NT Blog

These arrived last week but I left the email on my work PC (and blogging is mainly done from home). The titles below are those specifically relating to the NT.

Review of Biblical Literature

Beavis, Mary Ann, ed.
The Lost Coin: Parables of Women, Work and Wisdom
Reviewed by Athalya Brenner

Hagner, Donald A.
Encountering the Book of Hebrews: An Exposition
Reviewed by Goutzioudis Moschos

Hays, Richard B.
The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Levine, Amy-Jill and Marianne Blickenstaff, eds.
A Feminist Companion to Luke
Reviewed by Esther Fuchs

Smith, Dennis E.
From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World
Reviewed by Peter-Ben Smit

Verhey, Allen
Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture, and the Moral Life
Reviewed byJennifer Wright Knust

Webb, Joseph M. and Robert Kysar
Greek for Preachers
Reviewed by Kerry Robichaux

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Thanks to Jim West for this link from Newsmax.com:

Mel Gibson Rebuts Vatican Denial

Mel Gibson's spokesman issued a statement late Monday saying there is no reason to believe the Vatican's denial that the Pope commented favorably about the controversial film "The Passion of the Christ." . . . .

. . . . . "Based on all previous correspondence and conversations held directly between representatives of the film and the official spokesperson for the Pope, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, there is no reason to believe that the Pope's support of the film 'isn't as it was'."

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I commented on Saturday on Frank Rich's article, Chutzpah and Spiritual McCarthyism, which went investigating the pope's apparent endorsement of The Passion of the Christ. Well now it seems that the Vatican is denying that the pope ever said this. This story is already getting repeated everywhere, but its origin seems to be this article from the Catholic News Service:

Pope never commented on Gibson's 'Passion' film, says papal secretary
By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II never said "It is as it was" after watching Mel Gibson's film on the passion of Jesus, said the pope's longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz.

"The Holy Father told no one his opinion of this film," the archbishop told Catholic News Service Jan. 18 . . .

. . . . . The co-producer of the film, Steve McEveety, was in Rome in early December to host private screenings of a rough cut of the film for Vatican and other Catholic officials.

After the pope and Archbishop Dziwisz watched the film, the archbishop met with McEveety and with Jan Michelini, an assistant director of the film.

According to published reports, McEveety and Michelini said Archbishop Dziwisz told them the pope reacted positively to the film and said, "It is as it was."

But, Archbishop Dziwisz told CNS, "That is not true."

"I said clearly to McEveety and Michelini that the Holy Father made no declaration," the archbishop said.

"I said the Holy Father saw the film privately in his apartment, but gave no declaration to anyone," he said. "He does not make judgments on art of this kind; he leaves that to others, to experts."

There is a little more in the New York Times in an article by Frank Bruni:

Vatican Raises Doubts About Pope's View of 'Passion' Film

Until Archbishop Dziwisz's interview with the Catholic News Service, a news agency for Catholic publications that is affiliated with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, no Vatican official had gone on the record to confirm or deny the pope's reported remark.

That Archbishop Dziwisz spoke out is extremely unusual. He is closer to the pope and spends more time with him than virtually anyone else at the Vatican. Partly because of that, he almost never gives formal interviews to reporters.

His decision to talk to Ms. Wooden suggests that either he, the pope or other Vatican officials close to the pope had become concerned about the degree to which the pope's imprimatur was being placed on "The Passion."

A telephone message left today at Icon Productions, which is responsible for the movie, was not immediately returned.

One prominent Roman Catholic official close to the Vatican said today, "I have reason to believe — and I think — that the pope probably said it."

"But I think there's some bad feeling at the Vatican that the comment was used the way it was," the official added. "It's all a little soap-operatic."

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Two correspondents have recently asked me if there is an RSS feed so that they can view this blog using an aggregator. I'm afraid that at the moment the answer is no. Although I host this blog on the NT Gateway's server space, I use the blogger software to run it and at the moment blogger does not support RSS. They do have it available on their "blogger pro", but upgrades to blogger pro are currently suspended. But they promise that they should be introducing RSS feeds soon. I'll make an announcement when it is available.

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Christian History magazine steadily makes more of its articles in a given issue available on the web. The latest to be added from Issue 80 (Fall 2003), with its special focus on The First Bible Teachers, is an article on Origen:

Origen: Friend or Foe?
He has been called the father of Christian biblical exegesis, the first systematic theologian … and a heretic. How should we assess his legacy today?
by John R. Franke

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Thanks to AKMA for some interesting comments on Tom Wright on postmodernity:

Wright on [Postmodernism]?

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I took the What Christian Theologian are you? quiz and discover that I am Erasmus. A bit of fun for an idle moment.

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I've just been sent over this URL by Keith Simons. My guess is that it won't be of much interest to most readers of this blog because it is aimed at those who require a simple English resource, but I mention it anyway. It is developed by a group called Wycliffe Associates and is a site full of Bible commentaries and other materials written in what they call "EasyEnglish" (all one word):

EasyEnglish Info

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I've added a link on Paul: Books, Articles and Reviews to the following article reproduced on David Trobisch's homepage:

David Trobisch, “The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 and Paul's Letter to the Galatians", Christopher Seitz and Kathryn Greene-McCreight (ed.), Theological Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Brevard S. Childs (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) (PDF file)

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I've mentioned the Hollywood Jesus web site before, and specifically on The Passion of the Christ. It has now added a lot of additional material including a review of the film by David Bruce:

The Passion of the Christ: A Hollywood Jesus Movie Review

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I've added a link to my page on the Pasolini film, The Gospel According to St Matthew:

Hollywood Jesus: The Gospel According to St Matthew

This is a useful breakdown of the film into segments with clips in Real Video alongside the corresponding portions of text from Matthew's Gospel.

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Explorator 6.38 now available and, as usual, full of interesting bits and bobs.

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Stephen J. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) is reviewed pretty favourably in the latest Bryn Mawr Classical Review:

Review by Adam H. Becker, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.01.07

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Stephen Carlson's excellent review of Paul Foster, "Is it Possible to Dispense with Q?", NovT 45 (2003): 313-337 continues on Hypotyposeis, now in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. I have commented on Parts 1 and 2. I'd now like to comment on Part 3. Carlson comments on Foster's attempt to bring Luke's Prologue into play against the Farrer Theory, and specifically Luke's mention of the πολλοί (many) predecessors. As Carlson points out, the Two-Source Theory is no better off than Farrer here (Mark and Q rather than Mark and Matthew) and he makes the useful point that the wording "a narrative (or account, διήγησιν) of the events that were fulfilled among us" could tell in Matthew's favour since that sounds more like a description of Matthew than of Q.

I would add that Foster is walking a difficult line here. On the one hand, in the context being discussed above, he is keen to criticise Farrer and Goulder for their minimal sources position, no Q, no M, no L, and to make this criticism in the light of Luke's Preface. On the other hand, later in the article, he wishes to criticise me for not adhering to a minimal sources position, arguing that my acceptance of the role of oral traditions places me in a "thin end of the wedge" situation, that if I accept the role of oral tradition, I may as well accept Q. There is one minor problem and one major problem here. The minor problem is that Foster is misrepresenting Austin Farrer's views. As Carlson points out here, and as I pointed out to Foster before the publication of the article, Farrer accepted the role of oral tradition alongside Matthew's use of Mark and Luke's use of both (particularly "Dispensing": 85). The major problem is that the acceptance of the role played by oral tradition in the development of the Gospels is, I think, a real strength and it cannot realistically be used against me. Two-Source theorists do not see the acceptance of the role of oral tradition as compromising their theory and nor should Farrer theorists either. The only reason that we have got into the kind of situation where people think it is a weakness is because of the way that Michael Goulder has attempted to set up the terms of the debate. He set up a kind of hard-line version of the Farrer theory in which there are only literary sources with no oral tradition. He has been rightly criticised for this by E. P. Sanders and M. Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels, Eric Franklin, Luke: Critic of Matthew, Interpreter of Paul and most extensively by me in Goulder and the Gospels, Part 2 and Case Against Q: 64-66 (etc.). All in all I think Foster needs to decide whether it is a weakness for the Farrer theory to embrace a role for oral tradition (Farrer, Sanders and Davies, Franklin, me), in which case it is necessary to explain why this is not a weakness for the Two-Source Theory, or whether it is a weakness to deny a role for oral tradition (Goulder), in which case there can be no objection to my endorsement of it. Otherwise we simply have a "heads I win, tails you lose" scenario.

