Author: Stewart Moore

Today’s biblical contradiction is different from the first two. In Proverbs and Genesis, an ancient editor looked at two texts that contradicted each other and said, “Ah, we’ll put them both in.” Faced with two texts of equal authority, the editor did not feel qualified to make a decision between them. Today’s contradiction is different…

Kathryn Hughes. Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. You probably think you know what this book is about just from the cover and the title. I sure thought I did. Bustles unbustling, and corsets a-popping their whalebones. Nope. It’s so much better than that.…

Quick! How many days did it rain on Noah? Answer: It’s complicated. Everyone knows that it rained for forty days and forty nights (Gen. 7:4, 12, 17). But then something unexpected happens: The waters rise for another 150 days (Gen. 7:24), from the 17th day of the second month (Gen. 7:11) to the 17th day…

When I said that “One Thin Dime” was my first professionally published story, I left out the fact that I did have one story published before then, in about 2009, in the Yale Graduate School’s literary journal, Palimpsest. They didn’t pay me, or ask me to sign a contract, so I figure they won’t squawk…

I’ve been a playwright, a biblical scholar and a speculative fiction author, in overlapping phases. Being a theater professional or a religion professor didn’t work out, and I don’t anticipate retiring with my millions from bestselling fiction. Nonetheless, I’ve left some trail markers behind me. My first book is titled (rather drily) Jewish Ethnic Identity…

So here’s another thing we’re going to do here. When I’m not writing, and not busy with real life, I’m reading. Almost everything I read is nonfiction, mostly research for one story or another. And maybe some of these books would be interesting to you. We won’t talk about every book I read, just the…

“For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely.” George Orwell, 1984 I mentioned that I’ve been a biblical scholar, and I’ve long wanted to write about a topic I find fascinating: contradictions in the Bible. Now, if you Google “contradictions in the Bible,” depending on who you are, you’re likely…