Thursday, February 16, 2012
Telegraph Obituary of John Hick
Tomorrow's Telegraph has its obituary of John Hick:
Professor John Hick
Professor John Hick, who has died aged 90, was one of the most influential philosophers of religion of his time; he was HG Wood Professor of Theology at Birmingham University from 1967 to 1982, and before that taught at Cambridge.
He was, however, more widely recognised in America, where he held chairs at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1959 to 1964 and at Claremont Graduate University from 1979 to 1992. He wrote nearly 30 books, which, unusually for philosophy, included several bestsellers . . . .
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Death of Richard T. France
I was sorry to read on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog of the death of Richard France. I only occasionally had the chance to interact with Dick while I was in Oxford but I was always impressed by his gracious and encouraging manner. We came down on opposite sides of the issue that most concerned me at the time, the creativity of the evangelists, but I do recall enjoying engaging with him on the topic. He was a fine New Testament scholar and I know that he was well-loved by his colleagues and students. It's a great loss.
Death of John Hick
I was sorry to hear yesterday about the death of John Hick (Prosblogion, Jim West, John Hick: The Official Website; University of Birmingham page). One of the great privileges of working for a decade at the University of Birmingham was being surrounded by brilliant men like Michael Goulder and John Hick. And listening to those two men engage with one another about matters of theology and ethics was always fascinating. Their jointly authored little book, Why Believe in God? is a fantastic read. For many years "the Open End" meetings, which focused on theological and philosophical topics, and which were attended by academics from around the Birmingham area, were the talk of the town. On a personal level, I always found John Hick very encouraging. He was always eager to ask about the latest in Biblical Studies, albeit often with a view to discussing how they impacted on theology and philosophy.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Richard Hays to continue as Dean of Duke Divinity School
The breaking news next door at the Divinity School is that Richard Hays, who has been interim Dean of Duke Divinity School for the last two years, is to take on the job now for a full term. Congratulations to Richard on the appointment, but we will miss his contributions to the New Testament teaching in the Graduate Program in Religion. News release here:
The New Testament scholar will continue beyond his initial two-year term.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Earliest manuscript fragment of Mark rumour
There's nothing more likely to get the blogs all talking than a rumour about a newly discovered manuscript fragment. See Jim Davila on Paleojudaica, James McGrath on Exploring our Matrix, Peter Head on Evangelical Textual Criticism (with tons of comments), Joel Watts at Unsettled Christianity, Jim West and others. The basic gist is that Dan Wallace, in a debate last week with Bart Ehrman, made the following claim:
I would also add at this point that it is always good on these occasions to begin with a healthy scepticism. As often, the hunt for the lost Doctor Who episodes provides a good analogy with New Testament textual criticism. There have been rumours over the years that a new discovery of one of the lost episodes is about to be discovered, and often these come to nothing. As with manuscripts, we should wait for the physical evidence before we get our hopes up.
Update (Tuesday, 6.41): sage comments from Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis.
Update (Tuesday, 9.01): Larry Hurtado weighs in with similarly useful comments.
Bart had explicitly said that our earliest copy of Mark was from c. 200 CE, but this is now incorrect. It’s from the firstcentury. I mentioned these new manuscript finds and told the audience that a book will be published by E. J. Brill in about a year that gives all the data.
I'll throw in a couple of quick things in. The first is that the claim is, of course, hopelessly vague, and that the promised Brill publication "in about a year" may well mean that the book in question is not even in press yet. Authors are typically over-optimistic about when they think the press will publish their work and if the author is saying "about a year", my guess is that s/he has not let go of the manuscript yet.
It's also worth adding that it is a fair guess that this manuscript discovery is connected with Scott Carroll (HT Matthew Hamilton) who tweeted on 1 December 2011:
It's also worth adding that it is a fair guess that this manuscript discovery is connected with Scott Carroll (HT Matthew Hamilton) who tweeted on 1 December 2011:
For over 100 years the earliest known text of the New Testament has been the so-call John Rylands Papyrus. Not any more. Stay tuned .I am staying tuned but there is nothing more yet. I'd guess that Carroll is connected with Wallace's announcement given the unlikelihood that there are two such discoveries at the same time, and given the similar contacts the two figures have (e.g. both are part of a series on The Bible's Survival and Success). However, it is worth noting that Wallace remarked that the "world-class paleographer" in question had "no religious affiliation" and this does not appear to be the case with Carroll, who is advertised as an expert on, among other topics, "the Authenticity of the Bible".
I would also add at this point that it is always good on these occasions to begin with a healthy scepticism. As often, the hunt for the lost Doctor Who episodes provides a good analogy with New Testament textual criticism. There have been rumours over the years that a new discovery of one of the lost episodes is about to be discovered, and often these come to nothing. As with manuscripts, we should wait for the physical evidence before we get our hopes up.
Update (Tuesday, 6.41): sage comments from Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis.
Update (Tuesday, 9.01): Larry Hurtado weighs in with similarly useful comments.
