NT Blog

The call for papers for the SBL Annual Meeting 2004, San Antonio, Texas has gone on-line today:

SBL Annual Meeting 2004: Call for Papers

Closing date is March 1 2004.

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The SBL Forum has been updated with some fresh articles focusing on the topic of the moment, Mary Magdalene, with this blurb:

Well-known characters in the Bible are not always known well. This month the Forum explores the identity and representation of Mary Magdalene in early Christian literature. Who is Mary? and What are scholars discovering about her in canonical and noncanonical gospels?

Opposition as Index of Importance: The Case of Mary Magdalene
by John Dominic Crossan

Mary of Magdala: Christian Polemics and Demonic Influence
by Ann Graham Brock

Mary of Magdala in Early Christian Coptic Literature
by Karen L. King

Select Bibliography on Mary
by Ann Graham Brock

Mary Magdalene in Recent Literature
by Birger A. Pearson

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The two most recent Tyndale Tech emails from David Instone Brewer are now also on-line at:

Tyndale Tech (November 2003): Full text bibliography and journals on the web

Tyndale Tech (December 2003): Full text books on the web, free and subscription

What he has done is to combine details from the two separate emails originally sent to create the themes above. As I've often commented before, they are full of useful materials. If you don't already subscribe to these emails, I'd encourage you to do so -- they are always full of interesting and useful material. If I were to pick out one thing that I have found particularly new and helpful, I'd note the Tyndale Catalogue's facility to link to on-line versions of books at Amazon. David points out that books with this facility at Amazon actually outsell those without it, something that might give a second thought to those nervous about placing full texts of books on-line. I wonder, though, whether this may be due in large part to the fact that the books Amazon has full-text searches for are already the more popular books on their site, those marketed in a bigger way by their publishers, so the fact mentioned may not be particularly telling.

In the second of the two emails, David also lists with links a good number of books that are available for full-text searching at Amazon -- also very useful.

One thing now to add to the bibliographical resources listed (see also WWW links for finding books and articles) is BiBIL, on which I've been blogging recently. If I might be so bold, I would also be inclined to draw attention to the NT Gateway as a good resource of links to on-line books and articles and it has the added advantage of being categorised by topic. Further, the NT Gateway's page on Journals provides a fuller and better and more fully annotated list than those listed by David, especially the bsw one which is now very out of date.

Labels: Tyndale Tech

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As usual on Sundays (well it's now Monday here, but for some of my readers it is still Sunday), the latest Explorator from David Meadows is out:

Explorator 6.33

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Time Magazine this week has a feature on "Lost Gospels" with a nice cover story picture. You have to be a subscriber to read it all and I am not so have only read the first page of the main story, but it does mention Bart Ehrman's new book so there may be more discussion of that in what remains:

TIME Magazine: The Lost Gospels

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At the SBL Annual Meeting Synoptics Section a couple of weeks ago, Loveday Alexander responded to papers given by Richard Burridge, Mark Matson and Margaret Mitchell. In her response she commented that sometimes the exegete can gain some help in interpreting a given passage by looking at the Synoptic parallels. This had been a theme of Mark Matson’s paper on Matthew for readers who already knew Mark. Loveday went on to give an example of a place where, she claimed, none of the Synoptic Gospels made sense on their own. All are in their own way obscure and only become clear when one looks at them together. She attributed the observation to George Caird, I think only in oral material though I’d be interested if anyone happens to know of a place where he made these observations in print. The passage concerned is Mark 14.65 and synoptic parallels. Here is the passage in Synopsis:

Matt. 26.67-8	Mark 14.65	Luke 22.63-4
Τότε ἐνέπτυσαν εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐκολάφισαν αὐτόν, οἱ δὲ ἐράπισαν λέγοντες, Προφήτευσον ἡμῖν, Χριστέ, τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε;	Καὶ ἤρξαντό τινες ἐμπτύειν αὐτῷ καὶ περικαλύπτειν αὐτοῦ τὸ πρόσωπον καὶ κολαφίζειν αὐτὸν καὶ λέγειν αὐτῷ, Προφήτευσον.	Καὶ οἱ ἄνδρες οἱ συνέχοντες αὐτὸν ἐνέπαιζον αὐτῷ δέροντες, καὶ περικαλύψαντες αὐτὸν ἐπηρώτων λέγοντες, Προφήτευσον, τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε;

The passage is a notorious one for Synoptic students because it features such a blatant example of a Minor Agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark, something that is straightforwardly explained on the theory that Luke knows Matthew as well as Mark but something that has always been a problem for the Two-Source Theory, so much so that some of the leading proponents of that theory have resorted to conjecturally emending Matthew’s text to remove the agreement with Luke, so that it would, like Mark, lack the clause τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε; (Who is it who smote you?). Michael Goulder has argued, rightly in my view, that it is not acceptable to emend the text conjecturally purely to save a particular Synoptic theory. I have written about this Minor Agreement myself, most recently in The Case Against Q, pp. 157-60. But I don’t want to focus any further on the difficulty this Minor Agreement poses for the Two-Source Theory, at least not directly; rather, I would like to challenge Loveday Alexander’s claim that none of the three texts make sense on their own. I think that each text does make good sense in context within the narrative of each of the Synoptic Gospels and I will attempt to explain why.

First, the most difficult of the three, Mark. The difficulty with Mark on first reading is that given our familiarity with Matthew and Luke, we are expecting to see that additional question, τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε; (Who is it who smote you?). Clearly some scribes felt the same way and added the words in. However, recent narrative criticism has shed some useful light on the way the charge “Prophesy!” works here in Mark. In the end it is Mark’s account that is the richest and most rewarding of the three as a literary piece. To see this we need to look both at the immediate context and the broader context in Mark. In the immediate context, while Jesus is being tried by the Sanhedrin and subsequently mocked (Mark 14.55-65), Peter is in the vicinity (Mark 14.54 and 14.66-72). In this classic example of Marcan intercalation, Jesus is being mocked with the charge “Prophesy” while Peter is in the very act of fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy of a few hours earlier that on this very night he would deny Jesus three times (14.29-31). The dramatic irony here is clear, profound and typically Marcan. The readers have been given privileged information; they can see what those mocking Jesus cannot see.

The observation that this is what is going on here in Mark has been made in a number of commentaries, including those by Morna Hooker, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St Mark (London: A & C Black, 1991), p. 363, and Donald H. Juel, The Gospel of Mark (Interpreting Biblical Texts; Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), p. 27. But we might add two more elements here that are not commonly noticed. First, the people (τινες) who are mocking Jesus are themselves, while they taunt Jesus to prophesy, engaged in fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy that he will be mocked and beaten (Mark 10.34). Moreover, only a few lines earlier, Jesus has again been prophesying, that “you will see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14.62). No doubt Mark feels that his readers will see this fulfilled in their lifetimes, so further adding to the dramatic irony of the “Prophesy!” taunt.

In both Matthew and Luke, the addition of the “Who is it who smote you?” question diminishes the dramatic irony of the Marcan scene but it does not in any way make their scenes less coherent than Mark’s. Now the charge is explicitly one about second sight: "Prophesy! [Matthew adds "to us, Christ"] Who is it who smote you?" There is, however, one oddity in Matthew’s account, and it may be this that is in Loveday Alexander’s mind, and perhaps Caird’s before here, and it is the fact that in Matthew – unlike in Mark and Luke – Jesus’s face is not covered. What sense does it make to taunt Jesus to identify his assailant if he can see them all? There are a couple of ways of reading this text that make good sense of it. One possibility, suggested to me by my former doctoral supervisor John Muddiman, is that those mocking Jesus are taunting him to name the one who struck him and not to point a figure to the one who did it. A second possibility, defended in Michael Goulder’s recent article in Novum Testamentum, is to notice that it would be absurd to depict the mockers spitting into Jesus’ face if they have just covered it. For the spitting to be as nasty as the narrative requires it to be, they need to be spitting into Jesus’ face and not onto a piece of cloth that covers it. Goulder further suggests, following Jarmo Kiilunen, that they are hitting Jesus from behind while he is being spat upon from in front, so again Jesus would not know who has hit him. What seems clear is that there is little difficulty in making good narrative sense of the Matthean scene.

