Guardian's British University League Tables published

The Guardian has published its league tables for teaching excellence for 2010. Here is the University league table, with Oxford coming top, Cambridge second and St Andrews third:

University League Table 2010

There are also tables for individual subject areas. Here's the one for Religious Studies and Theology:

University Guide 2010: Religious Studies and Theology

It's the same top three, Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews, but in this subject area Durham ranks for more highly (4th) than the institution as a whole (14th). I'm naturally delighted to see my alma mater topping both charts, but sorry to see my former employer, University of Birmingham, down at a sorry 24 in both lists. Heythrop College, another former employer, is at an honourable 14 in the Religious Studies and Theology list. One obvious success story is the ranking of the Scottish Universities, with St Andrews, Edinburgh and Glasgow in the Religious Studies and Theology Top 10, and Aberdeen bubbling under at 11. Oxford Brookes is impressive at 12, and I suspect that Sheffield, Manchester and Nottingham will be disappointed to miss out on the Top 10.

Bibliography of Michael Goulder's works

Back in 1996, I published a book called Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (JSNTSup. 133; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), a slightly revised version of my Oxford DPhil thesis of 1994. At the end of the book I included a comprehensive bibliography of Michael Goulder's works. I have long been meaning to update that bibliography to include the several books and many articles that Michael has published since then. Having recently been lucky enough to have read Michael's memoir in manuscript, this gave me the opportunity I had been looking for to get that bibliography updated. I have uploaded it to the web for those interested, in PDF format. Please let me know if you spot any errors or omissions:

Michael Goulder Bibliography (PDF)

Update: Revised 12 May, with thanks to Ken Olson for two missing items.
Update: Revised 8 March 2010.

Appeals to "the majority of scholars"

I am just finishing work on a comprehensive bibliography of Michael Goulder and came across this enjoyable footnote in an essay on the resurrection (“The Explanatory Power of Conversion-Visions”. In Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli (eds.), Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? : a Debate between William Lane Craig & Gerd Lüdemann (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 2000): 102).  where, in context, he is discussing the views of William Craig, who appeals to "the majority of scholars":

One should always be wary when appeal is made to "the majority of scholars," for it tends to exclude any new idea.  Where would Galileo or Darwin have got to if they had bowed to it?

And I suppose too that the point should be extended to the reception of new ideas, not just the instigation of those new ideas.  Lots of new ideas turn out to be horribly wrong, but it is rarely a good argument against them to appeal to what the majority thinks.

I wonder if it is one of those areas where we allow ourselves to be unduly influenced in our research and writing by the constraints of pedagogy.  When we teach, we naturally have to paint a picture of the majority view, even where we disagree with that view.  Perhaps our attempts to understand where the majority view is can inadvertently cause us to give value to that view and so to argue as if good scholarship is about counting heads.

The Jastrow Project

Rob Letchford has been in touch to tell me about the Jastrow Project, details here:

The Jastrow Project

Marcus Jastrow's Dictionary of Targumim, Talmud and Midrashic Literature is a classic and is already available online at Tyndale House, but the new project aims to make the text fully searchable in PDFs.

More on the Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39

I am grateful for all the helpful feedback on my post on The Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39 last week, especially here on the blog, where dozens of comments provided helpful biblioblography and some excellent engagement with the issue.  On Primal Subversion, Sean helpfully gathers together several quotations from commentaries on Mark 15.39 and concludes that the ironic / sarcastic reading is preferable.  Other blog  commenters found support for the interpretation in a variety of places, from Alexander Roberts in 1862 to Stephen Moore in 2008.

What, though, of John Fenton?  Other than my own representation of the John Fenton oral tradition, which dates to the mid 1980s, there is nothing more specific at this point.  But several have been able to help me out with Donald Juel's views.  It is quite clear that he held the same view, apparently independently of Fenton, and it is mentioned in a variety of places, including Messiah and Temple and the Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament (see comments for details).  I picked up a copy of Donald H. Juel, Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), which features the following little footnote (74, n. 7):

I have come to believe that even "Son of God" in 15.39 ought probably be read as a taunt ("Sure, this was God's Son"), in accord with the rest of the taunts in the account of Jesus' trial and death.  The centurion plays a role assigned all Jesus' enemies: They speak the truth in mockery, thus providing for the reader ironic testimony to the truth.

I found a little more of interest in Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Patrick D. Miller (eds.), The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God: Essays in Memory of Donald Harrisville Juel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005).  The essay by Michael Welker, "Baptism as Change of Lordship" (107-14) quotes one of Juel's former students to the following effect:

Like a critic who delights in investigating and revealing the secrets behind magicians' illusions, Don dissected people's biblical exegesis, often wondering aloud why so much knowledge about texts and their histories prevented us from actually reading the texts. Likewise, he eagerly exposed students' hermeneutical assumptions, not necessarily to invalidate them but always to impel us to acknowledge and examine them.  His sarcastic reading of the centurion's 'confession' in Mark 15.39 best illustrates this practice.  While reading the passion narrative aloud, he would voice, 'Sure this was God's son!' with acerbic scorn.  He clearly enjoyed the effects of the reading as much as he believed it a faithful rendering of Mark's account.  His bold interpretation sounded alarms among students, driving us to the text to examine its contours for evidence to support various readings (Quoted from Matthew L. Skinner, "Mark a Life: A Tribute to Don Juel," inSpire 8/1 (2003), 33).

Some remain unconvinced by this reading and prefer to see Mark's centurion as making a true confession of some kind.  Mike Parsons asks about Matthew's apparent misunderstanding of Mark's intent.  My guess on that front is that Matthew is not so much misunderstanding as changing and re-conceptualizing.  One might see Matthew's version of the story, the so-called "Zombie Pericope" (Matt. 27.51-54), as providing the reader with a new and explicit reason for the centurions' (now plural) confession. Matthew often explicates Mark’s mysteries in this way, and here he provides a scene that can genuinely impress the centurion and those with him, a truly apocalyptic breaking up of the earth, as heaven declares the momentous nature of Jesus’ death for the characters within the drama to see.  The crucial difference is on what the centurion(s) witness in the different versions.  Mark's centurion makes his assertion when he "saw how he died", ὅτι οὕτως ἐξέπνευσεν.  Matthew's centurion, and those with him, on the other hand, do not just see how Jesus died. They "saw the earthquake and all that had happened", which leaves the reader in no doubt that this is some kind of awed confession.

This draws attention to the key point in the Marcan narrative, that the centurion makes his remark when he sees how Jesus dies. It is the reader who sees the veil of the temple torn in two. To speak of the temple curtain being visible from Golgotha, whether Mark is implying inner or outer, is wishful thinking. Perhaps we are supposed to surmise that the centurion is impressed by the darkness described earlier, but that is not what the narrator isolates in order to provide the context for the centurion's remark. As far as the narrative is concerned, it is the sight of Jesus' death that causes the centurion to make this remark.

Thanks again to everyone for their informed and interesting comments.

The Golden Rule and the problem of Historical Jesus criteria

In an enjoyable post on The Busybody, Loren Rosson asks Did Jesus teach the Golden Rule? with reference to the fourth volume of John Meier's Historical Jesus project.  I haven't read the new Meier yet, but I would like to comment on something that emerges from Loren's post.  His answer is that Jesus did not teach the Golden Rule -- "Meier shows that the Golden Rule doesn't meet any of the criteria of authenticity, least of all discontinuity"; it is only singularly attested and it is "thoroughly inconsistent with Jesus' demands stated elsewhere".

Are these criteria adequate to the task of establishing that Jesus did not teach the Golden Rule? I don't think so. "Discontinuity", more commonly "dissimilarity" is a notoriously problematic criterion. There must have been substantial continuity between Jesus and his Jewish context, and between Jesus and the first Christians. Käsemann's use of the criterion of dissimilarity only served to create a Lutheran Jesus. Single attestation (Matthew or Q) is, of course, problematic if one is a fan of the criterion of multiple attestation, but those of us who are sceptical about the existence of Q, the independence of Thomas or the independence of John have precious few independent sources anyway. And the alleged inconsistency of this saying with Jesus' other ethical teaching presupposes a use of the criterion of coherence that is at variance with the likelihood that Jesus was inconsistent, like other charismatic leaders of new religious movements (Jack T. Sanders).

