A couple of other Greek Alphabet Songs

Speaking of Greek Alphabet songs, don't forget Danny Zacharias's catchy number:



There is an industry going on Greek alphabet songs over on Youtube, and this is one of the best:

Greek Alphabet Song

Beginning your Greek classes this week?  Here's a nice help in learning the Greek alphabet, "with apologies to Kanye".  Thanks to Andy Rowell for the link, over on Justin Taylor's blog, and by a student from Southeastern Seminary called Micahel (sp?) Graening:

Learning the Greek Alphabet can be heartless

Thirty-nine lashes still being given as a punishment

I have been thinking about a podcast on 2 Cor. 11.24, "Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes less one"; it is an interesting verse and Anthony Harvey has a good article on it. I am also planning to talk about this a bit in one of my classes on the Life and Letters of Paul starting next week. I did not expect to see in the Jerusalem Post (via Antonio Lombatti) that this week the same punishment would be doled out, "'Sinner' singer given thirty-nine lashes by rabbis".  According to the report, the punishment was for performing in front of a "mixed audience".

Why studying Theology and Religion matters

In the face of Worries for UK Theology and Religion departments, Helen Ingram has an excellent shout out, 101 Reasons to Study Theology and Religion: The Call for Comments. Helen herself is a University of Birmingham BA in Theology and PhD in New Testament studies and she speaks with authority as well as humour. I think she is right that university leadership often thinks of Theology and Religion as "soft touch" and I would add that this is often born out of ignorance. It's important for those of us working and studying in the sector to let the powers know what we do and why it's worthwhile.

Frank Kermode: The Independent Obituary

Tomorrow's Independent has its obituary of Frank Kermode:

Sir Frank Kermode: Academic and pre-eminent literary critic who reached out to a non-specialist audience
By Paul Levy

NT Pod 38: Who is the Beloved Disciple in John's Gospel?

It's time I got up to date with posting the latest episodes of the NT Pod here also on the NT Blog. NT Pod 38 asks "Who is the Beloved Disciple in John's Gospel?"

You can listen to the NT Pod online 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.

Frank Kermode: New York Times Obituary, Washington Post Obituary

The New York Times has its obituary of Frank Kermode here:

Frank Kermode, 90, a Critic Who Wrote With Style, Is Dead
By Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

It adds a series of Excerpts from Frank Kermode's Writing.

HT: James Tabor on Facebook.

And the Washington Post has its obituary here:

British literary critic Frank Kermode dies at age 90
By T. Rees Shapiro

The Bizarre Case of Google Books Unavailable Outside the U.S.

Over on the NT Gateway blog, I noted yesterday that William Wrede's Paul is now available in toto on Google Books. Accordingly, I added a link to the Paul: Books and Articles page. But then it appeared that a lot of people were unable to access the book. In comments, Holger Szesnat, my colleague on the NT Gateway, noted:

In my experience, most google books that are available in full view in the U.S.A. are not accessible outside of that country. I don’t even get ’snippet’ view of the ET of Wrede’s book. The publication date seems to make no difference. Particularly galling when, as I once noticed, a scan had been made at the Bodleian library in Oxford, but UK web visitors would be prevented from accessing the google book scan. Even worse when you live on the other side of the globe, with absolute no way of reading that book.

One thing that U.S.-based people can do though is this: download the google books PDF, and then upload it to archive.org – from where it is accessible to anyone. So much for google’s supposed copyright concern behind all this, incidentally. The German original is available on that site already: http://www.archive.org/details/pauluswred00wred

The rest of us (i.e. those who do not live in google-land) can use proxy servers like hotspot shield to get around the problem – as long as you are prepared to put up with slow speed and annoying advertisements.

Well, this was news to me. I am really surprised that books like this, over one hundred years old, are not showing up in some countries. I realize, of course, that copyright laws differ from country to country. Nevertheless, I am curious to know how widespread this kind of difference between Google Books at home and abroad is. Anyone else experienced this?

Now, if anyone would like to upload the PDF of Wrede's book to archive.org, it would be great to hear from you. As an interim measure, I have uploaded the PDF to my web space here:

W. Wrede, Paul (translated by E. W. Lummis; London: Philip Green, 1907) [PDF]

Update (14.01): Roger Pearse comments.

Tom Wright on Moving to St Andrews

BBC Wear had a nice little feature on the forthcoming retirement of of Tom Wright as the Bishop of Durham, and his move to St Andrews University, Scotland, to work on his Paul book. And it turns out that he is a keen amateur golfer too, and there is some footage of him playing. It's about three minutes long:

Bishop of Durham approaches retirement

Is it just me or is Bishop Tom now sounding a bit more like Archbishop Rowan in the bishopy way he enunciates? Perhaps after a few months at St Andrews, that will all change and he will begin talking like Jim Davila.

Frank Kermode Obituary

The Daily Telegraph has its obituary of Sir Frank Kermode, who died yesterday:

Sir Frank Kermode
Sir Frank Kermode, who died on August 17 aged 90, was the most eminent critic of English literature since FR Leavis; his teaching career culminated in the senior English professorship at Cambridge University, a post he surrendered in 1982 in the aftermath of a widely reported doctrinal rift within the faculty.

The Guardian also has also just published its obituary:

Sir Frank Kermode obituary
Pre-eminent critic who with easy erudition explored how ideas work in literature

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.

Worries for UK Theology and Religion Departments?

Last week's Church Times has a worrying article about the problems in store for Theology and Religion departments in UK universities:

Axe hovers over world of academic Theology

The report is attributed to a "staff reporter" and suggests that "University theology departments are facing a turbulent autumn with rounds of staffing cuts and closures." At this point is difficult to see if the concerns expressed are legitimate or not.  Bangor's School of Theology and Religious Studies is mentioned, but it appears that the closure is in fact the result of a merger with the department at Trinity Saint David.  The University of Birmingham's Theology and Religion department, my former home, gets a special mention too, with an unnamed "source" speaking about low morale.

The rather vague nature of the claims, and the anonymity of the sources quoted, lead to some scepticism about the scale of the potential threat, at least at this point, but this will be one worth watching, especially in the light of the recent Sheffield and Gloucestershire situations.

HT: Roger Pearse, but I completely dissociate myself from his extraordinary take on the report.

Manuscript Rediscovery

ITSEE: News reports a scoop. That report in full:

Manuscript rediscovery

Dr Hugh Houghton and Dr Damaris Romero Gonzales of ITSEE recently located microfilms of complete images of an important manuscript of the Latin Bible, Codex Complutensis I, which suffered major damage in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. The microfilm, held at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, has been digitised and it is hoped soon to make the images of this virtual manuscript available through the Virtual Manuscript Room in Birmingham. A full set of pictures of the manuscript in its current state is available on the Universty of Madrid Biblioteca Complutense website.

For news reports of this discovery, see:
Rediscovering an ancient text in Collegeville (medievalists.net)
Lost medieval bibles found at Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (St Cloud Times)

Return of the Biblical Studies Blog Carnival

As James McGrath notes, a Biblical Studies Carnival has been spotted over on Jim West's blog, Zwinglius Redivivus. From what I recall, this is the first such carnival for a while; Tyler Williams's page records nothing for several months. So a big thanks to Jim for putting this one together with his customary eye for detail. It's a bit light on references to the NT Blog, but all you need to know about what's been happening here is some rambling about my trip to Israel and a discussion with several other bloggers about the future for online textbooks, a discussion that looks likely to run into August too.

The Shortcomings of Traditional Textbooks in the Digital Age, and Our Invitation

It's like the old days on the biblioblogs, with intelligent, engaging and useful discussions across a number of different blogs on a topic of interest and relevance, with lots of exciting suggestions for the future. I'm talking, of course, about the current discussion on the future of textbooks, and what we, as digital pioneers in our area, have to contribute. OK, I know that that sounds a bit pompous, but I think it is true. There are more interesting ideas bobbing around the blogosphere than you'll find anywhere else.

In order, the blog discussion on this topic goes something like this: AKMA, NT Blog, Sansblogue, Anumma, AKMA, NT Blog, NT Blog, Exploring our Matrix, AKMA, with apologies if I have missed any contributions.  James McGrath has a useful breakdown of different models in his post.  In this post, I would like to draw attention to a key difficulty with current print textbooks in our area.

There is an extent to which publishers are conscious of the fact that the textbooks they are marketing have a rather old-fashioned feel, especially in relation to the lack of internet resources.  They know that most modern students are more media-savvy than their professors and that it is a case of digital natives vs. digital immigrants.  In a bid to plug this gap, a good number of big-selling textbooks now have a special companion website (Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament, Bart Ehrman, A Historical Introduction to the New Testament, Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament).  This is hugely commendable -- the flashcards, the powerpoint presentations, the summaries -- these are all helpful additions to the student's experience.  But all of these fine websites have a central difficulty:  they are extensions of the single-authored textbook that they are complementing.  On the whole, they simply supplement the textbook with similar material, often authored or constructed by the publishers, or people working with the author and the publisher.  They have some idea of the potential for doing something different on the web, but they do not exploit the potential for linking to, embedding, integrating, engaging with existing resources on the net.  These textbooks therefore remain, essentially, single-author products, albeit products that are supplemented by useful, additional, publisher-supplied materials.

The potential that one sees in these types of companion websites, combined with the shortcomings of these websites, is in fact our invitation to rethink the idea of the "textbook", as I and others have been urging.  The weakness with the textbooks mentioned is that they are thoroughly single-authored affairs.  In some respects, that is, of course, an excellent thing.  I could not have a higher opinion of my colleague Bart Ehrman, for example, who is one of the authors mentioned above.  But in other respects, it is a problem.  The traditional textbook's difficulty is that however strong its author, it is still that author's views that are presented, in all their particularity.  What the textbook of the digital age can produce is something that is genuinely multi-authored as well as multi-media, a resource that encourages the university student to think critically from the earliest point by listening to different voices speaking on the same subjects.

This is where the digital pioneers come in.  Because we have at least some understanding of how the internet works, and what its potential is, we are in a position to do the kind of thing that these traditional textbooks, with their limited companion websites, are aspiring to do.

McGrath reviews Edwards on The Hebrew Gospel

James McGrath has an excellent, thorough, critical Review of The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition. I am reviewing the book myself for CBQ, and I have overflowed a couple of pieces here to the blog (James Edwards), and it is interesting to see James McGrath seeing all sorts of things that I had missed.

Deinde's Biblical Studies Web Search

Over in the comment section of my post on More on the Future for Online Textbooks, Bob MacDonald helpfully asks about the question of searching sites like the NT Gateway. The question reminded me of the excellent resource provided by Danny Zacharias over on Deinde. From this search box, you can search for Biblical Resources on the web that are indexed by sites like mine, Chris Heard's iTanakh and so on. It's a hugely useful resource, and one that is definitely worth more mentions than it usually gets:

Biblical Studies Web Search

The "Textyness" of the Textbook in a Digital Age

I must admit that I have never been a big fan of the "textbook", especially at university level.  University students are at the stage where they should be reading a range of primary and secondary materials and over-dependence on an introductory-level single-authored book will not bring out the best in them.  I appreciate, at the same time, that students often want something that will help them out with introducing a new topic and it can perform a useful function in guiding them through the early stages of something complex, and so it is a crutch that I have sometimes recommended, though always with lots of warnings and with a good range of different introductory textbooks too to illustrate the point.

Recent discussions about the possibilities of an online Old Testament Textbook (AKMA, NT Blog, Sansblogue, Anumma, AKMA, NT Blog) might cause us to reflect on the whole scenario of textbook-writing a bit further.  As several have implied already, the digital age allows us to rethink the way we do textbooks and I'd like to support Tim, Brooke and AKMA in that kind of thinking, and then to encourage still more radical thinking about what we are trying to do when we conceptualize textbooks.  I think textbooks have a couple of shortcomings, both of which can be overcome in the digital age.  One relates to the "text" bit and the the other relates to the "book" bit.  In this post, I'd like to address briefly the text bit.

Old-fashioned textbooks are just too texty.  For those of us who have some investment in the digital world, and that is all of us who are engaging in this discussion, we are familiar with the fact that it is now possible to access audio and video material far more straightforwardly than it was in the past.  In our area, there is a wealth of good audio and video material and this is only going to increase with time.  Think, just for starters, about Bibledex from the University of Nottingham, or the several resources available at St John's Nottingham.  I have added audio and video pages to lots of the NT Gateway pages in order to gather together the best of these resources.  The importance of this should not be underestimated.  Different students learn better with different media,   Some respond much more positively and learn much more quickly by listening to audio, others by seeing things represented graphically.  And that is to say nothing of the importance of thinking through how we work with students with disabilities, in particular, in this context, those who are blind or near-sighted.  Newer, digital textbook resources can integrate, embed, link to material that is not just blocks of text.

Let me try to illustrate this point by engaging with AKMA's original post:

Hey, in a perfect world, you could persuade the authors to record their chapters so you could distribute digital audio (and video — or perhaps, a video abstract of each chapter). So at this point, you have a textbook that’s free to consult as web pages, free to download as PDFs, and (again, ideally) free to listen to/watch in digital media.

I like the sound of this because it addresses the importance of integrating multi-media into the newly conceived, digital textbook.  It is the kind of thing that makes me enthusiastic about the way that AKMA is talking.   But my point is that the authors of the textbook in question do not have to wait for the perfect world for this to happen because high quality audio and video resources are already available on the web for free.  Let's say you are talking about the topic of form-criticism and introducing Richard Bauckham's recent contributions about the involvement of alleged eye-witnesses.  You could record your own audio or video about this, in which you attempt to summarize his position, or you could watch and listen to the man himself doing it for you.  Examples of this kind could be multiplied.  My point is not that we should stop producing new resources -- of course not.  But rather that we should start thinking seriously about the integration of good existing resources into our new model.

More on the Future for Online Textbooks

AKMA, Funding Neopublishing, continues to post things of interest on the topic started by Anumma, Open Access Intro to OT. In my previous post on this topic, The Future for Textbooks Online (with thanks to Tim Bulkeley on Sansblogue for an excellent discussion of my post alongside AKMA's), I suggested that we don't have to begin working on projects like this from scratch. There are now so many fantastic resources available on the web that the big issue is not so much how we create great resources but rather how we organize and publicize the existing ones in ways that will be helpful to our students. I suggested as one model the evolving NT Gateway, though I express interest in looking at other related and overlapping models.

Let me add some related thoughts.  Anumma articulates his goals for this project as one that:

• is freely available online;
  
• is historical- and literary-critical in focus (as is a Coogan or a Collins, say; in other words, not a “theological introduction” narrowly reflecting the concerns of faith communities or other readerly social contexts);
  
• is authored by a socially diverse body of contributors.
  

The first two elements are at the heart of a site like the NT Gateway -- it links to freely available materials and is itself free; it is historical-critical in focus; and the resources to which it links are as diverse as the authors that write them (which in fact means that too many of them are from too narrow a group, but that is a reflection, of course, of the state of the guild and something we could do something about in this kind of project).

Now, the advantages of beginning with what is already available on the net are several:

• No re-inventing the wheel is necessary.  Where excellent and diverse resources already exist, freely available on the net, one may as well work to those strengths rather than attempting, at every point, to create new resources.
• There is a huge psychological boost in working with existing resources rather than beginning from scratch.  A new project can be hugely daunting.  Working collaboratively to develop existing resources, to organize, to add, to fill in areas that are lacking -- this can be encouraging and fulfilling.
• It is much, much cheaper than beginning from scratch.
• It is much less labour intensive than beginning from scratch.
• It is easier to harness the great advantage of the internet in being fully multi-media.  You can pull in a range of resources, prose paper, website, podcasts, video clips and so on without the need to develop new websites, to begin recording new audio and new video.
• As children of our age, we are unduly impressed by what is new.  But sometimes, in scholarship, the old is good.  The advantage of a dynamic approach to this issue is that it enables us to draw from the storehouse both old and new.

I suspect that our difficulty in this area is that we are still inclined to think too narrowly in terms of the old-fashioned "textbook".  I would like to brainstorm a bit more about this, but I think it might need a separate post.

Apocryphicity

I hadn't seen anything of Tony Chartrand-Burke's Apocryphicity for months and when revising an article recently in which I mentioned the site, I went to check old link and it had gone. Then, quite by chance this morning, I came across it again at a new address:

Apocryphicity

I must have missed the move to a new address. Since there may be others who missed it too, and who do not have it on their blogrolls, I add a mention here.