Biblia Patristica Available Online

Stephen Carlson notes that a searchable version of the Biblia Patristica--the definitive index of scriptural quotations from the early church fathers--is now available here. It's a free tool, although registration is required. I've added it to the list of "Related Links" for future reference.

Patristic scriptural quotations remain one of the most unmined aspects of New Testament textual criticism, largely due to the enormous size of the corpus (perhaps one million total citations). Technological innovations such as this initiative, however, could go a long way towards resolving the problem and fully appreciating one of the most vital and vibrant groups of witnesses to the New Testament text.

New Testament Notes: Week 9 (Monday)

An introduction to the post-resurrection Christian movement:

RELC 122 Notes: 3/16

Better Take Some of Your Own Medicine

C. Michael Patton has written an elegant and thoughtful post entitled "What if God Read Your Posts? A Reminder About Christian Conduct on the Internet." A number of his recommendations should appeal to religious commentators of all theological stripes, especially the following:

* You accurately represent all theological positions, even when you strongly oppose them.
* Your tone of engagement comes from a humble respectful attitude.
* Your primary goal is not to win an argument, but to contribute to understanding.
* Your defense of your position recognizes that strengths of the opposing side.
* You are gentle.

I heartily concur with all of these. But when I scroll down a bit, I notice that he Michael himself has recently written a three-part series (here, here, and here) primarily entitled: "'Belief Is No Good Without Practice' and Other Stupid Statements." I understand that the title is largely rhetorical, and that he's essentially making the argument that right action will flow naturally from right belief. But as someone who has always valued James 2:20, I was a bit taken aback. Furthermore, I know that there are Christians who would disagree with his interpretations of these verses and doctrines. I'm not sure that the above title, nor the entirety of what follows, come from a "humble respectful attitude."

From Dove: T & T Clark Sale

A number of titles are on sale at significant discounts (at least 60%). In particular, Fred Lapham's Introduction to the New Testament Apocrypha is a nice entry-level text for those unfamiliar with the wide array of apocryphal traditions in early Christianity. (I'm thinking of recommending this sale to the Director of Christian Education at my home church.)

JSNT Publications

Gibson, Jeffrey B
Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity
(T & T Clark International, 2004)
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This study lays the groundwork necessary for establishing the validity of the thesis, proposed particulary by J.H. Yoder in his Politics of Jesus, that the early church held a selective and unified view of the nature and content of the various temptations to which Jesus was regarded as having been subjected in his lifetime. This leads to a clearer view of how the early church perceived the exigencies of its Lord's mission and message, and provides fresh insights into such prominent New Testament themes as sonship, obedience, faithfulness and discipleship. It also opens up new possibilities for firmly establishing the occasion of those New Testament writings, such as the Gospel of Mark and even the Epistle to the Hebrews, where notice of and appeal to the example of Jesus in temptation appears as a prominent feature.

Jack, Alison M
Texts Reading Texts, Sacred and Secular: Two Postmodern Perspectives
(T & T Clark International, 1999)
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The language, themes and imagery of the Bible have been rewritten into texts across time. In the Revelation of John, the Hebrew Bible echoes and is reinvented, just as in James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) many explicit and implicit readings and interpretations of the Bible are offered. In Texts Reading Texts, these readings of the Bible, and the ways in which Revelation and Hogg's Confessions have themselves been read, are considered from the two postmodern perspectives of marginalization and deconstruction. By reading the two seemingly unrelated texts side by side from these perspectives, traditional readings of them both are disturbed and challenged.

Kwong, Ivan Shing Chung
Word Order of the Gospel of Luke
(T & T Clark International, 2006)
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This work studies the word order of the Gospel of Luke and some of its prominent messages with consideration of systemic functional linguistic theories. The first part of the work focuses on the relative positions of four constituents (subject, predicate, complement and circumstantial adjunct) of different types of Lukan clauses (independent, dependent, infinitival, participial and embedded clause). The result gives some unmarked (typical or common) word order patterns and some marked word order patterns of all Lukan clauses. The second part traces the foregrounded messages of the Gospel based on their related marked word order patterns incorporated with functional linguistic phenomena. The result highlights the messages of Jesus' disciples and his parents' failure in understanding him, Pilate's crime of handing over Jesus and Jesus' predictions of his future sufferings and Peter's future failure. JSNTS and Studies in New Testament Greek series

Landon, Charles
Text-Critical Study of the Epistle of Jude
(T & T Clark International, 1996)
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The author writes in the tradition of C.H. Turner, G.D. Kilpatrick and J.K. Elliott, and attempts a reconstruction of the Greek text of Jude according to the rationale of thoroughgoing eclecticism. The aims of his study are to apply an eclectic approach to the resolution of textual problems in Jude, and to determine the extent to which the text of Jude published in the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (GNT4) is a product of the eclectic ideal. In this work, eclecticism is defined in detail, distinctions being made between eclectic generalism, rational criticism, and thoroughgoing eclecticism. Each of 95 variation units is analysed individually and the apparatus provided for each unit shows as much variation as possible in a compact form.

Lapham, Fred
Peter: the Myth, the Man, and the Writings
(T & T Clark International, 2004)
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This book critically examines all the early and important Petrine pseudepigrapha to identify a distinctive Petrine theology which, it is believed, was later swamped by the tide of western orthodoxy. Despite the diversity of the books and tractates, ranging from Jewish-Christian writings to avowedly Gnostic works, a remarkably consistent Petrine tradition does emerge; and Peter is shown essentially to be neither the impetuous, undiscerning, and even vacillating figure portrayed in the Gospels and Acts, nor the magisterial and pontifical figure of later Church tradition, but a visionary who was concerned above all to hold together both the moral and cognitive aspects of the Faith.

Newport, Kenneth G C
Sources and Sitz im Leben of Matthew 23
(T & T Clark International, 1995)
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Matthew 23 presents the New Testament scholar with many problems. Not the least of these is the unequivocal acceptance of Pharisaic authority in vv. 2-3. In the same chapter the tithing of mint, dill and cummin is affirmed (v. 23) and the altar is said still to sanctify the gift (v. 19). This material seems out of place within the broader context of Matthew's Gospel. This study examines the origin and function of such material and argues that the bulk of the chapter (vv. 2-31) is formed from a single unified source and cannot be explained in terms of Matthew's editing of Q, M and Markan material. The focus of the criticism found in these verses is that the Pharisees are too slack: they strain gnats but swallow camels (v. 24), they 'say but do not do' (v. 4). To this unified source material, however, the evangelist has added his own (vv. 32-39) and by it launches an attack not just upon the Pharisees and scribes, but 'Jerusalem' and her children as a whole. Matthew therefore both heightens the polemic and extends its range.

Related to Gnosticism and New Testament Apocrypha

Franzmann, Majella
Jesus in the Manichaean Writings
(T & T Clark International, 2003)
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Manichaeism was a dualistic religious system with Christian, Gnostic and pagan elements, founded in Persia in the third century by Manes. This is the first full-length study of the Manichaean Jesus, since the publication of several major Manichaean texts such as the Homilies, Psalm Book and Kephalaia in the 1930s and 1940s. A knowledge of Manichaean Christology is important for any understanding of the development of Christologies in the early cen-turies CE, whether within mainstream Christianity or within associated het-erodox groups. This book undertakes a comprehensive study of six distinct figures of Jesus that can be found in both Eastern and Western Manichaean lit-erature. Previous partial studies of Manichaean Christology have tended to restrict their focus to texts from either Eastern or Western traditions alone. Majella Franzmann argues that a single Manichaean Jesus can be discerned behind the many different representations to be found.