As far as Luke’s scene is concerned, commentators are united in finding his coherent so there is little need for further comment. It’s worth adding in relation to the above, though, that Luke retains Mark’s covering of Jesus’ face and drops the spitting, so that now there is a blindfold and a straight question asking Jesus to identify his assailant.

In short, all three accounts make good sense. In Matthew it is important to take his wording seriously and to use one’s imagination about the scene that is actually being narrated; in Mark it is important to pay attention to both the immediate and the broader narrative context.

Labels: Novum Testamentum

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It's the fourth programme in the series The Good Book tonight, 8 p.m. on BBC Radio 2, narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi. Listen live on the radio or the internet or listen on-line after the programme has aired:

The Good Book

Labels: Radio 4

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Oxford University Press has a new service to provide on-line full texts of certain books in its catalogue. If you are at a participating institution, you can read the full texts; but everyone has access to table of contents, abstracts and search facilities of the selected volumes. I'm lucky enough to have access via my university and it's a fine looking service -- much thought has gone into the aesthetics of the thing. Go to this link for the service home:

Oxford Scholarship Online

Or go here for the Religion titles:

Religion

Or go here for Biblical Studies:

Biblical Studies

Includes:

J. K. Elliott (ed.), The Apocryphal New Testament
James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology
Steven J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John - Reading Revelation in the Ruins
Tania Oldenhage, Parables for Our Time - Rereading New Testament Scholarship after the Holocaust
Marie Noonan Sabin, Reopening the Word - Reading Mark as Theology in the Context of Early Judaism
Anna Wierzbicka, What Did Jesus Mean? - Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts
Paul B. Duff, Who Rides the Beast? - Prophetic Rivalry and the Rhetoric of Crisis in the Churches of the Apocalypse

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Jim Davila blogs this interesting article in the Washington Post. It is by Bill Broadway and features Craig Evans, Jonathan Reed, Hershel Shanks and Paul Maier:

Digging Back Toward Jesus
Biblical Archaeology Uncovering Evidence About Places and People's Lives in Gospel Times

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In Our Time on Radio 4 yesterday morning had the Devil as its topic. Worth a listen if you didn't catch it:

In Our Time

In the Gospel according to John he is ‘a murderer from the beginning’, ‘a liar and the father of lies’, and Dante calls him ‘the ill Worm that pierces the world’s core’. But Milton’s description of him as a powerful rebel was so attractive that William Blake declared that Milton was ‘of the Devil’s party, without knowing it’. To ordinary folk the Devil has often been regarded as a trickster, a tempter, sometimes even a figure of fun rather than of fear.

How did this contradictory character come into being? Why did it take so long for him to become an established figure in Christianity? And if the Devil did not exist, would we have had to invent him?

Contributors

Martin Palmer, theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture

Alison Rowlands, Senior Lecturer in European History at the University of Essex

David Wootton, Professor of Intellectual History at Queen Mary, University of London

Labels: Radio 4

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Torrey Seland yesterday updated his pages; the additions are all on the Philo page:

Resource Pages for Biblical Studies

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Some time ago the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism disappeared from the web. I removed all my links to it in June 2003. This was a new electronic journal based at the University of Surrey Roehampton and the original plan was to place articles on-line as they appeared and then to produce a print version at the end of the year. The print version was to be published by Sheffield Academic Press. One full volume appeared in the year 2000 but nothing subsequently appeared and then even that disappeared. But now it has apparently been resurrected over at McMaster Divinity College in Canada which is where Stanley Porter, the editor, is now based. There is just a paragraph's information about the journal, but happily the volume from 2000 is back on-line:

Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism

Update: link added to the NT Gateway: Journals page.

Labels: Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, journals

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I reported that Lisa Gerrard is to score The Passion of the Christ; Wieland Willker tells me that I should not express my ignorance on who she is quite so blatantly. It's music for intellectuals, apparently, and that will be why I've not heard of her. So this ignoramus has now been to her web site, lisagerrard.com and read more about her. There is a paragraph on The Passion of the Christ, dated today (11 December):

Prayers answered is the only way to put it. The film depicts the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life. The film is in Aramaic the native language of Jesus Christ and is directed by Mel Gibson. For more information visit the official website.

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In the autumn of 2001 Sheffield Academic Press became part of the Continuum publishing group. Continuum have also over the last couple of years purchased T & T Clark and Trinity Press International, and these three imprints -- Sheffield, Trinity and T & T Clark have now been merged into one imprint entitled T & T Clark International, and several of us attended the launch at the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

But here's an interesting development. The Department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University have announced the launch of a new press, strongly resembling what used to be Sheffield Academic Press, with the same aims and emphases and with some of the same personnel (David Clines, Cheryl Exum and Keith Whitelam). It also looks a bit like there are some hard feelings about the Continuum buy-up of Sheffield Academic Press since Sheffield Phoenix Press is committed to undertake "to be an independent company (not part of a conglomerate); to be managed by academics for academics (not in order to maximize profit); to be led by the publishing ideas of academics (rather than commissioning scholars to carry out the agenda of the publisher)" and so on. Anyway, here are the full details:

Sheffield Phoenix Press

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I've often mentioned The Passion fan web site here; for a while I thought it was a clever means of providing official information about the film without being official, if you see what I mean. There's little doubt that at least for some time it had some exclusive access to official materials. But anyway, now that the official site has been launched, and the fan site has moved over to being ad-sponsored, I've come across another fine site that is in many ways superior to the one that always gets mentioned:

The Passion of the Christ

I'm afraid there's no more distinctive way to refer to this one than that. Its author calls himself "Godfather" -- very helpful! But it's a useful enough site with lots of information and links, if a rather annoying white-writing-on-black cramped content frame. It features the original four-minute trailer introduced by Mel Gibson as well as the one-minute fifty second trailer that now seems to be getting replaced with the newer, shorter trailer everywhere else. Anyway, I've added this web site to my page on the NT Gateway on The Passion of the Christ.

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So who is scoring The Passion of the Christ? A report today in Music from the Movies mentions a certain Lisa Gerrard:

Lisa Gerrard to score 'The Passion of the Christ'

Apparently she contributed music to the score of The Gladiator.

Earlier reports suggested that Jack Lenz was to be responsible for the music (e.g. this Catholic Herald report or here from Lenz entertainment). Still earlier reports had suggested James Horner (refuted here at Music from the Movies).

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One interesting element from the review just mentioned:

Continuing his habit of working with the best cinematographers in the world, Gibson has collaborated here with Caleb Deschanel, whose lush, painterly aesthetic is a perfect match for the film’s almost otherworldly feel. His imagery is perfectly complemented by, unfortunately, the temp-tracked music of Peter Gabriel’s PASSION, which, honestly, works better here at times than it did in the Jesus film for which it was written, Scorsese’s THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Combined, they have the power to put the viewer in a trance-like state.

