Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene? at Baylor

I'm lecturing at Baylor University tomorrow on the topic, "Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene?"  They have put this nice poster together, which features details of time and location.  I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Life of St Paul (1938) on Youtube

You can now watch The Life of St Paul (dir. Norman Walker, 1938) in its entirety on Youtube.  It's not a film that I had ever seen;  in fact, I was only dimly aware of its existence.  Since it is not easy to get hold of on DVD, this is good news for Bible Film enthusiasts:

It is two hours long and stars Neal Arden as Paul.  IMDb's page on the film is here: Life of St Paul (1938).

The Bible Series Official Trailer

There's a new "official trailer" out now for The Bible series coming in March from History Channel:


More on The Bible Series here.

Holy Land Archaeology at Duke

My colleagues Eric Meyers and Carol Meyers are once again leading a group of a students in an intensive study of Holy Land Archaeology.

They flew out at the end of December and are currently busy touring Israel, seeing sites, listening to one another's insights on the key archaeological, historical and political issues:

Holy Land Archaeology at Duke

The photograph here is nicked from Ben Gordon, who is TAing on the tour, and it depicts the group gathered for the discussion by Iron Age storehouses at Hazor.

As you'd expect from Duke students (I know, I would say this, but it's true), the writing on the blog is clear and full of great insights.  The whole blog is superbly illustrated with lots of great pics, including this one of "verifiable archaeological rock stars" Eric Meyers and Carol Meyers:

Standing with Christian Brady

Our friend and fellow-blogger Christian Brady has suffered the unimaginable grief this week of the death of his son Mack.

This morning, we are standing with him.

May light perpetual shine upon him.

Beyond Belief does Apocalyptic

The most recent episode of Radio 4's Beyond Belief discusses Apocalyptic. One of the guests is Philip Alexander, professor of Post-Biblical Jewish Literature at the University of Manchester, whose work will be well-known to many readers:

Beyond Belief: Apocalyptic

If you get to listen to this programme, it's because the Domesday scenario - according to which the world would end on December 21st - did not happen. The interpretation of the Mayan calendar that arrived at this date was derided by most Mayan scholars, but this hasn't stopped the media camping out in the French village of Bugarach, identified as the only village on earth which was to be spared destruction.

Apocalyptic ideas about the end of the world, as we in the West understand them, have their roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions. The popular imagery - the Mark of the Beast, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Whore of Babylon - feed the imagination of film makers and writers, who draw upon Biblical imagery.

Joining Ernie Rea to discuss the nature and role of apocalyptic ideas on western religion and culture are Dr Philip Alexander, Professor of Post Biblical Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester; Dr Stefan Skrimshire, lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leeds; and Rev Dr Steve Jeffrey minister of Emmanuel Evangelical Church in North London. 

It's a good listen.  You can listen again at the link above, or you can download the podcast.  The programme is thirty minutes long.

Still no news on the Jesus' Wife Fragment

CNN's Belief Blog has today published an update on the testing of the Jesus' Wife Fragment:

"Jesus Wife" fragment gets more testing, delays article
 Eric Marrapodi

The news is that there is no news:

"We're moving ahead with the testing, but it is not yet complete, and so the article will await until we have the results," King said in an email to CNN.

"The owner of the fragment has been making arrangements for further testing and analysis of the fragment, including testing by independent laboratories with the resources and specific expertise necessary to produce and interpret reliable results. This testing is still underway," Kathyrn Dodgson, director of communications for the Harvard Divinity School, said in a email to CNN.

"Harvard Theological Review is planning to publish Professor King’s paper after conclusion of all the testing so that the results may be incorporated," Dodgson said. "Until testing is complete, there is nothing more to say at this point."

However, one useful point is here clarified, that the tests are being arranged not by Harvard but by the still anonymous "owner of the fragment".

For more on the fragment, including my own reflections on what I think is a forgery, see The Gospel of Jesus' Wife.

The Nativity gets American premiere on BBC America

Back in 2010, the BBC followed up its successful The Passion (2008) with The Nativity, a two hour drama written by Tony Jordan and stripped across several nights on BBC One (IMDb). I thought it was an excellent drama.  Historical consultant Helen Bond had her own reflections on it.  At the time, I noted that it was to be distributed by BBC Worldwide and hoped that it might get shown in America.

