Ken Banner is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania focusing on Judaism in the Hellenistic Period.

Curriculum Vitae

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Early Judaism/Christianity
"Magic" in the Ancient World
Academic Approaches to the Study of Religious Experience
Computers and the Humanities
Bhakti Movements/Gaudiya Vaisnavism

The Benaiah Project A fictional project which pretends to study the Body/Mass Index of individuals in antiquity. It opens up with a comedy piece written by Eric Helmer, Jeff Henderson and myself back in 1982 and published in THE DOOR magazine. The article has just been republised in a book edited by Robert Darden, On the Eighth Day God Laughed (see the Benaiah Project, News for more information.)

I've put together a list of Religious Studies related Newsgroups for use by my students who are doing research. (March, 2001)

Simple JavaScript Program I wrote for Comparing Ancient Texts Side by Side in Columns. The js file underlying this program contains functions that can be accessed from other web sites. Useful for instructors who want to offer students a choice of texts for comparison.

My course page for RELS 02: Religions of the West at Penn has undergone a major revision for Summer, 2000.

My course page for RELS 302: Computing and the Humanities at Penn is now online. A new version of the course that used to be RELS409.

I maintained the Dept. of Religious Studies home page at Penn from Jan. 1998 to Jan. 2001. (Major revision: Jan. 1998, many minor revisions since. The page is now being updated by one of my former students from Computing and the Humanities)

I did the the HTML for the online version of Peter Dodson's syllabus, RELS202 Science and the Sacred (Fall, 1999)

I did the HTML for Ann Matter's course RELS 433 History of Christian Thought 300-1000 CE at Penn (Fall, 1998)

I did the HTML for Ann Matter's RELS 003 Religion and Literature course at Penn (Fall, 1998)

My course page for RELS 409: Computers and the Humanities (Spring,1998)

My old course page for Intro to Critical Thinking at Rowan University (Fall, 1997) has been moved to my Penn SAS account for preservation.

My old Course Page for Religions of the World at Rowan University (Spring, 1997) has been moved to my Penn SAS account for preservation.

My old Course Page for Introduction to Religion (Spring, 1996) at Rowan University has been moved to my Penn SAS account to be preserved for posterity.

Alan Humm's Page for "Ancient Jewish Accounts of Jesus"

Alan Humm's Introduction to the New Testament Course at Albright College

Alan Humm's Lilith "Home Page"

Alan Humm's Online Texts Related to Biblical Study

Comparision of Maimonides' "Thirteen Principles" and "The Pittsburgh Platform" Created for use in RS 002

Bob Kraft's Glossary of Judaism, Christianity and Islam created for use in RS 002

Ancient-L Discussion List Archive

Antiqua Medicina (UK)

Antiqua Medicina (University of Virginia)

ANRW Index

Apuleius, Apologia: Seminar The Product of a Seminar Led by Jim O'Donnell at Penn. This is an Excellent Example of the Use of the Web to Present Humanities Material!

Magic in the Daily Life of Roman North Africa in the Time of Apuleius by Gil Renberg (from the Apuleius Seminar above)

"Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!" (A response to the "Bible Code"--I've been waiting for someone to do this!)

Byzantine Paleography Page

Classics Eireann

Computers and Texts (The Online Journal of the CTI Centre for Textual Studies in the U.K.)

David Ulansey's The Cosmic Mystries of Mithras

Diotima: Women and Gender in the Ancient World

Dreams in Ancient Medicine

Early Christian Texts ("Church Fathers")

The Ecole Initiative (Online Encyclopedia Project for Early Christianity)

The Electronic New Testament Manuscripts Project

Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative

1 Enoch (Charles translation)

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Library of Ethiopian Texts-Prague

Exploring Ancient World Cultures (Excellent!)

Hellenistic Greek Linguistics Pages

Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts

The Jewish Roman World of Jesus by James Tabor

The Life of Adam and Eve: The Biblical Story in Judaism and Christianity (Site maintained by Gary A. Anderson and Michael E. Stone)

Medieval Calendar Calculator

Medieval Calendar Utility

The "Non-Canonical" Home Page (EarlyJewish/Christian texts.)

"Old Testament" Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

Resource Pages for Biblical Studies

A Table of Greek Manuscripts

The University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology

Online Course Materials at Other Locations:

• Eric Helmer's Introduction to Buddhism (An online introductory course to the academic study of Buddhism)
• Thinking Time-Feeling Eternity: Comparing the Incomparable (Eric Helmer's online discussion between Teacher and Student)
• Exploring Ancient World Cultures (University of Evansville, IN)
• Intro to Judaism at UC Davis
• Kern Trembath's Theology 100 at the University of Notre Dame (Ancient Israel, Early Judaism, Early Christianity)
• Online Classes in the Department of Theology-Notre Dame
• David Penchansky's Course Materials at the University of St. Thomas (Theology 101 and Old Testament).
• Introduction to Religion at the University of Wyoming
• The Online Classroom (Resource Page with a list of online courses)

• Advaita Vedanta Home Page
• Anthology of World Scripture
• Cybrary of the Holocaust
• Finding God in Cyberspace
• William James, Varieties of Religious Experience online.
• Mystic-L (List for the Academic Discussion of Mysticism)
• Michael E. Nielsen's Psychology of Religion Page
• Religion Section at Galaxy
• Religion Section at Yahoo
• Spirit-WWW
• Virtual Library: Religion
• Buddhism
• Hinduism
• Islam
• Judaism
• Pentecostal/Charismatic
• Protestant
• Roman Catholic
• Zoroastrian Home Page-Stanford University

• Missouri
• Eric C. Helmer, Home Page (A valued friend and former roomate from college, grad school and beyond)
• Gary Wornica's Home Page (A close friend from my college years)
• The Notre Dame Live Web Cams
• Exciting Career Opportunities for Religious Studies Ph.D.'s!
• The Fish Wars (A silent battle rages in our society!)
• HamsterDance Don't let this happen to your web page!
• Fox News (Excellent News Source!)
• The Drudge Report Matt will have the headlines a day before anyone else. And sometimes a month! (Also includes links to just about every significant news and editorial resource on the web from all political perspectives)
• The Zogby Poll
• Dr. Dean Ornish, M.D.'s LifeStyle Program
• Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire
• Bells & Motley Consort (Medieval and Renaissance music-- a favorite at the PA Renaissance Faire)
• The Kansas City Renaissance Festival
• Altramar Medieval Music Ensemble
• 2000 Keyes to the Future
• The Alan Keyes Network
• Pat Paulsen for President (He would have been great)
• Algore-Stupid Statements (The media should apologize to Dan Quayle)
• Surrealist Compliment Generator
• Cyberspace Confessional Booth (No longer functional! Please! Bring it back!
• Yesterday USA (Old Time Radio)
• Gilligan's Island Homepage
• Bob Denver's Gilligan Fan Page
• The Professor's Place (Russell Johnson's page)
• The Many Faces of Dawn Wells (The Offical Gilligan's Island Mary Ann web site)
• The Moose's Guide to Northern Exposure
• Peanuts Comic Strip
• Reverend Fun
• The Klingon Language Institute
• The Gospel of Mark in Klingon (Nick Nicholas' translation from the Greek)
• Nick Nicholas' Klingon Page
• The Miraculous Winking Jesus (Will you be one of the fortunate ones who sees Jesus wink?)
• The rec.humor.funny home page
• Clarion University (I used to work there....kind of...)
• WorldNetDaily

• Penn Dept. of Religious Studies
• Virtual Media Lab
• Jim O'Donnell's Home Page

• Get the Firefox Web Browser It's Free!
• CCAT Text Archives
• New Tools for Teaching
• Arachnophilia. Excellent HTML Editor! And it's free! (Careware).
• WOPR Home Page (Woody Leonhard-THE Authority on MS Word, WordBasic, and all things Microsoft Office)
• Lynx of the Week List
• NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML
• W3C's HTML Page
• W3C's Official HTML 4.0 Specifications
• W3C's Cascading Style Sheets Page
• W3C's XML Information
• HTML 3.2 ("Wilbur")
• AltaVista Search Engine
• Hotbot Search Engine
• Searching the Oxford English Dictionary
• MapQuest (Searchable Online Map of the United States)
• Directory of Electronic Journals and Newsletters
• The Urban Legends Reference Page (Check this out before you pass on that email message warning about telephone booths or whatever)
• Symantec Antivirus Center-Hoax Page (PLEASE check this out before you pass along that email message warning about the latest dreaded "virus")

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