Tuesday, June 17, 2025
NT Pod Woes!
Thursday, June 12, 2025
The Latest NT Pod News on Its 16th Birthday
It's the NT Pod's birthday! I released my first podcast 16 years ago today. There 109 episodes so far, though there are a few more "extended episodes" too from when I was numbering those differently. I actually wish I'd done far more episodes. The day job gets in the way more than I would like, and there are always more pressing and less enjoyable things to do. Occasionally, I prophesy a resurrection, only for the podcast to go back on hiatus.
Well, recently I have been working hard to get it relaunched properly. I'm in the middle of porting all 16 years' worth over to WordPress, with a new URL, but I want to make sure that it's working properly, and that those subscribed through Apple, Amazon, etc., won't notice any difference, and that new episodes will arrive on time in the same place. The biggest headache that I am having is with Spotify, which has stopped picking up the feed altogether since ep. 107. Once I have everything sorted out, I'll do a proper relaunch.
In the mean time, the last episode I mentioned here was NT Pod 104: The Synoptic Translation Problem. Since then, there have been five more episodes:
NT Pod 105: What is Translation Inertia?
NT Pod 106: NT Introductions & Johannine Communities with Hugo Méndez
NT Pod 107: Why Do We Translate New Testament Names the Way We Do?
NT Pod 108: The Jesus / Joshua Problem
NT Pod 109: The Last Supper (2025)
Episodes 105, 107 and 109 continue the theme begun in 104 on problems with Bible translation. I have at least one more episode to come on that theme. The most recent episode is my review of a recent Jesus film, and I have a couple more coming on that theme too.
I have also begun exploring the idea of recording NT Pod Shorts over on my Youtube Channel. So far they are mainly hot takes on recent Jesus films like The Chosen: Last Supper but I am hoping to do more of these in the coming weeks and months.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
What, Exactly, Did Josephus Write About Jesus? Guest Post by Stephen Goranson
The Aseneth Home Page: Revised and Relaunched
In 1999, there were only a handful of Aseneth-related things available online, and I could be exhaustive. But I didn't want to have an Aseneth website without a text, so I asked David Cook and Oxford University Press if I could have permission to use the translation that appears in Sparks's Apocryphal Old Testament.
I attempted to check in on the site over the years, but like a lot of my websites, they became ever more time-consuming as my time became ever more limited. So it languished. Until now:
Viola Goodacre took the content from the original site and completely redesigned it, and using WordPress so that it would be easier for me to edit in the future. I have spent a lot of time in recent weeks adding in new content. I eventually gave up trying to have an exhaustive bibliography, but the bibliography is now three times as long as it was, and I think I have at least all the major books and monographs. I have revamped the Resources page since most of that 26 year old content had vanished, and many great new resources have arrived.
I hope you enjoy the new site. It is at a new URL, but I have set up a redirect from the old URL (had to remind myself how to do that!) so old links should still work. Please send in your suggestions for things that I've missed.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
NT Pod 104: The Synoptic Translation Problem
Sunday, October 06, 2024
The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels
Hi everyone. I have been neglecting the NT Blog and the NT Pod for far too long because of the demands of the day job, and my frantic attempts actually to write something! But I am daring to hope that it really won't be very long until the blog and the podcast are back. In the mean time, I am happy to share my involvement with the following new project:
My colleague and friend over at UNC Chapel Hill, Bart Ehrman, is launching the Biblical Studies Academy (BSA), and he talks about it here. I am offering the first online course in this venue, and it is entitled "The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels," and I have a short introduction to it in this venue, at around the three minute mark.
Further details about my course, as well as the BSA, are here:
The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels
I am really looking forward to teaching in this new online forum.
In association with the new course, I have recorded a few conversations. The first was with Megan Lewis here:
What are the Synoptic Gospels?
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
The Resurrection of the NT Pod
I began podcasting back in 2009, and in the early years I was fairly prolific, but as life took over, I produced fewer and fewer episodes. There have been a few false dawns before, but I am happy to say that this one seems to be real!
There are three new episodes so far, one for each of the last three weeks. These are the new episodes:
NT Pod 100: New Ways Through the Maze
NT Pod 101: 100 Bible Films: In Conversation with Matthew Page
NT Pod 102: Has Q Been Discovered?
Eps. 100 and 102 are both the traditional short episodes with me talking about something, but Ep. 101 is an extended episode featuring a conversation with the brilliant Matthew Page about his new BFI book on Bible Films. Episode 103 is currently in what they call "post production" (it's another extended episode), but it will be out by the end of the week.
To coincide with the NT Pod's resurrection, I've been finding ways of making it easier to find. It's now on Amazon Music, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, as well as Apple Podcasts, where it has always had a home (back when it was iTunes, and iTunes U).
And today, I finished the Herculean task of getting the entire archive uploaded to Youtube. You can find every episode now on my Youtube Channel, @podacre. Please head over there to subscribe if you'd like to see some of the forthcoming video episodes of the NT Pod.
As well as the Facebook and Twitter pages, there is now a new Instagram page. So if you'd like to stay bang up to date, please follow one of these. And huge thanks to Lauren Aguilar for her work on the NT Pod's social media profile in recent weeks.
I am hugely grateful too to Viola Goodacre for the revised version of the NT Pod logo.
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Theodore J. (Ted) Weeden Obituary
Many thanks to Ken Olson for sending over the sad news of the death of Theodore J. Weeden. His obituary is here:
Rev. Dr. Theodore (Ted) Weeden
Weeden's Mark: Traditions in Conflict was one of the first books of academic Biblical Studies I read as an undergraduate student in Oxford. I was doing the Mark's Gospel paper with Canon John Fenton at Christ Church, and I think it was the second essay (of eight) that asked us to explore Mark's portrait of the disciples, still a perennial question.
I hadn't heard anything of Theodore Weeden for many years until one day, on the old "Crosstalk" email list (dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus), a certain "Ted Weeden" began posting. One of us asked, "Are you, by any chance, related to Theodore J. Weeden, author of Mark: Traditions in Conflict?" "The very same!" he replied.
In the early 2000s, Weeden began attending the SBL Annual Meeting, and when I was organizing a panel on Richard Bauckham (et al)'s book about gospel communities, I invited Weeden to participate. I was delighted that he accepted, and I well remember the fondness with which he was greeted by the packed room, all of whom knew his classic book.
As the obituary above mentions, he was involved with the Jesus Seminar and the Westar Institute in his later years, and he became very interested in Historical Jesus research. One of the most interesting contributions was his critique of Kenneth Bailey's model of "informal controlled oral tradition", which built on observations made by Ken Olson.