The past week has been a difficult one for blogging as final papers and final exams pour in. It is not necessarily an onerous task, it is just that there is so much. Writing on the Scripture, even in a blog format, requires time and thought and for the next week or so, that will be given over to grading or, as we Canadians say, “marking.” If it takes time to write on Scripture, though, it takes much less time to talk about it. As May 21, 2011 approaches, media outlets are beginning to produce stories about the this date and apocalyptic thought more generally. I wrote about this date and apocalyptic thought recently here and here  and Kerry Weber wrote beautifully about May 21 recently here. If you have written a book called The End of the World, though, you will get more requests to talk about the end of the world.

And so, this afternoon, I took a break from marking and talked to the local NBC affiliate Kare 11 on May 21 for the 5:00 pm central time news tonight. Tonight, I will take another break and discuss apocalyptic thought on WCCO Radio 830 at 8:30 pm central time. Watch or listen if you can. Then it’s back to end of the semester instead of the end of the world.

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.