I had blogged a month or so ago that Peter Gabriel scored The Passion. This information was taken from the Passion fan site FAQ; in fact they even included audio samples of the music. It was also clear from the on-line trailers that this was the music that was being used. But it now seems that the Peter Gabriel score was simply borrowed from The Last Temptation of Christ as a temporary measure. The new, official much shorter trailer (available on the official Passion of The Christ site) has different music. And the fan site has dropped the faq entry on Gabriel as well as all the audio samples they had available. So it seems pretty clear that Peter Gabriel is not responsible for scoring The Passion of The Christ.

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I commented the other day that I had no idea who Harry Knowles was. David Mackinder helpfully explains that "Harry Knowles is the wunderkind behind the Ain't it Cool film website (http://www.aintitcool.com); he earned some notoriety a few years ago because of his ability to find out information about upcoming films and to affect their box office success; it seems he's now in process of turning from poacher to gamekeeper, as he's become a producer." That web site follows up the special screening of The Passion of the Christ that they were given with a couple of long-ish, very interesting reviews from a "Mr Beaks" and "PetSnakeReggie":

Mr Beaks & PetSnakeReggie share their critical views on THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST!

In spite of that rather unpromising title, this is well worth reading.

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Officials at the Vatican were allowed a viewing of The Passion of the Christ at the weekend. Father Di Noia of the Doctrinal Congregation provides this pretty full interview and it is clear that he really loved the film. Reading this interview from Zenit does make one want to see it too:

Mel Gibson's "Passion": On Review at the Vatican

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The latest additions to the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Bauckham, Richard
Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels
Reviewed by Sharyn Dowd

Gilmour, Michael J.
The Significance of Parallels between 2 Peter and Other Early Christian Literature
Reviewed by Thomas J. Kraus

Levine, Amy-Jill and Marianne Blickenstaff, eds.
A Feminist Companion to Mark
Reviewed by Stephen W. Felder

Meyer, Marvin
Secret Gospels: Essays on Thomas and the Secret Gospel of Mark
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Sandnes, Karl Olav
Belly and Body in the Pauline Epistles
Reviewed by H. Drake Williams III

Scott, Douglas
Edited by S. R. Llewelyn
New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published 1986-87
Reviewed by John S. Kloppenborg

Hafemann, Scott J.
The God of Promise and the Life of Faith: Understanding the Heart of the Bible
Reviewed by Mark Gignilliat

van Kampen, Kimberly and Paul Saenger, eds.
The Bible as Book: The First Printed Editions
Reviewed by Patrick Graham

Viviano, Benedict Thomas
Trinity--Kingdom--Church: Essays in Biblical Theology
Reviewed by Kathryn Greene-McCreight

Labels: Secret Mark

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David Instone-Brewer yesterday issued a follow-up to his latest Tyndale Tech email, this one drawing attention to more full-text availability on the internet. I'll pick out a few highlights over the coming days, as usual (and may also comment that Tyndale Techs remain NT Gateway - free zones). David is also singing the praises of the new Theology Portal (cf. my blog entry on) and this reminded me to add a proper entry on the NT Gateway Resources page which I've now done:

General Resources: Religion and Theology

Labels: Tyndale Tech

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Here's an odd article on The Passion of the Christ from MCN (Movie City Center) Notepad:

What's Mel Afraid Of?
The Passion of the Christ's Surprising Public Premiere

It's by David Poland and is all about a preview screening of the film to a certain Harry Knowles. The author is apparently quite upset about all this, concluding with "I cannot support this unique and uniquely grotesque road to release". But it's all a bit of a mystery to me -- perhaps because I have no idea who Harry Knowles is.

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The Biblical Studies Foundation site has had a major redesign. They have also announced the second beta edition of the new NET Bible. This may have been on the site for a while -- I don't recall the last time I visited and the changes are not dated.

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A couple of minor updates on the NT Gateway to report: new URL for VocabWorks on the Greek NT Gateway: Computer Software page and a new URL for the Polyglot Bible on the Bible Translations and Editions page; thanks to Andy Parker for the latter.

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The third programme in the series The Good Book was broadcast tonight at 8 p.m. on Radio 2. If you missed it, you can listen on-line, and there are other resources available on the site including Biography from W. L. Moberley, some Experts' Notes from Sue Gillingham, Paula Gooder and Edward Kessler and more:

The Good Book: David

Looking back over last week's episode, it's nice to see my colleague Robert Beckford's face staring out from the Moses' pages.

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Latest version of Explorator posted by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.32

Couldn't blog all day Sunday -- blogger seemed to be down.

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I have updated my Bibliography: General Helps page too. I have refreshed a couple of the links, deleted a moribund one, reorganised the page and added two new links, Tyndale House Library Catalogue and Free Out of Print Book Search. The former has one particularly useful feature -- it brings up links to full-text searches on Amazon (though these searches are not working at the point of writing this entry, at Amazon's end and not Tyndale's). The latter is a useful resource from Peter Kirby, author of the Early Christian Writings web site and more. Go to:

Bibliography: General Helps

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I also commented the other day that I thought the Multi-Library Search at BSW had not been functioning for some time. Since then I've tried writing to BSW at three different email addresses all advertised on their site and all bounced straight back. So I think it's safe to assume that they have not got their act together and I've dropped that entry from the Bibliographical Search Engines page.

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I commented yesterday that one of the advantages of Theoldi is that it provides bibliography-ready citations. Since I've begun using Red Light Green (see blog entry on), I've noticed that one of the massive advantages is that it can format your citations for you according to Chicago style, Harvard style etc. -- very useful. But it only lists books, so one still has to use Theoldi for articles.

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The official web site for The Passion of the Christ has been launched. It has a new, shorter teaser trailer (though you can still see the longer one at the Passion fan site) and some information about the film -- cast and crew, pictures etc. It's a new site and so parts of it have "coming soon":

The Passion of the Christ

You can register for the latest news. You'll probably need to turn up the brightness on your monitor. There's a rather dubious comment under "Background Info" to this effect,

All the characters in the film are heard speaking the languages they would actually have spoken at the time. This means Aramaic for the Jewish characters, including Christ and his disciples, and "street Latin" for the Romans. Greek, which was commonly spoken among the intellectuals of the period was not quite as relevant to the story.

The latter comment is a fudge if I've ever seen one; it looks like the problem is that the film was shot with Latin dialogue and that only subsequently was it realised that they should have used Greek.

Update: I've added a link to this new official site to my page on The Passion of the Christ

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Stephen Carlson recently mentioned the BiBIL web site on his blog. This was demonstrated by Thomas Naef in the SBL Computer Assisted Research Section in Atlanta a week or so ago and it seems like an excellent resource. BiBIL stands for Biblical Bibliography of Lausanne. Here's the URL:

BiBIL

I've written to Thomas Naef to ask for permission to added it to my All-in-One Biblical Resources Search but have not heard anything yet.

I like to put this kind of resource to the test by checking how they perform on the author I know best -- me. BiBIL returns six titles for Goodacre, two out of three of my books and four out of twelve of my articles. So we could give it about six out of ten. By way of comparison, I have done the same search on Theoldi, which also managed two out of three of my books but six out of twelve of my articles. So Theoldi performs a bit better -- let's give it six and a half out of ten. Let's try another search.

The author I know second best is Michael Goulder. Let's compare performance again. BiBIL finds 36 titles for Goulder; Theoldi finds 49. The difference here is date -- BiBIL's cut-off seems to be about 1985 or so whereas Theoldi's appears to be 1981 or so. So again Theoldi wins, but this time by a higher margin.