But even if these criteria were strong, it is in the nature of criteria in historical research that they cannot demonstrate what Jesus did not say. The point of the criteria, as I see it, should be to help us to work out where the strongest evidence can be found, to adjudicate on what material is the securest in our pool. In other words, we might decide to avoid the use of a particular saying in our reconstruction of the Historical Jesus because that saying is not part of what we think we know for sure.  But that is different from saying that Jesus did not say the thing in question.

Dealing with "miracles" in Historical Jesus Class

April DeConick currently has an interesting series running headed Creating Jesus and there are several points where I have been tempted to comment but have not found a moment.  Comments from Rafael on Verily, Verily on the post about the miraculous reminded me of some comments I was going to make about the way that I approach the miraculous in my historical Jesus classes. 

In Historical Jesus classes I try to avoid the terms "miracle" and "miraculous".  As soon as the terms are out there, one is obliged to enter the complex and unwieldy philosophical debate about miracles, and it becomes difficult to make any serious progress in Jesus research.  And if I am honest, I don't have the necessary philosophical credentials to be able to make a genuinely informed contribution in that debate.  

Moreover, the term "miracle" is unhelpful in describing the way that the ancients perceived the world.  The early Christians saw God's activity in everything.  A dunamis, a "mighty work" or a "work of power" was different from God's everyday activities in scale rather than in kind.  When they talked about a dunamis, they did not see it as an event that lay outside the laws of nature but as something that specially manifested God's power, a signature event that differed from the repeated God-ordained events like the sun coming out and the rain pouring down.  

In other words, the earliest Christian writers do not appear to have had a special category of "miracle" that was different in kind from other activities of God.  The use of the term "miracle" can tempt us to think that they thought in those categories.  Now of course that does not settle the key questions about what lies behind the Gospel traditions about Jesus' healing activity, but it does help to refocus the terms of the discussion in a useful way.  

Biblical Studies Carnival 41

James McGrath has done a superb job on the latest Biblical Studies Carnival -- comprehensive, clear and often very funny:

Biblical Studies Carnival 41

Biblioblog Top 50 Latest

The new Biblioblog Top 50 is now available:

Biblioblog Top 50: April 2009

As usual, a huge amount of work has gone into it. If the author would step out of the shadows, I would enjoy thanking him personally (the author is, of course, male and goy).

I had not realized that Andrew Bernhard had begun a blog at his gospels.net site, and it's good to see it doing well. I am also pleased to see the NT Blog doing OK too.

A bigger surprise is to see my experimental podcast featuring among the list of new blogs. I will blog about this in due course but since it gets a mention and a link, let me fill in some background. I am planning to release a proper public podcast in the coming weeks but decided to experiment first by recording short podcasts for students on my Historical Jesus course, in order to get on top of the technology and to experiment with the format. It has been an enjoyable experience and the students have reacted well to it. Indeed, I am inclined to make this a more regular feature of my teaching. I think I am now ready to move on to a podcast aimed at a broader audience, but I should stress that what you see (hear) on the site mentioned above has the word "experimental" stamped on it.

Archaeology, Politics and Media Symposium Write-up

I attended the Archaeology, Politics and Media Symposium at Duke last week and Bob Cargill has helpfully written up a running commentary on the symposium in his blog:

Duke Conference on Archaeology, Politics and the Media: Day 1
Duke Conference on Archaeology, Politics and the Media: Day 2

The Historical Jesus: What if key pieces are missing?

When preparing to teach the Historical Jesus last year, I asked the question Why is the Historical Jesus Quest so difficult? The first difficulty, I suggested, is that so much evidence is missing.  Having just come to the end of another enjoyable Historical Jesus course here at Duke, I find that this is something that continues to haunt me, in spite of the fact that it seems not to trouble others engaging in the quest so much. So I would like to develop my concerns here by asking: What if key pieces are missing?

There is an assumption at work in a lot of historical Jesus research that all the relevant and necessary materials for a reasonably complete picture of Jesus are available. They are available somewhere and we can get at them somehow. We just have to work hard to get to them. We spend many painful hours sifting and honing criteria because we feel that the literary deposit is somewhere bound to contain all the material of real importance. We speak of what we can say about the historical Jesus "with confidence" because we are sure that the really key data has to be present. Only matters peripheral to the task of reconstructing the key elements in his life has disappeared.

The assumption develops out of an unrealistic perspective on the task. We proceed as if we are doing the work of restoration, clearing the dirt, the damage, the rust in order to unveil the real Jesus. But the quest is not about restoration.  It is about ancient history and when understood as ancient history, discussion about the historical Jesus should constantly involve the reminder that massive amounts of key data must be missing.

It may be that we seldom reflect on this fact because the ideological stakes in so major a figure inevitably interact with historical research on him. Those ideological interests are, of course, many and varied, but the same kind of optimistic assumptions about the data set are shared by those from different ends of the spectrum, from those whose faith commitment compels them to regard the scriptural deposit as definitive, to those who look to a range of materials and methods in a bid to reconstruct a Jesus who is uncongenial to later Christian orthodoxy.

Let me illustrate the kind of thing I am talking about. According to almost everyone, one of the most certain things that we can know about the historical Jesus is that he was a disciple of John the Baptist. This is bedrock stuff and anyone familiar with Jesus research will know all about why.  As it happens, I am inclined to agree with this;  I suspect that Jesus did indeed have an association with John the Baptist and that it was important, in some way, in his development.  But how important was John the Baptist, as an influence on Jesus, in comparison to other people?  We know about the link between the two men because John the Baptist was himself famous -- Josephus devotes more time to him than he does to Jesus.  So the tradition remembers and underlines the association between the two men.  But our influences are seldom solely other famous people.  Perhaps the major influence on Jesus was his grandfather, whose fascination with Daniel 7 informed Jesus' apocalyptic mindset.  Or perhaps it was Rabbi Matia in Capernaum who used to enjoy telling parables drawn from local agriculture.  Or perhaps it was that crazy wandering Galilean exorcist Lebbaeus who used to talk about casting out demons by the Spirit of God.  The fact is that we just don't know.  We can't know.  Our knowledge about the historical Jesus is always and inevitably partial.  If we take the quest of the historical Jesus seriously as an aspect of ancient history, we have to admit that many of the key pieces must be missing, don't we?

Stephen Carlson on Origen's Use of Thomas

From time to time there has been discussion on the blogs about the e-lists (e.g. here, Are e-lists dying?). One of the e-lists that has maintained its vitality, with a programme of regular contributors discussing specially themed material, is the Gospel of Thomas list, now ten years old (and congratulations to Mike Grondin for being at the helm all that time). One of the latest of these discussions will be led by Stephen Carlson, who is posting for discussion his forthcoming SBL paper on Origen's Use of the Gospel of Thomas (abstract). The paper emerged out of the graduate program here at Duke, so I can vouch for its quality! If you are not already a member of the Gospel of Thomas e-list, follow this link to join:

Gospel of Thomas Discussion Group

Archaeology, Politics and the Media Symposium at Duke today

I will be at the Duke Symposium on Archaeology, Politics and the Media today, details here:

Duke Symposium: Archaeology, Politics and the Media: Re-visioning the Middle East

Flyer here. I'll be giving a presentation at the symposium on "The 'Jesus Family Tomb' and the Bloggers"; I have outlined my presentation here in three parts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). AKMA is responding, and he will be wearing a tie.

I will, of course, be twittering during the symposium (follow me on twitter).

