Some good news for me this past week:  I’m now associate professor with tenure at York University.  I’m very happy about that process being behind me now.

The podcast has been going well and it will now be a hiatus on episodes for July and August.  There are two more episodes (on the book of Hebrews) in the “Early Christian Portraits of Jesus” series to come in September, and then a new series on “Diversity in early Christianity: ‘Heresies’ and struggles” (’gnosticism’, Apocrypha, etc) begins in October. Thanks for the emails of encouragement about the podcast.  Episodes now generally get about 1200 or more downloads per episode, which makes that work seem really worthwhile.  What is up with my episode on Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is at 2,438 downloads, I will never know (there are other ancient writings people!).

Regarding regular posts on this blog, I’ve been extremely busy lately trying to complete a book on Dynamics of Identity in Early Christianity for T & T Clark, which is occupying virtually all of my work time and more (and rightly so as we are expecting a new baby in the Fall!). Once I feel I am getting a handle on that project, I hope to do some regular posts here and there this summer on the blog.  Time with the family is very important in the summer as well, though.  So please be patient.

Happy Christmas to those of you that celebrate! Have a nice December break or holidays to others!

I’ll point you to some holiday-related posts of the past and a new Christmas album post (which may solve the mystery of the caption above) on my other blog:

• The Little Drummer Boy and Protevangelium of James (NT Apocrypha 2)
• ‘Tis the season . . . : Jewish and Roman holidays
• Humorous Hannukah interlude
• Favourite Christmas album: Ella Fitzgerald’s Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas

Well, my uncertainty as to whether or not anyone would actually listen to my podcasts on Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (mainly early Christianity) is dispelled. The number of subscribers to my bi-weekly podcast is now over 200 within just two months (mainly through iTunes). This crawls towards the number of subscribers to my blog itself (in the low 300s), which has been around for years. I can say that the podcasts will indeed continue. I’m glad my breath is not wasted.

You can subscribe to my podcast with a podcatcher (like iTunes).

I was happy to be chosen and interviewed as October’s “blogger of the month” by Biblioblogs.com (Brandon Wason and Jim West).  You can read the interview here.  A monkey is involved.

So far, it seems that the move of my websites and blogs to a new internet hosting service provider has gone well, and that things are working. Please comment here if you do encounter any problems at all on the blogs or websites. It would be much appreciated!

I just noticed that the number of unique visitors to this blog (since 2005) has recently gone passed 100,000, not to mention the 300 or so regular readers who now subscribe through feeds (and are not included in that unique visitors count). This makes it all seem worthwhile. Thanks for visiting this blog!

Now, if I could only get these sorts of numbers to my new music blog, Phil’s Vinyl Addiction.

I’ve started a new, non-academic blog that will facilitate and / or alleviate my new addiction: LP records (yes, those largish black discs made from vinyl–they still exist). As I state so eloquently on the opening post to Phil’s Vinyl Addiction, “This blog is about music. More specifically it’s about whatever music I happen to be listening to.” Sometimes I’ll even mention a CD. Check it out, if you like.

How, you might ask, are you going to run a second blog when you hardly ever post to the first one?  I don’t know.

In case you haven’t noticed, postings have been scant lately. End of term marking has been followed by preparations for a May wedding, as well as a move to a new home (priorities). So although there will not be many postings in the next month or so, I will be back (and I will avoid blog-death once again — nine lives, and in this case a happy life).

The most recent edition of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Forum includes an informative article on biblioblogging by Tyler Williams: “Welcome to the Biblical Studies Carnival“. Earlier Jim Davila had offered an article on: “Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism“. Articles like these can only help to bring more readers to our blogs and make our work on the blogs even more worthwhile. Thanks!

I have finally completed the transfer of all of my web pages to the new format with cascading style sheets and dynamic web templates.  I have created a number of new banners for the various websites.  Browse around and take a look.

Cascading style sheets (.css) allow me instantly to change the look of all pages, such as the fonts, colour of links, and style of headings, by changing just one item in the style sheet.  Dynamic web templates allow me to change all the side-bars, headers or footers with one simple step.

My fiancée claims that my old photo was not representative (I was fat with a funny beard). I liked it because there were Roman ruins. Here is the new one (now I’m old), but at least there are Loebs behind me:

As you may or may not have noticed, I have now made my blog website my main page and entryway into my other sites (so if you type in www.philipharland.com, you will now be brought to this blog).  I have added tabs just below the banner above that will allow you to access all other parts of my websites.  This includes my initial experimentation with a hover-based drop-down menu for “My Other Websites”.  Give it a try.

This is the first change of what will become an overhaul of my websites, with a new improved look (based on my blog design).  This is what happens when your girlfriend is a web expert — 24/7 helpline that actually does help.  Thanks, Cheryl.

The recent hosting of the Biblical Studies Carnival has pushed me over the brink of 50,000 unique visitors at this blog since May 2005. This made me think to look at the number of visitors for my main website, www.philipharland.com, which is now over 100,000.

Looking at the locations of recent visitors on the blog and website, I find visitors from the following countries in the past day or so:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK, USA.

This kind of makes it seem worthwhile that I started to do this geeky website thing.

After a long absence which I will not bother to explain — except to apologize, I will once again begin posting to the blog. And you thought it was dead. (It’s a sad state of affairs when one loses one’s near pole position on the NTGateway blogroll).

This year I am teaching the “Founders of Christianity” course (click for course outline) at York University, which is an introduction to early Christian writings. So many of my posts may relate to that course. As to research, I’m still working on immigrant groups in the Greco-Roman world and religion and travel, so those will come up as well.

