NT Blog

New from Eerdmans is:

Michael Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters
624 pages; dimensions (in inches): 6.25 x 9.25; 54 illustrations; 2003
ISBN: 0-8028-3934-7

Unlike the many books that treat the apostle Paul merely as a historical figure and his letters as literary relics, this new study by Michael Gorman focuses on the theological message of Paul’s writings, particularly what they have to say to the contemporary church.

An innovative and comprehensive treatment of Paul, including commentary on all of the Pauline letters, Gorman’s Apostle of the Crucified Lord unpacks the many dimensions of Paul’s thought carefully and holistically. Six introductory chapters provide background discussion on Paul’s world, his résumé, his letters, his gospel, his spirituality, and his theology, while the main body of the book covers in turn and in full detail each of the Pauline epistles. Gorman gives the context of each letter, offers a careful reading of the text, and colors his words with insightful quotations from earlier interpreters of Paul.

Enhancing the text itself are questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter and numerous photos, maps, and tables throughout. All in all, Apostle of the Crucified Lord is the ideal book for students and any other readers interested in seriously engaging Paul’s challenging letters.

The above link takes you to the Eerdmans catalogue; also available here at Amazon.com.

---

There was a short feature on the Today programme this morning on the King James Bible. Here's a link to the audio (about three minutes):

The King James Bible is 400 years old - an exhibition has just opened at Hampton Court

For a little more on what this is talking about, have a look at this web page:

The Hampton Court Conference

---

There's a new on-line article from the latest (Fall 2003) issue of Christian History that may be of interest:

Midwife of the Christian Bible
Irenaeus identified the books of the New Testament, then showed the church how they fit with the Old.
by Fr. John Behr

See also previous blog entry on this issue.

---

Viewers of The West Wing may have noticed the resemblance between Toby Ziegler and the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright:

   

---

On his Philo of Alexandria blog, Torrey Seland writes:

Etana turns out to be an excellent site for students of Philo and his social world too. But it makes me think about how long it is useful to keep up all these other collections of links like my own site, NTGateway, and others. I know from my own work that it eats my time, and I can't imagine how Mark Goodacre gets time to keep up his great site as a one-man work...
Have we reached the point where we should seriously consider coordinating more of this work, get some sponsors, and establish a team to work on a really megasite for Biblical studies? Viewpoints are welcome....

Torrey is asking a useful question here and I don't know that I have a good answer at this stage. Four initial thoughts, though, as well as to second Torrey's "viewpoints are welcome":

(1) When people ask me about the NT Gateway at conferences, usually to wonder out loud about how I get the time to do it all, I tend to find myself saying that I enjoy doing it and that's why I carry on doing it. As soon as I stop enjoying it, I will have to stop doing it. (It's also a fact that I work too hard, produce less research than I would otherwise do and don't get as much sleep as I should, but you don't want to hear about that).

(2) Where I was beginning to flag on keeping the NT Gateway up to date, this blog has helped enormously. For reasons I've stated before, it's much more enjoyable than just doing the NT Gateway.

(3) There is one area that I have failed to keep up to date on the NT Gateway and it is now causing me some concern: on-line articles. These are proliferating at a real rate and it is not straightforward to keep on top of them. This situation is hardly going to reverse itself and there may come a day when I have to admit defeat on this one.

(4) I've sometimes wondered out loud about the possibilities of greater collaboration and it may indeed be the way forward to begin thinking seriously about this. My hunch is that it would only work if one could involve a major organisation and the obvious one would be the SBL. But all this needs some more thought.

Let me make clear that I have absolutely no intention of stopping developing and maintaining the NT Gateway, but I do think that Torrey Seland is asking some useful questions for the long term about how we all look to the future for Biblical (and related) resources on the web.

---

Stephen Carlson is producing a fascinating review of Paul Foster, "Is it Possible to Dispense with Q?", NovT 45 (2003): 313-337 over on Hypotyposeis, so far Part 1 and Part 2. I am taking more than a little interest in this since Foster's article is largely focused on my work on the Synoptic Problem. I am writing a full-length response to Foster so will not comment at any length here but will comment on one or two things are they arise in Stephen Carlson's so far very thorough critique.

Carlson comments on Foster's brief discussion of the Farrer Theory's precursors. I would add that while of course Foster cannot be expected to cover all the proponents of the theory, there are two who are probably too important to miss, not least because I have drawn from them heavily in the material Foster is reviewing, and they are H. Benedict Green and E. P. Sanders / Margaret Davies (see my Introductory Bibliography for references).

In Part 2 Carlson makes some useful comments on Foster's claim on an "unproven assumption that is necessary for the Farrer theory", which "must hold for such a proposed solution to be even a possibility. It must be assumed not only that Matthew wrote before Luke, but also that the Matthean gospel had been in existence for "long enough" (however one may measure that) and had also circulated widely enough to come to Luke's knowledge." (315) As I commented to Foster before the publication of his review, I regard this as a clever attempt to turn a weakness for the Q theory (viz. the narrow window available for Matthew and Luke to be producing their Gospels in isolation from each other) into a strength. But the point only works with the singular quotation Foster picks from Farrer, and then only partially. Foster criticises Farrer's view about Matthew as an "orthodox Gentile Christian writing", but this view is quite singular. It is not shared by Goulder, whose Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974) is a forthright defence of the composition of Matthew by a Jewish scribe; I think I recall Michael Goulder saying that Farrer himself was largely persuaded by the thesis in its early stages, but Farrer died just before Michael Goulder gave the first of the Speakers Lectures in Oxford that eventually became Midrash and Lection. Since I agree with Goulder and the consensus about this, it's a red herring for Foster to bring out Farrer's view here as if it is a necessity for the theory -- it is not. But in any case, Farrer's general point in context is about the prima facie case; and it is a reasonable place to begin. Consider the passage immediately before the sentence Foster picks out:

If there is no difficulty in supposing St. Luke to have read St. Matthew, then the question never arises at all. For if we find two documents containing much common material, some of it verbally identical, and if those two documents derive from the same literary region, our first supposition is not that both draw upon a lost document for which there is no independent evidence, but that one draws upon the other. It is only when the latter supposition has proved untenable that we have recourse to the postulation of a hypothetical source. (Farrer, "Dispensing": 56)

In my view, this is the right place to begin. Stephen Carlson's mention of Michael Thompson's article on the "holy internet" in this context is a very helpful one. Something I commented on in Case Against Q was the remarkable nature of Burton Mack's theory that has Luke written nearly forty years after Matthew yet preferring to use the moribund Q.

