More on the British NT Conference

The conference finished at lunch time today, though for us local organisers the tidy-up and sort-out continued for still longer, though happily not so long that we missed the England match. It's difficult to judge when you're the host, but it seemed all to go off well. But I was only as far as Friday lunchtime in my narrative and I am unlikely to have time to finish that narrative for a while yet, so you'll have to be patient. Perhaps I could leap forward in the mean time to this morning; the third sesssions of each of the ten seminars. The one I attended this year was Synoptics and we had Prof. Larry Hurtado of Edinburgh University talking about the women at the end of Mark, especailly Mark 16. A cracking paper, arguing -- among other things -- that we should not see a contrast between 16.7 and 16.8 -- Mark doesn't use alla or de. And the fact that the women tell no-one because they were afraid really means they told no-one else because they were afraid, i.e. they fulfilled their commission to speak to the inner group (Peter & the others) and appropriately for the time did not speak in public to others. First century readers, according to Hurtado, would have picked up that the women had behaved appropriately and they would not have seen 16.1-8 as about their failure in any way. One interesting parallel -- Mark 1.40-45, Leper, Go show yourself to the priest and tell no-one . . . -- effectively this means tell no-one else. This is a very inadequate sketch of only some elements in an interesting paper, but I'm looking forward to hearing more in due course when it's published. There were at least a couple of plugs during his talk for his new book Lord Jesus Christ, on which more anon.