Please note the new web address for this blog (with no html page address):
http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/

I have successfully transferred all posts from my former blogger blog to this new Wordpress blog. The very nice thing about Wordpress is the categories (look to the right and further down). All 100 or so posts are now here and I have even attempted to get the more substantial comments transferred (all this done manually since any automated conversion was impossible with blogger not publishing to my server). I like Wordpress very much, but it has been a little bit tiring to figure out php language (which Wordpress uses in its formatting rather than html). Please do let me know (by email at pharland-at-alcor-dot-concordia-dot-ca) if you find any links that are “not found” (I’ve been trying to correct all internal links). Unfortunately, all previous permalinks have changed from the old blog (nothing I could do about that since the page names are not “html” in Wordpress).

Hope you like the look of this one and come again. I designed the banner myself, so let’s hope it doesn’t come across as “home-made” in a bad way;)

It’s been an annoying week or two as far as website related things go. Blogger was no longer successfully publishing to my server, so I was forced to find another way, and I have decided to switch to Wordpress (which has a good reputation and does not require any transfer from one server to another). Another result was that any time I had for web-related things was occupied with solving this problem, rather than making new posts (and this may be so for a little while yet). So the blog will now continue on Wordpress, and most of the previous posts will remain in blogger format for now (including their html link-names alongside this new and better blog). I may begin to transfer them gradually here, but there’s 110 entries in my previous blog (not looking forward to transferring them all).

UPDATE: Everything is now transferred from the old blog to this one.

As we move our way from medieval to early modern Christianity in one of my classes, I thought I’d mention an interesting blog that focusses on the early modern period (though not on Christianity specifically). Sharon Howard (post-doctoral fellow at the U. of Wales), who also hosts the Early Modern Resources site, has her blog on Early Modern Notes.

In a recent post she discusses why she blogs as an academic, as well as the value of blogging for research (much of which rings true to me). She writes, in part,

“Blogging research lets you develop the very first drafts of ideas. Bits and pieces that don’t yet amount to articles (or even conference papers), but they may well do some day. And something else, sometimes: last year I was having trouble thinking up any new ideas at all, but blogging old ideas, often attached to new sources, meant that I kept writing, if only a few hundred words a week, without having to worry about it being original or impressive. And now, because it’s all archived and easy to find, I can look back over some of that work and see potential themes, little seeds of ideas that are worth working on, start to make them grow. . . Another thing: writing for a slightly different audience than in the usual academic contexts. This is an amazing opportunity to reach out.”

I also really enjoy the broader audience thing.

UPDATE: Jim Davila and Instapundit point to an online article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on academic blogging.

Among other things, the author of the article, Henry Farrell, notes that perhaps the majority of academic bloggers “see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn’t a hobby; it’s an integral part of their scholarly identity. They may very well be the wave of the future.”

I was recently interviewed for an article, “Academics take up blogging,” in our local Thursday Report here at Concordia U, where you can see some of my basic thoughts on academic blogging.

It’s nice to see the counter for this blog go beyond the 5000 visitor mark (since May 2005, ranging from about 50-70 per day recently). My main website is approaching 60,000 since June 2003 (ranging from about 70-100 per day these days). It is even more rewarding to see the range of readers from across the world. In the past few days, for instance, there were visitors from: Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Japan, China, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Slovenia, Ukraine, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, and, of course, a good number of readers from United States and good ol’ Canada (”I am Canadian!”). One of the most rewarding things about a blog and a website is that you can share what you’re learning with people around the world with whom you would not otherwise have any contact! This really makes it all seem worthwhile. Thanks for coming!

UPDATE (Dec 2005): As I have switched to Wordpress, I have lost that good ol’ detailed counter. Oh well

I have been meaning to mention Troels Myrup Kristensen’s blog on early Christian iconoclasm (on which he is writing a doctoral thesis in the Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Aarhus, Denmark). Many of his entries deal with important issues concerning the relation of Christianity to the religions of the Mediterranean world, and he draws heavily on archeological materials. Recently, he has posted an excellent photo of a detailed sarcophagus (now in the Museum at Arles) depicting biblical scenes, as well as a colour photo of a papyrus which relates to iconoclasm. He also discusses religion in late antique Corinth. Just now he raises issues concerning continuities in the transition from”pagan” to Christian. I think the idea of tracking a thesis in progress by way of a blog is an excellent idea. Check it out.

As I am reading in preparation for a course on Christianity in the late medieval and early modern periods, iconoclasm is on my mind (right now I can’t remember the lyrics to that song).

This blog on the religions of the Roman empire and the social history of Christianity serves two main purposes. On the one hand, it will provide an opportunity for me to share interesting (to me and hopefully to you) things I encounter in my research (I am an assistant professor in the Religion department at Concordia University in Montreal). My own interests focus on archeological and epigraphic (inscriptions) evidence for small groups or associations in the Roman empire and on comparing groups of various kinds (Jewish, Christian, and “pagan”) from a social historical perspective. More recently I have also focused attention on the intersection of travel and religion in antiquity (e.g. pilgrimage, ethnography, immigrant groups). On the other hand, this blog will offer a venue for interactions with students on topics addressed in my courses, which include courses not only on ancient religions but also on the history of Christianity generally.
There are already excellent blogs by academics (us university types) in related areas, including Mark Goodacre’s New Testament Gateway blog, Stephen Carlson’s Hypotyposeis, Jim Davila’s Paleojudaica, Torrey Seland’s Philo of Alexandria blog, David Meadows’ Rogueclassicism, and others. I will consciously avoid covering the ground that is so well covered in those blogs and will concentrate most on issues specific to my own research or on issues raised by my students (both undergrads and graduate students). I plan to make posts about 2 or 3 times a week, but this may change if blog-addiction sets in. I’ll have to come up with something more interesting than this bland introduction soon. Come again.