About

My name is Michael Kok (the last name is Dutch and pronounced like ”Coke” rather than what you may be thinking :) ) and I am originally from Alberta Canada.  I am currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield working on the reception of Mark’s Gospel.  For my profile on the Sheffield Biblical Studies homepage, see here.

This blog exists to complement my PhD research on the “Gospel According to Mark” and to make some of that scholarship available to an online audience.  I am all for open discussion and debate in the comments, so I would love to hear your thoughts whether you agree, disagree or even strongly disagree with any of my posts.  I will try not to moderate comments, but my basic comment policy revolves around the “golden rule.”  That is, I do not want to have to deal with comments that are spam, that try to change the topic at hand to the individual’s own “hobby horse” or conspiracy theories about Christian origins, that make personal ad hominem attacks on individuals rather than sticking to the scholarly arguments, or that discriminate on the basis of a commentator’s gender, ethnicity/race or sexual orientation.  Those comments will be deleted, but everything else is open game in the comment section.

My policy for my blogroll is also pretty open since one of the things I missed about blogging was the community oriented aspect of it.  Basically, if you want a spot on my blogroll just leave your name, a link to your blog and a description of what your blog is all about in the comments of this post below.  The only requirement is that it has something to do with biblical or religious studies from an academic perspective at least some of the time.  Hope you enjoy the conversation here and thanks for stopping by.