Prayer in Q - Conference 2017 (Graz)

I was honored with an invitation to present a paper on "Prayer in Q" at the 2017 Q Conference in Graz, Austria (March 23-25). My paper was entitled "The Promise of Providence and the Problem of the Parables: Revisiting Prayer in the Sayings Gospel Q" and explored the literary and historical relationship between the Enochic Book of Parables and Q in light of Q's prayer texts. I've written on this topic in The Nonviolent Messiah: Jesus, Q, and the Enochic Tradition, but it was great to be able to discuss this with Q specialists in more detail and hear some excellent papers! Many thanks to Christoph Heil and the Dept. of Catholic Theology at the University of Graz for the invitation and hospitality! I look forward to seeing the published papers in Mohr Siebeck's WUNT series!

New Article in Gnosis!

My new article, "'Knowledge is Truth'': A Course in Miracles as Neo-Gnostic Scripture," has just been published in Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies! The article discusses A Course in Miracles - a book allegedly received from "Jesus" by Helen Schucman, a psychologist at Columbia Medical Center in NYC in the 1960s - as an example of what can be called "Neo-Gnosticism." I suggest that the Course represents a modern-day neo-Gnostic scripture that reflects significant trends in contemporary Western religiosity, especially the quest for alternative forms of esoteric “spiritual” knowledge and experience in a nominally Christian or post-Christian Western world. Many thanks to April D. DeConick and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments!