Stephen Carlson and Secret Mark

It's good to see the announcement on Hypotyposeis about Stephen Carlson's forthcoming SBL paper on Secret Mark. Already the bunch of comments to that post give an idea of just how much interest this is going to generate. It's good to hear that Stephen's short book on the topic is forthcoming. I am lucky enough to have read an earlier draft and I can say that what I have seen is a really superb piece of scholarship and an utterly convincing case. I look forward very much to publication.

Update (16.40): Michael Turton feels the same way.

Update (Saturday, 21.53): Amazon are already taking orders for Uncovered: Morton Smith's Secret and the Anatomy of an Academic Hoax.

Happy Annivesary Biblical Theology

I was in Glasgow examining yesterday, so missed the chance to say Happy Blogiversary to Jim West's Biblical Theology. Jim has carved a real niche in the biblioblog world over the last year (I'd have guessed it was longer thatn a year) and I'd say that one of his great skills in getting the information out to the punters quickly, efficiently, without fuss or fanfare. He could well add "Read it here first". It's often the first place I see things. And often I am grateful to Jim for covering something so that I feel I don't need to! Keep up the good work, Jim -- it's appreciated.

Two millionth visitor today

At some stage today, the NT Gateway counter should turn over the 2 million visits mark. It is currently at 1,998,996 visits and 5,430,911 page views. With just over a thousand more visits today, which would be normal from this point (lunchtime as I write), we should see the 2,000,000. I can't remember quite how far that web counter goes back, but I think it is to the point when I moved over from Birmingham as host to NTGateway.com. I might check that out later.

Update (14.58): Jim West makes some too flattering comments on Biblical Theology, adding that "Mark's only shortcoming is his resolute disregard of Q". Actually, as I've commented in the past, I am very fond of Q. There is something spoilsport about having tried to put together a case against it, but in the end it's the evidence that counts :).

Update (16.33): 1,999,391. Thanks to Danny Zacharias and Michael Pahl for comments. I should add that the 2 million figure is for the entire NT Gateway, not just the blog (but doesn't include associated sites, like Case Against Q, All-in-One, BNTC etc., so we are talking NT Gateway proper, i.e. anything with the NT Gateway logo). I've checked when the counter started and it seems it was indeed when the site moved to NTGateway.com, on 15 April 2000 (an old logbook). So the 2 million visits is over five years; the counter first appears in May 2000 Featured Links.

Update (20.55): 1,999,846. The two millionth visitor should be checking in around 22.00 BST.

Update (22.02): 1,999,963.

Update (22.20): 2,000,000 visits has been reached. The two millionth visitor came from the domain ucsd.edu, had done a google search on Gospel of John New Testament to get here and came to the John's Gospel page and left straight away. Let's hope s/he found what s/he was looking for.

Google Print: Revolution or Peep Show?

I blogged recently on what I called the Google Print Revolution. Others are less impressed, among them Ed Cook on Ralph the Sacred River:

Google Peep Show

The problem is, I haven't yet come across a book whose entire content is online. The maximum amount I have been able to access for any one book is about 15 pages . . . .

. . . . At this point, Google Print (and I know it's in the beta stage) is the print equivalent of a peep show: "Try these free samples! Get hooked and buy the rest!" They're going to have to lift some limitations on presenting full content, or else the tool will be more frustrating than helpful . . . .

We are probably looking at different books, but most of what I have looked at recently have been on-line more-or-less in toto. Sometimes the odd page is restricted, e.g. in some of the Paulist Press offerings, but others have the lot on there. One needs to do some tweaking to view it all, as one does with Amazon's full text offerings, but it is do-able with some patience. Some recent books I've been looking at on Google Print:

John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel

Martinus C. de Boer, Johannine Perspectives on the Death of Jesus

Graham N. Stanton, Stephen C. Barton, Bruce Longenecker, The Holy Spirit and Christian Origins

Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

And that's only a very small handful. There are loads out there, especially from Oxford University Press, Paulist, Routledge, Cambridge University Press. One of the things that I find really useful is being able to search within the books in question. There was something today I wanted to check up in the Ashton book above and I was able to go straight to it -- it would have taken me far longer if I'd have browsed through my own copy.

So I remain a fan. I've looked around to see if there's a plugin yet for Firefox for Google Print but no one seems to have written one yet. I might have a go myself if nothing else is forthcoming soon. Anyone else heard of one?

Daniel Wallace on 666 and 616

On ReligionNewsBlog.com Daniel Wallace comments on an earlier article by Chris Wattie. Below is an excerpt, but it's all worth reading:

Daniel B. Wallace responds to article on 'the number of the Beast'

. . . . Second, the fragment was not so badly discoloured that scholars could not make out the wording without sophisticated imaging equipment. Such equipment--such as multi-spectral imaging (MSI)--is often used on manuscripts that are in very bad shape.

This fragment, however, is part of a score of other fragments which span nine chapters in the book of Revelation. It is about the size of a postage stamp. No imaging equipment was needed to make out its wording.

I saw the fragment two years ago at the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford University. It was published over five years ago; just now it is making its way into popular literature as though it were a new discovery. When I looked at the fragment, the curator had to slice open its case because the verse in question (Revelation 13.18) was on the backside. He told me that no one had asked to see the fragment since it had been published. I looked at it under a microscope to make sure that the wording had not been tampered with. But even with the naked eye, it was quite legible.

Fourth, I don't know who Ellen Aitken is, nor Elijah Dann, but it seems that Wattie did not interview textual critics for this piece. Aitken makes the astounding claim that "it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast." . . . .

It's a model of how to write a succinct yet precise article setting the record straight after a lazy news article.

Gadarene Swine @ Laudator Temporis Acti

At Laudator Temporis Acti Michael Gilleland has an interesting post on:

The Gadarene Swine

. . . .There are passages from Greek and Latin literature in which petitioners beg the gods to transfer an evil from one place to another, or from one person to another. It's almost as if the amount of evil in the world is constant, and evil cannot be destroyed but can only change location . . . .

Michael has very several interesting examples of this underlying thought (read the post). The same assumption seems to underly Matt. 12.43-45:

43"When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."

12:43 ὅταν δὲ τὸ ἀκάθαρτον πνεῦμα ἐξέλθῃ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου διέρχεται δι' ἀνύδρων τόπων ζητοῦν ἀνάπαυσιν καὶ οὐχ εὑρίσκει 44 τότε λέγει εἰς τὸν οἶκόν μου ἐπιστρέψω ὅθεν ἐξῆλθον καὶ ἐλθὸν εὑρίσκει σχολάζοντα σεσαρωμένον καὶ κεκοσμημένον 45 τότε πορεύεται καὶ παραλαμβάνει μεθ' ἑαυτοῦ ἑπτὰ ἕτερα πνεύματα πονηρότερα ἑαυτοῦ καὶ εἰσελθόντα κατοικεῖ ἐκεῖ καὶ γίνεται τὰ ἔσχατα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκείνου χείρονα τῶν πρώτων οὕτως ἔσται καὶ τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῃ τῇ πονηρᾷ

(Par. Luke 11.24-26).

Update (Thursday, 22.00): Michael Gilleland comments further on Laudator Temporis Acti.

Matthean Posteriority

On Deinde, Danny Zacharias asks a question prompted in part by previous discussion here.

The Synoptic Problem . . . A Question

The gist of Danny's question relates to the possibility of Matthean Posteriority. I'll come to that in a moment, but first some correction again on terminology:

I think I am right in saying that the majority of NT scholars hold to marcan priority, with the two-source hypothesis and the two-gospel hypothesis being the next line of demarcation within marcan priority.

The first clause is correct, but the next is horribly wrong. "The two-gospel hypothesis" is not a Marcan Priority theory. On the contrary, it is another name for the Griesbach ~Theory, which postulates Matthew first, Luke's use of Matthew, Mark's use of both. I think what Danny meant to write here was the Farrer theory, which holds to Marcan Priority but also postulates Luke's use of Matthew. I know that Synoptic scholars can sometimes seem a bit like nit-pickers, but it is important to get the terminology as accurate as possible in order that everyone can be clear about what is being discussed.

Now on to the specific topic, Matthean Posteriority. Danny brings up Evan Powell's work. I own this; Stevan Davies sent me a copy a few years ago. It's a booklet in the form of an open letter to the Jesus Seminar. The most famous recent advocate of Matthean Posteriority is Martin Hengel, though he holds this theory in addition to the Q theory, and does not have a full defence of the theory -- it is a sketch in his The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (London: SCM; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000). Two other advocates are worth mentioning, R. V. Huggins, "Matthean Posteriority: A Preliminary Proposal", NovT 34 (1992): 1-21, and Alan Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew's Dependence on the Didache. It is not a thesis I am persuaded of myself given my own arguments for Luke's familiarity with Matthew, for which I refer the reader to my Case Against Q.

Danny suggests that the theory would have the following "going for it":

1) Matthew has a high Christology, probably the highest in the synoptics. This may indicate a progression in theology. 2) Matthew's careful arrangment of sayings material into 5 discourses seems to make more sense than Luke scattering it. Matthew had a theological purpose in arranging 5 discourses, so Matthew may have been taking Mark and Luke's material and arranging them purposefully. If Luke is using Matthew, why scatter it all about? It seems to me that that sort of organization would argue for posteriority of Matthew.

On Matthew's high Christology, even if Luke's were lower, I don't think it does anything to help establish direction of dependence. Paul's Christology is higher than Luke's, I would say, or at least higher than we can infer Luke's to have been from Luke-Acts, but he clearly pre-dates Luke. I think we have to be wary of the idea of a clear trajectory of low-to-high Christology, all the more so in the light of the work of Hurtado and Bauckham. On the arrangement of sayings material, I am not happy with the language of "scatter[ing] it all about" and can only refer the reader to The Case Against Q, Chapter 3, where I discuss this kind of rhetorical question on Luke's order, and Chapters 4-6, in which I attempt to set out how Luke's re-ordering of Matthew's non-Marcan material can be seen to be plausible. I would now also add three further important articles on the topic, all appearing in Mark Goodacre and Nick Perrin (eds.), Questioning Q, by Jeff Peterson, Mark Matson and Ken Olson, all dealing with different aspects of the question of Luke's ordering of Matthew.

Update (22.54): On Deinde, Danny Zacharias offers an update. One useful question:

I think I have been a living testimony to the confusion of some of this terminology, and I think two-source and two-gospel is the most confusing. After all, wouldn't Lucan posteriority and Matthean posteriority technically be 'two-gospel' theories because they are both using two gospels as their source? Perhaps I am missing something.

I agree -- the "two gospel hypothesis" is one of the more confusing terms in Synoptic criticism. It was coined by adherents of the Griesbach Theory with a view to providing a conscious alternative to "Two-Source Theory". Michael Goulder argued that it should be avoided since his own theory (what I call the Farrer Theory) is also a "two gospel" theory with Matthew and Mark the sources for Luke. I remember at the SNTS in Strasbourg 1996 Michael Goulder himself making a point of this to Bill Farmer over breakfast one morning. Bill Farmer then came over to me, a new unpublished lecturer from Birmingham, to tell me about that conversation. And then in the Synoptic Problem seminar, he also made an announcement of it. In some recent publications, the thesis has gone under the name "Two Gospel (neo-Griesbach) Hypothesis".

BibleDudes: Textual Criticism

BibleDudes Blog note that the latest addition is a section on Textual Criticism:

Bible Dudes: Textual Criticism

Something on Source-Criticism is apparently to be produced next (or at least next in sequence).

Electric Forest

Biblioblog.net notes this new team blog:

Electric Forest

One of the bloggers is Bible techno-whizz Patrick Durusau, whom many will know through the SBL CARG and elsewhere. Nothing much related to Biblical Studies there yet, but eyes peeled. I've added it to my blogroll.

616 on MTV

In the latest of the articles on the alternative number of the beast, still prowling around the media and stalking up here and there, MTV write the following piece:

666 Not So Evil? '616' Revelation Might Bedevil Metalheads

. . . "It is clearly an important new manuscript, giving us a relatively very early copy of the text of Revelation," said Christopher Tuckett, a theology professor at Oxford University's Pembroke College. "It is probably not the earliest manuscript of Revelation that we have ... but this is the first time [the 616 reading] has been found in such an early text."

Fear of 666 is so extensive it actually has a name — hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia — and has inspired everything from televangelist speeches to Hollywood films. The numbers have long been appropriated into the heavy-metal lexicon and symbology. Black Sabbath, Rob Zombie, Danzig and Sepultura have featured depictions of "666" on their album covers, Slipknot have decorated their stage set with 666 signs, and hordes of other bands have incorporated 666 symbols into T-shirts, stickers and other merchandise . . . .

I'll bet it's the first time Chris Tuckett has appeared in the same article as Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath! And if you are looking for a good quiz question, "What is hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia?" is worth adding.

Meanwhile, check up also Hypotyposeis, Ralph the Sacred River, rogueclassicism, FilmChat and Helenann Hartley for more recent blog entries.

Neotestamentica Latest

Thanks to Holger Szesnat for this note on the latest Neotestamentica

Neotestamentica 39 (2004), Issue 1

The latest issue is now available. The items Craffert and Botha; Decock; and Book Reviews are available full-text; other items are abstracts only:

Craffert, P F & P J J Botha 2005. Why Jesus Could Walk on the Sea but He Could Not Read and Write: Reflections on Historicity and Interpretation in Historical Jesus Research. Neotestamentica 39(1), 5-38. [abstract] [article (PDF)]

Bruce, P 2005. John 5:1-18 the Healing at the Pool: Some Narrative, Socio-Historical and Ethical Issues. Neotestamentica 39(1), 39-56.

Decock, P 2005. On the Value of Pre-Modern Interpretation of Scripture for Contemporary Biblical Studies. Neotestamentica 39(1), 57-74. [abstract] [article (PDF)]

De Villiers, P G R 2005. Turbulent Times and Golden Years: The First Twenty Five Years of the New Testament Society of South Africa (1965-1990) (Part 1). Neotestamentica 39(1), 75-110.

Fast, L 2005. Rejection and Reinstatement (Mark 12:1-11): The Rhetoric of Represented Speech in Mark. Neotestamentica 39(1), 111-126.

Loubser, J A 2005. Invoking the Ancestors: Some Socio-Rhetorical Aspects of the Genealogies in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Neotestamentica 39(1), 127-140.

Meyer, W H 2005. Histories of Reading and Readings of "History": A Study of a Group of South African Students Reading Mark 4:35-41. Neotestamentica 39(1), 141-162.

Wilson, M 2005. The Early Christians in Ephesus and the Date of Revelation, Again. Neotestamentica 39(1), 163-193.

Book Reviews (all on-line, PDF)

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Too busy to blog anything else at the moment, here is the latest from the SBL's Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading (and note that there are lots of interesting second temple Judaism titles too this time, which I'll leave others to blog):

Hall, David R.
The Unity of the Corinthian Correspondence
Reviewed by Russell Sisson

Hall, David R.
The Unity of the Corinthian Correspondence
Reviewed by Verlyn Verbrugge

Kruse, Colin G.
John
Reviewed by Dirk Van Der Merwe

Moyise, Steve
The Old Testament in the New: An Introduction
Reviewed by Peter Gosnell

Nanos, Mark
The Irony of Galatians: Paul's Letter in First-Century Context
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Neyrey, Jerome H.
Render to God: New Testament Understandings of the Divine
Reviewed by Richard Edwards

Prieur, Jean-Marc, ed.
La Croix: Représentations Théologiques et Symboliques
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Thorsteinsson, Runar M.
Paul's Interlocutor in Romans 2: Function and Identity in the Context of Ancient Epistolography
Reviewed by Bryan Lee

Alice Liddell

Speaking of Oxford, on RogueClassicism David Meadows draws attention to one of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Lives of the Week, Alice Liddell, famous as the heroine of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. David Meadows comments: "Most folks have have taken Greek will have been told that the model for Alice of Wonderland fame was the daughter of the guy who did that huge Greek dictionary"; here's the entry:

Hargreaves [née Liddell], Alice Pleasance (1852-1934)

It's a wonderfully written piece, by Lewis Carroll's most recent biographer, Morton Cohen, who was something of a Carroll figure to me, my brother and sister, when we were children. My father Selwyn Goodacre is something of an expert on Lewis Carroll and Professor Cohen used to visit. My father's interest in Lewis Carroll encouraged me to dabble in this a bit myself. I have a couple of articles on him, the most recent of which is "Reverence and Resolution: The Heart of Carroll's Religion", The Carrollian - The Lewis Carroll Journal 9 (Spring 2002): 32-42.

Rock on Rocky Ground

Things have been quiet on the blogging front recently because I have been writing a paper. I am giving it in Oxford at their Graduate New Testament Seminar today. Here's the abstract:

The Rock on Rocky Ground: How Matthew Read Mark’s Characterization of Peter

It is a commonly held view that Mark’s negative portrait of Peter is overwritten in Matthew, with its positive depiction of Peter as the Rock on which the Church will be built. But the standard view underestimates the extent to which Matthew’s characterization of Peter builds on Mark’s, repeating the pattern of immediate, enthusiastic response followed by falling away. Peter is temporarily successful in walking on the water but then falters (14.30-31); he is commended for his confession of Jesus as Christ but then is rebuked for rejecting Jesus’ suffering (16.13-23); and he promises to stand by Jesus in his Passion but then forsakes him (26.33-35; 69-75). Peter in Matthew behaves like the seed that fell on rocky soil (πετρῶδες) in the parable of the Sower (Matt. 13.20-21 // Mark 4.16-17). What Mary Ann Tolbert famously observed for Mark turns out to be just as true for Matthew.

While a narrative critic might see this pattern, it is often missed by redaction critics placing undue emphasis on Matthew’s difference from Mark, allowing Jesus’ commendation of Peter in 16.17-19 to eclipse everything else. But careful attention to the development of Matthew’s narrative as a whole encourages one to explore his Gospel as a successful reading of Mark. Far from supplanting or vanquishing Mark’s characterization of Peter, Matthew underlines, clarifies and nuances his source. The analysis of this rock on rocky ground sheds light not only on Mark but also on Matthew, his first interpreter.

I discovered the answer to why Matthew embarks on this course after I had written the above abstract (which I prepared for the forthcoming SBL in Philadelphia). My handout is available here. Once I've done a bit more work on the paper, I will make it available on-line.

Doctrine of Justification in N. T. Wright

Thanks to Jason Hood for this link:

The Doctrine of Justification in the Work of N. T. Wright

This is a series of presentations by someone called Bill Wilder; you can listen to the presentations as MP3s and you can view PowerPoints. I haven't listened to any myself -- it takes too long to listen to stuff -- but I've looked at one of the PowerPoints and it is nicely done.

New Testament Bibliography

I've updated the following page:

Bibliography

taking out a couple of dead links and updating two others, William Harmless's Bibliographies for Theology and the Vanderbilt Divinity Library's New Testament Bibliography (PDF).

Successor to Peter?

In this week's Tablet, there's an enjoyable piece in which Jesuit theologian José Ignacio González Faus writes an open letter to the new pope Benedict XVI "urging him to explore the meaning of the Petrine ministry":

Successor to Peter
José Ignacio González Faus

. . . Today, the ministry of Peter really needs restoration, like Michaelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel, to recover the freshness of the original colours. And not only the ministry of Peter: our politicians have now forgotten that the word “ministry” means service, which gives me the chance to discuss with you some biblical features of this service . . .

Of course one of the difficulties with taking the Biblical evidence seriously is that so much of it presents Peter in a largely negative light, but to his credit Faus attempts to reflect positively on this, for example:

Peter had his hesitations. He was intuitive and impulsive, but cowardly. And sometimes, for the sake of avoiding trouble, he betrayed the step that he had previously taken towards those who were not Jews. Paul, the whirlwind, criticised him for it in public. And Peter gave us a great lesson in humility when he accepted this criticism and did not silence Paul for saying so. You will no doubt remember what Augustine was to say later on: “I dare declare that even more exemplary than the courage of Paul was the humility of Peter.”

There is a little bit of creative embellishment of the story here, though, with Peter "accept[ing] this criticism" and "not silenc[ing] Paul". Peter's silence at the end of Gal. 2.11-20 is simply a function of Paul's rhetoric, and many a historian has (I think rightly) read between the lines to see Paul attempting to avoid relating the obvious conclusion of the Antioch incident, that Paul lost and Peter won.

I am writing a paper at the moment on the portrait of Peter in Matthew and I was pleased to see Faus stressing both sides of the Caesarea Philippi narrative of Matthew 16 in which Peter is first blessed and then rebuked:

The Church was founded on the faith of Peter. When this faith looked at Jesus from God’s viewpoint, Peter was described by the Lord as a “rock”. But Peter is also called by Jesus nothing less than “Satan” when he thinks of God in terms of power and triumph, and not in terms of a committed life (Mt. 16:18,23).

All too often in Biblical scholarship, it is only the "Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah . . ." material that gets spotted, because it is distinctive to Matthew, while the "Get thee behind me Satan!" material is missed because it is shared with Mark.

Chattaway on Spong

On FilmChat, Peter Chattaway discusses a short article he has written on Bishop John Shelby Spong's latest:

Spong 'loves the Bible,' decries scripture's 'sins'

I have never met Spong myself but I've read bits and bobs that he has written, and I rather like Chattaway's blog summary:

I have mixed feelings about the guy, myself. I appreciate his thirst for knowledge, as well as his desire to keep his knowledge and his worship in some sort of relationship, but I am also repulsed by the way he builds up walls between himself and his intellectual opponents, the way he makes his theology completely subservient to the science and political ideologies of the day, and the way he cannot express one positive belief without expressing a dozen or two negative beliefs first. I can be a champion nit-picker, at times, and there is something about Spong's always-on-the-attack mode that appeals to the worst in me, I think. Plus it seems to me that Spong, for all his talk of relevancy, is still wrestling with the demons of his pre-World War II childhood, in a way that has already made him culturally and theologically irrelevant himself.

Inventing New Testaments

While we are on the topic of David Parker, here's something that is a must-mention:

Inventing New Testaments
David Parker

This was David Parker's inaugural lecture from March 2003 and is an adapted froom his illustrated PowerPoint presentation.

Independent on 616

On RogueClassicism and Paleojudaica, David Meadows and Jim Davila draw attention to the article on today's Independent on Sunday:

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616)
By Tom Anderson

As Jim notes, the article "tries to be cute" by talking to a Satanist. What Jim doesn't mention is that it also talks to my colleague David Parker, certainly one of the people to talk to on this (another would be Peter Head, see comments and especially the link to Peter's article). Well, David's fame is on the rise as a result. I've already had the BBC in contact today asking me about him! And I was watching an episode last Sunday of Alias and to my surprise and delight the aliases taken on by our hero and heroine were David and Karen Parker (Season 4, Episode 5: Welcome to Liberty Village, a must see episode).