Peer-reviewed article responding to a blog post: what is the etiquette?

In a blog post back in 2010, I sketched out an idea that had occurred to me in class one day, that a conjectural emendation might explain one of the bizarre and famous features of our one major textual witness to the Gospel of Peter, A Walking, Talking Cross or the Walking, Talking Crucified One?  I suggested that the scribe may have misinterpreted a nomen sacrum for σταυρωθεντα ("crucified one"), instead imagining that σταυρον ("cross") was meant.

In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Theological Studies, Paul Foster provides a detailed critique of the blog post, "Do Crosses Walk and Talk? A Reconsideration of Gospel of Peter 10.39–42", JTS 64 (2013): 89-104.  The article is now available to view for subscribers.  At a future point, perhaps when I have worked up the idea fully for publication, I would like to comment on the content of the article, but in this post I'd like to reflect a little on the phenomenon of a peer-reviewed article in a major journal providing a full critique of a blog post.

I will confess to mixed feelings.  On one level, I am really flattered that Foster, and the editors of JTS, regarded my blog post of sufficient merit to warrant an extended response, and I am grateful to them, I think, for noticing my blog and regarding it so highly.  On another level, I have to admit that it makes me slightly uneasy to see my random jottings here subjected to the same kind of detailed critique that one would normally reserve for scholarly books and peer-reviewed articles.

The difficulty in part may be that there is not really any established etiquette for this kind of thing.  Blogs and the blogging phenomenon are still pretty young, and we don't really know yet how they should fit into the scholarly landscape.  Should we treat them like casual academic gossip, a kind of online senior common room, or is every post fair game for a full, formal response in a peer-reviewed journal?

One thing that focuses the discussion for me is to compare the status of the blog post with the status of the academic conference paper. Many scholars add a kind of rider to their conference papers, "Work in progress; not to be cited" and so on.  The point there is that conference papers are for discussion at conferences but not (yet) in formal publications.  I think I see something similar for blog sketches like mine -- it will, I hope, eventually make its way to publication, but it does not yet have that kind of status. Indeed, in the case in question, I did subsequently present the idea in a conference paper (International SBL, London, 2011), which will form the basis of a future formal publication.

For me, the blog is something more informal, more chatty than the published paper.  I write differently here from the way that I write in peer-reviewed articles. My tone is much more colloquial.  I speak differently in the classroom, differently again in the NT Pod.  So now that I look back at the blog post in question, I notice that I talk casually about the cross "bouncing out of the tomb"; I use a little cartoon illustration; I speak in the first person a good deal and I speculate openly. It is all round much more informal and colloquial.

This not to say that the discussion of blog posts in formal publications ought to be out of bounds.  I have myself published an article discussing the role played by blogs in the discussion of the Talpiot Tomb (The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers).  Others like James Crossley have written extensively on the blogging phenomenon and what it may reveal about the guild.  Nevertheless, I think there is a difference between those sorts of broader discussions about the phenomenon and writing at length about a blog report of work in progress, a post that is explicitly a kind of work-in-progress sketch.

But perhaps I am wrong about this.  I have had some discussion with Paul Foster via email, and I have corresponded also with one of the editors of JTS who expressed some surprise at my reaction to the publication.  I'd be interested to hear what others think about the etiquette here.  For one thing, I can't remember another example of this, and if Paul Foster and JTS are trend-setting, it may be worth our while thinking through the implications this has for the topics and the tone of our blogs.  I suspect that it will make an impact on how far and in what manner I sketch out new research ideas on this blog but this too may require some additional thought.

The Giant Jesus and the Walking, Talking Cross

Over on Remnant of Giants, Deane Galbraith (Tyrone Slothrop) comments on Bart Ehrman's Huffington Post column in Jesus was a Giant! … or was he, really? Bart Ehrman in the Huffington Post on the most famous passage in the Gospel of Peter:

The Giant Jesus and the Walking-Talking Cross. Remarkably, the Gospels of the New Testament do not tell the story of Jesus emerging from the tomb on Easter morning. But the Gospel of Peter does. In this text, discovered near the end of the nineteenth century, Jesus comes out of the tomb as tall as a mountain, supported by two angels, nearly as tall themselves. And behind them, from the tomb, there emerges the cross, which has a conversation with God in heaven, assuring him that the message of salvation has now gone to those in the underworld. How a Gospel like this was ever lost is anyone’s guess.

- Bart Ehrman, “What Didn’t Make It Into The Bible?”, The Huffington Post, 21 July 2011

The quotation actually illustrates splendidly one of the reasons that I offered in my recent conference paper for suggesting that a conjectural emendation is required here.  The paper was called "A Walking, Talking Cross or the Walking, Talking Crucified One? A conjectural emendation in the Gospel of Peter 10.39, 42" (Abstract). The paper was based on a blog post from last year and in due course, I will be expanding the paper for publication.

What the quotation above illustrates nicely is the narrative oddity of the giant Jesus, who is stretched beyond the heavens, from where God addresses not the crucified one but the cross, which has apparently come out of the tomb and remained on earth, something that makes no narrative sense at all, even within the bizarre logic of the Gospel of Peter.  Here's a brief section from my paper:

There are certain advantages that this reading brings. There are advantages both to the broader narrative context and the pericope itself. With respect to the broader narrative, now it is no longer the case that a cross emerges from a tomb that it never entered. With respect to the narrower context, it overcomes the incongruity that the three men all stretch as far as – or beyond – the heavens, but the voice from heaven then addresses the cross back on earth.  In the revised reading, the voice in heaven directly addresses the crucified one, who is beyond the heavens.  Moreover, on the usual reading, the witnesses should be able to see the cross speaking, so there is no need for the note that they “there was heard the answer, 'Yes'”, a line far more appropriate to the reading with the conjectural emendation. On this reading, they only hear the answer because it is the crucified one speaking, and his head is beyond the heavens. Further, the conjectural emendation removes the extraordinary situation whereby Jesus is upstaged, at his own resurrection, by his cross.

SBL International Paper Proposals Accepted

I am happy to say that I have had two paper proposals accepted for the SBL International Meeting in London in July. The first may be familiar to regular readers of the blog because it is something I began to brainstorm here. The second is in a section shared with James McGrath so with any luck we might even be in the same line-up.


A Walking, Talking Cross or the Walking, Talking Crucified One? A conjectural emendation in the Gospel of Peter 10.39, 42.

The Gospel of Peter famously presents the reader with a bizarre resurrection account in which a walking, talking cross emerges from the tomb (9.34-10.42). If the image were not already absurd enough, the difficulty is compounded by the lack of precedent for it in the text, with its ordinary, inanimate cross that does not enter the tomb with Jesus. If we conjecturally emend the text from σταυρον to σταυρωθεντα, from "cross" to "crucified", the difficulties are resolved.

Conjectural emendations should not be proposed lightly, but our only witness to this passage, P. Cair. 10759, is late (eighth century) and riddled with errors, including many in this context. If the exemplar had used the nomen sacrum ΣΤΑ (cf. 0212), it is easy to imagine how the scribe might have misconstrued this as abbreviating "cross" rather than "crucified". On this reading, it is "the crucified one" who has been preaching to the departed souls and whose voice is heard. Jesus is the chief character in his own resurrection account and is not upstaged by his cross.


How Reliable is the Story of the Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices?

The story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices in 1945 has attained near canonical status in scholarship of early Christianity. James Robinson's compelling narrative of how Muhammad 'Ali al-Samman and his brothers unearthed the jar containing the codices combines skilled investigative journalism with tales of intrigue and blood vengeance. Few appear to have noticed, though, that there are several different versions of the story, including a two person version (1977) and a seven person version (1979), with subtle variations including the identity of person who first found the jar.

Now, newly unearthed footage from a 1987 television series, apparently unknown to contemporary scholars of Nag Hammadi, sheds new light on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the documents. The Channel 4 (UK) series, The Gnostics, features Muhammad 'Ali himself, in his only known appearance in front of camera, offering his account of the discovery. Although there are several points of contact with the earlier versions, there are also several major points of divergence, which raise fresh questions about the reliability of 'Ali's testimony.

A Walking, Talking Cross or the Walking, Talking Crucified One?

One of the pleasures of blogging is that it gives you the chance to float ideas that may be worthwhile or that may come to nothing. This is one of those occasions. This is an idea that occurred to me last week while preparing for my Non-canonical Gospels course here at Duke.  It's week seven and we are looking at the Gospel of Peter.  There may be nothing in this idea, which I shared with my class today, but I want to go through the discipline of writing it up so that I can get a feeling for its merits.  Comments are gratefully received, but I ask that you bear in mind that this is just a thought, a sketch, an attempt to see if something works.

One of the great mysteries of the Gospel of Peter is what on earth could have inspired the following remarkable passage:

9. 34. Early in the morning, when the Sabbath dawned, there came a crowd from Jerusalem and the country round about to see the sealed sepulchre. 35. Now in the night in which the Lord's day dawned, when the soldiers were keeping guard, two by two in each watch, there was a loud voice in heaven, (36) and they saw the heavens open and two men come down from there in a great brightness and draw near to the sepulchre. 37. That stone which had been laid against the entrance to the sepulchre started of itself to roll and move sidewards, and the sepulchre was opened and both young men entered. 10. 38. When those soldiers saw this, they awakened the centurion and the elders, for they also were there to mount guard. 39. And while they were narrating what they had seen, they saw three men come out from the sepulchre, two of them supporting the other and a cross following them (40) and the heads of the two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was being led reached beyond the heavens. 41. And they heard a voice out of the heavens crying, ‘Have you preached to those who sleep?’, 42. and from the cross there was heard the answer, ‘Yes.’

The idea of a walking, talking cross is almost unbelievably absurd, all the more so given the lack of precedent for it in the text, in which the cross was earlier completely inanimate, and did not enter the tomb with Jesus at burial.  One of the difficulties with the Gospel of Peter is that the only major textual witness (P.Cair. 10759) is late (eighth century), unreliable and riddled with errors, including many in this passage.  And so I have begun to wonder whether there might have been another error in the scribe's transcription of his text here.  My suggestion is that we conjecturally emend the text from σταυρον to σταυρωθεντα, from "cross" to "crucified", so that it is no longer a wooden cross that comes bouncing out of the tomb but rather Jesus, the "crucified one" himself.

This might at first sound like a bit of a stretch.  But what if our scribe's exemplar here used the nomen sacrum στα?  It is worth bearing in mind that another second century Greek Passion Gospel, the Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony fragment (0212), uses the nomen sacrum στα for σταυρωθέντα in a similar context (the burial). Perhaps our scribe's exemplar had the nomen sacrum στα and the scribe incorrectly assumed that it stood for σταυρόν. It would be an easy mistake to make, and it is quite reasonable to assume that the scribe's source text might so abbreviate.   Other texts (Codex Bezae, P46) similarly abbreviate the verb.

If my suggested conjectural emendation has any merit, this is how the text would appear:

καὶ ἐξηγουμένων αὐτῶν ἃ εἶδον, πάλιν ὁρῶσιν ἐξελθόντας ἀπὸ τοῦ τάφου τρεῖς ἄνδρας, καὶ τοὺς δύο τὸν ἕνα ὑπορθοῦντας, καὶ τὸν σταυρωθέντα ἀκολουθοῦντα αὐτοῖς· καὶ τῶν μὲν δύο τὴν κεφαλὴν χωροῦσαν μέχρι τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, τοῦ δὲ χειραγωγουμένου ὑπ' αὐτῶν ὑπερβαίνουσαν τοὺς οὐρανούς· καὶ φωνῆς ἤκουον ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν λεγούσης᾽Εκήρυξας τοῖς κοιμωμένοις; καὶ ὑπακοὴ ἠκούετο ἀπὸ τοῦ σταυρωθέντος ὅτι Ναί.

At this point, the sharp reader will no doubt want to point out that the emendation cannot work because Jesus has to be one of the "three men" coming out of the tomb, "the two supporting the one", so that the cross is an additional figure, not identified with "the one".  This reading depends, though, on the translation of ὑπορθοῦντας as "supporting", as if the two angelic figures are holding Jesus up. But ὑπορθόω, a rare word, probably means something like "raise up", "lift up"; the text is saying that the two men, who have descended from heaven and entered the tomb, are lifting Jesus up from where he was lying, and they are leading him out, the crucified one following them. This scenario is clarified in the next line, where the men are leading him by the hand. Thus the English translation would go something like this:

And while they were narrating what they had seen, they saw three men come out from the sepulchre, two of them raising up the one, and the crucified one following them (40) and the heads of the two reaching to heaven, but that of him who was being led out by the hand by them reaching beyond the heavens. 41. And they heard a voice out of the heavens crying, ‘Have you preached to those who sleep?’, 42. and from the crucified one there was heard the answer, ‘Yes.’

There are certain additional advantages that this reading could bring.  For one thing, it has never made much sense that the three men all stretch as far as -- or beyond -- the heavens, but the voice from heaven then addresses the cross back on earth.  In the revised reading, the voice in heaven directly addresses the crucified one, who is beyond the heavens.  Moreover, on the usual reading, the witnesses should be able to see the cross speaking, so there is no need for the note that they "there was heard the answer, 'Yes'".  Rather, they only hear the answer because it is the crucified one speaking, and his head is beyond the heavens.  And finally, the allusion to the "harrowing of hell"  here makes far greater sense if it is the crucified Jesus who has done the preaching, as in 1 Peter 3.19-20, and not some kind of cartoon cross.