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This week in the blogosphere: Chris Brady highlights the Maccabeats. Firefox gets two new representatives. Michael Holmes begins a new blog. Joel Watts notes the launch of SAGE Open on January 1, 2011 and highlights, ultimately via Everett Ferguson, a few inscriptions relevant to the discussion of infant baptism.

The latest issue of Themelios includes the following: D. A. Carson, “Editorial: Contrarian Reflections on Individualism” Carl Trueman, “Minority Report: Terrible Beauty, Beauty, and the Plain Terrible” Daniel Estes, “Fiction and Truth in the Old Testament Wisdom Literature” Daniel Brendsel, “Plots, Themes, and Responsibilities: The Search for a Center of Biblical Theology Reexamined” Stephen Garrett, “The Dazzling Darkness of God’s Triune Love: Introducing Evangelicals to the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar” Philip Graham Ryken, “Pastoral Pensées A World Servant in Christian Liberal Arts Education”

As an incentive to download and install NookStudy, Barnes and Noble is offering registered users the opportunity to download up to twelve NookBook classics for free. Among these texts are Dante’s Inferno and Plato’s Republic.

Through its pre-publication program, Logos Bible Software is now offering the fourteen-volume Eerdmans Biblical Resources Series. Series titles include: Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism Richard Burridge, What Are the Gospels John Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination John Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem Frank Moore Cross, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry Joseph Fitzmyer, To Advance the Gospel Hermann Gunkel, Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton Richard Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ Colin Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia Anthony Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees in Palestinian Society Anthony Saldarini, The Semitic Background of the New Testament (vols. 1–2) Mark Smith, The Early History of God Samuel Terrien, Till the Heart Sings

At this year’s Friday meeting of the Institute for Biblical Research, the folks from InterVarsity Press kindly distributed to Institute members copies of Anthony Thisleton’s The Living Paul: An Introduction to the Apostle’s Life and Thought. Then, in the book room at SBL, the folks from Wipf and Stock and Zondervan graciously passed along desk copies for a couple of next semester’s textbooks: Michael Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification, and the New Perspective and Marvin Pate’s edited Four Views on the Book of Revelation(with contributions by Kenneth Gentry, Sam Hamstra, Marvin Pate, and Robert Thomas). Finally, before the end of SBL, two additional, biblical texts had made their way into the suitcase: The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition and Biblia Sacra Hebraica et Graeca. ...

This week in the biblioblogosphere: Bob Cargill notes that, on December 11, the National Geographic Channel will re-air its special on “Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Brian LePort hypertextually ponders Derridean non-extra-textuality and deconstruction, and he notes twenty-nine doctoral theses that the University of Durham has recently made available. Michael Bird shows how to benefit most from the new SBL Greek New Testament and notes that the new Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters now has its own blog. Google Editions are poised to hit the e-book market later this month and allow fee-based full access to copyrighted titles. For some additional details and thoughts, see Blog Kindle and Google Books Help.

Jim West and Joel Watts again top out this month’s Biblioblog Top 50. Among these entries, the top 10 student biblioblogs for the month are: StudentOverallAuthor(s)BlogAlexa Score12Joel WattsUnsettled Christianity112762210Jeremy ThompsonFree Old Testament Audio Website Blog247561311Scott BaileyScotteriology254643413Jonathan Robinsonξένος331840514Thomas VerennaThe Musings of Thomas Verenna337137617Mark StevensScripture, Ministry, and the People of God372159722Brian LePort, JohnDave Medina, and Robert JimenezNear Emmaus: Christ and Text412289824Phillip LongReading Acts441701930Stephen SmutsBiblical Paths4840941033Gavin RumneyOtagosh514808 ...

While expressing doubts about the correctness of the “New Perspective(s) on Paul,” Stan Porter makes the following, interesting observation about the New Perspective(s) vis-à-vis the question of continuity between the portraits of Paul in Acts and the letters: If this new perspective is correct, then it would appear that the Jewish elements that typify the account in Acts, such as Paul’s beginning much of his local preaching with a visit to the synagogue . . . , his agreeing to participate in the ritual in Jerusalem ( Acts 21:17–26 . . . ), and his defenses focusing upon his continuity with Judaism, all point toward continuity between the Paul of Acts and of the Letters. Thus, the new perspective on Paul would appear to render this criticism of [E.] Haenchen [that Luke is unaware of Paul’s answer to the question of the law and the Gentile mission] no longer valid ( 191). ...

Zondervan has recently added the following volumes to the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series: Grant Osborne, Matthew; Thomas Schreiner, Galatians; and Chilton Arnold, Ephesians. According to Zondervan, ...

This year’s second issue of Ecclesia Reformanda includes: John Frame, “Review of Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, Part 2” Simon Wakeling, “The Minor Prophets as a Unity Developing Theodicy” Neil Jeffers, “Reformed Defences of God’s Righteousness in Ordaining the Fall”

[caption id=“attachment_6620” align=“alignright” width=“80” caption=“Anthony Thiselton”] [/caption]Anthony Thiselton’s volume on the Thessalonian correspondence is the latest in the Blackwell Bible Commentaries series and is due to be released this December. A sample chapter is, however, available from the product page on the publisher’s website, and other previews are also available from Google and Amazon. As a whole, the Blackwell series is devoted primarily to reception-historical commentary, and for each pericope in the Thessalonian letters, Thiselton’s commentary divides this task among: ...

[caption id=“attachment_6600” align=“alignright” width=“80” caption=“Peter Enns, Douglas Green, and Michael Kelly”] [/caption]Now in the rolling queue on the Westminster Bookstore’s home page is a freshly published festschrift for the late Al Groves. I never had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Groves, but I am certainly and often thankful for his work and the personal blessing that he was in the lives of so many others. ...

Michael Bird announces a new, semiannual journal dedicated to Pauline studies and that is chiefly edited by himself in association with Nijay Gupta.

Just a bit ago, on the Document Foundation’s listserv, the following press release came out: “The Document Foundation is about documents and the associated software is pivotal to create, exchange, modify, share and print documents”, says Thorsten Behrens, a software developer and a member of TDF Steering Committee. “LibreOffice 3.3 is the first flavour of this long term strategy, but the journey has just begun, and the enormous advantages of our developer-embracing environment are not yet fully reflected in the upcoming software release”. ...

In working on the phrase εἰς ἐπίγνωσιν τοῦ μυστηρίου τοῦ θεοῦ, Χριστοῦ in Col 2:2 ( NA27 punctuation), I stumbled upon J. B. Lightfoot’s commentary on Colossians in full view, PDF format on Google Books. According to Lightfoot ( 239), ...

Over at Academia.edu, Charles Jones, Head Librarian at New York University, has requested suggestions for additions to a new list of “Ancient World Open Bibliographies.” Of course, as it develops, the bibliography should certainly list New Testament Gateway. Maintainers of ancient world bibliographic resources can note additions on Academia.edu or the bibliography page itself. ...

This post is a bit late, but among the top 50 biblioblogs for October, 2010, the top 10 student biblioblogs are: StudentOverallAuthor(s)BlogAlexa Score12Joel L. WattsUnsettled Christianity9552128Scott BaileyScotteriology212042312Jeremy ThompsonFree Old Testament Audio Website Blog294803415Jonathan RobinsonXenos300343518Brian LePort, JohnDave Medina, and Robert JimenezNear Emmaus: Christ and Text382933621Mark StevensScripture, Ministry, and the People of God420079722Phillip LongReading Acts431256825S. DemmlerYou Can’t Mean That!503362926Gavin RumneyOtagosh5039271029Bacho BordjadzeReading Isaiah533766 ...

Along with Logos 4 users, Libronix users may now download and install the SBL Greek New Testament and its apparatus. HT: Logos.

September’s Biblioblog Top 50 is available. Despite Joel Watt’s slippage to third in the overall rankings, his blog continues to hold the lead among the top ten student biblioblogs: StudentOverallAuthor(s)BlogAlexa Score13Joel L. WattsThe Church of Jesus Christ12848525Scott BaileyScotteriology173966311Jeremy ThompsonFree Old Testament Audio Website Blog271870416Stephen SmutsBiblical Paths319523517Mark StevensScripture, Ministry, and the People of God333878619Justin AllisonOld Testament and Ecology404624720Jonathan RobinsonXenos426276823Brian LePort, JohnDave Medina, and Robert JimenezNear Emmaus: Christ and Text536573924Phillip LongReading Acts5421871029Gavin RumneyOtagosh620744 ...

Earlier today, the Zotero Project announced concrete plans to release a stand-alone, browser-independent version of their open-source, bibliographic management system. Since its inception, Zotero has been tied to Mozilla Firefox as a support for its underlying architecture. Yet, as the members of the Zotero Project recognize, “not all researchers can or want to use” Firefox. In addition to maintaining Zotero’s compatibility with Firefox, this “major new initiative” for a stand-alone version of Zotero will “soon” allow users of “Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Internet Explorer” to use Zotero with whichever of these browsers they choose. This move will extend Zotero’s availability to approximately 98% of internet users. ...

[caption id=“attachment_6353” align=“alignright” width=“80” caption=“University of Chicago”] [/caption] The 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is, however, now available. Among other updates, this edition boasts Chicago’s first explicit guidelines for citing Kindle editions and publications (§§14.166; A.38). Although I have yet to be able to examine this new edition first-hand, on a cursory perusal, these guidelines appear mainly to be an additional application of the instructions for citing electronic books in Chicago’s 15th edition (§§17.142–47). More information on this new edition of Chicago is available at Chicago Manual of Style Online. ...

The folks at the Bulletin for Biblical Research have very kindly agreed to publish a revised version of my presentation from the November, 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society: “Rewriting Prophets in the Corinthian Correspondence: A Window on Paul’s Hermeneutic.” To provide just a bit fuller picture of the essay’s argument: In the broadest sense of the phrase, any use of Jewish scripture by a later author(s) could be understood to constitute a form of ‘rewritten Bible’. The phrase ‘rewritten Bible’ has, however, come to have a technical meaning whereby it designates a certain body of ancient, Jewish literature. The precise shape of this body of literature continues to be debated, but even with consensus on this specific point as far away as it is, ‘rewritten Bible’ can contribute valuable information to the study of Paul’s use of scripture. In particular, ‘rewritten Bible’ provides a useful foil for the study of Paul’s citations in 1 Cor 1:31 and 2 Cor 10:17 and the hermeneutical paradigm upon which these citations’ validity implicitly rests. In this case, Paul’s connections with ‘rewritten Bible’ literature especially help suggest the constitutive, hermeneutical role that Jesus played as Paul interpreted scripture for the Corinthian church within the broader context of some of the hermeneutical traditions of his near contemporaries. ...

Jeremy Thompson has August’s Biblioblog Top 50 available. Jim West remains in the top seat this month, despite Jeremy’s temporary coup d’état that had crowned Joel Watts. Still, Joel’s matriculation to United Theological Seminary earns him the top slot on August’s list of the top ten student biblioblogs. The full top-ten list is as follows: StudentOverallAuthor(s)BlogAlexa Score12Joel L. WattsThe Church of Jesus Christ10893727Stephen SmutsBiblical Paths210494311Mark StevensScripture, Ministry, and the People of God299339415Scott BaileyScotteriology332160518Brian LePort, JohnDave Medina, and Robert JimenezNear Emmaus: Christ and Text373283619Jeremy ThompsonFree Old Testament Audio Website Blog436755722Gavin RumneyOtagosh462138823Bob Hayton, Jason Skipper, Damien Garofalo, Will Dudding, Erik DiVietro, and Phil DearmoreKJV Only Debate465858933Jonathan RobinsonXenos6773451038Rick MansfieldThis Lamp768595 ...

Jim West has August’s Biblical Studies Carnival available. This month’s carnival has six “rides” from which readers can choose: Old Testament, New Testament, Church History, Systematic Theology, Archaeology/Dead Sea Scrolls, and Uncategorized.

Grammar of Biblical Hebrew Fred Putnam’s New Grammar of Biblical Hebrew is now out ( affiliate disclosure). According to the publisher, This is a Hebrew grammar with a difference, being the first truly discourse-based grammar. Its goal is for students to understand Biblical Hebrew as a language, seeing its forms and conjugations as a coherent linguistic system, appreciating why and how the text means what it says—rather than learning Hebrew as a set of random rules and apparently arbitrary meanings. ...

Beginning with Moses has been substantially refreshed, and the site is scheduled to have regular updates begin again on September 1. If you like, you can also follow Beginning with Moses on Twitter and Facebook. The Biblical Theology Briefings have carried over from the old site, and the site’s principal editor, Mark Owens, invites fresh contributions for this section. ...

A while back, when I finally decided to preorder the Göttingen Septuagint from Logos before the initial, pre-publication special ended, and when I did so, I was quite prepared to wait several years before this resource actually went through and came out of development. Yet, earlier today, I happened to stumble across this on the Logos website: So, rather than a couple years, the Logos edition of the Göttingen Septuagint is apparently just over a couple months away (!). ...

Earlier this morning, Logos Bible Software announced the release of the beta version of Biblia.com. To all visitors, Biblia.com offers access to slightly more than forty resources, including various Bible translations and a few more dated Greek New Testament texts. Free registration at Biblia.com allows users to access still other resources. ...

This week in the biblioblogosphere: Mark Goodacre finds and makes available a PDF version of Wilhelm Wrede’s Paul. Daniel and Tonya draw attention to Alex Andrason’s recent article on the use of yiqtol in Biblical Hebrew (via Uri Hurwitz) and Randall Buth’s response to the article. Via Ekaterini Tsalampouni, Holger Szesnat mentions the availability of the new Journal of Ancient Judaism. Christian Askeland notes the availability of a stable, Unicode-compliant Coptic font. At BioLogos, Peter Enns interviews N. T. Wright about Jesus’ humanity. Kirk Lowery ponders current developments in the peer review process for scholarly publications. Scot McKnight prepares his readers for a change of blogging address. Larry Hurtado uploads an essay on Martin Hengel’s impact on English-speaking, New Testament scholarship. Charles Halton considers cartographic hermeneutics and some of their implications for readers of biblical texts.

For those who may have missed the original special or who might just want to relive it, the National Geographic Channel’s recent documentary on “Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls,” hosted by primarily by Robert Cargill, is available here. ...