Biblioblogging Gender Gap and what can be done

Remember this cartoon? No? All will become clear in a bit. The occasion to dig it out is the recent, welcome resumption of the discussion about gender issues in biblioblogging.

I am delighted to see April DeConick, over on the Forbidden Gospels Blog, raising the issue of the disproportionately high ratio of men to women bloggers, in a lively post entitled What are we going to do about the blogger gender gap? This issue is one that many of us have been concerned about for some time. Back in 2005, it was one of the hot topics on the blogs, and it was one of the major discussion points at the SBL session on biblioblogging at the Philadelphia meeting in November 2005, not least because there were nine men -- and not a single woman -- on the panel. (I take responsibility; I chose the panel and could not find a single female biblioblogger to invite). Paul Nikkel and Yasmin Finch problematized this, and the subsequent discussion was fascinating, if inconclusive (See, among many other posts, Identity, Schmidentity @ Deinde; Death of the Biblioblog?; Stop obsessing about biblioblogging; and a great round-up on Hypotyposeis, Sans-biblioblogue). One of the more amusing things to come out of it was Tyler William's satirical cartoon above, over on Codex: Blogspot (where the image has since vanished), though the discussion was serious. Several of us were concerned, in particular, that we were seen not only as the symptom of the problem, but also its cause, that we were actively excluding women bibliobloggers from joining a club that we had created.

As time went on, a particular aspect of the issue began to bother me. The discussion about the lack of women bibliobloggers was taking place almost exclusively among men, and it was not reflecting well on us. When asked about it by Jim West, I wrote:

Of course we are right to be concerned about the lack of women bloggers in our area, but I am not sure that the issue is fruitfully dealt with by our obsessing about it. To problematize the phenomenon actually runs the risk of making it more difficult for changes to happen because we draw too much attention to the current situation, unduly isolating current and potential women bloggers. In other words, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the current lack of women bloggers is a situation not well served by a bunch of men sitting around frowning about it.

I suspect that that was not the ideal response and, if so, I repent of it. But I was genuinely unsure about how to try to change the situation for good, and I suspected that our discussions were only making things worse.

Looking back on it, and on other related episodes (e.g. see Pat McCullough's comments on kata ta biblia), what we needed was exactly what we now have: someone like April DeConick to take things forward. I, for one, appreciate her rallying cry, and hope that it will encourage more women to join the blogging fray. In other words, I like the fact that it's less a matter of soul-searching ("Enough of this nonsense and rationalizations") and more a matter of encouraging women to take action.

If I have a concern about April's recent post, I think I would be inclined to caution against the idea that there is some kind of conspiracy by men to marginalize women's blogs in the area, e.g. it seems clear to me that the person behind Biblioblog Top 50 is part of the solution and not the problem; we are lucky to have someone so well attuned politically running that chart (Anyone who quotes Sugi favourably is a friend of mine). But he may be Wrong and I may be wrong. Sometimes, the way that these things work is subtle, hidden, unconscious, and we are too dense to see it. I doubt that April will be able to find 270 women bibliobloggers who have been ignored and marginalized, but it would be fantastic if it turns out there are so many.

In relation to this, April quotes an interesting comment from Julia O'Brien to the following effect,

But I also wonder about the role of networking and way that many of the blogs in the top tier regularly reference one another. How do we encourage each other's success, make sure that others find the good work that's out there?"

This is an excellent question. One suggestion here would be not only to ask the male bibliobloggers to link more and to engage more with female bibliobloggers, but also to advise female bibliobloggers who feel themselves to be invisible to engage more with others on the scene, to link, to discuss. In other words, it is quite possible that male bibliobloggers are a cause as well as a symptom of the problem, but it is also worth considering the possibility that those, like me, who would like to call themselves feminists, may also be part of the solution.

The Revised NIV and "sinful nature"

Lots of the blogs (e.g. Better Bibles Blog) are reporting the news of the new version of the NIV (New International Version) to be released in 2011 (announcement here at NIV Bible 2011, including webcast). As far as I can see there is no sign yet of what it will be called, but new Bible translations are always great for demonstrating the folly of calling things "new" since "new" soon becomes not so new, and eventually it becomes old. "New Revised Standard" is one of the best pile-ups of adjectives yet. "Today" has already gone in the previous revision, the TNIV. Perhaps the NIV can be the Revised New International Version? Or NIV 2.0? "NIV Bible 2011" is going to date even more quickly, one would have thought.

As far as the content is concerned, I will be disappointed if they regress to some of the non-gender-inclusive language of the NIV. But there is one thing I will be looking for more than anything else, to see if they finally drop "sinful nature" as a translation of sarx in Paul, which was retained in the TNIV. It makes it unusable as a translation for teaching Paul.

Update (21:14): In comments, Matthew Montonini notes this interesting article (PDF) on the topic by Douglas Moo, who is on the CBT, the board that oversees the NIV translation.

NT Blog Six Years Old Today!

Happy birthday to me, six years old today. The first post on this blog was on 2 September 2003, Welcome to the NT Gateway Weblog where I wrote that

I've been inspired to set this up by Jim Davila's fine Palaeojudaica weblog at http://paleojudaica.blogspot.com/, not least because of a comment he made in that recently that it would be helpful to have more people doing the same kind of thing. I've very much enjoyed reading his blog over the last few months and while I doubt I will be able to do as good a job as he, I am nevertheless encouraged to try something similar myself.

Well, there are a few more people blogging now!

This last year has been one of the most important of the six, not least because half way through the year, the old NT Gateway blog morphed in to this NT Blog, taking the archives with it and migrating to a new URL. At the same time the NT Gateway, which stayed at its old URL, NTGateway.com, had a major reboot as I went into partnership with Logos. The improvements to the NT Gateway continue, and you can follow all the progress over on the NT Gateway blog which launched in February along with the new site. There are several exciting developments to come there over the coming weeks. (February was the big month -- Developments at the NT Gateway; Blog changes; New Blog URL; Blog Migration Success; New NT Gateway site launched; New NT Gateway now live).

The other development around here over the last year or so has been the launch of my NT Pod over on http://podacre.blogspot.com. I began this project after experimenting informally with a podcast in teaching last semester. There are ten episodes of the NT Pod so far, and it's something I am enjoying. As regular readers will know, I sometimes post programme notes here on the NT Blog too.

Many thanks for the support and encouragement over the last six years. I wonder if I will still be blogging in 2015?

New fragment of Codex Sinaiticus discovered

Tomorrow's Independent carries an interesting story about the find of a previously unseen section of Codex Sinaiticus:

Fragment from world's oldest Bible found hidden in Egyptian monastery
Academic stumbles upon previously unseen section of Codex Sinaiticus dating back to 4th century
By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent

A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.

Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt . . . .

. . . . A Greek student conservator who is studying for his PhD in Britain, Mr Sarris had been involved in the British Library's project to digitise the Codex and quickly recognised the distinct Greek lettering when he saw it poking through a section of the book binding. Speaking from the Greek island of Patmos yesterday, Mr Sarris said: "It was a really exciting moment. Although it is not my area of expertise, I had helped with the online project so the Codex had been heavily imprinted in my memory. I began checking the height of the letters and the columns and quickly realised we were looking at an unseen part of the Codex."

Mr Sarris later emailed Father Justin, the monastery's librarian, to suggest he take a closer look at the book binding. "Even if there is a one-in-a-million possibility that it could be a Sinaiticus fragment that has escaped our attention, I thought it would be best to say it rather than dismiss it."

Only a quarter of the fragment is visible through the book binding but after closer inspection, Father Justin was able to confirm that a previously unseen section of the Codex had indeed been found. The fragment is believed to be the beginning of Joshua, Chapter 1, Verse 10, in which Joshua admonishes the children of Israel as they enter the promised land . . . .