---

Latest Explorator was posted yesterday by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.37

One story of interest featured is this:

Roman Anchor Found in the Dead Sea

An archaeologist from Kibbutz Ein Gedi has probably made one of the biggest finds of his career - and it happened just as he was walking along the nearby beach of the Dead Sea. He found a lead-and-wood anchor - without the lead - that probably dates back to the Roman period, 2,000 years ago. The anchor found by Dr. Gideon Hadas is 1.8 meters by 0.9 meters wide (6 by 3 feet), and weighs some 500 kilograms (1,100 lbs.). Dr. Hadas informed the Antiquities Authority of his find, and received permission to research it.

That's from Arutz Sheva. Jim Davila also blogs this and links to a paragraph in Haaretz with a picture.

---

On Friday I mentioned a couple more N. T. Wright articles on-line. Now here's another, with thanks to Kevin Bush for drawing attention to it:

The Bible for the Post Modern World
William Orange Memorial Lecture 1999, hosted by the Latimer Fellowship

A little while ago AKMA made some interesting comments on some throw-away comments Wright had made about postmodernism. I don't suppose AKMA would care to comment on this article when he has time? I'd be interested to hear what AKMA thinks.

---

I began getting a page together on Biblical resources on Sexuality for the NT Gateway some time ago but like lots of my projects it's sitting around only half-finished. I am happy to see in the mean time that Holger Szesnat has got together a useful set of resources here:

Internet Resources: Bible and (Homo)Sexuality

---

Thanks to Kevin Bush for pointing out to me another Wright article on-line:

Jesus and the Identity of God (PDF)

It's hosted on the N. T. Wright Page and was originally published in Ex Auditu 14 (1998): 42-56.

---

A thread has begun on the Johannine Literature e-list on the question of the dating and priority of John. Paul Anderson draws attention to this paper from lister Mark Matson:

Current Approaches to Johannine Priority (PDF)

The paper was apparently read at the Stone-Campbell Journal Conference in St. Louis in March, 2003 and should appear in the Journal in the future; it appears on Matson's homepage.

---

I've mentioned Kevin Bush's N. T. Wright Page here before. There are some useful new links there:

Transforming the Culture
This article was "delivered as a main address at the AFFIRM conference at Waikanae in July 1999"; it is hosted by the Latimer Fellowship and the focus is on Paul.

New Perspectives on Paul (PDF)
This is a paper given at the 10th Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, Rutherford House, Edinburgh, 25-28 August 2003. It is hosted on the N. T. Wright page itself and looks like a copy produced by Wright himself (though whoever produced it really ought to think about double spacing).

Finally, Tom Wright has apparently agreed to answer questions posed by an email list called Wrightsaid -- What N. T. Wright Really Said and his first batch of answers, for January 2004, are reproduced on the N. T. Wright page here:

Tom Wright answers "Wrightsaid" questions

The latter includes his comments on the future projected for the six volume Christian Origins and the Question of God.

Many thanks to Sean D for drawing my attention to these additions.

---

Thanks to Jim West on Xtalk for a link to an excellent and comprehensive site from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill:

Ancient World Mapping Center

This centre "exists to promote cartography and geographic information science as essential disciplines within the field of ancient studies". Many useful, high resolution, well documented reproductions of maps from print resources in the AWMC Map Room including maps of the Expansion of the Empire in the Age of Augustus, Greece, the Aegean and Western Asia Minor and Roman Empire in AD 69. That's just a selection -- there are lots more. The main page has one of those annoying designs that only works properly in 1024x768 but the map room looks fine in 800x600.

The message forwarded by Jim was by Tom Elliott and reads as follows:

These maps were prepared to accompany the new book by Mary T.
Boatwright, Daniel J. Gargola and Richard J.A. Talbert, The Romans
from Village to Empire: A History of Ancient Rome from Earliest Times to Constantine, Oxford University Press, 2004 (ISBN: 0-19-511875-8).
Publisher's information on the book is available.

Please visit our homepage or jump directly to the map room for
more information.

Please feel free to forward this message to other lists where it may be of interest.

I've added the site to the NT Gateway: Maps page.

---

I've added Dieter Mitternacht's Homepage to Scholars: M. Mitternacht is a Senior Research Fellow at Lund University, Sweden. His homepage includes the tiniest little link to a huge file that would be a shame to miss -- his Master of Theology dissertation:

By Works of the Law No One Shall Be Justified (PDF)

I've added the link to the Paul: Books, Articles and Reviews page.

---

Both Stephen Carlson on Hyptoposeis and Jim Davila on Paleojudaica have blogged on a topic arising from the Corpus Paulinum email list. Jeffrey Gibson began the thread asking what you would ask Paul if you were able to go back to the sixties of the first century and somehow find a way of communicting with him. There have been some great suggestions on the Corpus Paul list; some highlights:

Paul, what was it that you and the pillars talked about when you spent your fortnight with them?

How many letters did you write and in what order?

What do you mean by PISTIS CHRISTOU?

Paul, how many other letters did you write that we don't have now? Were any of the other letters as tough as Galatians or 2 Cor 10-13?

Paul, what did Peter say after you confronted him in Antioch?

Since your about to die and all, have you changed your opinion about how quickly Jesus is going to return?

Could you explain just how many letters you actually wrote to the church in Corinth, and then give me a run-down on what they contained and when they were written?

Do you believe that homosexuality is as bad as temple prostitution and pederastry?

Fess up -- the collection which you so altruistically maintain that you were "eager" to take up actually galled and chafed you at first, didn't it? The pillars were stongarming you, no?

Why and where did you persecute fellow Jews who owned Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah and Lord, and who else was involved in this persecution?

How do you regard Jews who have not accepted Jesus as God's Messiah?

Was your letter to the Galatians a success? Did you receive a reply?

Do you keep copies of your own letters? Can we have a look at them?

When you said in (what we call) 1 Corinthians "I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh", could you explain what that means?

They are just some highlights. Visit the list archive to read them all, along with some attempts at answers; begin from 3 January 2004 and keep going.

Jim Davila adds a note on "a midterm question I used to ask my undergraduates back when I taught Introduction to the New Testament at another institution":

Imagine a meeting between a leader of the Q people, the Apostle Paul, and an Essene leader from Qumran in the year C.E. 58. Write your essay from the perspective of the Q person and explain how and where you (the Q person) agree and disagree with the other two leaders on observance of Torah law, proper religious lifestyle, relations with the gentiles (including proselytizing), the correct celebration of the communal meal, and the end of the world."

Nice idea; I'd be interested to hear a conversation between John Kloppenborg, Paul and a Qumran person!

