Newsweek on Karen King and Mary Magdalene

There's a major feature in this week's Newsweek on Karen King, Mary Magdalene and Biblical women. You can view it all on-line here:

The Bible's Lost Stories

Features pictures and a radio special. One thing's for sure -- Karen King and Elaine Pagels have got their publicity machines working brilliantly -- their agents have certainly been busy.

Elaine Pagels radio programme

On Friday there was a radio programme in Boston devoted to Elaine Pagels's Beyond Belief and you can listen to it here:

On Point Radio: the Secret Gospel of Thomas

The whole programme (50 minutes) is Elaine Pagels in the studio being interviewed and it is an interesting listen; the first quarter of an hour or so is devoted to explaining what the the Gospel of Thomas is, its history, its relationship to the canonical Gospels etc. After the news break, the topic moves more to her personal spiritual journey and broader issues of canon and creed, and then there are phone calls from mid-way through the programme to the end. You can hear Elaine Pagels relaxing as the programme goes on -- the first fifteen minutes or so are her least coherent; by the end she is enjoying herself.

Galilee Unicode Font new version

Rod Decker has released version 0.6 of the Galilee Unicode Greek font. It covers
classical as well as koine Greek; also included are NA27-style sigla for textual criticism. Download plus details here:

Galilee Unicode Gk Font

AKMA, the Marriott Marquis and Richard Hays

In a recent blog entry, AKMA explains how much he likes the Marriott Marquis hotel, which I had described as "soulless". I think what I didn't like about it was the gaping absence of anything in the middle of the hotel -- a sort of central shaft of nothingness -- and then the storey after storey one after another stacking up identically to the very high ceiling. It reminded me a bit of the worst inner city British 1960s high-rises. But I did like the breakfast at the American Grille and the cook-to-order omelettes -- that was a real highlight. Funnily enough, like AKMA I also left my mobile phone charger in my hotel room so one would have thought that security would have been used to this.

AKMA mentions Richard Hays and links to his webpage. This was one I did not have listed, so I've now added it to Scholars: H. I was also delighted to click on I recommend and to see The Case Against Q listed!

Geza Vermes in The Guardian

Geza Vermes wrote this week's "Face to Faith" in The Guardian. It's essentially a trailer for his new book and I don't find it (the article) his most coherent writing, but here's the link:

What's sex got to do with it?

The Good Book, Programme 2

The second part of The Good Book, "Moses: The Great Law Giver", is broadcast on BBC Radio 2 tonight at 8 p.m. Listen live by going to BBC Radio 2 or listen after the broadcast here:

The Good Book

Explorator 6.30 and 6.31

Latest Explorator:

Explorator 6.31

I was away last week so did not post a link to Explorator 6.30 but you can find it on the same page.

Tyndale Tech and Red Light Green

The latest Tyndale Tech email from David Instone Brewer arrived last week. As usual it is full of interesting tips and links (though also as usual it is a NT Gateway free zone; I hope David is not boycotting me!). The theme this month is Full-text books and articles on the web. There are several links of interest. The first is something called Red Light Green. Here's the link:

Red Light Green

I've added to the NT Gateway: Bibliography (Search Engine) page with this description:

Project emerging from the Research Libraries Group "designed for undergraduates using the Web and the libraries that support them". RedLightGreen.com delivers information from RLG members about more than 130 million books for education and research; and it links students back to their campus libraries for the books they select.

While updating that page, I noticed that the BSW Multi-Library Search is still not working so I've relegated it to the bottom of the page and added a note to that effect. I think it's not been working for some time now and so I'll drop the link soon if there's no change.

More on the ETS Membership Challenge

Further to my earlier posting on the Open Theism vote at the Evangelical Theological Society last week, David Mackinder has sent me this link to a page "devoted to all aspects of these proceedings":

ETS Membership Challenge

The Good Book

A new BBC radio series began while I was away on Sunday. It is called The Good Book and I have been lucky to be involved with this from the start as script consultant, contributor and also author of the accompanying booklets on Jesus and Paul. The series is broadcast every Sunday on BBC Radio 2, 8 p.m. in six episodes. It is beautifully narrated by Sir Derek Jacobi and features contributions from academics and spiritual leaders. The series has a colourful web site here:

The Good Book

You can listen to the first episode on-line by going to this first page and clicking on the audio link:

Episode 1: Abraham

Gays and Marriage in Atlanta

One more story from the AAR/SBL in Atlanta has made it to the media. This is by Brian Basinger from Online Athens and features comments from Bernadette Brooten, Antoinette Wire and Richard Horsley:

Religion, Bible scholars gather for Atlanta meeting
Gays and Marriage

James Ossuary in Atlanta

Last year's big topic at the SBL was the James ossuary which was on display in Toronto. It was less of a hot topic in Atlanta, but it was still getting talked about. Jim Davila has made some useful blog entries on this and I won't duplicate here. Go to:

More on the James Ossuary

and

Edward M. Cook weighs in . . .