Lapham, Fred
Introduction to the New Testament Apocrypha
(T & T Clark International, 2003)
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This book is a readable and analytical survey of those important but little-known Christian documents of the second and third centuries which are collectively referred to as the New Testament Apocrypha, and is intended to serve both as an introductory guide for interested clergy and laity, but also as a useful reference for thos pursuing higher research. Questions of the manufacture of the codices, the transmission of the texts, the discovery of the lost and hidden books, and of the classification of the documents are considered, and the books are placed and critically examined in their geographical and social setting.

Logan, Alastair H B A J M Wedderburn (eds)
New Testament and Gnosis
(T & T Clark International, 2004)
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This collection of essays commemorates two important events. The first if the retirement of Professor Robert Wilson, the leading British authority on the subject of Gnosis and Gnosticism and a foremost international scholar in this field, from the Chair of Biblical Criticism in the University of St. Andrews and from the Editorship of New Testament Studies in the autumn of 1983. The second is the recent appearance, both in facsimile form and in English translation, of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Some of these have become well known in various ways since their discovery in 1945-6, but it is only very recently that the complete corpus of material has been made generally available. Thus it is only now that we can begin to assess its significance both for our understanding of this area of early Church history and in particular for the question of the relationship between Gnosis and Gnosticism and the New Testament.

By John K. Riches

Riches, John K
Conflicting Mythologies: Identity Formations in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark
(T & T Clark International, 2000)
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A cultural anthropological interpretation of Mark and Matthew which examines the formation of early Christian identity, world view and ethos. John Riches examines notions of sacred space and ethnicity. He shows how group identity emerged in the form of a dynamic process of reshaping traditional Jewish symbols and motifs, such as descent, kinship and circumcision, and interweaving them with early Christian traditions about Jesus. He also argues that the Evangelists were influenced by two opposing cosmologies, which accounts for the diversity of senses of identity which flow from the two narratives.
Contents
Preface Abbreviations 1 Identity and Change 2 Jewish Identity in the World of the Mediterranean Cities: Themes and Variations 3 Sight to the Blind 4 The Remaking of Sacred Space 5 Conflicting World-Views in Mark's Christology 6 Church of Disciples 7 Matthew and the Remaking of Sacred Space 8 Cosmology and Christology in Matthew 9 New Worlds and New Identities: The Gospels of Mark and Matthew and the Beginning of Christianity Bibliography Index of biblical references and ancient sources Index of modern authors Index of subjects

Luke 4:16-30: A Truly Great Passage

While rooting through some of my notes and papers from my Yale days, I discovered this little gem: a multifaceted exegesis of Luke 4:16-30 which I prepared for Prof. Diana Swancutt's New Testament Interpretation course. I have great admiration for the author of Luke--in my opinion, he's one of the great creative geniuses of early Christianity--and this rich pericope really shows off his abilities. Check it out:

Exegetical Working Paper (Luke 4:16-30)

James McGrath on Homosexuality

James McGrath's Sunday School class is beginning a new series on divisive topics in Christianity. First up is homosexuality; James gives a nice summary of their discussion here.

He also includes a brief but familiar clip from NBC's The West Wing which he describes as "useful for those interested in raising some of these issues in a discussion forum of some sort." I tend to agree. It's a worthwhile reminder of the weighty problems which surround any woodenly literal interpretation of the biblical text, and which do not melt away in the wake of vague comments about the "New Covenant replacing the Old."

Carolyn Sharp Is Right

On Awilum, Charles Halton gives a brief quotation from Prof. Carolyn Sharp's most recent book, Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible (Indiana University Press, 2009):

Reading is not a simple act of recognizing codes and cues inked onto parchment or engraved in stone. Apprehension of human communication through written texts, especially across time and across cultural boundaries, can be so complex as to defy description.

A beautifully worded observation, from a truly great teacher.

Extreme Right v. Extreme Left: A Hopeless Debate?

Over the past few days, I've become belatedly aware of a vigorous (and occasionally downright nasty) debate between atheists and conservative Christian apologists raging throughout the blogosphere, particularly involving exchanges between John Loftus and J.P. Holding--who represent the former and latter camps, respectively. Nick Norelli notes a list of claims recently posted by Holding in response to Loftus:

1) I have answers to ANY claim of “contradiction” you can come up with.

2) The authorship of the NT Biblical books is more solid than it is for any secular work of the ancient world.

3) We don’t have originals for ANY ancient work, but only nimwits like you think this is a problem, and can’t explain why.

4) You wouldn’t know how the canon was put together, since you think Dan Brown is a good source; much less could you criticize its composition intelligently.

5) The textual tradition of the NT is far more secure than that of any secular document, with zero evidence of tampering or corruption; nothing but legitimate interpretive modifications to accommodate shifting language and cultural needs.

6) The NT books were all written within 40 years of Jesus’ lifetime.

7) You couldn’t argue with me ten seconds on any of these points.

Nick provides brief responses to the first, second, fifth, and sixth of these points (after stating that he "couldn't care less" about the others):

(1) I’m sure that this is true but I doubt that all of the answers are equally good or persuasive.

(2) This is worded in such a way as to indicate that we know who the authors of all the NT books are, but clearly we don’t. Maybe we can argue that the authorship for the Pauline corpus is solid (and there’s more than a few of his books that are disputed) and I’d venture to say that Luke-Acts is pretty well established, but that’s about it. We simply don’t know the rest.

(5) This is just false when it comes to the claim of “zero evidence of tampering or corruption.” Maybe he’s defining those terms in a special way but if he simply means intentional changes that may or may not affect the meaning of a given passage then he’s wrong.

(6) Holding’s preterism colors his dating of the NT but I don’t see any convincing arguments for dating John, 1-3 John, Revelation, Jude, or 1-2 Peter within 40 years of Jesus’ lifetime. Good luck proving it.

I find myself in agreement with Nick's responses. I would briefly take up Holding's third point, however, and reply that ancient historians are absolutely concerned with the fact that the majority of texts have survived in copies of a very late date. As Helmut Koester and any number of others have convincingly argued, textual emendation most frequently occurs in the century immediately following the initial publication, an issue which often forces the editors of classical texts to propose conjectural readings not found in any surviving manuscript. Furthermore, works such as the writings of Josephus (e.g., the so-called "Testimonium Flavianum") and the Sybilline Oracles display unmistakable evidence of alteration by later generations of editors, to say nothing of the innumerable form-critical and text-critical studies of the New Testament. So, I would say that all historians of antiquity are frustrated by the lack of autographic texts, as it makes their studies more difficult and tenuous from the outset.

To briefly supplement Nick's comments, I would add that while almost all scholars and critics accept Luke-Acts as the product of a single author, the actual identity of that author remains unknown. As for the Pauline corpus, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, and Philemon are universally acclaimed as authentic, with some occasionally advocating the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians, and only the most conservative commentators identifying Paul as the author of the Pastoral Epistles. In his Anchor Bible (now Anchor Yale Bible) commentary on the Letter of James, Luke Timothy Johnson argues that the letter should be attributed to James the brother of Jesus, but this view has not won widespread acceptance (and was not universally accepted even in the patristic era).