One additional advantage of Theoldi is its output -- it provides its results in bibliography-ready format -- very helpful indeed for authors checking references. But BiBIL has two advantages over Theoldi -- it gives a bit more detail on entries (e.g. book ISBNs) and it has more advanced searching facilities, e.g. Greek and Hebrew facilities. So I think I'll continue using Theoldi, but will also be turning to BiBIL from time to time.

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In a piece on Pirated Movies, the LA Times mention that:

The FBI began investigating the unauthorized release to the New York Post of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" two weeks ago; by the time that probe began, federal authorities already had launched a broader investigation into the unauthorized copying of numerous other first-run films, according to sources.

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Biblica 84/4 (2003) is now available here:

Biblica 84 (2003) (scroll down for Fasc. 4)

It includes the following NT articles:

Christoph G. Müller, "Der Zeuge und das Licht. Joh 1,1–4,3 und das Darstellungsprinzip der su/gkrisij, pp. 479-509

Stefano Romanello, "Rom 7,7-25 and the Impotence of the Law. A Fresh Look at a Much-Debated Topic Using Literary-Rhetorical Analysis", pp. 510-30

Sigurd Grindheim, "What the OT Prophets Did Not Know: The Mystery of the Church in Eph 3,2-13" , pp. 531-553

John J. Kilgallen, "Martha and Mary: Why at Luke 10,38-42?", pp. 554-561

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Further to my previous blog entry on the improved LookSmart's Find Articles site, they have uploaded the latest (Fall 2003) edition of Biblical Theology Bulletin. Contents are as follows (all full text articles free to access for all):

Nanos, Mark D, editor. The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation.(Book Review)
by Richard B. Cook

William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?(Book Review)
by Ralph K. Hawkins

Beatrice Bruteau, editor. Jesus Through Jewish Eyes: Rabbis and Scholars Engage an Ancient Brother in a New Conversation.(Book Review)
by John F. Craghan

Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., feminist mentor: rightly did the maidens love him.
by Carole R. Fontaine

Roland Murphy, The Pontifical Biblical Commission, Jews, and the Bible.(Book Review)
by Amy-Jill Levine

Postmodernism and the interpretation of biblical texts for behavior.
by John F. O'Grady

The book of Isaiah--Theses and Hypotheses.(Critical Essay)
by J. Clinton McCann, Jr.

A season for thanksgiving.(Presenting the issue)
by David M. Bossman

Labels: Biblical Theology Bulletin

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FindArticles.com has been transformed -- and greatly for the better. Its new name is LookSmart's Find Articles. Everything is at the same address as before, a huge relief because it would have involved a massive amount of updating on my part, but there are two major improvements: (1) the site looks much better; (2) journals can now be browsed issue by issue. This is a major advance over the old version of the site, for which one could only search out articles and could not browse. Homepage for the revamped site:

LookSmart's Find Articles

The two major journals of interest to New Testament scholars and students hosted here are:

Biblical Theology Bulletin

and

Harvard Theological Review

You can access both, of course, from the NT Gateway: Journals page.

Labels: Biblical Theology Bulletin

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There's been some discussion of 4Q521 on the Xtalk list recently and this link has just come up:

Expectations and the Expected One: 4Q521 and the Light It Sheds on the New Testament
Willem-Jan de Wit

It's an on-line version of a thesis submitted for the Dutch equivalent of a Masters-title, which the author received cum laude from the Faculty of Theology at Utrecht University in 2000. It was supervized by Prof. Dr. P.W. van der Horst (Utrecht) and examined by him with Dr. L.T. Stuckenbruck (Durham, UK). It's a good piece of work, especially at Masters level, though I would have liked to see a more nuanced discussion of the source-critical issues involved in the section on 4Q521 and Mat 11:2-6 // Luke 7:18-23; de Wit looks at the possibility that Matthew knew Luke, following Hengel's sketch, without looking at the more detailed -- and I would say much more plausible -- view that Luke knew Matthew. But that comment aside, this is a useful piece of work and well done to him for putting it on the web.

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Thanks to Magnus Zetterholm for pointing out his new web page to me; it's now added to my Scholars pages under "Z" and that's not very common. Dr Zetterholm also points out to me that he has a new book out from Routledge that may be of interest:

The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation Between Judaism and Christianity. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 0415298962

This book deals with the question of how Christianity in the beginning of the second century became a non-Jewish, Gentile religion. Since Christianity was originally one of many Jewish factions within the diversified Judaism of the period, the problem of its separation from Judaism is a major puzzle in the history of Western civilization. While previous attempts to solve this problem have focused mainly on ideological aspects, this study emphasizes the interplay between sociological and ideological elements.

It is argued that the separation between Judaism and Christianity in Antioch was a result of the socio-political situation in the Roman Empire and ideological elements within the Jewish faction of the Jesus movement that primarily concerned the status of Gentiles within the movement. The separation was mainly a separation between Jews and Gentiles within the Jesus movement. The Gentile adherents to the movement strove to become a legally recognised voluntary association completely separated from Judaism. The anti-Judaism of early Christianity was used as a resource in this struggle of independence, as part of the programme of convincing the civic authorities about the reasonableness of allowing Christianity to become a legally-recognised collegium.

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This article from Reuters:

Gibson delays Vatican screening of Jesus film

And this by Kathryn Jean Lopez on the National Review Online:

Mel Gibson, Feminist

And previously from The Age (Australia) a report that Billy Graham (unlike the Pope!) got a private screening of the film and loved it:

Evangelist gives his blessing to Gibson film

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There is a fine new resource from Denmark called the Theology Portal. It describes itself in this way:

The Theology Portal gives access to resources on the net. 2 different tecniques are used to perform automated selection of resources.

In Portal 1 a direct search in Google is performed. The search is delimited by the portal, so that the actual search is a "search within result" in a existing search set.

In portal 2 a search is performed in a delimited number of resources on the net, selected by experts.

The Theology Portal covers the subject Christian Theology, defined as the academic discipline carried out at universities in Europe.

I've run a few searches on it myself and it seems pretty impressive -- try both the Quick Search and the Advanced Search for different results:

Theology Portal

I am going to write to the owner to see if they will grant permission for me to add this search to the All-in-One Biblical Resources Search.

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I was delighted to see that the version of Jesus shown on BBC2 yesterday and today was the international version and not the CBS version; it's twenty minutes or so longer and has a far superior ending, the "I am with you always . . ." saying segueing into Jesus in contemporary garb in Malta getting mobbed by children. It's difficult to imagine why CBS cut it from the version they broadcast. It's also not on the VHS release which I have, and I don't think it's on the DVD (though I don't own that).