The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers III: When bloggers apparently fail to make an impact

In the previous two posts on this topic, I have celebrated some of the blogging successes in their critiques of the Discovery Channel documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus.  This was an occasion when several expert voices spoke up quickly and accurately and created a strong wall of opinion that had the effect of seriously undermining the claims made by the film makers.  But it is not always so straightforward.  Indeed, the kind of successes on this occasion are the exception rather than the rule.  It is much more common for academic bloggers to be ignored by the media, even when they are pointing out errors and inaccuracies that are actually embarrassing those making the claims.   A clear example of the kind of thing I am talking about was the following post which I will be discussing in this third and final post on The Talpiot Tomb and the bloggers:

Jesus Family Tomb Website: Errors and Inaccuracies

I published the post on 11 March 2007, a week after the documentary aired.  It took me ages to write.  It was one of those posts with which other bloggers will be familiar, the post that keeps on expanding, requiring lots of research, and which makes you ask repeatedly, "Is this really worth the effort?".   It relates to the "official" website on the "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" at www.jesusfamilytomb.com.  That website, more slick, more snazzy, more detailed than Discovery's site, had gone online at the same time, the end of February, but unlike that site, it was riddled with errors and inaccuracies.

Some of the errors were simply careless, sloppy mistakes, the Acts of Philip for the Gospel of Philip, AC for AD, Jesus 13 with Galilean rabbis rather than 12 at the Jerusalem temple, and so on.  Others, though, were more substantial.  Several claims about the Talpiot Tomb discoveries were so badly stated that they amounted to misleading information, like the claim that one of the ossuaries actually read "Mary Magdalene", alongside other familiar difficulties like the misreading of Francois Bovon's analysis of Mary in the Acts of Philip.

The most remarkable elements on this site, though, were not so much statements that were misguided or inaccurate, but entire sections that were nonsense, the Gospel of Thomas as "suppressed by Christian authorities due to the status allotted to Mary of Magadala (sic) as master", or "the Essene Gospel of Peace" as "one ancient manuscript discovered in the Secret Archives of the Vatican" or the following page on "The Gospels Nazarene: The Gospel of the Holy Twelve", which is nonsense from beginning to end:

The Gospel of the Nazarenes or the Gospel of the Holy Twelve is considered to be the original Gospel or one of the first complete written manuscripts of the original word of Jesus.

The term "Nazarene" is used by some to refer to early Jewish followers of Christianity in connection with the ancient Essene sect of Judaism which Jesus is often associated with. The original Gospels of Nazarene are said to have been written by St. John, who passed the manuscript along to a trusted friend in 70 AD following his arrest.

In the nineteenth century, the Gospel of the Holy Twelve was rediscovered by a friar. However, since its exposure to Church Authorities in Rome, it has remained hidden in the Vatican archive, which some say is due to newly discovered content that would discredit the Church and the Council of Nicea.

There is, of course, no reliable historical information contained on this page.

So what happened next?  I documented each of the errors and inaccuracies that I could find, while suspecting that a still more careful reading would reveal many more, and I hoped that the authors of the site would take the list seriously and amend their site accordingly.  Each one still remains on the site to this day.  

To his credit, James Tabor told me that he had reported this list to those responsible for the site but no adjustments were made, either then or in the subsequent two years.

What does this example teach us?  Well, if I were feeling cynical, I would say that it has taught me to waste less time on sites that are driven by commercial concerns and which are uninterested in honest intellectual concerns.  I would note that I am inclined to fall into that naïve academic belief that people will want to set the record straight, that they will want to eliminate disreputable and ignorant statements, and that accuracy, precision and nuance matter.  One of my favourite comments on the post here discussed remarked that while the link to the Gospel of Philip was inaccurate, the links to "Buy the DVD" and "Buy the book" worked fine.

If I were feeling less cynical, though, I would note that even where a glitzy site like this retains misinformation on a large scale, there is value in the academic bloggers publicly setting out the errors and inaccuracies involved.  If googleization democratize the process of attaining knowledge, one of the values of that process is that any researcher looking for material on "the Jesus family tomb" will quickly come into contact not only with the glitzy, commercial, error-ridden official site but also the mundane, non-commercial, accurate academic blogs.  

As in other areas, politics, religion, journalism, the blogs have empowered experts who have something intelligent, well researched and cogent to say.  When we are using the medium thoughtfully, they can place us in a surprisingly influential position, even when those with the money, the staff, the time and the publicity might at first appear seem like formidable opponents.  In spite of our failures, it is a responsibility worth taking seriously.    

The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers II: A Change in Tone

In my previous post, I looked at a success story in the blogging of the Talpiot "Jesus family tomb" affair, where accurate and knowledgeable blogging led to changes in several of the claims made on the Discovery Channel website.  It could be argued that that early success was symptomatic of a larger trend according to which the early, bold and far-reaching statements gave way to something much more cautious.  Many of us felt that we could see Discovery progressively distancing themselves from claims that at first they had embraced.  To go back now and to watch the Press Conference on Monday 26 February 2009 (still available online at the Discovery Jesus Tomb website, direct link here), at which the case was first made, is to see a remarkable degree of confidence in the importance of the alleged discovery, as the president and general manager of the Discovery Channel begins:

You are joining us here for what might be one of the most important archaeological finds in human history.  In the hills of Jerusalem, archaeologists have discovered a tomb, a two thousand year old tomb, which contains significant forensic evidence, and some potentially historic consequences . . . . I would like to briefly discuss how this momentous find came about and how it comes to be before you today.

And James Cameron, who comes to the microphone next, tells the story of his involvement with the documentary, which he went on to produce, and speaks of it as "literally this is the biggest archaeology story of the century".  And so it goes on.  But this robust beginning  gave way,  quite quickly, to a more cautious tone. 

The reaction in the blogosphere, as well as in other media outlets, demonstrated very quickly that the vast majority of scholars assessing the case were not finding it convincing.  Unilke Cameron, who said that as a layman he had found the case "pretty darn compelling", the experts were finding the case unpersuasive.  The statistical case began to crumble as experts cast doubt on elements in the identification of the ossuary inscriptions, and especially its "Ringo Starr", the supposed presence of Mary Magdalene.  The claim that "Mariamenenou Mara" was a unique way of identifying Mary Magdalene appeared to be based on a misreading of Francois Bovon's analysis of the Acts of Philip. I called attention to this before the documentary aired (with a follow up on 11 March), and others made similar points, including Tony Chartrand Burke and Richard Bauckham.  Now Bauckham himself is not himself a blogger, but was guesting on his St Andrews' colleague Jim Davila's Paleojudaica blog before producing a revised version of his thoughts also on Paleojudaica.  Once again the bloggers were adding guest posts from experts to enhance their own efforts, and the effect was pretty dramatic.

When the documentary aired on Sunday 4 March, Discovery added an extra programme that followed on immediately afterwards -- a studio discussion, hosted by Ted Koppel, The Lost Tomb of Jesus -- A Critical Look. It was this programme that launched Jonathan Reed's now famous charge of "archaeoporn".  Some at the time saw the scheduling of this programme as an opportunity for Discovery to imply some critical distancing from the claims made in the documentary, claims that they had been heartily endorsing only a week earlier.  When the first repeat of The Lost Tomb of Jesus was dropped from Discovery's schedules, it began to look like they were indeed feeling less confident about the documentary than they had at first.

I should add that it was not only the bloggers who played a role in holding the programme makers to account.  One key event was the appearance of Eric Meyers with Simcha Jacobovici on the Diane Rehm show on 5 March, the morning after the documentary aired.  But in only the recent past, radio appearances and newspaper op-eds would have been the only major public venues for providing critiques of programmes like this.  Now the blogging revolution had changed all that and the reactions were thorough, detailed, varied and fast.