Although the article is new, the discovery happened a while ago; The Economist reported it in July, and the British Library has a useful article by Prof. Nicholas Pickwoad, also from July, which mentions the find:

Most recently, Nikolas Sarris, a member the Codex Sinaiticus Project when he was working in the British Library, noticed, in the process of working through the photographic records from our manuscript survey for his PhD thesis, noticed a familiar-looking script inside the right board of MS Greek 2289. He immediately referred this to the librarian, Father Justin, who identified the text as coming from the book of Joshua and to be a part of the text missing from the known leaves of the Codex Siniaticus. It would appear that this is indeed another fragment of the Codex, but it presents enormous problems. It was used in as a board lining in one of a small group of bindings identified by Nikolas as having been bound in the monastery in the first half of the eighteenth century. At some date, someone tore part of the pastedown away to reveal the manuscript (and in the process apparently removing some of the ink), but there appears to be no further record of it. From a brief visual examination of the fragment, it would appear to be in a badly deteriorated condition with possibly a second leaf under it, but the turn-ins of the leather cover are very firmly adhered to it, as is much of what is left of the paper pastedown . . . .

Biblical Studies Carnival 45

A superb job this month on the Biblical Studies Carnival, the regular round-up of what's going on in the blogs over the last month:

Biblical Studies Carnival 45

It's by Michael Kok over on the Golden Rule blog. Thanks, Michael.

Bart Ehrman Web Page

I have just noticed Bart Ehrman's glossy web page:

Professor Bart D. Ehrman

It has information about publications, CV and so on, and perhaps most usefully a compendium of audio and video links, some of which will probably find their way onto the NT Gateway.

Are electronic journals changing the way we cite articles?

Back in the day, journal articles were cited something like this:

Christopher Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics”, NovT 30 (1988), 132-57

There was a simplicity about this kind of reference, and it made sense of the practice of finding an article. For all but the most current issues, we would go to the bound volumes of the journal in question, and all you'd need for that would be the volume number, the year and the page numbers. To add the issue number would be superfluous. But I've noticed now just how inconvenient it can be only to have that information in the light of ever increasing access to journals electronically. You can make a rough guess as to whereabouts the page numbers might be in a given issue, but more often than not, one makes the wrong choice. I must admit that I am now adjusting my own practice and, as far as possible, adding issue numbers to my citations, so that one like the above becomes:

Christopher Tuckett, “Thomas and the Synoptics”, NovT 30.2 (1988), 132-57

Of course things are simpler when you are reaching an article through a search and you are able to click through to the article in question, but it's now often helpful to have the issue information handy for occasions when one is in browse mode.

Biblioblog Top 50, August

The latest Biblioblog Top 50 makes for enjoyable reading. I must confess that there are far too many blogs in the top 50 that I don't yet subscribe to. I'll have to put that right. It's nice to see the NT Blog still in the top 10, and even more encouraging to see the NT Pod jumping a massive 78 places to 58. It's good to see James McGrath back in the top 10, but those of you who aren't reading Paleojudaica should be. I am sure Dr Jim (Linville)'s blog will continue to rise up the list in the future. It's one of the most entertaining of all the biblioblogs, in my humble opinion. One curiosity -- I don't see Bob Cargill's blog anywhere, and it certainly should be added. And congratulations to Jim West for holding on to the top spot for the sixth month in a row.

666 verses in Mark's Gospel in the NIV, or are there?

Over on PaleoBabble, Michael Heiser has a fantastic example of Another Great Moment in Pulpit Paleobabble, so good it is worth repeating here so that you can see it for yourself:



The pastor is a certain Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church, already notorious for comments on Him that Pisseth Against the Wall. Now he is attempting to prove that there are 666 verses in the New International Version of Mark's Gospel with a view to demonstrating that everyone should be using the King James Version (I understand that this phenomenon is called "KJV only" and it is surprisingly widespread, especially here in the US).

Michael makes some excellent points on PaleoBabble, all of which will be transparent good sense to any one with an education, but I'd like to add a quick point of my own which undermines the bizarre case on its own terms, and it goes as follows: There are not 666 verses in the NIV of Mark's Gospel. Like most modern translations, the NIV does not print Mark 7.16, 9.44, 9.46, 11.26 and 15.28. So there are not 666 verses in the NIV of Mark 1.1-16.8. There are 661. The preacher in question has made the mistake of counting simply by going to the last verse of each chapter and adding up those numbers. Of course he might say that these missing verses are printed as footnotes in the NIV, but then the whole point of his sermon is that the NIV ignores Mark 16.9-20 by treating them as footnotes, so that is hardly going to wash. Hoist by his own petard, I am afraid.

NT Pod 10: Paul's humour Programme Notes

I released the latest episode of the NT Pod on Friday and the topic was Did the Apostle Paul have a sense of humour? (or humor, if you prefer). I begin by mentioning John Knox, Chapters in a Life of Paul (Revised edition; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987; original edition, 1950); here is the passage in question:

To be sure Paul had his serious limitations as a counselor. We look in vain for any sign of humor in Paul's letters. He would have been both happier and wiser if he could sometimes have laughed at and with himself and at and with others; perhaps he did, but surely not often enough, since in that case at least an occasional chuckle would have found its way into his letters. (87).

The passages in Paul I discuss are Galatians 5:12, 1 Corinthians 12:15-26 and 2 Corinthians 12:11-13. For those who continued listening all the way to the end, there is a short clip of Eddie Izzard talking about Paul's letters. (Longer clip here on Youtube, with a bad language warning -- contains several expletives).

Audio and Video

There has been a lot of talk recently in the biblioblogs about audio and video in the NT Studies area, and the usefulness of new audio and video resources in teaching (e.g. AKMA and Homilia of a Budding NT Scholar, among others, commenting on St John's College, Nottingham Youtube videos). This has made me realize that it is high time that I begin the task of integrating links to audio and video resources into particular areas of the New Testament Gateway, and not just in gather-all pages like the one I recently added on podcasts. It is early days yet, but I have added pages on Historical Jesus: Audio and Video and Paul the Apostle: Audio and Video. So far, I have added links mainly to BBC documentaries and discussions (all audio streaming) and some podcasts, but next I'd like to work out how to link to some video too, including projects like the St John's Nottingham one. There is a lot more work to be done in this area, but it's exciting to have this new beginning. Suggestions, of course, are welcome.

Bob Cargill on Pseudo-Science and Sensationalist Archaeology

Bob Cargill has a superb piece in Bible and Interpretation today. I don't have anything to add to it, but just want to underline how helpful I think it is:

Pseudo-Science and Sensationalist Archaeology: An Exposé of Jimmy Barfield and the Copper Scroll Project

I particularly appreciate the rallying cry, for example here:

The academy has fallen too far behind in area of modern media. Television documentaries, blogs, and other self-produced vehicles of information dissemination have nearly been monopolized by entertainment brokers and scammers, who are all looking to make money by peddling popular misinformation. Scholars must venture into these less comfortable waters and begin to engage the public on their terms, for indeed, the winds have shifted and the environment of learning has shifted from the classroom to the living room. With wireless internet and satellite television pumping more information than a person can handle into homes around the world each day, an increasing number of people are getting their news and information from the internet and television rather than university campuses. At some point, the academy must relinquish its notion that the public will come to them for verification of facts and must take their message to the people. Scholars must work with university media relations personnel and technologists to maximize the reach of their research and instructional materials. And as always, scholars must publish their findings in a timely and credible manner, or they will indeed perish. Or, far worse, the truth will.

Most academics don't use Twitter

In today's Campus Technology, the news that Most Faculty Don't Use Twitter, Study Reveals. Also in the news today, it emerges that bears do, in fact, poo in the woods.

The Scholar's Scalpel

With a fine enough scalpel, everything is unique

Michael Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTSup. 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 280.