On a related note, Farrer was ahead of his time in dispensing with M and L as Streeterian written sources that could be dated and located. I've read very little in recent times that endorses M and L as literary entities, one of the few being Kim Paffenroth's The Story of Jesus According to L (JSNTSup, 147; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), cf. my review.

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The new theatrical trailer (2 mins.) for The Passion of the Christ is also now available on the official web site (and they have retained the "teaser" trailer there too):

The Passion of the Christ Official Web Site

While on the topic, see also this interesting article from the International Herald Tribune (but originally in the New York Times?) investigating the inside story on the Pope's apparent endorsement of the film:

Frank Rich: Chutzpah and spiritual McCarthyism

Excerpt:

McEveety declined to speak with me, but last week I tracked down Michelini, an Italian who lives in Rome, by phone in Bombay, where he is working on another film. As he tells it, McEveety visited Rome in early December, eager "to show the movie to the pope." Michelini, it turned out, had an in with the Vatican. "Everyone thinks it's a complex story, the pope, the Vatican and all," Michelini says. "It's a very easy story. I called the pope's secretary. He said he had read about the movie, read about the controversy. He said, 'I'm curious, and I'm sure the pope is curious too.'"

A video of "The Passion" was handed over to that secretary - Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, whom Vatican watchers describe as second in power only to the pope - on Dec. 5. The archbishop later convened a meeting with McEveety and Michelini in the pope's apartment. There, Michelini says, the archbishop quoted the pope not only as saying "it is as it was," but also as calling the movie "incredibile."

Update: here's the link to the (same) story in the New York Times, courtesy Paleojudaica and Explorator.

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After a year or more of absence, I had dropped the link to BSW's Multi-Library Search Engine from my Bibliography: Search Engines page but -- as so often -- not long after dropping the link it has returned:

BSW Multi-Library Search

If you've not used it before, this is a useful bibliographical tool which searches from one page the extensive collections THEOLDI (at the University of Innsbruck), COPAC (Union of universities in the UK and Ireland), LCOC (Library of Congress Online Catalogue), PIB (Pontifical Biblical Institute) and articles in some on-line journals (e.g. Biblica).

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Helen Bond's new book on Caiaphas is now out. It is published by Westminster John Knox who have details here:

Caiaphas: Friend of Rome and Judge of Jesus?

"This is a book about Joseph Caiaphas, the longest serving Jewish high priest of the first century and, along with Pontius Pilate, one of the men who sent Jesus of Nazareth to his death." --from the Foreword. "Written in a thoroughly accessible style and displaying easy mastery of the historical sources and mature judgment on controversial matters, this book will provide a much valued resource for scholars of ancient history as well as students of the Gospels and Acts." --James D. G. Dunn, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, University of Durham. "Well written, thoroughly researched, and probably a definitive study of Caiaphas. A fine example of the rigor expected of a scholar of antiquity, and especially marked by its readability and attractiveness for nonspecialists and scholars alike." --Jackson P. Hershbell, Professor Emeritus of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. HELEN K. BOND is Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Edinburgh. An expert on the history and archaeology of first-century Judea, she is author of the groundbreaking Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation.

ISBN: 066422332X. Price: $24.95

See also Amazon (US) and Amazon (UK).

Labels: Helen Bond

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A new trailer has been released today for The Passion of the Christ. It's longer than previous versions (2 minutes) and you even catch a little bit of Jesus speaking in Aramaic at the Last Supper. It's only available at the moment on a new Yahoo! Movies page:

Yahoo! Movies Exclusive: The Passion of the Christ

I've had a look round and the other sites -- including the official one still have the shorter, "teaser trailer". I've added a link to the Yahoo! site on my page on The Passion of the Christ.

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There is a review, not ever so favourable, of The Gospel of John in the Star Tribune's Movies section:

The Gospel of John
Despite the filmmakers' efforts to make "The Gospel of John" into a dramatic feature film, it never quite makes it beyond the Sunday School lesson stage.

You may need to register to view the article (free).

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Torrey Seland commented on the future for his pages, mine and others like them. I had responded here; Torrey replied; Jim Davila offers his response; and Torrey responds. After a little more thought, I find myself in sympathy with what Jim Davila is saying. The evolutionary model is the right one and the attempt to introduce hierarchical structures, centralisation, too much control could be unwieldy and to the detriment of all of our sites. Our sites are powered by energy and enthusiasm and my guess is that others are like me -- they do it because they enjoy doing it. To be frank, when I look for things that I can cut back on, my preference is always to cut back on things other than the internet stuff. I suppose that where Torrey was hitting a note with me was in the thought that one day it will all become too unwieldy, too much for individuals working in isolation. I always have a backlog of links to add to the NT Gateway, some sent to me by kind individuals who cannot work out why it is taking me so long to add their link, many that I have found myself and are awaiting the next spare moment. But in the end they do make it onto the site and I don't think I have a bigger backlog now than I've had in the past. So I'm not too concerned at the moment. What I would be interested in would be some dialogue about the future and being British, beer or wine is fine with me too. Unlike Jim, I won't be in Groningen but I will be in San Antonio, so we could take it there.

A couple of further notes: (1) By "SBL sponsored", I wasn't thinking about web space. I used to host the NT Gateway at the University of Birmingham web site but moved it to its own domain for a variety of reasons a few years ago. Perhaps the major reason was simply reliability -- I wanted a much more robust server than the university was providing. I fund the name and the web space through book purchases that are made through the site -- they just cover costs. So I'm not in loss through the site though I'm not in profit either. What I have wondered about a few times, and I've even approached SBL about this in the past, is the notion of a kind of SBL seal of approval for a handful of key sites in the area. In a way the SBL does that now to some degree with its Sites of Interest on the new web site. I would be interested to talk to them further about the way in which we can all interact with them in this kind of area. I've just been invited to join the SBL Forum Advisory Board and look forward to talking about issues connected with the web. (2) Felix Just, S. J. did moot something more formal for the future of academic Biblical-related web sites, a kind of SBL-sponsored loose confederation of key sites. The strength of his proposal was that it combined the evolutionary model with some degree of control and structure. His plan, if I remember it correctly, was that SBL centralise a gateway or portal and that individuals underneath that umbrella do their work, e.g. he would have the Johannine Literature covered. Wherever possible, the sections, groups, consultations etc. at SBL would be those responsible for that area of the web. I've had a look and see that Felix's draft proposal is still on-line:

Recommended Biblical Resources

I think this was either Nashville 2000 or Denver 2001, in the CARG (Computer Assisted Research Section). It was enthusiastically received in the session but I don't think that anything further has come of it and perhaps now nothing will. Still, it's an interesting idea.

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I've refreshed my Scholars: T page -- lots of wandering scholars' faculty pages and home pages. I've deleted the link to Tom Thatcher's. He used to have a huge and interesting web page with full-text reproductions of articles and more, but it's been off the web now for well over a year. I saw Tom briefly at the SBL in Atlanta; we share the same birthday (date and year). The other revisions are new URLs for Charles Talbert, William Telford, Bruce Terry (massive site) and Mary Ann Tolbert.

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Polebridge Press, the publishers of Karen King's recent book on Mary Magdalene, have a mini web site in connection with the book. It's clearly aimed primarily at the press but there are some useful features including excerpts, an image of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3525 and the text from Papyrus Berolinensis:

http://www.maryofmagdala.com/

[Note: there is a far, far better image of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3525 on the P.Oxy. web site].

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BSW announced today that they have made available on-line Vol 10 (1997) of the journal Filología Neotestamentaria (Vol 11, 1998 and Vol 12, 1999 have been available for a while):

Filología Neotestamentaria 10 (1997)

Christian-B. Amphoux, «Quelques remarques sur la formation, le genre litteraire et la composition de l'Évangile de Marc» , Vol. 10 (1997) 5-34

J. Smit Sibinga, «Serta Paulina on composition technique in Paul» , Vol. 10 (1997) 35-54

G.H.R. Horley and John A.L. Lee, «A lexicon of the New Testament with documentary parallels: some interim entries, 1» , Vol. 10 (1997) 55-84

Ernesto Borghi, «La notion de conscience dans le Nouveau Testament: Une proposition de lecture» , Vol. 10 (1997) 85-98

Josep Rius-Camps, «Las variantes de la recension occidental de los Hechos de los Apostoles (IX) (Hch 4,23-31)» , Vol. 10 (1997) 99-104

Simon Légasse, «Vas Suum Possidere (1 Th 4,4)» , Vol. 10 (1997) 105-115

J. Duncan M. Derrett, « 1Artoj and the comma (Jn 21:9)» , Vol. 10 (1997) 117-128

Roy R. Jeal, «A strange style of expression: Ephesians 1:23» , Vol. 10 (1997) 129-138

Maria-Irma Seewann, «Semantische Untersuchung Zu PW'RWSIS, Veranlasst Durch Röm 11,25» , Vol. 10(1997) 139-156

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National Catholic Reporter has an article / interview on Elaine Pagels, "Scholar stirs controversy with views on early Christian development". It's only available to subscribers, but this extract courtesy of Maurice A. O'Sullivan:

"Oh, this was gentle," she said of the stinging rebuke of one critic, a fellow scholar who, to put it charitably, did not like her latest book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. The critic, Luke Timothy Johnson, said Pagels adhered to a "stunningly simple argument." . . . .

. . . . Pagels argues that early authority figures within the church, particularly Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, concluded that the writer of the Gospel of Thomas erred in suggesting that Jesus taught "that we have direct access to God through the divine image within us," Pagels writes. In contrast, the majestic Gospel according to John -- which Pagels believes was probably written in response to Thomas, with the two texts "in dialogue" but also often in conflict -- took a far different view of Jesus and his ministry and proved more useful in uniting the growing Christian movement.

If Thomas believed humans should try to emulate Jesus as a way of discovering inner divinity, John's Gospel "succeeded ever after in persuading the majority of Christians," Pagels writes, that "only by believing in Jesus can we find divine truth." . . . .

. . . . "The history of Christianity is not a triumphal march of ideas but a series of intense arguments and conversations," Pagels said. "I love that side of it."

Others are less enthusiastic. In a review for the independent Catholic magazine Commonweal, Johnson, who teaches New Testament and Christian origins at the Candler School of Theology, took Pagels to task for needlessly defending noncanonical texts that honor spiritual experience over "the rule of faith (or creed)."

"Welcome to another exercise in revisionist history," Johnson wrote, adding that Pagels' "historical point is that the good stuff lost out. Her normative point is that Christianity has to claim its inner Kabbalah [Jewish mysticism] if it is to appeal to people like Elaine Pagels."

Pagels understands Johnson's critique, but maintains she is not so much saying that "the good stuff lost out" as arguing that contemporary Christianity is richer by having a wider range of early texts from which to draw. . . . . .

Labels: Elaine Pagels

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Ken Penner on b-greek draws attention to the following web site which reviews Memorisation Software including several of those linked on my Greek NT Gateway: Computer Software page:

Memorisation Software Reviewed

FlashWorks and VocabWorks both get four pencils (good).

Labels: b-greek

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Raymond Arroyo has interviewed Mel Gibson about The Passion of the Christ and this is to air in the USA on EWTN Global Catholic Network between January 23-26. Apparently he addresses the anti-semitism issue and also comments, "I don’t know if I will ever work again. I’ve said that this is a career killer and it could well be, but that doesn’t matter because I don’t care":

EWTN to air 2nd Exclusive Interview with Mel Gibson on "The Passion of the Christ"

The film also features in Empire Online which reports that Gibson "has secured a massive distribution deal for the movie"; it also notes that "The film's full trailer looks set to be released this weekend":

Power Push For Passion

The source for this appears to be Variety -- see this at SciFi.com:

Passion Opening Wide

This includes the additional information that it will be "the widest opening ever of a subtitled movie"; the release of the new trailer is pinned here to January 16.

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I reported back in December that Lisa Gerrard was to score The Passion of the Christ; this after earlier reports that it would be Jack Lenz or James Horner. The latest is that John Debney is to score the film. This from Music from the Movies:

Debney scores 'The Passion of the Christ'

Debney's latest include Elf and Bruce Almighty.

The news on the Lisa Gerrard web site has changed to say now that she is co-scoring the film: "There are other brilliant composers involved, amongst them Lisa is also collaborating with Patrick Cassidy." IMDb give Lisa Gerrard and Rachel Portman as providing the music.

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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.

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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

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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.

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

   

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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)

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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

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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.

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

Explorator 6.36

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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.

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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)

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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

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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)"

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!).

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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The latest Explorator has been posted by David Meadows:

Explorator 6.35

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

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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

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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!.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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The latest Explorator has been posted by David Meadows

Explorator 6.34

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

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

The best of British blogging

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