---

I posted recently on two articles, "The First Battle for the Bible" by Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., and "The Habits of Highly Effective Bible Readers", a conversation with Christopher A. Hall. I mistakenly said that these appeared in "the Fall 2003 issue (80) of Christianity Today". I am grateful to Dwight Peterson for pointing out to me that they actually appear in the Fall 2003 issue of Christian History, not Christianity Today.

---

Stephen Carlson points to a very interesting parallel between Matthew 3.11 and Acts 19.4, both of which juxtapose the themes of repentance and the "coming one" in John the Baptist's preaching. This is in contrast with Mark, Luke's Gospel and John. Given that, on the standard Two-Source Theory, Luke-Acts is independent of Matthew, this is striking. So how could it be explained? Stephen lays out the evidence and then asks:

Of the four gospels, only Matt 3:11 juxtaposes, as does Acts 19:4, the motifs of a baptism of repentance (John) with the one coming after (Jesus). According to the Critical Edition of Q (p. 14, at Q 3:16b, which aggressively adds Jesus's baptism to Q because of too many minor agreements), the phrase "for repentance" is Matthew's redaction of Q's baptism. In other words, the author of Luke at Acts 19:4 knows Matthew, or, if the editors of CEQ are wrong, Q is more like Matthew than we thought.

As a defender myself of the theory that Luke (the author) did know Matthew, what I like to do on such occasions is to try to get into the Q theorist's shoes. How would I answer this if I were persuaded of Q? (I always try to test my own arguments by trying to find the best possible arguments against them. This is not because of some kind of schizophrenia but because it can help one to sharpen up one's arguments or, sometimes, to drop them before it's too late). What I think I
would say here would be that there is a third option:

(1) It is not that Luke knows Matthew -- we know that that is not possible for a variety of reasons, chief among which are (a) Luke's eccentric editorializing that would be implied by that theory & (b) the phenomenon of alternating primitivity in double tradition. (My hypothetical Q theorist has not, unfortunately, read The Case Against Q or, if s/he has, s/he is -- God forbid! -- unpersuaded by it).

(2) And it cannot be that Q is more like Matthew than we previously thought. If Q had featured repentance here, Luke would have carried it over so producing the same juxtaposition of repentance + coming one in Luke 3. After all, we know that Luke has no aversion to repentance -- it is a favourite in his Gospel (e.g. Luke 5.32R, 15.7 QD, 24.47). On the other hand, repentance is something Matthew might have added in Matt. 3 (e.g. cf. the prominence the theme is given in Matt. 3.2). So Q did not have repentance here.

(3) So where did Luke get it from in Acts 19? It was probably his memory of these two features, both of them congenial, from Mark and Q. John's baptism of repentance is a key feature of Mark 1; the announcement of the coming one is a key feature of Q 3 and Q 7. So he juxtaposes them himself in Acts 19 in the same way that Matthew juxtaposed them himself in Matt. 3. So there is nothing here that cannot be explained by independent redaction.

---

I was sent this by Ori Trend from Israel. There's a useful new book price comparison site available on the net. I've played around with it a bit and it seems to come up with some useful results. There's a North American version and a British version, though from my searches it is still often cheaper to go to the American version and order from there with international shipping:

Fetchbook.Info

Fetchbook.co.uk

---

I posted a note on Torrey Seland's new Philo blog last week. If you haven't visited yet, don't forget to do so; new additions include a report on Philo at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta in November 2003. Torrey Seland has also made some major additions to his Resource Pages for Biblical Studies, dropping the discussion board, adding links to the NT Gateway, the NT Gateway blog (thanks!) and Jim Davila's Paleojudaica blog on the main page, and also adding a good number of features of interest listed here:

Resource Pages for Biblical Studies, January 2004 additions

One of the links new to me is Quotation Finder from the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung at Münster. This is designed to work with the TLG CD ROM. It looks useful, though I've not been able to spend enough time with it myself to figure it all out, and I don't have TLG installed so don't know how useful it would be for me. I'd be interested to hear if anyone does have any experiences with this.

---

The Fall 2003 issue (80) of Christianity Today is entitled "The First Bible Teachers" and has a focus on Patristic interpretation of the Bible. Most of the articles are not available on-line but two that may be of interest are:

The First Battle for the Bible
How the church was forced to choose its treatment of the Jewish Scriptures
Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J.

The Habits of Highly Effective Bible Readers
What we can learn from the church fathers that will enrich our own Bible study.
A conversation with Christopher A. Hall

---

The new version of Kalos (2.11) has been released today after some bugs were fixed in the previous release. This is an enjoyable, free resource for conjugating your Greek verbs:

Kalos Computer Programme

There is also a new much simplified URL and I've made the change on my Greek NT Gateway: Computer Software page.

---

I noted the appearance of the October 2003 edition of the Journal of Theological Studies back in November and also the lack of on-line availability to subscribers or those with institutional subscriptions. Now the edition is available on-line to those who are able to access it. Unfortunately, the free abstracts are largely absent. Here's the link:

Journal of Theological Studies 54/2 (October 2003)

---

I have previously mentioned Wieland Willker's On-line Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. He has now produced a major second edition. According to Wieland, "Compared to the 1st edition it has about 300 more pages (now 1731) and 67 variants added (now 1223)":

TCG 2004: An On-line Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament

---

The Institute for Biblical Research (IBR) describes itself in the following terms: "an organization of evangelical Christian scholars with specialties in Old and New Testament and in ancillary disciplines. Its vision is to foster excellence in the pursuit of Biblical Studies within a faith environment." Its web site is here:

Institute for Biblical Research

The institute plans to have certain sub-groups, the first one of which is the IBR Jesus Group started by Darrell Bock and Robert Webb. This is clearly in some ways intended as a reaction to the Jesus Seminar, though its approach is different (e.g. no voting). The web site features two major essays which are part of this project:

Robert Webb, "Jesus' Baptism: Its Historicity and Implications"

Scot McKnight, "Jesus and the Twelve"

Thanks to Michael Pahl for drawing this to my attention. I've added the main link to my Societies page. I'll add the articles to the Historical Jesus pages later.

---

I usually mention the latest Explorator on a Sunday because there are always items of interest there:

Explorator 6.36

---

My previous entry sent me looking around for other bits and bobs in the Christian Century and here's an older article on Wright that may be of interest -- an interview focusing on the resurrection but also dealing with other things:

Resurrection faith: N.T. Wright talks about history and belief

This is from the Christian Century December 18 2002.

---

Religion-online have an article excerpted from N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God:

On the Third Day: God's Promise Fulfilled (Religion-Online)

The article itself originally appeared in The Christian Century (April 5 2003): 32-36 and is also available via the Find Articles site here:

On the third day: God's promise fulfilled (Find Articles)

---

Carl Conrad, guru of the b-greek email list and professor emeritus of Classics at Washington University, has published on on-line commentary on Mark, with his own translation in the top frame and commentary on the text in a bottom frame. A very useful new resource:

A Brief Commentary on the Gospel of Mark

I've added a link on my Gospel of Mark page.

Labels: b-greek

---

This just received from Jenny Heimerdinger:

"We are writing to let you know that the study week on Codex Bezae planned for 3rd-8th July 2004 at the University of Wales, Bangor, has been postponed. A good number of people expressed an interest in the meeting but it appears that there is a variety of obstacles standing in the way of this year’s proposal.

We are suggesting, therefore, that the meeting be re-scheduled for the summer of 2005 and to that end, in view of the observations some of you have made, we would like to invite comments from any who may be interested in taking part. In particular, we would welcome your thoughts on:

Format —is an informal meeting, with workshops and discussions on aspects of Codex Bezae, preferable to the more usual structure of a formal conference with scholarly papers? Would a combination of the two be best of all?

Content —it was envisaged that all four Gospels and Acts in Codex Bezae would be potential topics. Would you like to see the scope of the meeting restricted to selected books?

Language —which languages would you wish to have represented at the meeting? and which on a equal footing with English?

Dates —possible alternatives to the first week in July are mid-July or mid-September. The duration could be shortened to 3 or 4 days.

Location —Bangor (Wales), London or Dublin are alternatives. Is any more attractive a proposal than the others?

If you would like to comment on any of these points, we would be grateful to have your response within the next month.

Jenny Read-Heimerdinger (University of Wales, Bangor)
Josep Rius-Camps (Facultat de Teologia, Barcelona)"

---

Daniel Gurtner points out to me that what I did have listed (on my Journals page) as Currents in Research: Biblical Studies has been recast for some time as Currents in Biblical Research. I've made the adjustment.

---

Torrey Seland has added to his pioneering Resource Pages for Biblical Studies, which have a special focus on Philo of Alexandria, a new Philo of Alexandria blog. This was announced yesterday and I've added a link on the left of this page.

---

I enjoyed reading Stephen Carlson's Hypotyposeis 2003 Retrospective and there are some connections with my own experience. Stephen mentions the problem of "link rot", a term I had not heard before. The problem of link rot is the something I am very conscious of because of the size of The New Testament Gateway which I've run for a few years now. The need to keep those links regularly serviced has made this NTGateway weblog liberating for me. I no longer need to arrange notices of URL changes in my old clunky Logbook but can simply note the changes I have made here, which is much quicker and less boring. Also the blog enables me to link to materials that are too transient to be added on the NT Gateway proper and especially media and journalistic materials.

In fact the blog began as a means of coping with some problems that the NT Gateway was throwing up. I was struggling to keep it as current as I would have liked and there were no obvious locations for smaller scale, transient features to which I would like to have linked. So the blog combines together my old Logbook, the monthly Featured Links section and the Notices sections but at the same time allows me to do loads more. I'm not quite sure why I find blogging so much easier and more enjoyable than all those things, but the fact is that I do.

It has not even occurred to me that it would be an idea to bolt a weblog onto the NTGateway until I read a comment of Jim Davila's that it would be good to see more weblogs in the general area.

An additional advantage, and one I had not realised at the outset, has been the chance to add some of my own short essays or reflections or thoughts. As Stephen rightly points out, this blog is primarily of the "filter" variety, "one in which the writer presents a daily selection of links and other web material that the writer finds interesting". But occasionally I've enjoyed venturing into the "journal" variety too, either to react to something that had been written about me, or to begin to frame some thoughts on a given topic. I share some of Stephen's reticence about publishing my own research in advance on-line and feel this more in this forum than I used to in, say, the email lists. For example, I worked out a lot of my ideas on the Synoptic Problem by engaging with people on Xtalk and Synoptic-L. I don't feel quite so comfortable working out current research ideas here, but perhaps that will change.

As time has gone on I've become less inclined to repeat any informatiion already noted in one of the other weblogs, particularly Hypotyposeis and Paleojudaica, not least because I know that many of the readers of this weblog also read those two (and of course others). But from time to time I can't resist flagging something up too, or I may have a comment to add; or I may have blogged it and only subsequently notice that others have blogged it too. This is just to say that I don't aim for comprehensiveness -- you have to read the other blogs too!

In the four months that the blog has been running, I've developed a few other rules of thumb. One of the most important is to avoid the temptation to be too self-indulgent. I figure that the reason that people read this blog is that they are interested in the academic study of the New Testament; some, I know, share broader interests in related topics like Jesus in film, which happens to be one of my favourites. But I don't assume that my readers will care about others of my interests so I don't write about them. And while I enjoy the more informal style that is at home in a weblog, I try not to allow it to become too chatty or matey. Just occasionally, I add an inappropriate light-hearted comment, repent of it and edit it out at the next posting. On a related matter, I try as far as possible to make the blog accessible to the newcomer. I don't assume that all my readers have been reading it from the beginning, nor do I assume that they all read it every day. So on the whole you won't find language that will look coded to the newcomer, though of course some familiarity with academic study of the New Testament is assumed.

I suppose this exercise itself runs the risk of getting rather self-indulgent, so I'll cease and return to the normal service. Many thanks again for your encouragement, your very helpful feedback and all your contributions.

---

The NT Gateway blog is now taking a break for a few days until the weekend. I would like to wish you a very happy new year and thanks for reading and sending feedback and contributions. I look forward to seeing you in 2004.

---

The web pages for the final programme of the BBC Radio series The Good Book have now been added:

The Good Book: Paul

It includes some excerpts from the Accompanying CD Pack to which I contributed. I'm afraid it's been a bit clumsily abridged (e.g. hanging colons where there the booklet contains quotations from the Bible). But let me take this opportunity to do a commercial for the thing that is here excerpted: the Good Book Pack features the entire series on CD and accompanying illustrated materials, the NT parts written by me. I haven't seen the OT materials but I know that at least some has been written by Walter Moberley. It's only £7.95 including p & p and you can order it now -- should be available in January. One of the reasons it is so well-priced is that it is a non-profit making educational resource funded by the BBC and the Jerusalem Trust (And I'm not on commission!).

---

It's all Tom Wright these days and according to yesterday's Independent, "The new Bishop of Durham has arrived with a bit of a bang" and "Yes, you can expect to be hearing a lot more of Dr Tom Wright":

Tom Wright: It's not a question of left and right, says the combative priest who opposes the war in Iraq and gay bishops
The Monday Interview: The bishop of Durham
By Paul Vallely

---

It's the time of year for news reviews; one that may be of interest to readers of this blog is the BBC Religion and Ethics News Review for the year. It includes topics that have been discussed here (e.g. Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ) and hyperlinks to BBC on-line articles and audio clips from the Sunday programme:

BBC Religion and Ethics News Review 2003

---

Over on N. S. Gill's Ancient / Classical History blog is a link to a useful essay on Ancient Biography:

Ancient Biography: Cornelius Nepos - Plutarch - Tacitus - Suetonius

It looks like it's been adapted from a piece by Robert W. M. Greaves on Suite 101. Both sites are so cluttered with advertisements and pop-ups that it becomes tough to read or concentrate on reading, but the essay is of interest.

---

I've been noting reviews of Geza Vermes's new book, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ as they appear (e.g. here). The latest is in last week's Daily Telegraph and is by Damian Thompson:

Jesus Christ, in his own words

---

Bible and Interpretation today flags up this article from Beliefnet by John Dominic Crossan:

A Christmas Message From Matthew
What was the gospel writer trying to tell us about Jesus in his opening chapters?

---

On Point radio, which is based in Boston, MA, USA, broadcast an interesting discussion of The Passion of the Christ on Friday. It features several of those who have been at the centre of the controversy over the film , Peter Boyer, Michael Medved and Paula Fredriksen. It is an interesting listen of about 35 minutes or so:

The Gospel According to Mel

Labels: Paula Fredriksen

---

Tom Wright had an article in the Christmas Eve edition of The Times reflecting his irritation with people cleverly telling him that Christmas is really an ancient pagan festival:

The origins of Christmas Day are no mere pagan festival

---

It's the sixth and final part of The Good Book on BBC Radio 2 tonight. It's entitled Paul - The Founder of Christianity. You can listen live at 8 p.m. on the radio or via the web; or subsequently you can listen on the web site. There will be some clips of me tonight, and also of Paula Gooder, Jimmy Dunn, John Barclay, Helen Bond, Kenneth Newport and Ian Boxall. The web site will also be updated with fresh information after the broadcast:

The Good Book

---

Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar both featured in the 100 Greatest Musicals on Channel 4 this Christmas, Godspell at 72 and Jesus Christ Superstar at 28. The Godspell section included some footage of David Essex and Jeremy Irons in the stage version of the show from 1971 and a clip from a 1972 programme called Box Office Christ -- an interview with David Essex. Matt Lucas was one of those commenting on Godspell and said that the best way to punish your children is to sit them down in front of it. I know whenever I show clips to students, they usually roar with laughter.

---

The latest Explorator has been posted by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.35

---

The NT Gateway blog is now taking a Christmas break, probably until the weekend. Wishing you a very happy Christmas.

---

Thanks to Helen-Ann Francis for pointing out that in this week's Times Literary Supplement Christopher Rowland reviews Geza Vermes, Larry Hurtado and Jimmy Dunn. Wow -- that is some heavy reading! Unfortunately they are not on-line, though the on-line samples of the 18 Dec. edition include this review by David Melling of Margaret Barker's The Great High Priest:

Solomon and Jesus

---

In the USA, Discovery have a day of repeats of NT related documentaries on Christmas day, three of which I was involved with either as a participant or consultant or both, Jesus: The Complete Story, Mary: Mother of Jesus and Who Was Paul?. Thanks to Bob Schacht on Xtalk for drawing attention to this.

Meanwhile on the History Channel, there is a programme called Banned from the Bible, blogged by Jim Davila the other day. It's in a series called Time Machine but there is nothing much on the History Channel web site about it. Don't know if or when we'll get this one in the UK.

As for me, I'll probably watch the Bond film and Some Like it Hot!.

---

While listening to BBC Radio FiveLive this morning, I caught a trail for The Real Jesus Christ. This is an hour long documentary introduced by Clive Anderson which was first broadcast on Christmas Day last year. It's to broadcast again on Christmas Day this year at 9 a.m. I was one of the participants (though not a consultant on this one so I am unresponsible for all the other content!) and there are also contributions from Tom Wright, Bishop Spong and lots of others. There's no sign of any repeat fee in the post yet. I've had a look and it is already available on-line / still available from last year:

The Real Jesus Christ

---

Also alerted in Bible and Interpretation, who are on top form today, is a review by Gary Anderson of Tom Wright's latest massive tome on the resurrection. It is taken from the journal First Things 137 (November 2003): 51-54:

Books in Review: The Resurrection of the Son of God

Anderson makes some useful observations but I am troubled by the conclusion of this paragraph:

I believe that Wright has shown with utmost clarity that the doctrine of the resurrection was deeply embedded in the fabric of the early Christian movement. The tendency among certain scholars to claim that a wide swath of early Christianity, represented by the circle of “Q” (a presumed common source of the synoptic Gospels) and the Gospel of Thomas, advanced a view of Jesus bereft of crucifixion and resurrection is just not tenable. Whatever one makes of “Q,” it should be clear by the close of this volume that the thought-world of the Gospel of Thomas is a late development and best understood against the backdrop of second-century Gnosticism. Indeed, most serious scholars of Gnostic sources have been saying this for some time. The explanation for why the books of Crossan and Elaine Pagels have such currency lies within the realm of the sociology of knowledge, not the history of early Christianity. That story has yet to be told.

I think one has to be careful of remarks about "serious scholars of Gnostic sources" lining up behind one particular view. This approaches polemic and is unhelpful. Though I don't always agree with them, and although I was disappointed by Pagels's recent Beyond Belief, I regard Pagels and Crossan as serious, imaginative, exciting scholars whose work is not so quickly dismissed. As it happens, I don't think that Wright does that with Crossan, at least not in Jesus and the Victory of God, but I've yet to read the latest book on the resurrection. I'll get round to it at some stage but it is so long. Why have all the recent books from British scholars all been so long -- Dunn, Hurtado, Wright? How do they expect us to find time to plough through them when we have books of our own to write?!

Labels: Elaine Pagels

---

This one alerted in Bible and Interpretation, an article by James Carroll in Boston.com News:

Questions about the Nativity

It aims to set out some of the facts on the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke and is a useful introduction to the issues. It's interesting that even in this kind of article, though, the author imports elements from our oral tradition of the birth narratives, ". . . . that the three Wise Men traveled from the East". He also begins with "Our calendar assumes that Jesus was born in the year 0". No it does not -- it assumes he was born in the year 1. I still find it very common for people not to realise that there was no year 0. I sometimes ask students why it was that some people were making a fuss about 2000 not really being the millennium and it is very rare for people to know. (As for me, I had a party in both 2000 and 2001!).

