Blog

On the web:

• Stephen Carlson’s dissertation on Galatians’ textual history is now available online in PDF format.
• Joel Willitts ponders “what to do with the story of Israel.”
• Tony Peterson reviews the recent Tokens show at Lipscomb University that featured Miroslav Volf, Saeed Khan, and Fred Gray, among a number of musicians.
• Brian LePort considers Everett Ferguson’s discussion of Tertullian.
• Joseph Kelly reviews some recent discussion of the referent(s) of “Torah” when used in the Hebrew Bible.

Thanks to the folks at Zondervan, Michael Horton’s For Calvinism and Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism came in yesterday’s mail, as the volumes are doing for a number of others too. According to the publisher,

Regarding For Calvinism:

The system of theology known as Calvinism has been immensely influential for the past five hundred years, but it is often encountered negatively as a fatalistic belief system that confines human freedom and renders human action and choice irrelevant. Taking us beyond the caricatures, Michael Horton invites us to explore the teachings of Calvinism, also commonly known as Reformed theology, by showing us how it is biblical and God-centered, leading us to live our lives for the glory of God.

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Sunday’s New York Times had a disquieting article about a potentially dramatic increase in substance abuse among teens for the sake of improved academic performance:

The boy exhaled. Before opening the car door, he recalled recently, he twisted open a capsule of orange powder and arranged it in a neat line on the armrest. He leaned over, closed one nostril and snorted it.

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First Chronicles 16 reports the ark of the covenant’s placement in the tent David had prepared for it (1 Chron 16:1). The middle of the chapter is a poetic section that celebrates Yahweh’s greatness toward Israel (1 Chron 16:8–36). The first part of this section (1 Chron 16:8–22) corresponds to Ps 105:1–15, the second (1 Chron 16:23–33) to Ps 96:1–13, and the third (1 Chron 16:34–36) to Ps 106:1, 47–48.¹ The Chronicler does not explicitly describe David as this hymn’s composer, although this supposition appears reasonable.² In any event, the hymn is offered in David’s presence and at his behest (1 Chron 16:7, 37).

The latest issue of New Testament Studies includes:

• Luc Devillers, “Le prologue du quatrième évangile, clé de voûte de la littérature johannique”
• Jeffrey A. D. Weima, ” ‘Peace and Security’ (1 Thess 5.3): Prophetic Warning or Political Propaganda?”
• Julien M. Ogereau, “The Jerusalem Collection as Κοινωνία: Paul’s Global Politics of Socio-Economic Equality and Solidarity”
• Michael W. Martin and Jason A. Whitlark, “Choosing What Is Advantageous: The Relationship between Epideictic and Deliberative Syncrisis in Hebrews”
• Philip Maertens, ” ‘Vos pères’ ou ‘nos pères’: la question de l’appartenance ethnique dans le texte grec du livre des Actes du Codex Bezae (D 05)”
• Lukas Bormann, ” ‘Auch unter politischen Gesichtspunkten sehr sorgfältig ausgewählt’: Die ersten deutschen Mitglieder der Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas”
• Tjitze Baarda, ” ‘And they thought that the time of his decease…had come’ [TA XXIV:5–6]”

On the Web:

• Paul Barrett is now blogging (HT: Michael Bird).
• The Israel Antiquities Authority issues a press release with further information about the recently discovered Bar Kokhba-era coin and jewelry cache (HT: Jim Davila).
• Ray Bradbury has passed away. Robert Woods posts a brief tribute and considers how Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes sits within Mortimer Adler’s framework for identifying “Great Books.”
• Richard Keeling and Richard Hersh argue for the importance of culture change in higher education.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Katell Berthelot and Thierry Legrand, eds., Torah: Exode, Lévitique, Nombres, reviewed by Eibert Tigchelaar
• Antonios Finitsis, Visions and Eschatology: A Socio-Historical Analysis of Zechariah 1–6, reviewed by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer
• Lester L. Grabbe, ed., Israel in Transition 2: From Late Bronze II to Iron IIA (c. 1250–850 BCE): The Texts, reviewed by Aren Maier
• Timothy Jay Johnson, Now My Eye Sees You: Unveiling an Apocalyptic Job, reviewed by Michael S. Moore

New Testament and Cognate Studies

On the web:

• The new Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament is openly accessible online (HT: Charles Jones).
• Keith Williams reflects on the “cloud ed” use of technology in the classroom.
• Ancient World Online has a new plugin for WordPress.org users.
• Stephen Carlson reflects on the placement of the “burden of proof.”
• Mark Goodacre discusses Steve Walton and David Wenham’s treatment of the synoptic problem in their Exploring the New Testament.
• Colin Kruse’s replacement for Leon Morris’s commentary on Romans in the Pillar New Testament Commentary is soon to be available (HT: Logos Bible Software).
• Charles Jones notes the availability of a Christian Art index.
• A Bar Kokhba-era cache of coins and jewelry has been discovered (HT: Jim Davila).

A new collection of online Loeb Classical Library volumes is now available (HT: Charles Jones).

This new collection provides locally-hosted PDFs that can be downloaded without completing a CAPTCHA field.

The page also provides a link to a single ZIP file (3.2 GB) that contains all the individual LCL volume PDFs available on the page.

The account of the man who had been born blind ( John 9:1– 10:21) shares some significant features with the story of the woman at the well ( John 4:4–42). In both cases, the individuals’ births place them at or outside societal margins ( John 4:9, 27; 9:2). Yet, in the end, it is such marginal individuals whom the narrative situates as most in step with Jesus’ mission and, therefore, most in step with Yahweh’s purposes for his people ( John 4:23–24, 39–42; 9:35–38), when a different situation would typically have been expected ( John 4:20, 22; 9:13–34, 40–41; 10:19–21).

Amid a program with a number of other engaging-looking sessions, Miroslav Volf, founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture will be lecturing next week at Lipscomb University’s Christian Scholars Conference. Further details about the lecture are as follows:

Thursday, June 7, Acuff Chapel, Lipscomb Academy, 4:00–5:15 p.m., free and open to the public

For further information about the conference, please see here and here.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Barbara M. Leung Lai, Through the ‘I’-Window: The Inner Life of Characters in the Hebrew Bible, reviewed by Frank H. Polak
• John Van Seters, Studies in the History, Literature and Religion of Biblical Israel (Changing Perspectives 1), reviewed by Diana Edelman
• Michael Weigl, Die aramäischen Achikar-Sprüche aus Elephantine und die alttestamentliche Weisheitsliteratur, reviewed by Mark W. Hamilton

New Testament and Cognate Studies

On the web:

• Mark Goodacre responds to Micheal Bird’s recent post on the synoptic problem.
• Brian Tucker reviews Trevor Burke and Brian Rosner, eds., Paul as Missionary: Identity, Activity, Theology, and Practice.
• Michael Kruger comments on obedience and hopefulness.

From the Document Foundation Blog:

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.5.4, the fifth version of the free office suite’s 3.5 family. LibreOffice 3.5.4 offers significant performance improvements over the previous versions of the product, which are the combined result of the many code optimizations executed during the last months and the bug and regression chasing activity performed regularly by volunteers and developers. As a result, LibreOffice 3.5.4 is the fastest version of the best free office suite ever, with up to 100% performance gains when opening large files (depending on operating system, hardware configuration and file contents).

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On the web:

• Michael Bird interacts with James Crossley’s response to his Evangelical Quarterly article on “Modernizing Jesus” and discusses the Holtzmann-Gundry (three-source) hypothesis.
• Todd Bolen notes the discovery of a new boundary inscription at Gezer (HT: Jim Davila).

On the web:

• Matthew Montonini and Chris Tilling highlight the availability of recordings from the recent King’s College conference devoted to Doug Campbell’s Deliverance of God.
• Brian Tucker favorably reviews BibleWorks 9, especially commenting on the value of the:

BibleWorks Manuscript Project [that] allows the user to compare original manuscripts, with high quality digital images of the texts that are fully searchable. . . . BibleWorks 9 includes, among others, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and Bezae. These have full transcriptions (and notes), digital images, verse tags, comparison tools, and, though incomplete, some morphological tags (with more to come). Furthermore, the New Testament Critical Apparatus from the Center for New Testament Textual Studies is also included, securing for BibleWorks a place as the preeminent electronic resource for detailed manuscript analysis and textual criticism.

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John’s narrative about Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman highlights the presence of faith in unexpected places.

Following up on yesterday’s comment about upgrading to and installing Logos 4 on Ubuntu via a Windows XP machine in VirtualBox, Logos 4 offers a nice import procedure that allows Logos 3 users to transfer all their personal user data files (e.g., notes, markups, queries) into Logos 4 relatively painlessly. There do, however, seem to be a couple hitches when trying to import Logos 3 user data in virtualized setup like the one described here. For the import to work properly,

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Yitzhaq Feder, Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual: Origins, Context, and Meaning, reviewed by Pekka Pitkänen
• David Frankel, The Land of Canaan and the Destiny of Israel: Theologies of Territory in the Hebrew Bible, reviewed by Phillip Sherman
• Lisbeth S. Fried, ed., Was 1 Esdras First? An Investigation into the Priority and Nature of 1 Esdras, reviewed by Erik Eynikel

New Testament and Cognate Studies

On the web:

• Mark Goodacre starts reviewing Brice Jones’s Matthean and Lukan Special Material.
• Matthew Montonini comments on Frank Matera’s God’s Saving Grace, Murray Harris’s Prepositions and Theology, and the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary.
• Brian LePort reviews Craig Evans’ volume on Matthew in the New Cambridge Bible Commentary.

On the web:

• Michael Bird excerpts Oscar Cullmann on poor biblical interpretation.
• Joel Willitts notes the discovery of a seal bearing the name “Bethlehem.”
• Chris Brady continues discussing character and motivation in Ruth.
• Rod Decker comments on a few Greek palindromes.

Socrates in the City has made available Eric Metaxas’s April 9, 2010 lecture that digests his then newly released Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson, 2010). After the introductory farce, the lecture proper commences at about 12:45.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/11208555 w=400&h=300]

From the item’s Vimeo page, the lecture may be streamed and downloaded directly in MP4 and M4V formats.

On the web:

• Matthew Montonini notes the updated location for this fall’s Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity Conference.
• Mike Aubrey considers some contemporary difficulties in receiving Stoic testimony about the Greek verbal system.
• Rafael Rodrodríguez discusses referential consistency in uses of the phrase “the historical Jesus.”
• Peter Williams and Simon Gathercole discuss faith and scholarship (HT: Michael Bird).

In addition to the sale at Christian Book Distributors on volumes 1 and 2 of the Princeton Dead Sea Scrolls series that Tod Bolen previously noted, the following volumes are also currently selling there at sharply reduced prices:

• Volume 3: Damascus Document Fragments, Some Works of the Torah, Related Documents, $29.99 (85% off) + free shipping
• Volume 4a: Pseudepigraphic and Non-Masoretic Psalms and Prayers, $22.99 (80% off)

John 1:13 describes a group of individuals “who were not born from blood nor from a fleshly will nor from a husband’s will but from God” (οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρὸς ἀλλʼ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν). For John, being born “from blood” (ἐξ αἱμάτων), “from a fleshly will” (ἐκ θελήματος σαρκός), and “from a husband’s will” (ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρός) would all have been perfectly reasonable ways of describing ordinary, human generation. 1 Yet, the individuals John describes as not having been born in these ways but as having been born “from God” (ἐκ θεοῦ) are still very much human beings ( John 1:9–12). John’s point, then, is not to negate the reality of the ordinary, human, physical generation of the individuals he describes but to negate the significance of this origin for determining the identity of the “children of God” ( John 1:12; τέκνα θεοῦ).

For iOS users, rollApp has now graduated into public Beta and is offering iOS-compatible versions of OpenOffice.org (now Apache OpenOffice) and LibreOffice. The LibreOffice app seems to have a bit of difficulty opening files stored on Dropbox, but my own tests thus far with the OpenOffice.org app seem to have worked quite well. Although these apps run entirely on rollApp’s servers, and so require a fairly decent Internet connection to function, they do offer extended support for additional file formats (like ODT) not natively readable in iOS.

Via Michael Bird:

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Philip F. Esler, Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Biblical Narrative with Its Ancient Audience, reviewed by Brian Peterson
• Tammi J. Schneider, An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion, reviewed by Andrew Riley
• Andrew E. Steinmann, Ezra and Nehemiah, reviewed by Antje Labahn

New Testament and Cognate Studies

• John Paul Heil, Hebrews: Chiastic Structures and Audience Response, reviewed by Philip Church
• Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Powers: Conflict, Covenant, and the Hope of the Poor, reviewed by Kevin B. McCruden
• Thomas E. Phillips, Acts within Diverse Frames of Reference, reviewed by Arie W. Zwiep
• James Riley Strange, The Moral World of James: Setting the Epistle in Its Greco-Roman and Judaic Environments, reviewed by John S. Kloppenborg

Miscellaneous

From Larry Hurtado:

[A]nother dreadful “thought for today” on Radio 4 this a.m., this one ostensibly taking as its pre-text (and I use the word advisedly) that today is Ascension Day, and opining that Jesus’ Ascension (portrayed solely in Luke-Acts in the NT) means that Jesus has deaked out and we’re on our own!  So, children, the moral lesson is that we should just face up to it and learn to cope.  Hmm. Well, just goes to show you what the exegetical equivalent of a drive-by-shooting can produce!

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Charles Jones notes that

Homer and the Papyri, first created by Professor Dana Sutton of the University of California, Irvine, is . . . published [online] in a second electronic edition. The new edition consists of a fully searchable relational database of Homeric papyri.

For more details and to access the Homeric papyri database, please see here.