Frank Deasy had a distinguished career as a television writer, winning an Emmy two years ago for the final instalment of Prime Suspect and injecting fresh drama and debate into the Gospel story with his BBC/HBO mini-series The Passion last year . . . ."Generally favourable" is a bit of an understatement, but it's good to see The Passion getting a strong mention. This follows on from the obituary in yesterday's Observer, mentioned by Matt Page:
. . . . Deasy attempted to put Christ’s final days into some sort of political context in The Passion, expanding the roles of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas and presenting a sympathetic portrait of Judas Iscariot. “I’ve always had a problem with Judas in Passion stories in that he suddenly and inexplicably betrays Jesus,” said Deasy. “I was keen to develop a psychological reality to Judas’s portrayal.” Traditionalists accused the BBC of rewriting the Gospel, but the mini-series received generally favourable reviews.
I am back in my real office now, having left the virtual office of Duke's "Online Office Hours" where I answered questions on the New Testament in front of a camera. The studio is actually just around the corner from where I am; it is in the bowels of the Bryan Center, not from from Gray Building. I never knew it was there, nor did the Duke Chronicle photographer, Robin Mi, who snapped the picture here.
I am really sad to hear of the death of the screenwriter Frank Deasy reported just now on BBC News:The Irish screen writer Frank Deasy, whose works include the award-winning finale of the Prime Suspect TV series, has died in hospital in Scotland.I was very lucky to work with Frank when I was consultant on The Passion. We had been in email contact this week, in fact only on Tuesday, and in spite of the article in The Observer, his death seems really sudden and shocking.
The 49-year-old Emmy winner, who was originally from Dublin, had been suffering from liver cancer . . .
. . . . He also wrote the The Passion, a BBC/HBO production which dramatised the final days of Jesus Christ and which featured Broughshane actor Jimmy Nesbitt in the role of Pontius Pilate.
Last Sunday, he wrote about his illness and his urgent need for a liver transplant in the Sunday Observer.
When I saw the NT Pod on the front page of iTunes U yesterday, as well as being dead chuffed I was also a little embarrassed by my minimalist paintbox logo. My friend Stephen Toback has generously designed me a great new logo, which you see here. It appears on the NT Pod's site, and also on its page on Duke University's iTunes U, but changing album art on iTunes main store is exceptionally difficult if you do things the way I do (with blogger and feedburner). Incidentally, hits on the site have doubled since iTunes U put it on their front page. It's nice to think that higher education is so popular that people are surfing in to to iTunes U to see what's available.
Viewers can submit questions in advance or during the session by email to live@duke.edu, on the Duke University Live Ustream page on Facebook or via Twitter with the tag #dukelive.Or just go straight to the Duke ustream channel. I would prefer not to sit there just busking, so please join me if you can! It kicks off at 12 noon EST, which will be 5pm in the UK.
Michael Goulder is a scholar who has always taken an original approach to the Bible and biblical criticism. He has developed five major theories, which challenged received opinion among the learned; and the book tells the story of how these ‘stones’ fared when confronting the biblical establishment. He wryly admits that his slinging has been rather less successful than David's against Goliath.
Among his five theories a special place must be given to his demonstration of how much of the teaching ascribed to Jesus actually derived from the evangelists—the Lord's Prayer for example being composed by Matthew out of Jesus' prayers in Gethsemane. The parables too are the composition of the evangelists, Matthew characteristically writing of kings and rich merchants, while Luke speaks of women, stewards, a beggar and a Samaritan. A long-rooted error Michael Goulder has valiantly opposed has been the belief that Matthew and Luke were both dependent on a lost source, Q; in fact, he argues, Luke was familiar with Matthew's Gospel and copied or developed its teaching as he thought best.
Goulder has worked at the Old Testament as well as the New. He concludes that the Psalms were not the individual prayers of pious Israelites, as Gunkel and others supposed, but the compositions of kings or their poets, deploring national disasters and praying for blessing at the great autumn festival.
This account of Goulder's scholarly work is fascinatingly interwoven with that of his life and ministry; and there are many anecdotes and vignettes of other people that are both amusing and interesting. He was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church, and though he resigned his Orders in 1981, he never lost his love of the Bible.
Michael Goulder was Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Birmingham prior to his retirement in 1994.
978-1-906055-84-4 paperback
Publication November 2009 (not yet published)
In his latter years, he said that he felt dons were having to spend too much time showing others how to do their jobs, and not enough time actually doing them. He was equally clear that there were too many books in the world; and accordingly he himself wrote sparingly, and only when he had something to say. His SCM Pelican Commentary on Revelation was published in 1979, and was well-received. It remains an inviting introduction to one of the strangest books of the Bible.See also previous posts on John Sweet.
ἀσπάσασθε Ἀνδρόνικον καὶ ᾿Ιουνίαν τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου καὶ συναιχμαλώτους μου, οἵτινές εἰσιν ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ.Attention has focused on two elements here, the identity of Junia, now universally taken to be a woman, and the translation "prominent among the apostles" (NRSV) vs. "well known to the apostles" (NET Bible). I am not persuaded by the latter translation for the reasons given by Eldon Jay Epp, Linda Belleville, and blogged in detail by Suzanne McCarthy (see Programme Notes), but there is a small element I would like to add to the discussion, Paul's use of the term "the apostles". I think it is one of those occasions where attention has been so focused on those other points of translation and interpretation that we may have missed something else in the passage.
Romans 16.7 (NRSV): Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.I might also have added reference to the NET Bible translation, which follows the Wallace / Burer view which I mentioned in the podcast:
Romans 16.7 (RSV): Greet Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners; they are men of note among the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.
Greet Andronicus and Junia, my compatriots and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.The Greek text (NA27) is as follows:
ἀσπάσασθε Ἀνδρόνικον καὶ ᾿Ιουνίαν τοὺς συγγενεῖς μου καὶ συναιχμαλώτους μου, οἵτινές εἰσιν ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, οἳ καὶ πρὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χριστῷ.
This is the major work arguing the case that Junia in Rom. 16.7 is a female apostle. It is short and readable.Daniel Wallace and Michael Burer, "Was Junia Really an Apostle?: A Re-examination of Romans 16.7", Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 6/2 (Fall 2001), 4-11.
Online article arguing that the verse should be translated "esteemed by the apostles" and not "prominent among the apostles" (cf. NET Bible above).Daniel Wallace and Michael Burer, "Was Junia Really an Apostle?: A Re-examination of Romans 16.7", New Testament Studies 47 (2001): 76-91
Academic version of previous articleLinda Belleville, "᾿Ιουνίαν . . . ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, A Re-Examination of Romans 16:7 in Light of Primary Source Materials", New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 231-24.
Answers Wallace and Burer.Suzanne McCarthy has commented on the issues extensively in her blog Suzanne's Bookshelf.
The book will provide a new account of the life of Jesus, challenging the gospels and arguing that the version in the New Testament was shaped by the apostle Paul. "By the time the gospels were being written, Paul had already begun to transform the story of Jesus into something altogether new and extraordinary, and some of his version influenced what the gospel writers put in theirs," said Pullman . . . .I may be unduly pessimistic. I am inclined to think that Paul had an influence on the Gospel writers too. This is explicitly the case with respect to Luke-Acts, and likely to be important in the composition of Mark. But "the story of Jesus" is something Paul seems inclined to depend on others for, especially given the evidence of 1 Corinthians, and I am sceptical about the "Paul invented Christianity" motif that is often so attractive to those in the early stages of their research.
Jim West and Kent Richards on the SBL site announce a new affiliation between the SBL and bibliobloggers, and we are invited to use the logo here. As Jim mentions, this is something that we have been talking about for some time, beginning at least as far back as the Philadelphia SBL 2005 meeting, with thanks to Jim and Kent for bringing this to pass.
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.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.
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.
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!
A British-based academic has uncovered a fragment of the world's oldest Bible hiding underneath the binding of an 18th-century book.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:
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 . . . .
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 . . . .
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).
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.
With a fine enough scalpel, everything is uniqueMichael Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTSup. 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 280.
. . . . 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.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.
"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."
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 press release also mentions an advisory board, which includes a couple of familiar names from Duke University.
The Project Director is SBL executive director Kent Richards, who will oversee the planning phase for the website from September 2009 to September 2010 . . .
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.
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: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 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.
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.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:
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.” . . .
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.
