In response to the previous entry, "U. of Auckland Features Seminars on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Barbarians," CJ discusses Christian history and the influence of bibilical events on the work of these authors and others. 

The date of the Crucifixion has been a subject of speculation and debate among Christians for quite awhile, but not as long as you might think; this obsession with dates, and Biblical archaeology, is actually a Medieval phenomenon.  Jesus' contemporaries understood that the gospels, along with the books of the Hebrew Bible, were allegory--they weren't so much interested in the facts of the stories as in how, and to what extent, they legitimized Jesus' role as savior.  The authors of the gospels very consciously and purposefully call on Jewish theology and mythology, when discussing Jesus.  The most famous example of this is probably in John, chapter 6, which discusses the Eucharist.  John uses a writing technique called "bracketing" to place Jesus' actions within the context of not only the Jewish Passover feast, but also the contemporaneous Pagan harvest festival.  Many modern readers don't realize that this technique would have been obvious to most early Christians--just as the author of John intended it to be.

 

The late Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney) was just inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors Hall of Fame.  Dragonmount has full coverage of the event, including complete video coverage via YouTube. 

In the context of speaking about the author Jordan (as opposed to the man Rigney), Mike Livingston, an English professor at Rigney's alma mater the Citadel, gave a stirring address about the fantasy genre ranging from its origins in medieval epics to The Wheel of Time itself.

The Book Swede has a great post up about the use of magic in fantasy novels, specifically the recent trend toward epic fantasy that relies less heavily on magic as a plot device:

The move lately in fantasy seems to be towards grittier, darker works, with a lesser importance placed on magic. Take Brian Ruckley’s Godless World trilogy for example. Sure, magic users, the na’kyrim exist....The na’kyrim are dying out though, and a lot of modern fantasies have magic seen as a thing of the past -- of course, when a character who can do magic goes crazy, no one is prepared! The same goes with George R.R. Martin’s excellent A Song of Ice & Fire series, though there’s dragons in that, so an exclamation mark is obviously required!

Growing up reading fantasy books, the presence of some form of magic was always what intrigued me the most about the genre.  The Druid Fire and in-your-face sorcery of Terry Brooks's Shannara series appealed to me quite a bit, for instance.