Jesus' Activity in the Gospels: "only some three weeks"?

There is an idea attributed to B. H. Streeter (1874-1937) that attempts to articulate how much time Jesus' narrated ministry, in the canonical gospels, actually takes up. He is reported to have said that the action described in the gospels, with the exception of the Temptation story, would actually only occupy about three weeks. The point he is apparently making is a good if rather obvious one -- that what is narrated about Jesus' life in the Synoptics and John, even if it is were all historical, amounts to the tiniest fraction of Jesus' life. 

But did Streeter actually say this, and if so, when and where? I have been searching for the origins of the idea, and the earliest reference I can find is the following:

"They [the gospels] are extremely brief - B. H. Streeter once cal­culated that, apart from the forty days and nights in the wilderness (of which we are told virtually nothing) everything reported to have been said and done by Jesus in all four gospels would have occupied only some three weeks, which leaves the overwhelmingly greater part of his life and deeds unrecorded."

This is from Dennis Nineham, "Epilogue", in John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977), 186-204 (188-9). I can't find the idea that he attributes to Streeter in any of his written works, and Nineham himself does not reference it, so is Nineham reporting an oral tradition? As far as I can tell, Nineham himself did not learn directly from Streeter. Although Nineham did go to Oxford, he was too young to have met Streeter -- only 16 years old when Streeter died in a plane crash in 1937.

On twitter, Brandon Massey speculated that Nineham might have picked it up from his teacher, R. H. Lightfoot, who perhaps reported this as a Streeter comment, which I think sounds quite plausible. 

It is also possible that the "three weeks" comment is a mis-remembered or mis-applied distortion of something that Streeter actually said. What is making me wonder here is that Streeter does in fact talk about "three weeks" in a related context:

Now of the last journey to Jerusalem, and the events of Passion Week, Mark presents a clear, detailed, and coherent account; and this, dealing with the events of, at the outside, three weeks, occupies about one-third of the whole Gospel. The rest of the Gospel is clearly a collection of detached stories as indeed tradition affirms it to be; and the total number of incidents recorded is so small that the gaps in the story must be the more considerable part of it. (B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels (London: Macmillan, 1924), 424).

And if Streeter thought that Mark's Passion Narrative occupied "three weeks", could he also have maintained that "everything reported to have been said and done by Jesus in all four gospels would have occupied only some three weeks"? So we are now at at least six weeks, and there is clearly a contradiction here, unless the oral tradition also forgets the "three weeks" of the Passion Narrative.

Chasing down oral traditions is notoriously difficult since they only survive, before and outside of oral / aural recordings, in the writings in which they are represented, but this case provides an interesting analogy to first century Jesus research. Nineham's comment in 1977 is at least forty years removed from when the historical Streeter may or may not have made these remarks, rather as Mark is at least forty years removed from what he reports about Jesus, whose actual lifetime contained a great deal more activity than is reported in (pseudo?)-Streeter's "three weeks". 

New Online Journal: The Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting

Thanks to Stephen Goranson for the notice about this new venture from Eisenbrauns:

--
Introducing,
the Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting (JJMJS) -

FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE FROM OCTOBER 20!

JJMJS is a new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed online journal, published in cooperation with Eisenbrauns.

A rich variety of Jewish and Christian traditions and identities mutually shaped one another in the centuries-long course of Roman Late Antiquity. A no less rich variety of scholarly approaches – from the history of Christian Origins to that of the late empire, from archaeology to Dead Sea Scrolls, from Rabbinics to Patristics – has in recent years converged upon this period, the better to understand its religious and social dynamics. JJMJS seeks to facilitate and to encourage such scholarly investigations across disciplinary boundaries, and to make the results of cutting-edge research available to a worldwide audience.

JJMJS is free of charge with complete open access. The journal is published in cooperation with Eisenbrauns and will be available in hard copy, which can be ordered from Eisenbrauns.

To download individual articles please click here. If you would like to share your ideas and interact with the articles published in our journal, please visit our Forum page. We welcome your interest and warmly invite your collaboration in this new scholarly enterprise.

For further information about the journal, please see the introduction by the co-editors in issue 1 (2014) and the About tab.

--

The first issue includes articles by Mark Nanos, Dieter Roth, Jonathan Klawans and Craig Evans. I must admit that I rather like the interface they are using too -- nice and clear and easy to use.

I have added a link on the NT Gateway: Journals page.

Historical Jesus Criteria Podcasts

I commented here the other day (Snow and Podcasts) on the latest episodes of the NT Pod, which is finally back after a hiatus of several months.

I have released a couple more episodes since then (NT Pod 69 and NT Pod 70), also both on the discussion about historical Jesus criteria.

Now seems like a good time to gather the links together on all of these:


NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria
NT Pod 60: The Criterion of Embarrassment
NT Pod 61: The Criterion of Multiple Attestation
NT Pod 69: The Criterion of Discontinuity
NT Pod 70: Views Common to Friend and Foe

Or, if it is easier, I have them together under one label: Historical Jesus Criteria.

I'm a bit bored with the discussion about criteria now, so I'll leave it for a while, perhaps until I teach Historical Jesus again next year.  Episode 71 will be about something different.  I have a couple of ideas and I'll make my mind up over the next day or so.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  You can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

Snow and Podcasts

I have been meaning to get back to the podcast for a long time and finally, this week, it happened. First, I recorded a new episode, NT Pod 67, on John's Gospel and the Historical Jesus. I've been teaching the Historical Jesus here at Duke this semester and the topics are often conducive to podcasting, and this one ran alongside one of my classes on materials for Jesus research (including Paul, the Synoptics, Thomas, John). Then yesterday, Duke cancelled afternoon classes because of the snow, and for the second time this semester, this affected my Historical Jesus class. Instead of just trying to re-jig the syllabus, I decided to use the occasion to record another podcast.

Traffic at a standstill on my four hour
commute home yesterday!

NT Pod 68 asks "Where do we begin Historical Jesus Research?" The topic was less congenial to podcasting because I was planning, in class, to introduce several different approaches to the Historical Jesus, contrasting the starting points of E. P. Sanders, John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright.  But I had a go anyway and recorded a kind of hybrid episode, going to twenty minutes rather than the usual 10-12 minutes.

The second half of yesterday's class was going to begin looking at Historical Jesus criteria.  This is something I began podcasting on last time I taught the course, in 2012 (see NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria, NT Pod 60: the Criterion of Embarrassment and NT Pod 61: the Criterion of Multiple Attestation).  I am planning to continue this series now with an episode on the Criterion of Dissimilarity.  I hope to have that episode online by this evening.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  You can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

Interview with me on The Jesus Blog

Over on their thriving new Jesus Blog, Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith have posted an interview with me in four parts.  It ranges from Historical Jesus research, with special reference to the forthcoming conference in Dayton, Synoptic Problem, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Jesus Wife fragment.  I like the Star Trek reference in part 4 below:

Part I

On Multiple Attestation in Jesus research

Part II

On using criteria in teaching

Part III

On the Gospel of Thomas and Q

Part IV (The Voyage Home)

Is the Gospel of Jesus' Wife a fake?

Thanks to Chris and Anthony for the opportunity to chat to them about these issues.

Criticizing the Criterion of Embarrassment in Historical Jesus studies

Both Loren Rosson and Doug Chaplin comment on my recent NT Pod 60:  The Criterion of Embarrassment and they make some excellent points.  There are also some very helpful remarks from Michael Barber on the post itself.  Here are some further thoughts, partly by way of clarification and summary, on the criterion:

(1) The major difficulty is the term itself, "embarrassment".  I simply do not believe that the evangelists were "embarrassed" about anything that appeared in their Gospels, unless of course one is thinking of the skandalon of the cross that all the early Christians were dealing with in different ways.  The evangelists were not sitting around, dictating the story of John's Baptism, fidgeting uneasily, with red faces.  When I read Mark's account, it's quite the contrary -- a bold proclamation of a theophany that establishes Jesus' identity clearly for everyone listening.

E. P. Sanders prefers the term "against the grain" and this is far more useful than "embarrassment", which sounds so horribly like attempts at pop-psychology of the evangelists. Looking for features in an account that go "against the grain" is what historians do all the time.

(2) The use of this criterion, like the other criteria, is often used too mechanistically. It is invoked, and the invocation is often regarded as sufficient to establish the historicity of the event or saying in question.  As I've been arguing in the recent podcasts, the value of the criteria is in teaching students about how the historian works, especially students who bring with them some confessional agendas that might interfere with the task.

As soon as the criteria become a kind of toolbox for the historical Jesus scholar, they become problematic.  It should give us pause when we remember that other ancient historians do not devote pages of their studies to discussing the special "criteria" for their topics.  Discussion of historical criteria is useful for training students.  Their use in scholarly invocation is the problem.

(3) Historical Jesus scholars seldom give any thought to how the criteria work in concert with one another.  As I have mentioned before, I cannot get my head around the apparent absurdity that the very traditions that are supposed to be "embarrassing" are the very same traditions that are supposed to be "multiply attested".  At the very least, some thought should be given to the contrast between the criteria.  One should inform and correct the other.

The point can be illustrated from the phenomenon of singly attested traditions, like the Blind Man of Bethsaida (Mark 8.22-26).  Scholars commonly provide good reasons for Matthew's and Luke's omission of the story from Mark -- the use of spit, the non-immediate healing.  The fact of the omission illustrates that the evangelists were not reticent about omission when they wished.  If a later evangelist was really "embarrassed" by material he found in an earlier account, he simply omitted it.  By analogy, one can imagine the same thing happening at different stages in the tradition, with different tradents.

At the very least, I would like to underline the problems with the terminology.  If we can talk instead about material that is "too much with the grain" and "against the grain", I suspect that we will improve our historical sensitivity.

Was Jesus a Magician? - Helen Ingram

I am delighted to see that my former doctoral student, Helen Ingram, has put together an excellent website based on her PhD work at the University of Birmingham:

Was Jesus a Magician? 
Extracts from "Dragging Down Heaven: Jesus as Magician and Manipulator of Spirits in the Gospels" by Dr Helen Ingram

It's packaged to be a little less dense and technical than the PhD itself, with most footnotes removed, and some nice pictures added.  And there are a couple of Youtube presentations of  the thesis by means of audio interviews with another Birmingham PhD, Dr Richard Goode. Here's the first, for a taster:



Thanks, Helen, for making your work widely available in this way!  Also mentioned already on Paleojudaica, Exploring our Matrix and elsewhere.

NT Pod: Historical Jesus Criteria

I have recently been focusing on criteria in the Historical Jesus quest in my regular podcast, the NT Pod.  I'm in the middle of a course on the Historical Jesus at Duke at the moment, so the topic has been very much on my mind.  So far, I have three episodes on this theme, NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria, NT Pod 60: The Criterion of Embarrassment and NT Pod 61: The Criterion of Multiple Attestation.   There should be more to come in this series soon.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  And now you can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

The Question of Uniqueness in the Teaching of Jesus

This week's reading for my Historical Jesus class includes a really wonderful piece by E. P. Sanders.  It's been available on the web for a while courtesy of Rob Bradshaw.  It's a real gem:

The Question of Uniqueness in the Teaching of Jesus

Professor E P Sanders

The Ethel M. Wood Lecture 15 February 1990

One of the favourite things which New Testament scholars and, probably, Christians in general say about Jesus is that he was ‘unique’. If we think historically, we know two things about the topic from the outset: no two people are alike; there is nothing new under the sun. Like all clichés, these two are true, and the hard thing is to know how to apply them. In this respect these two statements are like general moral maxims and folk wisdom: one or the other will meet every situation, but you do not know in advance which formula to apply when. I live by two maxims: nothing ventured nothing gained, and better safe than sorry. My trouble has been venturing when I should have played safe and the reverse. But one of these two maxims is always true. So it is with regard to similarity and dissimilarity among human beings. Either 'nothing new’ will apply, or ‘no two people are alike’. They might even both apply at the same time, as clichés often do. My wife once said to me, on the same topic, ‘that’s just like a man’, and ‘only you could do something like that’.

That's how to begin a lecture! And he goes on with quotations from Jeremias on Jesus calling God "Abba" and from Hengel on Jesus' difference from Theudas and comments:

One of the most interesting things about saying that this or that is unique is that the claim implies what one might at first think to be uniqueness on the part of the claimant: that he or she is omniscient. Omniscience, it will turn out, is by no means unique to any individual New Testament scholar: most have it, or claim to have it. We should all, however, grant that our knowledge is limited. We have very few personal prayers from other Jews of the first century, and so are not able to prove a negative, that no ‘Jew’ (that is, no Jew other than Jesus) could have said abba. We possess no stories at all about how Theudas and others called their followers, and so we cannot say that only Jesus called people with an authority ‘grounded in God himself’.

And so it goes on. Great stuff.

NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria

The latest episode of the NT Pod begins a series on the search for criteria in historical Jesus research. In NT Pod 59, I introduce the idea of the historical Jesus criteria and offer some first reflections on what it is that scholars are attempting to do.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  And now you can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity

Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity is edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne and it will be out this summer, published by T & T Clark.   I have contributed an article the volume entitled "Criticizing the Criterion of Multiple Attestation: The Historical Jesus and the Question of Sources".  The book also features essays by Morna Hooker, Dale Allison, Scot McKnight, Loren Stuckenbruck, Jens Schroeter, Dagmar Winter, Rafael Rodriguez and the editors.

Here's how T & T Clark are blurbing the book:
------
Criteria of authenticity, whose roots go back to before the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer, have become a unifying feature of the so-called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, finding a prominent and common place in the research of otherwise differing scholars. More recently, however, scholars from different methodological frameworks have expressed discontent with this approach to the historical Jesus. In the past five years, these expressions of discontent have reached a fever pitch.

The internationally renowned authors of this book examine the nature of this new debate and present the findings in a cohesive way aimed directly at making the coalface of Historical Jesus research accessible to undergraduates and seminary students. The book’s larger ramifications as a thorough end to the Third Quest will provide a pressure valve for thousands of scholars who view historical Jesus studies as outmoded and misguided. This book has the potential to guide Jesus studies beyond the Third Quest and demand to be consulted by any scholar who discards, adopts, or adapts historical criteria.
-----
Sounds interesting, doesn't it? There is a conference associated with the book and I'll be blogging about that tomorrow.

That Dalai Lama Quotation, and the Historical Sceptic

Seen this on Facebook recently? It's been doing the rounds

"The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered, ‘Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.’"

It's a great quotation but according to the Damien Zone, it is a hoax,

"This quote, printed over a photograph of the Dalai Lama, is floating around on Facebook. It is inspiring millions of simple-minded Facebookers — but there’s a problem. HE NEVER SAID IT! There is no record of the Dalai Lama ever saying this and on his website there is no mention of it. Devout followers of the Dalai Lama say it is not true, but we live in the day where all one needs to do is put something up on Facebook and it becomes the law of the land — at least where idiots are concerned."

I am no expert on the Dalai Lama but the case presented by the Damien Zone sounds plausible, and certainly a good deal more plausible than the simple pasting of a quotation next to the picture of the Dalai Lama.

Now of course if the Dalai Lama did not say that, how might the analogy help us with historical Jesus research?  Or any research into great figures of the past?  Misattributions of quotations to Winston Churchill are famous and even in our own area, there is a great misattribution of a saying to Schweitzer (about looking into the well) that was actually said by George Tyrrell.

I must admit that the ease with which misattribution like this can happen within someone's lifetime, as well as not long after their death, reminds us of just how perilous it is to build a picture of the historical Jesus that crudely assumes historicity for sayings material, screening the Gospel sayings and parsing them down to the nth degree to find nuances in what he said.

Imagine the historical Dalai Lama scholar in two thousand years with this multiply attested saying that emerges during the great man's own life time.  What if the dissenting voices like the Damien Zone's get lost but the apparent witnesses to the saying remain?  Every now and then a helpful analogy comes along to remind us how precarious the task of historical Jesus research can be.

The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus is over

So says Craig Evans in the first of a series of posts on the Future of Historical Jesus Studies over on Near Emmaus.  I am pleased to hear this.  I have been in favour of abandoning "the third quest" of the historical Jesus for some time (see also NT Pod 49: What is the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus?).  The term has been a tough one from the start, but became increasingly so as the 1990s progressed.  But let's please not start talking about "the fourth quest" or any similar terms.  Let's just talk about historical Jesus research and have done.

Where single attestation is preferable to multiple attestation

Further to my thoughts about the contradiction between "multiple attestation" and "embarrassment" in Historical Jesus Research, I'd like to throw out a related thought that I think compromises the value of the "multiple attestation" criterion.  Sometimes single attestation might in fact be a far better indicator of historicity than multiple attestation.

Mark is often rightly seen as more primitive in its representation of Jesus in comparison with Matthew, Luke and John.  There are moments where Mark provides a rough witness to an earlier stage of the tradition, where single attestation is a better indication of historicity than multiple attestation would be.  Where Jesus heals the Deaf Mute with physical agents (Mark 7.31-37) and where he heals the Blind Man of Bethsaida with some apparent limit to his abilities (Mark 8.22-26), these pericopae are not included by Matthew and Luke, no doubt because of the uncongenial picture of Jesus they imply.  Here, single attestation is a better indicator of primitivity than multiple attestation would be.  To put it another way, is the Multiplication of the Loaves, attested six times in the Gospel tradition, the more likely to be historical than Jesus spitting in the mouth of the deaf mute, which is attested only once?

I am aware, of course, that multiple attestation, as it is usually configured, refers to multiple independent attestation, and so one is searching for material that occurs in allegedly independent sources like Mark, Q, Thomas and John.  Notwithstanding my scepticism about the existence of Q and the independence of Thomas, the point still stands by analogy between the written Gospels and attestation in traditions, that uncongenial material will often have dropped out, so that some of the more unusual, primitive features will be at best singly attested where they are attested at all.  In this context, multiple attestation is actually a weaker indication of historicity than is single attestation.

On the contradiction between "multiple attestation" and "embarrassment" in Historical Jesus Research

I am writing a piece at the moment on the criterion of multiple attestation in Historical Jesus research and I came across this nice piece of wisdom in a quotation in an article by John Lyons:

"I can’t help thinking that one cancels out the other. If everyone, Q, an independent Thomas, Mark, Matthew, Luke all have this same material, who is embarrassed about it? The multiple attestation is itself an argument against embarrassment" (W. J. Lyons, “A Prophet Is Rejected in His Home Town (Mark 6.4 and Parallels): A Study in the Methodological (In)Consistency of the Jesus Seminar”, JSHJ 6 (2008): 59-84 (79).

It turns out that it's something I once said here on the NT Blog while I was reflecting on an SBL session that used the criteria of multiple attestation and embarrassment side by side. I am grateful to John for drawing attention to the passing comment (and, incidentally, for his article, which is an excellent discussion of the problems with the way that the Jesus seminar uses Historical Jesus criteria) because I think there may be something in it.

What other area of the humanities would manage to come up with something so counter-intuitive as criteria that apparently contradict one another?  When we are embarrassed about something, do we keep repeating the information?  If members of the early church were seriously embarrassed about John's baptism of Jesus, for example, why did they keep repeating it, even celebrating it?  Would multiple witnesses really begin their accounts of the "good news" by trumpeting something they all found embarrassing?

If a tradition is multiply attested, it is a tradition that on some level the evangelists were proud to repeat.  When they were embarrassed about things, they could easily omit them.

NT Pod 50: The Sisters of Jesus

The latest episode of the NT Pod has just come out and the topic this time is What do we know about the sisters of Jesus?. It is the latest in the current series of podcasts on the Historical Jesus that I am running alongside my course on the Historical Jesus at Duke this semester. Admittedly, this is one that will only get a few minutes in my class on the family of Jesus next week, but it's a topic that I have recently got interested in. In fact, I'll be blogging some more detailed reflections on the topic over the coming days, which is one of the reasons I am posting the NT Pod here a bit more apeedily than I usually manage.

If you are interested in other episodes of the podcast, please visit the NT Pod web page or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes. Or, of course, you can follow the NT Pod on Twitter or on the NT Pod Facebook page.

NT Pod 49: What is the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus?

The latest episode of the NT Pod came out last night and the topic this time is What is the Third Quest of the Historical Jesus?. It is the latest in the current series of podcasts on the Historical Jesus that I am running alongside my course on the Historical Jesus at Duke this semester.

If you are interested in other episodes of the podcast, please visit the NT Pod web page or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes. Or, of course, you can follow the NT Pod on Twitter or on the NT Pod Facebook page.

NT Pod 48: Why Study the Historical Jesus?

The latest episode of the NT Pod came out earlier this week and the topic this time is Why Study the Historical Jesus?. It is at the beginning of a series of podcasts on the Historical Jesus that I hope to run alongside my course on the Historical Jesus at Duke this semester.

If you are interested in other episodes of the podcast, please visit the NT Pod web page or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes. Or, of course, you can follow the NT Pod on Twitter or on the NT Pod Facebook page.

NT Pod 47: Did Jesus Exist?

The first episode of the NT Pod in 2011 came out last night and it is headed "Did Jesus exist?"  It is a short series of reflections on the so-called "mythicist" case with specific reference to two mythicists I have met, George Wells and Timothy Freke.  I first met Tim on Channel 4's Right to Reply, in 2001, when he had recorded a piece critical of the BBC's Son of God  (Jesus: The Complete Story in the USA).  His piece criticized the BBC for not tackling the mythicist case head-on, and the article also featured short critiques of the series from Tom Wright and Judith Lieu.  I was in the studio with Right to Reply presenter Roger Boulton, co-producer of Son of God Michael Wakelin and Timothy Freke.

I also reflect briefly on an earlier appearance on Right to Reply, back in 1984, when I was just 17.  I was responding to the series Jesus: The Evidence, which featured several scholars of interest -- Geza Vermes, Helmut Koester, Dennis Nineham, Morton Smith.  I was a precocious schoolboy and I recorded my little piece in the "video box" in Charlotte Street in London and was amazed when they decided to include it in the programme the next day.  The video clip is long since lost (thank goodness), but the series itself survives in several scratchy Youtube versions, which I have blogged about on several occasions (previous blog posts on this series here).  It looks peculiarly dated for something not that old, but it retains a real fascination for me.  As far as I know, it is the only series ever to provide mini-reconstructions of the life of Rudolf Bultmann.

Anyway, the first episode of Jesus: The Evidence featured George Wells (Youtube excerpt of the Wells segement here) and I discuss that in the latest podcast.  Twenty years later, I got to meet George Wells in London when he graciously came along to listen at a lecture series day in London which I shared with John Barton and John Muddiman.  I greatly enjoyed our chat.

Wading into an area like Jesus mythicism is, of course, a risky business, but I think it is worthwhile, not least because it is something that can keep Historical Jesus scholars honest.  I think it helps us to reflect too on the nature of ancient history.  This episode came about because I am about to begin teaching my course on the Historical Jesus this week, and it's a topic that will be in my thinking.

If you are interested in other episodes of the podcast, please visit the NT Pod web page or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes. Or, of course, you can follow the NT Pod on Twitter or on the NT Pod Facebook page.

Sanders vs. Crossan through the medium of puppets

Struggling to think of innovative assignments for your students?  How about asking them to have a go at expressing the views of key scholars in the discipline through the medium of a "Puppetual Debate"?  Although the student concerned has not quite got the likenesses of E. P. or Dom right, let alone the voices, the content is pretty accurate:



Update (15:13): James McGrath rightly notes that "sock puppets do not appear on biblioblogs nearly enough". Nor Mr Potatoheads, of course. James wonders whether the sock puppet versions of Sanders and Crossan in debate might be more popular than the real characters would be in debate. In fact, I've often thought it a shame that Crossan and Sanders have not had a good head-to-head debate, at least not as far as I am aware.