I've blogged several times about the pictures of giant human skeletons on the web that aren't what they seem to be. They fall into two categories: hoaxes and mis-identification of the remains of either dinosaurs or (more often) mastodons or mammoths. I recently came...
journal articles
Just in Time for Christmas: David C. Brown’s Catalogue for Books in Egyptology and Other Ancient Near Eastern Studies
David C. Brown / Oxbow Books is perhaps the "go to" site and catalog for finding books related to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamian, Israel, and other civilizations of the ancient Near East. They have hundreds of titles in each area -- lots of stuff you won't find anywhere...
Open Access Books on Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism
A couple books by well known Judaic scholar Lawrence Schiffman are now available for open access: download or read online: The Jews in Late Antiquity download or read online: Challenge and Transformation: Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism
Critical Edition of the Gilgamesh Epic Available Online
This is a steal, folks - especially if you can work in Akkadian. But even if not, Andrew George's magisterial work on the Gilgamesh Epic is a must. It's the most current scholarship on the original cuneiform text. The file features tablet transcriptions,...
Jesus and the Morning Star
One of the questions I get with some frequency concerns the phrase "(bright) morning star." The gist of the question usually concerns some presumed relationship between Jesus and Lucifer (the question, as we will see, is something of a misnomer all on its own). That's...
Red Rain of Kerala, India and Panspermia
Is the red rain phenomena of Kerala, India, proof of extraterrestrial life? Does it contain ET DNA? Does it demonstrate a panspermia mechanism? The answers, in order, are: no, no, and no. The red rain issue seems to come up a lot. I want to use it as an example of how...
E. A. Wallis Budge Resources
Many readers will be familiar with E. A. Wallis Budge, perhaps mostly with respect to his books on Egyptology. Much of Budge's work in Egyptian language is today very outdated, as is his other work in Egyptology. Nevertheless, there is still good material to be found...
New Website Dedicated to NT Scholar Father Raymond Brown
Mark Goodacre passed along this note about a new website dedicated to Father Brown. Check it out. I also recommend going to that part of the site that includes several PDFs of Brown's work. He was a major force in NT scholarship and Jesus studies.
Free Book (PDF) on Temples and Temple Cosmology in Antiquity
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago recently posted a new volume in the Oriental Institute Seminars series: Heaven on Earth: Temples, Ritual, and Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient World (Edited by Deena Ragavan). You can download the book as a PDF for...
The Cosmos in the Antikythera Mechanism: ET Flunked Astronomy
That's the title of a new, freely accessible scholarly paper on the Antikythera mechanism you can find here. Here's the abstract: The Antikythera Mechanism is a fragmentarily preserved Hellenistic astronomical machine with bronze gearwheels, made about the second...
Theses and Dissertations on UFO-Related Topics
[UPDATE 6/26/2013: Thanks to Jonas for adding some theses and dissertations in a comment - I have added them at the end of this post. MSH. Thanks as well (7/1/2013) to the Spooky Paradigms blogger for directing my attention to his first post in the series, where he...
Robert Ripley: A More Honest Showman Than Steven Greer
I just blogged this over at UFO Religions so I thought I'd reproduce this here. >> In the latest twist to the Steven Greer ET disclosure shell game (hat tip to BK), Greg Newkirk of the Who Forted? blog and Lee Spiegel of the Huffington Post (photo credit for the...
Abba Doesn’t Mean ‘Daddy’
Earlier today I saw something come up in my Twitter account that I appreciated. It was a tweet from New Testament professor Will Varner. The link Will provided led me to this online post at the Gospel Coalition site: "Does Abba Mean 'Daddy'?" The brief post outlines...
Scholarly Journal for Septuagint Studies Now Available Online
Thanks to Peter Gentry for this note. Thanks to the hard work of Ben Wright and Jay Treat, volumes 1-33 (1968-2000) of the Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (BIOSCS) are now available in PDF online. The IOSCS printed these...
Society of Biblical Literature Papers Available Online
This link from the Ancient World Online (AWOL) will take you to a few dozen SBL seminar papers that have been made available for free. These were all SBL conference papers. Some that I downloaded: Michael Pietsch, University of Hamburg Prophetess of Doom:...