NT Pod 31: The Passion of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel

I uploaded the second of this week's four Passion Podcasts early on Monday morning.  In this one, we turn to Matthew's Gospel, NT Pod 31: The Passion of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel. Apologies again for the lack of extended programme notes this week, but I am prioritizing recording, editing and releasing these back-to-back episodes.

The King of Kings -- 1927 Film Trailer

Among the many delights at archive.org, you can view the trailer for Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings from 1927:

NT Pod 30: The Passion of Jesus in Mark's Gospel

I uploaded the first of this week's four Passion Podcasts on Sunday.  Naturally, we turn to Mark's Gospel first, and NT Pod 30 deals with the Passion Narrative in Mark.  Apologies for the lack of extended programme notes this week, but I want to prioritize getting these episodes out on time.

Passion Week Podcasts

I have an ambitious plan this week to release four back to back episodes of the NT Pod on the Passion Narratives in the Gospels. The idea arose from the fact that I am focusing on the Passion Narratives in the Gospels in my New Testament Introduction class. Instead of putting out the podcasts on these episodes as I teach them, I thought it might be interesting to group them together and release them during Holy Week. I released the first tonight, NT Pod 30, on Mark's Passion Narrative. I turn to Matthew next, and hope to have all four out by Good Friday.

NT Pod 29: The Matthean Riddle

Just bringing things up to date here on the NT Blog with respect to episodes of the NT Pod, NT Pod 29 deals with what I call "the Matthean Riddle". Why is Matthew so Jewish and yet apparently so anti-Jewish? It is the latest in a series that goes alongside my New Testament Introduction class here at Duke. I apologize that I have not had the time to write fuller programme notes for this one, but it is certainly a topic that I plan to return to in due course.

NT Pod 28: The Disciples in Mark

I have just uploaded NT Pod 30 and took a look here on the NT Blog to check that I was up to date with adding notices of episodes here, and it turns out I am a couple behind. So this is a note about NT Pod 28: The Disciples in Mark. I recorded it on the back of a class here at Duke on the topic, part of my NT Introduction. Time prevents me from writing fuller notes here, but since some people access the NT Pod through this blog, I wanted at least to mention it. More anon.

Who is your favourite Herod?

Who is your favourite Herod Antipas? Jesus Christ Superstar is perhaps not as well known these days as it once was. When I mentioned it in class on Wednesday, I was surprised at how few in my New Testament Introduction class had seen it in any form, either the 1973 film or a stage production. It came up because we were talking about the distinctive elements in Luke's Passion Narrative, one of which is of course Luke 23.7-12, in which Herod appears. Here is Herod's song from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973):



Or do you prefer Rik Mayall's more recent Herod in the 2000 filmed stage version of Jesus Christ Superstar?



Although I love Rik Mayall, this performance doesn't quite do it for me. I still like Josh Moshtel's camp performance in the 1973 film version (above) directed by Norman Jewison.

But what about non-musical Herods? I think you have to go a long way to beat Jose Ferrer in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), earnest, brooding, menacing, troubled, understated and believable. (And his father, Herod the Great, is played by the great Claude Rains who is also great, though somewhat more manic). This is one of my favourite scenes in the film, at about the half-way point, where Salome's dance leads to the death of John:



There is an interesting segue here from the scene with Ferrer's Herod commanding the arrest of "the Nazarene", and the troops going to carry out this mission, to Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount beginning not with "Blessed are the poor in spirit" but instead, more appropriately, "Blessed are you when you are persecuted . . ."

Sir Kenneth Dover Obituaries and Lives Remembered

A week or so ago, I mentioned the Obituaries of Kenneth Dover that appeared in The Times and the Telegraph. The Times has followed up with several enjoyable reminiscences in Lives Remembered:

Lives Remembered: Sir Kenneth Dover

. . . . Kenneth Dover was an extraordinarily gifted teacher. His classes on Thucydides, for example, brought his own painstaking scholarship to his students with that rare ability that invited them to share his interest and excitement. I remember the alarm with which we were told to use the French edition “as the only decent one around just now” (his own had not yet been completed); it was a toss-up which created more of a headache for the first-year undergraduate: the French notes or the Greek original . . . .

There is another brief entry in Lives Remembered earlier this week, and The Sunday Times commented briefly.

Also this week, a full obituary in the Independent:

Professor Sir Kenneth Dover: Hellenist best known for his work on Greek homosexuality and for two controversial presidencies

Professor Sir Kenneth Dover was the foremost Hellenist of his generation, a skilled and authoritative interpreter of almost all the multifarious genres of ancient Greek literature. Somewhat to his regret he was probably most widely known as a disarmingly frank pioneer historian of Greek male same-sex gendering and sexuality, but he should better be remembered, and his work long revisited, as a quite formidable exponent of a unique combination of precise philological mastery with broader historical, sociological, and aesthetic exegesis, both of major canonical texts and of Greek (mainly Athenian) popular thought and morality. His career of high academic office-holding was attended by some considerable notoriety as well as renown . . . .

Geoffrey Rickman Obituary

Today's Times has its obituary of Geoffrey Rickman who died on February 8:

Professor Geoffrey Rickman: head of Roman history at the University of St Andrews

Professor Geoffrey Rickman was a man of integrity whose scholarship was never advertised. He was devoted to the study of ancient history and especially Rome: appropriately he was known at St Andrews University, where he taught for more than 35 years, as “the father of ancient history”. He was an inspiring teacher and a charismatic lecturer who was respected and much admired by generations of students. He built up, by his own sheer enthusiasm and commitment, the Department of Ancient History to one of international repute . . . .

Sadly, with no picture.

New Duke Department of Religion Website

Our new website here at the Duke University Dept of Religion went live today.  Please take a look and let me know what you think, if you get a chance.  I think it's a great improvement on the old one and is the result of a pretty lengthy process in recent months:

Duke University Religion Departmemnt

We will continue to work on it in the coming months.

Was the Last Supper a Passover Seder?

The most recent Bible Archaeology Review features an excellent article by Jonathan Klawans, "Was Jesus' Last Supper a Seder?".  I won't here summarize the article because it is available for all to read on the Bible Archaeology Review website but I would like to make a few comments on the details.  I will simply quote the passages I would like to comment on, and will then add my comments.

Of course a number of New Testament scholars—the Jesus Seminar comes to mind—tend to doubt that the Gospels accurately record very much at all about Jesus, with the exception of some of his sayings. Obviously if the Gospels cannot be trusted, then we have no reason to assume that there ever was a Last Supper at all. And if there was no Last Supper, then it could not have taken place on Passover.

Well, there is also the testimony of Paul in 1 Cor. 11.23-26, which most take as the earliest witness to some kind of Last Supper tradition.  Of course it does not help us a lot with the question of dating, though it parallels the Gospel traditions by locating the meal on "the night that Jesus was handed over".  And there are interesting Passover motifs elsewhere in the letter, especially 1 Cor. 5.7, "Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed" (which Klawans later mentions in another context).  The letter may have been written around Passover time since Paul wishes to stay at Ephesus "until Pentecost" (16.8).

While three of the four canonical Gospels strongly suggest that the Last Supper did occur on Passover, we should not get too comfortable based on that. The three Gospels that support this view are the three synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark and Luke. As anyone who has studied these three Gospels knows, they are closely related. In fact, the name synoptic refers to the fact that these three texts can be studied most effectively when “seen together” (as implied in the Greek etymology of synoptic). Thus, in fact we don’t really have three independent sources here at all. What we have, rather, is one testimony (probably Mark), which was then copied twice (by Matthew and Luke).

This is a common claim, and it is important to explain to newcomers that it indeed simplifies things to make it three vs. one.  Matthew and Luke know and use Mark's Gospel therefore they probably derive their dating from Mark.  All that is quite right.  However, some caution is necessary.  Eliminating Matthew and Luke as witnesses on the basis of their familiarity with Mark assumes that their only source of information was Mark.  That may be the case -- and I am very much a minimum sources man, especially when it comes to the Passion -- but we should bear in mind that Matthew and Luke may sometimes have been familiar with parallel traditions.  In other words, the likelihood that Matthew and Luke have Mark as a literary source does not automatically rule out the possibility of familiarity with other traditions.  They are sometimes willing to modify Mark in line with alternative traditions, for example Luke in his eucharistic discourse, which has parallels with Paul, or in his resurrection account, which has appearances in Jerusalem that cohere with the presence of the leaders in Jerusalem at a later date.

It's worth adding too that John may not be an independent witness either.  If John knows the Synoptics (the best evidence for which is, in my opinion, his account of the Anointing), we have to reckon with the possibility that he has simply adjusted the timing for theological reasons, with no parallel tradition about the dating.

According to John, Jesus died just when the Passover sacrifice was being offered and before the festival began at sundown . . . Any last meal—which John does not record—would have taken place the night before, or even earlier than that. But it certainly could not have been a Passover meal, for Jesus died before the holiday had formally begun.

This is a minor error here -- John 13.2,4 speak of a last supper, though indeed one that is before the Passover.

The article also features a sidebar,  but it does not render well in the web version -- it is practically incomprehensible.  What I would recommend here is Felix Just SJ's table, The Death of Jesus in Mark vs. John, which is clear and accurate.

But what of Klawans's major conclusion, that the Last Supper was most likely not a Passover Seder?  I think this may be right.  I have argued in favour if a liturgical origin of the Passion narratives in the Gospels, that they were developed in the context of worshipping communities.  This had the effect of fixing the dating of the narratives to the times when the communities were celebrating the events of Jesus' Passion, whether on 14th Nisan (the Quartodecimans, perhaps in continuity with some first century communities) or in a Passion vigil on the Thursday night / Friday after Passover, a custom that eventually came common but which may have had roots in the first century.  The difficulty with the celebration of events on particular days is that those celebrating quickly come to think of the day of celebration as the day on which the events happened.  My guess is that Jesus died at around Passover time, that this was remembered, that his death and resurrection were then celebrated around this time, but that the precise details were forgotten.

Klawans may well be right to lean towards the Johannine dating, though.  Although the Synoptics clearly locate Jesus' death on the Passover (Mark 14.12, 16, 17), there are remnants of the alternative view in Mark 14.2.  It is two days before the Passover (Mark 14.1) and the chief priests and scribes want to execute Jesus but they say, "Not during the festival, lest there will be a riot among the people".  I suspect that this note assumes a Johannine style chronology according to which Jesus was arrested and executed on 13/14 Nisan, the day before Passover.  The same underlying chronology is I think present in the idea that they were rushing to get Jesus' body buried in time for the Sabbath (Mark 15.42), an artificial idea if this is in fact Passover day, but a coherent notion if John is right that Sabbath and Passover coincided.

NT Pod: The Extended Episodes

When I started the NT Pod, my general idea was to provide condensed comment on  the New Testament and Christian origins, in the ten minutes or so format.  Well, it started as six minutes or so and grew, but it has settled on ten-twelve minutes.  To my surprise, listeners would often ask for more and for longer episodes.  So a few weeks ago I began an experiment.  Duke has been automatically recording some lecture courses, though to call it "recording" is somewhat passé and the term now is "capture", in our case via Lectopia. I was offered the chance to include my current course, Introduction to the New Testament, under this arrangement and decided to go for it.  It then occurred to me that I could use the raw recordings as the basis for extended episodes of the NT Pod, as an experiment.

In a 75 minute class, there is a fair bit of extraneous material, including discussion of assignments, the five minute break in the middle and so on, but my idea was that I could edit the feeds to produce a 45-50 minute episode, with a short intro and outro to orientate the listener.  There is a precedent for this too.  Phil Harland's Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean Podcast is this kind of podcast, an edited lecture capture with added intro and outro (though a much longer intro. than I give).

So I edited and uploaded three back to back extended episodes on the Synoptic Problem, NT Pod Extended Episode 1 (The Synoptic Problem, Introduction and Data), NT Pod Extended Episode 2 (Marcan Priority), NT Pod Extended Episode 3 (Q and the Case against Q).

The episodes seem to have been popular with listeners.  In fact, I received more feedback on these episodes than I had done on the normal episodes, even though they are downloaded less often than the standard ones.  I have therefore decided to go on with these extended episodes from time to time and the fourth (on the Messianic Secret in Mark) is already in the can and will be uploaded soon;  and the fifth (on Mark's Passion) is almost ready too.

Patterson on DeConick on Thomas, and thoughts on form criticism

The most recent SBL Review of Biblical Literature has a lengthy and very interesting review of April DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas in Translation by Stephen Patterson (PDF).  It is of special interest to those of us studying Thomas because it is one of the experts in the field commenting in detail on the work of one of the other experts in the field.  It is all the more interesting in that although appreciative of the book and the contribution it makes, Patterson is critical of the central conceptualizing of DeConick's project.

Patterson feels that DeConick's work is flawed because she is using form-critical methods in order to engage in literary stratigraphy.  In other words, she is setting out the literary history of Thomas by using a method that is designed for work on oral tradition.  As Patterson puts it,

Can form criticism be used to identify literary strata? This seems doubtful. Form criticism theorizes about how sayings may be adapted and used in an oral medium to accommodate various situations in the life of a community. But, of course, Thomas is not an oral performance. It is a document that incorporates material from countless prior oral performances in which all manner of development and remodeling has already taken place. That a particular saying in Thomas bears the form critical (i.e., oral) marks of secondary development is not an indication that it represents a secondary development in the literary history of the Gospel as a whole.

Patterson's criticism of DeConick on this point may be a little too stark.  As I read her, the method is not so much old form-criticism but an attempt to integrate form-criticism, source-criticism and redaction-criticism into a newer model that also takes seriously the rhetorical culture of the emerging Christian movement.  She speaks of a "'New' Traditionsgeschichtliche Approach" (e.g. Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, Chapter 1) and it is a repeated emphasis across the two volumes that Thomas and Thomas traditions went in and out of different instantiations in oral performance and literary text.  These different performances interacted with one another and flowed into one another.  It is probably not fair to say, then, that she is applying form critical methods towards the goal of ascertaining literary history.  She is rejecting the idea of literary history as traditionally configured, and she is attempting to rework the usual tools used for analysis.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to reflect a little further on Patterson's general point, about the potential for confusion between form-critical methods and literary history.  On one level, I am encouraged by what he says because I have been banging away at a similar point in a different context for some time, that we should be careful not to confuse age of traditions and literary priority.  It is a mistake that I think underpins the Q hypothesis, where signs of an older tradition are always taken as signs of literary primitivity.  I have argued that Q forces the whole discussion of Christian origins onto a literary footing, with double tradition material getting projected always onto a literary text.

On the other hand, though, I wonder whether we need to avoid driving too hard a wedge between oral tradition and literary text in the thinking of the form critics.  After, the form-critics often thought of the phenomena they isolated in the oral tradition as being continuous with the phenomena they could see between different literary texts.  The same laws applied when they were tracking the development of a saying in the pre-Marcan tradition and when they were looking at the way that Matthew edited Mark, and so on.  So the process of allegorization of parables, for example, began in the pre-Marcan oral tradition, but continued with the evangelists.  The trajectories they theorized began in the pre-Gospel era and continued in the literary phase.

In the end, I think that the problems with form criticism are such that it is not particularly useful in tracking the development of the tradition, but at the same time it is worth attempting to understand how it worked in the thinking of the greats in order to work out how it still affects our thinking about Christian origins.

Richard Bauckham Homepage

Michael Bird and Jim Davila have news of a new Richard Bauckham homepage.  It's nicely done, with a full bibliography, details of speaking engagements and some full text unpublished work.

NT Pod 27: The Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel

At the weekend I uploaded the first of three back-to-back episodes of the NT Pod on Mark's Gospel.  The topic is the Messianic Secret in Mark.  I am continuing to run the NT Pod alongside the Introduction to the New Testament course I am teaching at Duke University at the moment.  After having looked at the Synoptic Problem and redaction criticism, we move on to in-depth studies of the Gospels themselves.

Looking at the secrecy theme in Mark is an excellent way to begin one's study of Mark.  It is such a striking redactional theme in Mark.  It is a repeated feature in Mark, it comes in a range of material, including in the narrator's voice, and it occurs at key moments.  In this eleven-or-so-minutes podcast, I introduce these elements of secrecy and then ask how they can be explained, focusing, of course on W. Wrede's Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel.

At the time of writing this blog post, I am about to upload the next podcast in this series, NT Pod 28, on the disciples in Mark.  As always, you can find the details over on the NT Pod website, or you can look for me on Duke's iTunes U.

The Bible: A History: BIble Films Review

Matt Page concludes an excellent round of reviews of the Channel 4 series, The Bible: A History over on his Bible Films blog today, with The Bible: A History: Part 7. You can catch the rest of his reviews under the label The Bible: A History.

Sir Kenneth Dover Obituaries

Both The Times and The Telegraph have obituaries of the legendary Greek scholar Sir Kenneth Dover tomorrow. He died yesterday, on 7 March:

Sir Kenneth Dover: Greek scholar and Chancellor of the University of St Andrews

Sir Kenneth Dover was one of the finest and most widely respected Greek scholars of the 20th century, and held many high positions in the academic world. He became better known to a wider public in 1994 through his remarkable autobiography Marginal Comment and the reactions that it aroused. And to generations of students, especially at St Andrews, he was always a hero . . .

Sir Kenneth Dover

Sir Kenneth Dover, who died on March 7 aged 89, was considered the finest Greek scholar of his generation and seemed to have led a life of almost oppressive decorum, crowned in 1978 by his election as President of the British Academy.

But in 1994 he published an autobiography, Marginal Comment, which deliberately shattered the image. The book portrayed a spikily intelligent man who was slave to an urge to demonstrate his emancipation from bourgeois constraints. The reader is not spared the least detail of Dover's sex life, right down to the culminating horror that at 64 he and his wife enjoyed "some of the best ----- of our life".

But the issue which caught the headlines was his account of his attitude to Trevor Aston, a History fellow at Corpus Christi, Oxford, where Dover had been President between 1976 and 1986. Aston's disintegration into paranoia and alcoholism had proved a serious embarrassment to the college; Dover confessed to having thought long and hard about how to murder him . . .

Michael Goulder Bibliography

I have updated the bibliography of Michael Goulder's works and have converted the whole to PDF, which is much more pleasing to the eye than the previous web version.  Thanks to Mogens Müller for filling in some gaps. I have also added the memoir and have tidied the whole thing up:

Michael Goulder Bibliography

Jesus Films latest on FilmChat

Over on FilmChat, Peter Chattaway has a very interesting round-up of the latest news on different Jesus Films, in Newsbites: The Jesus-movie edition.

Teaching the Bible e-pub latest

The March issue of the SBL's e-publication for High School teachers is now online:

Teaching the Bible (March 2010)

It includes the second part of David Penchansky's introduction to Wisdom Literature, and a link to my NT Pod on the anonymity of the Gospels.

Donald Wiseman: The Times Obituary

Today's Times has its obituary of Donald Wiseman:

Professor Donald Wiseman: Assyriologist

Michael Goulder Memorial

I returned briefly to England last week to attend and take part in a celebration of the life of Michael Goulder, who died in January. The event itself was on Thursday 25 February, at St Francis Hall at the University of Birmingham.  Birmingham was, of course, the only place for it to take place since it was Michael's home for 44 years, from 1966 onwards, where he was staff tutor in the Extramural Department, and later Professor of Biblical Studies.  (Read The Times obituary here).

The room was packed with people, with standing room only.  People had travelled from far and wide.  I think I had come the furthest, but there were family, friends, and scholars from all over the country, and many Birmingham folk too.  It was a wonderful occasion, with some laughter at the memory of Michael's humorous stories and sayings, and some quiet tears.  Apparently the planning had been done by Michael himself, in discussion with the family, before his death. The occasion was led by friend of the family Anne Waugh, who began by reflecting on Michael's life with Krister Stendahl's tribute to Michael as a "baroque pearl".   She pointed out that Michael had been keen that there would be no fudge about his non-belief, and noted that on his death bed, when asked about his religion, he took off his oxygen mask and stated "None".

Michael's son Nicholas then read from the introduction to Michael's book, The Prayers of David, which situates Michael at Eton in his youth.  The congregation then said Psalm 15, "Domine, quis habitat", and Sir Christopher Slade, who had known Michael since he was a boy, read Michael's poem, "The Rowan Tree":

Rowans are finest when their year is ended,
October reddens them to richest rust:
So be our autumn days our time most splendid
Rich with contentment, love and trust
Before we go to dust
For so we must.

Do we deceive ourselves and spite our reason
Sensing a future that we cannot know?
Trees make their growth not for a single season:
Shall our great endeavour here to grow
Be in an hour laid low?
Have we not too a spring beyond the snow?

Michael's daughter Cathy then read from Horace's Ode 4.7, in Latin, and then we had the hymn "Fight the good fight", which had been sung at Michael's father's funeral; he died in the Second World War.  Michael's grandson Alex ably accompanied on the piano.  Michael's daughter Lizzie than read from Milton, Paradise Lost Book 3.

Michael's son  Philip had been asked to offer "a few words about The Old Man" and he spoke movingly for ten minutes or so, offering a warm and affectionate picture of his dad and how he spun dramatic tales from the classics to his children at bed time, or told them the goriest stories from the Bible, with full midrashic expansions, just like the evangelists.  There followed a reading by Cathy, from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and music from Brahms' German Requiem, part IV, "How lovely are they dwellings".  I then gave an address which offered my reflections on Michael Goulder's academic career.  I have recorded this here should you wish to listen to it:



Michael Goulder Memorial Address (mp3)

It is also available to read here (PDF).

Anne Waugh then read Arthur Hugh Clough's poem Say not the struggle nought availeth.  Music from Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutti, "Soave sia il vento" played as the ceremony concluded.


The celebration of Michael's life offered a most fitting tribute to the life of a great man.  We will miss him.

Donations in memory of Michael are made to Sight Savers.

Michael Goulder: Times Higher obituary

The Times Higher has an obituary of Michael Goulder:

Michael Goulder, 1927-2010
4 March 2010
By Matthew Reisz

It is a good tribute and it is nice to see quoted reflections from Marius Felderhof, and a mention of the Open End. There are some errors. His first degree was at Trinity College, Cambridge and not Oxford. And he read Classics and Economics there. I am not sure that it is correct to say that he "abandoned a promising career in the church"; he was in an academic position when he gave up his orders and was able to do so with relatively little fuss, at least in the formal sense. I may be wrong but I don't think he ever described himself as an "unaggressive atheist", though others have used this expression to describe him.

Thanks to John Lyons for pointing me to this obituary.

Bibledex: 2 John

What's the shortest book in the New Testament? According to Bibledex, it is 2 John. Their latest video is an appropriately short one:



Actually, 3 John is a little shorter, though it has more verses than 2 John.

E. Earle Ellis

I was sorry to read yesterday of the death of E. Earle Ellis on 3 March. I did not know Prof. Ellis and only met him once, at a meeting of the textual criticism section of the SBL, back in 1999 in Boston. I know that many have the greatest respect for him. The Baptist Press reflects on his life here:

Seminary Professor E. Earle Ellis dies at 83

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary had a tribute yesterday, Renowned New Testament scholar, professor E. Earle Ellis dies at 83. Several bloggers have weighed in with their reflections on Prof. Ellis's life including NT Resources Blog, Euangelion, Evangelical Textual Criticism, New Testament Perspectives, Christ, My Righteousness and Zwinglius Redivivus.

The Bible: A History, Ep. 7: Revelation

The final episode of The Bible: A History airs on Channel 4 (UK) this Sunday at 7.  This is the publicity photograph for the programme, featuring my former colleague Robert Beckford.  The topic is Revelation: The Last Judgement.  This one features Martin Palmer, Christopher Rowland, James Cohn and me.  The interview with me was shot in Duke Chapel last November.

New Testament Studies latest

Some very interesting stuff in the latest New Testament Studies, just out:

New Testament Studies 56 / 2 (April 2010)

… κτρϕϵτϵ αὐτὰ ν παιδϵίᾳ καὶ νουθϵσίᾳ κυρίου (Eph 6.4): Kinder in der Welt des frühen Christentums
Andreas Lindemann
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 169-190
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990257

Something about Mary? Remarks about the Five Women in the Matthean Genealogy
Peter-Ben Smit
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 191-207
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990191

Hymnus, Enkomion oder Psalm? Schattengefechte in der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft
Samuel Vollenweider
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 208-231
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990269

Judaizing the Nations: The Ritual Demands of Paul's Gospel
Paula Fredriksen
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 232-252
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990294

Persönliche Korrespondenz des Paulus: Zur Strategie der Pastoralbriefe als Pseudepigrapha
Manabu Tsuji
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 253-272
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990270

Short Study

A Scribal Solution to a Problematic Measurement in the Apocalypse
Juan Hernández
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 273-278
doi:10.1017/S002868850999018X

Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas

THE SIXTY-FOURTH GENERAL MEETING
M. C. de Boer
New Testament Studies, Volume 56, Issue 02, April 2010, pp 279-283
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990300

Bibledex: Acts, Romans, Philippians and Facebook

Lots more from the University of Nottingham's Bibledex project.  Here are their latest videos, on Acts, Romans and Philppians:







And you can now become a fan of Bibledex on Facebook.

Biblical Studies Carnival 51 and more

I'm back from a short trip to the UK and a temporary hiatus in blogging.  You can catch up on the latest around the blogs with the Biblical Studies Carnival 51, by Brooke Lester, at the Anumma Blog.

Meanwhile, Free Old Testament Audio Website Blog has its latest Biblioblog rankings.  NT Blog, not surprisingly, has tumbled down the rankings with the relative paucity of postings in February, but it's good to see the NT Pod hot on its heels at number 29, and the NT Gateway just behind that at 30.

Next month's Biblical Studies Carnival sees the return of Jim West to the fold.  Whatever he says about ruffling feathers, the fact is that his previous carnivals have been among the best and most thorough of any.  It's a shame that they are no longer available after the recent major blog deletion.  Perhaps we should retrieve them?