Nick is absolutely correct when he identifies Holding's statement that the text of the New Testament displays "zero evidence of tampering or corruption" as "absolutely false." I can't see how anyone could defend such a claim, given the astronomical number of variant readings among the approximately 5500 extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the fact that the Western text of Acts is approximately ten percent longer than the Alexandrian text, etc. Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament provides summary treatments of many problematic passages; Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture is also worth reading on this subject. And as for questions of dating, apart from J.A.T. Robinson's bold but flawed Redating the New Testament, which placed the origins of all of the books before 70 CE, I haven't seen any recent publications make such an argument. If anything, some arguments for second-century dates are intensifying; Richard Pervo has made a strong case that Acts belongs to this period.

Generally, I've found both of the extremes of this debate sorely wanting, usually resorting to bombastic and poorly constructed rhetoric rather than a sober exchange of thoughts and opinions. And I'm left wondering why they're even bothering to engage one another. Perhaps they simply enjoy the battle, even if there's no end in sight.

Forthcoming From SBL: The Second Church

For more than four decades, Ramsay MacMullen has been one of the most vibrant and influential social historians of late antiquity, particularly concerning the conflict between Greco-Roman religion and the emerging Christian movement. His latest book will be released this month, and has already received very favorable comments from Helmut Koester, Wayne Meeks, and Brent Shaw (I just know I'm going to end up buying it):

The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400

Ramsay MacMullen

ISBN: 1589834038
Status: Forthcoming
Price: $24.95
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: March, 2009

Christianity in the century both before and after Constantine’s conversion is familiar thanks to the written sources; now Ramsay MacMullen, in his fifth book on ancient Christianity, considers especially the unwritten evidence. He uses excavation reports about hundreds of churches of the fourth century to show what worshipers did in them and in the cemeteries where most of them were built. What emerges, in this richly illustrated work, is a religion that ordinary Christians, by far the majority, practiced in a different and largely forgotten second church. The picture fits with textual evidence that has been often misunderstood or little noticed. The “first” church—the familiar one governed by bishops—in part condemned, in part tolerated, and in part re-shaped the church of the many. Even together, however, the two constituted by the end of the period studied (AD 400) a total of the population far smaller than has ever been suggested. Better estimates are now made for the first time from quantifiable data, that is, from the physical space available for attendance in places of worship. Reassessment raises very large questions about the place of religion in the life of the times and in the social composition of both churches.

Ramsay MacMullen is Dunham Professor Emeritus of History and Classics at Yale University. He is the recipient of a lifetime Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association and the author of numerous volumes on Christianity and the Roman Empire.

Click here for a printable title information sheet that you can put in your files or give to your librarian or bookstore.

“Ramsay MacMullen—for many years the spokesman for the majority of the people who are not represented in the writings of the elite—here focuses on the beliefs and practices of the mass of Christians. He brings forward impressive evidence, mostly archaeological, for the third and especially the fourth century C.E., showing the persistent predominance of pagan rituals among the vast majority of Christians, especially in burial practices and veneration of the dead. While only a small minority of them went to church, most could have been found celebrating the memory of the departed with food and wine at the cemeteries, often in a manner that their bishops hardly approved.

For the first time most of the relevant materials with illuminating illustrations have been brought together in this publication, which should be on the reading list of all courses teaching the history of ancient Christianity.”

— Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Research Professor of Divinity and Winn Research Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard University

“Do not let the small size of this book mislead you. Anyone who wants to know what Christianity was like in the crucial two centuries discussed here—not just what the bishops and theologians were thinking, but what the other 95 percent were doing—will discover the weight of this book to be many times its physical heft. MacMullen, one of our most distinguished historians of Roman antiquity, tries here to refocus ‘the mind’s eye,’—the only tool we have, finally, to imagine that ‘second church’—to sweep away the double astigmatism that besets our usual scholarship, skewed by what our texts say Christians ought to be and what we want them to be. The result is history purged of wishful thinking, and it should make us all blink.”

— Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University

“If you wish to know what it was like to be one of the ordinary Christians who lived in the Roman Mediterranean, then begin here. Through artifact and word, by means of a scholarly excavation of detail and fact from great metropolises and isolated hamlets strewn around the central sea, MacMullen brings to life the varied and contradictory life of Christians at ground level.”

— Brent D. Shaw, Professor of Classics and Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Princeton University

Hardback edition available from Brill Academic Publishers (www.brill.nl)

The Future of Scholarly Publishing

Given the proliferation of electronic resources, rising production costs for printed volumes, and the current economic situation, I'm sure this will be an especially interesting talk. For those unfamiliar with the location of the Scholars Lab, turn left when you enter the library and head down the hallway immediately in front of you.

"Scholarly Publishing Today and Tomorrow"
Linda Bree
Senior Humanities Editor, Cambridge University Press
Tuesday, March 24 at 2:00 p.m.
Scholars' Lab, Alderman Library

RBL Highlights: 3/12/09

Highlights from the most recent Review of Biblical Literature:

Michael F. Bird
The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification and the New Perspective
Reviewed by James P. Sweeney

James H. Charlesworth
The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide
Reviewed by Peter J. Judge

Andrew D. Clarke
A Pauline Theology of Church Leadership
Reviewed by Jens Herzer

Tal Davidovich
The Mystery of the House of Royal Women: Royal Pilagsim as Secondary Wives in the Old Testament
Reviewed by Yael Shemesh

Mary Dove
The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions
Reviewed by Francis Dalrymple-Hamilton
Reviewed by Christo H. J. van der Merwe

David Flusser; translated by Azzan Yadin
Judaism of the Second Temple Period, Volume 1: Qumran and Apocalypticism
Reviewed by Joshua Schwartz

Richard S. Hess and Elmer A. Martens, eds.
War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century
Reviewed by Brad E. Kelle

Alistair G. Hunter
An Introduction to the Psalms
Reviewed by Gert T. M. Prinsloo
Reviewed by John S. Vassar

Barclay M. Newman, ed.
The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's Edition
Reviewed by Cynthia Long Westfall

Anita Norich and Yaron Z. Eliav, eds.
Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext
Reviewed by Shlomo Berger

Robert B. Wright, ed.
The Psalms of Solomon: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text
Reviewed by Rodney A. Werline
Reviewed by Joel Willitts

Today: Buddhist Tantric Ritual Manuals

Courtesy of Prof. Peter Ochs:

The SIP Faculty and Grads invite you to their SIP Lunch this term, featuring:

Professor Nicolas Sihlé
(Dept. of Anthropology)

"Buddhist tantric ritual manuals and society: Reflections on an anthropological approach to a local corpus of religious texts"

Hosted by Adam Wells

Thursday March 12, 12:15 to 1:30: HALSEY FACULTY LOUNGE

(You are welcome to bring your own bag lunch; we'll provide cold drinks and cookies)

Best, The SIP Program

Looavul... Luhvul...

Darrell Pursiful (aka Dr. Platypus) discusses one of the most charming aspects of speech throughout the state of Kentucky (and my hometown of Louisville in particular): its occasional removal or alteration of a syllable or two, often in the names of places, to create a new, seemingly inexplicable pronunciation. I can provide firsthand evidence of this practice: my paternal grandmother is from a small town in Marion County, the geographic center of the state. The name of the town is spelled "Lebanon," but locals (and all others in the know) pronounce it "Leb-nin." If you want to spend some time in Kentucky, you'd better figure this stuff out. ;-)

Darrell also provides an image of a helpful banner placed throughout Louisville by the city's tourism board; most people prefer one of the first two pronunciations listed there.

