The Talpiot Tomb and the Beatles

Over on the ASOR blog, I comment on the statistical case for the identification of the Talpiot Tomb with the family of Jesus, playing with the analogy from the Beatles that Simcha Jacobovici so likes:

The Talpiot Tomb and the Beatles

Mark Goodacre

For my earlier posts that played with this topic here on the NT Blog, see The Beatles and the Jesus Family Tomb and The Statistical Case for the Identity of the "Jesus Family Tomb", both from February 2007.

Scales of a fish on the Talpiot ossuary?

Although my comments on the Talpiot ossuary B have focused so far on other issues, there is one thing I've been curious about in relation to the "fish" interpretation.  If this is a fish, why do the designs in its body change from rectangles, to shaded and non-shaded triangles, to "Y" shapes?  Is it more likely that these are several different attempts to depict fish scales, one row at a time, or is it more likely that they are simple ornamentation, as on a vessel of some sort?

My curiosity is aroused by the fact that the design in the middle segment* -- shaded and unshaded triangles -- is apparently the same design as the ossuary's decorative border, also shaded and unshaded triangles.  I have drawn attention to these elements in the picture above, which I have also rotated by ninety degrees so that it fits on the page better.  I think it is more likely that we are seeing a decorative design on the border that correlates with the same decorative design on the object, rather than that the decorative design on the border contrasts with the scales of a "fish".

* I am speaking here of the middle section in the raw footage, which features three main segments, rather than the doctored image, which features four.

Jesus Tomb: I pointed out the mistakes

David Meadows drew my attention to this video that appeared on Youtube last year but which I had not previously seen:

Here, Simcha Jacobovici makes the following surprising claim:

If there's something wrong with our facts, with our investigations, someone should just point out the mistakes and I'd be the first to correct them if somebody actually says, "Hey, you made a mistake here." But so far that hasn't happened . . .

Almost five years ago, on March 11 2007, I listed multiple errors and inaccuracies on the Jesus Family Tomb website, ranging from minor mistakes to outright nonsense.  I have often repeated the point in the intervening years, and others have linked to it.  Every mistake that I pointed out has remained on the site from that day to this.

Was there a predisposition to find Jonah and the whale?

While revisiting my old post on the Errors and Inaccuracies found at the "Jesus Family Tomb" website (see also The Talpiot Tomb and the Bloggers III), I noticed that one of them related to comments made there about the Book of Jonah, some of which are garbled, but some of which make sense.  The relevant part is here quoted:

The Book of Jonah is centered around a major conflict between God and Jonah, initiated by Jonah’s resistance to obey God, who calls upon him to declare judgment in Nineveh. Jonah resists this calling and attempts to flee, only to be thrown overboard as a result of a storm inflicted by God. Jonah is then swallowed by a great fish sent by God.

Jonah remains in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, before reciting a prayer asking God for mercy. The previously relentless God answers Jonah’s prayer, and forgives him. Jonah then proceeds to fulfill the call of prophecy, and manages to turn 120, 000 people to God in Ninevah.

Why is this worthy of comment?  I recall being puzzled by the inclusion of this page at the time since there is no obvious relationship between Jonah and the (original) Talpiot tomb.  Bear in mind that this appeared in 2007, several years before the excavation of Talpiot Tomb B with its alleged imagery of Jonah and the fish.  Does this demonstrate, therefore, that there was at least a predisposition to interpret a symbol found in a subsequent tomb as Jonah and the fish?

The 2007 website also features a page on the Fish as an early Christian symbol. Moreover, the book that accompanied the website and documentary, Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb: The Evidence Behind the Discovery No One Wanted to Find (2007), 153-4, likewise features material about Jonah, here in the context of Jacobovici's descent into the Talpiot Tomb where he lands in "piles of modern texts falling apart at the touch of my fingers", one of which was "a damaged book of Jonah":

The irony, which was not lost on me, was that Jesus, who spoke in parables and codes, told his disciples that the only "sign" that he would pass on to them regarding his mission on earth was "the sign of the prophet Jonah."  Christian theologians have always interpreted this to mean that just as Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, Jesus was predicting that he would spend three days in the belly of the tomb before he was resurrected.  I had studied this passage in Luke because I believe Jesus was following in the footsteps of Jonah when he sailed to the mysterious "land of the Gadarenes."  It was on this fateful trip to the land of the Gadarenes that Jesus, according to the Gospels, quelled the tempest, and it was in the necropolis of Gadara that he exorcised demons from two men and transferred the demons into a herd of swine (Matthew 8.24-27; Mark 4.35-41; Luke 8.22-25).**  It was a code.  Strangely enough, I had been working on that code, parallel with the search for the tomb. Now I found myself crawling in the dark over half a dozen books of Jonah, in the belly of what was arguably Jesus' death chamber.

Somewhat surprisingly, Jonah and the whale is in Jacobovici's mind at the very moment that he is exploring this tomb, several years before the discovery of an alleged image of Jonah and the fish on an ossuary in the tomb next door.

The fact that we might have a demonstrable predisposition for a particular interpretation does not, of course, invalidate that interpretation.  And if the experts end up agreeing that the picture in Talpiot Tomb B is of Jonah and the Whale, the predisposition will simply be interesting but irrelevant. However, where there is scepticism about the interpretation of the picture as Jonah and the Whale, the natural human inclination to find what one is looking for may need to be taken into account.

** Note: The references given here at to the Stilling of the Storm pericope and not to the Gerasene Demoniac, for which see Matt. 8.28-34 // Mark 5.1-20 // Luke 8.26-39.   The "two men" detail is taken from Matthew's (secondary) redaction of Mark's story.

"If it quacks like a fish" -- Simcha Jacobovici answers his critics

Simcha Jacobovici, who has recently been appointed professor of religious studies at Huntington University, has answered critics of The Jesus Discovery in a couple of venues, on James Tabor's blog and now in comments on the ASOR blog.

My favourite line in Prof. Jacobovici's comments on the ASOR blog is the following:

At the end of the day, I think there is a principle in British common law that serves us well i.e., if it quacks like a fish, and flaps like a fish, and waddles like a fish – it’s a fish!

Thaddeus

Over on Exploring our Matrix, James McGrath asks Was Thaddaeus Jesus’ Original Drummer, or his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development?

It's nice to know that I am not the only one to use bonkers analogies in Historical Jesus classes.  The other day I was talking about the inner circle of Peter, James and John in the Synoptics (Mark 5.37, 9.2, 14.33), and comparing it with a different but overlapping inner circle of Peter, James and John in Paul (Gal. 2.9) and I found myself referring to the changing personnel of Charlie's Angels!

But James's mention of Thaddeus reminds me of one of my favourite sketches.  Sunday Heroes were short sketches that appeared on Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun (1995) with Stewart Lee playing Jesus, sometimes a little like a schoolteacher, as here:

The Talpiot Tomb, Jonah and Q

So it turns out that there is a really important Synoptic Problem angle on the issue of the Talpiot Tomb B, the "patio" tomb and its alleged depiction of Jonah and the fish.  Now, I know what regular readers will be thinking.  I'm going to go on about the wholehearted acceptance of the Q theory and ignorance of Q scepticism in Jacobovici and Tabor's Jesus Discovery. Well, it's true that I could go on about that if I wanted.  After all, they accept the Q hypothesis without question, they do not call it a "hypothesis", they treat it as an established fact, a "discovery" on a par with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel of Thomas and so on and so on.  But no, that's not my problem.  That's endemic in scholarship and is especially common in books for the non-experts and I'm used to it.  I expect it.

