British New Testament Conference 2006

On Paleojudaica, Jim Davila reminds us that the British New Testament Conference 2006 gets underway this afternoon in Sheffield. In fact, people are probably saying their hellos over drinking tea as I write, perusing the book display and looking forward to dinner tonight followed by the main paper, Prof. Graham Stanton on ‘Messianism and Christology: Mark, Matthew and Luke’. That's a paper I'd love to hear.

This will be the first BNTC I have missed in almost a decade. I'm actually quite sad about that because it is such an enjoyable conference and I look forward to meeting old friends. I was secretary of the society for three years, and webmaster for longer. Now Bridget Gilfillan-Upton is doing a superb job as secretary and the website is looking great under my former doctoral student Catherine Smith's control.

You can see the conference programme here (PDF) with more details on all the seminars (including some papers and lots of abstracts) here and short papers here.

Update (Friday, 8.49): I am really touched by this comment on Paleojudaica.

Apostle Matthew's Grave

On RogueClassicism, David Meadows notes a story on the Apostle Matthew's burial place, from Radio Free Europe:

Burial Place Of Apostle Matthew 'Found' In Kyrgyzstan
August 30, 2006 -- A Kyrgyz archaeologist believes he may have located the burial place of the Apostle Matthew.

Vladimir Ploskikh told a news briefing in Bishkek today that his team this summer uncovered on the northeastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul what he believes are the remains of the Christian monastery that a 14th-century map indicates is the site where the Apostle Matthew was buried.

According to legends, Apostle Matthew died on his way to India and established several Christian communities during the course of his journey.

The document, which is kept in Venice and is known as the Catalan map, mentions a place named "Issicol," where it says there is "a cloister of the Armenian Brothers where the body of the Apostle and Evangelist Saint Matthew is."

Ploskikh, however, cautioned that further investigation is needed.

Right!

Update (17.38): Crystal has more on Perspective.

Marcus Borg on Jesus' Mighty Deeds

Beliefnet have published a short article by Marcus Borg:

The Mighty Deeds of Jesus
Are there limits to the spectacular?
By Marcus Borg

It looks like a slightly older piece that they have brought forward to the main site.

Burnett Hillman Streeter by John Court

The latest Expository Times (Volume 118, no. 1, October 2006) is announced today and it includes a most enjoyable piece on the life of B. H. Streeter:

Burnett Hillman Streeter (17th November 1874–10th September 1937)
By JOHN M. COURT

Abstract: B. H. Streeter was one of the most distinguished of his generation of English New Testament scholars who wrote the standard work on the sources of the four Gospels, in which he drew heavily on German scholarship but also introduced ideas of his own. He was an academic and a churchman, a canon of Hereford Cathedral who was also attracted to Moral Rearmament.

I'm afraid that access is only to subscribers and subscribing institutions, but if you get a chance, do give it a read. It prevents a vivid, rounded picture of the man and his achievements and has several nice little anecdotes in there too, for example:

A personal impression of Streeter, on a visit to Cambridge, is contained in this anecdote by Christopher Evans. He describes how in 1931 he was

reading an essay to Hoskyns at a supervision on a Saturday morning when there was a knock on the door and Hoskyns said ‘Just a minute, Evans. You are about to see the largest pair of feet in the Church of England. Come in Streeter.’ He had come to preach on the Sunday, a terrible sermon because he said ‘Er’ every other word. I counted fifty and then gave up.

I was also amused by the following:

In support of his interests he travelled widely, with extensive tours of China and Japan, as well as visits to India and the USA. He never went to Jerusalem; he commented: ‘I don’t think my faith’s robust enough to go there. It was hopeless in the time of Christ and it has degenerated ever since!’

The only thing that slightly spoilt my enjoyment of the article was the following comment, which I thought unnecessary:

On the internet it is this work [on the Synoptic Problem] which still receives prominent documentation, as on the Stephen C. Carlson web pages dedicated to the Synoptic Problem:

The magnus (sic.) opus of B. H. Streeter, this book is responsible for firmly establishing the 2 Source Hypothesis in the English speaking world. A must-read for its influence and rhetoric, even if its main arguments have been shown to be fallacious.

Such a sweeping and somewhat illiterate judgment would have offended Streeter greatly; a more balanced assessment of his Synoptic work can be seen below.

Stephen Carlson's comment (which is not referenced) is of course "sweeping" in that it is a sentence in part of an Annotated Bibliography, which is necessarily succinct. The notion that it is "illiterate" will strike anyone who knows Carlson's work as particularly unfair. If that characterization is to do with the "magnus" typo, then I think it is an odd overstatement, especially as the typo is not present where Streeter's magnum opus is discussed in context (Two-Source Hypothesis).

But with that odd sentence aside, it's a super article and I am most grateful to John Court for a fine appreciation of the great man.

Next Biblical Studies Carnival

On Hypotyposeis, Stephen Carlson posts the last call for the ninth Biblical Studies Carnival. You can use the submission form at Blogcarnival.com to nominate your favourite posts this month. I haven't put my own nominations in yet, but top of the list for me this month would be Stephen's own series of posts on Brown on Morton Smith's Motives in JBL (which began at the end of July and continued into the first part of August). Also memorable for me have been Loren Rosson's posts on The Empty Tomb: Arguments against Historicity and The Empty Tomb: Arguments for Historicity. The other series of posts that springs straight to mind is from Michael Pahl, A Blogentary on 1 Thessalonians, an exciting, unfolding project.

Because I was away at the time, I did not get the chance to comment on the previous Biblical Studies Carnival, the eighth, a first class offering from Kevin Edgecomb at Biblicalia.

Donfried on Paul, Luther and the New Perspective

The September 2006 edition of The Lutheran features the following article:

Reading Paul (& Luther) today
New learnings about the apostle and his world boost our understanding
Karl P. Donfried

The article introduces newcomers to questions surrounding the contemporary interpretation of Paul, including the new perspective, with special emphasis on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Much of the first half of the article is an excellent introduction to some of the issues connected with seeing Paul in the context of Second Temple Judaism, e.g.:

No longer can it be maintained that the core of Paul’s theology is primarily influenced by the philosophical movements of the Graeco-Roman world. Rather it was precisely to Paul as a Jew that the Risen Lord revealed himself. It’s this Jewish Paul who addresses his Graeco-Roman congregations, as 1 Corinthians 10 illustrates. The coherence of Paul’s language and thought patterns with those found at certain points in the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrates the “Jewishness” of his thinking.

But the second half of the article is much more controversial. I was a little struck with how dismissive Donfried was at several points, especially here:

Together with the emergence of credible re-evaluations of Paul, we must also be alert to readings of the apostle that are blatantly misguided. Some assert that the death of Jesus isn’t essential for our justification. Others argue that a text like Romans 3:22 shouldn’t be translated as “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” but rather as “the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ.” Both of these uncommon contemporary tendencies turn Paul’s theology on its head.

and here:

But the great weakness of Sander’s position is that in attempting to correct the “Lutheran” distortion of Judaism, he presents a warped view of Judaism. This view respects neither the internal diversification of the Judaisms of the period nor the conflicts and confrontations that existed among the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes with regard to their interpretations of the law.

Sander [sic] constructed an illusionary and artificial pattern of so-called Palestinian Judaism in which Rabbinic and Talmudic traditions of the post-second century are illegitimately thrust back upon the far more diverse and mutually antagonistic Judaisms of the first century.

Towards the end of the article, Donfried suggests that the new perspective is "perhaps, now, more appropriately the 'old perspective'”. I hope to find time to comment on the article later, and especially the quotation of 1QS 11.

Religion Timelines: Jewish History + Christian History

On the Stoa Consortium, Juan Garcés draws attention to a post on Semantic Humanities which references this remarkable new utility from MIT:

Simile: Timeline
Timeline is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information.

