Sightings Articles
Stop Asking What the Bible Means to the President
A historian of the bible in America reflects on what Trump’s recent photo-op in front of St. John’s Church does (and doesn’t) mean
June 8, 2020
How Republican Politicians Get Schooled on the Bible
An investigation of the Bible study (and its teacher) influencing how Republican politicians understand the coronavirus pandemic
April 6, 2020
The Bible as/and Literature
W. W. Norton & Company’s recent publication of Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary is at once a cultural accomplishment of a very high order, and an opportunity to think about the places and the spaces that “the Bible” occu...
February 18, 2019
Faking the Bible
News outlets widely reported last week that five Dead Sea Scroll fragments acquired and displayed by the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, are forgeries. For Dead Sea Scrolls experts, this announcement came as no surprise: a number had already r...
October 29, 2018
The Apostle and the AG
Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Trump administration’s then policy of separating children from their parents at the southwestern border of the United States in a speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on June 14. Within that speech he made a brie...
June 21, 2018
Biblical Translation Leads to Tussles, Clashes
One scholar, N. T. Wright, reviewing another, David Bentley Hart, prompted a response from the latter that the former’s writing was a “catalogue of complaints” by someone whose work “suffers from a dangerous combination of the conventional and the id...
January 29, 2018
“Cross”-examining the Biblical Witness in War for the Planet of the Apes
Editor's Note: With today's issue, Sightings launches a new thematic series on the relationships between religion and science fiction—both terms broadly understood. Our first installment in this series comes from returning Sightings contributor Audre...
October 19, 2017
The Pitfalls of Meritocracy: James J. Tissot's "Prodigal Son" Etchings at the Smart Museum
James J. Tissot (1836-1902), a French artist best known for his paintings of society and fashion, produced a series of images restaging the parable of the Prodigal Son in 1880s England. I used his cycle of five etchings as part of a class I taugh...
May 28, 2015
Bible Society Museum
“Museum of Biblical Art to Close, Despite Recent Crowds,” a New York Times headline read on April 28. The reviews of its current Donatello show were very positive, but, author Randy Kennedy explained, could do nothing to help prevent the closing. ...
May 4, 2015
Evangelicals, LGBTQ+, and the Bible: What's (Been) Going On?
In early March, evangelical Pastor Stan Mitchell announced to his congregation, GracePoint Church in Nashville, that he fully affirmed gay members. Growing numbers of evangelical pastors in the United States are coming out in favor of full accepta...