I have been looking for this quotation for ages, and finally came across it today. I had remembered using it myself (e.g. in my review of Kim Paffenroth's Story of Jesus according to L, "In the search for 'un-Lukan' features, one cannot help thinking that with a sharp enough scalpel, everything is unique"), and I had always attributed it to Michael Goulder, but I was beginning to think that I had invented it myself. It turns out that my memory was correct and that it does come in Goulder. It's a nice line. In context, Goulder is criticizing the fine distinctions made by Schürmann on Luke 3.15, "Schürmann denies the verse to Luke by fastidious distinctions . . . "

Admitting our Ignorance about the Historical Jesus

My latest In My View piece is up at Bible and Interpretation:

Admitting our Ignorance about the Historical Jesus

Regular readers of this blog may recognise that it repeats, deletes, adjusts and adds to some of the themes that I have been discussing here in the series on Missing Pieces. It is also my belated birthday tribute to Rudolf Bultmann whose 125th birthday was last week (see Bultmann posts and tributes).

NT Pod 9: Jesus' Genealogy in Luke's Gospel

For those who are not subscribed to the NT Pod, I will continue to mention it here when I remember. The latest episode, uploaded earlier, is on Luke's Genealogy (Luke 3:23-38). In it I develop the suggestion that Luke takes his genealogy of Jesus through Nathan (Luke 3:31) rather than Solomon (Matthew 1:6) because he is developing an idea drawn the famous messianic passage Isaiah 11:1, which speaks of the "shoot coming from the stump of Jesse". I don't think I have any substantial programme notes to add this time, but it is possible that I might follow up the podcast with some notes here in due course.

Jesus Seminar latest

John Dart has the latest on the Jesus Seminar in an article in The Christian Century:

Revitalized Jesus Seminar Gets New Home

. . . . However, the outgoing board chair, Lane C. McGaughy, this year engineered a major money-saving relocation to the private Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, across from the state capitol. A longtime professor there, McGaughy convinced university president Lee Pelton, already a supporter of the Jesus Seminar, that the academic group and its Polebridge Press would fill the university's desire for an additional research center and an expandable university press.

"Westar was never on the verge of closing shop," McGaughy said. A core of Jesus Seminar fellows and lay associates "decided that Westar is an important voice for disseminating the results of serious scholarship on the Bible to the literate public." Its leaders had the respect of many biblical scholars not associated with theologically conservative schools.

Most people who looked into what the Jesus Seminar was saying "realized that our work was more mainstream (and boring) than they had thought," said one participant. "The shock value was lost."

Mainstream and boring -- that's a quotation worth remembering for the next time I am setting an essay on the Jesus Seminar and its participants! There is more news on the Westar Institute's site. And since I have last visited their site, there is some audio and video added.

SBL Receives NEH Award for "World of the Bible" website

The SBL site provides news of a successful award application:

Society of Biblical Literature Receives NEH Award

Atlanta – The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) has received a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant to develop an interactive website that would improve public understanding of the Bible and its contexts. This website, “The World of the Bible: Exploring People, Places, and Passages” will feed the large public interest in matters biblical and will draw on the work of SBL members.

The Project Director is SBL executive director Kent Richards, who will oversee the planning phase for the website from September 2009 to September 2010 . . .

The press release also mentions an advisory board, which includes a couple of familiar names from Duke University.

Graham Stanton: Obituary by James D. G. Dunn

I am not sure how long this has been on the SBL Site, but I have just spotted it and so add a note here:

Graham Stanton (1940-2009)

James D. G. Dunn

For other tributes and obituaries, follow this link: Graham Stanton.

Graham Stanton: The Times Obituary

Tomorrow's Times has its obituary of Graham Stanton:

Graham Stanton: New Testament Scholar

It is a fine obituary, with plenty of detail on his scholarship and even a mention of the British New Testament Society. The following paragraph corroborates what others like Peter Head have said:

Stanton justified his early elevation to a chair and his transfer in 1998 to the prestigious Lady Margaret’s chair at Cambridge. What the publications barely show is his remarkable success as a doctoral supervisor and the unusual proportion of his time and energy spent on this part of his work. His reputation attracted research students from overseas, a welcome contribution to university budgets. The warmth of their devotion to their teacher was evident in a haka honouring his roots and support for the All Blacks at the presentation of a festschrift [sic] in 2005.

SBL on a Budget

Around the blogs, talk is in the air about the SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans in November (e.g. should Dr Jim go?). One of the big issues this year, for many, will be finance. Even wealthy universities like my own, Duke, are cutting conference grants and expenses as part of their bid to save millions from their operating budgets. So for the first time since crossing the shores, I will not be able to claim a $1,000 conference grant to fund the trip. Luckily, I have experience of attending SBL on a budget. It is something I have blogged about before (Enjoying SBL), but here is a revised and expanded version:

1. Find a cheap flight. This has to begin pretty early, like a month or so ago. It's a good idea to use an aggregator site like Kayak and to watch the prices daily. I have managed to find a $216 flight from Raleigh to New Orleans after having watched the site for the last few weeks, and I am feeling quite chuffed about it.

2. Room-share. The SBL hotels are all pretty posh and pretty expensive. The only way to stay in one of those hotels and keep the price down is to room-share. Of course you need to have a person or people that you can cope with for several days, but the lucky ones among us will actually enjoy the SBL a great deal more because of the company they keep.

3. Breakfast trough-out. The cost of food is a big problem, and four days of conference-attending can put the strain on your budget. What I suggest is to get to one of those great American breakfast buffets every morning and eat to your heart's content. Don't be put off by earnest looking professor types who only visit the buffet once. Keep going for as long as you can. Eat so much that you won't want lunch. You can then make it through to the evening when you'll be just peckish enough to enjoy something else.

Birmingham never gave me enough to travel, and so troughing my face at breakfast was my standard survival strategy. The American breakfast buffets are great, though for Brits it can be a little off-putting to see Americans putting their fruit on the same plate as their sausage and bacon, or worse, putting corn syrup on their scrambled egg. So Brits abroad may need to avert their eyes. There is also an unappetizing pastey coloured concoction called "grits", which is to be avoided.

4. Get invited to receptions. Even if you have troughed out at breakfast, you'll be hungry again by the evening. If you can, get to an evening reception where there is a lot of food. Unfortunately, publishers and universities are all feeling the pinch, and the amount of "free" food at the receptions is now pretty limited, let alone free drinks (e.g. Duke goes to a cash bar this year for the first time in recent history). Nevertheless, if you are not too fussy, you might be able to pick up some nick-nacks while networking.

And with apologies to the publishers, who do need your money,

5. Don't visit the book exhibit. If you do, you will probably end up buying books. You know you can't afford them, and you run the risk of weighing down your bags so much that you have to pay extra at the airport for the journey home. And all these scholars who write big books have got plenty of money anyway, and don't need additional royalties from an SBL-on-a-budget type like you. Bear in mind that they won't be flight-watching, room-sharing, breakfast-troughing and reception-grabbing. The last thing you want to do is to subsidize their luxury.

John Sweet: The Independent Obituary and Selwyn College Condolence Book

The Times obituary of John Sweet mentions a book of condolences for John Sweet at the Selwyn College website. It is a remarkable testament to the man and it is often quite touching:

Condolence Book for Revd Canon Dr John Sweet 1927-2009

I have also just noticed The Independent obituary, which was published a week or so ago:

John Sweet: Biblical scholar and educator who taught a raft of Church leaders

This one is written by John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, hence the title, and it echoes the same comments about John Sweet's delightful character, but it has a nice paragraph on John Sweet's commentary on Revelation.

Academically, his commentary on the Book of Revelation was both wise and balanced, and played a very important role in helping ordinary readers make sense of this strangest and most puzzling part of the New Testament. He tried to see it as a whole, without the distortions of inherited assumptions. Drawing on the latest scholarship, Sweet explored the literary and theological dimensions of the text with great skill and lightness of touch, with the commentary serving as a reference point for students and scholars ever since its publication in 1979 by SCM Pelican Commentaries.

