Biblical Studies Articles on Slate

I don't regularly check out Slate, one of the major online ezines, but it turns out that they have published quite a number of biblically related articles. Check out:

• Happy Birthday, Dear Yeshua, Happy Birthday to You! - Was Jesus a common name at the beginning of the first century? > Provides a nice explanation of the name of Jesus and its various forms in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, etc.
• The Complete Blogging the Bible > Started in 2007, a series of blog posts by an admitted non-expert, Jew as he just starts reading and asking questions about the text
• Jesus and the Gospel - What Really Happened? > From 2005: a nine-part, online conversation over three days by Alan Segal, Larry Hurtado, and John Kloppenborg considering historicity issues (especially criteria used for evaluation: dissimilarity, multiple attestation, etc.; Kloppenborg uses "not true stories, but stories that are true"), points of historical contact (eg, Baptism and Crucifixion), stories not necessarily historical but reflective of Xn spiritual values (eg, virgin birth or woman caught in adultery story), varieties of Judaism and the place of John the Baptist and Jesus, and more.