Polygamy in Second Temple Judaism

In his discussion of possible meanings of the phrase μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα (lit. "the man of one woman" or "the husband of one wife") in 1 Timothy 3:2, Bill Mounce mentions the practice of polygamy:

Some hold that it [the phrase] is a prohibition against polygamy, i.e., married to one at a time. This argument is stronger than one might suspect from its near universal rejection. However, while polygamy was common in Judaism it was not common in Christianity, so it seems unlikely that Paul would have thought to prohibit something that rarely occurred.

Was polygamy "common in Judaism" at the time of Paul--or decades later, during the composition of the Pastorals? In "Marriage, Divorce, and Family and Second Temple Judaism," published in Families in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), John J. Collins presents a thorough overview of the evidence, noting that it is mentioned by Josephus, Justin Martyr, and the Mishnah; it was apparently practiced by elites such as Herod and his sons; and the recent discovery of the Bathaba archive suggests that it may have spread beyond the upper classes of society to members of the Palestinian bourgeois. Nevertheless, while the legal wranglings of Bathaba and her fellow wife over the property of their late husband provide important evidence that polygamy was not limited to eminent figures such as the Herodians, the correspondence "remains a single instance and does not warrant any generalization about the extent of polygamy in second temple Judaism" (p. 122), and Collins does not dramatically depart from the relative consensus "that monogamy was the norm throughout the second temple period" (ibid, citing S. Lowy's "The Extent of Jewish Polygamy in Tannaitic Times" [1958]). The fact that Justin Martyr is clearly engaged in a polemical dialogue with Judaism, and that the Mishnah often discusses past practices in a seemingly contemporary fashion, would support such a position.

The Brick Testament

Anyone looking to brush up their biblical literacy in a creative way should check out the Brick Testament. Ruben Dupertuis, one of my undergraduate mentors, gave a paper on it as part of SBL's "Bible and Popular Culture" section a couple years ago. Fun!

Happy Anniversary, Codex Sinaiticus!

While mindlessly surfing the web last night, I discovered an inexplicable oversight: I neglected to mention that February 4 marked the sesquicentennial (that's the 150th anniversary, for all you philistines out there) of the scholarly discovery of the priceless Codex Sinaiticus by Constantin von Tischendorf. Go drink a toast or gulp down a piece of cake in its honor... or check out the remarkable collaborative Codex Sinaiticus Project, which is slated for final completion in July 2009.

P.S. Don't tell Jim West that I was reminded of this date by Wikipedia's events feed, or I'll be blacklisted from the biblioblog world! ;-)

New From Baker/Fortress/WJK: More Good Stuff

Another recent announcement from Dove:

Aune, David E
Apocalypticism, Prophecy, and Magic in Early Christianity: Collected Essays
(Baker Book House, 2008)
Paperback List: $49.99 Dove Price: $39.99
Save $10.00 (20%)

Renowned scholar David Aune, author of a leading commentary on the book of Revelation, here offers twenty studies on apocalypticism, the book of Revelation, and related topics. Several essays on the Apocalypse of John explore contextual relationships of the Apocalypse to apocalyptic literature. Other essays center on aspects of the content and interpretation of the Apocalypse itself by investigating issues such as discipleship, narrative christology, genre, and the problem of God and time. Essays on early Christian prophecy deal with charismatic exegesis in early Judaism and early Christianity, the relationship between Christian prophecy and the messianic status of Jesus, and the prophetic features found in The Odes of Solomon. Originally published in hardcover by Mohr Siebeck, this collection is now available in paperback.

Evans, Craig A N. T. Wright
Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened
(Westminster John Knox, 2009)
Paperback List: $16.95 Dove Price: $13.50
Save $3.45 (20%)

What do history and archaeology have to say about Jesus death, burial, and resurrection? In this superb general reader book, two of the worlds most celebrated writers on the historical Jesus share their greatest findings. Together, Craig A. Evans and N. T. Wright concisely and compellingly convey the drama and the world-shattering significance of Jesus final days on earth. Certain to be a best seller during the Lent/Easter season and beyond!

Evans, Craig A Emanuel Tov (eds)
Exploring the Origins of the Bible: Canon Formation in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective
(Baker Book House, 2008)
Paperback List: $22.99 Dove Price: $18.99
Save $4.00 (17%)

For those who want to go deeper in their understanding of the canon of Scripture, leading international scholars provide cutting-edge perspectives on various facets of the biblical writings, how those writings became canonical Scripture, and why canon matters. Craig Evans begins by helping those new to the field understand the different versions of the Hebrew Bible (Masoretic Text, Septuagint, Targum, Vulgate, etc.) as well as the books of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. Later essays also help beginners by explaining "canon" and the development of canons in various Jewish and Christian communities, the much-debated tripartite canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, and questions of authority. But the book also includes insightful explorations and perspectives to challenge more advanced readers, starting with Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls expert Emanuel Tov delving into the complexities of biblical writing and moving into a critical investigation of the usefulness of extracanonical Gospels for historical Jesus research and an exploration of the relationship of Paul to the canonization process. The result is a thought-provoking book that concludes with discussion of an issue at the fore today--the theological implications of canon.

Hanson, K C Douglas E. Oakman
Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Contexts, Second Edition
(Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
Paperback List: $30.00 Dove Price: $23.99
Save $6.01 (20%)

Hanson and Oakman's award-winning and illuminating volume has become a widely used and cited introduction to the social context of Jesus and the early Jesus movement. This second edition updates all the discussions in light of more recent scholarship, improves clarity and readability of diagrams and maps, provides additional diagrams and images to enhance the book for student use, and includes new classroom resources, for professors and students, on a Companion Web site. Along with an overview of the ancient Mediterranean worldview, Palestine in the Time of Jesus explores major domains and institutions of Roman Palestine: kinship, politics, economy, and religion.

Holman, Susan R
Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society
(Baker Book House, 2008)
Paperback List: $32.99 Dove Price: $26.99
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Wealth and poverty are issues of perennial importance in the life and thought of the church. This volume brings patristic thought to bear on these vital issues. The contributors offer explanations of poverty in the New Testament period, explore developments among Christians in Egypt and Asia Minor and in early Byzantium, and connect patristic theology with contemporary public policy and religious dialogue. This volume inaugurates Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History, a partnership between Baker Academic and the Stephen and Catherine Pappas Patristic Institute of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. The series is a deliberate outreach by the Orthodox community to evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic seminarians, pastors, and theologians. These multi-author books include contributors from all traditions but focus on the patristic (especially Greek patristic) heritage.

Horsley, Richard A (ed)
In The Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming The Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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The Bible tells the stories of many empires. And many are still considered some of the largest of the ancient and classical world: the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. In this provocative book, eight experts bring a critical analysis of these world empires in the background of the Old and New Testaments. As they explain, the Bible developed against the context of these empires, providing concrete meaning to the countercultural claims of Jews and Christians that their God was the true King, the real Emperor. Each chapter describes how to read the Bible as a reaction to empire and points to how to respond to the biblical message to resist imperial powers in every age.

Horsley, Richard A
Jesus in Context: Power, People, and Performance
(Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
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What difference did empire make for Jesus and his disciples? What difference did empire make for the broader social currents of which he and they were a part? What social roles did Jesus perform, what "little tradition" did he embody against the "great tradition" of Roman culture? What difference does it make for our understanding of Jesus if we attend to new kinds of evidence regarding popular movements, the dynamics of oral tradition, and reading history "from below"? Richard A. Horsley addresses all these questions and sketches a dramatic new picture of Jessus in light of recent approaches.

Kloppenborg, John S
Q, the Earliest Gospel: An Introduction to the Original Stories and Sayings of Jesus
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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Estimated to date back to the very early Jesus movement, the lost Gospel known as Q offers a distinct and remarkable picture of Jesus and his significance and one that differs markedly from that offered by its contemporary, the apostle Paul. Rather than privileging Jesus? death and resurrection as the salvific events, highlighting his battles with demons, or concentrating on his messianic program of healing, this Sayings Gospel presents Jesus as a prophetic critic of unbelief and a sage with the wisdom that can transform. In Q, the true meaning of the kingdom of God is the fulfillment of a just society through the transformation of the human relationships within it: debt relief, mutuality and reciprocity, nonretaliation, and the total rejection of the long-standing Mediterranean honor and shame codes. Though this document has never been found, Kloppenborg offers a succinct account of why scholars maintain it existed in the first place and demonstrates how they have been able to reconstruct its contents and wording from the two later Gospels that used it as a source: Matthew and Luke. Presented here in its entirety, as developed by the International Q Project, this Gospel reveals a very different portrait of Jesus than in much of the later canonical writings, challenging the way we think of Christian origins and the very nature and mission of Jesus Christ.

Pregeant, Russell
Knowing Truth, Doing Good: Engaging New Testament Ethics
(Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
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As we face new, complex, and controversial ethical issues in our lives, turning to the writings of the New Testament for guidance can be a bewildering experience. One reason this is so, says Pregeant, is that the New Testament writings belong to a distant and very different cultural world, where many of our contemporary questions simply weren't imagined. Another reason is the open - ended character of language and the possibility - and desirability - of multiple and often competing strands of meaning in the New Testament writings. In Knowing Truth, Doing Good, Pregeant models a careful and sensitive approach to ethics in the New Testament writings. Instead of looking for "the New Testament answer" or "the early Christian view," he calls us to own our responsibility for the ways we interpret the Bible and for the ethical decisions we make in the Bible's name. Pregeant explores such topics as: * Madness in the Methods: On Learning to Treat the Text as Subject * The Ethics of the Jesus Movement * The Ethics of the Canonical Writings * Engaging New Testament Ethics

Rowe, C Kavin
Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke
(Baker Book House, 2009)
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Despite the striking frequency with which the Greek word for kyrios (Lord) occurs in Luke's Gospel, this study is the first comprehensive analysis of Luke's use of this word. Rowe offers a careful exegetical discussion of all the passages in the Gospel that use kyrios for Jesus in order to trace the complex and deliberate development in Luke's narrative of Jesus's identity as Lord. Detailed attention to Luke's artistry and use of Mark demonstrates that Luke has a nuanced and sophisticated christology. For Rowe, Luke's use of kyrios for Jesus not only after the resurrection but throughout shows Jesus's close association with the God of Israel. This book, now available in paperback, was first published in hardcover by Walter de Gruyter.

Wilson, Walter T
Pauline Parallels: A Comprehensive Guide
(Westminster John Knox, 2009)
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Paul's letters to early churches form one of the largest and most theologically rich parts of the New Testament. Wilson examines each passage from every one of Paul's letters-including those that some scholars believe were written by someone else-and show how they overlap and connect with passages from a broad spectrum of ancient literature. Parallels are drawn with other Pauline letters, New Testament and Old Testament writings, early Jewish literature such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the philosophical and religious works of Greece and Rome. In terms of its range of parallels, this book is the most complete study of its kind to date. Pauline Parallels: A Comprehensive Guide is sure to be invaluable resource for understanding Paul's concepts for many years to come.

New From SBL: Minorities and Sicarii

... but not in the same book, of course!

They Were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism

Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Fernando F. Segovia, editors

Critics from three major racial/ethnic minority communities in the United States—African American, Asian American, and Latino/a American—focus on the problematic of race and ethnicity in the Bible and in contemporary biblical interpretation. With keen eyes on both ancient text and contemporary context, contributors pay close attention to how racial/ethnic dynamics intersect with other differential relations of power such as gender, class, sexuality, and colonialism. In groundbreaking interaction, they also consider their readings alongside those of other racial/ethnic minority communities. The volume includes an introduction pointing out the crucial role of this work within minority criticism by looking at its historical trajectory, critical findings, and future directions. The contributors are Cheryl B. Anderson, Francisco O. García-Treto, Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Frank M. Yamada, Gale A. Yee, Jae-Won Lee, Gay L. Byron, Fernando F. Segovia, Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Demetrius K. Williams, Mayra Rivera Rivera, Evelyn L. Parker, and James Kyung-Jin Lee.
Paper $45.95 • 412 pages • ISBN 9781589832459 • Semeia Studies • Hardback edition www.brill.nl


The Sicarii in Josephus's Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations
Mark Andrew Brighton

This book offers a comprehensive study of the Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War. Detailed rhetorical analyses are provided not only for the Masada narrative, where Josephus tells how the Sicarii famously committed suicide, but also for all other places in War where their activities are described or must be inferred from the context. The study shows how Josephus adopted the Sicarii in his narrative to develop and bring to a resolution several major themes in War. In a departure from the classical proposal that the Sicarii were an armed and fanatical off-shoot of the Zealots, this work concludes that from a historical perspective, “Sicarii” was a somewhat fluid term used to describe Jews of the Judean revolt who were associated with acts of violence against their own people for religious/political ends.
Paper $26.95 • 200 pages • ISBN 9781589834064 • Early Judaism and Its Literature • Hardback edition www.brill.nl

CJA Colloquium: Morwenna Ludlow

Courtesy of Prof. Judy Kovacs. Anyone in the area should stop by:

Please mark your calendars for our next meeting on Tuesday, April 7,
12:30 -1:45 in Newcomb Hall Room 389.

Our guest speaker will be Prof. Morwenna Ludlow, of Exeter University (England), who will speak on the topic: "Power and Dominion? Patristic Readings of Genesis 1." Please look over beforehand the primary texts that will be distributed a week or so before the colloquium.

Prof. Ludlow offers this summary of her presentation:

In current environmental debates, Christian biblical interpretation has often been held at least partly responsible for faulty modern Western attitudes to the natural world. In particular, attention has fallen on readings of Gen. 1:26 in which God is described as giving humans 'dominion' over other creatures. Setting the modern theological and ecological debate to one side, this paper will give an historical analysis of some church fathers' interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis. The first part - 'power' - will be a brief survey of readings of Gen. 1:1 with the aim of examining what kind of interpretation the fathers are attempting (literal, figurative, allegorical?) and in what kind of contexts (homilies for a mixed audience, more specialised philosophical treatises?). It will be seen that a factor unifying diverse interpretations is an emphasis on the unique power of God. The paper's second part - 'dominion' - will focus on Gen. 1:26, analysing the fathers' understanding of the relationship of humans to other animals in the light both of the 'imago dei' theme and of late antique concepts of human and animal nature (especially in relation to the concept of 'soul').

Your Comments Are Requested...

While my experiences with Blogger have been generally good, I've occasionally regretted its relative lack of customizable features when compared to other publishing platforms such as WordPress. For instance, I've always been a little jealous of the "Recent Commentations" portion of Nick Norelli's sidebar; one of the most interesting and rewarding things about sharing ideas and information in this type of format is the rich, evolving conversation that it fosters. Fortunately, the fine folks at bloggerbuster.com have created an extremely user-friendly widget that corrects this glaring problem, and the most recent comments on this blog will now be proudly displayed in the sidebar immediately beneath the blogroll.

So, the moral of this story is... let's see more comments! ;-)

New From Fortress/WJK: Good Stuff

A recent announcement from Dove (which is currently offering these titles at various discounts). There are a number of good-looking books here; I'm particularly interested in Dale Martin's take on biblical pedagogy, which I plan to read before teaching the subject again.

Davies, Philip R
Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History-Ancient and Modern
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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Recent years have seen an explosion of writing on the history of Israel, prompted largely by definitive archaeological surveys and attempts to write a genuine archaeological history of ancient Israel and Judah. The scholarly world has also witnessed an intense confrontation between so-called minimalists and maximalists over the correct approach to the historicity of the Bible. Memories of Ancient Israel looks at the issues at stake in doing biblical historythe ideologies involved, the changing role of archaeology, and the influence of cultural contexts, both ancient and modern. Davies suggests a different way of defining the problem of reliability and historicity by employing the theory of cultural memory. In doing so, he provides a better explanation of how ancient societies constructed their past but also a penetrating insight into the ideological underpinnings of today's scholarly debates.

Gravett, Sandra L Karla G. Bohmbach, F.V. Greifenhagen, Donald C. Polaski
Introduction to The Hebrew Bible: A Thematic Approach
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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This pedagogically astute introduction to the Hebrew Bible is designed specifically for undergraduates. It begins with the most basic questions: from where and when did the Hebrew Bible originate, how was it written, and how did people read it? And in focusing on the fundamental question of the canon "Who are we,"it first gives much attention to the issues of identity, especially in contexts of family, gender, ethnicity, and class. Then it explores how the ancient Israelites organized themselves in terms of power and state, and finally delineates the larger questions of God and ideology within the canon. The result is a flow of topics that yields a textbook more in line with other studies of ancient literature and culture. Without ignoring the religious function of the Hebrew Bible, it instead presents religion as a part of every aspect of existence. Through art, photography, literature, and popular culture, this text vibrantly presents the concepts of the Hebrew Bible and offers a companion Web site for teachers, with tests and other pedagogical aids.

Horsley, Richard A (ed)
In The Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming The Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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The Bible tells the stories of many empires. And many are still considered some of the largest of the ancient and classical world: the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and finally the Romans. In this provocative book, eight experts bring a critical analysis of these world empires in the background of the Old and New Testaments. As they explain, the Bible developed against the context of these empires, providing concrete meaning to the countercultural claims of Jews and Christians that their God was the true King, the real Emperor. Each chapter describes how to read the Bible as a reaction to empire and points to how to respond to the biblical message to resist imperial powers in every age.

Kessler, Rainer Linda M. Maloney (trans)
Social History of Ancient Israel: An Introduction
(Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
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Histories of ancient Israel have usually focused attention on major figures in powerful positions: kings, prophets, and patriarchs. Kessler asks about the larger social patterns that shaped the everyday life of ordinary people, from the emergence of Israel in the hills of Canaan, to the Jewish populations of Greek city-states in the Hellenistic age. The introductory section includes discussion of social history as discipline and as method, event history and the "long haul," the representation of social history, and the history of research. Two other sections explore the methods of the social history of Israel and the epochs of Israel's social history, including discussions of environment as living space, Israel's emergence as a kinship-based society, exile and its consequences, and more. Includes a time line, glossary of terms, maps and illustrations.

Lemche, Niels Peter
Old Testament between Theology and History: A Critical Survey
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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From its inception at the time of the Enlightenment until the mid-twentieth century, the historical-critical method constituted the dominant paradigm in Old Testament studies. In this magisterial overview, Niels Peter Lemche surveys the development of the historical-critical method and the way it changed the scholarly perception of the Old Testament. In part 1 he describes the rise and influence of historical-critical approaches, while in part 2 he traces their decline and fall. Then, in part 3, he discusses the identity of the authors of the Old Testament, based on the content of the literature they wrote, demonstrating that the collapse of history does not preclude critical study. Part 4 investigates the theological consequences of this collapse and surveys Old Testament and biblical theology in its various manifestations in the twentieth century. An appendix includes a history of Palestine from the Stone Age to modern times, constructed without recourse to the Old Testament.

Maier, Christl M
Daughter Zion, Mother Zion: Gender, Space, and the Sacred in Ancient Israel
(Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
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In this innovative and important work Christl M. Maier argues that the way Israelites in the exilic and post-exilic periods spoke of Jerusalem as gendered space ? a "female" city ? helps us trace reactions to the crisis of exile and the emergence of a new national-religious identity. Taking up the Zion tradition in Isaiah of Jerusalem, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and Lamentations, Maier explores motifs of Jerusalem as mother, daughter, bride, whore, and injured victim. Her interpretation of gendered metaphors also helps us understand contemporary political and religious constructions of gender and political power.

Martin, Dale B
Pedagogy of the Bible: An Analysis and Proposal
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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For generations, most seminary teaching of the Bible has focused on the historical-critical method. While this method has been the assumption in almost every seminary curriculum, the actual effects of this approach to Scripture have hardly been examined. From studying the biblical studies courses at ten different seminaries and divinity schools, Dale Martin learned what faculties were doing and what students were hearing. This book presents his discoveries, offering the best-ever inside look into the teaching of the Bible for ministry. Going beyond mere description, Martin argues for a new emphasis on interpreting Scripture within the context of church history and theology. Such a reading would be more theological, more integrated into the whole theological curriculum, and more theoretical (as it would focus on whats at stake in interpretation); however, Martin surprisingly argues, it would be more practical at the same time.

McCready, Wayne O
Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism
(Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
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Two decades after the publication of E. P. Sanders's monumental Judaism: Practice and Belief inaugurated vigorous debates about the extent and significance of commonality and diversity in ancient Judaism, Common Judaism gathers a host of scholars to present the state of our understanding of what was common ground in Second-Temple Judaism. By examining the tensions between a "common Judaism" and local settings, partisan Judaism, and the influence of Hellenism, these essays set contemporary discussion on a secure footing. An important resource for scholars and students alike, the contributors include: Lee L. Levine, Susan Haber, Daniel Poxon, David Miller, Eliezer Segal, and many more. Including an introductory essay by E.P. Sanders, this should become a standard reference work in the fields of early Judaism and New Testament studies.

O'Brien, Julia M
Challenging Prophetic Metaphor: Theology and Ideology in the Prophets
(Westminster John Knox, 2008)
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The prophets of the Old Testament use a wide variety of metaphors to describe God and to portray how to understand people in relation to God. Some of these metaphors are familiar and soothing; others are unfamiliar and confusing. Still others portray God in ways that are difficult and uncomfortableGod as abusive husband, for instance, or as neglectful father. Julia OBrien searches the prophetic books for these metaphors, looking for ways that the different images intersect and build off each other. When confronted with disturbing metaphors, she deals with them unflinchingly, providing a sharp critique and evaluation of the interpretations of these metaphors for God. Giving particular attention to the possible uses of these metaphors in the church todayfor good or illOBrien listens to the fullness of the prophetic messages and points us toward new ways to read these theological metaphors for a just faith today.

Perdue, Leo G
Wisdom Literature: A Theological History
(Westminster John Knox, 2007)
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The Old Testament's wisdom literature offers one of the most intriguing collections of biblical books (Proverbs, Job, the Psalms about Torah and wisdom, Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth, Ben Sira, and the Wisdom of Solomon). In this magisterial textbook, preeminent wisdom scholar Leo G. Perdue sets each book of wisdom in its historical context, examining the conditions that produced the book and shaped its thinking. This allows him to show how wisdom thought changed over time in response to shifting historical and social conditions. Not only analyzing the historical setting of wisdom, Perdue discerns the theological themes and theological developments within this rich literature.

Sawyer, John F A
Concise Dictionary of the Bible and Its Reception
(Westminster John Knox, 2009)
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This dictionary not only identifies terms and biblical figures but examines them from the perspective of "reception history"-the history of the Bible's effect on its readers. Biblical books, passages, and characters certainly played important roles in the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but they also influenced other religious traditions, preachers, writers, poets, artists, and filmmakers. The study of such cultural effects of the Bible is an emerging field, and this work promises to open new avenues of exploration.

Another Dove Sale: Used Books 50% Off

The sale ends March 14. The available titles may be viewed by subject here.

No More Manuscripts?

The astute folks at Evangelical Textual Criticism note that the original announcement of the discovery of several new New Testament manuscripts at the Benaki Museum has been removed. Hopefully we'll see some additional information in the next few days.

Reflections on Racism

John Hobbins of Ancient Hebrew Poetry recently defined "a racist pig" as:

[S]omeone who, regardless of intentions involved, exploits culturally sanctioned beliefs to put down and denigrate someone who belongs to a minority.

Furthermore,

The worst kind of racist I know of: the one that says, because you don’t fit my stereotype of what an X is, I will compliment you by saying that you are not at all like what an X is. Rather, you are just like me, don’t you know.

I certainly agree that the majority of racist opinions and acts involve the marginalization and subjugation of members of smaller groups, but these are not the limits of racism. It's a truly multifaceted threat, rearing its ugly head whenever any individual embraces and/or perpetuates a negative stereotype against another. Also, while the type of latent, patronizing attitude John describes is undeniably hurtful and problematic, I'm not sure that it's emblematic of "the worst kind of racist." Members of this ignominious category use their biases as the basis for the infliction of more tangible persecution and pain upon others. I remember reading, as a shocked high school student, of the horrible murder of James Byrd, Jr. by three white supremacists in 1998. Those men, and others like them, are the worst kinds of racists.

The Text of the NT: 95% Reliable?

While browsing the Accordance Forums, a perennially helpful and worthwhile series of discussion boards dedicated to the workings of Accordance Bible Software, I noticed an interesting post which included the following:

I am listening this afternoon to a debate between Dr. Bart Ehrman and Dr. James White from Jan 2009. Dr. White claims that even the most "extreme" traditions (such as the Westcott-Hort manuscript vs the Textus Receptus) agree in 95% of the variants, that we can be confident in 95% of the text of the New Testament. Dr. White said in his talk that "you can do a search with Bibleworks" that proves his point.

Similar comparative capabilities are available in Accordance, and within seconds (thanks to the extreme ease of the program's powerful interface) I was looking at a complete list of discrepancies between the editions mentioned above. Some were simply matters of punctuation or capitalization between the electronic texts, but many others were more substantive. However, I'm not particularly interested in an investigation of the accuracy of White's claims. Instead I was reminded of an article by Helmut Koester in which he argued that the most fluid period in the life of any text is the first century after its composition--and of course, we have virtually no New Testament manuscripts which belong to this category (the exceptions being a few fragmentary papyri). Matthew J. Bruccoli explores a modern illustration of this point in his collation of a number of variants in early printings of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, all of which appeared mere months after the novel's initial publication in September 1922:



















It's certainly something worth thinking about...

The Joys (Read: Horrors) of Transcription

This semester I'm taking a course on textual criticism and scholarly editing with Prof. David Vander Meulen, a member of UVA's acclaimed English department. It's been a great opportunity to spend some time outside my own discipline, and to study one of my particular passions (textual criticism) from a completely different perspective. This week Prof. Vander Meulen asked us to transcribe two brief selections from the notebooks of Robert Frost. These notebooks (some of which are archived here in Charlottesville) were recently edited by Robert Faggen and published by Harvard University Press, in an edition which has received sharp criticism due to the alleged presence of thousands of transcription errors. A thorough article on the controversy from last year's New York Times is available here.

Take a look at the images below and see what you think. I'm pretty sure that both Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus are more legible than this cramped scrawl! ;-)

Forthcoming from T & T Clark: New LNTS Titles

A recent announcement on The T & T Clark Blog:

New Books for the LNTS Series






























Customers in the UK please click here

Customers in the US please click here

Paul and Epictetus on Law, Structuring Early Christian Memory, A Former Jew and Reading Ephesians are four new titles which have just been put into production and will be available in Autumn 2009.

Niko Huttunen’s Paul and Epictetus on Law: A Comparison presents a fascinating discussion on differences and similarities in teaching of law that come from Paul and Epictetus. Can Epictetus’ teachings of law be compared with those of Paul? Should these be firmly categorized as Stoic (Epictetus) or Christian (Paul) or one may hope to find some correlations between these teachings? In this book Niko Huttunen tackles all these issues and offers new observations.

In Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance Rafael Rodriguez embarks upon how social memory research has obscured the relationship between past and present in New Testament studies. This captivating debate focuses on the figure of Jesus, a ‘historical Jesus’, and Rodriguez formulates many interesting observations in his quest to find whether it is possible to clearly separate ‘authentic’ from ‘inauthentic’ traditions.

Love L. Sechrest’s volume titled A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race is another new volume that concentrates on Paul, although this time focusing more upon the apostle’s Christianity. Sechrest describes Pauline Christianity as a nascent ancient racial group and bases her discussion on Jewish understanding of race in Second Temple Judaism.

Reading Ephesians: Exploring Social Entrepreneurship in the Text, by Minna Shkul, explores how Ephesians connects in social entrepreneurship, a process that has shaped the emergence of Christian Identity. Shkul’s intriguing discussion stands against the widely assumed theological presupposition that something was wrong with the Judaism practised at the time, but rather focuses upon the divine ‘legitimating’ of the Christian group and its culture.

These books will be available in October 2009 in the UK and in December 2009 in the US.

Bart Ehrman: The Most Successful Brand in Biblical Studies

No sooner did his name grace this blog than he appears on NPR's Fresh Air to discuss his latest book. The complete interview, and a brief excerpt, are available here. Thanks to Jim West for making this available, and for informing me that he did a nice job so that I don't have to actually listen to it. ;-)

Pondering the Lukan Jesus

Richard Anderson, who focuses primarily on the text and themes of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, describes the Lukan Jesus as the "Messiah of Peace":

At the birth of Jesus, the chorus of angels are singing peace and when Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey the chorus is singing “Blessed is the king that cometh in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” This was a different kind of victory procession. A humble king riding on a donkey with an army carrying psalms is not a threat to Pax Romana.

Luke's preoccupation with peace is certainly a noteworthy observation, but the conjecture that "[a] humble king riding on a donkey with an army carrying psalms is not a threat to Pax Romana," with its implicit corollary that Roman provincial officials would have been willing or able to differentiate between the peaceful demonstrations of a jubilant crowd and the zealous declarations of a nationalistic mob, seems somewhat dubious. Josephus' account of the swift execution of the messianic pretender Theudas and many of his followers after their symbolic journey to the Jordan (Antiq. 20.97-28) suggests that almost any large gathering whose actions could be viewed in an incendiary or revolutionary context was subject to reprisal. Whether the triumphal entry was intended to be such a gathering is an open question, but it seems likely that the authorities would have viewed it as such--at least if it were as dramatic as the gospels suggest.

It might also be noted that the Lukan Jesus flatly denies that he comes bearing earthly peace on at least one occasion: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!" (δοκεῖτε ὅτι εἰρήνην παρεγενόμην δοῦναι ἐν τῇ γῇ; οὐχί, λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἢ διαμερισμόν; Luke 12:51, the parallel of the Matthean Jesus' promise that "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword").

More Manuscripts!

Parchment and Pen relates an announcement that a team led by Daniel Wallace has identified seven previously unknown New Testament manuscripts at the Benaki Museum in Greece. Hopefully additional details regarding the date, contents, and other features of these finds will be forthcoming.

White v. Ehrman

Nick Norelli, diligent gatekeeper of the biblioblog world, directed me to this post in which James White virulently criticizes Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them). Several statements were particularly striking to me:

[T]he real issue is, does this book finally signal the end of Ehrman's "I'm not a theologian, I'm just a high-brow scholar so I cannot be held accountable for all the theological pronouncements I make" excuse making? Will those in the "academy" finally see his real intentions, and start to recognize his bias?

I agree with Nick on this point, who rightly suggests (in the title of his post) that the unassuming academicians who blithely accept all of Ehrman's conclusions as objective gospel are a nonexistent category. Or, as Mike Aubrey stated in his comment on Nick's post, "I think the academy is quite well aware that there isn’t such thing as an unbiased scholar period." All of us--believers and nonbelievers, scholars, clergy, and congregants alike--possess inherent biases which affect each and every critical question we approach.

He [Ehrman] has moved far beyond the realm of his narrow expertise in his last three most popular books, all of which are designed to do one thing: destroy Christian faith.

While I haven't read Ehrman's latest book (his publishing prowess far outstrips my meager free time), I have read a large amount of his work, including text-critical monographs and articles not normally read by the general public. Sometimes I agree with him and sometimes I don't. But I admire the way in which he digests and analyzes the extant evidence, and I certainly don't think that his principal goal is to destroy the Christian faith. Personally, I suspect his chief aim is financial and popular success; as one of my undergraduate professors once observed, "A lot of scholars hate Ehrman, but it's mostly because he's making money hand over fist." This argument is supported by the fact that many of his books are strikingly similar to one another in both style and content, and are designed to appeal to a more popular market that will support higher sales and prestige. But this doesn't make them salvos against the Christian faith, merely alternative readings of the available evidence. Ehrman may occasionally play upon the emotions of his readers in order to make the New Tork Times bestseller list, but his critics are almost always guilty of the same crime.

I might note that the quote above would be just as applicable to the Islamic view of the fire as well. Just don't ask Bart about that. As he begins his rounds on NPR, do you think someone will ask him, "So, you are saying Allah in the Qur'an is a never-dying eternal divine Nazi?" Yeah, probably not.

This seems to be a deliberately provocative comment designed to inflame the passions of the reader rather than contribute to a sober, rational refutation of the ideas and contents of the book in question. Ehrman is not, has never been, and has never claimed to be an Islamic scholar. Any caution or outright refusal to apply his conclusions to a field of study in which he has no specialized knowledge should be viewed as academic restraint--an academic restraint which many scholars, commentators, and critics should practice more often.

Spring Break, Part I: Clement of Alexandria on Martyrdom

One of my goals for the spring break (which, incidentally, seems to have come a little early this year, especially given the snow flurries currently swirling outside my window) is to make some significant progress on my research project for Prof. Judy Kovacs' seminar on the life and writings of Clement of Alexandria. I'm presently examining his views on martyrdom, particularly those given in Book IV of the Stromateis, and exploring whether they were influenced by martyrological acta circulating throughout north Africa and the rest of the empire during this period. Initially I was concerned with exclusively Christian writings such as the Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas, but recently I've wondered whether Clement could have read Greco-Roman texts such as the collection variously titled as the Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs or the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs. His status among the most widely read authors of the early Christian world makes such a hypothesis possible; now if only I can find something more concrete...

Any thoughts?

Sex and the Church I: The Theology of Sexuality

The first installment of an online series on sexuality prepared by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church is now available:

The theology of sexuality: How to develop open Christian discussions

The author, Traci C. West, is Professor of Ethics and African American Studies at Drew University Theological School in Madison, NJ, and is also ordained in the UMC.

The Grades Are In...

For the past several days, Anna Blanch has undertaken the monolithic task of briefly reviewing every blog featured among christiancolleges.com's 100 Top Theology Blogs. Here's what she had to say about yours truly:

Confessions of a Bible Junkie: A scholarly biblical studies blog. Matthew Burgess (MA - Religion (Yale)) is a current doctoral student in the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity program at the University of Virginia. Once again, this blog is incorrectly categorized as "writings" and would be better classified as Academic. He often links to the Review of Biblical Literature and the SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) Forum monthly along with biblioblogs carnivals. Design-wise, my only criticism is that the size of the font is a little on the small side. I'd like to see some more original content from Burgess (that's the reason for the B grade) [this is meant as constructive encouragement] although he does link to .pdf's of his own papers and research.

Making the Grade:
Scope - B+
Quality - B
Theological Leanings - ?

Overall, I consider this to be a pretty fair assessment (although I don't see a significant size difference between my font and Anna's, and as Nick Norelli so sagaciously pointed out to me, it's often better to write fewer posts of higher quality than to produce a plethora of drivel... not that I encounter any drivel in the biblioblog world!). One of my recent academic resolutions has been to increase my attention to and involvement in the blogosphere, including additional postings. There's a lot to be learned from this dynamic community, and scholars who are unwilling or unable to avail themselves of it are missing out on a vital resource. As for the resolution, so far, so good... I'm on pace to write more posts this year than ever before! And I will certainly do my best to implement Anna's "constructive encouragement"... although as any current or former doctoral student is aware, what I really need are a few more hours in the day. ;-)

February/March SBL Forum

The latest from the SBL Forum:

This month on The SBL Forum:

Love Turns into Hate: The Rape of Tamar (2 Sam 13:1–22) in Baroque Art
Sara Kipfer

Know*Be*Do: Using the Bible to Teach Ethics to Children
Valerie A. Stein

"They’ve Given You a Number and Taken Away Your Name": Gnostic Themes in The Prisoner, Television’s Ultimate Cult Classic”
Mark Holwager and Valarie Ziegler

The City as Salvific Space: Heterotopic Place and Environmental Ethics in the New Jerusalem )
Thomas W. Martin

PLUS! Essential links to articles and news items of interest and much more!

Textual Criticism Meets Star Trek

Thanks to the guys at Biblical Studies and Technological Tools for introducing me to the Open Scriptures Manuscript Comparator, a remarkable (and free!) online program which allows the interested user to instantaneously compare the readings of a number of critical editions of the Greek New Testament (including UBS 4, N-A 27, Westcott-Hort, Tischendorf, and the Textus Receptus). I've added it to the list of "Related Links" for future reference. Here's the Comparator's presentation of the opening verses of Luke 4:

















The introduction to the program hints that New Testament manuscripts themselves will eventually be added to the list of texts available for comparison--which will dramatically increase its value to textual critics. An easy and intuitive way to compare and view disparate readings of Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Codex Bezae, and the principal papyri, for example, would be absolutely groundbreaking. But in the meantime, I'm happy to make use of the existing features. Check it out!

"Storahtelling"?

My father recommended that the Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity program at UVA adopt this pedagogical approach over its current Hebrew Bible requirements.

Somehow I don't think Liz Alexander will go for it. ;-)

A new twist for the ancient Torah

Ritual Torah storytelling goes back thousands of years, but a local synagogue is bringing in a group of traveling performers to help bring it up to date. In an effort to inject added life into what can sometimes be a routine reading of Torah verses during morning services, this weekend Keneseth Israel Synagogue is holding "Storahtelling" events that will combine traditional Torah readings with modern theater.