Changed look

I've messed around a bit with the template to this blog. I was irritated by the fact that the main left margin in the body of the blog was frequently jagged; I couldn't work out why so I stripped it down and started again and have made the look a bit more lean.

Other news from Atlanta: Open theism vote

I had meant to blog on this when I arrived in Atlanta last Friday but didn't get time. One of the big stories in Atlanta came from the Evangelical Theological Society who meet each year just before the SBL meeting. This year they had a big vote on whether or not to exclude two members, Clark Pinnock and John Sanders, because of their views on "open theism". In the end the society voted not to throw them out. There are several versions of the story on the web. For a shorter version go to this one on Crosswalk:

Russell Shubin, "A Referendum on Open Theism?".

For all the detail, go to this one on Christianity Today:

David Neff, Dispatch from Atlanta: What Fireworks?
Anxieties and attack turn to grace and truth as the Evangelical Theological Society votes on Open Theism proponents' membership.

Other SBL Blogs

Don't forget to go to Hypotyposeis, Paleojudaica and AKMA's Random Thoughts for more and varied reflections on the SBL. I saw all three fellow bloggers at the SBL, though AKMA only briefly as we both dashed in opposite directions. Jim Davila kindly performed a BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! for me when we met on the Saturday morning; now that audio blogging is available, perhaps he could perform this for the masses? Stephen Carlson I saw frequently at the SBL and got to hear hot off the press some very interesting new discoveries and possible discoveries he's made; really looking forward to seeing them published. In years to come no doubt there will be myriads of other bloggers at the SBL and people will laugh as they look back to 2003 and say, "Good grief; were there really so few blogs in the olden days?" and we will be proud to have been there early on. AKMA will be prouder still -- he was even blogging at the SBL in November 2002.

SBL Monday and Tuesday

So to Monday morning. Bear in mind that the sessions I attended are a tiny fraction of what was on; at any given time there are multiple sessions one would enjoy attending. And sometimes duty takes one away from a session one would parituclarly like to get to. But one that I was keen to get to was the Historical Jesus section on the topic of "Women and the Historical Jesus". The speakers were John Dominic Crossan, Kathleen Corley and Jane Schaberg. Each spoke for half an hour or so; they then debated among themselves a little, all pretty friendly first name terms stuff, and then the discussion was opened up to the audience. It was one of the least stimulating sessions I attended at the conference, mainly because of the room, the audience and the fact that they only had one microphone. As usual for the really big historical Jesus sessions, they'd used a ballroom and it was absolutely packed. It was dark and dingy and they only had one microphone between them. Even with the microphone, it was quite difficult to hear Jane Schaberg. And when they debated among themselves, there were constantly passing the microphone around from one to another. It's funny how those things stick in one's mind more than the subtance of the papers, but it was so difficult to listen to and I'm afraid I slept through more of this even than the Q section, and that's saying something.

Also on Monday I attended the Mark Group again. Papers were by Tom Shepherd, Michael Vines and Kelli O'Brien and all on the theme of literary aspects of the trial of Jesus in Mark. I find the Mark Group one of the more enjoyable sections because it doesn't stack the programme too fully and allows enough time for presenters to summarise their papers and plenty of time for discussion.

General comment about the organisation of the conference: although it was good to have everything close together, I did find it a bit harder to navigate my way around this time. Perhaps I was being dopey but I found myself asking for directions more than usual. It also seemed to me that the organisers had not got the room allocation right. Many sessions I went to were overcrowded, and especially the first Synoptics session. Presumably it is difficult to predict but it seemed that they got the rooms badly wrong sometimes; perhaps there was not quite enough space there for the conference.

I was really lucky on the Monday evening to be able to get away from the hotel and to stay with friends in Atlanta; a real highlight. Back again on Tuesday morning the fag-end of the conference did seem a bit of an anti-climax. Lots of people are in the process of leaving on Tuesday morning, and even those that are not are focused on leaving. So it's rough to have to present a paper right at the end of the conference. I enjoyed a last chance to get a breakfast in the Marriott Marquis. It was easily the best place for breakfast among those I tried (the Hyatt was especially poor); and the chef cooked omelettes to order in front of you -- great stuff. I sampled a bit of the textual criticism section before leaving and there were some interesting bits and bobs though I slept through most of what I did attend and spent the rest of the time chatting to an old friend outside the session.

As usual, the best memories of the conference are the personal contacts, the breakfasts, the steak and ale, good laughs, spending time with old friends, meeting new people. Had several useful discussions relating to future publishing projects too, so I'm feeling pretty fulfilled at the end of it, but still delighted to get home again.

SBL Sunday

I am not going to be able to remember the rest in order. Saturday sticks in my mind in a big way because of my own involvement. On Sunday I started enjoying myself properly. One of the sections I attended across Sunday and Monday was the Mark Group and the theme this year was Jesus' trial in Mark, the first day specifically focusing on the blasphemy charge and including papers from Adela Yarbro Collins and Jeffrey Gibson. The second of the Synoptics sections was the open session, with four papers, Stephen Moore, Albert Harrill, Alex Damm and Simon Gathercole. Gathercole's paper was excellent -- a defence of a Danielic application of the Son of Man language throughout Mark's Gospel, from the Son of Man has authority statements in Mark 2 through to the vindication of the Son of Man statements in Chapters 13 and 14, from revelation to suffering to vindication. It was a model of how to give an engaging paper -- clear but with a kind of relaxed good humour that engages the audience. I missed Bert Harrill because I wanted to hear Catherine Smith (one of our post-grads in Birmingham) speaking in the Biblical Language and Linguistics section -- a proud moment when one's own students present papers at an international conference. But dashed back to the Synoptics as soon as that was finished and just back in time for Alex Damm on the application of rhetoric to the Synoptic Problem. Damm is a graduate student of John Kloppenborg in Toronto. I was happy to hear him focus on the Mark-Without-Q hypothesis along with the Two Document Hypothesis in his paper, which was essentially an attempt to show that Luke's use of Q is more plausible than Luke's use of Matthew in the Beelzebub Controversy. He looked at rhetorically effective elements that are distinctive to Matthew which one would have expected Luke to have taken over had he known Matthew. I was not convinced by the argument myself and asked a question to the effect that Luke's use of Matthew and Luke's use of Q are not hypotheses competing on a par. We do not have Q, so that thesis functions at an automatic advantage in this kind of discussion. In particular, Luke's order here becomes Q's order, so it is fruitless to compare Luke's order of Q with Matthew's in this kind of context. But I am happy once again to hear the Farrer Theory being taken seriously; this has marked the work of several post graduate students from Toronto including Robert Derrenbacker and Zeba Crook.

Speaking of Derrenbacker, I attended the Q section on the Sunday too and Derrenbacker gave the best and most engaging of the papers there, admitting that Matthew's re-ordering of the Q material could be constituted as a problem for the Two-Source Theory, because it is so different from Q's order, but suggesting that Matthew was able to gain random access to Q by accessing it in notebook or codex format. The theme for the session was Matthew and Q and consisted of five papers, Marco Frenschkowski, Joseph Verheyden, Robert Derrenbacker, Clare Komoroske Rothschild and Linden Youngquist. I am afraid that my tiredness was really kicking in by this stage so I slept through at least some of all of these. (I sleep through at least some of pretty much all academic papers; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the papers; it's just a question of tiredness. Recommendation: if you want me to hear all of your paper, ask me to chair it and I might just manage to stay awake.). After the five speakers, Ulrich Luz gave thirty minute response to them all. It was his first SBL and was clearly enjoying the occasion. The chairing of the section was even worse than my chairing of the Synoptics section, though, since Luz finished after the scheduled finish and there was not time for the allotted discussion. I suspect that they were trying to cram too much in to the session to attempt to cover five papers and a major response and still have time for discussion.

Return from Atlanta

I have now returned from Atlanta where I was attending the SBL Annual Meeting. I had thought that I would be able to blog throughout the conference and made a first entry or two on Friday afternoon and early on Saturday morning. But that was that. I was simply too busy the rest of the time to find a moment to blog. But now that I am home (or at least sitting at an airport waiting for a bus), some scattered reflections.

Saturday was the worst day for me personally -- still tired from losing a night's sleep to travel and also the day on which I had first to give a paper at the CARG and then to preside at the Synoptics section. But first things first. I tend to mark the beginning of the meeting by the annual gathering of "e-listers", always at 11 on the Saturday at the Gramcord booth, and always organised by Jeffrey Gibson. I did a circuit about five times round the book display looking for the Gramcord booth and wondered if I was being uncommonly inobservant. I eventually found out that there was another whole room of book display and I headed down to that; it's the first time since I've been going to SBL that I've known them to use two different rooms. The e-listers meeting was good, some old friends and some new ones, and Gail Dawson took a photograph of the group.

The first session I went to was the CARG, the computer assisted research section. There were five presentations and mine was the fourth. I talked about the All-in-One Biblical Resources Search, talking a little about the history of the site, what I saw as its advantages and disadvantages and began to look to the future, specifically the creation of a fresh page on the Greek New Testament / Biblical Languages.

Straight afterwards I had my first experience of presiding at a session, the first Synoptics section (of two). The theme was Richard Bauckham (ed.), The Gospels for all Christians: Rethinking Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). Sadly Richard Bauckham himself was not able to be present because of ill health. Dwight Peterson, one of the respondents, was also unable to be present through ill health. Late in the day, Richard Burridge had agreed to stand in for Richard Bauckham and Loveday Alexander for Dwight. The other panelists were Margaret Mitchell, Mark Matson and Theodore J. Weeden. I was delighted to be able to introduce Ted Weeden, known to many through his famous Mark: Traditions in Conflict, but his first SBL for something like thirty years. The session was absolutely packed -- people standing at the back, at the doors and squatting on the floor. Apparently Eerdmans brought the book back into print because of the session, and then they sold out from their book display. The session was very lively; I thought Margaret Mitchell's presentation and contributions (in particular) pretty powerful, though she exceeded her time limit even more than all the others did. [Strong mental note to self: next time be much stricter on speakers' going over allotted time]. Plenty of time for lively discussion. Lots of people commented on how enjoyable they had found the session. I haven't commented on the substance much; you can read Mitchell's and Matson's papers on-line still, along with Bauckham's summary paper. [located here.] Richard Burridge is also going to send me his notes from the session to upload. A friend told me over breakfast the next morning that he thought the pro-Bauckham team had won a narrow victory, perhaps 3-2, but that Mitchell had achieved some big hits (to mix sporting metaphors).

One other event on Saturday was the Continuum reception, this year an official launch party for T & T Clark International, which is to be Continuum's Biblical Studies imprint, incorporating Trinity Press International, Sheffield Academic Press and T & T Clark.

The meeting all nice and close together -- no long treks across the city to different meeting places. And everyone seemed to be in one of the main meeting hotels which were also all central. The one I was in, the Marriott Marquis, was the main convention hotel. Enormous, rather soulless place -- tall with glass elevators going up and down the middle; it had enough room for 2000 guests apparently. Some good food places around. I had my first experience of a Japanese steakhouse, where they cook the food in front of you on the hot plate in the middle of the table, juggling the utensils and so on. There was a very good local Atlanta beer too called something like Sweet Water or Fresh Water. The weather was quite nice -- great to get off the plane on Friday to blazing sunshine. It rained on Monday, but otherwise pretty nice throughout. More later.

SBL Carg session

I went to two sessions at yesterday's SBL, the first the Computer Assisted Research Section. It was a good session, much better attended than last year, probably largely because of the location of the section at the central convention hotel, the Marriott Marquis. The five presentations focused on web-based applications, collaborative research and pedagogy. Susan Graham talked about the Theoweb project at the University of Exeter, Tim Bulkely talked about his Collaborative Hyptertext Commentary project -- he is the author of the on-line Amos commentary. Steve Delamarter discussed his research project funded by the Wabash centre, "A typology of technology use among theological educutors". [unfinished blog entry]

The KARGs

Jim Davila reflects (who is blogging through his television set in an Atlanta hotel, itself a kind of feat of science-fiction) on the CARG abbreviation:

Science fiction readers will recall that in Keith Laumer's classic novel Dinosaur Beach the "Kargs" were evil Terminator-like robots from the future who came back in time to carry out dastardly deeds to change the course of history.

I'm sure the similarity in name is just a coincidence. Of course, I have presented a CARG paper myself iin recent years, so I would say that, wouldn't I?

BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Jeff Peterson had to explain the last phrase to me. Apparently it is used in blogeny as a kind of evil laugh -- practise saying it yourself with a kind of Dr Evil voice on.