I’ve always wondered how villains see themselves. Do they recognise their “evil” goals and mischievous behaviour as evil—or do they experience them as necessary, reasonable, even good? When I was a kid, weekend cartoons often served villains with bizarre, self-sabotaging plans. Sometimes their plots sounded less like wickedness and more like confused idealism (or just bad logic): after  the plan succeeds, what then? How does the villain actually benefit? Did they think they w

Last autumn, Mohr Siebeck published an edited volume (in WUNT I) on "Empire Criticism of the New Testament" that I edited. I am very happy that I could secure funding to make it open access  – which means you can simply download it for free. (I am especially glad about this because the volume is explicitly designed to be used in an advanced biblical studies class; more on the project and its pedagogical rationale on my personal website .) It was very encouraging to learn rece

Part of the main building complex of the University of Munich, picture by Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC BY-SA I am writing this...

It has been a while since I played video games, probably one of my all-time favourite hobbies. In my vacation back home, I had the chance...

Here you will find Triantafillos Kantartzis' Handout for his presentation Christian Apocrypha S23-213, SBLAAR San Diego 23.11.2024.

It's obvious that the Gospels tell stories. They report on Jesus's life, his encounters, relay his parables, and bear witness to his...

This summer, I had the privilege of participating in the summer conference season for the first time as a presenter. Presenting three...

Two weeks ago, OpenAI released their new GPT version, “o1.” It is different from previous versions in that it works with an “inference”...

This summer, I found myself traveling a path I never imagined when I first began my academic journey. From the quiet, rural, unknown...

As scholars of early Christianity, we are constantly seeking new ways to illuminate the complex relationship between the New Testament...

A couple of days ago, Google’s release of Gemini 1.5 Pro made headlines. While it comes with a standard 128,000 token context window, a...

In a recent - very stimulating - article, Nina Beguš showed that "narratives from GPT-3.5 and particularly GPT-4 are more more...

Πρωτοβρόχια, the first rains. Anyone who has traveled to Greece in early autumn knows them well. Just moments ago, everything was in the...