Of particular interest in our area is the following:

Religion Timelines: Jewish History + Christian History

Move your mouse around see different parts of the timeline, and click on selected features to get more details on given events. We NT nerds will want to argue with a lot of the basis for the timeline, e.g. Q dated to the mid 60s and Paul's epistles to the 70s and 80s doesn't make a lot of sense, but if some of the data that has provided the basis for the timeline could be corrected, this is a fantastic tool. I was listening to a feature on Today on Radio 4 yesterday in which the question was being asked about whether British school children know enough of the grand sweep of history, the broad narrative, as they were calling it. (You can take their How's your history test to see what your knowledge of British history is like. I'm ashamed to say that I got one wrong!) Well, this kind of timeline project could very much help in encouraging students to get something of a feel for the "what happened when", the "card index" element of studying history. It's a great resource.

Teaching Notes 1

Further to my previous comments on beginning teaching again, I thought I might introduce a new feature here, where I give myself a little space for reflections on current courses as they progress, with the aim of sharing odd reflections, and actually writing down what often just remain strong mental notes, and looking for ways to improve my current offerings.

There were several firsts for me yesterday. One was teaching a regular course in an evening slot, a slot that at two and a half hours is a bit of a chonker. It's a course on the Life and Letters of Paul (see previous comments on Teaching Paul) and it runs from 6.15 to 8.45 pm. Another first for me is having a class of seventy. The dean here is encouraging us to raise the caps on our classes and to teach more students so I am experimenting this semester by raising the cap to seventy (from the 40/45 which is more normal here). I realize that by some standards that is still a small class, e.g. I hear that down the road Bart Ehrman has been known to have over 350 students on his Introduction to the New Testament class, but it is still more students than I have had in a regular class. I am helped by two fine teaching assistants, though, and without them I think it would be too large a load.

One of the pluses of the larger class is that I get a nicer room. In Religion, we tend to teach in the Gray Building, where we are all located, and the classrooms are adequate but not especially comfortable or well equipped. Because 70 wouldn't fit into one of the usual Gray classrooms, I have a room in Wesbtrook, which is part of the new Divinity School wing. It's a nice room with comfy seats, microphone and all mod cons. I don't normally like to use a microphone since projecting one's voice should be a basic skill for teachers, but it occurred to me that with a 150 minute class, it might be sensible for me to look after my voice.

I went down to the classroom several hours before the class started. Here's my little tip for teachers: always find your classroom long before the first class. Get used to the feel of it; work out where everything is, how everything works, where you are going to stand. And the big one: if you are going to use technology, make sure it's working long before the class begins. In Birmingham, I had given up using technology in the classroom by the end of my time there because I had so many bad experiences of equipment not arriving, not arriving on time, arriving but not working and so on. It's too stressful. Yesterday, in this new classroom, it took me a good half an hour or so to get on top of the technology too, not helped by the fact that the Divinity School classroom computers apparently have different usernames and passwords from the whole of the rest of the university, and they have no one available on tech support after five.

It was nice to be able to show a few pictures with my introductory lecture on Paul. We looked at a couple of classic pictures of Paul, I introduced them to the NT Gateway Paul pages and promised them that they would be getting updated as the course progresses, and we used several maps so that we could picture Paul's journeys, in particular through reflecting on Romans 15.15-19, and the grand sweep from Jerusalem to Illyricum. I took time to explain too that Paul would not have been at all familiar with our modern maps and would not have conceptualised the world in the same way as we do. There's a great (but little known?) article on this, including a fine discussion of Paul's use of the word κύκλῳ in Rom. 15.19 -- James M. Scott, “Paul’s ‘Imago Mundi’ and Scripture” in Otfried Hofius, et al (eds.), Evangelium - Schriftauslegung - Kirche. Festschrift für Peter Stuhlmacher (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996): 366-81).

To cope with the two and a half hour session, we took a 15-20 minute half-time break at about 7.25 pm and that gave me the chance to get something to eat. Tip for new teachers, a tip also relevant for students taking exams: EAT. It keeps your energy levels up and helps you to concentrate, especially in the evening. On this occasion, I talked for most of the session, not least because it was an introductory lecture and I wanted to sketch out some of the key issues in studying Paul, and to provide some framework for future discussions, including a bit of basic biography. In future, I am planning a first half which will predominantly be me lecturing and a second half in which we will look together at the texts and tasks of the week.

Don't do this again: slurp coffee close to a microphone. It sounds disgusting.

One great bonus came out of yesterday's class. I mentioned the TVM Peter and Paul, made in 1981 and starring Anthony Hopkins as Paul. I remember watching it and I particularly enjoyed the Antioch row between Paul and Peter. I have often thought what fun it would be to use that clip in a class, but whenever I have looked in the past, it has been unavailable. Well, two students, one during the lecture itself, kindly looked it up and discovered that it is available on Amazon. It turns out that it was released at the end of 2002 and it had bypassed me. So I ordered it last night and I am looking forward to seeing it again, for the first time in over twenty years.

One negative: I mentioned Horrell's book the other day. I had planned the syllabus around this and Sanders's Very Short Introduction. I knew that Horrell's book was out because I received my copy of the second edition back in May / June. On Thursday I received an email from Duke Text Book store letting me know that they have not been able to order it, and Amazon also show it as not yet released. Frustrating.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Luc Devillers
La saga de Siloé: Jésus et la fete des Tente (Jean 7,1-10,21)
Reviewed by Johanna Brankaer

Laurence D. Guy
Introducing Early Christianity: A Topical Survey of Its Life, Beliefs and Practices
Reviewed by Peter J. Judge

Clay Alan Ham
The Coming King and the Rejected Shepherd: Matthew's Reading of Zechariah's Messianic Hope
Reviewed by Mark J. Boda

Tomasz Lewicki
"Weist nicht ab den Sprechenden!": Wort Gottes und Paraklese im Hebraerbrief
Reviewed by Harold W. Attridge

Douglas McCready
He Came Down From Heaven: The Preexistence of Christ and the Christian Faith
Reviewed by Martin Karrer

Commencement 2006 Pictures

Back in May, I attended my first Commencement at Duke, and spoke at our Religion gathering (I posted here some reflections, A Brit at Duke, which were the basis for the talk). Lots of nice photographs from the day are now available on the Duke Religion website:

Graduation 2006

When blogger is behaving better, I'll upload a pic of my talk too. These pictures were taken by Lucas Van Rompay, not only a brilliant scholar but, it turns out, a great photographer.

Death of David Hay

I was very sorry to hear of the death of David Hay today, reported on Philo of Alexandria Blog by Torrey Seland:

David M. Hay 1935-2006

Term starts at Duke

It's my first full academic year at Duke and so I am experiencing an August beginning of term for the first time ever. It is the strangest feeling to someone used to the much later British start. It's still roasting hot here, and there is no rustling through the leaves as one walks into university; there's not a jumper in sight, let alone any scarves or coats. In the UK it is Bank Holiday Monday today and everyone is on holiday, and that makes it even odder to be back to class here. I'm not complaining, though. I really like the earlier finish to the academic year here. And as someone who thoroughly enjoys teaching, it's great to be back to it again. In fact, I am always a bit shocked by academics who complain about teaching and it was refreshing to read Joel Willitts's comments in Euangelion

I am of the mind that good teaching is extremely important, and for me it is as important it not more important than good writing. But it appears to me that we spend much more of our time trying to be better researches and writers than we do being better teachers. Perhaps this is because it is in writing that we can make a name for ourselves (but that is another issue).

The fact that few of us get professional training as teachers should make us work all the harder at our own teaching. I think we are often not self-critical enough, we are too reticent to learn from peer review and we do not listen sufficiently to our students' feedback, especially on course evaluation forms. No doubt we have all heard academics in different institutions trying to avoid peer review, or playing down the importance of course evaluation forms. Too often, I think we look for an easier life. But the major personal trade-off in working hard on our teaching is that we enjoy it more and, hopefully, our students get more out of it. So I'd better get working on that next class!

Euangelion moves

Michael Bird's blog has moved to this new URL:

Euangelion

and Joel Willitts is now his co-blogger (and probably has been for a little while, but I am still catching up). I've changed the feed address on my blogroll.

Daniel Kirk's blog

At my previous institution, the University of Birmingham, there were many bloggers, especially among the graduate students in NT (and that's still the case). Here at Duke, there are not so many. In fact, I can't think of any. So it was good today to run across a recent Duke graduate's blog:

Sibboleth

It's by Daniel Kirk, who is now an Assistant Professor of New Testament at Biblical Seminary in Philadelphia, having finished his PhD at Duke under Richard Hays's supervision this year. I would say "Welcome to the biblioblogosphere" but it turns out that Daniel has been been blogging since January 2005.

Another blog I've recently added to my blogroll is Darrell Bock's Blog, which is relatively new. With Bock's blog you get the special treat of his mugshot on every post.

Teaching Paul

As the sole teacher of New Testament in the Department of Religion at Duke, it falls to me to alternate each semester between teaching the Historical Jesus and Paul. I don't know whether the choice of Jesus and Paul goes back to Ed Sanders, who came to Duke in 1990 and retired last year, or whether it predates him, but it is an arrangment I am very happy with. The way we have worked out my own undergraduate teaching load for the present is that I take Introduction to New Testament once each year, in either Fall or Spring, and I take Paul each Fall and Jesus each Spring. Having taught my first course on the Historical Jesus last semester, it's time now to teach my first course on the Life and Letters of Paul. The first class is next Monday, and I'm looking forward to it.

I taught Paul for a decade in Birmingham, but in a rather different set up. When I arrived at Birmingham in 1995, I was appointed as the teaching relief for Frances Young, who had just been promoted to Dean of the Faculty of Arts (I had the dubious honour of being known as the "Dean's relief"). She had run a course known as "New Testament Theology", which was essentially, a bit like the course of the same name I had taken as an undergraduate in Oxford, all about Paul and John, i.e. everything that didn't fit into the Synoptic Gospels course. Perhaps Hebrews might get thrown in there too, and maybe even 1 Peter, James and Revelation, but it was largely a space for reflecting on Paul -- and John. As the years went on, and as David Parker and I did more team-teaching, New Testament Theology morphed more and more into a course about Paul. From time to time we would integrate other parts of the NT into the course, usually because we felt bad about the sole focus on Paul, but really Paul was the star.

One of the things that differs hugely between my experience at Birmingham and my experience now at Duke -- and I have no idea if this is a standard difference between the UK and the USA or not -- is that here everything is done in self-contained semesters. You begin the course at the beginning of the semester, get a mid-term half-way through, then get examined at the end, you get your grade and you move on to completely fresh courses the next semester. In Birmingham, on the other hand, we had single modules and double modules, but I tended to teach all double modules -- and the doubles were year-long. So you'd begin your study of Paul (say) in the September and run right through to the following May before you'd finished. What this means to me in the new context is that there will be an intensity to our study of Paul that I have not experienced before. One Duke semester is far longer than one Birmingham term (especially as there are three Birmingham terms vs. two Duke semesters), but nevertheless, we have fourteen weeks to get on top of the life and letters of Paul.

Another big difference between Duke and Birmingham, and here I think there is a difference between the UK and the USA more generally, is that there is much more of a text book culture here. Students want to buy one or two books that will see them through the course. It's pretty unnerving to someone who is not familiar with this set up, and you can rebel against it and make adjustments all you like, but the student expectations are that they will buy two or three books and will devour them. As y'all who teach NT will know, recommending text books is not easy, and no doubt lots of you, like me, don't really approve of the text book culture. But what I tend to do is to recommend a couple of books as essential and to work from there to the rest. It puts students' minds at rest to feel they've at least got some starting points.

The two I am recommending this semester for Paul are both little books, and to this extent it may be a risky strategy. But both are, in very different ways, ideal to students beginning their study of Paul. The first is pictured at the top of this post, David Horrell's Introduction to the Study of Paul in its second edition. I think this book is a cracker. In fact it may be a bit too good -- it presents in nice, natty little sections just what you really need to know about all those key topics, the law, the future of Israel and so on. Unlike the other introductions, this one is an introduction to the study of Paul, so it will tell you about Bultmann and Sanders and Hooker and Dodd and the rest, and not just about Paul and Jesus.

But I want my students also to get a taste first hand for the ground-breaking, exciting (relatively) recent scholarship on Paul too and for that, I am recommending E. P. Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction. It's one of the great services to scholarship that Sanders wrote short, undergraduate friendly books on both Jesus and Paul. Both are superb, and if they don't give an undergraduate a passion for studying either figure, they are probably beyond hope. Incidentally, the "very short introduction" is identical to the earlier Past Masters Paul -- it was a master stroke of re-packaging and re-marketing that saw it being issued under a completely new title.

These are just a handful of initial reflections ahead of the new semester next week, and I look forward to following up with further thoughts as I teach the course.

SBL Midatlantic Region

The Midatlantic Region of the Society of Biblical Literature has announced their plenary speaker for 2007 and it is . . . me! I am grateful for the invitation to speak. It's the first time I've been asked to do a plenary at a conference so I feel very honoured. I have been asked to talk about Q and the Synoptic Problem, so I am going to have to do some thinking about that topic before next March. The meeting is on March 1-2 2007 at the Radisson Hotel at Cross Keys, 5100 Falls Road, Baltimore, Maryland 21210. Apparently more details are to follow.

Call for Papers: Textual Criticism: Theological and Social Tendencies?

Over on ITSEE News at the University of Birmingham is notice of a call for papers:

--
The Fifth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament will be held from 16-19 April 2007 at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Selly Oak, Birmingham.

The theme is:

"Textual Criticism: Theological and Social Tendencies?"

Proposals are invited for papers of 30 or 45 minutes. Suggestions for workshops, presenting work in progress, are also welcome. Please send these here.

Further details and a booking form will be available in October 2006.
--

Lazarus, Mary and Martha

This press release is from Fortress:

--
Why the Lazarus Story Meant So Much to Early Christians

MINNEAPOLIS (August 10, 2006)—The story of Lazarus in John 11–12 typically has been understood by scholars as a prototype of the resurrection of Christ. In the newly-released Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social –Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John, Philip F. Esler and Ronald Piper examine the raising of Lazarus, the relationship between him and his two sisters Mary and Martha, and the theological implications of a social-scientific critique of this relationship and the Lazarus story in general.

Using social identity theory, Esler and Piper set out what social identity theory actually means, how it works, and how it applies to John’s Gospel. They then show how their ecclesiological reading of the Lazarus story finds confirmation in the catacomb art from Rome. The book concludes by setting out some of the theological dimensions of the investigation, and ultimately provides fresh theological insight into this New Testament text.

Features

* Uses social-scientific insights into group identity to provide a new interpretation of Lazarus

* Includes four pages of full-color illustrations from the catacombs

Philip F. Esler is one of the foremost New Testament scholars in the world. Vice-Principal at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, he is author of many works, including Fortress Press volumes Conflict and Identity in Romans (2003) and New Testament Theology (2005).

Ronald Piper currently holds two positions: Professor of Christian Origins in the Divinity School, and University Vice-Principal for Learning & Teaching at St. Andrews. Among his works is Wisdom in the Q Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Lazarus, Mary and Martha
By Philip F. Esler and Ronald Piper
Format: 5.5” x 8.5”, paperback, 208 pp
ISBN: 0-8006-3830-1
Price: $22.00
Publisher: Fortress Press
Rights: North American English

To order Lazarus, Mary and Martha please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at www.fortresspress.com.