Two years later and The Nativity is about to get its American premiere over on BBC America, on Sunday at 1pm ET/PT.  They are showing it in one fell swoop rather than stripped across several nights, so you'll have to treat it like watching a film.  For those who haven't seen it yet, do try to catch it.

Here's the original BBC One trailer, just 40 seconds' worth, still available on Youtube:



In the lead up to the BBC America showing, Amazon Instant Video and iTunes have made available a free three minute "sneak peak" for downloading.  It's Joseph talking to Joachim and Anna, Mary's parents, and then a nice scene of Joseph and Mary walking and chatting.

This presumably means that the series will be available for purchase on both Amazon and iTunes as soon as it has aired next week, which is all good news.

I am delighted to see that this has made its way to America at last.  If only the BBC had partnered with BBC Worldwide for The Passion, rather than HBO, perhaps we might have had an American release for that by now.

Disambiguation: this is not The Nativity Story, directed by Catherine Hardwicke and released four years earlier in 2006 in cinemas (my review), nor is it Nativity!, a comedy produced by BBC Films a year earlier, in 2009, and starring Martin Freeman.

Update: I've just noticed that The Nativity is also getting repeated this year on BBC HD, on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, 5.30/5.45pm -- The Nativity (including more clips for those in the UK, or with jiggery-pokery skills).

The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers

Several other bloggers (including Joel Watts and Jim West) have mentioned this fine new volume from Eisenbrauns, Archaeology, Bible, Politics, and the Media (great Oxford comma there). It is edited by my esteemed colleagues here in the Duke Religion Department, Eric and Carol Meyers.

The volume is the result of the Duke Conference on this subject held in April 2009.  At the time, I blogged about the conference, and you can listen in to an archive of the talks on our iTunes U.  It is all worth reading, of course, but I am happy to provide access here to my essay in the volume (as well as to the table of contents):

The Talpiyot Tomb and the Bloggers
Mark Goodacre

The essay has a response by AKMA, though I can't reproduce that here.

Another Bible Series video

Here's another video featuring scenes from the forthcoming History Channel series, The Bible:



It's largely the same scenes released in the first look the other day, but with some added shots of Jesus at the end, and set to a song by Blake Shelton.

My previous posts on the series are gathered here: The Bible Series, History Channel, 2013. .

Did Jesus Exist? with Richard Carrier and me on Unbelievable?

Premier Christian Radio's Unbelievable? with Justin Brierly today featured a discussion about the historicity of Jesus with Richard Carrier and me. You can listen here:

Unbelievable? Did Jesus Exist?  Richard Carrier vs. Mark Goodacre

Richard Carrier is the world's foremost proponent of the "mythicist" view of Jesus - that he never actually existed as a historical person. He explains his theory that St. Paul only ever spoke of Jesus in the spiritual realm and that the Gospels are "extended parables". Mark Goodacre is NT professor at Duke University. He contends that Carrier's mythicist view is extrememly far fetched and the evidence for the historical Jesus is beyond reasonable doubt.

Scenes from The Bible series, set to CeeLo Green

Also newly released this evening, this montage of scenes from The Bible series (History Channel, March 2013) set to "Mary Did You Know?" by CeeLo Green. The montage includes scenes from several episodes in the New Testament half of the series, including the Nativity, Jesus' Life and Passion, and Paul:

 

 Other posts on The Bible series are here.

The Bible Series -- First Look!

The first clip of the The Bible Series (History Channel, 2013) has been released tonight. Suitably enough, it's the Nativity scene:

 

The Bible dramatizes key narratives from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and it is executive produced by Mark Burnett (The Voice, Survivor, The Apprentice) and Roma Downey (Touched by an Angel). It is produced by Lightworkers Media.  I and several others have acted as consultants.  You can follow The Bible Series on Facebook. My previous post on the series is here: The Bible Series, History Channel, 2013.

Beverly Gaventa to join Baylor

Beverly Roberts Gaventa is moving to Baylor.  Details here:

Dr. Beverly Roberts Gaventa Appointed Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Baylor University

WACO, Texas (Dec. 11, 2012) - Baylor University Executive Vice President and Provost Elizabeth Davis, Ph.D., has announced the appointment of Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Ph.D., as Distinguished Professor of New Testament Interpretation in the department of religion at Baylor University. Dr. Gaventa currently serves as Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she has taught for 21 years. She will join Baylor beginning in fall 2013.

Dr. Gaventa received her Ph.D. from Duke University under the supervision of W.D. Davies and her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she studied with J. Louis Martyn and Raymond E. Brown. She holds Honorary Doctorates from Christian Theological Seminary and Kalamazoo College. She also is an honorary professor of New Testament at Stellenbosch University in South Africa . . . .

. . . . "Distinguished Professors have a unique role in helping to clarify and articulate Baylor's mission to be a research university with a distinctively Christian identity," Provost Davis said. "The serious study of the Bible is a central part of that identity, and Dr. Beverly Gaventa has established herself as one of the leading New Testament scholars in the world who engage in theological interpretation of the Christian Scriptures. She brings to Baylor a sterling reputation as a scholar/teacher, and she will, in splendid ways, build on the legacy left by her predecessor, Dr. Charles H. Talbert, Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus."

Read the whole announcement here. Thanks to Mike Parsons and Mike Whitenton for the news.

NT Pod 63: Conflicting Christmas Stories

It's that time of year again, the time for the release of the Christmas episode of the NT Pod!  So I have interrupted the series on the Gospel of Thomas, for NT Pod 63: Conflicting Christmas Stories.

The episode explores the differences between the Birth Narratives in Matt. 1-2 and Luke 1-2 and asks how this can be the case if Luke is familiar with Matthew.

This is now the fourth year of the NT Pod Christmas episode.  You can find the others here: NT Pod Christmas episodes.

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

My Response to Crook's Response to My Review of Parallel Gospels

I reviewed Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels at this year's SBL and Crook responded.  I now have a few comments on that response.  I am grateful for Zeba's thoughtful comments.  I will take his points in turn:

(1) On the lack of word-alignment, I had not realized that this was a publisher's decision rather than an author's decision.  I understand the importance of affordability but I think it is a great shame that  something so fundamental to Synopsis construction is here jettisoned because of cost considerations.

In the discussion on Monday, I facetiously suggested that one could save a lot of space by getting rid of Q from the Synopsis, thereby freeing up more space for word-alignment.

(2) On the source-language translation, I understand Zeba's decision but I disagree with it.  The difficulty is that prepositions, for example, do not exist on their own, as individual sense-units.  They only attain meaning in connection with nouns in a particular case, so it makes no sense to translate hypo always as "under" and meta always as "with".  It is misleading to translate every preposition the same way, and it is a decision that greatly detracts from the appeal of the Synopsis.

(3) I am a little surprised by Zeba's response on the inclusion of Q in the Synopsis.  I think the inclusion of Q would be defensible on the grounds that it helps to illustrate the Two-Source Theory or that it facilitates comparison between Matthew, Luke and the reconstructed text of Q, but it is surely not debatable that including one solution to the problem into the presentation of the data prejudices the reader in favour of that solution, is it?

Zeba suggests that his Synopsis offers some encouragement to the Farrer Theory, e.g. placement of double tradition pericopes in the Synopsis and also the generation of more minor agreements.  However, the point about minor agreements is at least in part negated by the fact that Q is present in this synopsis to explain key minor agreements, especially Q 3.3 and Q 4.16.

Zeba also suggests that the inclusion of Q is no different from the inclusion of Thomas or John, but there is, of course, a material difference.  Both Thomas and John are extant works with textual witnesses and patristic citations; they are not hypothetical texts. In fact, the (helpful) inclusion of Thomas and John illustrates my point well -- that a Synopsis should aim to present the data without prejudice to a given solution to the problem.  Integrating Q into the presentation of the data confuses problem with solution in a fundamental way.

But my key point here is the pedagogical difficulty of including Q in the Synopsis, which turns double tradition into a second kind of triple tradition, and makes colouring the Synopsis much more difficult.  These are issues that are worth considering further.

Zeba Crook's Response to my Review of Parallel Gospels

I am grateful to Zeba Crook for making available his response to my review of his Parallel Gospels and to Loren Rosson for posting it on his blog:

Zeba Crook's SBL Response to Mark Goodacre

Review of Crook's Parallel Gospels

At this year's SBL in Chicago, I took part in a session on Monday afternoon, in the Synoptic Gospels section, that was devoted to  reviewing Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels.  The other reviewers were Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster and Robert Derrenbacker.  My article review is available here:

Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels: Review Article
Mark Goodacre

Update (22 April 2014): My conference paper is now revised and published in SBL's Review of Biblical Literature here:

Review of Zeba A. Crook, Parallel Gospels [PDF]
Mark Goodacre

Please cite as: Mark Goodacre, review of Zeba A. Crook, Parallel Gospels: A Synopsis of Early Christian Writing, Review of Biblical Literature [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2014)

SBL Chicago 2012

In the past, I have often blogged my way through the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. Sometimes I have even sat in sessions, blogging away as I listen.  For one thing, it's been a great way to help me to stay awake.

To some extent, Twitter has changed all that. A quick tweet on your phone, with the #sblaar hashtag, and you are in touch with loads of others who are also tweeting away, most of whom you will never even meet.  Twitter has actually made blogging the SBL much easier -- it helps you to work out what's worth a blog comment and what is only worth a tweet.

If you read this year's tweets, one thing will come through again and again, especially on Saturday, the realisation that McCormick Place is simply MASSIVE.  One fellow participant said that it was far bigger than the village he lived in in Cambridgeshire.  I found that it was a huge help with the usual SBL diet issue, that one eats far too much unhealthy stuff in quantities that are too large.  Normally, one does not have to walk ten miles in the convention centre just to get from one session to the next, and so I was able to shed a few calories that way.

And that was already after one had commuted in from the hotels area, itself a couple of miles from McCormick.  You did not have to walk, though, if you did not want to.  The shuttles laid on by the society worked well and it reminded me a bit of Orlando 1998 when you could find yourself sitting next to someone interesting quite by chance, or renewing old acquaintances, or overhearing fascinating conversations.

In some years, the book exhibit has been really squeezed in space.  This year, there was so much space available that they hardly knew what to do. And yet, I don't think I visited it as often as usual because everything was so far away from everything else.  You had to plan to go to the exhibit.  You could not simply pop in for 10 minutes in between sessions.

Moreover, SBL tarting was much more difficult than usual.  I have always been an advocate of tarting one's way from one session to another.  But this year, you might have half an hour's walk to get from one session to another.  On the Saturday, I wanted to get from John, Jesus and History (superb paper by Dale Allison aligning the BD with John son of Zebedee that cohered nicely with my NT Pod on the topic) to the Second Century Intertextuality section to hear about Papias -- but I had nearly had a heart attack by the time I had arrived.

My experience of SBL this year was tarnished by the worst series of headaches I have had since I was in college.  So I was in survival mode for much of it and I must apologize to those who found me a little stranger than usual.   Nevertheless, there were a couple of highlights, one the chance to see Skyfall, on Friday evening, with old friends.  Of course the danger with doing the best thing first is that everything is down-hill from there, but it was still a treat.

I was pleased too to get some Chicago pizza on Monday evening, and some good beer, pub food and Thai food on other evenings.  It's awful to say, but eating and drinking really is the heart of SBL.  Oh, and I had an amazing breakfast on Tuesday morning at Eleven City Diner, which looks exactly what you would imagine a Chicago diner should look like, and the breakfast was fantastic, and lasted me all day. And we saw Austan Goolsbee there too (Obama's first term economic advisor, for those not as up with American politics as I am).

As usual, I seemed to have let myself in for involvement with too many sessions this year.  I enjoyed speaking on Secret Mark over at the Biblical Archaeology Society's Fest on Sunday morning and found them an ideal audience, genial but interested and full of questions (more here).   In the past, I have not bothered with a powerpoint, but on this occasion I felt that I needed to illustrate the talk, and it took us the best part of fifteen minutes to get it working.  Still, we got there in the end.

Back at the SBL, I also chaired a session that day, the first of the "Blogger and Online Publication" sessions.  The focus was on Media and Archaeology and featured Simcha Jacobovici, James Tabor, Robert Cargill and Christopher Rollston.  It was not the easiest session to chair and the attendance was poor, I'd guess thirty to forty or so.

On Monday afternoon, I was part of a panel reviewing Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels in the Synoptic Gospels section.  The other reviewers were Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster and Robert Derrenbacker.  I found myself in the unusual position of being the mean guy here, since it seems that the other reviewers were all far more positive overall about Crook's new Synopsis than I was.  I will post my review under separate cover.  For what it is worth, Zeba Crook responded well  to the critique, with good humour and some good points.  The discussion flowed too in the aftermath.

I walked the twenty miles from that session in the East of McCormick Place to another in West, only just making it in time.  This was a session reviewing two recent books on the Gospel of Thomas, my Thomas and the Gospels and Simon Gathercole's Composition of the Gospel of Thomas.  The three reviewers were Stephen Patterson, Christopher Tuckett and Nicola Denzey Lewis.  I was delighted with them all -- critical but appreciative.  More than one could possibly have hoped for.  I received the reviews too late to compose a response, so I responded on the fly.  I made a fair fist of it but Simon did much better and made me laugh several times, not least in drawing attention to Dorothy L. Sayers's character the Revd. Simon Goodacre, in response to the reviewers' remarks about the remarkable similarity of our books in spite of their independence.

One thought did occur to me in that session.  Although there is the conceit that everyone has read the books in question at a book review session, in fact very few have yet had the chance even to look at them, all the more so as several have only just bought them in the book exhibit.  So it would be ideal to begin these book review sessions by allowing the authors ten minutes each to summarize their books before the reviewers are invited in.  In other words, with new books, the sessions could be crafted in such a way that they are geared towards the majority of hearers.  The reviewers too could be encouraged to address those who are not familiar with the books.  Having said that, I did think the organization and chairing of the session (by the Extent of Theological Diversity section, partnering with the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism section) was exemplary, so it's just a small suggestion for the future ethos of the SBL.

It wasn't my favourite SBL, but that's mainly my fault, and I would like to thank the SBL for the fantastic work they put into making this such a successful meeting, and thanks too to all those who worked so hard as volunteers to make things go so well.

Karen King article in the Boston Globe

I meant to blog this last night but didn't get a chance because I was at the new Bond film, Skyfall (which is very good, by the way).  Lisa Wangsness, who has been publishing on the Jesus' Wife Fragment story from the beginning., has a new piece in the Boston Globe.  She was one of the three journalists who broke the story on 18 September (Harvard Professor identifies scrap of papyrus suggesting some early Christians believed Jesus was married) but unlike others, she has continued to follow the story and to report on the developments (Debate, doubts about a married Jesus, 26 September; Scholars begin to weigh in on 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife', 27 September) and now she has a profile piece on Karen King:

Harvard divinity professor relishes adventure, research

Jesus finding put scholar in spotlight

Lisa Wangsness

I have spoken to Lisa on several occasions, including one time last week while I was sitting in the carpool at school, and I get a short quotation in the piece:

“I started seeing that the lines that were being drawn between orthodox or correct Christianity and heretical Christianity couldn’t be drawn that way,” she said. “I had to step back and start sort of fresh and say, ‘What are the similarities and differences among [ancient] Christians, and how might we account for them, in terms of them belonging to this place?’”

King argued that these texts should be seen as part of the story of Christianity, not as distortions of a complete belief system articulated by the Gospels and handed down by the fathers of the early church. She contends that the early history of Christianity needs to be rewritten to include these previously marginalized voices, taking into account how “a limited set of perspectives has shaped what people believe.”

“She’s made her mark on the field by doing that,” said Mark Goodacre, a New Testament scholar at Duke University. “It’s a massive contribution to scholarship.”

The article does mention the forthcoming tests on the Jesus' Wife Fragment but there is no more information about timetable:

King is now awaiting the results of ink composition tests, which cannot establish for sure that it is authentic — but they could reveal that it is a forgery.

“I’m on the edge of my seat as much as anybody,” she said. “And we’ll see.”

The article is also mentioned by Jim Davila in Paleojudaica.