The article ends with quite an interesting challenge:

Most Christians are effectively fundamentalist in their beliefs, with little capacity for critical thought about sources, doctrines, and theology. Church leaders and scholars have kept it this way for the sake of their own power, but in a new era of inflamed religious conflict, childish passivity by a broad population in matters of faith is irresponsible.

---

Someone over at SBL was working late last night and sent round the latest update from Review of Biblical Literature. Here are the NT related titles:

Beaton, Richard
Isaiah's Christ in Matthew's Gospel
Reviewed by Daniel M. Gurtner

Cantalamessa, Raniero
Frances Lonergan Villa, translator.
Life in Christ: A Spiritual Commentary on the Letter to the Romans
Reviewed by Jeffery S. Lamp

Koester, Craig R.
Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community
Reviewed by Eric Wallace

Nave, Guy D.
The Role and Function of Repentance in Luke-Acts
Reviewed by F. Scott Spencer

Smith, Dennis E.
From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World
Reviewed by Jonathan Schwiebert

Wenham, David
Paul and Jesus: The True Story
Reviewed by Craig A. Smith

---

I referred recently to a feature on Geza Vermes in The Independent. Jim Davila blogs the review in The Guardian and now we can add a third review, this time by Karen Armstrong and in The Sunday Times:

Review: Religion: The Authentic Gospel of Jesus by Geza Vermes

---

There's a most entertaining article on Joseph in The Times by Waldemar Januszczak:

Art: No Ordinary Joe

The article is essentially about the depiction of Joseph in art, but it involves some reflection too on the Biblical account. A couple of excerpts:

It occurs to me that you may not, perhaps, be fully au fait with Joseph’s story, and that before we embark on any explanations of why the poor blighter has been so badly coloured by artists, we need first to agree on his basic outlines. These are godless times we are living through, and even among Sunday Times readers there might be those who have never picked up a Bible and familiarised themselves fully with Joseph’s tale, or considered properly the psychological dynamics of his impossible situation. Until you think about him specifically, he is, after all, just the old boy at the back. That is his tragedy.

[ . . . ]

Now, you do not need me to tell you what Middle Eastern men are really like. You do not need me to tell you what all us men are really like when it comes to the subject of our wife’s fidelity and her required ability to keep her knees clenched for anyone but us. The Bible demands many difficult reactions of its heroes, but surely the reaction it demands of Joseph — that he allows himself to be cuckolded by the Holy Spirit, then joyously permits his spouse to be used as an incubator by God — is the sternest test of religious devotion set to anyone in the 2,337 pages of the King John. Would you do it? Would I do it? Would anyone do it?

Joseph is the ultimate dumb consort. And, inevitably, a certain amount of stupidity is assumed of him as he fulfils this role. His modern equivalent would be Denis Thatcher or the Duke of Edinburgh. Like them, his job is to be there, yet somehow not to be there. But whereas Prince Philip is excused the odd foray into eccentricity and naughtiness, and Denis was allowed his tipples and his interesting array of awful opinions, Joseph is trapped for eternity in a state of profound goodness. See how Giorgione has him glowing like a log fire with golden kindliness. Joseph is simply not allowed to have any foibles or eccentricities, because anything that draws attention away from the miraculous scene we are witnessing must, in these circumstances, appear flippant or, worse, heretical.

Januszczak wonders at why Joseph does get depicted as an old man in contrast to the youthful Mary given the absence of any indication from the New Testament. But while absent from the New Testament, apocryphal texts do make Joseph considerably older than Mary, e.g. the second century Protevangelium of James in which Joseph is already a widower with sons.

---

I caught this fascinating programme earlier today on Radio 4:

Sir Frederic Bartlett – The War of the Ghosts

This is another blog entry (see previous) not directly connected to the NT but of related interest. The programme explores Bartlett, a psychologist at Cambridge University in the earlier part of the twentieth century, and his experiments on memory. Here's the programme's blurb:

When the British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett was working at Cambridge University during the First World War, memory had only just started to be considered a psychological rather than a philosophical subject. A German psychologist called Herman Ebbinghaus dominated the field. He had spent days at a time learning lists of nonsense words, testing himself to see precisely how many he could remember. But a game of Chinese Whispers gave Bartlett an idea which he developed into a radically different approach to the study of memory. He discovered that when he asked people to repeat an unfamiliar story they had read, they changed it to fit their existing knowledge, and it was this revised story which then became incorporated into their memory. Bartlett's findings led him to propose 'schema' - the cultural and historical contextualisation of memory, which has important implications for eyewitness testimony and false memory syndrome, and even for artificial intelligence!

You can listen on-line. There are presumably some implications here for the question of memory and oral tradition in early Christian literature; cf. Crossan's interesting discussion of the issue in The Birth of Christianity.

---

Thanks to David Gentile on Synoptic-L for the link to this very interesting article by Erica Klarreich from Science News Online:

Bookish Math: Statistical tests are unraveling knotty literary mysteries

Its theme is the use of stylometry to solve difficult literary problems, with a special focus on The Royal Book of Oz, which has been subjected to analysis by José Binongo. He has been able to demonstrate that it was written by Ruth Plumly Thompson and not Frank L. Baum. The article does not discuss the New Testament though there have been some attempts to use stylometry to analyse problems in NT texts. The difficulty, I suppose, for many of the NT issues is that one does not have the same kind of definitive, large samples of writings from the authors in question, as one does have in the case of Ruth Plumly Thompson and Frank L. Baum. David Gentile, who provided this link on Synoptic-L, has his own Statistical Approach to the Synoptic Problem.

---

Thanks to Holger Szesnat for drawing my attention to this journal:

Word and World

This quarterly journal of theology is based at Luther Seminary, St Paul, MN, USA and it is "meant for readers throughout the church who are concerned for Christian ministry in and to the world". There is detailed information and full text availability on many back issues, all of which are helpfully indexed by theme and author. There is lots of interesting material here and I hope to draw attention to some of the interesting articles in the near future. But in the mean time, do browse around it. I've also added it to my Journals page.

---

My colleague Rod Mullen has a new book just out from Brill. Details:

The Expansion of Christianity: A Gazetteer of its First Three Centuries is published in the Vigiliae Christianae Supplements series. The volume covers the geographical spread of Christianity in its first three centuries. It is arranged by continents - Asia, Europe and Africa - to show the gradual development of Christian communities down to the Council of Nicaea in 325. The area surveyed stretches from Wales to the borders of India, and from the Northern coasts of the Black Sea to the plains of Morocco. The result is a picture not only of the outward development of early Christianity but of the variety that existed within it as well.
Leiden: Brill, 2004
ISBN 90 04 13135 3 (hardback)

---

Many readers will have seen this, but the consistent high quality of Stephen Carlson's Hypotyposeis blog is maintained in a fascinating post on the James Ossuary:

James Ossuary Analysis Flawed?

It makes some very useful observations on James Harrell's questioning of the Israeli Antiquities Authority's report on the ossuary.

---

The fifth programme in the BBC Radio series The Good Book aired tonight (last night) at 8 p.m. If you missed it you can listen on-line. There are a couple of bits of me in this one; there was also a little bit of me at the end of the Isaiah programme. Here's the link to the web site for the latest programme, which features interviews with Ben Witherington III, Richard Burridge and me, some material written by me, a quiz and the link to the audio of the programme:

The Good Book: Jesus

The piece headed Biography is excerpted from a booklet I wrote to accompany the programme, but unfortunately it's been excerpted in such a way that the connecting links between the sentences and paragraphs do not always make sense.

---

The latest Explorator has been posted by David Meadows

Explorator 6.34

It includes a round-up of the latest on the James Ossuary.

---

Nice article in last week's Guardian on some quality British weblogs:

The best of British blogging

---

There was an article on Geza Vermes in yesterday's Independent, referenced by Bible and Interpretation:

Geza Vermes: A child of his time

The occasion is Vermes's new book The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. I've not yet seen it myself and probably won't rush to do so -- I found the other follow-ups to Jesus the Jew (an all time classic) pretty disappointing. The article, based on an interview with Peter Stanford, doesn't tell you a lot; there is some spurious journalistic nonsense about Vermes easily being able to "pass for one of Santa's elves"; but there's an interesting concluding passage, the first line of which is pretty exaggerated, but the rest is worthwhile:

"For years," he says with a chuckle, "before Jesus the Jew, there had been no books on the historical Jesus, but since then one book after another has been published and what sounded at that time something absolutely revolutionary and very sensational has become almost a cliché. Everybody talks of Jesus the Jew today."

---

There's an enjoyable article in The Economist, taking its lead from the fact that The Passion of the Christ has Latin dialogue. One interesting note on the film is that William Fulco, who provided the Latin and Aramaic dialogue, clearly agrees that the Latin is not appropriate, "You could argue, as he does, that Greek would often be more appropriate, and that the conscripted troops in Judea spoke little Latin". It does make one wonder about the tortuous process that led the film to use Latin (cf. earlier comments on this). One cannot help thinking that it must have had something to do with Gibson's alleged fondness for the tridentine mass. Anyway, here's the article:

Latin Today: Roman Rebound

---

I thought I'd try Google Print for New Testament titles. At the moment Print.Google.com New Testament brings up just two offerings, a very short excerpt from Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament and a fairly short excerpt from Walter M. Dunnett, Exploring the New Testament. So at this stage at least there is vastly less than is available on Amazon's "search inside the book", e.g. the latter has the entire text of Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament. But no doubt this will change as time goes on.

---

Google has been testing a new service which will search the texts of published books, thereby imitating and rivalling the recently launced service from amazon to do the same (see recent blog entry following on from Tyndale Tech). It's not been launched with any sort of major fanfare but news features have begun to appear on this over the last day or so, e.g. this one at ZDNet:

Google tests book search

And Google itself has a short page here:

About Google Print (BETA)

The latter has the following great introduction, "Google's mission is to provide access to all the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible. It turns out that not all the world's information is already on the Internet, so Google has been experimenting with a number of publishers to test their content online."

---

As Jim Davila blogged, the October edition of New Testament Studies is now available on-line, contents and abstracts for all and full text for individual or institutional subscriptions:

New Testament Studies

Vol. 49/4 (October 2003):

‘Christus starb für uns’. Zur Tradition und paulinischen Rezeption der sogenannten ‘Sterbeformeln’.
CILLIERS BREYTENBACH

The Justification of Wisdom (Matt 11.19b/Luke 7.35)
SIMON GATHERCOLE

‘Ungefähr 30’: Anmerkungen zur Altersangabe Jesu im Lukasevangelium (Lk 3.23)
CHRISTOPH G. MÜLLER

Can Everyone be Wrong? A Reading of John 11.1–12.8
FRANCIS J. MOLONEY

Of Cherubim and the Divine Throne: Rev 5.6 in Context
DARRELL D. HANNAH

Recapitulation and Chronological Progression in John's Apocalypse: Towards a New Perspective
MARKO JAUHIAINEN

Does the ‘We’ in Gal 2.15–17 Include Paul's Opponents?
WILLIAM O. WALKER

Rm 1.11–15 (17): Proemium ou Propositio?
LUCIEN LEGRAND

What did Paul mean by ‘Those Who Know the Law’? (Rom 7.1)
PETER J. TOMSON

Labels: Simon Gathercole

---

I wrote up Stephen Goranson's report that "the Greek letters [on the Absalom tomb] were first noticed by an art history student," but John Poirier writes that "in his presentation at the SBL meeting in Atlanta, Joe Zias was very clear in saying that, when the art student showed him the picture, he (Zias) noticed what looked like an inscription above the portion of the photograph that the student was interested in, and that when Zias pointed out the possible inscription to the student, she denied that there was anything there. So, while it's true that the inscription was first noticed in a photograph owned by an art student, it was Zias (not the student) who first saw the inscription."

---

Here's a fuller article on the Pope's viewing of The Passion of the Christ; it's by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

'It Is as It Was'
Mel Gibson's "The Passion" gets a thumbs-up from the pope.

And ADL have issued a press release on the reported viewing -- this from the ADL web site:

ADL Reacts To Reports the Pope Has Screened Mel Gibson's Film 'The Passion'

New York, NY, December 17, 2003 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today reacted to media reports that Pope John Paul II recently previewed Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of Christ" and indicated through an intermediary his approval of its account of the events leading up to the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

If in fact Pope John Paul II has screened Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" and if in fact his reaction to the film was positive, as has been reported, then we respect his statement. The Pope has a record and history of sensitivity to the Jewish community and has a clear moral voice and understanding when it comes to anti-Semitism.

However, we must reserve final judgment on "The Passion of Christ" until we have an opportunity to see the film. We hope that Mel Gibson has heard our concerns and those of Christian and Jewish scholars and religious leaders, who expressed unease about the earlier version of the film and its potential to fuel, rationalize and legitimize anti-Semitism.

If Mel Gibson has changed the film, which he has referred to all along as a "work-in-progress," then we would welcome that. We would like the opportunity to screen the final version for ourselves to see if the scenes of concern have been changed, and if so, publicly congratulate him.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

[End of press release]

---

Stephen Goranson makes some useful comments on Xtalk concerning the recent articles on the Zechariah and Simeon inscriptions including some corrections, "The latter article [Jerusalem Post) includes many mistakes. E.g., Greek letters were first noticed by an art history student, not by viewing the monument directly, but in a particular photograph. And the article mixes up which inscription relates to Lk. 2:25. And it gives the wrong century for the opening of the Cairo Geniza (E. Puech in Rev. Biblique July 2003 gives that text)."

---

I've refreshed the Scholars: E page -- new URLs for Hans-Joachim Eckstein, Bart Ehrman and Craig Evans.

---

A couple more items of interest on Paleojudaica, articles from the Christian Science Monitor and the Jerusalem Post on the discovery of the Greek inscription ("This is the tomb of Zechariah, martyr, very pious priest, father of John") at the traditional site of Absalom's Tomb:

Grave Discovery

New find, old tomb, and peeks at early Christians

The second (Christian Science Monitor) is all about Joe Zias and has a picture of him alongside the cast made; the first (Jerusalem Post) focuses on Emile Puech and Shimon Gibson without even mentioning Zias. There's an odd contradiction here too. In the first article, Puech says "'They [Zechariah and the old man], were both priests and that might be why they were buried there,' says Puech, noting that the tomb lies directly on the path from the Old City to the Kidron burial area." (The "old man" referred to here is Simeon, whose name is also found here, apparently a reference to the man in Luke 2.25-35). In the second, we read "Foerster discounts that Zacharias was buried at the site, saying that during the 1st century those monuments belonged to the Jewish priestly families of Jerusalem, and Zacharias did not belong to such a family." Do we know that? If Zechariah is an historical figure, Luke may imply that he and Elizabeth lived in or near Jerusalem (Luke 1.5-25), though when Mary visits Elizabeth, she goes εἰς πόλιν ἰούδα (to a town / city of Judah).

---

This article from the Washington Post reports on an alleged endorsement of The Passion of the Christ by the Pope ("It is as it was"):

For Mel Gibson's 'Passion,' Praise From a Tough Critic

Thanks to Jim Davila for the notice.

---

In Our Time this morning focused on the origins of the alphabet; one of the contributors was Alan Millard whom I know from his Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus. The programme featured one of those great radio moments when one of the other contributors said that ancient scribal schools were about as big as "this room"; Melvyn Bragg then had to describe the room to listeners. You can listen on-line:

In Our Time

At the start of the twentieth century, in the depths of an ancient Egyptian turquoise mine on the Sinai peninsular, an archaeologist called Sir Flinders Petrie made an exciting discovery. Scratched onto rocks, pots and portable items, he found scribblings of a very unexpected but strangely familiar nature. He had expected to see the complex pictorial hieroglyphic script the Egyptian establishment had used for over 1000 years, but it seemed that at this very early period, 1700 BC, the mine workers and Semitic slaves had started using a new informal system of graffiti, one which was brilliantly simple, endlessly adaptable and perfectly portable: the Alphabet. This was probably the earliest example of an alphabetic script and it bears an uncanny resemblance to our own.

Did the alphabet really spring into life almost fully formed? How did it manage to conquer three quarters of the globe? And despite its Cyrillic and Arabic variations and the myriad languages it has been used to write, why is there essentially only one alphabet anywhere in the world?

The other contributors were Eleanor Robson and Rosalind Thomas.

And speaking of radio programmes, Stephen Carlson has posted comments on Fresh Air featuring Bart Ehrman.

---

Today on Fresh Air is an interview with Bart Ehrman. If you are in the US, Fresh Air is distributed via satellite to public radio stations on Monday to Friday at noon, 3 and 7 p.m Eastern time. If not, archives of each programme are available on the site and you can listen on-line. I'll post a note here as soon as the archived version is availbale. Thanks to Nichael Cramer on Ioudaios and b-greek for this. Details:

Fresh Air

Theologian Bart D. Ehrman. He’s the Bowman and Gordon Gray professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His new book, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, chronicles the second and third centuries before Christianity as we know it came to be. Ehrman has also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ called Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make it Into The New Testament.

Update (20.38): you can now listen on-line -- just click on "current show" or "archived show" from the main link.

---

I've sometimes expressed my disappointment over the BSW: Biblical Studies on the Web site recently because a once fine site has been badly in need of an overhaul -- its links pages years out of date, the Multi-Library Search having disappeared and so on. I've also found it impossible to communicate with them -- emails simply bounce. (The one thing that has remained up-to-date has been their free on-line version of Biblica, a very useful contribution). But the good news is that there is some movement on the site. Some of you may, like me, have received a circular yesterday advertising their service to provide "a new means of sharing biblical links and allow you to insert your own contributions into our site Biblical Studies on the WEB". The idea is to build a directory by soliciting contributions:

WWW Biblical Theology Index

I've had a go with it myself and have submitted a handful of links (of my own, I'm afraid!) and it works well, instantly adding them to the site. It looks like I am one of the first people to do this -- there are only a few other links currently available.

It's a great idea and has the potential to be pretty useful. But at this stage my main concern would be that it is potentially open to abuse. Will the site simply fill up with dodgy submissions and self-promotions? The site maintainers are hoping to overcome this problem by checking the site on a weekly basis and weeding out anything that is inappropriate. But it will need some devoted and knowledgeable staff to do that if the number of submissions does rise. There is also the problem of the marginal cases -- the site could get filled with sites that are in that fuzzy area of are they / aren't they quality academic resources. But I don't want to be negative; I'm just mentioning some potential qualms; let's hope that these potential problems are easy to overcome. All strength to their arm for coming up with the innovative resource. I would want to encourage people to submit their quality links to the site, and ideally not just their own materials but those of others that they find useful.

Email contact to BSW does seem to be working again now, and I hear from Roger Boily that the site is in the process of moving hosts so that further fixes should be on the way.

---

This just announced on the b-greek list. Carl Conrad, Associate Professor Emeritus at Washington University, has posted a very useful new pedagogical introduction to ancient Greek voice entitled, "Active, Middle, and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice." In his own words "it is an 8 pp. brief introduction intended (a) as an introduction to ancient Greek voice for students, (b) as a demonstration of how I would go about teaching voice to English-speaking students if I were still in the active teaching profession":

Understanding Ancient Greek Voice (PDF)

Labels: b-greek

---

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.

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---

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

---