John Sweet: The Times Obituary

Today's Times has its obituary of John Sweet, with a very similar photograph to the one from the Telegraph obituary a couple of weeks ago, with Canon Sweet standing in front of Selwyn College:

Canon John Sweet: priest and scholar

John Sweet was a highly respected New Testament scholar who gave his life to teaching generations of students at Cambridge, among them three current Archbishops: Canterbury (Rowan Williams), York (John Sentamu) and Wales (Barry Morgan).

It is a delightful obituary and it catches something of his character:

He was totally without self-importance and to many seemed to epitomise the words from St John’s Gospel, “full of grace and truth”; 194 people attended his retirement dinner, including four diocesan bishops. For although Sweet was a distinguished scholar, at the centre of all he did, suffusing it with a special quality, was a sense that first of all he was a priest and a Christian disciple. His influence on all he taught was deep and long lasting.

NT Pod 8: The Alternative Number of the Beast: Programme Notes

I have just released episode 8 of the NT Pod and the topic this time is The Alternative Number of the Beast. The podcast discusses Revelation 13:18 and "the number of the beast", 666, as well as the alternative reading, 616, witnessed in Irenaeus and P115. I mention in the podcast that you can see P115 clearly on the web and this is the link:

P.Oxy LXVI 4499

It's there on the third line, chi, iota, stigma (hexakosiai deka hex).

For a useful video introduction to the issues, see my post from yesterday, Number of the Beast: 666 or 616: how does it work?, which features Ian Boxall and David Parker.

For an earlier post on the topic here, see The Number of the Beast: 616 and Oxyrhynchus.

Relevant bibliography includes:

David C. Parker, "A New Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of Revelation: P115 (P.Oxy 4499)", NTS 46 (2000): 159-74

Peter M. Head, "Some Recently Published NT Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: An Overview and Preliminary Assessment", Tyndale Bulletin 51 (2000): 1-16 [Available online in PDF format - click article title]

I may add a bit more here in due course.

Number of the Beast: 666 or 616: how does it work?

Back in 2003, the BBC made a series called Bible Mysteries and it included an episode on the Book of Revelation. It features an excellent introductory explanation of how the number of the beast works in Revelation and it covers the "other number of the beast", 616, with some great shots of the Oxyrhynchus fragments of Revelation published in 1999. This is the relevant (ten minute) section of the documentary:



The experts used in the discussion are Ian Boxall of St Stephen's House, Oxford, and David Parker of the University of Birmingham.

In My View: Philip Davies, "Watch Your Language!"

The latest In My View is now available at Bible and Interpretation. This week, Philip Davies writes on Watch Your Language!.

Daughter of Biblical Scholar Who Named Pluto

I always go first to the obituaries page when reading The Times and there is often material of interest. This is one I have been meaning to blog for a while. In May, The Times published the obituary of a certain Venetia Phair (1918-2009):

Venetia Phair: gave the planet Pluto its name

The obituary tells the delightful story of how the eleven year old came up with the name for "Pluto":

Venetia Phair won fame in 1930 when she suggested that a newly discovered far-distant planet in the solar system should be called Pluto, after the classical god of the underworld.

She was 11 years old. The ninth planet in the solar system had just been discovered by Clyde W. Tombaugh, a young American working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was 8.05am on March 14, 1930, and Venetia Phair, née Burney, was taking breakfast with her mother and grandfather.

Her grandfather, Falconer Madan, the retired head librarian of Bodleian Library in Oxford, was reading the newspaper. As he turned the pages he came across the report about the ninth planet, as yet unnamed, and how it had been captured by camera for the first time. The murky images vindicated those who, since the 19th century, had believed that another planet lay beyond Neptune.

In a short documentary entitled Naming Pluto, recently released by Father Films, Phair later recalled: “My grandfather as usual opened the paper, The Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered. He wondered what it should be called. We all wondered. And then I said, ‘Why not call it Pluto?’.”

With a shrug of her shoulders Phair also told the film-makers: “And the whole thing stemmed from that.” . . .

Now there is a feature there that one might easily miss. The name "Venetia Phair" reminds me rather of the name Sabrina Fair from the romantic comedy of the same name, but Venetia's maiden name was "Burney". A little further along in the obituary, we read:

Venetia Katharine Douglas Burney was born in Oxford in 1918, to the Rev Charles Fox Burney, professor of Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and Ethel Wordsworth Burney.

So Venetia Phair, it turns out, was the daughter of C. F. Burney (1868-1925), a scholar renowned for his interpretation of both Testaments, and perhaps most famous for his influential book The Poetry of Our Lord: An Examination of the Formal Aspects of Hebrew Poetry in the Discourses of Jesus Christ (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), though also well known for The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1922), the latter available in toto on archive.org and Google books.

Sadly, C. F. Burney had been dead for five years when his daughter named Pluto. But her grandfather (and Burney's father-in-law), Falconer Madan, who is credited in the story above, was at the time "finalising his definitive bibliography of Lewis Carroll", according to a certain Selwyn Goodacre in Lives Remembered.

Graham Stanton: The Telegraph Obituary

The Telegraph has just published its obituary of Graham Stanton:

Graham Stanton

Professor Graham Stanton, who died on July 18 aged 69, was Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge from 1998 to 2007 and before that spent 21 years as Professor of New Testament Studies at King's College, London.

Simon Peter in Matthew's Gospel: Article and NT Pod 7

I made available the latest NT Pod earlier this week, NT Pod 7: Simon Peter in Matthew's Gospel. It's the first time I have done a kind of "sequel" episode, this one following on from NT Pod 5: Simon Peter in Mark's Gospel. In this latest piece, I explore the way that Matthew works with Mark's portrayal of Peter and suggest that we can see the same "Peter Pattern" here as we see in Mark. As in Mark, the "rocky ground" Peter is the one who enthusiastically receives the word with joy but stumbles when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word (Mark 4:16-17 // Matt. 13:20-21).

Matthew takes forward the characterisation of Peter as the disciple who is scandalized by the idea of "Christ crucified" (1 Cor. 1:23), and he underlines and enhances the same language of skandalon and skandalizomai ("stumbling block", "to fall away"). Far from whitewashing the disciples, Matthew in fact proves to be a strong reader of Mark, understanding and elaborating on his presentation. One of the reasons that we fail to see this is our over-reliance on redaction-criticism, and our tendency only to pay attention to the parts where Matthew differs from Mark; we do not take seriously the elements that Matthew takes forward and underscores in Mark.

For those who would like to follow up the discussion on this point, I have an article available on the issues. It was published in 2006, but I am happy now to make it available online in toto (PDF):

"The Rock on Rocky Ground: Matthew, Mark and Peter as Skandalon," in Philip McCosker (ed.), What Is It That the Scripture Says?: Essays in Biblical Interpretation, Translation, And Reception in Honour of Henry Wansbrough Osb (Library of New Testament Studies; London & New York: Continuum, 2006): 61-73

The essay has been available in the above Festschrift for Henry Wansbrough for the last three years, but I am happy now to make it available free for all on the internet.

The Stuff of Earth is back!

It's true -- Michael Pahl is back! It's still called The Stuff of Earth, but it's now on Word Press, and there are other changes. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what Michael has in store.

The NT Blog and the NT Pod finally get ref-tagged!

I have been meaning to add Logos's RefTagger to this blog for as long as I can remember and finally I have got round to it. The gist is that you add a little bit of code to your template, and it automatically brings all your Biblical references to life. So if I want to refer to Mark 15:39, for example, reftagger hyperlinks the reference and sends it to bible.logos.com. It does it with whole passages too, e.g. Matthew 1:1-17, and it seems to work in a range of formats, e.g. with either the dot (Matthew 1.1-17) or the colon. Impressive, huh? I've added it to the NT Pod's web page too, where I always list the key texts for each podcast in the given entry.

