Cairo, Day 2

Morning came really, really early today, but it was worth it to see the pyramids and sphinx at Giza. These are massive structures that demonstrate incredible skill in engineering. After leaving Giza we went to Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and met with Dr. Dina Shehata. Dr. Shehata discussed with us some…

Cairo!

We arrived safely at our hotel in Cairo today. We’re all pretty tired after a long day of travel, and we have to be up in about five hours for breakfast and the next day’s activities. Cairo is an incredible city of about 20 million people (including the surrounding area). It is massive and an…

Off to Egypt

I’m having a wonderfully exciting time sitting in DFW airport right now. I’ll fly to D.C., then to JFK, then to Amman, Jordan, and then to Cairo. The flight to Amman is overnight, so hopefully I’ll be able to sleep a bit. At least I can get some good reading time in. I’m going to try…

Christmas, Palestinian Style

I was in Bethlehem a couple of years ago just after Christmas. Although it’s the city of our Lord’s birth, Bethlehem is a tense place, situated as it is in the West Bank, so close to Jerusalem, in the midst of seemingly unresolvable religious and political conflict. Two students and I were walking to the…

In the Incarnation….

God took on human weakness. This is a crucial aspect, though an oft-neglected one, of Christian theology. Consider the kenosis hymn of Philippians 2:5-11. Christ had the form of God, but did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped for his own gain. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a…

Are Classical Liberalism and Postmodernity Both Oppressive?

I’m reading Rebecca Raphael’s very fine book, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature (T & T Clark, 2008). In this work, she makes a very interesting observation: “[T]he classical liberal emphasis on autonomy assumed a standard, able, adult body and said virtually nothing about the presence of disabled persons in the body…

Post SBL thoughts

Well, I didn’t find any good bbq in downtown Atlanta (though I can’t say that I tried very hard). I ran into a lot of old friends, though, which was nice. The only program unit sessions that I went to were the three sessions of the Disability Studies and Healthcare in the Bible and Near…

SBL!

I’m off to the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta today. This is always a really beneficial conference. For me personally, the sections on the Bible and disability and social-scientific criticism of the NT are very important. Add in the lecture by N. T. Wright tonight, numerous receptions, and a chance…