I've run this blog since 2014. It started when I was working on my second book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus after the Demise of Authenticity: Toward a Critical Realist Philosophy of History in Jesus Studies. Calling this blog "Critical Realism and the New Testament" made sense at that time. It makes much less sense now, and for at least a couple reasons. First, my third book—Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament—isn't about critical realism per se. It's not unrelated, of course, in that the years I spent immersed in Bernard Lonergan and Ben Meyer, and my ongoing involvement in the Lonergan community as Executive Director of the Lonergan Research Institute (Toronto) deeply inform my approach to history and historiography. I would not have been able to complete Rethinking were it not for what I learned from Lonergan. But—and this gets to the second reason that a name change makes sense at this point—not only is my third focused upon chronology, but I've come to recognize that this is probably where much of my scholarly focus will remain, probably for the balance of my career. I'm just fascinated by the question of when especially (but not exclusively) biblical books were written, and also when events reported in those books might have occurred. So, "chronologist."
But why "The Cranky Chronologist." Look, we're headed towards year three of a global pandemic. My hat's off to you if you're not cranky by this time. This particular adjective just seems to fit the Zeitgeist. Plus, most people who know me well are quite aware that I like cats more than people and ultimately I'm just a sucker for alliteration.
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