[Cross-posting] I want to retool my Intro NT course by framing the texts as political theology. What are the best secondary sources on NT in/and empire? (I'm thinking of things like apocalyptic as anti-imperial worldview, use of terms like basileia, ekklesia, gospel, etc.)

In other news. . . www.bbc.com/news/article...

Talk to me about the so-called "Great Persecution." Where are scholars on the impetus for Diocletian's edicts? (Esp. the new addition of book burning.) Has the Neo-Platonic influence become consensus?

Does anyone know what happened to the Campbell Bonner Amulet database? (formerly: cbd.mfab.hu) Has it be moved elsewhere? Or is it just gone??

I’m so excited to have this in my hands! And I can’t wait for the next one! @vox-magica.bsky.social

Grad school feels.

p45. Chester Beatty 1.

Iris would have voted no.

@markwarner.bsky.social @timkaineva.bsky.social Do not fund this sham of a government. Musk has gutted everything worth saving. @chuckschumer.com is selling us out. Withholding your votes is the only card Dems have. Represent us, please!

Yo @durbin.senate.gov, no one is picking up your Senate phone and you don’t even have a voicemail. Vote no on cloture and the spending bill or I will do whatever it takes to make sure the next Senator from Illinois has basic constituent services set up during business hours.

Well, people, now I just want to start good trouble.

CEO pay is up 1,085% since 1978, while typical worker pay is up just 24%.  Why do we always hear "we can't afford to pay our workers more" but never "we can't afford to pay our CEO more"?

This is the face of a puppy who doesn’t want to wait an hour for her lunchtime treat. It is also the face of a puppy who reminds me that time is a human construct that doesn’t need to determine when lunchtime treats should be given.

I know mortality rates in the pre-modern world are little more than educated guesses, but does anyone know what the guesstimate is for maternal mortality in late antiquity?

Supporting Ukraine is not a Rorschach test. It is an open book True/False for anyone who paid any attention to 20th century European history. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real hard choices about what to do but forced surrender with a knife in the back is so obviously not it.

For @emuehlbe.bsky.social Before Iris started turning gray, the only patch on her whole body that wasn’t blackest black was this little whitest white btw her paw pads. Not exactly post worthy, but I thought you would ❤️ her for it.

Not just deserve. Weather monitoring, disease management, and food safety are services we pay for from the government that are being stolen from us.

I think I speak for all of Gen X and I am here to say that we are tired of living in historic times. Astronauts fell out of the sky while we watched in Social Studies. We felt the isolation when all the planes were grounded after 9/11. Some of us survived a … 🧵

I’m not Catholic and so have no ecclesiological dog in the game, but I just can’t with a progressive (for a Catholic) pope dying or stepping down. The winds are not moving in favor of democracy, and I just can’t think about a conservative Pope taking the reins right now.

When you study religion, people often assume you study all religions at all times and in all places. Also, you can pull the most obscure data from your middle aged brain at any moment. This is how I am talking to my PoliSci friends now. Apologies for being _that_ person.

Governments aren’t businesses and shouldn’t be. When governments spend money on things they have deemed important, they are doing their jobs. Musk doesn’t understand the difference.

Feed Cleanse

I know this sounds dumb, but what if the Trump administration took a minute to find out who they are about to fire? It’s super inefficient to have to track them down to rehire them.

Today I was reading around in Nag Hammadi texts and now my brain is broken.

Antidote: Masterpiece and Iris.

Musk's censorship algorithm on Twitter reduced our audience by about 95% since he bought it. So we moved over to blue sky. Help us build another great following right here where the skies are clear and the water is fine ;-) Please do Follow Retweet & repeat

"Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Wednesday rolled out the Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy (ELON MUSK) Act, which would ban 'special' government employees like Musk from having federal contracts."

I don’t think—in all the awfulness—this has gotten the attention it deserves. They cut FIFTY-SEVEN PERCENT of the GedEd courses. General education courses at Florida institutions no longer contain “indoctrinating concepts,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues announced this w…

Causation not correlation: There has never been a time in our nation’s history when the humanities have been more relevant and most derided.

Friends: I am trying to write a few paragraphs on the ontology of the G-R world: to communicate the saturation of the divine in that world as real, as working from a different (but not inferior) logic than the post-Enlightenment world. Who can I read who does this especially well?

Take home lesson from today 1/30/25: innocent peoples’ lives are not political fodder. If you disagree, you are an immoral jackass.

I think it's interesting that before you can pay your membership dues for SNTS, you have to click an acknowledgement that you are actually a member of SNTS. Have they had a problem in the past with random people sending them £90?

From my FB post.

My dog posts are not dismals of the gravity of the world we face, but a tiny fraction of antidote to it.

Today: How many Universities sent assurances to their campuses that they would ensure everyone’s safety. How many affirmed the rights of Muslims and Jews of LGBTQ and Trans members of the community? I am betting on crickets because higher education is about the bottom line, no matter what they say

If you are friends of mine, you know and love deeply people who are going to be targeted by this administration and/or its devotees. Let them know you are in the fight for & with them to the bitter end. To my friends: I will fight to the end for your human rights. And I am a scrappy bitch

I don't know who among you had been needing a photo of Iris, but I've got you covered.

I need my people to periodically yell at me: "You cannot have three dogs! Three dogs will not fit in the back of your Mustang." Ok?

So... This happened...

A bit of good news. It's still a long road to the finish line, but it's a start.

I've been thinking a lot about my writing process lately. I've decided that sometimes it's like I've mastered the art of the French croissant. Other times it's like making sausage. Today I want a croissant, but I am having sausage, instead. Que será, será.

Early Christianity and Late Antiquity friends: who has written on the Martyrdom of Ignatius (the account of his martyrdom, not the date of the martyrdom itself) in recent years? What critical scholarship is around about date, provenance, etc?

Truer words have not been spoken.

I'm closing out 2024 as a frustrated writer. After reading and rereading the first two chapters of my new project for six months, I only today realize that they won't work and have to be completely reconceptualized and rewritten. Sigh.

When you can buy a democracy. It's not a democracy any longer. Join the resistance at @altyellonatpark.org

Happy morning, friends! 🌞