A few more tidbits from this film. Portrayal of Pilate: Gary Oldman plays Pontius Pilate in a manner so reminiscent of Michael Palin's Pilate in Life of Brian that I think it must be deliberate. Location: much of the film was made in Ouarzazate in Morocco. I visited Ouarzazate in January this year for the filming of the BBC/Discovery documentary on St Paul and it was delightful to see it in the Jesus film. There's a real industry there of filming of contemporary Biblical films and documentaries -- even a complete temple construction which was apparently left some years ago by an Italian film company and now it gets used regularly in other films and documentaries. When it was used in St Paul apparently it was crumbling a bit so it had to be touched up with CGI for the TV. I loved visiting Ouarzazate -- some delightful locals who had clearly got used to film crews hanging around there. One other thing about this Jesus film -- the official CBS site seems to have vanished so I've deleted the link on my page for this film and have added instead a link to the extensive Hollywood Jesus review. See:

Jesus (1999)

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Jim Davila blogged this the other day; I'm behind the times. Here's the contents breakdown for the current Biblical Interpretation (11/3). You can only view the articles if you have an institutional or personal subscription, I'm afraid:

Editor's Preface

Articles
Leviticus 16 Als Mitte Der Tora
Rolf Rendtorff

In Words and Pictures: the Sun in 2 Samuel 12:7-12
Van Ellen Wolde

A Prophet Tested: Elisha, the Great Woman of Shunem, and the Story's Double Message
Yairah Amit

Gazing Back At the Shulammite, Yet Again
Athalya Brenner

Seeing Solomon's Palanquin (Song of Songs 3:6-11)
J. Cheryl Exum

Torah and Anti-Torah: Isaiah 2:2-4 and 1:10-26
Francis Landy

Proving Yahweh Killed His Wife (Zechariah 5:5-11)
Diana Edelman

Rhetorische Fragen!? Eine Aufkundigung Des Konsenses Uber Psalm 88:11-13 Und Seine Bedeutung Fur Das Alttestamentliche Reden Von Gott Und Tod
Frank Crüsemann

Psalms, Philippians 2:6-11, and the Origins of Christology
Adela Yarbro Collins

Narrative Christology and the Son of Man: What the Markan Jesus Says
Instead Elizabeth Struthers Malbon

Ezra-nehemiah as a Narrative of (re-invented) Israelite Identity
Philip F. Esler

Israel's Holy Seed and the Foreign Women of Ezra-nehemiah: a Kristevan Reading Harold C. Washington

'Job the Dog': Helene Cixous on Wounds, Scars and the Biblical Text
Hugh S. Pyper

The Morning After in Corinth: Bread-and-butter Notes, Part I
Alice Bach; Jennifer A. Glancy

Stabat Mater? Re-birth At the Foot of the Cross
Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger

We Felt Like Grasshoppers: The Little Ones in Biblical Interpretation
David E. Orton

Evil At Odds with Itself (Matthew 12:22-29): Demonising Rhetoric and Deconstructive Potential in the Matthean Narrative
Bruce W. Longenecker

Revelation, Atonement and the Scope of Faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews: a Deconstructive and Reader-response Interpretation
Dan O. Via

The Syrians in the Book of the Divided Kingdoms: A Literary/theological Approach
David Jobling

'Rouzing the Faculties to Act': William Blake, Merkabah Mysticism, the Theology of Liberation and the Exegetical Importance of Experience
Christopher Rowland

Biblical Scholarship in Public Discourse
Norman K. Gottwald

Loitering with Intent: Biblical Texts in Public Places
R.S. Sugirtharajah

Toward a Pastoral Reading of the Bible Not Confined to the Church
Jorge Pixley

Questing or Sense-making? Some Thoughts on the Nature of Historiography
Bernard C. Lategan

"Ja, Bin Denn Ich An Gottes Stelle?" (Genesis 50:19) Beobachtungen Und Uberlegungen Zu Einem Schlusselsatz Der Josefsgeschichte Und Den Vielfachen Konsequenzen Aus Einer Rhetorischen Frage
Jürgen Ebach

Discoursing Old Testament Theology
Ben C. Ollenburger

Historical and Canonical Aspects of a New Testament Theology
Robert Morgan

Biblical Challenges to a Theology of Love
Werner G. Jeanrond

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New in the Review of Biblical Literature:

Eve, Eric
The Jewish Context of Jesus' Miracles
Reviewed by Douglas Geyer

Levine, Amy-Jill and Marianne Blickenstaff, eds.
A Feminist Companion to Mark
Reviewed by Barbara Reid

Malina, Bruce J., Gerd Theissen and Wolfgang Stegemann, eds.
The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels
Reviewed by Robert Derrenbacker

Müller, Mogens and Henrik Tronier, eds.
The New Testament as Reception
Reviewed by Maarten Menken

Wilson, Mark
Mastering New Testament Greek Vocabulary Through Semantic Domains
Reviewed by Edward M Curtis

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The 1999 American Jesus film (dir. Roger Young, starring Jeremy Sisko as Jesus) gets its first network TV broadcast in the UK today. They are showing it in two parts and the first part is on BBC2 this afternoon at 1.30 p.m.--3.00 p.m. It could be a better slot, but at least it's getting aired. I quite like the film -- it has some great moments, e.g. Jesus dancing. There are two different versions of the film and I am hoping it's the version I haven't seen. The one on commercial video release is the shorter version without the post-resurrection scene and with a lot of other material cut. The best place to go for details on this, including clips of the footage that was cut is:

Hollywood Jesus: Jesus mini-series

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Yesterday's Sunday programme on Radio 4 carried a feature on The Gospel of John including an interview with Philip Saville (director) and an interview with Peter Malone (film critic). You can listen again by going to the web site and clicking on the link:

Sunday

Labels: Radio 4

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There's a major feature in this week's Newsweek on Karen King, Mary Magdalene and Biblical women. You can view it all on-line here:

The Bible's Lost Stories

Features pictures and a radio special. One thing's for sure -- Karen King and Elaine Pagels have got their publicity machines working brilliantly -- their agents have certainly been busy.

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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On Friday there was a radio programme in Boston devoted to Elaine Pagels's Beyond Belief and you can listen to it here:

On Point Radio: the Secret Gospel of Thomas

The whole programme (50 minutes) is Elaine Pagels in the studio being interviewed and it is an interesting listen; the first quarter of an hour or so is devoted to explaining what the the Gospel of Thomas is, its history, its relationship to the canonical Gospels etc. After the news break, the topic moves more to her personal spiritual journey and broader issues of canon and creed, and then there are phone calls from mid-way through the programme to the end. You can hear Elaine Pagels relaxing as the programme goes on -- the first fifteen minutes or so are her least coherent; by the end she is enjoying herself.

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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Rod Decker has released version 0.6 of the Galilee Unicode Greek font. It covers
classical as well as koine Greek; also included are NA27-style sigla for textual criticism. Download plus details here:

Galilee Unicode Gk Font

Labels: Unicode

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In a recent blog entry, AKMA explains how much he likes the Marriott Marquis hotel, which I had described as "soulless". I think what I didn't like about it was the gaping absence of anything in the middle of the hotel -- a sort of central shaft of nothingness -- and then the storey after storey one after another stacking up identically to the very high ceiling. It reminded me a bit of the worst inner city British 1960s high-rises. But I did like the breakfast at the American Grille and the cook-to-order omelettes -- that was a real highlight. Funnily enough, like AKMA I also left my mobile phone charger in my hotel room so one would have thought that security would have been used to this.

AKMA mentions Richard Hays and links to his webpage. This was one I did not have listed, so I've now added it to Scholars: H. I was also delighted to click on I recommend and to see The Case Against Q listed!

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Geza Vermes wrote this week's "Face to Faith" in The Guardian. It's essentially a trailer for his new book and I don't find it (the article) his most coherent writing, but here's the link:

What's sex got to do with it?

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The second part of The Good Book, "Moses: The Great Law Giver", is broadcast on BBC Radio 2 tonight at 8 p.m. Listen live by going to BBC Radio 2 or listen after the broadcast here:

The Good Book

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Latest Explorator:

Explorator 6.31

I was away last week so did not post a link to Explorator 6.30 but you can find it on the same page.

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The latest Tyndale Tech email from David Instone Brewer arrived last week. As usual it is full of interesting tips and links (though also as usual it is a NT Gateway free zone; I hope David is not boycotting me!). The theme this month is Full-text books and articles on the web. There are several links of interest. The first is something called Red Light Green. Here's the link:

Red Light Green

I've added to the NT Gateway: Bibliography (Search Engine) page with this description:

Project emerging from the Research Libraries Group "designed for undergraduates using the Web and the libraries that support them". RedLightGreen.com delivers information from RLG members about more than 130 million books for education and research; and it links students back to their campus libraries for the books they select.