The Subversive Graham Stanton

Thanks to Steph Fisher for sending over a link to this nice comment on the life of Graham Stanton:

The Dunedin School Remembers Graham Stanton (1940-2009), Subversive

The Real Paul at Religion & Ethics News Weekly

There is a pretty good and very interesting essay on PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly site about Paul. It focuses mainly on the new book, The First Paul, by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, but it roams into other related territory too:

The Real Paul

Review Essay

By Allen Dwight Callahan

I have not yet read the new book by Crossan and Borg, but whenever faced by the anti-imperialist Paul, I always want to know what the scholars in question do with Romans 13, and Callahan clearly has the same question:

The radical Paul of Borg and Crossan is not really very radical at all. This becomes painfully clear, among several other instances that could be adduced, in their contorted exegesis of Roman 13:1-7, Paul’s infamous exhortation to obey ruling authorities—read the Roman imperial regime—because they are “ordained of God,” who has given them the sword to enforce law and order.

Borg and Crossan explain that Paul feared his Roman audience would resort to “violent tax revolt” against Rome: “Paul is most afraid not that Christians will be killed but that they will kill, not that Rome will use violence against Christians but that Christians will use violence against Rome.” This danger of violent revolt whips Paul into a “rhetorical panic’ and causes him to “make some very unwise and unqualified statements with which to ward off that possibility”—the possibility that church folk in Rome would use their marginalized, persecuted faces to scuff the brass knuckles of Roman state terror. The hermeneutic here would be hilarious if Paul’s “statements” in this toxic text were not so “unwise and unqualified.” With radicals like this, who needs reactionaries?

That is only a brief snippet, though, and I encourage you to look at the whole article, which also draws in Pope Benedict XVI's and other's recent treatments of Paul.

Blogger backup

Following a hint from Michael Halcomb, I have decided to back up my entire blog, all six years or so of it, and have used the utility he suggested, Blogger Backup. I used to have all the blog files located on my own web space at NTGateway.com, and I would back up that entire site from time to time, but now have them all on blogger, so decided that it would be a good idea to keep a local back up of the blog archive. In the light of recent hacker activity, I would recommend others taking similar action.

Doug Chaplin's blog hacked?

Unless Doug Chaplin is in the middle of an elaborate hoax on himself, it seems that his clayboy blog is the victim of a hacking attack. Sympathies, Doug, and I hope that all will be back to normal soon. In the mean time, a reminder to us all of the dangers of such things. Heck; has anyone got any guidance on how to avoid such attacks?

Beginning Blogging Questions

A correspondent thinking of starting a new blog recently got in touch and asked me a series of questions, and he has encouraged me to post my answers here. These are very much my own perspectives on the issues from my own experience, and others will feel quite differently, I am sure, so please feel free to blog your own responses to these questions, or to add a comment below.

1. Which is the best site to go with--or does it make a difference?

Blogger is, I think, simpler to use and you can have your blog up in minutes. It is pretty efficient and is fine for what most people need from a blog. However, I do think WordPress is the superior product and I have very much enjoyed using it for the new NT Gateway and NT Gateway blog since I went into partnership with Logos for that site. For my NT Blog, I am fairly happy with blogger, which I have used since 2003. For the NT Pod, I went with blogger for the "shop front", as it were, though the audio files themselves are all located elsewhere, and I slightly regret that decision. Word Press is the superior product for podcasting, it seems to me.

2. I would like to blog about three things--Bible, ministry and Macs. Is it best to have three separate blogs?

Well, people feel differently about this one. I like to keep one blog for academic stuff and one for the rest (the Resident Alien) in which I talk about things connected with the life of a British expat in the US, and some other stuff of personal interest. I do this because I don't assume that people who want to read the academic stuff necessarily have any interest in things that happen to interest me, like The Prisoner, Doctor Who, and Abba. Similarly, there are those who are interested in some of that stuff but who could not care less about academic NT studies. But it's very much an individual thing. Some like to combine everything into one blog, and that clearly works for them and for their readers. My guess is that there will be those interested all three of those things, Bible, ministry and Macs, and so a one blog approach might be best.

3. What about name registration? I see you have stayed with having .wordpress but others have their own names for their blogs. Is this straightforward?

Well, we have retained ntgateway.com for the NT Gateway site, but yes, I have a .blogspot address for the NT Blog. I actually find hosting on blogger much easier than hosting on my own site. Blogger updates incredibly quickly. Holding all the archives on my personal space and publishing via FTP sometimes took a very long time. The most straightforward thing, I would say, is simply to publish on Wordpress or Blogger's own sites, and so to have a .blogspot or a .wordpress address. And the massive advantage there is that it is free!

Library of New Testament Studies Web page updated and moved

I have updated and moved the Library of New Testament Studies web page. It is now found at:

Library of New Testament Studies

Latest "In My View", Robert Cargill

Bible and Interpretation continues its In My View series of op-ed style pieces with a second and fascinating entry from Robert Cargill, On the Curious Protests of the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition in Toronto.

Paul Hollenbach

I was sorry to read about the death of Paul Hollenbach at the weekend (Controversial Theologian Pushed for Critical Study of the Bible). Hollenbach (83) taught at Iowa State University's dept of Religious Studies and published several articles on the New Testament including "Social Aspects of John the Baptizer's Preaching Mission in the Context of Palestinian Judaism" in ANRW (1979) and "Jesus, Demoniacs, and Public Authorities: A Socio-Historical Study" (Journal of the American Academicy of Religion 49/4 (Dec. 1981): 567-88 and "The Historical Jesus Question in North America today" in Biblical Theology Bulletin 18 (1988): 11-22.

Jesus films latest: a new "Superstar" and "Him"

Over on Bible Films, Matt Page notes (from Peter Chattaway) that there may be a new version of Jesus Christ Superstar in the works. As a fan of the original 1973 film ("Do you think you're what they say you are?"), I have the same mixed feelings about a new version as I have had in the past about popular culture's search for big money reboots (e.g. The Prisoner, Doctor Who, and the music of Abba, just to list my obsessions). I would be delighted if it works, but ready to pour scorn if it does not. One of the things that may make Jesus Christ Superstar difficult to recreate for the big screen now, though, is that it is such a period piece. Norman Jewison's 1973 film works because it is so much of its time, and made within only a couple of years of the musical's theatrical debut. On the other hand, theatrical productions have continued now for nearly forty years, and they remain popular, so it will be interesting to see if they can pull it off for a new Superstar. And since the composers (Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice) are still alive, perhaps they could be called upon to do a few updates? A new song or two? That would be interesting.

The other element of curiosity on the Bible Films blog deals with Him, the gay Jesus film. Matt has more to confirm what has become increasingly clear over recent years (See Gay Jesus Film Hoax?) that this is not a hoax. It's probably one of the worst marketed films of all time, though. Imagine a film, with a topic as controversial as that, making so little impact that people wonder seriously whether the film even existed.

Wright on Resurrection in Today's Guardian

N. T. Wright has a short piece, a kind of numbered list, in today's Guardian, responding to Adam Rutherford who has been attending an Alpha Course* and who is writing up his experiences as he goes:

The resurrection was as shocking then as it is now
When Adam Rutherford talks about the resurrection, he misses the point. It isn't an extra thing, bolted on to our moral philosophy

Fans of Wright's work will find the piece a robust and engaging summary of familiar themes from his work on the resurrection, like the claim that the ancients found resurrection as perplexing an idea as we do ("we all know that dead people don't rise. Actually, the early Christians knew that too") but there was one element that appeared new to me, the idea that "The other "raisings" in the NT are of course what we would call 'near death experiences' – people who are clinically dead and then find themselves called back," but it is possible that I have missed that in Wright's writings.

A couple of other things occur to me. The first, underlined for me all the more after reading James McGrath's post today on Preach your doubts, is that I am quite taken aback by the degree of confidence that Wright has in his historical analysis. For those who do not share the same degree of confidence, the certainty expressed here, the repeated "of course" (x 6 in a short article), may perhaps be tough to handle. I wondered too whether this kind of vigorous response quite met the more impressionistic jottings-style commentary of Rutherford's original piece in his ongoing response to the Alpha course he is attending.

