Archive Repost: Biblical Studies Carnival 34 (the acrostic one)

(Update note 1 August 2009. This was originally posted in October 2008 on my previous metacatholic blog. It is reposted here for the sake of completion. I have left the text unaltered from the original. Where I know a link doesn’t work, I have indicated with a strikethrough.)

Or, indeed, 34, if you appreciate one of the great Arab contributions to Western civilisation. Well, here in the UK it’s October 1, so may I welcome you to a blogging cornucopia, an abc of the last month as it has come to my attention. It seems that I had to wade through an awful lot of Palin and bailout inspired indignation to mine the moderately well-off biblical seam you find below. You may disagree with my choices, but if you do, your only recourse is to shake a cross stick (groan!) in my direction.

Archaeology hit headlines early in the month with the discovery of a well-preserved part of the wall of Second Temple Jerusalem. As so often Jim West was one of the first with the scoop (fitting it in between his campaigning for the presidency). Claude Mariottini and others also noticed, but Antonio Lombatti got the video first. By contrast, apart from Jim Getz and Duane Smith very few people seemed abnormally interested in the excavations of the Oymaağaç mound, although it was in the Turkish Daily News.

BNTC, or the British New Testament Conference drew a few bloggers. Ben Byerly started offwith the journey there, and a quick summary of the opening session, and finished with some photos. Nijay Gupta followed up with day one, and days two and three. Ben then brought us the first pics of failed Tom Wright impersonator James Crossley. One badge does not a beardy bish make. Mike Bird’s post-conference summary confirms that the talk of the conference – at least for evangelicals – was John Barclay’s comparison of Wisdom and Paul. James Crossley, naturally, disagrees with Mike’s take on Crossley in a fairly wide ranging summary post, whose wry punchline is worth the price of admission – even if technically he and Bird are the participants, not the witnesses. Sean the Baptist chipped in a day or so later.

Censorship reared its head in Israeli schools with the announcement that the Education Ministry’s “National Supervisor for Bible Studies” (what a title!) objected to translating the (Hebrew) Bible into (Modern) Hebrew. Jim West and Iyov had views, Peter Kirk (as so often) robustly disagreed and Eddie Arthur also demurred. John Hobbins had a view disguised as a report on those crazy Southern Baptists (about whom you can believe anything). The whole thing seemed like a kind of cross between debates on teaching Shakespeare and modernising the King James, with the same capacity to raise blood-pressure and elicit knee-jerk reactions.

Digital aids for biblical study are unsurprisingly a hardy perennial for many bloggers. John Hobbins features some guest posts by one Michael Aubrey on the Logos digital edition of Moulton, Hpward and Turner. Also on digitalia Technological Tools remains one of the more useful sites, with posts like this reflection on unicode. He also provides an interesting summary of his reviewing approach. I must say I’d like to see a blog offering some more wide-ranging reflection here on open formats for texts that we could use in any of the main bible study packages. Danny Zacharias also provides some good stuff in this area. Oddest aid of the month comes from Darrell Pursiful who notes a book on singing NT Greek. In a related area Ben Blackwell posts on Greek accents. On a slightly different tack, s/he whom we know as mgvh draws attention to HebrewBooks.org. It’s worth remembering that bothBibleworks and Accordance have blogs, with more regular posts on the latter.

“Execution of Jesus” headlines Phil Harland’s list of things we can know about Jesus. His post investigating Josephus and Tacitus is a useful reference point for those who ask where these sources are. He follows up with a post on the next most certain piece of information, Jesus’ baptism by John. I do hope these herald a series, beacuse I think they’re good models of this sort of enquiry that educators can point people to.

Film and TV presentations of the Bible are a recurring topic. Mark Goodacre notes the release of the BBC’s Passion in a Bible Society study pack. Both Mark and Matt Page note the UK’s Channel Five documentary series Secrets of the Cross. As Mark drily notes, these aren’t made for high-brow audiences, and have been of variable quality though both our reviewers were reasonably impressed by the second one. The four are Secrets of the Jesus Tomb (Mark, Matt),Who really killed Jesus? (Mark, Matt), Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner? (Matt) and, the fairly unbiblical (in every sense) Trial of the Knights Templar (Matt), one of the shabbier episodes in the history of France and the papacy.

Gathercole’s book The Pre-Existent Son is getting a bit of a fisking from Daniel Kirk, who disagrees with many of its arguments. See, for example, here on Son of God, and here on lexical issues. Blogs are good for this kind of review-as-you-go approach.

Hector and Helmut have been having at it. (Two “h”s for the price of one.) April DeConick first noted Helmut Koester’s attack on Hector Avalos. Jim West (is there a blog this man doesn’t read)draws fairly scathing attention to Hector Avalos’ response on Debunking Christianity. (Possibly the first time that blog has been cited in a Biblical Studies Carnival.) Generally, I think, more heat than light. Drew Tatsuko ruminates on the arguments, and draws some response from Avalos, mainly (and I think oddly) arguing about Bible sales! April deConick comes back with a very thoughtful semi-autobiographical reflection – definitely more light than heat.

Interpretation and hermeneutics are bread and butter to bibliobloggers. A couple of random posts this month touching on the topic are: Daniel Kirk on the changing vantage points of retrospection, and Susan Pigott on the linguistic nonsense some preachers peddle. David Hymes’Hebrew Scriptures and more has two posts on intertextuality that are worth checking out.

Jews or Judeans: the dispute rumbles on with another Bird posting on Ioudaios, reflecting on an essay by Daniel Schwartz. Technically this was an August posting, but I think Michael Halcomb, such are the time-zones, had already finished (if not published) last month’s carnival, and the post is well-worth a reference.

Kerchief lying in the empty tomb? There’s been a fair bit of blogging on the resurrection this month. James McGrath has been promoting his new book and has other related posts. (I rather dislike linking to blogs where people hide quite strong criticism of others behind pseudonyms, but) NT Wrong tries his hand at the argument which bases the resurrection appearances in visions, and sees the empty tomb as later narrative. Matthew at Cryptotheology muses on the Corinthians “There is no resurrection from the dead.”

Lust and adultery are on many minds (and indeed other body parts). One of the fascinating features of blogs, particularly in single points of translation, is the myriad of ways in which people discuss questions where you never noticed or thought there was one. Such is the discussion of Matthew 5:28 by Rick Mansfield and Chuck Grantham.

Mariottini’s Messiah posts are well worth catching as Claude does a mini-series in three parts:one, two and three. He’s more definite about the idea than some (including me) would be, and I also note Charles Halton’s post on word studies as a useful counterbalance.

Note a nascent critical edition of the Hebrew Bible reported by Chris Weimer. Quite when the Oxford Hebrew Bible will come to birth is another question, though it looks as if it will be well worth the wait. Blogs are good for alerting us to new stuff, but also for sharing discoveries of existing resources. I was particularly grateful for Eric Sowell’s finding the anti-Marcionite prologues online, together with other useful resources.

Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Phil Sumpter republished his book review on his own site, since no-one seemed to notice it on Chrisendom, no doubt because the latter is a New Testament and Miracle-working Gospel Ministry site scorned by those who do not bow down at the other Wright feet. This time Phil followed it up with further reflection on what a world-view is. Well, it’s a word for people who know it’s pretentious to say Weltanschauung when speaking English. No seriously, Phil’s post is well worth reading. If Phil is wrestling with Chris Wright on the Old Testament, Anglican ordinand Jon Swales has Tom Wright on world-views and the New Testament with some quotes and other stuff. (You can’t get ordained in the Church of England without being able to quote +Durham.) In a related move Ben Witherington published a draft section from a forthcoming book relating the OT to the NT in ethics.

Pseuepigraphical provenance comes under Kevin Edgecomb’s eye as he offers a belated review of Jim Davila’s The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other? He also moans rightly about the price. Perhaps this should become a meme: pick a ridiculously over-priced book (probably) from Brill, and moan about their pricing. Another (quite unrelated) “p” is the four part series on ἐν ἐφέσω on Porter and the Greek Verb. Also among the “p”s isposerorprophet on poverty and Jesus’ rebuke to Judas in John.

Quite interesting posts that I haven’t managed to locate under another letter:– Jim Davila manages to find a quirky link between Metatron and fashion, and Randal Buth on ETC posts on some variants modern critical texts manage to introduce to the tradition (a reminder that a critical text is not the Greek text qualis ab incepto)

RIP Early Christian Writings. Antonio Lombatti notes that we say good-bye to one of the more useful resource listings and provision on the web. Early discussion on the biblical studies list suggests that all might not yet be lost. There is no further news that I’m aware of yet.[Update August 2009 repost: Early Christian Writings is now here].

Study Bibles are not my cup of tea. As far as I can see they tend to help students confuse text and interpretation, and never have enough information for real study. Possibly in the real world they are a necessary evil, and Douglas Mangum offers a comparison of the ESV and NLT Study Bibles based on Jonah. Like Gaul, it is divided into three parts.

Translation issues continue to concern, or be the primary stimulus for, a number of Bloggers. Not content with what’s already out there, David Ker is attempting to bring all of them together in a Bible Behemoth targeted at those who love the Search Behemoth and it’s feed reader. In a related move on texts and translations there was a quick kerfuffle about the Lord’s Prayer andhow to translate the introduction, which seems to have resulted in a fresh translation effort. Douglas Mangum has a summary of key translation points he brings away from a two-week translation school.

Ugaritic, Akkadian, Sumerian and other ANE languages are closed books to me, so when doing a carnival I either have to rely on guesswork or submissions. Since submissions are rarer than hen’s teeth these days, guesswork rules, but these posts from Jim Getz look as though they should be mentioned, as does Duane Smith’s Friday loanword series, here, here, here and here. Jay Crisostomo muses on learning Hittite. (And Duane himself has subsequently confirmed in one of this month’s four rare submissions that the aforementioned are indeed abnormally interesting, although he only mentions one of his.)

Victoria and Tasmania Uniting Church get a new Professor of New Testament Studies in Biblioblogdom’s own Sean Winter. Congratulations Sean.

Wright or Dunn Wrong? A rather odd dispute went on at the beginning of the month. Mark Goodacre asked whether Tom Wright really coined the phrase “the New Perspective” for the sea-change in Pauline Studies. A few days later the pseudonymous NT Wrong, never one to let his anti-eponym get any credit for anything, weighed in with attributing it to Krister Stendahl back in 1963. Yes, they both used the language, but it seems to me Stendahl’s seminal essay became more quoted and more used after Sanders than before him. Stendahl had a new perspective, but nobody else to share it with. Wright – then an obscure Cambridge College chaplain – also used a similar phrase 15 years later in the then equally obscure Tyndale Bulletin. But until recognised heavyweight Jimmy Dunn put it into a lecture it wasn’t officially “The New Perspective”.

Xenogenesis: is it part of the explanation for the origins of Christianity? Is the teaching of (first) Paul and (then) John, alien to the words and acts of Jesus? The Crossley-Bird smackdown book got reviewed by Jim West, and Crossley subjected McKnight’s essay in the book, critiquing his view, to a real going-over. Perhaps this is a book that was crying out for a website for ongoing debate. Let’s hope not only that Mike Bird is soon in full health again, but that he might also offer some comments. (If I hadn’t been busy with this carnival I might have said something myself by now about the book, since I think an argument of frameworks is presented as many arguments over details. FWIW I disagree with many of Bird’s details, but agree with his framework, and vice versa for Crossley.)

Yohanan ben Zakkai is an unusually subsidiary character in a post from John Hobbins mainly on the life of Hanina ben Dosa.

Zygotes, embryos and foetuses are words that occasionally migrate from biology into ethical discussions. (Well zygote doesn’t usually, but I needed a “z”.) Claude Mariottini picks up on the rumbling argument between the House Speaker and the Catholic bishops about teaching on abortion and leads into a preliminary discussion on interpreting Exodus 21:22-23. Unfortunately the follow-up he hinted at never seems to have arrived. Please, Claude …

And there you have it for another month. Thanks to the four people who offered submissions.

I have an observation for future carnivals about which I suspect I would not be the only one who appreciates feedback. It seems to me that submissions greatly help, but that the most helpful ones are those which mainly mention other people’s posts. I appreciate those who have guided me to a selection of their own posts for my consideration, but given that none of us have knowledge of every related field, nor read everything, a wide range of submissions of good posts within different specialist areas would have made this carnival a lot better. What do others who have done / are going to do carnivals find helpful?

Tagged as: carnivals