New Books in Religion

Professor Matthew Thomas returns to explain how we can place the Gospels in time and context using both internal clues (literary evidence) and the external ones (anthropological evidence). These are the first steps on a path of the many centuries of transmission toward the Bible we have today; Matthew Thomas tells why they are so important and where they have led us.The papyrus (P66) of the Gospel of John in the Bodmer Library, Switzerland, can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What does the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have to say about nomads and nomadism in the ancient Near East? This episode explores nomadism in the Judaic religious tradition through the eyes of the authors of the Old Testament.Music in this episode: Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Jonathan Fessenden and I talk about two movies, Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) and Jerry London’s The Scarlet and the Black (1983) and what they say about how to confront evil in terrible times—seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan in one film, and 1943 Nazi-occupied Rome in the other—how to face our shortcomings and lean on God even when He is hard to find. We also talk about Jonathan’s article about continuous prayer and his life and journey.Jonathan Fessenden is a Catholic writer, composer, and teacher of theology. He has written about movies and worked in the industry as a composer, and continues to write music for film.Note: In this episode we refer to my earlier conversation with Makoto Fujimura about his work on the film Silence and other topics: Almost Good Catholics, Episode 14. Jonathan Fessenden, Missio Dei, “Pray without Ceasing” (October 6, 2022) Pope Francis’s recent homily on continuous prayer (September 28, 2022) All of Jonathan Fessenden’s articles on Missio Dei are here. Jonathan Fessenden’s album, Upon the Water, is here. Silence (2016), official trailer The Scarlet and the Black (1983), trailer Inside the Vatican, “Deep Dive: The Secret Archives of Pope Pius XII” (article and podcast) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this episode, we focus the use of religious myths, icons and deities in Hindu nationalist politics in India. More specifically, we discuss the political invocation of Lord Parshuram, a deity in the Hindu pantheon who has, in recent years, become more visible as a mobilizing political symbol for the Hindu nationalist movement. But who is Lord Parshuram? Why has he now become politically salient? And what does his politicization tell us about Hindu nationalist politics in India today? We look for answers to these questions in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Goa, where Lord Parshuram has recently been a focal point for political contestation and conflict along caste and religious lines.Solano da Silva, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at BITS Pilani in Goa.Jigisha Bhattacharya, The Faculty of English at Cambridge University.Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an Associate Professor at the dept. of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and one of the leaders of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, University of Helsinki, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical, and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

For two years Sr Nathalie Becquart has been in charge of the Church’s Synod on Synodality, coordinating the responses of millions of Catholics from 112 out of 114 Episcopal Conferences and from all the 15 Oriental Catholic Churches. She and I talk about the spirit of this Synod, its progress and direction, and the recently published Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS), Enlarge the Space of Your Tent.Sr Nathalie Becquart was appointed by Pope Francis to be Undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops. She's the first woman in church history to hold that office and to vote with that body of clerics. Working Document for the Continental Stage (DCS), Enlarge the Space of Your Tent. About Sr Nathalie Becquart, Global Sisters Report, “Meet Sr. Nathalie Becquart” About Sr Nathalie Becquart, Boston College News, “Papal Appointment” About Sr Nathalie Becquart, Rome Reports, “The Synod Special” Inside the Vatican, “Deep Dive: The Synod on Synodality” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Matthew Thomas, theologian and biblical scholar, explains how the Bible got to be the Bible, how confident we can be in its historicity, and on what authority we can trust such judgments. We talk about the languages of the Scripture and their transmission over time, and how we see the emergence of the documents that would later become the Bible already in first-century Christian communities.Professor Thomas teaches Biblical languages and the history of the Bible, Patristics, and Early Christian interpretation of the Scriptures, especially Pauline Theology, at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at UC Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

David Basile explains Thomas Aquinas's cosmological proofs for God. David is department chair of Theology at Archbishop Rummel High School in Metarie, Louisiana; he is also an old friend of mine so he was a natural choice to be the first guest of this new podcast. He talked about his own journey from atheism to Buddhism and finally to the Catholic Church. (He spent a decade as a Buddhist monk, where he first encountered Catholic contemplative mystics.)I asked David to explain how we know there is a God in the way he might make the case to his own students, to the skeptical—and maybe sometimes cynical—teenagers who native to our secular and materialistic society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference!Resources mentioned in the pod: Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com) Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022) Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021) Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022) Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017) McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019) Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013) Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net) Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. He is also the host (with Lan Li) of the Blue Beryl podcast. Subscribe to Blue Beryl here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In her latest book, Life in Citiations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture (Routledge, 2019), Ruth Tsoffar studies several key biblical narratives that figure prominently in Israeli culture. Life in Citations provides a close reading of these narratives, along with works by contemporary Hebrew Israeli artists that respond to them. Together they read as a modern commentary on life with text, or even life under the rule of its verses, to answer questions like: How can we explain the fascination and intense identification of Israelis with the Bible? What does it mean to live in such close proximity with the Bible, and What kind of story can such a life tell? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The Need for Creeds Today: Confessional Faith in a Faithless Age (Baker Academic, 2020) is an accessible invitation to the historic creeds and confessions makes a biblical and historical case for their necessity and shows why they are essential for Christian faith and practice today.J. V. Fesko, a leading Reformed theologian with a broad readership in the academy and the church, demonstrates that creeds are not just any human documents but biblically commended resources for the well-being of the church, as long as they remain subordinate to biblical authority. Fesko also explains how the current skepticism and even hostility toward creeds and confessions came about.For those interested, listen to an earlier conversation with J.V. Fesko on his book The Spirit of the Age (2017), which discusses 19th century debates about the Westminster Confession in the American Presbyterian church.Dr. J. V. Fesko has taught at Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) Atlanta since 2000 while he served as a pastor in Northwest Atlanta and now as Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at RTS Jackson. He has been an ordained minister since 1998 in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church serving as a church planter, pastor, and now teacher. Dr. Fesko’s interests include early modern Reformation and post-Reformation theology, the integration of biblical and systematic theology, as well as soteriology, especially the doctrine of justification. Dr. Fesko has authored or edited more than twenty books and written fifty published essays for various journals and books. More of his writing can be found at his personal website.Justin McGeary is Director of Christian Studies at John Witherspoon College and a graduate student at Union School of Theology, Wales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion