NT Pod 76: This year's Christmas episode

The Christmas episode of the NT Pod has landed!

NT Pod 76: The Magi in Matthew's Gospel

This time with sleigh bells! And Johnny Cash! And Ella Fitzgerald! And me yabbering on about Matthew 2.1-12.

You can find it in the usual places -- at podacre, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on your RSS reader, and (if it ever updates) Duke's iTunes U.

I. Howard Marshall (1934-2015)

I was sorry to hear of the death of I. Howard Marshall over the weekend. He was 81. Marshall was a prolific scholar and he will be fondly remembered, especially the generations of evangelical students he trained at the University of Aberdeen.

I was lucky to get to know him a little after his retirement because he was a regular at the British New Testament Conference. He had been president of the society, and his name was on the bank account. He always showed great humour when I asked him to sign all our cheques. He said that he enjoyed spending other people's money.

Prof. Marshall was always encouraging and gracious to younger scholars. I remember in particular his kindness in providing feedback on a paper I gave on the first beatitude, which later became Chapter 7 of The Case Against Q. He was not at all convinced! Like most evangelicals of the day, including his teacher F. F. Bruce, he was wedded to Q. I have often consulted his commentary on Luke, which may be his finest and most important book.

I first saw Prof. Marshall on TV, when I was a teenager. He was interviewed for the Channel 4 programme Jesus: The Evidence, which also featured Geza Vermes, Helmut Koester, Werner Kümmel and Morton Smith. I have extracted the minute or so that features Howard Marshall and uploaded to Youtube here:





It was something of a cause célèbre at the time among evangelicals that Prof. Marshall only received a minute or so compared to the many minutes given to Geza Vermes, George Wells and others!

There is also a lecture on Youtube from Acadia University:





It is from 2002 (uploaded in 2012) and the topic is "The Interpretation of the Bible and Development of Theology." Over on Biblical Studies Online, Deane Galbraith has gathered together a series of Prof. Marshall's lectures from 1991, the Moore College Lectures on A Fresh Look at the Acts of the Apostles:

I. Howard Marshall on the Acts of the Apostles

There have been several tributes to Prof. Marshall online, including Ray Van Neste in Gospel Coalition, Darrell Bock, also on Gospel Coalition, Michael Bird on Euangelion, Stanley Porter on Domain Thirty-Three. There are comments also on Jim West's blog and James McGrath's blog. Please let me know in comments if I have missed anything.