*The Alpha Course is a popular British evangelical week-by-week introduction to the Christian faith, usually consisting of a talk, a meal and some discussion.

August Charts and Carnivals

It's 1 August and we are treated to a Smörgåsbord of biblioblogging highlights in a couple of places, by TAFKANTW and Jim West:

Biblical Studies Carnival 44: The Funhouse Edition

Biblioblog Top 50: July 2009

Both are fantastically comprehensive. I am very impressed! Biblioblog Top 50 is, in fact, a top 200 and something. And Jim West shows himself to be master of the art of the Biblical Studies Carnival. It's difficult to imagine how much work both have put in on these, so it is a big thanks from us all.

Podcasting -- everyone's at it!

In the words of Lily Allen, "everyone's at it". Well, six of us in the biblioblogging world, anyway! Steve Wiggins has a new podcast over on Sects and Violence in the Ancient World. I first saw reference to this on Daniel and Tonya's Hebrew and Greek Reader. There are three so far, the latest, Whence Monotheism, out today. It's a bit longer than 5 Minute Bible and the NT Pod. Because of this steady growth in the number of podcasts in our area, I have set up a new page on the NT Gateway on Podcasts (see also the recent NT Gateway blog post) and I'll be adding Steve Wiggins's next, though I'm hoping he sets up a separate tag for the podcasts because at the moment they simply occur among the other blog posts. Also today, a new Targuman podcast from Chris Brady.

NT Pod 6: Resurrection and After-life in Paul: Programme Notes

I uploaded the latest NT Pod last night, touching on one of those perennial topics of interest to NT scholars, Resurrection and the After Life in Paul. My original plan to keep the NT Pod to 5 minutes or so an episode now appears to be under threat, as today I went over nine minutes for the first time. At this rate, the NT Pod will be up to the hour mark by this time next year!

For those who are less familiar with the material discussed in this episode and who would like to follow up on it, I will throw in a little bibliography. The classic essay I refer to in the piece is the following:

C.H. Dodd, "The Mind of Paul: I"; and "The Mind of Paul: II" in New Testament Studies (Manchester: University Press, 1953), 67-82 and 83-128.

The key piece is the second one, which deals with Paul's eschatology, and it is compulsory reading for anyone who wants to take the topic seriously. Both essays were originally written in the 1930s and published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. I think they are Dodd at his best -- some of his finest writing. Unfortunately, neither is available online and it is my hope that one day that will change. A further bibliographical note: this is one of Dodd's own collections of essays that is called New Testament Studies. It is not the journal of the same name. Many a student has gone searching in the wrong place for this one.

I also mention N. T. Wright's "life after life after death" suggestion. The best place to access this in detailed discussion is in his Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3; London: SPCK, 2003), though I am sure there are many popular places to access the same thinking. Indeed, googling for "life after life after death" will turn up a surprising number of hits.

The piece in Josephus to which I refer in passing is War 3.374f:

Do not you know that those who depart out of this life according to the law of nature, and pay that debt which was received from God, when he that lent it us is pleased to require it back again, enjoy eternal fame; that their houses and their posterity are sure, that their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolutions of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies; while the souls of those whose hands have acted madly against themselves are received by the darkest place in Hades, and while God, who is their Father, punishes those that offend against either of them in their posterity? for which reason God hates such doings, and the crime is punished by our most wise legislator.

(Quoted from Whiston for ease of copying and pasting!). Wright discusses this and related material in Resurrection, 129-276 (specifically 176).

Reading and Hearing Papers -- John Hobbins weighs in.

Over on Ancient Hebrew Poetry, John FH has an excellent post On Reading and Hearing Papers at SBL-Rome 2009. He writes:

After ISBL-Rome 2009, I am more convinced than ever that most people do not understand what kind of content can be delivered and how to deliver it effectively before an audience which has sat through several presentations already whose point was barely intelligible or not intelligible at all.

And he goes on to list several "common errors". Given my comments on the topic here, over several years (Presenting Papers), John's post is music to my ears. I particularly liked common error number 5, "Wall-flower presiders". This is a great term, and one I am tempted to adopt myself.

SBL Annual Meeting 2009 talk

It is only July, but all over the biblioblogosphere, people are already talking about the SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans on 21-24 November. Many bloggers will be there and many are reading papers. Daniel and Tonya have compiled a full list; Anumma is talking about a Tweet-up; Jim West has organized a massive bibliobloggers dinner; and now Stephen Carlson has the most important list of all, Dukies at SBL, an impressive looking bunch.

All this confirms that the SBL Annual Meeting is truly the "San Diego Comic-Con" of the world of Biblical Scholarship.

John Sweet Obituary in the Telegraph

There is an obituary of John Sweet, with a picture, in today's Telegraph:

Canon John Sweet

Canon John Sweet, who died on July 2 aged 82, was for 36 years a greatly admired and much loved figure in the life of Cambridge University.

It's a fine obituary, and I am pleased to see that the warmth, generosity and kindness of John Sweet comes through so clearly. Like Graham Stanton, who has also recently died, John Sweet was a model of kindness and generosity in his interpersonal relations, and greatly loved by his colleagues, students and friends. I might well have mentioned him too in my recent piece On Scholarly Conduct over at Bible and Interpretation.

It looks like a copy editor has inserted an "s" in the book of "Revelations", which I hope someone will fix quickly.

Bible and Interpretation "In my view" piece

I have joined several scholars who are submitting regular op-ed style pieces to the Bible and Interpretation site. The new section of their site is called In My View and so far features pieces by Philip Davies, Robert Cargill, Thomas Thompson and me. My piece, published this morning, is called On Scholarly Conduct.

Comments on the Library of New Testament Studies

Nijay K. Gupta has recently successfuly completely a PhD thesis at the University of Durham and has been reflecting on the possibilities for going from PhD thesis to monograh, also in Choosing a monograph series to publish with. Nijay asked me a few questions about the Library of New Testament series and you can read it here: Interview with Mark Goodacre on Publishing with LNTS.

Academic publishing online -- and increased sales

It's good to see Robert Cargill weighing in on the question of academic publishing online, where he is commenting on a new article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by David Wiley, Giving Away Academic Books Online Can Actually Help Print Sales. The great thing about that short piece is that it actually features some research suggesting that this might indeed be the case. The anecdotal case has always appeared strong to me, that greater online access leads to great sales, and there are parallels to the same kind of thing in other areas. People who watch poor quality versions of TV programmes on Youtube will often subsequently order the DVD. With academic books, I know that I have on occasion spent so long on Google Books or Amazon's "Search Inside" that I have gone on and ordered the book I am getting a taster of. But the key, presumably, is more research on whether free online availability of books will boost sales of the same.

Of course it may not be the case of all or nothing. I would be interested to see more publishers developing models like those found in the music industry, where buying an mp3 version of a song is cheaper than buying the same thing on CD. I know that where an electronic vs. a print edition of a book is concerned, I will go for the print edition every time, just as I still prefer good old CDs to mp3s when it comes to music. The fact is that we are still in the early days of the online revolution, and now is a challenging time to be a publisher, I imagine.

Codex Sinaiticus Podcasts

While I was away, I didn't get chance to blog on the big news event in our area, the launch of the online Codex Sinaiticus on July 6. Now, ITSEE news notes some new podcasts from the British Library all about the Codex Sinaiticus project, and it features some familar names. They are between 7 and 12 minutes long and there are five of them altogether. Here at the NT Blog, we like podcasts, so here is the link to the page:

Podcasts - From Parchment to Pixel

These podcasts are part of the From Parchment to Pixel: The Virtual Reunification of Codex Sinaiticus exhibition at the British Library. These five podcasts mostly take the form Juan Garcés conducting telephone interviews with David Parker, Amy Myshrall, Rachel Kevern and Timothy Arthur Brown. The first is an introduction by Juan Garcés himself.