While updating that page, I noticed that the BSW Multi-Library Search is still not working so I've relegated it to the bottom of the page and added a note to that effect. I think it's not been working for some time now and so I'll drop the link soon if there's no change.

Labels: Tyndale Tech

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Further to my earlier posting on the Open Theism vote at the Evangelical Theological Society last week, David Mackinder has sent me this link to a page "devoted to all aspects of these proceedings":

ETS Membership Challenge

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A new BBC radio series began while I was away on Sunday. It is called The Good Book and I have been lucky to be involved with this from the start as script consultant, contributor and also author of the accompanying booklets on Jesus and Paul. The series is broadcast every Sunday on BBC Radio 2, 8 p.m. in six episodes. It is beautifully narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi and features contributions from academics and spiritual leaders. The series has a colourful web site here:

The Good Book

You can listen to the first episode on-line by going to this first page and clicking on the audio link:

Episode 1: Abraham

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One more story from the AAR/SBL in Atlanta has made it to the media. This is by Brian Basinger from Online Athens and features comments from Bernadette Brooten, Antoinette Wire and Richard Horsley:

Religion, Bible scholars gather for Atlanta meeting
Gays and Marriage

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Last year's big topic at the SBL was the James ossuary which was on display in Toronto. It was less of a hot topic in Atlanta, but it was still getting talked about. Jim Davila has made some useful blog entries on this and I won't duplicate here. Go to:

More on the James Ossuary

and

Edward M. Cook weighs in . . .

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I've messed around a bit with the template to this blog. I was irritated by the fact that the main left margin in the body of the blog was frequently jagged; I couldn't work out why so I stripped it down and started again and have made the look a bit more lean.

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I had meant to blog on this when I arrived in Atlanta last Friday but didn't get time. One of the big stories in Atlanta came from the Evangelical Theological Society who meet each year just before the SBL meeting. This year they had a big vote on whether or not to exclude two members, Clark Pinnock and John Sanders, because of their views on "open theism". In the end the society voted not to throw them out. There are several versions of the story on the web. For a shorter version go to this one on Crosswalk:

Russell Shubin, "A Referendum on Open Theism?".

For all the detail, go to this one on Christianity Today:

David Neff, Dispatch from Atlanta: What Fireworks?
Anxieties and attack turn to grace and truth as the Evangelical Theological Society votes on Open Theism proponents' membership.

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Don't forget to go to Hypotyposeis, Paleojudaica and AKMA's Random Thoughts for more and varied reflections on the SBL. I saw all three fellow bloggers at the SBL, though AKMA only briefly as we both dashed in opposite directions. Jim Davila kindly performed a BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! for me when we met on the Saturday morning; now that audio blogging is available, perhaps he could perform this for the masses? Stephen Carlson I saw frequently at the SBL and got to hear hot off the press some very interesting new discoveries and possible discoveries he's made; really looking forward to seeing them published. In years to come no doubt there will be myriads of other bloggers at the SBL and people will laugh as they look back to 2003 and say, "Good grief; were there really so few blogs in the olden days?" and we will be proud to have been there early on. AKMA will be prouder still -- he was even blogging at the SBL in November 2002.

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So to Monday morning. Bear in mind that the sessions I attended are a tiny fraction of what was on; at any given time there are multiple sessions one would enjoy attending. And sometimes duty takes one away from a session one would parituclarly like to get to. But one that I was keen to get to was the Historical Jesus section on the topic of "Women and the Historical Jesus". The speakers were John Dominic Crossan, Kathleen Corley and Jane Schaberg. Each spoke for half an hour or so; they then debated among themselves a little, all pretty friendly first name terms stuff, and then the discussion was opened up to the audience. It was one of the least stimulating sessions I attended at the conference, mainly because of the room, the audience and the fact that they only had one microphone. As usual for the really big historical Jesus sessions, they'd used a ballroom and it was absolutely packed. It was dark and dingy and they only had one microphone between them. Even with the microphone, it was quite difficult to hear Jane Schaberg. And when they debated among themselves, there were constantly passing the microphone around from one to another. It's funny how those things stick in one's mind more than the subtance of the papers, but it was so difficult to listen to and I'm afraid I slept through more of this even than the Q section, and that's saying something.

Also on Monday I attended the Mark Group again. Papers were by Tom Shepherd, Michael Vines and Kelli O'Brien and all on the theme of literary aspects of the trial of Jesus in Mark. I find the Mark Group one of the more enjoyable sections because it doesn't stack the programme too fully and allows enough time for presenters to summarise their papers and plenty of time for discussion.

General comment about the organisation of the conference: although it was good to have everything close together, I did find it a bit harder to navigate my way around this time. Perhaps I was being dopey but I found myself asking for directions more than usual. It also seemed to me that the organisers had not got the room allocation right. Many sessions I went to were overcrowded, and especially the first Synoptics session. Presumably it is difficult to predict but it seemed that they got the rooms badly wrong sometimes; perhaps there was not quite enough space there for the conference.

I was really lucky on the Monday evening to be able to get away from the hotel and to stay with friends in Atlanta; a real highlight. Back again on Tuesday morning the fag-end of the conference did seem a bit of an anti-climax. Lots of people are in the process of leaving on Tuesday morning, and even those that are not are focused on leaving. So it's rough to have to present a paper right at the end of the conference. I enjoyed a last chance to get a breakfast in the Marriott Marquis. It was easily the best place for breakfast among those I tried (the Hyatt was especially poor); and the chef cooked omelettes to order in front of you -- great stuff. I sampled a bit of the textual criticism section before leaving and there were some interesting bits and bobs though I slept through most of what I did attend and spent the rest of the time chatting to an old friend outside the session.

As usual, the best memories of the conference are the personal contacts, the breakfasts, the steak and ale, good laughs, spending time with old friends, meeting new people. Had several useful discussions relating to future publishing projects too, so I'm feeling pretty fulfilled at the end of it, but still delighted to get home again.

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I am not going to be able to remember the rest in order. Saturday sticks in my mind in a big way because of my own involvement. On Sunday I started enjoying myself properly. One of the sections I attended across Sunday and Monday was the Mark Group and the theme this year was Jesus' trial in Mark, the first day specifically focusing on the blasphemy charge and including papers from Adela Yarbro Collins and Jeffrey Gibson. The second of the Synoptics sections was the open session, with four papers, Stephen Moore, Albert Harrill, Alex Damm and Simon Gathercole. Gathercole's paper was excellent -- a defence of a Danielic application of the Son of Man language throughout Mark's Gospel, from the Son of Man has authority statements in Mark 2 through to the vindication of the Son of Man statements in Chapters 13 and 14, from revelation to suffering to vindication. It was a model of how to give an engaging paper -- clear but with a kind of relaxed good humour that engages the audience. I missed Bert Harrill because I wanted to hear Catherine Smith (one of our post-grads in Birmingham) speaking in the Biblical Language and Linguistics section -- a proud moment when one's own students present papers at an international conference. But dashed back to the Synoptics as soon as that was finished and just back in time for Alex Damm on the application of rhetoric to the Synoptic Problem. Damm is a graduate student of John Kloppenborg in Toronto. I was happy to hear him focus on the Mark-Without-Q hypothesis along with the Two Document Hypothesis in his paper, which was essentially an attempt to show that Luke's use of Q is more plausible than Luke's use of Matthew in the Beelzebub Controversy. He looked at rhetorically effective elements that are distinctive to Matthew which one would have expected Luke to have taken over had he known Matthew. I was not convinced by the argument myself and asked a question to the effect that Luke's use of Matthew and Luke's use of Q are not hypotheses competing on a par. We do not have Q, so that thesis functions at an automatic advantage in this kind of discussion. In particular, Luke's order here becomes Q's order, so it is fruitless to compare Luke's order of Q with Matthew's in this kind of context. But I am happy once again to hear the Farrer Theory being taken seriously; this has marked the work of several post graduate students from Toronto including Robert Derrenbacker and Zeba Crook.