Labels: Doctor Who lost episodes, Early Mark fragment, Textual Criticism
Friday, February 03, 2012
Biblioblog Carnival February 2012
When you are away from the blogs as often as I tend to be these days, it's great to have a Biblioblog Carnival to help you catch up. This one is by Amanda Mac on Cheese-Wearing Theology and it's a nice treat to have it divided up along lines dictated by Babylon 5, surely one of the best TV series of all time.
Labels: Biblical Studies Carnivals
What is the trouble with Q?
In a recent article in Bible and Interpretation, Dan Smith reflects on The Trouble with Q. But the troubles he is talking about are not those niggles that make some of us question the existence of Q, the Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, the Mark-Q overlaps, the weakness of the arguments for Luke's independence from Matthew and so on, but the way that many scholars fail to take the implications of the Q theory seriously. Like Kloppenborg, Dan draws attention to facile appeals to Q's hypothetical nature by those who refuse to think through what the existence of Q means for our reconstructions of Christian Origins.
But is this really the trouble with Q? I am puzzled by Dan's focus on scholars who are uninterested in the Synoptic Problem and Q. Those who have not invested time in studying the problem are unlikely to want to engage seriously with the implications of the hypothesis. In my own experience, the same set of scholars, the so-called "lazy" believers in Q, are equally unwilling to invest time in engaging with Q sceptical scholarship like my own.
It is never easy in scholarship to find yourself in a position where you are telling other people that they should be interested in what you are studying. Engaging other scholars' interest is always tough, and it is especially tough in areas like the study of the Synoptic Problem, which requires a lot of hard work and a degree of technical expertise.
There is always the option, though, of seeking out dialogue partners among those who are already interested in the problem. Dan alludes to those who do not accept the existence of Q but he does not mention them by name, much less engage them directly. Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my memes relates to the Farrer Theory getting ignored in scholarship, but I am usually in those contexts talking about introductory-level works, textbooks and the like. It is, however, something that happens in the higher-level work too.
The problem is that there is a major alternative to the Q hypothesis and critical engagement with it can help to clarify and focus the bigger picture questions that Dan mentions here, about the degree of diversity in early Christianity, in particular the question of the role played by Jesus' death. Dan talks about engaging with people who may help with refining the Q hypothesis, but a healthy hypothesis is also one that engages with those who are attempting to refute it.
Let me offer one example of how this works. Dan talks about taking seriously Q's silence about the salvific death of Jesus, the resurrection and the term "Christ". Arguments about silence are often worth hearing and in the case of a text like the Gospel of Thomas, its silence on these same features is indeed worth some serious thought. There is a difference in the case of Q, however, that makes any study of its silence problematic. Given that the document is reconstructed on the basis of Matthew's and Luke's double tradition, there is always the possibility that it is not Q that is silent on the matters in question but that Matthew and Luke are silent in their witness to Q's contents.
Dan talks about what he regards as similar difficulties in reflecting on Matthew, noting that there are many things we do not know about Matthew, its author, whether he wrote other materials and so on. But we do have textual witnesses to Matthew that are pretty clear about the scope, parameters and wording of the work, the very things that are absent in the case of Q. Indeed, the absence of any kind of textual witness to Q is one of the things that invites us to consider the alternative, that the kind of close verbatim agreement that Dan discusses may be evidence not for a lost document but for a direct link between Matthew and Luke.
In other words, the hypothetical nature of Q is indeed relevant in this discussion. Dan is right that the hypothetical nature of Q should not be used as an excuse for a refusal to think. The real issue, though, is that Q's hypothetical nature is an invitation always to think about live alternatives. To imagine a world without Q is surely one of the best ways of testing a model where Q is central.
To put it another way, what are the chances that Dan's essay will be noticed by those who are his targets? At least the Q sceptics are willing to have the conversation.
Labels: Farrer Theory ignored, Q, Synoptic Problem
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Death of Frederick Danker
I was sorry to hear from Jim West that Frederick Danker died earlier today, also mentioned on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.
Update (Friday): Rod Decker has a tribute on the NT Resources Blog.
Update (Friday): Rod Decker has a tribute on the NT Resources Blog.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Wilfred Lambert Obituaries
I posted on the death my former colleague Wilfred Lambert in December. Jim West followed up his earlier posts with a notice that Wilfred Lambert was featured on Last Word, Radio 4's regular obituaries programme. Although the podcast version is no longer available, you can listen again to the episode.
Professor Wilfred Lambert
Professor Wilfred Lambert, the Assyriologist who has died aged 85, was a scholar of ancient Mesopotamia and the world’s leading expert on cuneiform, an ancient form of writing which began as a system of pictographs and, over three millennia, developed into a more simplified and abstract script.
Now also the Telegraph has published its obituary:
Professor Wilfred Lambert
Professor Wilfred Lambert, the Assyriologist who has died aged 85, was a scholar of ancient Mesopotamia and the world’s leading expert on cuneiform, an ancient form of writing which began as a system of pictographs and, over three millennia, developed into a more simplified and abstract script.
Labels: Wilfred Lambert
