
In this episode we’re joined by Dr. James Barker, who is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Western Kentucky University and the author of Writing and Rewriting the Gospels: John and the Synoptics (published by Eerdmans). In this episode we discuss Dr. Barker’s theory of Gospel development, which entails the idea that each…

In this episode we’re joined by Dr. Nicholas Elder, who is Associate Professor of New Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary and the author of the book that we discuss in this episode, Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions (published by Eerdmans). Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Elder talks…

Before we left for the UK my wife and I joined one of my graduate professors (and dear friend) for dinner with his family at his home. He gave me lots of needed advice about working on my PhD as he himself worked through his at the University of Aberdeen many years ago. One piece…

Systems are great. You should use them for, like, everything. I just realized this summer that there’s a pretty straightforward system for writing a research paper over five days. Identify a category. I like Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, but I had no idea what to write about it. So I picked it up and read the first twenty…

For the past few years, I have been pretty intensely involved in a particular field of academics that generates a ton of monographs, books, and other book-like-things every year. One of the great ways us young academics can get our name listed along with all other rockstars of the Biblical studies field is to review…

I grew up, like most Christians, immersed by Christian culture. Left Behind books, Kirk Cameron movies, Tee-shirts with Christian knock-off slogans. Half of me lived in this realm, the other half lived in secular culture. Stephen King, Jim Carey movies, and non-knock off tee-shirts. All people, Christian or not, care about culture. We want our…

The other day a friend of mine wrote a really great blog post where he surveyed several PhD students about how they managed their time while working on their PhD. You can read his post here: http://tinyurl.com/o28leab. I thought I would weigh in on the matter in this blog post. Typically one receives the following…

Every once and a while a strange but wonderful happenstance takes place in my office here at the University of Aberdeen. All three of us (myself and two officemates) spontaneously look up from our systematic theology books, economic charts of the Irish economy, and ancient Greek manuscripts to take part in a momentary reprieve from…

The writing process for working on a PhD Thesis is pretty frustrating. I have spent the greater part of my first year here in Aberdeen just trying to nail down a system that works for me. I thought I would share this insane/frustrating/possibly helpful system in my blog this week. I originally wrote this post…