The Talpiot Tomb provided the first major test for the bloggers in our area, and it is a test that they passed with flying colours.  The contrast with the earlier and similar story, the James Ossuary, only a few years earlier, in 2002,  is significant.  Then blogging was only in its infancy, and in our area it was non-existent.  (Jim Davila's Paleojudaica, the pioneer, began in March 2003;  this blog began six months later in September 2003).  The James Ossuary story took some time to unravel and although furiously debated on the then more popular e-lists, the latter did not attract the same degree of expertise or the same degree of publicity now reached by the blogs.  Indeed, two occasional bloggers were themselves involved directly with the project, Darrell Bock, who was highly critical of the the documentary's claims, and James Tabor, who remained sympathetic, and provided a sane if lonely voice speaking up for Jacobovici.

At this point, perhaps you will be thinking that there is far too much by way of celebrating blogging success, so in the next part I will look at an example of a complete failure to achieve any change at all, and the failure was mine.

The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers I: An Early Success

On Thursday this week I am giving a short presentation at the Duke Symposium on Archaeology, Politics and the Media: Re-Visioning the Middle East (Flyer). My topic is "The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers".  Naturally, I will be outlining my presentation here, with some hyperlinks to the relevant material.  In this first post, I would like to begin with an example of how blogging successfully held the programme makers to account and resulted in changes to the claims made.   Most of the links below are to the NT Blog where you can find further links to the relevant information, and you can get a feel for the original timeline, which on this occasion is important.

The Lost Tomb of Jesus was first broadcast across a two hour slot on Discovery Channel at 9pm on March 4 2007.  Several of us live blogged the event.  But by this point, Discovery's publicity machine had been in full force for several days;  there was a press conference, a snazzy "official" website and Discovery's own website.  The bloggers got to work on this informtion straight away and by the time the documentary had aired, there were already major question marks against the claims being made by Simcha Jacobovici and the other programme makers.

The case for the identification between the Talpiot Tomb and Jesus of Nazareth is based largely on statistics.  The cluster of names found in this tomb is said to correspond to a remarkable degree with the names of Jesus and his family.   Before the documentary had aired, I was highly sceptical of the statistical case, not least because it appeared to rely on a dubious identification between Mariamene and Mary Magdalene while at the same time failing to take seriously important contrary evidence, Judas son of Jesus, and ignoring the non-match Matia.

Simcha Jacobovici had hired a top statistician, though, and surely, he argued, his expertise should be taken seriously. The statistician in question was Dr Andrey Feuerverger, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Toronto. I wrote the following:

Clearly he knows a lot more about statistics than most of us, and I would not dream of trying to second guess him. But he revealed a very important piece of information at the press conference, that he is not an expert on the New Testament or archaeological data, so he was working with the data given to him by the programme makers. The relevance of this is that a significant and fatal bias was introduced into the analysis before it had even begun.

One can view the data that was given to Feuerverger on the Discovery website, in the PDF packet of documentation, where the grounds for the statistical analysis are given. It is clear from this that the task he was given was to work out the probability of a certain cluster of names occurring, where in each case all known examples of the given name in the given period were divided into all known naming possibilities in the given period. And the names he worked with were Jesus son of Joseph, Mariamne, Maria and Joseph. The name Matia was initially factored in too, and then removed "since he is not explicatively [sic] mentioned in the Gospels". But the problem is not just that Matia is not mentioned as a family member in the Gospels, it is that the greater the number of non-matches, the less impressive the cluster becomes. Or, to put it another way, it stops being a cluster of striking names when the cluster is diluted with non-matches. Mariamne needs to be taken out of the positive calculation and instead treated as a non-match; Matia needs to be treated as a second non-match; Judas son of Jesus needs to be treated as contradictory evidence. These three pieces of data together detract radically from the impressiveness of the given cluster.

In an attempt to make the point by extending and reapplying an analogy that Simcha Jacobovici was fond of, I continued:

At the risk of labouring the point, let me attempt to explain my concerns by using the analogy of which the film-makers are so fond, the Beatles analogy. This analogy works by saying that if in 2,000 years a tomb was discovered in Liverpool that featured the names John, Paul and George, we would not immediately conclude that we had found the tomb of the Beatles. But if we also found so distinctive a name as Ringo, then we would be interested. Jacobovici claims that the "Ringo" in this tomb is Mariamene, whom he interprets as Mary Magdalene and as Jesus's wife, which is problematic (see Mariamne and the "Jesus Family Tomb" and below). What we actually have is the equivalent of a tomb with the names John, Paul, George, Martin, Alan and Ziggy. We might well say, "Perhaps the 'Martin' is George Martin, and so this is a match!" or "Perhaps John Lennon had a son called Ziggy we have not previously heard about" but this would be special pleading and we would rightly reject such claims. A cluster of names is only impressive when it is a cluster that is uncontaminated by non-matches and contradictory evidence.

In short, including Mariamne and leaving out Matia and Judas son of Jesus is problematic for any claim to be made about the remaining cluster. All data must be included. You cannot cherry pick or manipulate your data before doing your statistical analysis.

That post appeared on Thursday 1 March.  (Actually I remember being up late that night to write it, and the time stamp of 1.45am confirms that memory).  Within 24 hours, I was able to publish a follow-up based on a helpful but technical email from Joe D'Mello who was concerned about some of the claims being made on the Discovery Channel website.  D'Mello was able to go much further than I, and others like me, were able to go.  We were largely questioning the data that had been fed to Feuerverger, but D'Mello could see that there were problems also in the interpretation of the statistical calculations.  D'Mello was disputing the following claim that appeared prominently on the Discovery Website:

A statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters (Discovery Channel/Vision Canada/C4 UK) concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this tomb being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

D'Mello was clear that this conclusion was not justified by the data.  I invited him to write a guest post for me;  and he wrote to Feuerverger and Discovery.  Within two days, now the day of the broadcast itself, D'Mello had secured important corrections from Feuerverger, including the following:

In this respect I now believe that I should not assert any conclusions connecting this tomb with any hypothetical one of the NT family. The interpretation of the computation should be that it is estimating the probability of there having been another family at the time whose tomb this might be, under certain specified assumptions.

Again, I published the material here and again it was not the end of the story. By March 10, D'Mello had secured an agreement that there should be an adjustment on the Discovery website itself, a correction that duly appeared three days later, on 13 March, and then throughout the site by the end of the week, on 16 March. Perhaps the most significant of the changes was this one:

Dr. Andrey Feuerverger, professor of statistics & mathematics at the University of Toronto, has concluded a high statistical probability that the Talpiot tomb is the JESUS FAMILY TOMB.

changed to

Dr. Andrey Feuerverger, professor of statistics at the University of Toronto, has concluded (subject to the stated historical assumptions) that it is unlikely that an equally "surprising” cluster of names would have arisen by chance under purely random sampling.

It is easy to see that the second statement is significantly weaker than the first.

The discussion of the statistics continued for some weeks and months after this initial flurry of emails and posts, and I should make special mention of the work of Randy Ingermanson, who was involved in the discussions right from the beginning and went on to write what I think of as the definitive piece on the subject, Analysis of Andrey Feuerverger's Article on the Jesus Family Tomb. But I have homed in in this post on the early contributions of Joe D'Mello, and the discussions of the statistics in this blog, because it illustrates one of the upsides of the blogs. By providing informed comment in an up-to-the-minute way, the blogs can, on occasions like this, hold the media to account, exposing problematic claims and faulty logic. It was, I think, the combination between speed and accuracy that made the impact. The reactions were speedy, at the very time that the eye of the media was upon us, and when Discovery wanted to avoid criticism. The reactions were informed and accurate, the blogging revolution allowing connections to be made between Biblical scholars and statisticians.

In the next part, I will turn to the broader picture of the blogging of the Talpiot Tomb, and how it had success in changing the scene.

The Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39

The centurion's cry in Mark 15.39, "Truly this was the son of God", is often described as a "confession". It is the moment in Mark's Gospel when Jesus is finally acknowledged as God's son, by a Gentile centurion, forming a nice inclusio with God's announcement of Jesus as his son in Mark 1.11 (cf. 9.7, 12.6). But are we supposed to read centurion's statement as a positive confession, or is it a sarcastic comment, "Huh, truly this fellow as a son of god!"? I first heard the latter interpretation as a first year student in Oxford in the mid 80s, from Canon John Fenton. I would like to underline the merits of this reading in the current blog post, and then I will conclude by asking where the reading originates.

Since hearing John Fenton expound this reading, I have often taught it myself. Usually people are somewhat shocked at first, but as time goes on the reading becomes more appealing and, ultimately, quite persuasive. If the cry is sarcastic, it makes sense in its narrative context. Take another look:

Mark 15.37: ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀφεὶς φωνὴν μεγάλην ἐξέπνευσεν. 38. Καὶ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη εἰς δύο ἀπ' ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω. 39 Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ κεντυρίων ὁ παρεστηκὼς ἐξ ἐναντίας αὐτοῦ ὅτι οὕτως ἐξέπνευσεν εἶπεν, Ἀληθῶς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος υἱὸς θεοῦ ἦν.

Mark 15.37: And Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. 38. And the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who was standing facing him, saw how he died, he said, "Truly this was a son of god".

There is nothing that the centurion has seen that suggests that we should read the text as implying his admiration for Jesus. He makes his comment when he saw how Jesus died (ὅτι οὕτως ἐξέπνευσεν εἶπεν), that is, in despair (15.34), apparently unable to call down Elijah to deliver him (15.35-6). The reader, on the other hand, is given some privileged information, that the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. This is classic dramatic irony: the reader knows what the actors in the drama do not know, and the actors do not realize the truth of the words that they are speaking in mockery.

To read the text in this way coheres with the rest of Mark's Passion Narrative, which is commonly regarded as rich in irony. Jesus is repeatedly mocked as a king (15.9, 12, 18, 26, 32) with purple cloak, crown of thorns and mock homage (15.17-20), but the reader knows that he really is a king. He is mocked as a prophet (14.65) while his very prophecies are being enacted all around him (the mockery itself, fulfilling his Passion predictions, and Peter's denial, fulfilling Jesus' Last Supper prophecies). Given this context, it is difficult to think that the centurion's remark can be intended as a "confession" of faith in Jesus. Reading the remark as the crowning element in the dramatic irony of Mark's Passion Narrative makes good narrative sense.

Now, the first time I heard the suggestion that we read the centurion's cry as ironic was from my tutor John Fenton. A friend tells me that he thinks Fenton got this interpretation from Austin Farrer. This is plausible because Fenton was an admirer of Farrer, but I don't remember that from what Fenton himself said -- and he was inclined to attribute ideas that were not original. I have cast around the literature too to see if anyone else has read the text in this way, and I am surprised to be struggling to find examples of this interpretation. I had thought that perhaps Donald Juel mentioned it, but again I can't find it. Fenton himself mentions it in written work once, as far as I am aware, as follows, with some helpful additional context connecting the saying to the Elijah on Horeb narrative:

Elijah had, it was believed, set up an experiment to prove that the Lord was God, not Baal (1 Kings 18). Someone now tries to repeat the experiment on Jesus: he is given the drink, and they say, Let us see if Elijah will come to take him down from the cross. If Elijah comes, Jesus is who he says he is; if Elijah does not come, he is not. Jesus dies, without the intervention of Elijah, thus proving to those who think in this way that he was not the Messiah, the king of Israel. (It is possible that the centurion's words should be taken in this sense: He really was God's son! Of course not! There is a parallel in the Greek between what the people said on Mount Horeb after Elijah's miracle: Truly the Lord is God; and what is said here, Truly this man was the Son of God. There is also the possibility that 'this man' should be translated 'this fellow', disparagingly, as in Acts 6.13.), John Fenton, Finding the Way Through Mark (London: Mowbray, 1995), 111.

If anyone has any more from the literature on this theme, I would be interested to hear it.

The Horrors of Crucifixion and Amnesty International

This week in my Historical Jesus class we came to one of the topics that I never particularly enjoy teaching, not because it is lacking in interest but because it is such a profoundly disturbing topic.  If there is one thing that we know about the Historical Jesus with a degree of certainty, it is that he died by crucifixion.  If we don't know that, we really don't know anything.  But if we do know that, what are the details of what we know about crucifixion in general?

When discussing Jesus' crucifixion, I like to explore the archaeological and the literary evidence for ancient crucifixion.  That means drawing attention to the blood-curdling accounts from Seneca, Cicero and Josephus, among others, with help from Martin Hengel's little book, and adding to those Joe Zias's work on Crucifixion in Antiquity.  When I showed the students a picture of the heel bone of Jehohanan, the sole archaeological evidence of a crucifixion victim, with the nail still embedded, there was an audible sense of horror at what must have been involved in that crucifixion.  It brings home to students the unspeakably cruel nature of the punishment.

If, like me, you are a sensitive person, discussing forms of ancient torture with some degree of detail is not a pleasant experience.  There is an anxiety in drawing attention to something so horrible from the past.   When I was teaching this a few years ago, I found myself making some kind of remark about the cruelty, the sadism of the ancient figures we were discussing.  And then I paused for a moment.  The conceit of the academic who studies antiquity allows the indulgence of separating oneself from the past.  The distancing is, of course, necessary and often desirable if one is to understand the past.  But appreciation of the horrors of antiquity can at the same time awaken us to similar horrors in the contemporary world.  And here there is something we can do about it.   Why not use the reminder of evil in antiquity to stimulate us to action about the evil in the contemporary world?

Like 2.2 million others, I am a member of Amnesty International and I attempt, often inadequately, to make my small contribution to ending human rights abuses around the world.  

I don't often discuss politics on this blog.  It's not the blog's topic, and I am not expert enough to provide incisive political comment.  I leave that to those who are more skilled and knowledgeable than I.  But on occasions like this, with the reminder of such inspeakable human cruelty, I break with protocol, as I do in the classroom too,  and share my own commitment to joining those who campaign for internationally recognised human rights for all.  

BBC Passion repeated on BBC4 tomorrow

The Passion gets a repeat showing on BBC4 tomorrow, Wednesday 8 April, at 7.30pm. They are showing all four episodes in an omnibus version. If you did not catch it last year, I strongly recommend it. No news yet on its first airing in the US, but it now looks unlikely to air here this year.  Previous discussion of The Passion on this blog here.

Syneidon Podcast: Exploring the Gospel of Mark

Regular readers will know if my enthusiasm for the University of Birmingham's Syneidon Project, which is run by Richard Goode and Helen Ingram. Helen is already known to many of you through her blog The Omega Course, recently mentioned at the Biblioblog T0p 50 website, and to others she is famous for her church organ renditions of rock classics. Both Richard and Helen are University of Birmingham PhDs in New Testament and it is excellent news that Syneidon now have their own podcast:

Syneidon Podcast

The first episode is entitled Exploring the Gospel of Mark - 1. Richard is the compère and has a fine voice for radio. He is joined by another Birmingham graduate, from the Queen's Foundation, Robert Foster (who was in my first ever Greek class in Birmingham some years back!). And there is an interview with David Parker. Helen supplies the music, her own composition and not Metallica.

I hope to add a page to the NT Gateway soon on Podcasts, encouraged by the fact that I hope to have my own podcast available soon. I will have details there and here when it is available.

Beg the question alert: Crossley

From James Crossley's Jesus in An Age of Terror, 36:

"Note throughout that Ristau did not really condemn those involved -- at best the odd human error here and there -- and he apparently still believes that western powers are acting with only kindness in their hearts. But with the propaganda model in mind, this begs the question, if he concedes wrongdoings then why can he not bring himself to condemn the wrongdoers or post comments on his blog, especially as he is arguably the most explicitly political biblioblogger?

The Dilettante Hobby Horse Bibliobloggger's Behaviour

In an earlier post, I drew attention to the uncanny similarities between the style of Jim West and the style of the anonymous author of the Dilettante Hobby Horse blog. The latest post on the site continues the trend, with another West-style neologism ("horsistary"), and characteristic usages like "'em" phrases ("tell 'em", "show 'em", etc.). But what makes the new post striking is that the anonymous author is now not only imitating Jim's style but also using materials sent to him by Jim without the proper attribution.

The sequence of events appears to go something like this. Chris Tilling posted on Negotiating Tensions in the Bible. A character called "sickrandir" adds a comment and then Jim comments, "i'm going to copy his comment and send them over to the dilettante hobby horse!" The comments in question then appear on the Dilettante Hobby Horse very shortly afterwards, but without the requisite "hat tip" to Jim. Now we all know how Jim feels about using material without a hat-tip (e.g. with reference to BAR). So it seems likely that the Dilettante Hobby Horse is going to be in for Jim's wrath pretty soon. As well as blogging anonymously, he fails to attribute his sources, and he has the affrontery to do all of this using Jim's own writing style. Time to take action, Jim!

Hyperlinking endnotes: a suggestion for James Crossley

I am currently enjoying James Crossley's Jesus in An Age of Terror and hope to comment here in due course. One quick suggestion comes to mind as I read the piece that is going to be of the most interest to those of us here, Chapter 2, "The Politics of the Bibliobloggers". There are 94 endnotes to this chapter, most of them with one or more URLs pointing to a particular blog post. Now, few of us are going to go to our machines and type these in, letter by letter, so the ideal would be to have an online version of the endnotes in which each URL is hyperlinked. It's an excellent time-saving device and it helps readers to investigate the claims made here for themselves. Moreover, because of link-rot, dozens of these URLs are already defunct, and the presence of even the defunct URL would allow a quick copy and paste to archive.org.

Just in case you think this sounds terribly theoretical, I have a model for this kind of thing which I created back in 2004 when I was invited by Robert Webb and Kathleen Corely to contribute to a book on The Passion of the Christ. The book has its own page at Jesus and Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, with its full hyperlinked footnotes page here.

Moratorium on Biblioblogging April Fool's Jokes

It's April 1 and once again we have a selection of April Fool's jokes on the biblioblogs. As usual, there are varying degrees of skill, wit and humour to be found. I don't know whether I am speaking just for myself here, but frankly I am finding it all a bit tiring. One or two of them raised a bit of a smile, but all of them induced that dull, "Here we go again" kind of tedium. The difficulty is not just that they are getting tired but that they detract from the scholarly nature and academic reputation of the biblioblogs. If we wish to be taken seriously by the guild, I think it's time to behave with a bit more decorum. I suspect that what we are seeing here is a symptom of a larger problem about the decline in the academic quality of the biblioblogs. I think I am inclined to use an American expression and say "Enough already!"

Latest Biblioblog Top 50

The latest Biblioblog Top 50 is out and it is not good news for my NT Blog, which is nowhere to be seen, though the NT Gateway blog still clocks in at a very respectable 12. So let's see what we can do to move my NT Blog up into the mix for next month. There is plenty of good news, though, including the reappearance of Paleojudaica at Number 32, though I am still amazed by what the punters view ahead of Jim Davila's blog. I am also pleased to see the blog of Helen Ingram, my former PhD student, The Omega Course, gaining an honorable mention:

But then we found Helen Ingram’s smoking new blog, delightfully named The Omega Course, which discusses Jesus and Magic - that is, when she’s not playing Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’ on a church organ.

Who is behind the Dilettante Hobby Horse Blog?

In recent days there has been some speculation about the identity of the author of the new Dilettante Hobby Horse blog. As soon as it became clear that it was not by the artist formerly known as N. T. Wrong, attention turned to Jim West. Could he be the author of this new blog? Those who are inclined to think so cite several pieces of circumstantial evidence that appear to point to Jim. Some of them are pretty obvious, the repeated use of the term "dilettante", one of Jim's favourites, the repeated references to Jim ("if you are Jim West . . ."; Extra Hudson) as well as contributions from Jim (Another one for you) and regular comments (comments, comments, comments).

But of course all that that tells us is that Jim is an enthusiastic supporter of the new blog. It does not make him its author. Attention has naturally turned, therefore, to the blog's style. Does it sound like Jim? Certainly it features a striking number of his favourite language, "idiocy", "crackpot", "lunacy", "pearls", alongside the use of sarcasm and neologisms constructed around names. "Hudsonianism" and "hobby horsistians" in the new blog are analogous to famous Westisms such as "Wrightianity", "Wrightianist", "bibliobloggists", "Bentley-ism" and "Bentley-ism-anity".

It is difficult to be convinced by such speculation. The Dilettante Hobby Horse Blog cannot be Jim's work because his position on anonymous blogs is clear and often repeated, e.g. On blogging anonymously, where he comments that "Blogging anonymously is akin to citing Wikipedia, so far as I’m concerned". Or here:

An alias is a means by which a person hides him or herself, in a delightfully cowardly way, behind the mantle of anonymity. Anonymity, such persons believe, allows them to make the most outrageous and unsubstantiated claims without fear of having to give an account of themselves.

Like unprovenanced artifacts, however, unattributable comments have neither value nor worth and cannot be taken seriously by anyone. They are the academic equivalent of ‘www.juicycampus.com’ - a site devoted to slander and stupidity.
(Learning about the intelligence of readers via comments)

Moreover, Jim himself has denied being the author of the new blog (Finally, there's a place for all the dilettantes to assemble). So we have an interesting new biblioblogging mystery. Why does the author of the Dilettante Hobby Horse Blog model his language and style on Jim's? Jim: I think you have a fan!

Beg the Question alert

From Mark Allen Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 78:

"The group's [i.e. Jesus Seminar] ideological slant, then, may have been unintentional, but it is also undeniable. The Jesus Seminar is not representative of the guild of New Testament historical scholarship today. Rather, it is representative of one voice within that guild, a voice that actually espouses a minority position on some key issues. Nevertheless, this voice is a chorus. The charge "They all think alike!" is not completely accurate but, in any case, begs the question "Why do they think alike?" The harmony of so many usually independent voices is precisely what demands that attention be given to this chorus of scholars."

(HT: Nathan Eubank)

The Dilettante Hobby Horse Biblioblog

The artist formerly known as N T Wrong has another new blog (see also The Biblioblog Top 50) and it resurrects one of the great innovations at the old NT Wrong blog, the dilettante hobby horse section, now given a whole blog to itself. If TAFKANT Wrong (for short) continues at this rate, we we will soon no longer be lamenting his demise:

The Dilettante Hobby Horse Biblioblog

Meanwhile a Facebook group called Come back NT Wrong continues on his trail.

Paleojudaica: Now We are Six!

Congratulations to Paleojudaica, today celebrating its sixth anniversary, becoming somewhat "paleo" itself. In the blog world, that is positively ancient.

Beg the Question alert

From Dale Allison, "The Historians Jesus and the Church", Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Richard B. Hays, Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 79-95 (81):

"None of what has been said gives us good reason to attribute Mark 9.43-48 to someone other than Jesus, and my own strong inclination has always been that the verses go back to him. But if I am candid, I am not really sure what arguments or criteria I might muster to persuade others who are inclined to a different opinion or even no opinion at all. I can say that the language is vivid and shocking. My mind's eye beholds a bloody stump and an empty eye socket when it encounters these words, from which it follows that if Jesus did say something like Mark 9.43-48, it would stick in the memory. But this begs the question: Did he really say something like it?"

Incidentally, the article is fantastic, and I would like to blog about it in due course, but I thought I would note this incorrect usage of "beg the question" since the topic has been raised today.

Pet Peeves redux

A couple of years ago, several biblioblogs shared their pet peeves, including this one. By coincidence, two of them have re-emerged on the blogs today. First, Jim West shares his loathing of the plural "Revelations" for the Book of Revelation. As I mentioned before, I have an almost irrational degree of annoyance about this. Then on Higgaion, Chris Heard notes a fine new website, Beg the Question: Get it Right. I just happened to read an incorrect usage of "beg the question" yesterday, so I will blog that separately. And from now on, each time I see one in Biblical scholarship, I am going to mention it here.

The Ethics and the Practicalities of Blogging in the wake of the Raphael Golb affair

The fall-out from the Arrest of Raphael Golb is still making the news and it is being covered well by Jim Davila on Paleojudaica and Jim West, both of whom comment on Norman Golb's remarkable defence in Ha'aretz:

“Raphael, my son, is very devoted to my research. He realized years ago that there was an effort to close the door on my opinions. And so he started debating bloggers who were against me, using aliases. That’s the custom these days with blogs, as I understand it,” Norman Golb said.

Since I am not an expert on the scrolls, I generally avoid blogging on the topic, but the fall-out from this affair now touches on the ethics and practicalities of blogging and blog-commenting. (For full and detailed coverage, see Bob Cargill's constantly updated Who is Charles Gadda? web page).

When academics unfamiliar with the blogosphere comment on this world, they often -- unsurprisingly -- have a skewed picture. As Jim West and Jim Davila comment, Golb's view quoted above is seriously mistaken. There is no such accepted convention about the use of aliases and anyone who uses them in the way allegedly adopted by Raphael Golb is engaging in unacademic, uncivil and completely unacceptable behaviour. For those of us familiar with academic blogging, this goes without saying, but for others it may be less clear, and it is therefore worth underlining.

There is a practical problem here with the issue of blog-commenting, not least because Raphael Golb is alleged to have used multiple aliases in commenting on blogs, including my own (under the names Charles Gadda, Suzanne Shapiro and on one occasion as Anonymous, concerning the disgraceful slur on Schiffman, which I deleted). I have had commenting available on this blog almost from the beginning and on the whole the benefits outweigh the problems. Nevertheless, recent events highlight the problems quite starkly. I insist on people adding their names in comments, but what this affair shows is just how easy it is to adopt an alias and post something. In the light of this, it is easy to see why some do not allow comments and why others moderate them very heavily. I am certainly going to be much more careful in future.

The story continues in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, only available, unfortunately, to subscribers and subscribing institutions. The whole article is the best piece yet on the debacle, clear, detailed and well-narrated, and it appears now that Norman Golb admits that his son is indeed Charles Gadda (and so by implication these other aliases too):

Norman Golb told The Chronicle that he was "aghast and horrified at these charges. My son's only interest has been to follow my work, and—since he is a blogger and I am not a blogger—to engage in debate with other bloggers." The elder Mr. Golb added, "He used a pseudonym because that's what he preferred to do."

When a Chronicle reporter asked if that pseudonym was Charles Gadda, the older Mr. Golb replied, "Yeah, that's right."

The sad thing about the case is that engaging in debate is just what did not happen. Essentially, the multiple aliases were used to promote and not to debate. And it is difficult to engage in proper debate with a series of apparently different identities that all emanate from the one person.

The Chronicle article goes on to talk briefly about how scholars should be involved on the web. "Mr. Schiffman believes that descending into the fray on Web forums is a fool's errand," the article says, but Jodi Magness was also interviewed:

"We have a responsibility to disseminate our information to the wider public," she said. "The fact of the matter is that many people now get their information from the Internet, so we do have a responsibility to make what we find out known."

But while the Web allows scholars to engage the public directly, Ms. Magness said it is "not a suitable venue for the dissemination of unvetted scholarly interpretations."

I strongly agree with what Jodi says about our responsibility to disseminate our scholarship, and I agree too, in the spirit of the second quotation here, that we need to keep thinking about how best we do this. Where the blogs are concerned, the very informality and immediacy of the medium provide the opportunity to try out fresh ideas or to engage creatively with published material. Those of us actively involved in the blog world need to make sure that the abuse of the medium is not allowed to provide a reason for avoiding intelligent use of the medium.

A coda. The article has a further remarkable quotation from Norman Golb to the following effect:

At the same time, the elder Mr. Golb said he thinks "there should be tighter rules in general for bloggers so that everyone would have to have his own identification—bona fide identification."

This reminds me of Tony Blair's response to the "Cash for Coronets" scandal in the dying days of his premiership, with the suggestion that new rules were required to help the parties to avoid corruption. Legislating the bloggers is not only an absurd idea from a logistical point of view, it is also entirely the wrong reaction to the abuse of the bloggers' and blog-commenters' relative freedom. We don't need new rules. We need ethical behaviour.

Douglas Campbell Interview

Mike Bird has a fascinating interview with my colleague here at Duke, Douglas Campbell, concerning his forthcoming Eerdmans book, The Deliverance of God (rather unfortunately and repeatedly reduced to "DOG"). It's over on the Euangelion blog. You may need to read it backwards if following that link since the most recent instalment comes first.

Gender analyzing my blogs

Over on Crypto-theology, Matthew Malcolm turns out to be only 41% male, and I thought I would run my blogs through the GenderAnalyzer too. There is actually a surprisingly clear pattern:

NT Gateway blog: "strong indicators" that it is "written by a man", 92%

My NT blog: "we think" that it is "written by a man", 67%

The Resident Alien: "we guess" that it is "written by a man, but it is quite gender neutral", 50%.

So it seems clear that the more my own personality is found, the less male and the more female I become.

John Fenton's Advice to Canons

Over on Notes from Underground, Steve Hayes reproduces John Fenton's Advice to Canons. It is hilarious and touching in equal measure, and wonderfully capture what he was like.

Does the British New Testament Society have members?

Nijay K. Gupta asks, "Does the British New Testament Society have members?" I must admit to being a bit out of the loop these days, having missed the last three conferences because of my move to the US, but it is an interesting question. I think the tendency in the past has been to prefer the terminology of British New Testament Conference and to regard the "society" aspect as informally constituted. There are no membership fees, no list of members, and votes go to all those who attend a given conference.

Having said that, I recall Jimmy Dunn's speech at the pseudo-25th anniversary, BNTC 2004 (my report), in which he noted that the society provided a fine example of the "routinization of charisma", beginning informally and dynamically, and increasingly becoming like a formal society, with its own president, secretary, treasurer, committee and website (even if the website is currently on hiatus). Perhaps the next step in that process is for people to think of themselves as members.

Additional note: while I was secretary, the society also had its own logo, which my wife Viola designed (see above). It has since been dropped on the website, though it's perhaps worth nothing that we decided to make the logo refer to the "conference" rather than the "society".

Update (11.23): Lloyd Pietersen's comments are worth bringing up to the main post:

Two comments. First, you'll be pleased to know that the logo still remains on our letterhead. So any letters I send out contains your original logo. Second, BNTS is formally consituted as a Society and is a registered Scottish charity. It still does not have a formal membership but the committee does refer to the following criteria for admission to the annual conference:

(1) Teach New Testament (or a cognate discipline) at a recognized HEI
(2) Hold a doctorate in the area of New Testament
(3) Currently engaged in a programme of study that leads to a doctoral degree in New Testament
(4) Have previously been in attendence at the Society's annual conference
(5) By special permission of the committee for a time limited period

Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIX

It's spring break at Duke this week, which means that the students get a well-deserved break somewhere nice like Myrtle Beach or Fort Lauderdale, and I get to catch up on emails. I'll probably be blogging more than usual, including this catch-up post about the latest Biblical Studies Carnival, an excellent and thorough job from a new blog to me, Dr. Platypus by Darrell Pursifal:

Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIX

Biblioblog Top 50

I am way behind on mentioning the February Biblioblog Top 50, put together by the artist formerly known as N T Wrong. As usual, it's an interesting read. I am amazed that the NT Gateway blog remained right up there in the top 3 given the general upheaval last month, and the bifurcating of the old blog to create that one and this one. It will, perhaps, be a long time before this blog will grace the Top 50, but who knows what the "Biblical Floccinaucinihilipilification Society" has in store? The one baffling factor remains the absence of Paleojudaica from the list, all the more strange given some of those that are present there.

