Matthew Bates argues that faith or believing is not mere assent, not easy believism, but covenantal loyalty to the God who saves his people through the Lord Jesus Christ. Bates forces us to rethink the meaning of faith, the gospel, and works with a view to demonstrating their significance for true Christian discipleship. This will be a controversial book, but perhaps it is the controversy we need!
...
Larry Hurtado has recently uploaded the published version of his inaugural lecture, “New Testament Studies at the Turn of the Millennium: Questions for the Discipline.” For the lecture file, see his “Selected Published Essays etc.” page.
My Logos Bible Software homepage recently popped up this helpful overview of the “collections” feature.
Over at Becoming Minimalist, Joshua Becker offers some personal introspection on a paradigmatic case of forgetting a couple’s names. In part, Becker narrates,
I was sad that I wasn’t able to remember something as simple as the names of two people I very much enjoyed meeting.
…
And suddenly it struck me.
I entered the conversation—as I do so often—with the desire to be known rather than to know. I was trying so hard to say something impressive or witty or intelligent that I entirely missed what they were saying on the other side of the conversation.
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Kirk Lowery has recently rebooted his blogsite, The Empirical Humanist, with entries thus far on topics including manuscript transcription, Google indexing, and (of course) language.
March’s free and reduced-price companion
volumes from Faithlife
include:
Logos: Paula Gooder, This Risen Existence: The Spirit of Easter, and for $1.99, Dennis Ngien, Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms Verbum: Bonaventure, The Life of Saint Francis, and for $0.99, Bonaventure, Mystical Opuscula
I haven’t yet found a dedicated Spanish “free book of the month” page, but the past several months have also had on offer a free Spanish resource. This month’s is, in translation, A. W. Pink’s Reflexiones paulinas: Estudios en las oraciones del Apóstol (vol. 1).
...Peter Gurry has recently shared the video recording provided via the Leverhulme Project of the Copper Scroll’s opening.
Discussion of the recent Qumran-vicinity cave finds since the previous post tracking the story here includes:
What seems to be shaping up as the key question about the status of this new find’s designation as “Cave 12” is the question “What makes a cave worthy of inclusion inside the numbering?”—actual textual finds tied to the location or simply a strong possibility that ancient texts were once located in the cave? Barring additional news about thus-far undisclosed contents from this cave, the apparently blank parchment showing text under multispectral examination, or known texts’ being re-provenanced to this cave, it seems more in keeping with the criteria applied to derive the existing 11-cave scheme not to include this new cave as a twelfth in that sequence. But, of course, the new find remains quite significant and reopens important questions about possible issues of provenance for texts currently classified as deriving from the standard 11 caves.
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To
celebrate the 25th anniversary of Logos Bible Software, Logos is giving
users $25
of credit toward orders at Logos.com before 1 March. Originally, the
offer had been limited to credit toward a select number of resources but
has since been expanded to “any
order on logos.com.”
Combined with academic pricing, the offer coupon code, and $0.34, I was able to load up on:
...
Since September 2013, I’ve had the
privilege of serving the Faulkner
University community as the director of Faulkner University Online.
Over that time, the effort has blossomed, and the university now enrolls
about a quarter of its total student body in online degree
programs, ranging from associates- to doctorate-level.
I deeply appreciate the opportunity to have been involved with Faulkner Online as we have sought, step by step, not only to serve more students but also to create for them a caring, Christian environment where every one of them matters every day. In Faulkner’s next fiscal year, plans are continuing to take shape around my transitioning into a more teaching- and research-focused role with Faulkner’s F. Furman Kearley Graduate School of Theology.
...
The SBLHS blog has a helpful discussion on
the use of “and” or “but” at the start of a sentence. And they are
permissible. But one should use them sparingly.
For the full and very helpful post, please see the SBLHS blog.
[caption id=“” align=“alignright” width=“175”] 
Justin Martyr presents a book to the emperor, paper etching, print made
by Jacques Callot, published by Israël Henriet, 1632–1635 [ PD-1923][/caption]To
date, one of this site’s more popular posts has been this one about W.
Trollope’s Greek edition of Justin Martyr’s Dialog with
Trypho.
J.-P. Migne’s edition would, of course, be more standard. Justin’s Dialog is available in volume 6 of Migne’s Patrologia graeca, and that text has been made available online at:
...Overlining is comparatively straightforward in Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice. But, for Microsoft Word users, overlining still isn’t a default formatting feature, as is its companion underlining.
Sometimes inserting a symbol or special character will work if you can find one that matches the overlined character you need. In other cases, Word’s cache of symbols and special characters simply isn’t large enough to cover everything (e.g., when discussing nomina sacra). Sometimes, creating a character image might work, but inserting an image can create issues with text flow and line spacing.
...
Registration for the 2017
Stone-Campbell Journal Conference is now
open. The 2017 meeting will be hosted by Johnson University in
Knoxville, TN, and will focus on the theme of “Communicating the Old
Testament.”
This year’s conference marks the meeting’s 20th anniversary. The plenary lineup includes Ellen Davis (Duke Divinity School), Chris Heard (Pepperdine University), and Jason Bembry (Emmanuel Christian Seminary).
For additional information and to register, please see the SCJ website.
...
Annually, the St. George’s Centre for
Biblical and Public Theology sponsors three seminars at SBL: Scripture and
Church, Scripture and
Doctrine, and Scripture and
Hermeneutics (in partnership with the Institute for
Biblical Research). Registration is now open for
these seminars’ 2017 meetings in Boston, as well as for the accompanying
dinner. The lectures and discussion are always quite stimulating.
Nijay Gupta introduces 1–2 Thessalonians via video, with some comments about what new readers can anticipate in his NCCS volume on the letters.
James VanderKam, via University
of Notre Dame](http://news.nd.edu/assets/226451/james%5Fvanderkam%5F300x350.jpg)
In a short interview published by the University of Notre Dame, James VanderKam urges caution about labeling the recent Dead Sea find as “Cave 12.” Comparisons have previously been drawn between the new find and Cave 8, which comes inside the numbering but contained no scrolls.
VanderKam comments,
In 1952, after the earliest scrolls finds, archaeologists made a survey of hundreds of caves and openings in the general vicinity of Khirbet Qumran…. Some 230 of them contained nothing of interest, but 26 housed pottery like that found in the first scrolls cave…. [G]iven the fact that other caves in the district, besides the 11 that held the Dead Sea Scrolls, contained pottery of the same sort as Qumran Cave 1, it seems a bit premature to call [the new find] Qumran Cave 12.
...In a recent First Things essay, Peter Leithart shares a transparent and good-humored five-stage taxonomy for writing a non-fiction book. Although some elements are tongue-in-cheek, the normalcy of the kinds of feelings about the process as it progresses should be encouraging to those of us with much less writing under our belts.
HT: theLAB
The new Judaism and Rome project “aims to:
Several interesting resources have already been made available with the promise of more to come.
...Since my previous post about Qumran Cave 12, a few other noteworthy articles have cropped up, including on:
Much of what is in these articles about the new find is also in other reports. But, the Times piece confirms that
Experts at the Dead Sea Scroll Laboratories in Jerusalem … plan to carry out multispectral imaging of the [apparently blank parchment fragment] to reveal any ink invisible to the naked eye.
...
David Allen, via Twitter](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile%5Fimages/731239654658281473/bzOryuFu%5F400x400.jpg)
If you’ve never read David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity (Penguin, 2001), a recent episode of the EntreLeadership podcast has a sit-down with Allen and crash course in the fundamentals of what he thinks makes for effective time management self-management in time.
Working under the auspices of Operation Scroll, archaeologists have discovered what is being numbered as the twelfth scroll cave in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran.
Work in the new cave has produced no new texts, but both linen (characteristic of scroll wrappers found elsewhere) and blank parchment fragments suggest that texts probably were stored in the cave at some point. Since no [scroll-type] texts were found in this cave, as with cave 8, the new cave’s designation will likely be Q12 rather than 12Q. [Updated 15 February 2017. For explanation of this correction, please see Qumran Cave 12: Update 2.]
...SBL Press has clarified its guidance about citing J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia Latina based on the discovery that various year’s printings of certain volumes within Patrologia Latina have differences. Among these differences are variations in the column arrangements for the texts contained in Patrologia Latina. The Press’s initial recommendation was that
authors always check a PL volume title page to ensure that the printing is dated 1865 or earlier. If the publication or printing date is 1868 or later, we encourage authors to find an earlier printing of PL to cite.
...
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Maren Wood suggests that institutions should be more intentional about preparing PhD students for the possibility of non-faculty or non-teaching careers. Maren’s first suggestion is especially salient and recommends, in part,
While there are graduate students who decide that an academic career is not for them, most say their first objective is a faculty career. There is no way to know who will or won’t be successful on the academic job market, so all students should be encouraged or required to take professional courses.
...
Some time ago, Larry Hurtado posted some thoughts about how Jesus is characterized as ἐκ δεξιῶν or ἐν δεξιᾷ. Recently, he’s followed up with “another possible factor” for how the language coalesces and a “bonus” post on the importance of being data-driven in developing hypotheses about such phenomena.
This month, Logos
Bible Software’s free book is N.
T. Wright’s Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Christian
Discipleship (SPCK, 1994). The book falls into two parts:
Part one outlines the essential messages of six major New Testament books—Hebrews, Colossians, Matthew, John, Mark, and Revelation. Part two examines six key New Testament themes—resurrection, rebirth, temptation, hell, heaven, and new life—and considers their significance for the lives of present-day disciples.
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On 30 June–1 July, Tyndale House is set to host a workshop on Greek prepositions that focuses on cognitive linguistics, lexicography, and theology. Registration opens 1 March.
For further discussion and background, see Septuaginta &c.
There’s some fun to be had in hunting up references to and citing instances where volumes from Migne’s Patrologia latina exist in different versions.
The folks at SBL Press have kindly resolved the mystery. Most significantly, SBL Press notes,
According to the Patrologia Latina Database … , PL’s printing history can be divided into two distinct periods. Jacques-Paul Migne initially published the 217 volumes of PL over a twelve-year period, 1844–1855. Migne reprinted volumes as needed for another decade, then sold the rights to the Paris publisher Garnier. Unfortunately, in February 1868 a fire destroyed Migne’s presses and printing plates, which meant that Garnier, which had begun reprinting some PL volumes in 1865, was the only source for future reprints—all of which were produced on plates other than Migne’s originals. These plates differed substantially in some cases and are considered in general “inferior in a number of respects to Migne’s own first editions.”
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Sometime since I last visited, the Vatican Museum has substantially upgraded its website. The site now features a conveniently static central area to display a high-resolution image of a given piece in the collection.
HT: AWOL
Via the blog of Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson, John Dumas highlights three skills to develop in order to be more satisfied with what’s gotten done amid everything that has come along in a given day: productivity, discipline, and focus.