Julia M. OBrien

There’s been some discussion over at the Changing Lives through Literature blog about an article I wrote this summer.   You can click here to learn more about this program, which engages offenders in a process of reading and self-discovery as an alternative to incarceration.

Thanks to all those who responded to my call for Psalms stuff. Here, I report on the array of objects we handled in our first Psalms class.

I've never thought of Jesus as meek and mild, but I also never imagined Jesus the way I saw him depicted on a billboard in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a few years ago.

Last weekend, two biblical scholar friends and I visited the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and spent time in an exhibit entitled "Shrunken Treasures:  Miniaturization in Books and Art." It features tiny books and objects from the museum's permanent collection.

My "What's your Earliest Memory of a Bible Story?" poll has been up for 6 weeks.  As of today 75 people voted.  Thanks for all who joined in.

Since I'm not a trained poll-crafter, I'm not sure if the results really provide fresh data or are skewed by my selection of stories. But the winners of the poll didn't surprise me.

My daughter, a college senior, saw the new Harry Potter movie at midnight last night.

A lot of folks treat the Old Testament as "background" reading for something else.  For Christians, it's treated as the prequel to the New Testament, the part you have to read in order to understand the stuff you want to read. Who is Melchizedek and why does the book of Hebrews link him to Jesus?  Why was circumcision important to Jews of the first century?  What does atonement mean?  What's a covenant? The Old Testament offers the answers for the New Testament reader who wants to know.

King David is on the entertainment circuit these days.  He's the focus of an off-Broadway musical, not so creatively titled "King David," now at the Promise Theater. He's already a TV regular,  starring in the NBC series Kings (see earlier blog post).

In all the media hype, he hasn't risen above the humble book.  Robert Pinsky's The Life of David was published in 2008.   For the literary-minded, there's a new version of his story by Robert Alter: The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel.  And to show that he doesn't take himself too seriously, David continues to appear as a vegetable version of himself in "Dave and the Giant Pickle" in the Veggie Tales series.

What accounts for David's timeless appeal?

I just learned about the Iconic Books Project at Syracuse University, run by Jim Watts and Dorina Miller Parmenter.  The goal of the project is to catalogue the way in which iconic books ("texts revered as objects of power rather than just as words of instruction, information, or insight") are displayed, read, covered, represented in art, etc., etc.

There's nothing new about accessorizing with religion.  A quick stroll through most museums will make the point:  people have worn faith-based necklaces, rings, and amulets for millennia.