Blog

On Friday, Southeastern Seminary’s Graduate Studies faculty accepted my dissertation, “The Hermeneutical Roles of the Teacher of Righteousness and of Jesus of Nazareth in the Qumran Sectarian Manuscripts and in the Epistle to the Romans” ( abstract). This acceptance followed Wednesday’s oral defense where the committee had passed my project with minor revisions (i.e., correcting some remaining errata, describing a few further implications). The Southeastern committee members included Andreas Köstenberger and Benjamin Merkle, and I was also privileged to have James Charlesworth as the project’s external reader.

The Society of Biblical Literature has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce a new website that will “invite[] general audiences to engage with biblical scholarship.” The website is currently scheduled for a full launch in 2013. For the full SBL press release, see here.

This week in the cyberspace:

• Robert Woods discusses “Christian humanism.”
• Jeremy Thompson passes his oral dissertation examination. Congratulations!
• Mark Stevens points out that a new book on Jesus and a new translation of the New Testament are forthcoming from N. T. Wright.
• Jim Davila reminds us about the upcoming Metz conference on Paul and Qumran.
• Joel Watts and Matthew note Amazon’s announcement of a library lending service for Kindle.
• David Perry provides a major update to the Cardo font (1.04).
• The Connecticut House of Representatives approves a certificate program in Talmudic Studies (HT: Jim Davila).
• Ron Kubsch notes Amazon’s creation of a German Kindle store.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Ehud Ben Zvi and James D. Nogalski, Two Sides of a Coin: Juxtaposing Views on Interpreting the Book of the Twelve/the Twelve Prophetic Books, reviewed by Marvin A. Sweeney
• Katell Berthelot, Thierry Legrand, and André Paul, eds., Torah: Genèse, reviewed by Kristin De Troyer
• Paul D. Korchin, Markedness in Canaanite and Hebrew Verbs, reviewed by John Lubbe
• Jürg Luchsinger, Poetik der alttestamentlichen Spruchweisheit, reviewed by James Alfred Loader

New Testament and Cognate Studies

The spring issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society arrived in the mail late last week and includes the following:

• Eugene Merrill, “Old Testament Scholarship and the Man in the Street: Whence and Whither?,” 5–17
• Thomas Schreiner, “The Saving Righteousness of God in Christ,” 19–34
• Frank Thielman, “God’s Righteousness as God’s Fairness in Romans 1:17: An Ancient Perspective on a Significant Phrase,” 35–48
• N. T. Wright, “Justification: Yesterday, Today, and Forever,” 49–63
• John Rhoads, “Josephus Misdated the Census of Quirinius,” 65–87
• Mark Saucy, " Regnum Spiriti: The Role of the Spirit in the Social Ethics of the Kingdom," 89–108
• William Dennison, “The Christian Academy: Antithesis, Common Grace, and Plato’s View of the Soul,” 109–131

The essays from Schreiner, Theilman, and Wright are versions of their plenary addresses at this past November’s annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting. So, those who were interested in hearing these addresses but were unable to attend the meeting may find these three articles particularly interesting.

This week in cyberspace:

• Tommy Wasserman mentions the discovery of a new, early papyrus fragment of Hebrews.
• James McGrath comments on Loren Stuckenbruck’s presentation at the recent Stone-Campbell Journal Conference.
• Amazon announces that an advertisement-sponsored Kindle WiFi is available for pre-ordering.
• Logos Bible Software releases a specifically academic training DVD set.

This year’s first issue of the Bulletin for Biblical Research arrived in the mail last week and includes the following:

• Michael Graves, “Scholar and Advocate: The Stories of Moses in Midrash Exodus Rabbah,” 1–22
• John Lawlor, “The ‘At-Sinai Narrative’: Exodus 18–Numbers 10,” 23–42
• David Lincicum, “Philo on Phinehas and the Levites: Observing an Exegetical Connection,” 43–50
• Mark Matthews, “The Genre of 2 Peter: A Comparison with Jewish and Early Christian Testaments,” 51–64
• Armin Baum, “Revelatory Experience and Pseudepigraphical Attribution in Early Jewish Apocalypses,” 65–92

In addition, among the other book reviews in this issue is my review of G. Walter Hansen, The Letter to the Philippians(Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) on pages 129–31.

Last evening, I was privileged to attend the second annual Prentice Meador Lecture at Lipscomb University. There, Weston Fields, the Executive Director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, addressed what seemed very nearly to be a full house on the topic “The Dead Sea Scrolls Today.”

At least for the present, Amazon has available two Kindle versions of Penguin’s edition of Aristotle’s Poetics, page numbering included. The difference between the two seems mainly to be the difference between an older and a newer cover, with the version that has the newer cover retailing for $1.90.

The past week in the biblioblogosphere:

• Jim Davila notes the sad news of Ben Zion Wacholder’s passing.
• Larry Hurtado comments on lengths of book usage in the Greco-Roman world.
• A. D. Riddle and Ferrell Jenkins report the beginning of new excavations at Carchemish.
• Nijay Gupta notes one freely available chapter from each of two Companion to Religion Series volumes from Wiley-Blackwell ( Aune, “The World of Roman Hellenism”; Riesner, “Pauline Chronology”; 44 pgs. total). The other series volumes also appear normally to have similar samples.
• Recently at Trinity Western University, N. T. Wright discussed “Being Human” (HT: Brian LePort).

Although we are nearing the end of the first week of April, I just noticed that those who visited New Testament Interpretation last month made that month the busiest month here so far. So, thank you for your interest, everyone! :)

Zotero 2.1.3, 2.1.4, and 2.1.5 have rolled out with several minor updates. The Microsoft Word plugin has also been updated, but details about this update are still forthcoming from the plugin change log page.

Having been away this past weekend, I have just gotten to pull March’s top student biblioblogs. March’s top 10 by Alexa rank are:

StudentOverallAuthor(s)Blog12Joel WattsUnsettled Christianity26Brian LePort, JohnDave Medina, Joshua Smith, Mark StevensNear Emmaus: Christ and Text313Amanda Mac, Rodney Thomas, Chad PressleyPolitical Jesus417Matthew CroweA Fistful of Farthings527Jeremy ThompsonFree Old Testament Audio Website Blog628Phillip LongReading Acts729Scott BaileyScotteriology831Mitchell PowellFont Words936Gavin RumneyOtagosh1038Bob Hayton, Jason Skipper, Damien Garofalo, Will Dudding, Erik DiVietro, and Phil DearmoreKJV Only Debate

Recently, at the first, annual meeting of the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Louis Menand, Professor of American Studies at Harvard University, addressed attendees regarding “[w]hy the case for liberal education is so hard to make”:

Nowadays, everyone believes that “it’s good for people to be introduced to the humanities,” said Dr. Menand, but he highlighted a paradox: one of the difficulties in trying to make the case for the humanities is that the work of academics isn’t literature, art and music—rather, it is research about these works. Hermeneutics is hard to study and, because every interpretation is provisional, it is hard to defend.

He said the natural sciences have been able to reconfigure themselves to overcome the “silo” problem of different disciplines; but for a variety of reasons, the humanities haven’t. He pointed to the need for reform, acknowledging that “we’re right when we say that many reformers are not educational. But that is all the more reason for academics to take the task upon themselves to reform” ( Berkowitz).

Never failing to amaze, Google introduces several du jour innovations:

• Gmail Motion Beta
• Google Docs Motion Beta
• Chromercise

I particularly like the new protocol for creating a Google Docs Drawing (pictured here) and think it may make Google Docs much more useful for biblical studies. ;)

A new Zotero update is now available. The update mainly contains bug fixes, but it also allows Zotero to “[r]ecognize .csl.txt files as CSL files.”

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Jeffrey Boss, Human Consciousness of God in the Book of Job: A Theological and Psychological Commentary, reviewed by William J. Kynes
• Sidney Greidanus, Preaching Christ from Ecclesiastes: Foundations for Expository Sermons, reviewed by Jordan M. Scheetz
• T. M. Lemos, Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine: 1200 BCE to 200 CE, reviewed by Anselm C. Hagedorn
• Horst Seebass, Genesis I: Urgeschichte (1,1–11,26), reviewed by John Engle
• N. Wyatt, The Archaeology of Myth: Papers on Old Testament Tradition, reviewed by Uwe F. W. Bauer

New Testament and Cognate Studies

Recently in cyberspace:

• Southern Seminary provides a set of recent lectures by Richard Bauckham (HT: Tim Henderson).
• Jeremy quotes Henri De Lubac “on the dangers of learning our catechism against someone.”
• The Center for the Study of Christian Origins provides a lecture and question and answer session by Larry Hurtado.
• Reports begin circulating about several lead codices that are supposed to contain stories about Jesus’ later life.
• Early Christianity makes available a full issue for free download (HT: Nijay Gupta).
• Larry Hurtado advocates additional caution vis-à-vis the recent discovery of a number of ancient lead codices, James McGrath condenses several other recent discussions about them, and Jim Davila (HT: Stephen Carlson) adds his own presently-skeptical perspective on the codices’ genuineness.
• Amazon launches its own cloud drive service with 5 GB of free space.
• The Internet Archive makes available Mark Goodacre’s Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze for free download (HT: James McGrath).
• Dictionary.com discusses a few word-choice updates in the new editions of the NIV and NAB.
• Google Maps adds street views of “historic sites in Italy and France.”
• The Center for New Testament Textual Studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is featured in a NOLA.com article (HT: James Leonard).
• The Elaborated makes available a set of composite RSS feeds based on the Biblioblog Top 50.

Logos Bible Software has recently released or will soon release several noteworthy resources:

• Brill Philo Studies Collection
• Comments on Waltke and O’Connor: An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax
• Camp Logos Live (DVD)
• Evangelical Exegetical Commentary
• Qumran Biblical Scrolls

[caption id=“attachment_7151” align=“alignright” width=“80” caption=“Carolyn Custis James”] [/caption]

Now at number 3 on Amazon’s top free Kindle book list is Carolyn Curtis James’s The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules (Zondervan, 2008), and Zondervan presently has the EPUB edition for free also. The book boasts favorable blurbs from Robert Gundry, Timothy George, and Karen Jobes. According to the Amazon product page, what James describes

If you’re a Facebook friend of Logos Bible Software, like their fan page, and you can download their edition of B. B. Warfield’s Canon of the New Testament: How and When Formed for free.

[caption id=“attachment_7158” align=“alignright” width=“80” caption=“Martin Thielen”] [/caption] Now at number 9 on Amazon’s top free Kindle book list is Martin Thielen’s What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?: A Guide to What Matters Most (Westminster/John Knox, 2011). According to the product page, Thielen is a United Methodist minister from Lebanon, Tennessee, and in the book, Thielen

For some reason, this clip, particularly Theoden’s last utterance under Saruman’s influence, seems oddly parallel to the process of concluding a dissertation. ;-) The oral defense is slated for later next month. For a brief abstract of my particular project, see here.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Daphna Arbel, J. R. C. Cousland, and Dietmar Neufeld, “And So They Went Out”: The Lives of Adam and Eve as Cultural Transformative Story, reviewed by Deborah Rooke
• Ehud Ben Zvi, Diana Edelman, and Frank Polak, eds., A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics, and Language Relating to Persian Israel, reviewed by Bob Becking
• Horace D. Hummel, Ezekiel 21–48, reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins
• Dermot Anthony Nestor, Cognitive Perspectives on Israelite Identity, reviewed by Frank H. Polak
• Marco Nobile, Saggi su Ezechiele, reviewed by Donatella Scaiola
• Horst Seebass, Numeri: Kapitel 22,2-36,13, reviewed by John Engle

New Testament and Cognate Studies

Zotero 2.1 is now available with a number of enhancements over the previous stable version. You may download the latest version from the Zotero homepage.

This week in the blogosphere:

• Kirk Lowery discusses “Strongs Numbers & the Problem of a Universal Index,” particularly for Biblical Hebrew morphology and lexicography.
• Robert Woods reviews Henry Petroski’s Book on the Bookshelf.
• Chris Allen and D. A. Carson discuss the Westminster Catechism via rap (HT: John Byron).
• The SBL Greek New Testament is now available in CROSS format.
• Mark Goodacre ponders the possible correlations between writing big books and having clean houses.
• James McGrath highlights a how-to article about reading scholarly journals.

In his Romans commentary, F. F. Bruce gives the following, sound advice for those who want to understand Paul better:

We may agree or disagree with Paul, but we must do him the justice of letting him hold and teach his own beliefs, and not distort his beliefs into conformity with what we should prefer him to have said ( 136).

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

New Testament and Cognate Studies

• Cornelis Bennema, Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John, reviewed by Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B.
• Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology, reviewed by Joshua Schwartz
• Ernst Käsemann, On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene: Unpublished Lectures and Sermons, reviewed by Wayne Coppins
• Andreas J. Köstenberger, A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters: The Word, the Christ, the Son of God, reviewed by Craig R. Koester
• Luis Sanchez Navarro, ed., Pablo y Cristo.: La centralidad de Cristo en el Pensamiento de san Pablo, reviewed by Rodrigo Morales
• Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey, reviewed by Peter J. Judge
• Carl N. Toney, Paul’s Inclusive Ethic: Resolving Community Conflicts and Promoting Mission in Romans 14–15, reviewed by James R. Harrison

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

This week in the blogosphere:

• Rod Decker highlights The Illustrated Guide to a PhD.
• Archaeologists begin excavating an Abrahamic-era water tunnel (HT: Joel Watts).
• The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae has released a version of the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon tagged to their textual database (HT: Tommy Wasserman).
• The E-corpus Digital Library has added 344 Georgian, Arabic, and Syrian manuscripts from St. Catherine’s Monastery (HT: Charles Jones).
• The Cardo font receives an italic companion.
• Seth Rodriquez collects a list of free Kindle edition books relevant for biblical studies. Others are also available at Project Gutenberg.
• Charles Halton provides a slideshow about the “Theology of Genesis 32 through Contemporary Art.”
• Peter Head provides an essay on “Textual Criticism and the Synoptic Problem.”

Matthew Crowe has February’s Biblical Studies Carnival. In February’s biblioblog rankings, Jim West and Joel Watts again top the Biblioblog Top 50 Alexa chart, and James McGrath and Daniel Kirk top the vote-based rankings.

By Alexa rank, then, February’s Student Biblioblog Top 10 lines up as follows:

StudentOverallAuthor(s)Blog12Joel L. WattsUnsettled Christianity23Brian LePort, JohnDave Medina, Joshua Smith, and Mark StevensNear Emmaus: Christ and Text314Thomas VerennaThe Musings of Thomas Verenna418Daniel O. McClellanDaniel O. McClellan523Matthew CroweA Fistful of Farthings625Jeremy ThompsonFree Old Testament Audio Website Blog726Bob Hayton, Jason Skipper, Damien Garofalo, Will Dudding, Erik DiVietro, and Phil DearmoreKJV Only Debate836Phillip LongReading Acts939Gavin RumneyOtagosh1044Mitchell PowellFont Words