New URLs for my homepage and other academic materials

About three weeks ago, I announced that I had moved my home page and my own academic web materials to new locations at Duke. I did not imagine for a moment that I would need to move them again so quickly, but on Monday this week, the Duke servers suffered a major meltdown of some sort and at the end of the week, many Duke pages are still down. In well over a decade of having homepage and academic materials online, they have never experienced a crash like that. Back when they were on the University of Birmingham servers, they would occasionally be down for an hour or two, but rarely anything more. And while they were on the NTGateway.com servers, they were never down, year in, year out. So I have decided to move them again, to a new and, I hope, permanent destination (in so far as anything is permanent on the net, of course). I have followed the lead of others and have bought my own domain name connected with my actual name, markgoodacre.org. (Even if I had wanted markgoodacre.com, I could not have got it, on account of my namesakes's fine kitchen business). So the new URLs for my materials are as follows:

My homepage

The Case Against Q Website

The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze

The Aseneth Home Page

This one is now long in the tooth, but I keep it available for posterity / nostalgia, and because I devoted hours and hours of my time to it back in the day:

All-in-One Biblical Resources Search

See also:

Synoptic-L

Xtalk: Historical Jesus and Christian Origins

Duke PhD vs. ThD

Over on Church Leadership Conversations, Duke ThD student Andy Rowell has some interesting and detailed reflections on the similarities and differences between Duke's ThD (Divinity School) and PhD (Graduate Program in Religion) programs. The comments thread is worth reading too for further reflections from people on the ground.

Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr.

I was sorry to read of the death of Burton H. Throckmorton on Bibbiablog (see obituary on that site). Throckmorton is one of those rare scholars, like Liddell and Scott, or Hatch and Redpath, or Rahlfs, whose book became so widely used that his name became the name of that book.

John Fenton: Independent Obituary

Regular readers will know that I have been blogging everything I can find on the death of my beloved former tutor Canon John Fenton, adding also my own reflections. Now one of the great British New Testament scholars of the twentieth century adds his own fascinating obituary, a little later than all the others, in The Independent, with thanks to Frank Cranmer for alerting me to it:

The Reverend Canon John Fenton: Gregarious priest, teacher and scholar of the New Testament
Dennis Nineham

The obituary contains many delightful reflections that will strike a chord with anyone who knew Canon Fenton, and the following is an enjoyable characterization:

He is hard to describe because he was a sui generis, an unusual combination of opposites: a free spirit with his feet firmly on the ground; a speculative theologian who had something very earthy about him; a thoughtful man with bold ideas who advanced them with great diffidence; affable and outgoing but with a strong interior life; a deeply devout man who knew how to enjoy himself and help others to do the same.

I must admit that it is interesting to me to hear the reflections from churchmen about Canon Fenton's theology and devotion. I was somewhat impervious to the theological musings myself, except in so far as they nurtured my own scepticism.

Nineham's piece is not a eulogy but is a proper, warts-and-all obituary, with observations like the following:

He was a thoroughly good teacher and a striking and memorable preacher who always held his congregation's full attention, though a tendency to dwell at length on human shortcoming, very much including that of his hearers, occasionally caused some dismay.

I find that a little surprising, but perhaps I didn't have enough experience of Canon Fenton's sermons. He was well loved as our college catechist, as far as I can recall (Memories of John Fenton). I think "thoroughly good teacher" is a serious understatement too. He is one of the best teachers I have ever had, with a rare and remarkable understanding of the importance of encouragement. There are other remarks in the obituary which are a little unfortunate and which I will not quote here, but overall it is a worthy tribute to a great man.

The Arrest of Raphael Golb

This has to be one of the most remarkable stories to break in our area in recent times, and there are plenty to choose from. Jim Davila reports on the "strange and sad" story over on Paleojudaica, with a follow-up this morning, the Golb Arrest, as Raphael Golb, son of the Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Norman Golb, is arrested "for creating multiple aliases to engage in a campaign of impersonation and harassment relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls and scholars of opposing viewpoints" (News Release). Jim West is on top of the story over on his blog, The Arrest of Raphael Golb, with regular updates.

The arrest came hot on the heels of Robert Cargill's "Who is Charles Gadda" website. Its URL http://www.who-is-charles-gadda.com now redirects to the news release about the arrest of Golb, but Cargill's fascinating site can still be read over in his sandbox at Wikipedia, Who is Charles Gadda?, and he continues to update the page with all the latest information.

One of the aliases mentioned by Robert Cargill is "Robert Dworkin", and I now recall that this person corresponded with me on several occasions in 2007, to the same effect as that mentioned by Cargill. He wrote to me at my old blog address with links to material written by or defending Norman Golb. I replied briefly to each message but did not blog any of it because it is outside my area of expertise, and I prefer to rely on those like Jim Davila who understand the issues.

The alias "Charles Gadda" has also commented on my blog; similarly Suzanne Shapiro (after the previous comment). I notice too that I have received an email from another of the aliases on Bob Cargill's list, Sam Edelstein. After finding that I have had connections with all these aliases, I have stopped looking, but there are bound to be more. It is remarkable to think that I have been receiving multiple emails and comments over the last couple of years from different aliases of the same person. But I suppose that this also shows how ineffective the campaign was since I didn't blog on this on a single occasion.

However this story continues to pan out, now Norman Golb really does have some publicity for his theory of the origin of the scrolls.

The End of Yahoo! Briefcase: a Cautionary Tale?

There is a school of thought that says that the best way to back up your documents is to find a secure internet site. The theory is that you can access your documents from anywhere in the world as long as you have a web browser. There is no need for multiple flash drives or CDs, or other things that moth and rust, or the twenty-first century equivalent, might destroy. I must admit to having had some sympathy with this school of thought. Material that I have had available up on the web somewhere secure has often been a great help to me. Such documents withstand computer crashes, data losses, accidents and disasters happening on the laptop, the PC or wherever. But this March brings a cautionary tale.

I was looking for an old article I had written this week and couldn't find it in any of the standard places I look for my old stuff. So I turned to Yahoo! Briefcase which I used to use a good deal back in the day. It was part of the "my yahoo" suite which I used to enjoy before it turned out that Google did all the same things but much better. The following message greeted me there:

Briefcase will be closing on March 30, 2009.
You must download or delete your files before this date.
For more information, please see Help.

This was the first that I had heard that my 30MB of data was about to vanish. If I had not happened to pop back to the site, all this would have gone for good without my getting the chance to save it. So here is the moral of the story: don't assume that your online back-ups are safe for ever. One day even Google may no longer be with us.

Duke web problem update

The latest from Duke's OIT:

Certain web pages continue to be unavailable, as well as Streaming Media services (audio and video content in Windows media, Quicktime, Flash and Real formats).

We are waiting for a replacement array to arrive, at which time it will be installed and tested. We are not able to give an estimated time to fully restored services at this point.

I am planning to move all of my homepage and academic materials currently based at Duke this afternoon.

Problems with my web materials hosted at Duke

Since the beginning of the week, Duke has been having major problems with its web servers. Many of its pages are offline, including our departmental website. Most of my own academic web materials, my homepage, the Case Against Q website, the Way Through the Maze site, the Aseneth pages, all these are currently offline. I have to express some frustration at this scenario. When I moved these sorts of materials to the old NTGateway.com site back in 1999, it was largely because of frustration with the University of Birmingham web servers. I imagined that Duke's web servers would be stronger, but apparently not. At present, there are no reassurances about when a stable service will return, e.g. the Office of Information Technology is saying, "At this point, we are unable to estimate when services will be fully restored and fully stable." I am therefore planning on moving my own pages as soon as possible. Updates here as soon as they are available.