The British Library's embedded media player (Windows Media Player) does not seem to be working in Firefox or Chrome, though it is working in IE. If that is the case for you too, they have a link to each podcast that you can use instead.

There is a great line in the podcast featuring David Parker, where he says that today is the most exciting time to be editing texts possibly ever.

Graham Stanton Obituary

Cambridge Network publishes today an obituary from the University of Cambridge on Graham Stanton:

Professor Graham Stanton (1940-2009)

NT Pod 5: Simon Peter in Mark: Programme Notes

The latest NT Pod deals with the topic of Simon Peter in Mark's Gospel. Against the background of the famous issue of Mark's negative portrayal of the disciples, I explore a little the interesting thesis of Mary Ann Tolbert that the interpretation to the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4.13-20) reflects programmatically the way that different people respond to Jesus in Mark, with a pun on Peter's name covered in the rocky ground (πετρῶδες). Peter, like those on the rocky ground, receive the word with joy when they hear it but they fall away (σκανδαλίζομαι) when trouble or persecution arise (Mark 4.16-17). This is what I call the "Peter pattern" in Mark, immediate enthusiasm followed by a falling away in the face of the cross, persecution, suffering. It is most clearly encapsulated in the Caesarea Philippi episode, where Peter initially gets things right, having understood and confessed that Jesus is the Christ (Mark 8.27-30), but then gets things horribly wrong, when he rebukes Jesus for talking about the cross and himself receives a rebuke from Jesus, "Get thee behind me, Satan" (Mark 8.31-33).

My own addition to this discussion is to link the portrayal of Peter in Mark with the perception in early Christianity of "Christ crucified" as a "stumbling block" to Jews (1 Cor. 1.23). It is the connection between the Christ and crucifixion that causes Peter to stumble, and Mark repeatedly stresses this using the same language of σκάνδαλον and σκανδαλίζομαι (Mark 4.17, 14.27, 14.29). Mark's narrative makes Peter the character through whom the reader comes to understand (and ideally to overcome) the anxiety in the concept of a crucified Messiah.

More tributes to Graham Stanton

Peter Head has a wonderful personal reminiscence of his interactions with Graham Stanton over on Evangelical Textual Criticism. I did not know Graham Stanton so well, but on the several occasions I met him, he was unfailingly kind. I remember being somewhat intimidated by my first experience of an SNTS meeting back in 1996 in Strasbourg, when many senior scholars refused to speak to the unknown youngster, but Graham, who was the president that year, run off his feet, still took the time to introduce himself and to ask how I was getting on and to make me feel welcome. He was also hugely supportive a few years later when we hosted the British New Testament Conference in Cambridge -- again he took the time to be personally encouraging and friendly. For those who didn't meet him, it is worth underlining that this is not just people being positive about someone after their death. He really was well loved in the guild in a way that is quite uncommon.

The tributes are beginning to come in at the guest book in The Times, including one from Wayne Meeks.

Update: Dominic Mattos offers his reflections at the T and T Clark blog.

Graham Stanton death

The Times today publishes the sad news of Graham Stanton's death, mentioned here on Saturday morning:

Graham Norman. Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity Emeritus, Cambridge, passed away at home on 18th July 2009, aged 69. Loving husband, father and grandfather who will be greatly missed by so many. Funeral Service at Emmanuel URC, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, at 2.30pm on Friday 24th July 2009. No flowers please, donations to Cancer Research UK.

Links to obituaries here as they appear.

Martin Hengel: The Times Obituary

The Times tomorrow has its obituary of Martin Hengel:

Martin Hengel: Historian of Religion

For a thorough round-up of other comments and obituaries so far published, see Jim West's blog.

Sad news: Death of Graham Stanton

I have just heard the sad news of the death of Graham Stanton, a great scholar and a true gentleman. He will be greatly missed.

Latest NT Pod: 1 Cor. 11.15

I released the latest NT Pod earlier today, NT Pod 4: Does 1 Cor. 11.15 refer to a "testicle"? It is a six minute summary version of my paper from the recent SBL International Meeting in Rome, but packaged for a general audience as is the norm for the NT Pod.

As usual, I am grateful for any feedback. I think the sound quality of this latest podcast is improved. I have invested in a nice new microphone and after some experimentation, it made recording much easier. Also, for those few interested in the technical sides of these things, I have located the problem that has been annoying me for earlier podcasts, a kind of blurring or slight doubling of my speaking voice. This appeared to be happening at the moment when I exported the recording as an MP3. It turned out to be connected to the way that LAME mixed the opening and closing theme with my voice, combining a stereo track and an mono track. By re-working the music into a mono track on Audacity, it synchronizes properly with my voice when I export to MP3 on LAME. You lose the stereo in the opening and closing theme, but I think that's a price worth paying to have the audio overall sounding better. Like all these technical things, recording and editing podcasts is a matter of constant experimentation and, I hope, gradual improvement. In a year's time, I will probably be laughing at these early efforts!

SBL International Report and new pic

The SBL site has a new picture of the international meeting last week in Rome, and once again it is from our Pauline Epistles section on the Wednesday morning. From left to right the characters are me (obscured!), Marilou S. Ibita, Soham Al-Suadi, William Campbell, Janelle Peters, Jeffrey Peterson, Kenneth Waters. Also, Kent Richard has a Report from the International Meeting.

John Sweet (1927-2009)

I am sorry to be sharing the news of the death of John Sweet on 2 July. I heard the sad news when in Cambridge earlier this week. Selwyn College makes the announcement here:

Revd Canon Dr John Sweet

They have a book of condolences. I will add references to obituaries as they appear, but I have not seen any yet.

I met John Sweet for the first time at the SNTS Strasbourg in 1996 where he showed me great kindness. It was my first ever conference and I felt like a little fish in a big pond. Many of the scholars there were stuffy and unfriendly, some were rude. But John was generous with his time, charming and delightful. He was a contemporary of Michael Goulder's at Eton, and they shared a life-long friendship and admired one another's scholarship. He was a fine scholar and a real gentleman and will be greatly missed.

Death of Martin Hengel

I am on the road at the moment, enjoying a stay in England and seeing family and friends, as well as doing some work-related things, so I have not had time to add a mention of the sad passing of Martin Hengel. The biblioblogs have had some notice and comment; see, for example, Jim West's notice with lots of updates. No obituaries yet in the British press, as far as I can see.

Rome Travel Diary 4

It's the end of the SBL International Meeting here in Rome and from my perspective, the meeting has been a great success. We have we had a chance to see some of the great sites in Rome and to enjoy some wonderful Italian food, and the conference wasn't bad either.

Among the more interesting sessions I have attended over the last couple of days was the Bible and Music section this morning. I reckon that one of the strengths of the SBL International is in specialist sessions like this. First up was Richard Wright (Oklahoma Christian University), talking about "The Sounds of Silence: Hearing the Music in Pauline Assemblies", probably the best presentation of the conference that I heard. As it happens, I ran into Richard yesterday when we were in Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano, and we managed to snap this photo of the chance encounter. (That's my daughter Lauren in the picture too). Today's session took place in one of the little wooden classrooms, like the one I mentioned in SBL Travel Diary 3. Unfortunately, the Saturday morning at the International Meeting is a bit like the Tuesday morning at the Annual Meeting and the session, which began with about 15 people, was down to 5 by the end, for Shu-chwen Chen's paper, including the speaker and chair.

Conclusion later . . .

SBL Rome

Today marks the end off the SBL International Meeting in Rome. It has been my first international and I have had a great time. My final Travel Diary is forthcoming but in the mean time, I am grateful for permission to reproduce the picture of the first Paul and Pauline Literature section on the Wednesday morning, which appears on the main SBL Site at the moment. You can see me on the far right of the picture. If you could see my facial expression, it would be expressing great relief that my paper was done, while listening intently to the others in the section.

Rome Travel Diary 3

Second full day at the SBL International Meeting in Rome and this time I had the good sense to walk through the streets from Trastevere to the Pontifical Biblical Institute with a t-shirt on and then to change when I got there. Another warm day. I seemed to meet lots of people at the conference today, old friends and colleagues, a real pleasure. The academic highlight was the afternoon session on the Bible and Visual Culture, organized by Martin O'Kane. Ian Boxall (St Stephen's House, Oxford) was up first with a wonderful presentation on "Visualising John’s Island: Patmos in Botticelli and Burgkmair", with nicely illustrated colour handout. As it happens, I ran into Ian Boxall later on just in front of the Pantheon and we managed to get a quick photo (left).

The other papers in the session were Nicoletta Bonansea (Università degli Studi di Torino), "The Role of Jonah in Christian “Imaginaire” Between the Third and Fourth Centuries", Linda Sue Galate (Drew University), "Secondary Signals II: Beyond the Symbol Specific in Ante Pacem Art" and Laura Carnevale (University of Bari), "Job: Iconography and History in the Middle Ages", all also fascinating and, for me, educational. I suspect that these kinds of sessions are going to be the most richly rewarding at the meeting. Those speaking were experts in materials with which I am not familiar, and the session was friendly and fascinating. It was held in a little old fashioned wooden classroom, with the speaker sitting proud in front of a wooden-framed blackboard, like teacher, at a raised desk. I have made a strong mental note to go to more sessions like this in the future, not least because I stayed awake almost throughout, which is something of an achievement for me.

I also made it to much of the Pauline Epistles section again, where 25-30 people were squeezed into a small, claustrophobic whitewashed room, much less pleasant than the one previously mentioned. There were seven hours of Pauline epistles today, three and a half hours this morning and three and a half hours this afternoon, both with 30 minute breaks half-way. I wish I could boast that I had managed to stay awake through these sessions too (with no disrespect intended to the excellent speakers in these sessions).

In the evening, we took in the Trevi Fountain and then the Pantheon, when the evening thunderstorm began, as on each of the previous evenings. We tried to take cover under the awnings of a nice looking restaurant in Piazza Della Rotonda, but soon the rain and wind was so heavy that we had to run inside the restaurant. We had a lovely meal there and several in our party thought it the best of the week; my seafood pizza was good but not as good as I have had in Trastevere on other nights this week, and of course we paid tourist prices in the centre compared to the cheaper food in our area.

After the storm, we walked through streets from the Pantheon back towards the Trevi Fountain, taking in an ice cream at San Crispino on the way. San Crispino is the best Gelateria in Rome, so they say. I enjoyed walking through the alley-ways in this area -- lots of Italians and, I suppose, tourists eating pasta and pizza and drinking wine on the streets. A nice place for a romantic weekend away.

Biblioblogging Carnivals and Charts

It's the beginning of a new month and there are new things to see in the world of the Biblioblogging aggregators. Pat McCullough has the latest Biblical Studies Carnival 43, Or the Apocalypse of Eve. It's an entertaining take on the format, with a big thank you to Pat for his trouble in digging up this ancient document. Not sSurprisingly, the ancients had no some idea what podcasts were, and the NT Pod, which launched in June, doesn't gets a mention in the Apocalypse of Eve. Luckily, though, it gets a mention in the latest Biblioblog Top 50 (blurb), also just out. As usual, TAFKANTW has done a remarkable job there. Thanks to all, and congratulations to Jim West who comes out on top once again!

Update: It turns out that a new, interpolated version of the the Apocalypse of Eve does feature a prophecy about the NT Pod, so I have amended the above accordingly.

Rome Travel Diary 2

First full day of the SBL International Meeting in Rome today and it was a really early start. We are staying out in the Trastevere district, a couple of miles away from the Pontifical Biblical Institute which is hosting the meeting this year. We have been walking everywhere and have clocked up many miles so far. Normally, it doesn't matter too much, with jeans and t-shirts and plenty of time. This morning at 7.45am in smart clothes, we walked in and sweated much too much in the ridiculously warm and humid early Roman morning. Luckily, I was not on first for the 8.30am session, and I had the chance to cool down a little before it was my turn.

The Pauline Epistles section was a lengthy three and a half hours in what appears to be a fairly typical arrangement at this conference, in contrast to the SBL Annual Meeting where two and a half hours is the norm. William Campbell, in one of his famous elegant striped jackets, was chairing the session. Jeffrey Peterson from Austin Graduate School of Theology was first up, talking about Wisdom and the Cross in 1 Cor. 1-4. As it happens, we managed to catch him for a photo earlier this week in front of the Constantine Arch (above). That's me next to him.

I was on second, at 9am, on the topic "Does περιβόλαιον mean “testicle” in 1 Corinthians 11.15?" (Handout (PDF) here). The point of the paper was to investigate an article by Troy Martin in JBL 2004 that made this claim, and to find it wanting. I was pleased with the reception of the paper and several useful comments and questions. For the first time at a conference too, my family were present, and it was nice to have their support, if a little unusual to see them present when I was talking about a rather sensitive topic (I quoted a large section from Martin's intriguing summary of ancient understandings of anatomy and sex).

Third up was Janelle Peters (Emory University) on "Practice Makes Perfect: Corinthian Veils as Stoic Kathekonta". There was a thirty minute break, again as seems to be standard at the SBL International, and the session continued with Soham Al-Suadi (University of Basel), "Kuriakon Deipnon: When Utopia Becomes Real", Marilou S. Ibita (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), "The Story of the Lord's Supper in Corinth: A Narrative-critical Reading of 1 Corinthians 11:17-34" and Kenneth L. Waters (Azusa Pacific University), "No Cursing in the Church: Anathema in the Corinthian Congregation (1 Corinthians 12:3) and the Letters of Paul". All of the speakers read their papers, most sat down. I was not too keen on the idea of sitting down so stood up to address the room, and did my usual thing of presenting rather than reading.

My first impressions of this, my first SBL International Meeting, is that it is a bit like a cross between the SBL Annual Meeting and the British New Testament Conference. Or perhaps the SBL Annual Meeting and one of the SBL Regionals. It has all the marks of the SBL Annual, with formal sessions, presiders, 30 minute papers, the SBL brand, with the same kind of program book, badges and so on. But the scale is very much smaller. In our session, one of the more popular ones, there were 30-45 people across the three and a half hours, where there would have been many more in the Annual Meeting. I noticed far smaller audiences in some of the other sessions as I walked around. The book exhibit is like that of a smaller conference; the major players were there but they were often on one table, with just one rep.

Because of the smaller numbers here, one could go along to the almost adjacent restaurant, Abruzzi's, and easily get a seat; there was no need to walk a long way, even if there was that same experience of spotting people you know coming to the same restaurant, or walking down the road past you and waving.

The Pontifical Biblical Institute itself seems to be an ideal location. It is easy to find, in the centre of Rome, and has (of course) a famous history. Some of the rooms were a little more like classrooms than the conference rooms one is used to at the Annual Meeting. One of the rooms, where the Psalms / Writings group was meeting, was a delightful wooden affair straight out of Indiana Jones. And there is a bar / snack bar open for business throughout, the thirty minute breaks giving everyone long enough to grab a drink and a snack during sessions.

No doubt my impressions will develop over the coming days. So far it has been a positive and enjoyable experience and I would definitely recommend the event to others thinking about coming in the future. On a personal note, the overwhelming feeling at the moment is relief to have my paper done, with time now to enjoy the conference -- and more of Rome -- in a more relaxed frame of mind.

Update (23.39): On Evangelical Textual Criticism, Tommy Wasserman has an excellent and thorough report on his experiences of the conference so far. Thanks too to Sharon Johnson for adding a link to this blog and to Tommy Wasserman's posts on the main SBL Site.

Update (3 July, 00.19): The SBL Site has a nice picture of our session on its main page. You can see me on the far right of the picture.