To request review copies (for media), or to discuss speaking engagements or interviews, please call 1-800-426-0115 ext. 234 or e-mail toddb@augsburgfortress.org

To request exam copies for classroom use (professors) go to www.fortresspress.com/examcopy.

MiniFlash Greek and Hebrew

Thanks to Jamie Macleod for letting me know of a new URL for his MiniFlash software:

MiniFlash

I've made the adjustment on the Computer Software page of the Greek NT Gateway.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

The latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading is surely the richest offering ever, both in terms of books reviewed and reviewers:

Dale C. Allison
Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters
Reviewed by Michael R. Licona
Reviewed by J. Samuel Subramanian

Thomas L. Brodie
The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings
Reviewed by Margaret Daly-Denton

Ronald L. Farmer
Revelation
Reviewed by Jan A. du Rand

Christopher A. Frilingos
Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation
Reviewed by Robert M. Royalty Jr.

Aaron M. Gale
Redefining Ancient Borders: The Jewish Scribal Framework of Matthew's Gospel
Reviewed by David C. Sim

Brian J. Incigneri
The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark's Gospel
Reviewed by Zeba A. Crook

Loren Johns
The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John: An Investigation into its Origins and Rhetorical Force
Reviewed by Robert M. Royalty Jr.

Xavier Leon-Dufour
To Act According to the Gospel
Reviewed by Richard A. Burridge

Scot McKnight
Jesus and His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, and Atonement Theory
Reviewed by Craig A. Evans

Lidija Novakovic
Messiah, the Healer of the Sick: A Study of Jesus as the Son of David in the Gospel of Matthew
Reviewed by J. R. C. Cousland

Hendrika N. Roskam
The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in Its Historical and Social Context
Reviewed by Zeba A. Crook

Gerard S. Sloyan
Jesus on Trial: A Study of the Gospel
Reviewed by Joel B. Green

Herman C. Waetjen
The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple: A Work in Two Editions
Reviewed by John Painter

Jan G. van der Watt, ed.,
Salvation in the New Testament: Perspectives on Soteriology
Reviewed by Frank J. Matera

K. K. (Khok-Khng) Yeo, Charles H. Cosgrove, and Herold Weiss
Cross-Cultural Paul: Journeys to Others, Journeys to Ourselves
Reviewed by Veronica Koperski
Reviewed by Sigurd Grindheim

End of blogging holiday

Although I did break into the blogging holiday with the odd post here and there, the blogging holiday has now officially ended and normal service should be resumed fairly soon, though the email mountain makes that less likely than it might otherwise be. We arrived back from England late on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning, after something like 22 hours of travelling, with plenty of searches and queues and delays (I even had a pen confiscated). When we finally made it back to Raleigh-Durham airport, our luggage had not made it with us, including our house key, so we had to wake up the neighbour to get our spare key in order to get in. Viola has already blogged some of our trip on The Americanization of Emily, with several more posts to come in the coming days. It's good to be back. This will be my first full academic year at Duke (I arrived here at the end of September last year, and academic years run from the end of August) and I am looking forward to the teaching; I have some research projects I am excited about too, and hope to fit in some NT Gateway and NT Gateway blogging too.

SBL Review of Biblical Literature

I break again briefly from my blogging holiday, currently in Cambridge in England, to give the links to the latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Peter Balla
The Child-Parent Relationship in the New Testament and Its Environment
Reviewed by Reidar Aasgaard

Michael J. Kruger
The Gospel of the Savior: An Analysis of P. OXY. 840 and Its Place in the Gospel Traditions of Early Christianity
Reviewed by Joseph Verheyden

Scott M. Lewis
The Gospel according to John and the Johannine Letters
Reviewed by Paul N. Anderson

Sorin Sabou
Between Horror and Hope: Paul's Metaphorical Language of 'Death' in Romans 6:1-11
Reviewed by James C. Miller

Alistair I. Wilson
When Will These Things Happen? A Study of Jesus as Judge in Matthew 21-25
Reviewed by J. Samuel Subramanian