The difficulty is this.  Tabor and Jacobovici appeal to the presence of resurrection imagery in Jesus' teaching on the "Sign of Jonah" (Matt. 12.38-42 // Luke 11.16, 29-32) as being present in Q and so linked to the pre-70 period.  Indeed, it is key to their case that the earliest Christians used Jonah and the fish imagery as a means of pointing to their belief in the resurrection:

Our discovery in the Patio tomb is unprecedented in that it reflects one of the earliest sayings of Jesus, preserved in Q, contemporary to the generation that saw him and heard him teach.*

However, and this is the important point, the use of resurrection imagery in connection with Jonah does not appear in Q.

The Sign of Jonah appears in Q 11.16, 29-32.  Jacobovici and Tabor rightly refer to the IQP's reconstruction of the text of Q** though they do not quote it.  It reads:

Q 11.16 But‚ some .. were demanding from him a sign. 29 But .. he said‚ ..: This generation is an evil .. generation; it demands a sign, and a sign will not be given to it — except the sign of Jonah! 30 For as Jonah became to the Ninevites a sign, so also‚ will the son of humanity be to this generation.

The material about Jesus being in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights is universally regarded by Q scholars as Matthew's redactional addition:

Matt. 12.40: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

In other words, it is Matthew's gloss written in the post-70 period and it is not evidence for what Christians in the earliest period thought.  To put it another way, there is no evidence from the earliest period that imagery from Jonah was used in connection with Jesus' resurrection.

I understand why Jacobovici and Tabor wish to stress that Jonah is mentioned in connection with the resurrection in the pre-70 period.  They are right to note that Q, if one accepts the hypothesis, does indeed mention Jonah.  However, the mention of the sign of Jonah in Q is connected specifically with the preaching to the Ninevites.  Q experts like Kloppenborg link it with Q's deuteronomistic theology and with preaching of repentance and the rejection of God's prophets.

Scholars often tire of studying the Synoptic Problem, but it does repay careful attention, especially in cases like this, where the devil is in the detail, and the evidence for pre-70 resurrection imagery evaporates.

* Tabor, James D.; Jacobovici, Simcha (2012-02-28). The Jesus Discovery (Kindle Locations 1115-1117). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
** Chapter 3, footnote 5.

March Biblical Studies Carnival

Over on Abnormal Interests, Duane Smith has a superb round-up of all the interesting blog activity from the last month:

March Biblical Studies Carnival

And now the Jesus Discovery Website

I have been wondering when the website connected to the book and forthcoming documentary on the latest on the Talpiot Tomb would be available, and here it is:

The Jesus Discovery

It features a short interview with Tabor and Jacobovici, press releases, bios, some information about the finds and, most usefully, some good pictures.

There is also news of the forthcoming Discovery documentary, "The discoveries are nothing short of astounding," they say. "This spring, the world will be watching."

Perhaps.  I doubt it, though.

More anon.

Tapiot Tomb B: the First Twenty-four hours

I mentioned last night Jacobovici and Tabor's linking of a burial cave to Jesus' disciples.  Lots has been going on today, and the blogs are, as ever, up to speed in supplying links and expert commentary.  If you would like to get up to speed, the case is made by James Tabor in an article published earlier today on Bible and Interpretation:

A Preliminary Report of a Robotic Camera: Exploration of a Sealed 1st Century Tomb in East Talpiot, Jerusalem

James Tabor

The article is detailed and features several figures.  Tabor is to be commended for getting a detailed article out featuring all the data at the beginning so that we don't need to reply on media mis-information and misunderstanding. 

The ASOR blog is the next place to go.  It is the repository for critical commentary on the claims.  Today it has published several pieces, by my colleague Eric Meyers, by Jodi Magness, by Robert Cargill (and see also an important post on his XKV8R blog), but most importantly by Christopher Rollston:

Reflections of an Epigrapher on Talpiyot Tombs A and B: A Detailed Response to the Claims of Professor James Tabor and Filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici

Christopher Rollston

Rollston's post develops the point also made in others' responses, that the alleged drawing of a fish is actually more likely to be a nephesh tower or tomb façade.  Tabor had discussed this possibility in his article, but had dismissed it, and he now comments in situ on each of the ASOR blog posts above.  

Rollston also has a helpful analysis of the inscription and he completely rejects Tabor's and Jacobovici's suggested reading.  I am not an epigrapher, but one point made by Rollston appears to be unassailable.  In order to make one of the lines read as a Greek spelling of the Tetragrammaton, it has to be "IAIO", with an initial iota.  But the first letter simply cannot be an iota:

the Greek script(s) of the Late Second Temple period, the morphology of iota is quite consistently a vertical stroke (sometimes with modest curvature), but without distinct top or bottom horizontals.

Rollston suggests that the letter in question may be a tau and that seems plausible on the basis of the actual picture rather than the pencilled-in version.

At this point it is tough to know what the inscription says, but there is nothing here that pins it to Christianity, even if one reads it in the way suggested by Tabor and Jacobovici.  Time will tell whether the picture is better interpreted as a fish or a nephesh tower, but it's straightforward to see the case for the latter.

Even if one does read the tomb the way that Tabor and Jacobovici read it, it is important to underline that the evidence is all circumstantial.  As with the Talpiot Tomb A, the case is based on circumstantial evidence.  With regard to that tomb, I have argued frequently here that the statistical case is not as impressive as they claim that it is.  It is not that the names are common but that the statistical case places undue weight on the alleged unusual nature of some of the names (either Mariamne, Yose or both) without taking seriously contradictory evidence (Judas son of Jesus).

To read what other bloggers have been saying, Tom Verenna has a helpful round-up post.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of reasons for dismay in the media headlines over the last twenty-four hours.  If you did not read carefully on the subject, you would have no idea how tenuous these headlines are -- the Telegraph says Christ's disciples' remains 'discovered' in spite of the fact that there is no mention of "Christ", his "disciples" or their "remains".  Or in the case of the Daily Mail, even the reference to the disciples drops out with 'Divine Jehovah, raise up': Does discovery of coffin lid prove the resting place of Jesus is under Jerusalem tower block? 

Always be wary of newspaper headlines that ask questions.  The answer is almost always "No".

John Dominic Crossan on the origins of the Passion Story

I had never noticed this before, but the Jesus Seminar has placed a helpful seven and a half minute video on Youtube of John Dominic Crossan summarizing and introducing his case for the origins of the Passion Narrative as deriving from prophecy historicized, though he does not use that term in this clip. It is from a presentation made in 1995:

 

Jacobovici and Tabor link burial cave to Jesus' disciples

There have been rumours about the latest project from Simcha Jacobovici for a while (cf. James Tabor, Exploring our Matrix and a new Facebook page, The Jesus Discovery) and now the news is about to break.  So is everyone ready for another round?  I'm not sure that I am, but I'm bracing myself, and getting up the strength.  Here goes.  The first news outlet that I've seen to report on this is Haaretz:

'Naked Archaeologist' finds signs Jerusalem cave was used to bury Jesus' disciples
Simcha Jacobovici, an Emmy-winning documentary director and producer, hopes findings of current explorations will substantiate his earlier theory that Jesus was buried in a nearby cave.
By Nir Hasso

Under an ordinary residential building in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, a robotic arm with a camera inserted into a Second Temple-era burial cave has revealed mysterious inscriptions and drawings on ossuaries. 

Simcha Jacobovici, an Emmy-winning documentary director and producer who is best known for his documentary TV series "The Naked Archaeologist," argues that the cave served as a burial cave for at least some of Jesus' disciples . . .

The gist is that this burial cave features an image of Jonah and the fish, and Haaretz does have the image for you to see.  It is not clear from the article where the image appears, whether on one of the ossuaries or somewhere else.  The article also reports a second discovery:

The second of Jacobovici's dramatic finds is an inscription in Greek letters. It can be variously interpreted, but all refer in one way or another to resurrection, he says. 

Jacobovici, along with the experts he has enlisted, claims the words are "God" in Greek, the Tetragrammaton (the traditionally unutterable four-letter name of God in Hebrew), the word "arise" or "resurrected" in Greek, and the word "arise" or "resurrected" in Hebrew.

It is difficult to comment until we know a bit more but no doubt that will be forthcoming.  If there is to be a large website on this find, though, I hope that it will be better researched than the error-riddled Jesus Family Tomb Website (Jesus' Family Tomb Website: Errors and Inaccuracies, 2007, still on the web five years later).  I'll be on the look-out.

Update (Tuesday, 8.51): comments from Michael Heiser and Jim West.

Daniel Smith on Narrative, Historicity, and Verisimilitude in the Passion Narratives

I mentioned Dnaiel Smith's short article, The Trouble with Q, the other day. He has a new oped piece today also on Bible and Interpretation that is well worth a read.  It is clear, illuminating and I I wholeheartedly agree with it!

Narrative, Historicity, and Verisimilitude in the Passion Narratives; or, What I Learned from “Big Fish” About Reading the Bible
Daniel Smith

I recently watched Tim Burton’s film Big Fish (2003) again. I must have first seen it around the time that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) came out. Although these films are now several years old, the issues they raise are illustrative for how we understand ways of reading the Bible, especially where claims about the historicity (what “really happened”) or the verisimilitude (the appearance of being true or real) where biblical narratives are concerned. Where The Passion tends to use its own narrative to concretize abstract theological concepts (for example, the medieval notion of the superhuman suffering of Christ) or to historicize familiar moments from the history of Christian piety or art (for example, Jesus’ encounter with Veronica), Big Fish sees the relationship between narrative and history in a much more ambivalent way. For the characters in the film, narrative is foundational for community and relationship in spite of troubling questions about truth and verifiability.

Read more . . .

New blog design

After eight and a half years of this blog looking much the same, I decided that it was time for a redesign.  I used to want it to look the same as the NT Gateway, but that went its own separate way a few years ago.  And then I quite liked the conceit of having designed my own template.  But it was becoming increasingly unwieldy, and then I noticed that Jim Davila had changed the design of Paleojudaica, also after many years, and I decided the time had come for me too.

Provenance of Picture of Mark Fragment

Earlier this week, a photograph of an alleged fragment of Mark's Gospel began to circulate on the internet and it has rightly been treated with the scepticism, if not always ridicule, that it deserves (Near Emmaus, Paleojudaica, Exploring our Matrix, Earliest Christianity, Zwinglius Redivivus, Thomas Verenna and others).

One fact that has not received adequate attention is that the provenance of the picture.  It emerged for the first time last Saturday in a posting of a certain "GodAlmighty" on a fringe internet forum. If you were curious about where "GodAlmighty" found the picture, he* says "A Facebook friend of mine posted a pic. He knows his Koine pretty well and he says it's definitely from Mark 5:15-18."  (The picture has since disappeared, but the post is still present).

As far as I am concerned, this settles the question.  So often we are faced with artifacts appearing on the antiquities market with unknown provenances, or vague tales about their being found in caves somewhere.  Not here.  The artifact is from no less a source than GodAlmighty himself and his Facebook friend who knows some Greek.  What more do we need to know?

* I am not here assuming that GodAlmighty is male but rather inferring it from his long beard, clearly visible in his avatar.

NT Pod 59: Historical Jesus Criteria

The latest episode of the NT Pod begins a series on the search for criteria in historical Jesus research. In NT Pod 59, I introduce the idea of the historical Jesus criteria and offer some first reflections on what it is that scholars are attempting to do.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  And now you can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

Paul's Letter to the Galatians and Christian Theology

Thanks to Tom Wright for this reminder about the conference this summer on Galatians and Christian Theology at the University of St Andrews. There are still places available:

Paul's Letter to the Galatians & Christian Theology
10-13 July 2012

We are pleased to announce the fourth St Andrews conference on Scripture and
 Christian Theology. Since the first conference on the Gospel of John in
 2003, the St Andrews conferences have been recognized as amongst the most
 important occasions when biblical scholars and systematic theologians are
 brought together in conversation about a biblical text. With the book of Galatians as our key text, biblical scholars and theologians of the Christian tradition will gather to work out how exegesis and theology meet, critique and inform each other.

Full details here.

Telegraph Obituary of John Hick

Tomorrow's Telegraph has its obituary of John Hick:

Professor John Hick

Professor John Hick, who has died aged 90, was one of the most influential philosophers of religion of his time; he was HG Wood Professor of Theology at Birmingham University from 1967 to 1982, and before that taught at Cambridge.

He was, however, more widely recognised in America, where he held chairs at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1959 to 1964 and at Claremont Graduate University from 1979 to 1992. He wrote nearly 30 books, which, unusually for philosophy, included several bestsellers . . . .

Death of Richard T. France

I was sorry to read on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog of the death of Richard France.  I only occasionally had the chance to interact with Dick while I was in Oxford but I was always impressed by his gracious and encouraging manner.  We came down on opposite sides of the issue that most concerned me at the time, the creativity of the evangelists, but I do recall enjoying engaging with him on the topic.  He was a fine New Testament scholar and I know that he was well-loved by his colleagues and students.  It's a great loss.

Death of John Hick

I was sorry to hear yesterday about the death of John Hick (Prosblogion, Jim West, John Hick: The Official Website; University of Birmingham page).  One of the great privileges of working for a decade at the University of Birmingham was being surrounded by brilliant men like Michael Goulder and John Hick.  And listening to those two men engage with one another about matters of theology and ethics was always fascinating.  Their jointly authored little book, Why Believe in God? is a fantastic read.  For many years "the Open End" meetings, which focused on theological and philosophical topics, and which were attended by academics from around the Birmingham area, were the talk of the town.  On a personal level, I always found John Hick very encouraging.  He was always eager to ask about the latest in Biblical Studies, albeit often with a view to discussing how they impacted on theology and philosophy.

Richard Hays to continue as Dean of Duke Divinity School

The breaking news next door at the Divinity School is that Richard Hays, who has been interim Dean of Duke Divinity School for the last two years, is to take on the job now for a full term.  Congratulations to Richard on the appointment, but we will miss his contributions to the New Testament teaching in the Graduate Program in Religion.  News release here:

Richard Hays Selected As Divinity School Dean

The New Testament scholar will continue beyond his initial two-year term.

Earliest manuscript fragment of Mark rumour

There's nothing more likely to get the blogs all talking than a rumour about a newly discovered manuscript fragment.  See Jim Davila on Paleojudaica, James McGrath on Exploring our Matrix, Peter Head on Evangelical Textual Criticism (with tons of comments), Joel Watts at Unsettled Christianity,  Jim West and others.  The basic gist is that Dan Wallace, in a debate last week with Bart Ehrman, made the following claim:

Bart had explicitly said that our earliest copy of Mark was from c. 200 CE, but this is now incorrect. It’s from the firstcentury. I mentioned these new manuscript finds and told the audience that a book will be published by E. J. Brill in about a year that gives all the data.