Speaking of Derrenbacker, I attended the Q section on the Sunday too and Derrenbacker gave the best and most engaging of the papers there, admitting that Matthew's re-ordering of the Q material could be constituted as a problem for the Two-Source Theory, because it is so different from Q's order, but suggesting that Matthew was able to gain random access to Q by accessing it in notebook or codex format. The theme for the session was Matthew and Q and consisted of five papers, Marco Frenschkowski, Joseph Verheyden, Robert Derrenbacker, Clare Komoroske Rothschild and Linden Youngquist. I am afraid that my tiredness was really kicking in by this stage so I slept through at least some of all of these. (I sleep through at least some of pretty much all academic papers; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the papers; it's just a question of tiredness. Recommendation: if you want me to hear all of your paper, ask me to chair it and I might just manage to stay awake.). After the five speakers, Ulrich Luz gave thirty minute response to them all. It was his first SBL and was clearly enjoying the occasion. The chairing of the section was even worse than my chairing of the Synoptics section, though, since Luz finished after the scheduled finish and there was not time for the allotted discussion. I suspect that they were trying to cram too much in to the session to attempt to cover five papers and a major response and still have time for discussion.

Labels: Simon Gathercole

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I have now returned from Atlanta where I was attending the SBL Annual Meeting. I had thought that I would be able to blog throughout the conference and made a first entry or two on Friday afternoon and early on Saturday morning. But that was that. I was simply too busy the rest of the time to find a moment to blog. But now that I am home (or at least sitting at an airport waiting for a bus), some scattered reflections.

Saturday was the worst day for me personally -- still tired from losing a night's sleep to travel and also the day on which I had first to give a paper at the CARG and then to preside at the Synoptics section. But first things first. I tend to mark the beginning of the meeting by the annual gathering of "e-listers", always at 11 on the Saturday at the Gramcord booth, and always organised by Jeffrey Gibson. I did a circuit about five times round the book display looking for the Gramcord booth and wondered if I was being uncommonly inobservant. I eventually found out that there was another whole room of book display and I headed down to that; it's the first time since I've been going to SBL that I've known them to use two different rooms. The e-listers meeting was good, some old friends and some new ones, and Gail Dawson took a photograph of the group.

The first session I went to was the CARG, the computer assisted research section. There were five presentations and mine was the fourth. I talked about the All-in-One Biblical Resources Search, talking a little about the history of the site, what I saw as its advantages and disadvantages and began to look to the future, specifically the creation of a fresh page on the Greek New Testament / Biblical Languages.

Straight afterwards I had my first experience of presiding at a session, the first Synoptics section (of two). The theme was Richard Bauckham (ed.), The Gospels for all Christians: Rethinking Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). Sadly Richard Bauckham himself was not able to be present because of ill health. Dwight Peterson, one of the respondents, was also unable to be present through ill health. Late in the day, Richard Burridge had agreed to stand in for Richard Bauckham and Loveday Alexander for Dwight. The other panelists were Margaret Mitchell, Mark Matson and Theodore J. Weeden. I was delighted to be able to introduce Ted Weeden, known to many through his famous Mark: Traditions in Conflict, but his first SBL for something like thirty years. The session was absolutely packed -- people standing at the back, at the doors and squatting on the floor. Apparently Eerdmans brought the book back into print because of the session, and then they sold out from their book display. The session was very lively; I thought Margaret Mitchell's presentation and contributions (in particular) pretty powerful, though she exceeded her time limit even more than all the others did. [Strong mental note to self: next time be much stricter on speakers' going over allotted time]. Plenty of time for lively discussion. Lots of people commented on how enjoyable they had found the session. I haven't commented on the substance much; you can read Mitchell's and Matson's papers on-line still, along with Bauckham's summary paper. [located here.] Richard Burridge is also going to send me his notes from the session to upload. A friend told me over breakfast the next morning that he thought the pro-Bauckham team had won a narrow victory, perhaps 3-2, but that Mitchell had achieved some big hits (to mix sporting metaphors).

One other event on Saturday was the Continuum reception, this year an official launch party for T & T Clark International, which is to be Continuum's Biblical Studies imprint, incorporating Trinity Press International, Sheffield Academic Press and T & T Clark.

The meeting all nice and close together -- no long treks across the city to different meeting places. And everyone seemed to be in one of the main meeting hotels which were also all central. The one I was in, the Marriott Marquis, was the main convention hotel. Enormous, rather soulless place -- tall with glass elevators going up and down the middle; it had enough room for 2000 guests apparently. Some good food places around. I had my first experience of a Japanese steakhouse, where they cook the food in front of you on the hot plate in the middle of the table, juggling the utensils and so on. There was a very good local Atlanta beer too called something like Sweet Water or Fresh Water. The weather was quite nice -- great to get off the plane on Friday to blazing sunshine. It rained on Monday, but otherwise pretty nice throughout. More later.

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I went to two sessions at yesterday's SBL, the first the Computer Assisted Research Section. It was a good session, much better attended than last year, probably largely because of the location of the section at the central convention hotel, the Marriott Marquis. The five presentations focused on web-based applications, collaborative research and pedagogy. Susan Graham talked about the Theoweb project at the University of Exeter, Tim Bulkely talked about his Collaborative Hyptertext Commentary project -- he is the author of the on-line Amos commentary. Steve Delamarter discussed his research project funded by the Wabash centre, "A typology of technology use among theological educutors". [unfinished blog entry]

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Jim Davila reflects (who is blogging through his television set in an Atlanta hotel, itself a kind of feat of science-fiction) on the CARG abbreviation:

Science fiction readers will recall that in Keith Laumer's classic novel Dinosaur Beach the "Kargs" were evil Terminator-like robots from the future who came back in time to carry out dastardly deeds to change the course of history.

I'm sure the similarity in name is just a coincidence. Of course, I have presented a CARG paper myself iin recent years, so I would say that, wouldn't I?

BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Jeff Peterson had to explain the last phrase to me. Apparently it is used in blogeny as a kind of evil laugh -- practise saying it yourself with a kind of Dr Evil voice on.

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Ahead of a short presentation I am giving this afternoon in the CARG (Computer Assisted Research Section) here at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta, I've uploaded a new trial version of my All-in-One Biblical Resources Search. There is more still to be done to it but so far I have done some work neatening up the look of the site, updating some of the searches and beginning (only beginning, I am afraid) a new page on the Greek New Testament. This is not formally released yet, but any feedback on it would be gratefully received, though please bear in mind that this is very much work in progress:

All-in-One Biblical Resources Search Version 3

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This link is courtesy of Bible and Interpretation: Christianity Today have reproduced an article from back in 1984:

CT Classic: Evangelical Scholars Remove Robert Gundry for His Views on Matthew

It is about the removal of Robert Gundry from the Evangelical Theology Society for the views expressed in his commentary on Matthew's Gospel, in which he suggested that the evangelist himself creatively embellished gospel materials. Apparently the Evangelical Theology Society subscribed to the inerrancy of scripture and this was felt to be incompatible with that doctrine.

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The big story emerging over the last few days is the inscription found on an ancient burial monument in Jerusalem mentioning Simon's name and a part of Luke 2.25. It has been publicised by Joe Zias here in Atlanta at the American Schools of Oriental Research in a talk yesterday. There are lots of news stories around about this. This link courtesy of Stephen Goranson from a Georgia newspaper called AccessNorthGa.com:

Archaeologist discovers parts of New Testament verse on funeral monument

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I've arrived safely in Atlanta and hope to be able to blog my way through the conference once I'm settled. So more later. I've adjusted the time indication too for Atlanta (i.e. what you see below on each blog entry).

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I depart soon for Atlanta, Georgia for the SBL Annual Meeting. I look forward to seeing some of you there. I also hope to be able to provide a few of my own reflections on the meeting as it goes on.

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On Saturday I am giving a short talk in the Computer Assisted Research Section (which by quirk of history is abbreviated CARG) on my All-in-One Biblical Resources Search. I am currently working on the latest version of the resource, deleting defunct searches, neatening up the code, adding fresh materials. I will preview elements of the new version in due course, but while I am updating I would be very grateful for any feedback on people's experience of the resource, especially things that I could improve. My guess is that there is a law of diminishing returns as one progresses through the site -- many use the Bible Versions and Translations page, some use the Biblical Resources page, few use the other pages. In fact I discovered to my horror this morning that there is very little on the General Academic and Religion Page that still works because of moving sites. The fact that I've not received a single email saying "What's gone wrong here?" suggests that that page, for example, is very seldom used. Anyway, if anyone does have suggestions for improvement, or feedback about what is most useful on the site, I would be happy to hear from them.

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I haven't now been able to connect to Religion-online for some time; I know that one of my correspondents has had the same problem. It seems that the site is down. Does anyone know if or when it will return? It is a massive resource of useful material -- this is one we really don't want to lose!

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Also today on Paleojudaica, a link to this article from the Jerusalem Post:

Ancient Jewish Village Uncovered in Jerusalem

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This one flagged up by Jim Davila. It's from the Society of Jesus USA web site, a short article by Bronson Havard:

Scholar says inscription about 'brother' of Jesus may be genuine

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Thanks to Bob Derrenbacker for notifying me of his new homepage at Regent College, Vancouver, now adjusted on the Scholars: D page.

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Two more papers relating to the NT on the SBL Program Units Page, and then I think that's pretty much the lot (i.e. no more on the web). These two are for the Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism and Early Christianity section but are free standing on the site, i.e. located on the SBL site itself and not on a program unit page. Both PDF:

Adela Yarbro Collins - Composition and Performance in Mark 13

Rollin Ramsaran - From Mind to Message: Oral Performance in 1 Corinthians 15

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One more from the SBL Program Units Page:

Josephus Seminar 2003

Features the following full text papers, all PDF format:

John M G Barclay, "Josephus and his Audiences: Exploring Reading Options in a Commentary"

Jonathan J Price, "Josephus' reading of Thucidydes: A test-case in the BJ" [Response, Honora H. Chapman]

Miriam Ben-zeev, "Josephus' Ambiguities: His Comments on Cited Documents"

Claude Eilers, "Josephus' Caesarian Acta: History of a Dossier"

Tessa Rajak, "Who needs charters? Josephus in the light of Greek historiographical practice"

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There's a report here on Amy-Jill Levine's reservations about The Passion of the Christ based on a speech given on Sunday. The report is by William Kelly of Palm Beach Daily News:

Scholar airs reservations about early 'Passion' script

Amy-Jill Levine was one of those scholars who saw the early script of the film; usually they are described as an "ad hoc" group, but not here. This report perpetuates the claim that the script was "stolen", something Paula Fredriksen and others on the committee have denied.

Labels: Paula Fredriksen

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A useful tip picked up via an entry on AKMA's blog -- the tiny URL site allows you to create a "tiny URL" instantly from any very long one -- great to stop URLs wrapping in email messages etc.:

Tiny URL.com

I'd seen these tiny URLs on David Meadows's Explorator and never realised what they were. AKMA also suggests trying your initials on the end of a tiny URL to find out what comes up, for a bit of fun. (Mine's useless -- /msg gets a dead URL).

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I asked if anyone knew how to strike out text in html; David Mackinder kindly supplies the information: "the code is simple (but counterintuitive): it's 'del' within
angle brackets partnered with forward-slash 'del' within angle brackets -- it used to be 'strike', but that is now deprecated." So let me see if that works: "Three Versions of Jesus". Yep, looks like it; thanks David.

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There is a radio programme featuring Karen King on The Connection which is based in Boston:

Mary Magdalene Reconsidered

That takes you to the web page; click on "Listen to show" towards the bottom. It features both Karen King and Lesa Bellevie, the webmaster of a site on Mary Magdalene. It is 50 minutes long so a bit more depth than is usual in such programmes; there's a phone-in too. I've not listened to it all, but so far it is quite interesting.

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I recently mentioned the SBL Program Units Page. Here's another section that has some papers available on the web for reading ahead of the meeting:

Semiotics and Exegesis Section

(Unfortunately, it has one of those annoying hidden frames that keeps the original URL in the address bar). The papers available include:

Liliana M. Nutu, "A Veil of One’s Own? Identity and The Pillow Book"

George Aichele, "The Poetic Function and the Gospel in/of Mark: a Post-Canonical Reading"

Richard Walsh, "Three Versions of Jesus" [Jesus has a line through it. Anyone know how to do that in html?]

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Jim Davila draws attention to this article on the Jerusalem shroud:

Discovery of Jesus-era shroud to be aired at UNC-Charlotte

And he adds that Shimon Gibson will be presenting a lecture on this at the SBL Annual Meeting too; I can't see that on the SBL Site, but I may be looking in the wrong places. The article above mentions that "He will discuss the findings again Wednesday at the American Schools of Oriental Research conference in Atlanta." I've had a look at the ASOR web site and it seems that Gibson is presenting on the Friday -- abstract available here.

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Another article on Karen King on Mary Magdalene, with a photo:

Book probes Magdalene’s legacy
Author cites ‘Gospel of Mary’ in portrayal of 1st female apostle

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Stephen Carlson helpfully puts me right on Streeter on the Minor Agreements (see Goulder on the Minor Agreements); the view that τίς ἐστιν ὁ παίσας σε; were original to Mark 14.65 was apparently not Streeter's view, at least not in The Four Gospels. He followed Turner and anticipated Neirynck in arguing that the words were interpolated into Matthew from Luke. Since Stephen is quoting the 1926 edition, I'll double check my Streeter when I'm next in the office just in case (I mainly blog from home). But Streeter did originally hold a different view; I recall also that Tuckett changed his mind on this one, I think as a result of Neirynck's article on the topic, but this is another one that I need to look up.

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Latest Explorator has been posted by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.29

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Reviews of the Gospel of John are beginning to come in now, this one from the Washington Post:

'The Gospel of John': A Good-Faith Effort

It is particularly critical of the use of the Good News Bible for the translation, "a decidedly unpoetic and unevocative text". There's an error in the article -- "it makes sense that the company [Visual Bible International] would start with John" -- but it's their third departure, already having covered Matthew and Acts.

This review in the Orange County Weekly is more enthusiastic (and it makes the same mistake about this being the first project of Visual Bible International):

The Very Good Word: The Gospel of John converts without moralizing

Labels: Visual Bible

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Eric Laupot has asked me to note that the follow-up to his article “Tacitus' Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans”, Vigiliae Christianae 54 (2000), pp. 233-47, appears in Revue des etudes juives 162, nos. 1-2 (2003), 69-96.

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