According to Jimmy Kimmel, “Jesus really is everywhere!” (And I thought he was Jewish!) Just the other night Jimmy Kimmel had a special clip about Jesus sightings called “Where’s Jesus?” It was rather funny — there have been sightings of Jesus in rocks, wood panelling, fish sticks, mugs, pancakes, ceiling tiles, MRIs, pumpkins, dental x-rays, among other things. You can watch the segment here.
Jim West also noted another Jesus sighting… this time in the foam at the bottom of a pint of beer.
Dr. David M. Gunn will be visiting Edmonton for the next couple weeks through a grant from the University of Alberta’s EFF Distinguished Visitor Fund. The Program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta is hosting a series of lectures with Dr. Gunn. In addition, the Religion & Theology Department at Taylor University College is fortunante enough to be hosting one of the lectures on our campus.
Professor David M. Gunn (Ph.D., Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) is the A. A. Bradford Chair in Religion at Texas Christian University. The author or co-author of six monographs and close to four dozen substantive articles, as well as the editor or co-editor of six volumes of collected essays and translated works, and the general editor of 77 more, Dr. Gunn has been described as a prolific and diverse scholar. Originally a classicist, Dr. Gunn became interested in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. Significant results of that interest include the births of the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament and the JSOT Supplement Series, known today as the Library for Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. This astounding legacy helped make possible the methodological transformation of the discipline of biblical studies that occurred in the 1980s as scholars moved from a modernist historical-critical paradigm toward theories of reception history. Dr. Gunn currently serves as an editor for the Blackwell Bible Commentary Series, in which he wrote the volume on Judges (2005).
The theme of the free lectures is “Used and Re-Used: Episodes from the History of the Bible’s Reception.” The lectures are as follows (I have bolded the lecture at Taylor):
The lecture that Dr. Gunn will be delivering at Taylor University College will be drawing on the reception history of the book of Judges to illustrate responses through the centuries, by clerics, commentators, educators, artists, and archaeologists, to the material world of the Bible, particularly to problems raised by material objects and their use. He promises a mixture of the serious and whimsical, with some visual illustrations to temper the talking. One of the illustrations he sent me for a poster I was working on was from a comic based on the Jael-Sisera episode in Judges 4. I thought it was a hoot, so here it is:
This looks to be a great lecture series. If you are in the Edmonton area, I encourage you to attend.
I just had a chance to see the July 2006 volume of Dead Sea Discoveries (Volume 13, Issue 2). There are a number of interesting articles in it, especially the ones on “David’s Compositions” and the Qumran cemetery. The contents are as follows: