Blog

On the web: Logos Bible Software adds select works of C. K. Barrett and the Justification and Variegated Nomism set to their pre-publication program. Lawrence Schiffman considers Jubilees’ rationale for Torah’s commandments. J.-L. Simonet comments on what may be some newly-identified lectionary leaves. Tommy Wasserman notes the forthcoming Biblia Graeca from Eisenbrauns.

Image via Wikipedia The next issue of the Biblical Theology Bulletin includes: Richard E. DeMaris, “Sacrifice, an Ancient Mediterranean Ritual” James F. McGrath, “On Hearing (Rather Than Reading) Intertextual Echoes: Christology and Monotheistic Scriptures in an Oral Context” Madison N. Pierce, “War: Fighting the Enemies of God, not Man” John J. Pilch, “Exploring Periods of Psychological Development in MENA (Middle East North Africa) Societies: A Tentative Model”

On the web: Zotero 4.0.4 is now available with some minor improvements over the previous stable version. Joseph Kelly highlights some good advice about how not to write a thesis or dissertation. Logos Bible Software has added the Aramaic Bible series to their pre-publication program.

Image via CrunchBase I’ve just now noticed, but a stable release of Zotero 4 became available earlier this week. This release includes a substantial number of updates over previous versions. For highlights, see here, or peruse the whole change log. ...

The latest issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research arrived in yesterday’s mail and includes: Joshua Philpot, “Exodus 34:29–35 and Moses’ Shining Face” Edward Bridge, “The Metaphoric Use of Slave Terms in the Hebrew Bible” Gregory Goswell, “Joshua and Kingship” Gregory Wong, “A Farewell to Arms: Goliath’s Death as Rhetoric against Faith in Arms” David DeSilva, “The Human Ideal, the Problem of Evil, and Moral Responsibility in 4 Maccabees”

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Philip R. Davies and Diana Vikander Edelman, eds., The Historian and the Bible: Essays in Honour of Lester L. Grabbe, reviewed by George C. Heider Robert Gnuse, No Tolerance for Tyrants: The Biblical Assault on Kings and Kingship, reviewed by James M. Bos New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

Reverend Samuel Rolles Driver (1846–1914; Photo credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich) Google Books has full-text PDFs freely available for the following works by S. R. Driver: Commentary on Deuteronomy (International Critical Commentary; 1895; repr., 1903) ...

Paul Danove has the latest article in Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics, “Features of the Conceptualization of Transference in the New Testament”: This article develops five features that describe the conceptualizations of the event of transference grammaticalized by New Testament verbs, and uses these features to formulate a model of the possible New Testament usages of transference. The discussion resolves all New Testament occurrences of verbs that designate transference into one of eighteen usages with distinct feature descriptions, and considers the usages of transference predicted by the feature model but not realized in the New Testament. ...

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies John E. Anderson, Jacob and the Divine Trickster: A Theology of Deception and Yhwh’s Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle, reviewed by Koog P. Hong Frank Lothar Hossfeld and Eric Zenger, Psalms 3: A Commentary on Psalms 101–150, reviewed by Leonard P. Maré Pirjo Lapinkivi, The Neo-Assyrian Myth of Istar’s Descent and Resurrection, reviewed by James R. Getz Jr. Jordan M. Scheetz, The Concept of Canonical Intertextuality and the Book of Daniel, reviewed by Philippus J. Botha and by Don Collett Janet Smith, Dust or Dew: Immortality in the Ancient Near East and in Psalm 49, reviewed by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

The latest issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature includes: John Dominic Crossan, “A Vision of Divine Justice: The Resurrection of Jesus in Eastern Christian Iconography” Jill Hicks-Keeton, “Already/Not Yet: Eschatological Tension in the Book of Tobit” Shane Berg, “Ben Sira, the Genesis Creation Accounts, and the Knowledge of God’s Will” Seth Bledsoe, “Can Ahiqar Tell Us Anything about Personified Wisdom?” Richard Steiner, “Four Inner-Biblical Interpretations of Genesis 49:10: On the Lexical and Syntactic Ambiguities of עַד as Reflected in the Prophecies of Nathan, Ahijah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah” Richard Hicks, “Markan Discipleship according to Malachi: The Significance of μὴ ἀποστερήσῃς in the Story of the Rich Man (Mark 10:17-22)” David Moffitt and Jacob Butera, “P. Duk. inv. 727r: New Evidence for the Meaning and Provenance of the Word Προσήλυτος” Ronald Troxel, “The Problem of Time in Joel” Jonathan Stökl, “The מתנבאות in Ezekiel 13 Reconsidered”

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Keith Bodner, Jeroboam’s Royal Drama, reviewed by Mark McEntire Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Israel in the Persian Period: The Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E., reviewed by John Engle Edwin M. Good, Genesis 1–11: Tales of the Earliest World, reviewed by Brian D. Russell Michelle J. Levine, Nahmanides on Genesis: The Art of Biblical Portraiture, reviewed by George Savran Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt, reviewed by Michael B. Hundley New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

Though it has apparently been on the chopping block for some time, Google Reader was a very useful tool. Even so, it has apparently come to the end of the road: Google Reader will be retired on July 1, 2013. If you’d like to download a copy of all your Reader data before then, you can do so through Google Takeout. You’ll receive your subscription data in an XML file, and the following information will be downloaded as JSON files: ...

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Ulrich Berges, Jesaja: Der Prophet und Das Buch, reviewed by Francis Landy William G. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect, reviewed by Diana Edelman and by Aren M. Maeir Siegfried Kreuzer, Martin Meiser, and Marcus Sigismund, eds., Die Septuaginta: Entstehung, Sprache, Geschichte. 3. Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 22.-25. Juli 2010, reviewed by Hans Förster Lisa M. Wolfe, Ruth, Esther, Song of Songs, and Judith, reviewed by L. Juliana Claassens New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

Logos Bible Software is currently preparing the first English translation of Geerhardus Vos’s Reformed Dogmatics. By way of background regarding Vos: [T]he “father of Reformed biblical theology,” was born 151 years ago this month. Vos, a professor of biblical theology at Princeton, lectured alongside many famous theologians, including J. Gresham Machen, B. B. Warfield, and Abraham Kuyper. So great was Vos’ academic insight that Kuyper offered him the chair of Old Testament studies at the Free University of Amsterdam when Vos was just 24. ...

Unfortunate news from the Biblioblog Reference Library: Our webhost, GoDaddy, decided to change the rules on us and has deleted the entire Biblioblog Reference Library database. Beforehand we had enough space to keep the database working and pruned down to a size that was feasible, but in the course of the last few months, they decided to halve the allowable database size which made it impossible to house all of the data and indices. What’s worse is that after requests for a full backup of the database were made, they refused to provide anything but a corrupted partial backup. We tried very hard to make the chunked backups necessary to put the entire database into a format that we could move, but in the midst of it (moving millions of records only tens of thousands at a time) they pulled the plug. ...

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Melissa A. Jackson, Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible: A Subversive Collaboration, reviewed by Kathryn D. Blanchard Tremper Longman III, Introducing the Old Testament: A Short Guide to Its History and Message, reviewed by Trent Butler James D. Nogalski, The Book of the Twelve: Hosea–Jonah, reviewed by Beth Stovell Kathleen M. Rochester, Prophetic Ministry in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, reviewed by Wilhelm J. Wessels New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Yoram Cohen, The Scribes and Scholars of the City of Emar in the Late Bronze Age, reviewed by Bryan C. Babcock Urmas Nømmik, Die Freundesreden des ursprünglichen Hiobdialogs: Eine form- und traditionsgeschichtliche Studie, reviewed by Kyle C. Dunham Kathleen M. O’Connor, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise, reviewed by Wilhelm J. Wessels Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah, reviewed by Joshua Schwartz Assaf Yasur-Landau, Jennie R. Ebeling, and Laura B. Mazow, eds., Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

Robert Funk A single-volume edition Robert Funk’s Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek is due out in April and is now available for pre-order from Polebridge. According to the publisher’s description, Originally published in three volumes in 1973, Robert Funk’s classic Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek utilizes the insights of modern linguistics in its presentation of the basic features of ancient Greek grammar. Now redesigned and reformatted for ease of use, this single-volume third edition makes Funk’s ground-breaking work available once more. ...

After about an 8-year term, Pope Benedict XVI is apparently set to resign on February 28, citing health difficulties. For more information and the NBC report from earlier this morning, see here.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: New Testament and Cognate Studies Martin Bauspieß, Geschichte und Erkenntnis im lukanischen Doppelwerk: Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu einer christlichen Perspektive auf Geschichte, reviewed by Nils Neumann Darrell L. Bock, A Theology of Luke and Acts: God’s Promised Program, Realized for All Nations, reviewed by Ulrich Busse Daniel Durken, ed., The New Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament, reviewed by Ernest Van Eck Lars Hartman, Mark for the Nations: A Text- and Reader-Oriented Commentary, reviewed by Robert M. Fowler Rainer Metzner, Kaiphas: Der Hohepriester jenes Jahres: Geschichte und Deutung, reviewed by Thomas Bergholz Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies ...

On the web: The SBL website now has a page with links to a number of program unit and seminar papers (HT: Charles Jones). Ohio State University has a special online exhibition about the King James Version (HT: Bill Warren). Zotero has seen a significant and a couple more minor updates over the past few days. The SBL citation style is also newly updated as of January 29. The W3 Consortium has a list of fraktur characters (e.g., for cases where they are used as text-critical siglia) and their corresponding Unicode character assignments. Among other fonts, Gentium Plus natively includes 1D510 (Majority Text) and 1D513 (Papyrus).

On the web: Rod Decker shares an update on his forthcoming Greek grammar. Logos Bible Software is wishing everyone a happy International Septuagint Day today with a substantial sale on their release of the Göttingen Septuagint (HT: Brian Davidson, Abram K-J). Jim Davila excerpts a Cambridge News story about funding that Cambridge and Oxford are seeking to keep together the Lewis-Gibson Genizah Collection at Westminster College.

On the web: Larry Hurtado comments on Alan Mugridge’s PhD thesis, “Stages of Development in Scribal Professionalism in Early Christian Circles,” which is currently under revision for publication. Nathan Eubank enters the biblioblogosphere (HT: Stephen Carlson). Baker is now releasing the “Teach the Text” commentary series. Currently available is Marvin Pate’s volume on Romans, and Robert Chisholm’s volume on Samuel is available for preorder (HT: M. Miller).

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Francis Landy, Hosea, reviewed by Gert T. M. Prinsloo Angela R. Roskop, The Wilderness Itineraries: Genre, Geography, and the Growth of Torah, reviewed by Nathan MacDonald Mark R. Sneed, The Politics of Pessimism in Ecclesiastes: A Social-Science Perspective, reviewed by Robert Williamson Jr. New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed. The 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, including the critical apparatus, is now available on Logos Bible Software’s prepublication program. For Peter Williams’ review of the edition earlier this week, see here.

On the Web: Phil Gons digests Tony Reinke’s suggestions for reading more. Logos Bible Software has added the 12-volume Clarendon edition of Aristotle’s works (1908–1952) to their community pricing offerings.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include: Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies Michael Avioz, “I Sat Alone”: Jeremiah among the Prophets, reviewed by Wilhelm Wessels Steed Vernyl Davidson, Empire and Exile: Postcolonial Readings of the Book of Jeremiah, reviewed by Bob Becking Joëlle Ferry, Isaïe: “Comme les mots d’un livre scellé”, reviewed by Wilson de Angelo Cunha Jean-Daniel Macchi, Christophe Nihan, Thomas Römer, and Jan Rückl, eds., Les recueils prophétiques de la Bible: Origines, milieux, et contexte proche-oriental, reviewed by James M. Bos Shalom M. Paul, Isaiah 40–66: Translation and Commentary, reviewed by Roy E. Gane Deborah W. Rooke, Handel’s Israelite Oratorio Libretti: Sacred Drama and Biblical Exegesis, reviewed by Helen Leneman Robb Andrew Young, Hezekiah in History and Tradition, reviewed by Ibolya Balla New Testament and Cognate Studies ...

Codex Bezae with text Luke 23:47–24:1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Logos Bible Software is now taking $0.00 pre-orders for their upcoming edition of Codex Bezae. Among the manuscript’s noteworthy characteristics, It is the oldest-known manuscript containing the story of the adulterous woman found in John 7–8, as well as a longer ending of the Gospel of Mark. There are also several apparent additions, including a story found nowhere else of Jesus addressing a man found working on the Sabbath. ...

On the web: Nijay Gupta provides the table of contents for the latest issue of the Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters. Robert Woods reflects on significance and dissonance in Great Books. Abram K-J discusses the Göttingen Septuagint ( 1, 2, HT: Tommy Wasserman).

Image via Wikipedia The latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society arrived in today’s mail and includes the following: Matthew Akers, “What’s in a Name?: An Examination of the Usage of the Term ‘Hebrew’ in the Old Testament” G. K. Beale, “The Use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15: One More Time” Joseph Greene, “The Spirit in the Temple: Bridging the Gap between Old Testament Absence and New Testament Assumption” Moyer Hubbard, “Kept Safe through Childbearing: Maternal Mortality, Justification by Faith, and the Social Setting of 1 Timothy 2:15” Peter Davids, “What Glasses Are You Wearing?: Reading Hebrew Narratives through Second Temple Lenses” Bryan Litfin, “Eusebius on Constantine: Truth and Hagiography at the Milvian Bridge” Steven Cowan, “Does 1 Corinthians 10:13 Imply Libertarian Freedom?: A Reply to Paul A. Himes” Paul Himes, “First Corinthians 10:13: A Rejoinder to Steven Cowan” Luke Van Horn, “On Incorporating Middle Knowledge into Calvinism: A Theological/Metaphysical Muddle?”