Craig Evan Anderson (Claremont Graduate University) and Matthew Ryan Hauge (Azusa Pacific University) have launched a podcast series about the Gospel of Mark.  I’ve listened to the first episode and thought it was really good.  Here’s a snippet of their thoughts:

This podcast episode addresses the diverse ways in which the canonical Gospels speak about the life of Jesus. Oftentimes, in popular Christian culture we blend the Gospels together, manufacturing a super-gospel that harmonizes the diversity of the four Gospels into a gospel that does not exist. Unfortunately, this popular harmonization functions as a subtle rejection of the Gospels as they are presented in the Bible and silences the unique beauty of the voice of each Gospel.

Go hear to listen and read their summary of episode 1.  They have also produced a series on Kings.

The recent find on October 13th of a dead, 18 foot oarfish off the California coast brought to mind all the books I read as a child about sea monsters. Seeing the pictures of the long, narrow body of the  typically deep sea fish (which can actually grow up to over 50 feet), it is easy to understand why sailers of an earlier time would have thought, on the rare occasion one approached the surface, that it was a giant “sea serpent“.  Coincidentally, the Smithsonian ran a fascinating article just a few days later promoting the release of two new books (here and here) dealing with maps and sea monsters.

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One of the scholarly dangers in our field is letting the excitement of an inscriptional find take us down avenues where we want to go, rather than having a more restrained approach. Part of the problem with this is, as many archaeologists and historians have found in recent years, the news media are prone to sensationalizing finds when they bear upon ‘biblical’ times without our coaxing. The result is the dissemination of misinformation. And news certainly travels quickly these days.

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(image courtesy of the Israeli Antiquities Authority)