Liberal-Arts

Mark 12:28–30 reports Jesus’ citation of Deut 6:4–5 as Torah’s preeminent commandment and of Lev 19:18 as the commandment of next greatest standing (cf. Matt 22:34–40; Luke 10:25–28). Jesus’ expansion of Deuteronomy’s בכל־מאדך ( Deut 6:5; ἐξ ὅλης τῆς δυνάμεώς σου; with all your might) into ἐξ ὅλης τῆς διανοίας σου καὶ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς ἰσχύος σου ( Mark 12:30; with all your mind and with all your strength) 1 is in step with Deuteronomy’s original formulation (cf. Mark 12:33a) but perhaps stresses still further יהוה’s comprehensive claim on the affections of the command’s addressees. 2 Not surprisingly, these commands’ importance also provides further, mutually-reinforcing suggestions about readings of Israel’s scriptures, including ones that privilege the love of יהוה and even of one’s potentially disagreeable neighbor over any burnt offering or sacrifice ( Mark 12:32–34). 3

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The story of Jesus’ raising Jairus’s daughter appears in all three synoptics ( Matt 9:18–19, 23–26; Mark 5:21–24, 35–43; Luke 8:41–42, 49–56), but only Mark and Luke report a closing admonition about the event’s further dissemination ( Mark 5:43; Luke 8:56). In Luke 8:56, Jesus instruction focuses on the fact that the witnesses, perhaps especially the parents, should not themselves engage in describing what happened. By contrast, in Mark 5:43, Jesus warns those around him ἵνα μηδεὶς γνοῖ τοῦτο (so that no one would know this*).

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In Num 12:1, Miriam and Aaron confront Moses because of his marriage to a Cushite woman, and in so doing, they attempt to claim equal prophetic status with Moses ( Num 12:2a). Apparently, on this occasion, Moses’ meekness constrains him from responding ( Num 12:3; cf. Rom 12:19; 1 Clem. 17 [ANF 9:234]; Socrates, Hist. eccl., 7.42 [NPNF2 2:176]), but יהוה hears the conversation and summons all three siblings to the tent of meeting ( Num 12:2b, 4). יהוה then summons Aaron and Miriam for a special rebuke ( Num 12:5): however high may be their claim to apparently equal prophetic status with Moses, Moses own status still surpasses that of prophet ( Num 12:6–9). The status that Aaron and Miriam claim for themselves gets them only so far—only to dreams and visions ( Num 12:6). By contrast, Moses is not limited to dreams and visions, but פה אל־פה אדבר־בו ומראה ולא בחידת ותמנת יהוה יביט ( Num 12:8a; with him, I [יהוה] speak mouth to mouth, plainly, and not in riddles, and he looks upon the form of יהוה). More than a prophet, Moses is a faithful servant in all יהוה’s house ( Num 12:7; Heb 3:5).

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Mark 15:21 describes Simon of Cyrene as having been “pressed into service” (ἀγγαρεύουσιν . . . Σίμωνα Κυρηναῖον) to carry Jesus’ cross, and Matt 27:32 uses the same language (ἄνθρωπον Κυρηναῖον ὀνόματι Σίμωνα . . . ἠγγάρευσαν). Only Matthew’s narrative, however, has Jesus previously instructing his disciples, saying, ὅστις σε ἀγγαρεύσει μίλιον ἕν, ὕπαγε μετʼ αὐτοῦ δύο ( Matt 5:41; whoever will press you into service for one mile, go with him for two; cf. Bruce, “Synoptic Gospels,” 328; Gundry, Matthew, 94; Keener, Matthew, 199). Matthew does not identify how far Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus’ cross, but the accompanying soldiers at least press him into service not to carry his own cross, as would have been anticipated, but someone else’s ( Matt 27:27–32; France, Matthew, 221–22, 1064–65; cf. Keener, Matthew, 199–200; Lightfoot, Commentary, 2:132–33; Schürer, Jewish People, 2.2.231). At this juncture, Jesus’ own disciples are not to be “found,” and in their stead is only one Cyrenean who appears only here in the synoptic tradition ( Matt 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26). Although certainly not explicitly included among the audience for Jesus’ earlier instruction in Matt 5:41, Simon here serves, where others fail to do so, as a model of the kind of discipleship that Jesus has described. In this way, Simon has a share in Jesus’ cross, albeit still only to a limited extent (Allison, “Anticipating the Passion,” CBQ 56.4 [1994]: 704–5; cf. Luke 9:23; 14:27; 23:26; Rom 6:5; Phil 3:8–11; Augustine, Cons., 3.37 [NPNF1 6:196]; Origen, Comm. Matt., 12.24 [ANF 9:464]; [Pseudo-]Tertullian, Haer., 9.1 [ANF 3:650]*; Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 95–104, 161; Keener, Matthew, 673).

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In an article this past Sunday in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dan Berrett digests the results of a recent conference at Harvard University about learning and teaching. The article contains several insightful observations, but in one key paragraph of his article, Berrett summarizes:

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Within the narrative of Exodus, identifying the referent of the term מלאך (angel, messenger) in Exod 23:20 is somewhat nettlesome (Ausloos, “The ‘Angel of YHWH,’” VT 58, no. 1 [2008]: 7–10; Enns, Exodus, 473–74), but one reasonable reading is to understand this term as a reference to Joshua (Augustine, Faust., 16.19 [NPNF1 4:226]; Justin, Dial., 75 [ANF 1:236]; Tertullian, Adv. Jud., 9 [ANF 3:163]; Tertullian, Marc., 3.16 [ANF 3:335]; see also Ausloos, “The ‘Angel of YHWH,’” 9n43; cf. Exod 33:12; Gowan, Theology in Exodus, 227–28; Stuart, Exodus, 542–43). Yet, this Joshua does not pardon sins because the name of the God of Abraham is only in him ( Exod 23:21; i.e., he acknowledges this God’s renown; cf. 1 Kgs 5:11 [Eng.: 4:31]; see also Mal 1:11; Ps 8:2 [Eng.: v. 1]; 1 Chron 14:17; 2 Chron 20:9). Rather, such forgiveness comes by him who has received this God’s name as his own ( Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:17–26; John 17:11–12; Phil 2:9–11; cf. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 272–74, 631–45) and in whom Abraham’s offspring inherit not one region only by conquest ( Exod 23:24, 31) but the whole world by meekness and rest ( Matt 5:5; Rom 4:13; Heb 4:8–10; see also Pao and Schnabel, “Luke,” 300–3).

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The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• J. Andrew Dearman, The Book of Hosea, reviewed by Heinz-Dieter Neef
• Károly Dániel Dobos and Miklós Köszeghy, eds., With Wisdom as a Robe: Qumran and Other Jewish Studies in Honour of Ida Fröhlich, reviewed by Korinna Zamfir
• Bruce Louden, Homer’s Odyssey and the Near East, reviewed by Charles L. Echols
• Jason Radine, The Book of Amos in Emergent Judah, reviewed by Daniel C. Timmer
• Shemaryahu Talmon, Text and Canon of the Hebrew Bible, reviewed by August H. Konkel
• William A. Tooman and Michael A. Lyons, eds., Transforming Visions: Transformations of Text, Tradition, and Theology in Ezekiel, reviewed by William R. Osborne

New Testament and Cognate Studies

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The stable release of Zotero 3.0 is now available:

Zotero 3.0 marks a major departure from previous versions, most notably with the new ability run outside the Firefox browser. Available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, this standalone version of Zotero contains all the great functionality of the old Firefox-based Zotero but now enables users to integrate Zotero into browsers other than Firefox like Google Chrome and Apple Safari. To all you Firefox lovers out there, no need to worry! Zotero continues to work within Firefox, and even if you choose to run the standalone version, it will talk to Firefox, too.

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The interchange in Matt 18:21–22 looks back to Jesus’ immediately preceding comments on handling a community member (ἀδελφός) who sins ( Matt 18:15–20; Chrysostom, Hom. Matt., 61.1 [NPNF1 10:357]; cf. Matt 18:21; 19:1). Read within this context, Peter’s question ποσάκις ἁμαρτήσει εἰς ἐμὲ ὁ ἀδελφός μου καὶ ἀφήσω αὐτῷ; ( Matt 18:21a; How many times* shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?) addresses a very plausible ambiguity in Jesus’ preceding comments. Judging from this question, Peter presumably thinks it inappropriate for a community member endlessly to sin and repent, but as long as some repentance was involved, Jesus’ instructions could seem never to allow further action to be taken. As many times as the community member would sin and repent, this member would also be restored ( Matt 18:15b; Chrysostom, Hom. Matt., 61.1 [NPNF1 10:357]).

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Matthew 14:22–33 narrates Jesus’ walking on water. Yet, unlike the parallel accounts in Mark 6:45–52; John 6:15–21, Matt 14:33 reports that the disciples’ conclusion, at the end of this episode, was ἀληθῶς θεοῦ υἱὸς εἶ (truly, you are the son of God). Apparently thinking along the lines similar to Heb 3:5–6, Archelaus, Disputation with Manes, 44 ( ANF 6:220; affiliate disclosure), relates this text to Jesus’ superiority to Moses. Perhaps more to the point here, however, is a chaos-versus-creation motif (Boring, “Matthew,” NIB 8, 327; affiliate disclosure) in which Jesus subjects the surrounding disorder (Graves, “Followed by the Sun,” RevExp 99, no. 1 [2002]: 92; Ladd, Theology of the New Testament, rev.ed., 163 [ affiliate disclosure]; Verseput, “The Faith of the Reader,” JSNT 46 [1992]: 14–16; cf. Augustine, Serm., 25.6 [ NPNF1 6:338; affiliate disclosure]; Jerome, Epist., 30 [ NPNF2 6:45; affiliate disclosure]). He does so, first, by walking on the sea himself and then all the more by causing Peter to do the same (Chrysostom, Hom. Matt., 50.2 [ NPNF1 10:311–12; affiliate disclosure]). In this framework, then, if Israel’s God is master of the seas (e.g., Job 9:8; Ps 89:9, 19–37; Hab 3:8, 15; cf. Gen 1:2 [LXX; LSJ, s.v. ἐπιφέρω, §§2–3PIFERW#lexicon)])—a kind of mastery not otherwise within the realm of human experience—Jesus’ walking on the sea is an eminently good reason for identifying Jesus as θεοῦ υἱός (son of God) and worshiping him as such (see Matt 14:33; Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, 6.51 [ NPNF2 9:117; affiliate disclosure]; cf. Mark 6:51–52; John 6:21; Aristotle, Poetics, 5.6, 6.2 [ affiliate disclosure]).

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This year’s Faith and the Academy conference program is now available. The conference is hosted annually by Faulkner University. This year’s theme is “Money, Morals, and Missions,” and the plenary sessions will feature Shawn Ritenour of Grove City College and Monty Lynn of Abilene Christian University. In the last morning session, I am also privileged to be giving a paper on “Physical Humanities and Lettered Sciences: Thomas Kuhn’s Significance for Contextualizing Biblical Studies.” For more information about the conference and to register, please see here.

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As Abram returns from rescuing Lot ( Gen 14:1–16), Melchizedek brings out bread and wine ( Gen 14:18), and so, fittingly does the priest do the same whom David says has been appointed in Melchizedek’s order ( Ps 110:4; Heb 7:1–26; Augustine, Civ., 16.22 [NPNF1, 2:323]; Augustine, Doctr. chr., 4.21 [NPNF1, 2:590]; Bede, Genesis, 269; Cyprian, Epistles, 62.4 [ANF, 5:359]). Melchizedek is without genealogy ( Heb 7:3), and his bread and wine are also without origin. Yet, he brings them to Abram and, in a way, to Abram’s seed ( Gal 3:15–29; Heb 7:9–10; cf. Bede, Genesis, 269; Cyprian, Epistles, 62.4 [ANF, 5:359]). The messianic seed, however, brings bread and wine as from himself, and he brings them to those also who are in himself as Abram’s other offspring ( Matt 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:14–20; Gal 3:15–29; Heb 2:10–18).

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On the web:

• Andrew McGowan interacts with N. T. Wright about the nature of the narratives of Jesus’ birth, especially in Matthew.
• Robert Woods reflects on Desiderius Erasmus and Eva Brann’s Logos of Heraclitus.
• Chris Brady and Bob Cargill startup “Sacred Techs.”
• Chris Brady uploads a discussion of footnotes and endnotes.
• Tim Gombis considers Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together.
• Mark Goodacre notes that The Star of Bethlehem (1912) is available online.
• Rich Brannan mentions the availability of the Cascadia series’ Syntactic Analysis of the Septuagint on Logos Bible Software’s prepublication program.
• Joel Willitts comments on “Jewish Identity Markers in the Pre-exilic Period.”
• Michael Bird ponders the timing of Gal 1:4.
• John Byron and Jim Davila ( 1, 2) comment on some recent manuscript and archaeological discoveries.
• Matthew Montonini notes the possibility of a free Ephesians ebook commentary offering on Monday.

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On the web:

• Nijay Gupta excerpts Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Advent.
• Robert Woods reflects on Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Bonaventure, and their relevance for liberal arts education.
• Jim Davila notes an announcement from the Israel Antiquities Authority about the recent discovery of a Second Temple era purity “voucher,” and John Byron picks up the same story from the Israel National News.
• Larry Hurtado discusses the dating of early Christian manuscripts.
• Tony Burke notes a couple recent 60 Minutes specials on Mount Athos and the Vatican Library.
• Jim Davila notes the availability of a new Talmud index. The index is currently available by subject in both Hebrew and English.
• Matthew Emadi discusses Augustine’s hermeneutic.

According to Hans-Georg Gadamer,

Prejudices [i.e., prejudgments] are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word [i.e., prejudgments], constitute the directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something—whereby what we encounter says something to us.((Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics ( affiliate disclosure), 9.))

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I’m pleased to say that the new website for the Great Books Honors College at Faulkner University is out of beta. The site has been a work in progress for a while but has, at this point, come together fairly nicely and completely. Of particular interest here is the College’s Christian Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts. At present, the Institute offers an innovative Master of Letters program that heavily utilizes Google Apps for Education and other distance education media to help form students and faculty into a virtual learning community. In coming years, the Institute looks forward to adding Bachelor and Doctor of Letters programs also.

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On the web:

• Logos Bible Software is developing their edition of Meyer’s New Testament commentary under development, and releases several plugins for Biblia.com.
• Robert Holmstedt and John Cook discusses “Genesis 1.1 and Topic-fronting before a Wayyiqtol.”
• Robert Woods discusses Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty for Truth’s Sake.
• Larry Hurtado highlights Ragnar Leivestad’s “Exit the Apocalyptic Son of Man,” New Testament Studies 18 (1971), 243–67.
• Tommy Wasserman discusses the new Parallel Pericopes of the Synoptic Gospels volume in the Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior series.
• Mary Crane and Thomas Chiles consider “Why the Liberal Arts Need the Sciences (and Vice Versa).”

On the Web:

• Cliff Johnson reproduces, with permission, C. S. Lewis’s keen essay “Meditation in a Toolshed.”
• The Society of Biblical Literature releases Klaus Wachtel and Michael Holmes, ed., The Textual History of the Greek New Testament: Changing Views in Contemporary Research, about which Tommy Wasserman provides some additional information and links.
• Andy provides the tables of contents for this year’s Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters ( spring, fall).
• Courtesy of Broadman and Holman, the Evangelical Theological Society now has its own program apps available in the App Store and Android Market.
• The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts has released a DVD of the recent Ehrman-Wallace debate (HT: Tommy Wasserman).
• Jim Davila comments on a recent article about the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Project.

On the web:

• Larry Hurtado discusses historical Jesus research.
• Brian LePort notes that Kevin Vanhoozer has returned to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
• Jim Davila highlights a Jerusalem Post article on the significance of the Talmud for liberal arts education.
• The bibliobloggers decide on a time and place to meet for dinner during the SBL Annual Meeting.
• Through November 16, the Westminster Bookstore is offering Köstenberger and Patterson’s new Invitation to Biblical Interpretation(Kregel, 2011) for 50% off. A sample PDF containing, the endorsements, the table of contents, the first chapter, and part of the second chapter are available from the book’s product page.

Yesterday’s review of the Chronicle of Higher Education collects several interesting articles about distance learning. Among the open-access articles listed are:

• Robert Mendenhall, “How Technology Can Improve Online Learning—and Learning in General”
• Shai Reshef, “No Tuition? No Problem.”
• Burck Smith, “Let’s Deregulate Online Learning”
• Derek Bruff, “A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network”
• Ari Kohen, “From Homeric Writings to Cellphone Forensics, Some Favorite Online Resources”

Although potential gains need to be weighed especially carefully in relation to potential losses in some of the applications Bruff describes (e.g., “Back channels”), from this list, Bruff’s thoughts about employing collaborative technologies seemed especially intriguing.

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Earlier this semester in Exploring Religion, we discussed Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, and one paragraph particularly struck me as an apt illustration of Qoheleth’s advice that עת לחשות ועת לדבר ( Eccl 3:7b; there is a time to be silent, and there is a time to speak):

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On the web:

• Larry Hurtado discusses scholarly amnesia in Pauline Studies.
• Charles Jones mentions Poorly Attested Words in Ancient Greek, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, and Digital Medievalist.
• The Biblical Archaeology Review has launched a new website about the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Why They Matter (HT: Jim Davila).
• The British Library’s Digitised Manuscripts site now has ten new 13th–17th century manuscripts (HT: Julian Harrison).

As they have for some others already, most of my Perseus collection downloads for Logos have recently been processed. Below are a few particularly anticipated texts from these collections:

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After recently transitioning to Ubuntu, I found that my previous online backup solution had some issues running in Linux, even via a Windows XP virtual machine in VirtualBox. With some additional research, however, I came across Digital Lifeboat:

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Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Selingo discusses what might change in higher education if engineers were assigned to reinvent it from the ground up. Some points that emerged at a recent kick-off event for Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities were:

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Jim Davila has picked up a discussion about ancient testimony to the earth’s spherical shape. Cicero also, by way of his Stoic character Balbus, comments to this effect, saying,

[T]he sea, which is above the earth, tends still toward the earth’s centre, and so is itself shaped in conformity to the globe of the earth and nowhere spills or overflows. ( 171; affiliate disclosure; italics added)

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As noted earlier, Logos Bible Software is working on releasing over 3000 texts from the Perseus Project for free to Logos 4 users. Included here is Perseus’s substantive collection of Greek and Latin classics and their translations. This collection also offers access to Perseus’s dictionaries and lexica and integrated searching with the rest of a user’s Logos library. For further details, see here.

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The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• A. Graeme Auld and Erik Eynikel, eds., For and against David: Story and History in the Books of Samuel, reviewed by Frank H. Polak
• Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, ed., Die Samuelbücher und die Deuteronomisten, reviewed by Graeme Auld

New Testament and Cognate Studies

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Today, Google has released an Offline Gmail web app, which uses HTML5 in place of the now-deprecated Google Gears. Similar offline access for the Calendar and Docs apps is available through these apps’ settings, but offline editing in Docs is apparently still in the works.

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Alison Babeu has a new ebook freely available in PDF format: “Rome Wasn’t Digitized in a Day”: Building a Cyberinfrastructure for Digital Classicists (Washington, D. C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2011). According to the publisher,

The author provides a summative and recent overview of the use of digital technologies in classical studies, focusing on classical Greece, Rome, and the ancient Middle and Near East, and generally on the period up to about 600 AD [ sic]. The report explores what projects exist and how they are used, examines the infrastructure that currently exists to support digital classics as a discipline, and investigates larger humanities cyberinfrastructure projects and existing tools or services that might be repurposed for the digital classics.

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