Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Becker, Eva-Marie, ed.
Die antike Historiographie und die Anfange der christlichen Geschichtesschreibung
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Khiok-khng (K. k.), Yeo, ed.
Navigating Romans through Cultures: Challenging Readings by Charting a New Course
Reviewed by Johannes Loubser

Penner, Todd
In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellenists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography
Reviewed by Shelly Matthews

Seland, Torrey
Strangers in the Light: Philonic Perspectives on Christian Identity in 1 Peter
Reviewed by Fika Van Rensburg

Stare, Mira
Durch ihn leben: Die Lebensthematik in Joh 6
Reviewed by Michael Labahn

Court, John M., ed.
Biblical Interpretation: The Meanings of Scripture-- Past and Present
Reviewed by Stephen Moyise

"You say so" continued

This time last week I managed to find a little time to post on Jesus' answer to Pilate in Mark 15.2, "You say so", in response to Phil Harland on the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog. There are some useful responses now from Loren Rosson on The Busybody, "You Say So" and "You Say So" II: The Question of Messiahs, from Wayne Leman on Better Bibles, Translating συ λεγεις of Mark 15:2, and Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis, Morton Smith on Mark 15:2 ("So you say"). There are some particularly interesting and useful points made here, and I'd like to comment on some of them and to expand my own thoughts.

Stephen draws attention to a fascinating article by Morton Smith, “Notes on Goodspeed’s ‘Problems of New Testament Translation’,” JBL 64 (1945): 501-514 (which, incidentally, gives me the opportunity to mention for the first time, and belatedly, the fantastic new service to SBL members of the complete JBL back-catalogue at JSTOR). It's a cracking article, and on the case in point recommends the translation "So you say" "to preserve in English the ambiguity of the Greek, for it is only fair to the unlearned reader that the English text should present the same opportunities for misunderstanding as does the Greek". Stephen quotes the following segment from 308:

. . . The case of the answer to Pilate is exactly similar. For the Evangelists, of course, Jesus was a king. But when Pilate asks him if he is, they make him reply Σὺ λέγεις. And here their motive is clear, for, as John goes out of his way to explain, “Everyone that maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.” If, then, Jesus had openly claimed to be a king, in Pilate’s hearing, he would have been guilty of, and accordingly executed for, lèse-majesté. But all the Gospels are at pains to make clear that Pilate found Jesus innocent and had him executed only as a favor to the Jews. With the historical truth of this account we are not here concerned. The historical motive, which concerns us, is perfectly clear, for it was one of the principal fulfillments of prophecy, one of the main points of the apostolic preaching, that the Messiah, should be cast out and effectively killed by his own people. Σὺ λέγεις, therefore, in these passages, must be an ambiguous statement capable at least of being misunderstood by Pilate. . . .

I think that there is another element to what is going on, though, and I am not sure about the statement that "For the Evangelists, of course, Jesus was a king." Well, yes and no. For Mark, Jesus was the Messiah, the one anointed, but what was he anointed to do or to be? Mark's answer is that he was anointed to suffer, to die, to be raised and to be exalted as Son of Man. I don't think he conceives of Jesus as a "king" during his life-time -- that would be a nonsense. His kingdom is in the future. Some of those present with him would not taste death before they had tasted it, but it was not here yet.

In other words, Mark is careful to distinguish between terms like "Messiah" and "King", one of which Jesus is willing to own if he can qualify it, and one of which he is not. The term "Messiah" is always and inevitably eschatological -- it points forward to a time in the future when Jesus will be acknowledged as king. He is anointed to rule, but he is not ruling yet; the kingdom is still in the future. I think that one of the reasons that we tend to miss this nuance is that we tend to make "Messiah" and "King" synonyms when they are not. David was an anointed one before he was a king, and Jesus is his son. This is where I find elements in Loren Rosson's post helpful, especially the reminder of the importance of distinguising between messiahs and kings, even if I am not sure how we would work out such issues in relation to the historical Jesus.

One of the remarkable things about Mark's Passion Narrative is that he does have repeated royal imagery, and the term "king" repeatedly occurs on the lips of his opponents. Is the crucifixion a kind of darkly ironic coronation -- is this when Jesus the Messiah becomes King, when his kingdom comes? I suspect that this is the right way to read Mark. Jesus is anointed to suffer and die and be raised, and only through that destiny does he finally become King -- but the full consummation comes when he returns as King.

But there is another element in the exchange with Pilate that is too easily missed if we focus just on "Messiah" and "King" terminology. Pilate asks Jesus if he is King of the Jews. But Mark's Jesus does not want to own that term since he is anointed not just to become a king of the Jews but also a king of all nations. Only consider the incident in the Temple, where in Mark the complaint is that the temple should be a house of prayer for all the nations (11.17).

Victor Paul Furnish at Duke: Kenneth W. Clark Lectures

Dr. Victor Paul Furnish, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Southern Methodist University, will be presenting the 2006 Kenneth W. Clark Lectures on February 15 & 16. The lectures below are public, though word is that you'll need to get there early to secure a seat:

Wednesday, February 15, 2006 12:30 p.m Room 0014, Duke Divinity School
Lecture: No Fugitive Word: The Gospel According to Paul; Gospel and Theology in Paul's Letters

Thursday, February 16, 2006 9:00 a.m. Room 0016, Duke Divinity School
Lecture: No Fugitive Word: The Gospel According to Paul; Faith, Love, Hope

Crossan and Wright on the Resurrection of Jesus

This press release just received from Fortress. I saw this book at the SBL, but it has just been officially released:

Crossan and Wright on the Resurrection of Jesus

MINNEAPOLIS (February 1, 2006)— Two of today's most important and popular New Testament scholars, John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright, air their very different understandings of the historical reality and theological meaning of Jesus' resurrection in The Resurrection of Jesus from Fortress Press.

The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue brings two leading lights in Jesus studies together for a long-overdue conversation with one another and with significant scholars from other disciplines, highlighting points of agreement and disagreement between them and explores the many attendant issues.

The Resurrection of Jesus is edited Robert B. Stewart, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Greer-Heard Chair of Faith and Culture.

Contributors include:

* John Dominic Crossan
* N. T. Wright
* Robert Stewart
* William Lane Craig
* Craig Evans
* R. Douglas Geivett
* Gary Habermas
* Ted Peters
* Charles Quarles
* Alan Segal

Format: Paperback, 6” x 9”, 224 pages
Item No: 0-8006-3785-2

Price: $18.00

Publisher: Fortress Press

To order The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the web site at www.fortresspress.com. To request review copies (for media) or exam copies (for potential classroom use) please call 1-800-426-0115 ext. 234 or e-mail toddb@augsburgfortress.org. For speaking engagements and interviews call Bob Todd at 612-330-3234 or e-mail toddb@augsburgfortress.org.

How long did it take to walk from Nazareth to Sepphoris?

James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003): 298, ". . . the youthful Jesus would have (regularly?) visited Sepphoris, only two hours distant (5 km) from Nazareth by foot, perhaps even as a young carpenter assisting in the construction of its theatre." 5 km is apparently just over 3 miles, which you can walk in an hour at a stroll. Two hours would be a mile and a half an hour. Is Jimmy a slow walker?

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Burridge, Richard A.
What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Greco-Roman Biography
Reviewed by Uta Poplutz

Burridge, Richard A.
What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Greco-Roman Biography
Reviewed by Mitchell Reddish

Buscemi, Alfio Marcello
Lettera ai Galati: Commentario Esegetico
Reviewed by James West

Davis, James F.
Lex Talionis in Early Judaism and the Exhortation of Jesus in Matthew 5.38-42
Reviewed by Steven Bryan

"You say so"

On the ever-interesting Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean, Phil Harland has a post on Mark, "Who is this guy? The Gospel of Mark on the Identity of Jesus" in which, towards the end, he makes the following comment:

Jesus is publicly asked “Are you the Messiah (Christ)?” and, in an unprecedented manner (for Mark’s narrative), he openly proclaims “I am”. The secret is out. Then, when he is brought for another hearing before Pilate, the Roman governor, the issue of identity is at the fore: “Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ He answered him, ‘You say so’” (15:2 [NRSV]) — which amounts to a “yes” here.

But does the latter amount to a yes? Given that Jesus does say such an ambiguous yes in front of the high priest in 14.62, why not here in front of Pilate? What does σὺ λέγεις mean?

Perhaps one clue lies in the different questions asked by the high priest and by Pilate. The high priest's question is "Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed?" Now, we know that these are titles Mark approves of -- 1.1 announces the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ; the baptism and the transfiguration have God announcing that Jesus is his son; and Peter (Chapter 8) and the nameless woman (Chapter 14) recognise that Jesus is the Christ. The only thing that needs adding is some qualification -- he is anointed to suffer (8.31), or for burial (14.3-10), and now the confession that he is the Christ leads directly to his death.

But Pilate's question is different, "Are you the king of the Jews?" (15.2). Nowhere does Jesus own the title "king" in the Gospel, though it is the one that everyone imposes on Jesus throughout the Passion Narrative, king of the Jews, crown of thorns and so on. This is one of those places, I think, where John is a fine exegete of Mark and he teases out the meaning of the terse, ambiguous "You are saying so" in this way:

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" "Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?" "Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?" Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18.33-36)

PDF Problems

Several have commented on my post from this morning on Paula Fredriksen's PDFs. As predicted, when I got to class today, almost everyone had struggled with reading the article I had set (and in case you are thinking, "Excuses, excuses", that is not normal for Duke students, at least not in my limited experience so far).

But to comment on the post's comments, Eric Rowe notes that there are plenty of programmes available for converting originals to PDFs, and for free too. I use these myself, but I suppose that what holds others back are (1) the desire to have the document exactly as it appeared in print, with page numbers et al, rather than in the flawed original from their own PC; (2) the fact that research assistants and support staff are often those who prepare materials for scholars' homepages, and they work with what they are given, in this case printed originals. Some (not all) scholars who have homepages do not look carefully at the content on the page.

Crystal asks about why people use PDFs at all. I think the answer there is sheer convenience -- instant results. I know that that is why I've used them in the past, and with some regret because it takes away one of the glories of publishing on the web, which is hypertext. I know that in theory you can add hyperlinks (and so on) to your PDF, but in practice few do. One of the things I particularly dislike about PDFs of articles is the reading of footnotes and endnotes. The web offers the potential of a new way of reading academic papers, with nice, hyperlinked notes, but how often do we have that pleasure now that so many just upload a PDF?

A further relevant point: one of the advantages of the PDF adapted from the scholar's own e-original is that it can still be searchable, whereas the photo-scans of printed versions are usually not.

John Lyons asks about how publishers regard the uploading of scholars' work to the web. My own experience would be to suggest that they remain wary about the wholesale uploading of book manuscripts to the web, but appreciate that the reproduction of journal and FS articles can increase a scholar's profile and so increase book sales. But that's just my own perspective, and it may be inaccurate.

Did Jesus "declare all foods clean"?

There's an interesting blog thread at the moment surrounding James G. Crossley's The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (JSNTSS 266; London: T & T Clark, 2004), the catalyst for which was the most recent edition of the SBL's Review of Biblical Literature, which featured reviews of James's book by John Painter and David du Toit. James Crossley responds on his Earliest Christian History blog (one of the joys of academic blogging is that you can respond publicly to reviews of your work; our forefathers just had to grumble in the senior common room) and Stephen Carlson follows up with a characteristically thoughtful post on Hypotyposeis. One element in the discussion is what the apparently editorial comment in Mark 7.19c, "Thus he declared all foods clean" implies about Mark's view of the law and Jesus' attitude to it. I don't have James's book to hand, having lent it to someone (see how popular it is?), but what I want to add is at a slight tangent and relates to the translation of Mark 7.19c.

I have long been bothered by the unnecessarily robust verb "declare" here, and the unduly forthright "Thus he declared all foods clean." This very common translation gives the impression that Mark is flagging up his comments here far more blatantly than he is. The translation is based on a reading of Mark 7.18-19 that construes καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα at the end of Jesus' speech of 7.19 with καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς at the beginning of 7.18, thus "Jesus says to them . . . cleansing all foods," or "Jesus says, cleansing all foods, 'Are you too without understanding . . .'" The reason that "Thus he declared . . . " comes in is that translators are anxious about bringing forward the end of one verse (19) to the beginning of another (18) -- it breaks the verse-by-verse rule of Bible translation, without which people would not be able to look up the verses they wanted in the right place. And given the necessity to keep words in sequence, the decision is made to translate this participle phrase by adapting the force of λέγει and turning the whole into a fresh, interpretative clause. But that move, from a clarificatory parenthesis to a stand-alone statement, and the use of the word "declare", alters the force of the original.

Now it may be that the standard translation picks up the sense of this interpretative clause, even if it overstates it, but even there I am not sure. Could the person orally delivering Mark 7.18-19 have made this intelligible?:

He says to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?", cleansing all foods.

I am not convinced that we are reading Mark right here.

Paula Fredriksen PDFs

I've often praised the way that Paula Fredriksen has PDFs of lots of her key articles on her homepage and I sometimes set them as reading for my classes. I set one for my class later today "From Jesus to Christ: The Contribution of the Apostle Paul" but when I sat down to re-read it I was struck by how bad the quality of the scan was, at times almost unreadable. The same is true of several others on the page. It's a shame since it's a great contribution to on-line scholarship for those to be present; but people need to be able to read them if they are to take advantage of such a great contribution.

A good introduction to Textual Criticism?

In comments, Sean du Toit asks if I could recommend a good introduction to Textual Criticism. Indeed I can:

David Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Amazon have it on "Search Inside" so you can get a good taster before buying. And it's on Google Books too, like a lot of CUP's stuff.

Incidentally, the fact that it was available for searching allowed me to try out the terms discussed in that previous blog post and comments and it seems that David is, on the whole pretty consistent in his usage: "textual criticism" x 50; "textual critic" x 7; "text critic" x 0; "text criticism" x 0; but "text-critical" x 7 and "textual critical" x 0.

Updates (Friday, 9.33): thanks to Matt Page for the corrected Amazon link for David Parker's book, now adjusted above. Thanks too to Holger and to Steve Walton for the endorsement of another useful introduction to NT Textual Criticism, which I had completely forgotten about:

J. K. Elliott and I Moir, Manuscripts and the Text of the New Testament: An Introduction for English Readers (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995)

Alas, it is a bit expensive on-line, like several of the Continuum back-catalogue (including one of my own books, to my frustration); e.g. see Amazon. It is reviewed by Tim Finney on TC.

Lüdemann on The Intolerant Gospel

Thanks to Gerd Lüdemann for drawing my attention to a new article on-line:

The Intolerant Gospel
Gerd Luedemann

It is from the February-March 2006 issue of Free Inquiry and located on the Council for Secular Humanism Website.

Just one minor comment:

The salvation or eternal damnation of individual human beings depends on whether they believe or do not believe in him. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. But whoever does not believe will be condemned"-this is the clear message of the risen Jesus at the end of Mark's Gospel, the first of the four canonical accounts to be written.

The verse in question is Mark 16.16, part of the longer ending of Mark, in which case the mention of Mark as "the first of the four . . . to be written" is irrelevant, no?

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Brooke, George J.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament
Reviewed by Michael Moore

Crossley, James G.
The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity
Reviewed by John Painter

Crossley, James G.
The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity
Reviewed by David du Toit

Litwak, Kenneth Duncan
Echoes of Scripture in Luke-Acts: Telling the History of God's People Intertextually
Reviewed by Bart Koet

Mrázek, Jirí and Jan Roskovec, eds.
Testimony and Interpretation: Early Christology in Its Judeo-Hellenistic Milieu: Studies in Honour of Petr Pokorný
Reviewed by Leo Percer

Crum available at Wipf and Stock

I was pleased to hear on the Gospel of Thomas e-list recently, from Simon Gathercole, that Walter Crum's Coptic Dictionary is now available from Wipf and Stock -- yet another very useful reprint:

Walter E. Crum, A Coptic Dictionary

At $108, it is not cheap, but it has always been expensive on the second-hand book market and this is a welcome re-issue.

On the Gospel of Thomas list, Judy Redman also posted on forthcoming electronic editions of Crum.

American Jesus scholarship coming of age?

I am preparing a lecture at the moment on the contemporary scene in Historical Jesus scholarship (having taking a lecture on Schweitzer, then a lecture on Bultmann, Käsemann and the new quest, then a lecture on Geza Vermes and Ed Sanders) and as I re-read some materials on the Jesus Seminar, I am struck by this comment from the late Robert Funk, just a little over twenty years ago:

Perhaps most important of all, these developments have taken place predominantly, though not exclusively, in American scholarship. We need not promote chauvinism; we need only recognize that American biblical scholarship threatens to come of age, and that in itself is a startling new stage in our academic history. We may even be approaching the time when Europeans, if they know what they are about, will come to North America on sabbaticals to catch up, rather than the other way around. It is already clear that Europeans who do not read American scholarship are falling steadily behind. (Opening Remarks of Jesus Seminar Founder, Robert Funk, 21-24 March 1985)

It's interesting to read that prophecy of not so long ago, and in many ways Funk has been proved right. In Historical Jesus studies at least, one's mind naturally turns to Germans, and a handful of Brits prior to 1970. But the last thirty years or so have been quite different.

I'm wondering about geographical affiliations of Jesus questers in recent times. I suppose that a surprising number of so-called third questers have an association with the U.K., Geza Vermes, Anthony Harvey, Tom Wright. Ed Sanders had written Jesus and Judaism prior to coming to Oxford in 1984, but it was published in 1985. Then there's Gerd Theissen in Germany. There are of course many prominent Americans too, Ben Meyer, John P. Meier, Paula Fredriksen, Dale Allison and more. Jesus Seminar folk, on the other hand, tend to be almost exclusively based in the US, and perhaps that is no coincidence in the light of Funk's remarks above.

An aside on the same topic, I have struggled with attempts to categorize recent Jesus scholarship and I am inclined to agree with Dale Allison in "The Secularizing of the Historical Jesus"* that the now standard division into three quests is misleading and unhelpful. Nevertheless, I was struck today to see that Lane McGaughy consciously aligns the Jesus Seminar's work with the work of the New Quest (The Search for the Historical Jesus: Why start with the sayings?). I was struck because I had thought that Tom Wright's category "renewed new quest" in his inventory in Jesus and the Victory of God was a kind of marginalizing of the work of Crossan et al. I had not realized that it was in the Jesus Seminar's own self-description. Notice, in particular, the following:

The agenda of the Jesus Seminar thus evolved from the New Quest and its attempt to reconstruct the teaching of the historical Jesus. In distinction from the so-called Third Quest which is attempting to locate Jesus within the religious and social world of first-century Judaism, the work of the Jesus Seminar may be seen as a renewal and extension of the New Quest (though some members of the Jesus Seminar may see their own work as part of the Third Quest). In chapter four of his recent book Honest to Jesus, Robert Funk refers to the work of the Jesus Seminar not as part of the Third Quest, but as the Renewed Quest for Jesus . . . . The work of the Jesus Seminar can thus be seen as the continuation of the New Quest for the historical Jesus.

I'm really surprised by the explicit acknowledgement that there are others who are engaged in a different enterprise, and the apparent distancing from the task of "attempting to locate jesus within hte religious and social world of first-century Judaism". I thought that everyone took for granted that one of the very reasons for the collapse of the new quest was its negative evaluation of what it so shockingly called "late Judaism".

* This was on-line on Dale Allison's homepage for ages, but it seems that it is no longer there, nor are any of his other articles (and there's a new pic.). Google locates a version here but I don't know if it's legitimate or not. Anyway, if you have a copy of Resurrecting Jesus (and if you haven't, why not?), it's the first essay in there, and a cracking read, as is the whole book.

Textual criticism and text critics

I am just preparing an introductory lecture on Textual Criticism for my New Testament class and I fell to wondering why it is that everyone tends to talk about textual criticism and text critics. Why is it that when we start talking about the individuals who practise textual criticism, we call them text critics? Why not textual critics or text criticism? Or is it just my perception that those are the conventions?

SBL Forum latest and Graphic Novels

It's always interesting to read the latest in the SBL Forum, which continues to go from strength to strength (though, as I have often said before, I am looking forward to the day when they introduce a proper, browsable archive), and I particularly enjoyed the article this month on graphic novels and the Bible:

The Bible and Graphic Novels: A Review and Interview with the Authors of "Marked" and "Megillat Esther"
Dan W. Clanton, Jr.

One of the two comic books reviewed is Steve Ross's Marked, which I mentioned here last November (Graphic Novel based on Mark's Gospel).

Since we are talking about graphic novels and the NT, let me also mention that !Hero: The Rock Opera, often mentioned on this blog, also has its own comic book, but I must admit that I have not seen this yet.

New Jesus film: Son of Man

Regular readers will not be surprised to hear of my excitement at the news of a new Jesus film, Son of Man, already mentioned in November by Peter Chattaway on Filmchat, Jesus comes to Johannesburg, and now with more information in a fresh post announcing the arrival of the film in the USA, at a festival in Utah:

Son of Man comes to Sundance -- an update

So what do we know so far? IMDb have pretty scant information: Son of Man (2006) but there is more on the Sundance Film Festival website, linked to by Peter Chattaway:

World Dramatic Competition: Son of Man

South Africa, 2005, 86 Minutes, color

Director:
Mark Dornford-May

Screenwriter:
Mark Dornford-May, Andiswa Kedama, Pauline Malefane

The story of Jesus reclaimed as an African fable: a simple concept becomes a remarkable cinematic experience in Son of Man. This is the second installment from the collaboration of director Mark Dornford-May and the South African theatre company, Dimpho Di Kopane. The moniker means "combined talents," and it aptly describes the incredible creative energy on both sides of the camera. Shot against the backdrop of a violence-riddled township and with text updated to modern time, Son of Man delivers one indelible impression after another. Mary conceives the Christ child during a militia attack on a grade school, Jesus asks for the surrender of handguns from his apostles, and the angel Gabriel is a precocious child marked with simple white feathers. Equally intriguing is the melding of the crucifixion and resurrection–alluding to the fact that in today's Africa, political dissidents, as Jesus was, are conveniently made to disappear. In song and originality, the spirit of Son of Man is contagious, a life-enriching elixir for Christians and non-Christians alike who feel mired in the unyielding bigotry of fundamentalism. By modernizing one of the world's most famous stories, Son of Man creates lasting resonance and imparts a significance that is truly glorious.— John Cooper

Peter also links to a Reuters article:

Black Jesus film preaches politics over religion

Billed as the world's first black Jesus movie, "Son of Man" portrays Christ as a modern African revolutionary and aims to shatter the Western image of a placid savior with fair hair and blue eyes.

The South African film, which premieres on Sunday at the U.S. Sundance festival in Utah, transports the life and death of Christ from first century Palestine to a contemporary African state racked by war and poverty.

Jesus is born in a shanty-town shed, a far cry from a manger in a Bethlehem stable. His mother Mary is a virgin, though feisty enough to argue with the angels. Gun-wielding authorities fear his message of equality and he ends up hanging on a cross.

"We wanted to look at the gospels as if they were written by spindoctors and to strip that away and look at the truth," director Mark Dornford-May told Reuters in an interview.

"The truth is that Christ was born in an occupied state and preached equality at a time when that wasn't very acceptable."

I suppose spoil-sport Historical Jesus scholars will want to point out that Israel was not "an occupied state" (e.g. see E. P. Sanders's excellent article, Jesus in Historical Context), or that it is an oversimplification to think of Jesus "preaching equality" (e.g. see John H. Elliott's Jesus was not an egalitarian), but hey, it's a new Jesus film and there's plenty to be excited about. It's an interesting comment that this is "the world's first black Jesus movie". I can't think of another off-hand, though one that comes close is !Hero, a rock opera that is available on DVD (filmed stage show) and record, and -- as I've commented before -- it's well worth the purchase if you don't have it yet.

Update (Saturday, 01.24): there is more here:

dimpho di kopane :: film :: Son of Man

The page includes a PDF press kit, stills from the film and more.

End of Biblical Theology blog

I don't seem to have so much time to hang around on-line these days, alas, and I was quite surprised on my return to the land of the blogging to see the demise of Jim West's Biblical Theology. In his own inimitable way, Jim had carved out a niche with that blog, making it the place people went to hear a lot of the latest news on Biblical Studies related issues. I don't think anyone was ever quicker to the mark than Jim and even if some of the material covered there was not to everyone's taste, he was performing a useful service. So this is something of a lament, all the more so in that the entire archive appears to have been deleted, presumably a year or two's worth? It may be that others have commented on this on-line, but I've not had the chance to catch up with the blogs yet. Anyway, I am sorry to see this blog go. Jim has a new blog called First Baptist Church of Petros, centred on the church he pastors in Tennessee, and of course I wish him all the best with that.

The Email Mountain

My apologies if you are awaiting a reply from me; the email mountain is enormous this week, and without losing more sleep I don't have time to keep up with it as efficiently as I would like. And I've had even less time to blog this week, as you may have noticed. But I am hopeful of being able to find some more spare moments today.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Bolt, Peter G.
Jesus' Defeat of Death: Persuading Mark's Early Readers
Reviewed by William Campbell

Dibelius, Martin
Edited by K. Hanson
The Book of Acts: Form, Style, and Theology
Reviewed by Renate Hood

Donahue, John R., ed.
Life in Abundance: Studies of John's Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown
Reviewed by Paul Anderson

Gil Arbiol, Carlos J.
Los Valores Negados: Ensayo de exégesis socio-científica sobre la autoestigmatización en el movimiento de Jesús
Reviewed by Alejandro Botta

Jung, Chang-Wook
The Original Language of the Lukan Infancy Narrative
Reviewed by Gert Steyn

Kaminouchi, Alberto de Mingo
But It Is Not So among You: Echoes of Power in Mark 10:32-45
Reviewed by William Campbell

Kirk, Alan and Tom Thatcher, eds.
Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity
Reviewed by Thomas Kraus

Matthews, Shelly and E. Leigh Gibson, eds.
Violence in the New Testament
Reviewed by Mark Bredin

Crossan on the web

I finished getting together my syllabus for a course on the Historical Jesus tonight, and in the process of hunting down sources and references, I came across a site I don't recall having seen before:

John Dominic Crossan

It's at johndcrossan.com (a little odd since he's known by Dominic rather than John) and appears to be run by HarperSanFrancisco and is vehicle to advertise his books. There are excerpts from each of Crossan's recent books, though it is not quite as promising as it first looks -- where it says "Read Chapter 1", it is usually just three or four pages. But still a nice site.

I also came across this on Beliefnet, which I'd missed before, or forgotten about:

In Search of Paul Presentation

It's a nice virtual tour around some of the sites discussed in the book of the same name co-authored with Jonathan Reed. You hear a commentary from Crossan (sounding uncharacteristically stilted) and watch a slide show; it takes 10 minutes or so to go through.

David Starkey on Paul

A few minutes ago, just before the beginning of the Today programme, there was a little trailer for the following:

Who Killed Christianity?
Dr David Starkey argues that five major Christian figures distorted, even betrayed, the Christian faith as envisaged by Jesus. Defenders argue back. 1/5. St Paul.

I have to admit that Starkey is one of my least favourite people, and it's not a programme I am looking forward to. It's on at 9.30 am GMT, by which time I'll probably be in bed, though unfortunately it is likely to be archived so that I'll be able to listen to it later.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

The latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Bovon, François
Studies in Early Christianity
Reviewed by H. H. Williams

Delville, Jean-Pierre
L'Europe de l'Exégeses au XVIe Siecle: Interprétations de la Parabole des Ouvriers a la Vigne (Matthieu 20, 1-16)
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Luz, Ulrich
Translated by Rosemary Selle
Studies in Matthew
Reviewed by Robert McIver

Luz, Ulrich
Translated by Rosemary Selle
Studies in Matthew
Reviewed by Clare Rothschild

Riches, John and David C. Sim, eds.
The Gospel of Matthew in Its Roman Imperial Context
Reviewed by Robert McIver

Stegman, Thomas
The Character of Jesus: The Linchpin to Paul's Argument in 2 Corinthians
Reviewed by Verlyn Verbrugge

Fortress Press Presents Teaching Awards

This Press Release is from Fortress:

Fortress Press Presents Teaching Awards

MINNEAPOLIS (December 20, 2005)-Fortress Press presented two teaching awards at this year's annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature conference in Philadelphia, PA on November 19, 2005.

The awards-one for teaching undergraduates, the other for teaching graduates or seminarians-are given in recognition of innovative teaching, unique approaches to subject areas, or superb communication with today's students in biblical studies, religious studies, theology, ethics, or ministry. Candidates were nominated by peers and chosen by independent judges.

Dr. Daniel L. Smith-Christopher is Professor of Theological Studies and Director of Peace Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Among his innovative techniques cited in the nominations are his engagement of students directly with physical remains of the material culture of the Bible as a way of connecting archaeology and the development of the biblical texts. Likewise, he has encouraged students to get "out the classroom and into the real world" to see how various ethnic and cultural groups interpret and respond to the historic sacred texts today. Smith-Christopher's teaching, said one nominator, "captures the imagination of the students by approaching the worlds of the biblical text in non-traditional ways, especially ways that put students directly in touch with intra-cultural approaches to the Bible. (His own roots as a Quaker teaching in a Roman Catholic university context only add to this!)" Among Professor Smith-Christopher's several books is A Biblical Theology of Exile (Fortress Press, 2002).

Michael J. Gorman, Professor of Sacred Scripture at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, is also Dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology there. Dean Gorman was particularly praised for his attempts to address the problems of so many biblical students with little prior background in the critical scientific approach to the biblical texts and of how they may be applied pastorally. Particularly, he has developed a resource, published as Elements of Biblical Exegesis (Hendrickson, 2001), to introduce students to interpretive methods. And he has worked with the faculty of St. Mary's to develop Scripture: An Ecumenical Introduction to the Bible (Hendrickson, 2005) to bring exegetical and historical insights to a broad, ecumenical audience.

In presenting these awards proclaimed Fortress Press publisher, Scott Tunseth, "Fortress Press joins professors from around the country in acknowledging the talents of these educators and presents them as models for the academic community. We hope also in this process to identify teaching strategies to inform development of future classroom resources."

---
I once shared a cab/bus ride with Michael Gorman to the airport after one of the SBLs, I forget which, and we talked all the way about teaching. Many congratulations to both on their achievement.

Response to Lüdemann on Lüdemann's homepage

Just before Christmas, some readers will remember that I engaged in a discussion of Gerd Lüdemann's press release The Christmas Stories are Pious Fairy Tales. I responded in Lüdemann on Christmas; then Prof. Lüdemann responded to my blog post in Response to Mark Goodacre and Stephen Carlson and I added a further Response to Lüdemann. The dialogue is also now reproduced on Gerd Lüdedmann's Homepage, and I am grateful to Prof. Lüdemann for giving me this gracious "right to reply".

Review of Biblical Literature latest (belated)

Among the many emails in my pending tray is one I've missed that I try always to blog, the latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Barclay, John M. G., ed.
Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire
Reviewed by Pablo Torijano Morales

Barclay, John M. G., ed.
Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire
Reviewed by Allen Kerkeslager

Asano, Atsuhiro
Community-Identity Construction in Galatians: Exegetical, Social-Anthropological and Socio-Historical Studies
Reviewed by Francois Vouga

Bakke, O. M.
Translated by Brian McNeil
When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity
Reviewed by Carolyn Osiek

Köstenberger, Andreas J.
John
Reviewed by Jan Van Der Watt

Økland, Jorunn
Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space
Reviewed by Antoinette Wire

Thurston, Bonnie B. and Judith Ryan
Philippians & Philemon
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Biblical Studies Bulletin latest

The latest edition of the Biblical Studies Bulletin from Grove Books and edited by Michael Thompson is now availbale on-line. It's always worth a look:

Biblical Studies Bulletin 38

I particularly enjoyed the report of the British New Testament Conference 2005, but it's all worth reading.

Fredriksen On the Passion of the Christ

I was just looking at Paula Fredriksen's web page -- I am putting together teaching materials for a course on the Historical Jesus and she has so much useful on-line material. She has a new book advertised there, On The Passion of the Christ : Exploring the Issues Raised by the Controversial Movie. It turns out that the book is in fact a re-issue with a much more interesting front cover (a picture from the film, see left) of the book previously published by Miramax and entitled Perspectives on the Passion of the Christ (see Another Passion of the Christ Book and A Short Review of Perspectives on the Passion of the Christ). It seems that Paula Fredriksen has added a new preface too. My guess is (with no disrespect) that if you already have the Miramax edition, there is not enough new in this re-issue to make it worth buying. But if you don't have it, now would obviously be a good time to buy it. I found the book pretty frustrating myself, and the overwhelmingly polemical tone of the vast majority of essays made it depressing reading. I once meant to write a review of it, but instead I have written notes with a view to writing a paper on what scholars' perceptions of the film tell us about contemporary NT scholarship. More on that anon, I hope.

There are three scholarly collections, to my knowledge, on The Passion of the Christ:

(1) The first out was the Miramax collection Perspectives on the Passion of the Christ just mentioned, and now re-issued by the University of California Press under the title On The Passion of the Christ.

(2) Next out was Kathleen Corley and Robert L. Webb (eds.), Jesus and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, in my opinion a stronger volume, not least because it was more strongly edited, with specific essays commmissioned on specific topics. Did I mention that I have an essay in this one?

(3) Most recently S. Brent Plate (ed.), Re-viewing the Passion: Mel Gibson's Film and Its Critics, one of the highlights of which is Peter Chattaway's essay.

Just one author, I think I am right in saying, found his/her way into two out of the three books. Quiz question: who is it?

NT Gateway updates (or the lack of them)

I am getting a lot of emails at the moment asking me to add things to the New Testament Gateway, new resources, URLs to change and so on. I am afraid that I have not had a moment to add anything to the site since moving to the USA in September, and I don't foresee a chance to update it any time soon. I seem to have been able to snatch the odd moment to blog, even though not at the rate I was once blogging, and I hope that that will continue. In the mean time, though, there is the ever present mountain of correspondence to work through. Even putting all the NT Gateway materials to one side, I am having to answer dozens and dozens of emails a day to try to get back on track. I think I can do it, and still prepare classes for next week, but for the time being the New Testament Gateway proper will have to continue to take a back seat. Sorry about that, and I'll keep you up to date on the (lack of) progress.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all readers of the NT Gateway blog. We have returned to the USA after an excellent break in the UK (details on The Americanization of Emily, It's Chriiiiistmaaassss! and Happy New Year) and I am looking forward to getting back to bloggng at some point soon.

Second Annual Ralphies

I am beginning to work through my bloglines backlog of posts and still with hundreds to go, I realize to my horror that some go back weeks. One item of particular pleasure is the annual indulgence of bibliobloggers giving their "best ofs" in the Second Annual Ralphies. As regular readers will know, this is an academic New Testament studies based blog in which personal posts are only very rarely allowed a place, but the Ralphies are a pleasure I did partake of in 2004 (first annual Ralphies) and very much later than everyone else, I thought I'd add mine for 2005 too. I suppose there really ought to be a cut-off point for best-ofs, perhaps 2 January or something like that, and in recognition of that I am going to fictionalise the date of this posting back to 2 January.

Best nonfiction book: John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes: this is the unfinished auto-biography of the greatly missed John Peel, completed by his wife Sheila. He is still so greatly missed. I still can't quite believe he's gone.

Best fiction book: I didn't read any from 2005.

Best film: King Kong, I think. Honourable mention: Pride and Prejudice. Most overrated: either Crash or Batman Begins.

Best CD of the year: The Fall, Heads Roll

Song of the year: Kaiser Chiefs, I Predict a Riot; Madonna, Hung Up; The Fall, What about us?

As in 2004, I add a couple of extra categories and campaign for these to be added in 2006 too. I didn't go to any gigs in 2005, so drop that category here, but my move to America made me more conscious of the joys of BBC radio, and of British sport, so I add some extra categories:

Best TV programme: Dr Who wins hands down -- I thought I'd died and gone to television heaven. If you haven't seen this series yet, with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth doctor, and penned by Russell T. Davies, you are in for a real treat (it premieres in the US a year late, on Sci Fi in March). It wasn't just the best of 2005, but one of the best TV series ever -- I am serious! And as if it could get any better, it went and got better with the Christmas Invasion starring tenth doctor David Tennant, with a new series to look forward to in the spring.

Best radio programme: I'm sorry I haven't a clue -- still going strong after 34 years, and hilarious as ever -- makes driving home listening to the radio dangerous.

Best sporting event: England winning the Ashes, of course.

Christmas Break

I'm off to England for a Christmas break and so there'll be no blogging until the new year. Speaking of England, I did a guest blog yesterday on The Americanization of Emily on How to cope without British TV and radio, but happily that's not something I will have to worry about while I'm away.

Thank you very much for all the support with the blog over the last year, and for all the contributions, encouragements and comments. I look forward to more NT Gateway blogging in the new year and in the mean time wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. For those who don't celebrate Christmas, my very best wishes.

Kloppenborg, Segal and Hurtado debate

Thanks to David Mackinder and John Marshall for mentioning this:

Jesus and the Gospel: What Really Happened?

It's an email debate between three of the top brass, John Kloppenborg, Alan Segal and Larry Hurtado. I've not had a chance to read it yet myself (and it's still ongoing) because I am on the road, but look forward to checking it out when I get back.

Response to Lüdemann

I have now finished my first set of final grading here at Duke so I have a moment to turn again to Gerd Lüdemann on Christmas. Lüdemann published a press release headed The Christmas Stories are Pious Fairy Tales to which I responded here on Friday, Lüdemann on Christmas. Prof. Lüdemann responded to my blog post yesterday, Response to Mark Goodacre and Stephen Carlson, and asked me to post it here. I would now like to respond to those comments.

It will perhaps not surprise the reader that I was a little taken aback by the rather strong tone of Prof. Lüdemann's response, some of which I thought went a little further than the kind of civil scholarly discourse I in general tend to prefer. I suspect that this was at least partly due to some misunderstanding of my own tone, which was attempting, at points, to be light hearted and a bit tongue-in-cheek. Of course one of the problems with blogging is that the intended tone does not always come out right, and what I am writing with a smile may be read with a frown. One of the reasons for the elements of levity in my response was that I found Lüdemann's tone in the press release so strident. So when I criticize Lüdemann's use of the term "pious fairy tales", e.g. by commenting that we have an angel rather than a fairy on the top of our Christmas tree, this is not to be taken too seriously. And when Lüdemann comments on my reference to troubles communicating with the 8th Century BCE Isaiah, where I mention the universal translator and babel fish (references to Star Trek and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the uninitiated), I am simply having a bit of fun, so I take it as a compliment that Prof Lüdemann finds them "silly and irrelevant", which was the point. Perhaps I've been watching too much Monty Python since I came to the USA (it's the prime staple of BBC America).

I had commented on Lüdemann's insistence on "ten unquestionable facts", and what "historical research" had "demonstrated once and for all" by suggesting that this was stated too strongly. What historical research can do is "to show that elements in the story are implausible or problematic", to which Lüdemann responds:

This is simply carping about blunt and straightforward talk that has no time for the nuances and niceties of scholastic debate. Soften a couple of phrases, add a few qualifiers and weasel-wording extenuations, if you like; but it will all come down to the same thing. [I have changed to lower-case here and throughout, which I find easier to read than upper case.]

I do not share quite so low a view of "the nuances and niceties of scholastic debate" and think that precision in our language is important when we are engaging in scholarship, especially when we are encouraging our students to do the same. I don't think that it is "qualifiers and weasel-wording extenuations" to describe the academic task as precisely and clearly as possible. To be a good historian is not only to know what we can say about the past with confidence, but also to know what the limits of the historian are. I am keen to make clear that my own attitude to doing ancient history has been formed in interaction with Prof. Lüdemann's work; I have learnt much from his own cautious approach to history, and I frequently engage with it in my teaching (especially on Pauline chronology).

Later, I asked "Is talk of "the Christmas story" itself unhelpful when one is talking about Matthew and Luke?" to which Lüdemann responded, "One cannot determine what this question means". I was a bit terse there. I was simply wondering whether it is helpful to talk about "the Christmas story" in a press release, the aim of which is presumably to communicate about the Biblical narratives to a broad audience, some of whom would not realize that "the Christmas story" was in fact a harmonized, popularized narrative based on elements derived from Matthew and Luke. It's not a particularly important point; I just wondered whether it gave the impression that you could go to the Bible and find something resembling "the Christmas story" that we see in nativity plays and the like.

More importantly, I went on to write:

Some of the Biblical verses alluded to by Matthew are such an odd fit with the events narrated that it is difficult to imagine that Matthew, or anyone else, "derived" the narrative from the prophecies.

And Lüdemann responded:

Call it "created” or "derived” or "inspired by”; it makes little enough difference. This admission shows beyond cavil that narrative elements have their roots in the Hebrew Bible and have resulted from a process of radical revision.

My point is that given that some of Matthew's scriptural citations are a relatively poor fit for the material they are supposed to be confirming, it seems likely that at some points Matthew has not derived the tradition from the prophecy. Rather, the tradition sometimes comes first, and the Biblical citation comes afterwards. Whereas Lüdemann is working with a kind of "prophecy historicized" model, I am suggesting that sometimes the exact reverse is taking place, and we are dealing with tradition scripturalized. Let me clarify that I do not think that this is happening all the way through Matthew's Birth Narrative -- the prophecy historicized model sometimes works well, perhaps most obviously in the case of the birth in Bethlehem, which, I would guess is a prophecy historicized because it is a good fit. But there are other cases where the prophecy historicized model does not work, and the best example is Matt. 2.23, on which I commented as follows:

Where does it say that the Messiah would live in Nazara? Matthew is weakly scripturalizing the tradition he knows.

And Lüdemann responds:

To be sure, in this one case, the author has manufactured out of whole cloth a citation in order to give scriptural authority to a simple biographical fact: Jesus came from Nazareth. Invention? Lie? Call it what you will.

We are agreed, then, on the direction here, that the tradition (Jesus was from Nazara) has been scripturalized (though my preference is to avoid language like "invention" and "lie"). What I am suggesting is that this interesting, agreed phenomenon right at the end of Matthew's Birth Narrative, could give us a clue to what is going on elsewhere too.

Another particularly good contender for the phenomenon of tradition scripturalized (i.e. a pre-Matthean tradition that is overlaid with Matthew's own scriptural reference) is, I would argue, at 1.23, where Isaiah 7.14 LXX, "A virgin shall conceive . . ." is given as the scriptural text that explicates Jesus' unusual conception out of wedlock. If this tradition was well known -- and Jane Schaberg and others make a very good case that it was -- then Matthew has not derived the story of Jesus' conception from Isaiah 7.14. On the contrary, the tradition came first and the scripture that for Matthew explained it came afterwards. I think that Lüdemann in fact largely agrees with this scenario:

Granted that this line of argument has further support in Matthew’s curious inclusion in Jesus’ genealogy of four problematical pregnancies (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba), the Isaiah quote, coming as it does from perhaps the most revered of the prophets, is hardly thereby to be discounted.

The four women are, following Schaberg and others, no doubt mentioned by Matthew because of unusual sexual unions outside of wedlock, and it seems likely that this points to a pre-Matthean tradition of Jesus' conception outside of wedlock. And if that is the case, the story of Jesus' conception is clearly not derived from, or invented on the basis of, Isaiah 7.14.

Lüdemann is concerned, though, that I may be ignorant of the issues connected with Isaiah 7.14 LXX:

Here Goodacre seems to be unaware that the Hebrew almah ("young woman", as opposed to betulah, "virgin”) was rendered by the Greek parthenos (often but not always intending "virgin”) in the Septuagint. Since Matthew apparently relied on the Septuagint, he would quite naturally cite it as evidence of a special birth.

The latter clause here captures nicely the process of scripturalization, that Matthew "would quite naturally cite it as evidence of a special birth" -- he cites the text as evidence; he does not derive the story from there. Of course Matthew is working from the LXX of Isaiah 7.14 here, and of course I am aware of basics like that. My point is that even the LXX of Isaiah 7.14 is not especially appropriate -- it's nothing to do with the birth of a Messiah in the distant future. So Matt. 1.23 is a relatively weak scripturalization of the tradition, and my guess is that Matthew goes to it because he likes the "Emmanuel" part, which famously gets its pair at the end of the Gospel, 28.20.

On the issue of Jesus' birthplace, as I indicated before I am inclined to agree with Lüdemann. But I dislike the language of "unquestionable fact" when we do not have so much as a tradition to the effect that Jesus was born in Nazareth, let alone birth records. If there is some scope for doubt -- and who knows whether Jesus might have been born in Cana, Nain or Bethsaida or anywhere else -- then it is incautious to speak of birth in Nazareth as "unquestionable fact". Ancient history is about nuanced judgements.

Regarding angels in the story, Lüdemann had said that they "derive from primitive mythology". I facetiously mentioned fairies (referencing my comments at the beginning of the post) but more seriously added that the "derive from" is a little too strong given that even today, a person with a religious world view might articulate their experience of the world by using language of angels, demons, etc. The language often encapsulates or masks a description of reality that could be articulated using scientific language. In other words, the presence of religious language is not itself an index of lack of historicity. It is only an indication of the kind of world view witnessed in the text. Lüdemann's response, which suggests that I am splitting hairs and attempting to bolster a tenuous case, does not take seriously the nature of my objection, which is that Lüdemann's remarks were overstated, and his method questionable.

Lüdemann also commented on the lack of Magi in Luke's account, to which I responded that Luke would not be expected to include Magi given his known attitude to them in Acts, to which Lüdemann respnds:

Here is another irrelevant point, an objection for the sake of objecting. Their absence from Luke’s account was adduced only to show the irreconcilability (and therefore the all but certainly fictitious nature) of the two accounts.

I don't think that this deals with the point. If Luke knew of the Magi, one would not expect him to include them given his antipathy towards Magi in general, so their absence from Luke at best simply reminds us of that antipathy. It can't tell us anything about the historicity or otherwise of the tradition in Matthew. Difference between Matthew and Luke cannot in itself be an index of lack of historicity, nor does Lüdemann treat it this way in other contexts.

Overall, this response, in addition to my previous comments, may give the impression that there is more distance between Lüdemann and me on the Birth Narratives than there actually is. What caused me to respond initially were what I regarded as some overstatement and unhelpful generalization which ultimately detract from the potential plausibility of the case. But my guess is that one of the reasons for issuing a press release is to generate not only attention but also discussion and intellectual exchange, and it is in that spirit, and in the appreciation of Lüdemann's scholarship, that I offer this response.

Update (19.41):

Response to Mark Goodacre

I agree that the two of us are not as far apart as our contentious words may have suggested. I do look forward to further mutually respectful exchanges with Professor Goodacre on matters of mutual interest.

Sincerely,

Gerd Lüdemann.

Response to Mark Goodacre and Stephen Carlson by Gerd Lüdemann

I have just received this response from Gerd Lüdemann to my comments on his press release (The Christmas Stories are Pious Fairy Tales) and Gerd asks if I would place this in my blog, which I am of course happy to do. I am knee-deep in grading (that's what they call "marking" here) at the moment but I am looking forward to commenting later. The message below is as I received it from Prof. Lüdemann, with my original blog post in lower case (but combining parts of the press release and my comments) and Prof. Lüdemann's responses in upper case:

-----------
RESPONSE TO MARK GOODACRE AND STEPHEN C. CARLSON BY GERD LÜDEMANN.

Friday, December 16, 2005
Lüdemann on Christmas

On Biblical Theology, Jim West gives the text of Gerd Lüdemann's thoughts on the Christmas story. A look at Lüdemann's homepage gives the text too, under a press release headed:

The Christmas Stories are Pious Fairy Tales

I'm not sure what's wrong with piety, and you'd expect the New Testament to feature some piety, and I don't think there are any fairies in the Birth Narratives (or at least we still call the doll on the top of our Christmas tree an angel rather than a fairy). Some of Lüdemann's content I am inclined to agree with (which NT scholars would not?), but there is something about the overstatement and the tone ("supposed Son of God", "unquestionable facts", "lies") makes me all the more keen to argue against at least elements in it. So here are a few thoughts:

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: APPARENTLY GOODACRE IS UNAWARE OF THE DIFFERENCE IN CONNOTATION BETWEEN "PIOUS” (AS IN PIOUS MYTHS OR PIOUS FAIRY TALES) AND "PIETY”. THE FORMER IMPLIES EXCESSIVE CREDULITY; THE LATTER REFERS TO DEVOUT FAITH. HE SEEMS TO SUFFER FROM A SIMILAR CONFUSION WITH RESPECT TO THE TERM "FAIRY TALE,” WHICH INDICATES AN INCREDIBLE STORY WITH OR WITHOUT FAIRIES IN THE CAST OF CHARACTERS. I SUGGEST THAT IN BOTH CASES HE IS GRASPING FOR STRAWS WITH WHICH TO CREATE OBJECTIONS.

The biblical accounts of the birth of the Jesus, the supposed Son of God, are mere inventions and have little relation to what really happened. Historical research has demonstrated this once and for all. Ten unquestionable facts argue against their historical credibility: Historical research has not "demonstrated" any of the elements here. What historical research can do is to show that elements in the story are implausible or problematic, but it misrepresents the historical task here to claim so much for it. Nor are the ten assertions all "facts", let alone unquestionable facts".

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: THIS IS SIMPLY CARPING ABOUT BLUNT AND STRAIGHTFORWARD TALK THAT HAS NO TIME FOR THE NUANCES AND NICETIES OF SCHOLASTIC DEBATE. SOFTEN A COUPLE OF PHRASES, ADD A FEW QUALIFIERS AND WEASEL-WORDING EXTENUATIONS, IF YOU LIKE; BUT IT WILL ALL COME DOWN TO THE SAME THING.

1. Written centuries earlier, the quoted words of Old Testament prophets did not predict the coming of Jesus, but referred to events and persons in their past or immediate future. They would have been shocked by the notion that Jesus' birth was the fulfillment of their prophecies. Perhaps so, but I am always puzzled by comments about how figures living centuries before later figures would have been "shocked" by what they saw. I can't even begin to get my head around the idea of Isaiah being told about what was going to happen 700 years later. His seeing the time machine would surely be a far greater "shock" than the substance of what Lüdemann would be able to convey. If I were in the time machine, I'd definitely want to make sure I had a universal translator switched on, or a babel fish in my ear because I wouldn't trust my 8th C. BCE spoken Hebrew.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: TO OBJECT ON THE GROUNDS OF TRANSLATION PROBLEMS IS SILLY AND IRRELEVANT. TO BE PUZZLED BY THE IDEA OF AN ANCIENT PERSON TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE MODERN WORLD SHOWS LITTLE MORE, I THINK, THAN A WEAKNESS IN IMAGINATIVE POWERS. AGAIN SAND IS BEING THROWN INTO PEOPLE’S EYES IN LIEU OF ARGUMENT.

2. The New Testament authors derived most events of the Christmas story from prophecies of the Old Testament and misrepresented their original intent in order to make them seem to point to Jesus. Is talk of "the Christmas story" itself unhelpful when one is talking about Matthew and Luke?

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: ONE CANNOT DETERMINE WHAT THIS QUESTION MEANS.

And far from an "unquestionable fact", this is actually highly debatable. Some of the Biblical verses alluded to by Matthew are such an odd fit with the events narrated that it is difficult to imagine that Matthew, or anyone else, "derived" the narrative from the prophecies.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: CALL IT "CREATED” OR "DERIVED” OR "INSPIRED BY”; IT MAKES LITTLE ENOUGH DIFFERENCE. THIS ADMISSION SHOWS BEYOND CAVIL THAT NARRATIVE ELEMENTS HAVE THEIR ROOTS IN THE HEBREW BIBLE AND HAVE RESULTED FROM A PROCESS OF RADICAL REVISION.

On the contrary, the opposite process, of tradition scripturalized is far more plausible. e.g. Matt. 2.23 -- where does it say that the Messiah would live in
Nazara? Matthew is weakly scripturalizing the tradition he knows.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: TO BE SURE, IN THIS ONE CASE, THE AUTHOR HAS MANUFACTURED OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH A CITATION IN ORDER TO GIVE SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY TO A SIMPLE BIOGRAPHICAL FACT: JESUS CAME FROM NAZARETH. INVENTION? LIE? CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL.

3. The notion that Mary's pregnancy did not result from intercourse with a male is a canard. The claim of a virgin birth has two sources: the mistranslation of "young woman" by "virgin" (in a passage that clearly did not refer to Jesus!), and the desire of Christians to place their revered leader on the same level as other ancient "sons of God" who were likewise born without participation of a male. The first point is weak and self-defeating. If "young woman" is mistranslated as "virgin" in Matthew, then Isaiah 7.14 can hardly be the prophecy from which the story of the conception of Jesus is derived.

-- COMMENT LÜDEMANN: HERE GOODACRE SEEMS TO BE UNAWARE THAT THE HEBREW ALMAH ("YOUNG WOMAN, AS OPPOSED TO BETULAH, "VIRGIN”) WAS RENDERED BY THE GREEK PARTHENOS (OFTEN BUT NOT ALWAYS INTENDING "VIRGIN”) IN THE SEPTUAGINT. SINCE MATTHEW APPARENTLY RELIED ON THE SEPTUAGINT, HE WOULD QUITE NATURALLY CITE IT AS EVIDENCE OF A SPECIAL BIRTH.

No one would have derived the virginal conception story from that verse for the very reason Lüdemann adduces. More likely is that scripturalization is at work here -- Matthew has a tradition of illegitimate birth that he is attempting to explain and defend by providing a scriptural precedent. The one he chooses is not especially appropriate, but it is the best he can do, and has the advantage of allowing him to bring in "Emmanuel".

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: GRANTED THAT THIS LINE OF ARGUMENT HAS FURTHER SUPPORT IN MATTHEW’S
CURIOUS INCLUSION IN JESUS’ GENEALOGY OF FOUR PROBLEMATICAL PREGNANCIES (TAMAR, RAHAB, RUTH, AND BATHSHEBA), THE ISAIAH QUOTE, COMING AS IT DOES FROM PERHAPS THE MOST REVERED OF THE PROPHETS, IS HARDLY THEREBY TO BE DISCOUNTED.

4. The reported worldwide census ordered by Caesar Augustus did not occur.

5. The reported murder of children in Bethlehem ordered by Herod the
Great did not occur.

I'd prefer to state it a little less forthrightly, e.g. there is no other evidence in ancient texts for these, they are historically unlikely etc.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: THAT’S FINE; WAFFLE A BIT IF YOU LIKE. I PREFER NOT TO. I ALSO PREFER NOT TO MAKE CASES ON THE BASIS OF LINGUISTIC PREFERENCES.

6. Jesus was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem. I'd be inclined to think that that is likely, but it's not an "unquestionable fact". It's one of those don't knows. The historian surely needs to keep open the possibility that it was Jesus' birth in Bethlehem that suggested to him and his family that he might be something special.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: A PIOUS HOPE LIKELY UNDERGIRDS THIS INSISTENCE, BUT IT IS SO THIN AS TO BE EASILY DISMISSED – UNLESS ONE WERE WRITING A LENGTHY DISQUISITION RATHER THAN A ONE-PAGE ARTICLE.

7. The angels in the Christmas story derive from primitive mythology. Shouldn't that be "fairies"? "Derive from" is again too strong. Think only of contemporary stories told of meetings with angels in which it is the religious language being employed that potentially masks a story that could be told in other, non-religious language.

-- COMMENT LÜDEMANN: CAN IT BE THAT MR. GOODACRE DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAIRIES AND ANGELS? AND AGAIN, IF HE WOULD PREFER "MODELED UPON” INSTEAD OF "DERIVED FROM,” I WILL ACCEPT THE CHANGE. IT AMOUNTS TO A DISTINCTION THAT IS TO ALL INTENTS AND PURPOSE WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE. WHY MUST WE SPLIT HAIRS? IS IT TO REGISTER A PLETHORA OF OBJECTIONS IN AN ATTEMPT TO BOLSTER A TENUOUS CASE?

8. The shepherds who kept watch over their flocks are idealized representatives of the poor and outcast, persons emphasized by Luke. They do not appear in Matthew's story. Nobody said they did.

-- COMMENT LÜDEMANN: THIS IS MORE SAND IN THE EYES MASKING AS ARGUMENT.

I think that that's a good reading of Luke -- the whole Birth Narrative rings with the good news to the poor that is so characteristic theme in Luke. But it's worth bearing in mind that for many scholars (not me), the earliest stratum of Jesus tradition, in Q1 and Thomas, has "Blessed are the poor", and so the concern for the poor is bedrock, not Lucan redaction.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: GIVEN THE SUPPOSITIONAL NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE, ONE IS IMPRESSED THAT MR. GOODACRE CAN CERTIFY WHICH IT IS.

9. The magicians from the East are idealized representatives of the Gentiles and of eternal wisdom. They do not appear in Luke's story. Well, of course they don't appear in Luke's story. We know from Acts that Luke doesn't like Magi; one of its villains is a Magus.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: HERE IS ANOTHER IRRELEVANT POINT, AN OBJECTION FOR THE SAKE OF OBJECTING. THEIR ABSENCE FROM LUKE’S ACCOUNT WAS ADDUCED ONLY TO SHOW THE IRRECONCILABILITY (AND THEREFORE THE ALL BUT CERTAINLY FICTITIOUS NATURE) OF THE TWO ACCOUNTS.

10. The story of the star of Bethlehem is a fiction intended to emphasize the importance of Jesus - and, of course, to provide an entrance cue for the magicians from the East. I've nothing to say there, except that again it's not "an unquestionable fact"; it's a reminder of the kind of language and imagery that is being employed in Matthew's Birth Narrative.

COMMENT LÜDEMANN: YES, AN IMAGERY THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HISTORICAL FACTS. THAT WAS MY POINT ALL ALONG.

I've adapted this post from a Xtalk post I wrote earlier.

Permalink | posted by Mark Goodacre @ 10:06 PM | Comments:
... universal translator or a babel fish ... :-)
# posted by crystal : 9:13 AM

Thanks for doing that. I thought about responding to point-by-point too,
but I found L.'s tone too "off-putting" for me to engage it.
# posted by Stephen C. Carlson : 12:26 AM

I AM SORRY THAT MR. CARLSON "... FOUND [MY] TONE TOO OFF-PUTTING TO ENGAGE IT." I WILL OFFER HIM, HOWEVER, THE FOLLOWING THOUGHTS: I WOULD NOT HAVE YOU ENGAGE MY TONE, SIR, BUT MY IDEAS AND MY ARGUMENTS; AND I WOULD NOT HAVE YOU PUT OFF DOING SO BECAUSE YOU ARE PUT OFF BY SO GOSSAMER A THING AS YOUR RESPONSE TO MY RHETORICAL STYLE. HAVING SMELLED WHAT SEEMS A FALLACIOUS PROPOSAL, YOU SHOULD NOT BE SO EASILY PUT OFF THE SCENT. IT WOULD BE BETTER TO DETERMINE JUST WHAT YOU CONSIDER ERRONEOUS AND ATTEMPT TO REBUT IT. THAT IS MORE HONEST AND FORTHCOMING THAN SIMPLY "PILING ON" BY SECONDING THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS.

AND AS FOR BEING ANNOYED OR OFFENDED -- OR WHATEVER YOU MEAN BY "OFF-PUTTING" -- PLEASE BE ASSURED THAT LIKE MANY OTHERS I AM EQUALLY RESENTFUL OF ATTEMPTS ON THE PART OF ORGANIZED RELIGION TO IMPOSE OUTMODED MYTHS AND CREEDS ON A PUBLIC AND A BODY POLITIC WHO PREFER TO LEAD THEIR LIVES IN ACCORDANCE WITH RATIONALLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY BASED PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN NATURE, MORALITY, AND ASPIRATION.

GERD LÜDEMANN.
----------

Lüdemann on Christmas

On Biblical Theology, Jim West gives the text of Gerd Lüdemann's thoughts on the Christmas story. A look at Lüdemann's homepage gives the text too, under a press release headed:

The Christmas Stories are Pious Fairy Tales

I'm not sure what's wrong with piety, and you'd expect the New Testament to feature some piety, and I don't think there are any fairies in the Birth Narratives (or at least we still call the doll on the top of our Christmas tree an angel rather than a fairy). Some of Lüdemann's content I am inclined to agree with (which NT scholars would not?), but there is something about the overstatement and the tone ("supposed Son of God", "unquestionable facts", "lies") makes me all the more keen to argue against at least elements in it. So here are a few thoughts:

The biblical accounts of the birth of the Jesus, the supposed Son of God, are mere inventions and have little relation to what really happened. Historical research has demonstrated this once and for all. Ten unquestionable facts argue against their historical credibility:

Historical research has not "demonstrated" any of the elements here. What historical research can do is to show that elements in the story are implausible or problematic, but it misrepresents the historical task here to claim so much for it. Nor are the ten assertions all "facts", let alone "unquestionable facts".

1. Written centuries earlier, the quoted words of Old Testament prophets did not predict the coming of Jesus, but referred to events and persons in their past or immediate future. They would have been shocked by the notion that Jesus' birth was the fulfillment of their prophecies.

Perhaps so, but I am always puzzled by comments about how figures living centuries before later figures would have been "shocked" by what they saw. I can't even begin to get my head around the idea of Isaiah being told about what was going to happen 700 years later. His seeing the time machine would surely be a far greater "shock" than the substance of what Lüdemann would be able to convey. If I were in the time machine, I'd definitely want to make sure I had a universal translator switched on, or a babel fish in my ear because I wouldn't trust my 8th C. BCE spoken Hebrew.

2. The New Testament authors derived most events of the Christmas story from prophecies of the Old Testament and misrepresented their original intent in order to make them seem to point to Jesus.

Is talk of "the Christmas story" itself unhelpful when one is talking about Matthew and Luke? And far from an "unquestionable fact", this is actually highly debatable. Some of the Biblical verses alluded to by Matthew are such an odd fit with the events narrated that it is difficult to imagine that Matthew, or anyone else, "derived" the narrative from the prophecies. On the contrary, the opposite process, of tradition scripturalized is far more plausible. e.g. Matt. 2.23 -- where does it say that the Messiah would live in Nazara? Matthew is weakly scripturalizing the tradition he knows.

3. The notion that Mary's pregnancy did not result from intercourse with a male is a canard. The claim of a virgin birth has two sources: the mistranslation of "young woman" by "virgin" (in a passage that clearly did not refer to Jesus!), and the desire of Christians to place their revered leader on the same level as other ancient "sons of God" who were likewise born without participation of a male.

The first point is weak and self-defeating. If "young woman" is mistranslated as "virgin" in Matthew, then Isaiah 7.14 can hardly be the prophecy from which the story of the conception of Jesus is derived. No one would have derived the virginal conception story from that verse for the very reason Lüdemann adduces. More likely is that scripturalization is at work here -- Matthew has a tradition of illegitimate birth that he is attempting to explain and defend by providing a scriptural precedent. The one he chooses is not especially appropriate, but it is the best he can do, and has the advantage of allowing him to bring in "Emmanuel".

4. The reported worldwide census ordered by Caesar Augustus did not occur. 5. The reported murder of children in Bethlehem ordered by Herod the Great did not occur.

I'd prefer to state it a little less forthrightly, e.g. there is no other evidence in ancient texts for these, they are historically unlikely etc.

6. Jesus was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem.

I'd be inclined to think that that is likely, but it's not an "unquestionable fact". It's one of those don't knows. The historian surely needs to keep open the possibility that it was Jesus' birth in Bethlehem that suggested to him and his family that he might be something special.

7. The angels in the Christmas story derive from primitive mythology.

Shouldn't that be "fairies"? "Derive from" is again too strong. Think only of contemporary stories told of meetings with angels in which it is the religious language being employed that potentially masks a story that could be told in other, non-religious language.

8. The shepherds who kept watch over their flocks are idealized representatives of the poor and outcast, persons emphasized by Luke. They do not appear in Matthew's story.

I think that that's a good reading of Luke -- the whole Birth Narrative rings with the good news to the poor that is so characteristic theme in Luke. But it's worth bearing in mind that for many scholars (not me), the earliest stratum of Jesus tradition, in Q1 and Thomas, has "Blessed are the poor", and so the concern for the poor is bedrock, not Lucan redaction.

9. The magicians from the East are idealized representatives of the Gentiles and of eternal wisdom. They do not appear in Luke's story.

Well, of course they don't appear in Luke's story. We know from Acts that Luke doesn't like Magi; one of its villains is a Magus.

10. The story of the star of Bethlehem is a fiction intended to emphasize the importance of Jesus - and, of course, to provide an entrance cue for the magicians from the East.

I've nothing to say there, except that again it's not "an unquestionable fact"; it's a reminder of the kind of language and imagery that is being employed in Matthew's Birth Narrative.

I've adapted this post from a Xtalk post I wrote earlier.

SBL Forum

There's a new issue of the SBL Forum available, for December 2005:

SBL Forum Vol. 3, No.11: December 2005

Strategies for Moving Students from Faith-based to Academic Biblical Studies
by Mary Bader

Is God Bipolar or Are We Just Crazy? A Psychology and Biblical Studies Section Report: Personality, Aggression, and the Destructive Power of Religion
by Daniel J. Gaztambide

A New Program Unit: Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
by Nicolae Roddy

Bible Literacy Polls
by Leonard Greenspoon

Review of "The Bible and Its Influence"
by Steven L. McKenzie

Bookends Review: Bibliographic Software For Mac
by Danny Zacharias

As a member of the advisory board, I have been lobbying now for the last eighteen months or so for several simple things that in my opinion will improve the journal:

(1) Archives of previous issues. The individual articles are still available, but there is nowhere to browse through previous issues. I think that this acts as a disincentive to scholars to write for the forum -- articles are not "visible" for long enough. I think it would be useful to have specific issue archives, e.g. a link to "previous issues" on the first page, then an archive page with links to each issue and contents pages.

(2) More letters and reader comments should be encouraged since this will make it feel more like a "forum".

(3) Contact details: providing contact details would encourage people to get in touch, to contribute their own materials without every article having to be invited, as at present. Many newspapers, journals etc. have email addresses at the bottom of each article to encourage people to get in touch; but the forum should really have some contact details prominently. Indeed,
if you click "contact us" on the main page (bottom), it takes you to a page that doesn't even mention the forum.

So far I have not had any success on these, but I've had some encouragement that (1) at least is in process.

SBL Call for Papers goes live

The SBL Annual Meeting Call for Papers went live yesterday (15th). Or at least all the programme chairs were encouraged to get our calls for papers on-line by yesterday. In fact it looks like slim pickings at the moment. But some are available and here's the link:

SBL Annual Meeting 2006: Call for Papers

Jim West draws attention to the call from the Jesus, John and History section. Perhaps I might draw attention to our short call for papers in the Synoptics Section:

Synoptic Gospels
Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes

Call For Papers: The Synoptic Gospels section is planning a themed session on the Birth Narratives in Matthew and Luke. Participation in that session is by invitation of the steering committee only. In addition, paper proposals are being accepted for at least one open session. You are encouraged to submit your proposals on any subject relevant to the study of the Synoptic Gospels. Please make offers through the SBL Website only.

Program Unit Chairs
Mark Goodacre (Goodacre@duke.edu)
Greg Carey (gcarey@lancasterseminary.edu)

New Location for Phil Harland's Blog

Others will already have mentioned this by now, but I've been away from the blogging machine for a couple of days and this is the first opportunity I've had to mention it, the new location for Phil Harland's blog. Don't forget to update your blogrolls and your links:

Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean

NTS latest

The latest New Testament Studies has been announced and is on-line for subscribers and subscribing institutions (with abstracts available for all):

New Testament Studies
Volume 52 - Issue 01 - January 2006

Are there any Early Fragments of the So-Called Gospel of Peter?
PAUL FOSTER
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 1 - 28

Decrees and Drachmas at Thessalonica: An Illegal Assembly in Jason's House (Acts 17.1–10a)
JUSTIN K. HARDIN
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 29 - 49

Paul's Collection and the Book of Acts Revisited
DAVID J. DOWNS
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 50 - 70

Living Rewards for Dead Apostles: ‘Baptised for the Dead’ in 1 Corinthians 15.29
JAMES E. PATRICK
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 71 - 85

Galatians 2.20 in Context
SCOTT SHAUF
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 86 - 101

Paul's Allegory of the Two Covenants (Gal 4.21-31) in Light of First-Century Hellenistic Rhetoric and Jewish Hermeneutics
STEVEN DI MATTEI
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 102 - 122

La sagesse de la vie selon l'épître de Jacques: Lignes de Lecture
ERNESTO BORGHI
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 123 - 141

Abraham's Bosom, the Place Where he Belonged: A Short Note on απενεχθηναι in Luke 16.22
PIETER W. VAN DER HORST
Published Online: 12-DEC-05
[ abstract ] pp 142 - 144

In the Footsteps of Jesus, Episode 4

The fourth and final part in the BBC Radio 4 series In the Footsteps of Jesus was broadcast earlier today, and it is available for listening on-line here:

In the Footsteps of Jesus: India

Click on the Listen to the Programme link. The transcript link is broken at the moment.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Harris, Murray J.
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Kinlaw, Pamela E.
The Christ is Jesus: Metamorphosis, Possession, and Johannine Christology
Reviewed by Donald Carson

Kinlaw, Pamela E.
The Christ is Jesus: Metamorphosis, Possession, and Johannine Christology
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Koester, Helmut, ed.
Cities of Paul: Images and Interpretations from the Harvard New Testament and Archaeology Project
Reviewed by Ralph Klein

Rhoads, David, ed.
From Every People and Nation: The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective
Reviewed by Pieter De Villiers