I'll throw in a couple of quick things in.  The first is that the claim is, of course, hopelessly vague, and that the promised Brill publication "in about a year" may well mean that the book in question is not even in press yet.  Authors are typically over-optimistic about when they think the press will publish their work and if the author is saying "about a year", my guess is that s/he has not let go of the manuscript yet.

It's also worth adding that it is a fair guess that this manuscript discovery is connected with Scott Carroll (HT Matthew Hamilton) who tweeted on 1 December 2011: 

For over 100 years the earliest known text of the New Testament has been the so-call John Rylands Papyrus. Not any more. Stay tuned .

I am staying tuned but there is nothing more yet.  I'd guess that Carroll is connected with Wallace's announcement given the unlikelihood that there are two such discoveries at the same time, and given the similar contacts the two figures have (e.g. both are part of a series on The Bible's Survival and Success).  However, it is worth noting that Wallace remarked that the "world-class paleographer" in question had "no religious affiliation" and this does not appear to be the case with Carroll, who is advertised as an expert on, among other topics, "the Authenticity of the Bible".

I would also add at this point that it is always good on these occasions to begin with a healthy scepticism.  As often, the hunt for the lost Doctor Who episodes provides a good analogy with New Testament textual criticism. There have been rumours over the years that a new discovery of one of the lost episodes is about to be discovered, and often these come to nothing.  As with manuscripts, we should wait for the physical evidence before we get our hopes up.

Update (Tuesday, 6.41): sage comments from Stephen Carlson on Hypotyposeis.

Update (Tuesday, 9.01): Larry Hurtado weighs in with similarly useful comments.

Biblioblog Carnival February 2012

When you are away from the blogs as often as I tend to be these days, it's great to have a Biblioblog Carnival  to help you catch up.  This one is by Amanda Mac on Cheese-Wearing Theology and it's a nice treat to have it divided up along lines dictated by Babylon 5, surely one of the best TV series of all time.

What is the trouble with Q?

In a recent article in Bible and Interpretation, Dan Smith reflects on The Trouble with Q.  But the troubles he is talking about are not those niggles that make some of us question the existence of Q, the Minor Agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark, the Mark-Q overlaps, the weakness of the arguments for Luke's independence from Matthew and so on, but the way that many scholars fail to take the implications of the Q theory seriously.  Like Kloppenborg, Dan draws attention to facile appeals to Q's hypothetical nature by those who refuse to think through what the existence of Q means for our reconstructions of Christian Origins.

But is this really the trouble with Q?  I am puzzled by Dan's focus on scholars who are uninterested in the Synoptic Problem and Q.  Those who have not invested time in studying the problem are unlikely to want to engage seriously with the implications of the hypothesis.  In my own experience, the same set of scholars, the so-called "lazy" believers in Q, are equally unwilling to invest time in engaging with Q sceptical scholarship like my own. 

It is never easy in scholarship to find yourself in a position where you are telling other people that they should be interested in what you are studying.  Engaging other scholars' interest is always tough, and it is especially tough in areas like the study of the Synoptic Problem, which requires a lot of hard work and a degree of technical expertise. 

There is always the option, though, of seeking out dialogue partners among those who are already interested in the problem.  Dan alludes to those who do not accept the existence of Q but he does not mention them by name, much less engage them directly.  Regular readers of this blog will know that one of my memes relates to the Farrer Theory getting ignored in scholarship, but I am usually in those contexts talking about introductory-level works, textbooks and the like.  It is, however, something that happens in the higher-level work too.

The problem is that there is a major alternative to the Q hypothesis and critical engagement with it can help to clarify and focus the bigger picture questions that Dan mentions here, about the degree of diversity in early Christianity, in particular the question of the role played by Jesus' death.  Dan talks about engaging with people who may help with refining the Q hypothesis, but a healthy hypothesis is also one that engages with those who are attempting to refute it.

Let me offer one example of how this works.  Dan talks about taking seriously Q's silence about the salvific death of Jesus, the resurrection and the term "Christ".  Arguments about silence are often worth hearing and in the case of a text like the Gospel of Thomas, its silence on these same features is indeed worth some serious thought.  There is a difference in the case of Q, however, that makes any study of its silence problematic.  Given that the document is reconstructed on the basis of Matthew's and Luke's double tradition, there is always the possibility that it is not Q that is silent on the matters in question but that Matthew and Luke are silent in their witness to Q's contents.  

Dan talks about what he regards as similar difficulties in reflecting on Matthew, noting that there are many things we do not know about Matthew, its author, whether he wrote other materials and so on.  But we do have textual witnesses to Matthew that are pretty clear about the scope, parameters and wording of the work, the very things that are absent in the case of Q.   Indeed, the absence of any kind of textual witness to Q is one of the things that invites us to consider the alternative, that the kind of close verbatim agreement that Dan discusses may be evidence not for a lost document but for a direct link between Matthew and Luke.  

In other words, the hypothetical nature of Q is indeed relevant in this discussion.  Dan is right that the hypothetical nature of Q should not be used as an excuse for a refusal to think.  The real issue, though, is that Q's hypothetical nature is an invitation always to think about live alternatives.  To imagine a world without Q is surely one of the best ways of testing a model where Q is central.

To put it another way, what are the chances that Dan's essay will be noticed by those who are his targets?  At least the Q sceptics are willing to have the conversation.

Death of Frederick Danker

I was sorry to hear from Jim West that Frederick Danker died earlier today, also mentioned on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog.

Update (Friday): Rod Decker has a tribute on the NT Resources Blog.

Wilfred Lambert Obituaries

I posted on the death my former colleague Wilfred Lambert in December.  Jim West followed up his earlier posts with a notice that Wilfred Lambert was featured on Last Word, Radio 4's regular obituaries programme.  Although the podcast version is no longer available, you can listen again to the episode.

Now also the Telegraph has published its obituary: 

Professor Wilfred Lambert
Professor Wilfred Lambert, the Assyriologist who has died aged 85, was a scholar of ancient Mesopotamia and the world’s leading expert on cuneiform, an ancient form of writing which began as a system of pictographs and, over three millennia, developed into a more simplified and abstract script.

Returning to the Talpiot Tomb

There is a new article over on Bible and Interpretation about the Talpiot Tomb, the tomb alleged by Simcha Jacobovici and others to have been Jesus' family's own tomb, widely discussed in the media and here in the blogs back in 2007.  I was sceptical and have remained sceptical (see NT Blog: Talpiot Tomb for some of my many posts on the topic).  The new article is by Kevin Kilty and Mark Elliott, Regarding Magness and Talpiot and it provides an answer to comments made by my colleague down the road at UNC Chapel Hill, Jodi Magness.  The article is attracting some comment among the blogs and over on the Biblical Studies e-list, as well as in the comments section over on Bible and Interpretation.

I enjoyed reading the new article, and I appreciate the even-handed and careful nature of Kilty's and Elliott's response.  The article continues in a series of articles that they have written on the topic over the last three or four years.  I am particularly pleased to see Kilty and Elliott playing down one of the most egregiously problematic elements in Jacobovici's case, the notion that "Mariamne" was an especially appropriate way of designating Mary Magdalene, a claim that Jacobovici regarded as the lynchpin of the  case.

Nevertheless, there are still a couple of major problems, as I see it, with the way that Kilty and Elliott are presenting the case for the identification:

(1) They claim that "Yoseh" is significant because it is rare, a claim that does not take the New Testament evidence seriously.

(2) They do not regard "Judas son of Jesus" as contradictory evidence for the identification with the Jesus family.

The difficulty over (1) is that the names Joses and Joseph are clearly regarded as similar or the same in the New Testament. Mark 6.3 calls Jesus' brother "Joses" while the parallel in Matt. 13.55 calls him "Joseph".  Matthew clearly regards Joseph as an alternative, preferable way of saying "Joses".  Likewise, the character who appears in Mark 15.40 and 15.47 is called Joses in Mark and Joseph the Matthean parallel (Matt. 27.56).  Moreover, the fact that this character may be a different character than the brother of Jesus also witnesses against the alleged extraordinary nature of the name. The same Joseph / Joses variation is found in the texts too, and not just here in Matthew but also in Acts 4.36, Joses / Joseph Barnabas.

The difficulty with (2) is that there is simply no evidence that Jesus had a son called Judas. (As a commenter on this blog once facetiously said, "How likely is it that Jesus would have named his son Judas?!"). This might sound like a simple point, but I am afraid that it needs to be taken seriously. The whole case for the identity of the Talpiot Tomb with Jesus' family is based on the idea of an extraordinary positive correlation between clusters of names. It is unacceptable when calculating probabilities to ignore contradictory evidence like this.

The difficulty over Judas son of Jesus is already clear in the Jacobovici presentation.  On the page Judah son of Jesus, we read:

The most controversial ossuary pulled from the Tomb of the Ten Ossuaries was undoubtedly the one inscribed “Judah, son of Jesus,” the ossuary of a child. If indeed the tomb uncovered in East Talpiot in 1980 is that of Jesus and his family, and if indeed Jesus of Nazareth had a son, this ossuary contradicts dramatically nearly 2000 years of Christian tradition.

The difficulty ought to be immediately apparent.  The whole case is based on the idea of an extraordinary correlation between the names in the tomb, but here there is an admission that in fact one of the ossuaries "contradicts dramatically nearly 2000 years of Christian tradition" (emphasis added).  In a case that requires extraordinary correlation, extraordinary contradiction simply will not do.

Update (Friday, 7.03): James McGrath has a helpful round up of links to recent discussion.

Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity

Jesus, Criteria and the Demise of Authenticity is edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne and it will be out this summer, published by T & T Clark.   I have contributed an article the volume entitled "Criticizing the Criterion of Multiple Attestation: The Historical Jesus and the Question of Sources".  The book also features essays by Morna Hooker, Dale Allison, Scot McKnight, Loren Stuckenbruck, Jens Schroeter, Dagmar Winter, Rafael Rodriguez and the editors.

Here's how T & T Clark are blurbing the book:
------
Criteria of authenticity, whose roots go back to before the pioneering work of Albert Schweitzer, have become a unifying feature of the so-called Third Quest for the Historical Jesus, finding a prominent and common place in the research of otherwise differing scholars. More recently, however, scholars from different methodological frameworks have expressed discontent with this approach to the historical Jesus. In the past five years, these expressions of discontent have reached a fever pitch.

The internationally renowned authors of this book examine the nature of this new debate and present the findings in a cohesive way aimed directly at making the coalface of Historical Jesus research accessible to undergraduates and seminary students. The book’s larger ramifications as a thorough end to the Third Quest will provide a pressure valve for thousands of scholars who view historical Jesus studies as outmoded and misguided. This book has the potential to guide Jesus studies beyond the Third Quest and demand to be consulted by any scholar who discards, adopts, or adapts historical criteria.
-----
Sounds interesting, doesn't it? There is a conference associated with the book and I'll be blogging about that tomorrow.

Duke Holy Land Archaeology

Thanks to Eric Meyers for this great picture of our students spelling out the name of our favourite university in the Caesarea theater, taken last week during the Holy Land Archaeology at Duke course run by Eric Meyers and Carol Meyers on behalf of the Religion department.

You can read all about the trip over on the Holy Land Archaeology blog, with lots of detailed reflections from the students involved and some great pictures too.

Star of Bethlehem (1912) available online

One of the oldest Bible films is now available to watch in toto online, The Star of Bethlehem (Lawrence Marston, 1912):

The Star of Bethlehem (1912) from Ned Thanhouser on Vimeo.

Thanks to David Shepherd for the notice. You can see the film in context here: Star of Bethlehem It is part of the Thanhouser Company's Film Preservation site. Edwin Thanhouser was the force behind the film. For more on the Star of Bethlehem, see the Bible Films Blog post on the film, and links there.

Hilarious but Adorable Nativity Clip

This made my day -- an adorable video of a Nativity play with one of the angels stealing the show. Thanks to AKMA and Tim Gombis for sharing on Fb. I guarantee you'll enjoy it.

 

Death of Wilfred Lambert, Obituary and Reflections

Jim West reports on the sad news of the death of Prof. Wilfred Lambert and links to a nice, detailed obituary in the Birmingham Post:

Birmingham-born historian and archaeologist Wilfred Lambert dies

I got to know Professor Lambert while I was at the University of Birmingham between 1995 and 2005.  He was unfailingly gracious and kind-spirited though I must admit to thinking him, at times, a little eccentric.  He was a regular in the coffee room in the Arts Building and I remember many interesting conversations with him there.  He would always try to get to our Biblical Studies colloquium and on one occasion presented a paper.  I used to have to make a special effort to tell him about the colloquium because he never embraced email; everything was done the old-fashioned way.

I knew about his Christadelphian affiliations and remember his disdain for a lot of modern medicine, and especially modern drugs.  I had not realized until reading the obituary, though, that he was so thoroughly Brummy, born in Erdington, at King Edward's High School in Edgbaston (where many a great classicist studied) and so on.  Nor did I know that he was a conscientious objector during the war.

The obituary has a little (but important) mistake:

His knowledge of ancient eastern history could not be bettered and in January 2010 Prof Lambert and colleague Dr Irving Finkel identified pieces from a cuneiform tablet that was inscribed with the same text as the Cyrus Cylinder, a clay artefact dating from 6 BC praising the rule of Babylon monarch King Cyrus The Great.

It should, of course, be the 6th Century BC.  Details about that discovery are found in a press release at the British Museum (scroll down to 23 January 2010).

Bethlehemian Rhapsody

I really love this. As I've said before, there are not enough puppets on the NT blog:

 

Thanks to Stephen Carlson, Judy Redman and Trevor Hawes for posting this on Fb.

Biblical Studies Carnival 69

The latest and unbelievably comprehensive Biblical Studies Carnival is up:

Biblical Studies Carnival 69 (November 2011)

It is compiled by the ever-impressive Deane Galbraith and it is as lively as you would expect.  I am now proud to have met Deane, sadly only very briefly, in San Francisco last week.  

What if the Pauline letters were labelled after their sender?

Since we are towards the end of the semester, I am at that point in my NT intro course where we are looking at the (so-called) Catholic Epistles.  It occurred to me yesterday that the genius of Paul's epistles is that they have nice memorable, catchy individual names like "Philippians" and "Galatians".  There is only one sequel  (2 Corinthians), possibly two (2 Thessalonians).

But what if Paul's letters were were named after their sender rather than his audiences?  Would Romans have worked as well if it were called 6 Paul?  Or 1 Corinthians if it were 2 Paul?  It's difficult to imagine, somehow.

It's a bit like the Bond films.  Would On Her Majesty's Secret Service have been as appealing if it were called James Bond 6?  Or Die Another Day if it were James Bond 20?  I doubt it.

Method and Meaning -- Harold Attridge Festschrift

I was delighted to receive today my copy of Andrew B. McGowan & Kent H. Richards, Method and Meaning: Essays on New Testament Interpretation in Honor of Harold W. Attridge (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011).  It's a massive volume, just under 600 pages, and aims to honour one of the great scholars of early Christianity of our time.

You can read a little more about the volume over on the SBL site -- front matter including introduction and table of contents -- and there is a nice flyer there too.  One of the two editors, Andrew McGowan,  has been blogging about it too, with more over on academia.edu too.

My essay in the volume is about the Synoptic Problem.  It's called "The Synoptic Problem: John the Baptist and Jesus" and it comes just after James Robinson's contribution (and there's an honour I never expected to have).   I know -- surprise, surprise! -- Goodacre is writing about the Synoptic Problem again!  But in my defence, I was asked to write on the topic, and the idea of the volume is that it will not simply be one of those Festschriften that allows scholars to throw in any old piece they happen to have been working on.  Rather, it looks to provide a volume that will be of use to students of the NT and early Christianity, looking at the major methods in the field and applying them to specific texts.  Seriously, I am absolutely delighted to have been invited to participate in what looks to be a fantastic volume.  I have already begun delving into it.  

There was a reception in honour of Harold Attridge at the SBL this year, at which this volume was presented, on the Friday evening, and it was very clear just how well-loved and greatly respected Harold Attridge is in the guild.  My hope is that this volume will contribute in some way to honouring the wonderful contribution that he has made to enriching the study of early Christianity.

Pods, blogs and other time-wasters

I have been invited by the Student Advisory Board at the Society of Biblical Literature to speak at a session on the "Wired-in Generation".  It is on Saturday at 1pm and the details of the program are at the bottom of this post.  My title is "Pods, Blogs and other Time-wasters: Do Electronic Media Detract from Proper Scholarship?"

Putting "pods" at the front of that title is a deliberate and self-indulgent reference to my own attempts at podcasting, something that at this point still marks out my own online output as a little different from others'.  In spite of the massive proliferation of academic blogs in recent years, there are still relatively few podcasts around, thinking especially of genuine podcasts, i.e. programmes produced specially for the occasion of disseminating via the internet, and not just online recordings of lectures.

Having produced the NT Pod for over two years now, I am still struck at how podcasting differs from a lot of the other stuff one does online.  Somehow, perhaps because it takes so much longer to prepare, record and produce a podcast than it does to blog, it feels like it has a longevity that the blogs lack.  But perhaps it is just that it is a relatively new medium.  Perhaps podcasts will, in the long run, go the way of other experiments on the net and will come to be seen as "of their time", dated, forgettable, a waste of time.

My title is, of course, slightly facetious given that I have "wasted" a huge amount of my own time in online activities.  First, back in the mid to late 90s, it was the e-lists.  I still remember the thrill of participating in the e-lists, first b-greek and Crosstalk and later also Synoptic-L and several others.  The late 90s were their hey-day.  Back then, the whole world was not on email and it now seems extraordinary to imagine that it was actually a thrill to receive an email.  And to receive emails from all around the world and to be able to reply instantly, arguing about some element of Greek grammar, or some theme in Historical Jesus scholarship -- it was genuinely exciting stuff.

I have similar memories of the early days of blogging, roughly a decade ago.  When Jim Davila began his Paleojudaica blog, I read it avidly.  It was the first blog I remember even being aware of.  It wasn't long before I wanted to begin my own, then as a sister to the New Testament Gateway site that I had been running since the late nineties, though later under its own NT Blog heading. Back then blogging was easy, innovative and fun.  With so few people blogging in our area, there were only a handful of blogs to read, and that gave one more time to write.  There was a thrill in exploring the new medium, and I loved it.

The email lists have not gone away, but their importance has diminished massively now that we are all desperately fighting to stay on top of the hoards of daily emails, longingly imagining that simpler world that we once inhabited with its letters, memos and time for reading.  Looking back on the heyday of the e-lists, I can't help thinking that I must have wasted a huge amount of time on them.  It really felt like it mattered when one was deep in debate with someone about some point of Greek grammar, or some argument for the existence of Q.  But what value was it really?  I am embarrassed to think of the boldness with which we circulated our half-baked opinions and relieved to think that lots of that stuff has vanished from the net, never to be seen again.

But what about blogs?  What about the time spent blogging?  Could it have been spent more profitably doing something else instead, like reading a book, taking a walk or sleeping? I remember how people would sometimes comment on the time stamps on my posts, so often written in the early hours of the morning.  I used to say that that was the only way that I could find time to blog, and I think I believed it.  Why didn't I just take life a little easier?  Or why didn't I write more real stuff and get more published?

3,604 posts in eight years.  Hundreds of thousands of words.  Hours, days, weeks of time wasted.  Why did I bother?  Why do any of us bother?  After all, I am not the most prolific blogger, not by a long shot.  How much time has been burned up by the likes of uber-bloggers like James McGrath, Jim West and Joel Watts?

Back in the early days of doing scholarship on the internet, I remember being asked by another scholar about the value of this sort of work, not, at that point, blogging, but e-lists, websites and the like.   I was working in the UK at the time where we had a thing called the "Research Assessment Exercise".  I wouldn't be able to submit any of my internet stuff to that, would I?  I was a little take aback by the question.  It had never even occurred to me that the internet stuff might be taking me away from proper scholarship, the kind of stuff that one could submit to the RAE.  Perhaps he was right; perhaps this is not the way for a true scholar to behave.

Anyone who has had a blog for a while will be aware of just how short our memories are.  When the same old question comes back around again -- there is a kind of blog cycle -- it is rare for one of us to say, "Oh, I remember a great post about that two or three years ago."  Blogs are ephemeral.  Blog posts do not endure.  Even if you keep a full archive of everything you have ever posted, the vast majority of your posts, the great bulk of activity, 99% of your output evaporates from consciousness.  Here today, gone tomorrow.

I have often been surprised at what I forget of my own blogging activity.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a reference in a recent article written by John Lyons, and published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, to something I had once said here about the conflict between the criterion of multiple attestation and the criterion of embarrassment in historical Jesus research.  It was a good thought, I think, but one that I had completely forgotten. 

But here is another thought.  Perhaps I would have forgotten that idea forever if I had not blogged it.  Perhaps this is one of the values of a blog -- it is the chance to put down a marker in the sand, to share some thoughts, to put things out there and to see what happens.  Indeed, this is one of the values of the medium -- it is a little more than the casual conversation but a little less than the published piece.  It can occupy a kind of middle ground.  It is a sketch pad, but it is also interactive.  If you are lucky, people talk back.

A New Testament scholar once asked my advice on starting a blog in order to support his new book that was coming out, to give it a bit of extra publicity and to provide a place where people could come and interact with him about the book.  I advised caution.  Blogs that are set up to support publications seldom last very long, not least because they end up being rather self-possessed and narrow.  The most successful blogs, or the ones that I like reading, are those that range widely, blogs that chat about topics that are outside the narrowly defined area of a particular scholar's research interest, and touch on ephemera related more broadly to the discipline.

They are great for intellectual tidbits, the things you just can't resist sharing but know will never make it into one of your publications.  They are places for notes about teaching, for reflections on the funny side of scholarship, for research ideas that would otherwise never see the light of day.  And it's worth thinking too of those ideas that are better left to the blog alone, or would have better left even off the blog.  Sometimes blogging is all you need to do to convince yourself that an idea does not have legs and can be quietly dropped.

I don't think I'd advise anyone to start a blog unless there was a chance that they would be become an enthusiast.  In the end, it has to be its own reward.  The same is true with those other bits of public technology, podcasts, gateway sites, even the ones that now look long in the tooth, the e-lists, the scholarly websites.  That's why I don't regret the time I have spent online.  I have enjoyed it and it is just possible that it has made me a better scholar.  It's certainly given me some practice in writing, in interacting with others, and in improving my teaching.

I suppose that what I am saying to the graduate students is that it really is a waste of time to blog, to podcast, even to tweet, if you are doing it for its own sake, to gain recognition or something like that.  But if it's something you'd enjoy, it does have its rewards.  I sometimes think, "That's bloggable!" even if I don't get around to blogging it.  Or "I could do a podcast on that!" even when I never find the time to sit down and record.   And that's something that can keep you sane, which can't be a bad thing.

Engaging the "Wired-In Generation": Knowledge and Learning in the Digital Age
11/19/2011
1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
Room: 3002 - Convention Center

Theme: Hosted by the Student Advisory Board

Teresa Calpino, Loyola University of Chicago, Presiding
Mark Goodacre, Duke University
Pods, Blogs, and other Time-wasters: Do Electronic Media Detract from Proper Scholarship? (15 min)
Christian Brady, Pennsylvania State University
On the Internet No One Knows You're a Grad Student, Or How Social Media Can Help You, Build You Up, and Tear You Down (15 min)
Kelley Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward's University
Videoconferencing in the Classroom: Broadening the Horizons of Students through Interactive Scholarly Exchange(15 min)
Discussion (30 min)

It's SBL again

The time has come for the SBL Annual Meeting again, when thousands of Biblical scholars all descend on some American city and hang out together for a few days, listening to good, bad and many mediocre papers, walking through the book exhibit, going to meetings, networking and, most importantly of all, socializing.

This year it is in San Francisco and travelling there from the east coast is almost like travelling from England.  You even have to cross several time zones.  As a result, I've got a horribly early start in the morning.

As usual, I'll be tweeting my way through the conference (follow me @goodacre)  I've just taken an early look and it appears that the hashtag of choice is going to be #SBLAAR.  

I always used to blog my way through the conference too, and used to enjoy it, and I'll see if I can do the same this time.  It can be a good way of staying awake in sessions, but it does depend also on not being too busy.

I look forward to seeing lots of you there.

Erasure History Conference

As I mentioned the other day, I went to an excellent conference on "Erasure History" in Toronto last weekend.  I tweeted through the event.  It was a genuinely outstanding conference, organized by John Marshall, and the qualities of the papers were excellent.  Tony Burke has some reflections on Apocryphicity.  My own paper imagined A World Without Mark and I've made it available here (PDF) for a while, with the usual remarks about it being work in progress and subject to revision, and so on.

Erasure History Conference

Tony Burke has already mentioned this, over on Apocryphicity, but there is a conference later this week (11-12 November) on Erasure History: Approaching the Missing Sources of Antiquity in Toronto.  Here is the blurb:

From Antiquity to the early middle ages, lost texts may outnumber survivors. The reconstructive efforts of historiography in general and textual editing in particular must grapple with the way in which the poverty of preservation conditions scholarly efforts. "Erasure History" names the effort to think through significant historical problems as if a crucial surviving source were instead among the lost. This endeavour of programmatically holding data in abeyance is meant to illuminate the conditions under which we actually labour and to facilitate fresh consideration of, and renewed humility before, the generative problems of Western historical scholarship. 

The purpose of the Erasure History Workshop is to bring together students and scholars from disciplines that study the ancient Mediterranean world historically to participate in a thought experiment with methodological significance. The workshop's participants will consider the status of "the archive" of Mediterranean Antiquity by abstaining from an important source in analysis of a literary/historical problem.

Several prominent scholars from North American Universities have been invited to think and write provisionally in contradiction to their specialized knowledge of a key topic in their field. The goal of the exercise is to understand better the problems under investigation by understanding better the status of the archive that is the basis for their analysis. The Erasure History Workshop will form the 47th instance of the Conference on Editorial Problems held annually at the University of Toronto.

I will be speaking on "A World without Mark" and John Kloppenborg will be responding. More details, full program and registration details here.

The Origin of the Symbol "Q"

An anonymous writer on the Sheffield Biblical Studies blog has a nice post on Why was ‘Q’ named ‘Q’: because ‘Q’ comes after ‘P’? in which s/he quotes R. H. Lightfoot's contention that the symbol "Q" did not originate in Germany but rather in England.  J. Armitage Robinson claimed that he used it in the 1890s as the letter coming after "P" in the alphabet.  For him, "P" stood for "Peter", the alleged source of Mark's Gospel.

It's a great myth of origins and while it is quite possible that Robinson introduced the term "Q" independently of the German scholarship, there is no question that the term is in fact first used in the German scholarship.  Frans Neirynck shows that the use of "Q." as an abbreviation for Quelle goes back to Eduard Simons, Hat der dritte Evangelist den kanonischen Matthäus benutzt (Bonn: Universitäts-Buchdruckerei von Carl Georgi, 1880).  It is then used as "Q", without the dot, from 1890 onwards, by Johannes Weiss, and with full critical self-awareness by Paul Wernle in 1899.  Some bibliography:

Frans Neirynck, "The Symbol Q (=Quelle), ETL 54 (1978): 119-25

Frans Neirynck, "Once More: The Symbol Q", ETL 55 (1979): 382-3

Frans Neirynck, "Note on the Siglum Q", Evangelica II (BETL 99; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991), 474

See too the helpful summary in:

James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann and John S. Kloppenborg. The Sayings Gospel Q in Greek and English: with Parallels from the Gospels of Mark and Thomas (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2002), 23-4

The Matthew Effect

In a comment on my previous blog post, The Dalai Lama Quotation and the Historical Sceptic, Stephen Carlson notes that this is an example of "the Matthew Effect", about which Daniel Rigney writes:

The term Matthew effect was cooined by the Columbia University sociologist Robert K. Merton (1968a) to refer to the commonly observed tendency, noted above, for initial advantages to accumulate through time . . . In his pioneering studies of prestige systems in scientific communities, Merton demonstrated that prestigious scientists and institutions tend to attract inordinate attention and resources, leading to the further accumulation of prestige, which in turn attracts further resources (Daniel Rigney, The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 4).

The term has come to be used of occasions where a piece of research, an idea, a quotation, a story gets associated with a more famous, more prominent person.  It is called the "Matthew effect" because of Matt. 13.12, "For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away."

Now what I find delightful about this terminology is that it inadvertently contains within it an example of the very phenomenon it is describing.  Matthew has been, since the early second century, the most popular Gospel, the Church's Gospel, and when people quote something that's in more than one Gospel, they invariably quote from Matthew.

So a saying that originates in Mark's Gospel (Mark 4.25),* which most scholars rightly take to have been written prior to Matthew, is actually remembered better as a saying in Matthew.  It is not the Mark Effect but the Matthew Effect.  The better known, more prominent Gospel lends its name to the feature that is thereby illustrated.

* See also Matt. 25.29, Luke 8.18, Luke 19.26.

That Dalai Lama Quotation, and the Historical Sceptic

Seen this on Facebook recently? It's been doing the rounds

"The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered, ‘Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.’"

It's a great quotation but according to the Damien Zone, it is a hoax,

"This quote, printed over a photograph of the Dalai Lama, is floating around on Facebook. It is inspiring millions of simple-minded Facebookers — but there’s a problem. HE NEVER SAID IT! There is no record of the Dalai Lama ever saying this and on his website there is no mention of it. Devout followers of the Dalai Lama say it is not true, but we live in the day where all one needs to do is put something up on Facebook and it becomes the law of the land — at least where idiots are concerned."

I am no expert on the Dalai Lama but the case presented by the Damien Zone sounds plausible, and certainly a good deal more plausible than the simple pasting of a quotation next to the picture of the Dalai Lama.

Now of course if the Dalai Lama did not say that, how might the analogy help us with historical Jesus research?  Or any research into great figures of the past?  Misattributions of quotations to Winston Churchill are famous and even in our own area, there is a great misattribution of a saying to Schweitzer (about looking into the well) that was actually said by George Tyrrell.

I must admit that the ease with which misattribution like this can happen within someone's lifetime, as well as not long after their death, reminds us of just how perilous it is to build a picture of the historical Jesus that crudely assumes historicity for sayings material, screening the Gospel sayings and parsing them down to the nth degree to find nuances in what he said.

Imagine the historical Dalai Lama scholar in two thousand years with this multiply attested saying that emerges during the great man's own life time.  What if the dissenting voices like the Damien Zone's get lost but the apparent witnesses to the saying remain?  Every now and then a helpful analogy comes along to remind us how precarious the task of historical Jesus research can be.

Bloggers Get-together at the SBL

Bob Cargill is putting out the call for a  bloggers' get-together at the SBL in San Francisco.  Here's the link to his blog post with the cases fixed so that it's easier for old fogies like me to read:

Where shall the bloggers congregate at SBL in SF?

He also draws our attention to two sessions involving blogging in the program:

S19-314 – Blogger and Online Publication

11/19/2011, 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Golden Gate C2 – Marriott Marquis

Robert R. Cargill, University of Iowa, Presiding

Robert R. Cargill, University of Iowa
Welcome and Introduction (5 min)

Alice Bach, Case Western Reserve University
Can Blogging at 3 AM Be Considered Scholarship? (25 min)

Madeleine Flannagan, University of Auckland and Matthew Flannagan, Independent Scholar
Blogging a Short-Cut to Peer Review: How to Do It Effectively (25 min)

Juhana Markus Saukkonen, University of Helsinki
Sense and Practicality: Building a Historical GIS Online (25 min)

Richard Price, Academia.edu
Academia.edu: The Past, Present, and Future of Scholarly Social Networking (25 min)
This session will conclude with a Q&A discussion period with Academia.edu CEO, Dr. Richard Price.
Discussion (25 min)

S19-320 – Engaging the “Wired-In Generation”: Knowledge and Learning in the Digital Age
11/19/2011, 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Room: 3000 – Convention Center

Theme: Hosted by the Student Advisory Board

Teresa Calpino, Loyola University of Chicago, Presiding

Mark Goodacre, Duke University
Pods, Blogs, and other Time-wasters: Do Electronic Media Detract from Proper Scholarship? (15 min)

Christian Brady, Pennsylvania State University
On the Internet No One Knows You’re a Grad Student, Or How Social Media Can Help You, Build You Up, and Tear You Down (15 min)

Kelley Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward’s University
Videoconferencing in the Classroom: Broadening the Horizons of Students through Interactive Scholarly Exchange (15 min)

Discussion (30 min)

Bart Ehrman "something of a superman"

It's official -- Bart Ehrman is "something of a superman when it comes to scriptural studies", at least according to a review of his co-edited volume, with Zlatko Plese, The Apocryphal Gospels, in the LA Times, with thanks to Jim Davila for the link.

The Cinematic Savior: Jesus Films and Related Literature

A former student of mine, Jon Rainey (MA Religion, Duke, 2009), has put together an excellent bibliographic essay on Jesus films, ideal for those who require a little guidance on this topic.  It reminds me that I really ought to resurrect my Jesus Film pages.

The Cinematic Savior: Jesus Films and Related Literature
Jon Rainey
Theological Librarianship 3/2 (2010): 22-26

It's available, free to all, from the link above (PDF).

Great work, Jon!

C. K. Barrett Obituaries

The Guardian published its obituary of C. K. Barrett last week. It is written by Robert Morgan who describes him, alongside C. H. Dodd, as "the greatest British New Testament scholar of the twentieth century":

The Rev CK Barrett obituary
Biblical scholar known for his acute analysis of the New Testament


Thanks to Alan Bandy, Sean Winter, Mike Bird and others for the notice.

The Telegraph obituary was published a month ago, but I did not get the chance to mention it because it fell during my sabbatical from blogging:

The Reverend C K Barrett
The Reverend CK Barrett, who died on August 26 aged 94, was one of the foremost New Testament theologians of the 20th century


Both obituaries mention his habit of doing his NT research from 10pm to 2am each day.

Jim Davila on KGO Radio

Among a thousand things I have missed while I have been away is Jim Davila's appearance on KGO Radio, on Brent Walter's God Talk.  Luckily, you can catch it as a podcast.  (Previous God Talk episodes featuring bibliobloggers here).

The Jordan Lead Codices Information Page

There is one thing I have been able to keep up with while I have been away and that is the issue of the Jordan Lead Codices.  I have been privileged to be among those bloggers who have been discussing this issue and I have been cheering from the sidelines while some really great work has been taking place, explaining clearly and decisively why the evidence demonstrates that these are fake.  Now Steve Caruso has gathered the key information together in one place:

The Jordan Lead Codices Information Page

Thanks to Steve and everyone else involved for putting information out there in such a clear and accessible way.

Biblioblog Carnivals

So what's everyone been up to  while I've been away?  On these occasions, I like to turn to the Biblioblog Carnivals, and I am not disappointed this time.  Over on Scotteriology, there are two carnivals, "the lesser" and "the greater":

September Biblioblog Carnival: The "Lesser"

September 2011 Biblical Studies Carnival: The "Greater"

I must admit that I don't know / can't remember / can't work out who is behind Scotteriology, and the about page doesn't help me much, but many thanks for helping those, like me, who have not been around the blogs at all in September and can catch up with such an entertaining digest.

Sam Cooke, "Touch the Hem of his Garment"

Far too many of my analogies and digressions in class are drawn from British culture, so it's always nice when I can point to something like this.  On Thursday this week, we were talking about Matthew's Gospel and we were looking at his redaction of the story of the woman with a haemorrhage (Matt. 9.18-26 // Mark 5.21-43 // Luke 8.40-56), and the note that she touched not just his garment but "the hem" of his garment, Matt. 9.20, a minor agreement with Luke 8.44.  It reminded me of one of my favourite old gospel tracks, Sam Cooke's "Touch the Hem of His Garment". If you are not familiar with the track, it is a classic. Here is a nice youtube version with some fan-added images: