Sean the Baptist (in the UCA)

Review of the Pope on the Baby Jesus

Anyone who wants to save time in the run up to Christmas can read John Crace's review of Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives here.

The spoof on Benedict's appeal to the work of other scholars is great. My favourite line being:

"Marcus Reiser has suggested there is some confusion about the naming of Jesus, arguing that Emmanuel was his real name. This need not detain us long. Emmanuel was a very common second name in Israel at the time. More surprising is that his nickname, according to the great Marian scholar Martin Dibelius, was Jay-Z."

SBL: Good and Bad

I had no real inclination to post detailed reflections on this year's SBL Annual meeting in Chicago. Mark Goodacre pointed out that the use of Twitter was an important part of proceedings this year, and even I had a go at it. Not sure what I think.

Instead, I thought I would list 5 good and 5 less good aspects of the Conference for me, in no particular order.

Good

1. People: always the main event, getting to spend time with so many people who (a) share a professional interest and some of whom (b) you also count as personal friends. It was especially good to connect with members of the Chester TRS Department, my dear, dear friends Alan and Ellie Kreider and Brad Braxton, and many other US and UK friends.

2. Papers: the usual mix, but the highlights were a session on Gender, Sexuality and the Bible, Dale Allison's whirlwind presentation in the John, Jesus and History unit (also mentioned by Mark Goodacre) and Thomas Schmeller's elegant negotiation of the bridge between 2 Corinthians 1–9 and 10–13. I also very much enjoyed the session honoring Chris Rowland and discussing the recent Festschrift in his honour.

3. Meetings: On Saturday morning I met Clifford Green, who is Executive Director of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English project (one more volume to come in 2013) to discuss wider dissemination of the articles gathered together in Pacifica 25.2 (July 2012) which I edited. Green's book on Bonhoeffer's Theology of Sociality was what reconnected me Bonhoeffer's importance, so it was a pleasure to meet with him before going to hear David Congdon talk about Bonhoeffer's understanding of mission.

4. Receptions: Friday and Saturday nights were quiet. Monday was Chester, Oxford, Kings and Scottish, with T & T Clark/Bloomsbury and Sheffield on Monday. T & T Clark's was the best of these.

5. Books: Only 6 purchases of which the most important are NA28 and Konrad Hamann's biography of Bultmann, which I plan to read slowly alongside a re-reading of Bultmann himself over the summer break.

6. Chicago: sorry this makes 6, I wrote the others first, but this also needs to be mentioned. Its a great city.

Bad

1. The McCormick Conference Centre: The epitome of dystopian architecture. Everyone hated it, and not just because of the distances.

2. Bars: reception bars were lightening fast to dismantle at the appointed time, and hotel bars almost all shut up shop by 1am. This left little incentive to stick it out for those 3.30 a.m. discussions about life, the universe and the state of the discipline.

3. Sessions: we need less of them, with fewer papers in each session, to ensure better discussion and interaction by a greater number of qualified and knowledgeable people in the room.

4. Travel: 24 hours door to door: enough said.

5. Books: too many at only 20% discount which meant that they remained unaffordable.

Anyone else have a top 5, or 3, or a list of groans?

Oh, and watch this space for a new reception to be introduced into the Programme Book next year in Baltimore

Fellowship for Biblical Studies National Conference

One of the things that I miss about the biblical studies scene in the UK is the annual meeting of the British New Testament Conference (which has, by all accounts, just held a very successful meeting at King's College London and at which a panel of scholars reached definitive agreement about what the discipline of New Testament studies actually is and is for ... or am I being optimistic?). Here in Australia there are few opportunities for biblical scholars to gather from across the country. Therefore it is good to know that the inaugural conference of the Fellowship for Biblical Studies is due to be held here in Melbourne on the 24–25 September 2012. The programme for the conference is as follows:

9.30 Mark A. O’Brien    “Creativity and Limitation in the Making of Biblical Texts”

10.10 Judy Redman        “Finding a lost sheep”

 10.50    Morning Coffee (in the café area)

 11.10 Ian Young     “‘Neither Can Live While the Other Survives’: Linguistic Dating of Hebrew Biblical Texts vs Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible”

11.50 Adam White    “Value Formation and Value judgement: Graeco-Roman paideia as a backdrop to Paul’s judgement language in 1 Cor 4.1-5”

12.30 Dermot Nestor    “Is ‘Israel’ in the Merneptah Stele?”

1.10  Lunch (in the café area)

2.00 Sean Winter    “Dung as Idolatry: The Meaning of skubala in Philippians 3:8”

2.40 Martin Shields    “Was Elihu Right?”

3.20     Afternoon Tea (in the café area)

3.40  Alexandra Robinson    "Jude's Citation of 1 Enoch and its Significance"

4.20 Jon Kenneth Newton    “Story lines in the Book of Revelation”

5.00pm Lucy Davey,    “The Importance of the Chiastic Structure in the Book of Ezekiel”

5.40pm Wine and Nibbles (in the café area)

 

Tuesday 25^th September

9.30 Howard Wallace    “Arthur Boyd and his Bible”

10.10 Stephen Llewellyn    “Metaphors and Eunuchs: The Argument for a Different Reading of Matt 11:12”

10.50 Morning Coffee (in the café area

11.10 Anne Elvey    "Rethinking Neighbour Love: Toward an Ecological Materialist Conversation between Political Theology and Ecological Ethics"

11.50 Rachelle Gilmour     “Juxtaposed Episodes of Biblical Narrative in Dialogue”

12.30 David Sim    “The Gospel of Matthew and Galilee”

1.10 Lunch (in the café area)

2.00 Robyn Vern    “Recent Study of Archaic Biblical Hebrew: shedding new light on understanding Biblical Hebrew”

2.40 Steffen Joeris    “More than family dispute: Mk 13:12-13a and Isa 66:5”

3.20 Afternoon Tea (in the café area)

3.40 Anne Gardner    “Gratuitous Repetition or Meaningful References in Dan 7:1b-2a? Implications for an Ur-text”

4.20 Todd Stanton    “Toward a Comparative Method in Biblical Studies”

5.00pm Wine and Nibbles (in the café area

A mixed bag of papers to be sure, but it is good to see colleagues from Sydney attending in some numbers. As you may have spotted, I am giving a paper. I'll post the abstract for that tomorrow.

Luke's Use of Matthew: Luke 1:31 as a Test Case

I am no scholar of the synoptic problem, but I was raised a Q sceptic and continue to remain comfortable with the notion of Luke's knowledge and use of Matthew.

But I looked again at one tiny aspect of the evidence that Mark Goodacre draws on in support of that notion: namely that Luke betrays apparent knowledge of the Matthean Birth Narrative at the following point:

Luke 1:31: καὶ τέξῃ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν.

Matthew 1:21: τέξεται δὲ υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν·

See, The Case Against Q, 56–57.

So far, so good. What is puzzling, however, is that Matthew continues as follows:

αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν. / and he will save his people from their sins.

The issue is that on the face of it, at least, this further clause would seem eminently in keeping with Luke's redactional interests. While Luke's use of the verb 'to save' is broadly similar to Matthew and Luke, the language of 'salvation' and 'Saviour' is distinctive not least in the following canticles (see Luke 1:47, 69, 77). It might, of course, be suggested that Luke has no interests in Matthew's etymological comment, or that Luke replaces the Matthean clause with the more explicitly Davidic: οὗτος ἔσται μέγας καὶ υἱὸς ὑψίστου κληθήσεται (Luke 1:32). It is also true that the notion of deliverance from 'sin' is always expressed using the verb aphiemi in Luke, rather than sozein. Nevertheless, the Matthean formulation would appear to be conducive to Luke's overall concerns.

I don't have access to Michael Goulder's Luke: A New Paradigm (the library copy is out), so it may well be that he offers an explanation there.

Any thoughts, Mark?

Fellowship for Biblical Studies: August 2012 Meeting

On Thursday August 9th I have the honour of addressing the Fellowship for Biblical Studies. Here is my topic:

The Church Triumphant?
Another Look at 2 Corinthians 2:14–17

Abstract: This paper proposes that the oft-discussed thanksgiving period in 2 Cor. 2:14–17 is to be understood as an inclusive portrayal of the common missional vocation shared by Paul and the Corinthians. This vocation is a participation in the ‘triumph of God’, that has initially taken Paul and the Corinthians captive, through public procession and intentional diffusion of the ‘aroma of Christ’: the gospel. This reading stands in contrast to the dominant reading of the passage (and of 2 Corinthians as a whole) as more narrowly focussed on Paul’s apostolic activity. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the possible implications of this reading for an understanding of 2 Corinthians in general.

If you want to come you either need to be a member of the FBS or be a guest of a member (our little attempt at SNTS-like exclusivity!). The paper follows on from earlier work on Paul's use of the ambassadorial motif in 2 Corinthians 5:20 and the argument basically goes against the grain of all contemporary 2 Corinthians scholarship. We shall see how it goes.

Creation, Conflict and Cosmos: Plenary 1 (Stephen Westerholm)

The first plenary session in the Princeton conference on Romans 5–8 was by Stephen Westerholm on the topic of "Righteousness: Cosmic and Microcosmic"

Taking his cue from Paul's dikaiosune language in Romans 5:1 and 5:19 Westerholm sought to spell out the overall meaning and purpose of Paul's righteousness and faith language within his theology. The argument would be unsurprising to anyone who knows Westerholm's work. Righteousness is a category of cosmic morality: the ordering of the universe towards which human life (individual and communal) can be directed, or not, and in line with which human behaviour can (or can not) correspond. God's dikaiosune is God's action in re-ordering a disordered world. Paul's contribution lies in the largely pessimistic assessment of human capacity to be righteous, an assessment that is retrospective in the light of the Christ event, as well as the emphasis on faith as the believing response to the word of the gospel.

This soteriological framework, present in Romans 5.1 and drawing out all that Paul has been saying about the exemplary role of Abraham as 'believer' in Romans 4, is really what makes Paul tick. The language of 5:19, and the more objective, inclusive, perhaps even universal dimensions of Paul's soteriology, are to be read in the light of the basic righteouness/faith paradigm as outlined above.

As usual, Westerholm steered a path between aspects of the 'traditional' (pre-New Perspective), New Perspective and apocalyptic readings of Paul. The first question was asked, as one might expect, by Douglas Campbell who, rightly in my view, challenged the 'having your cake and eating it' aspects of Westerholm's presentation. Does God's 'No' to a disordered universe ground God's 'Yes' in the Christ event, or is it the other way round? My own concern was especially around Westerholm's use of wisdom literature as the primary matrix for understanding the meaning of righteousness within Judaism. By appealing to notions of 'the order of the universe' as something epistemologically and theologically prioor to notions of covenant, election and, of course, Christology, Westerholm continutes to read Paul primarily as a theologian of the human condition.

Boring, Commentary on Mark

I am teaching Mark again this year, both online in Semester 1 and face to face in Semester 2. It has provided a good opportunity to get to know some of the more recent commentaries on the Gospel that had previously passed me by (or that I had passed over as I made use of Hooker, Moloney and Marcus - the three commentaries I know best). It has been a delight to start to work in more detail with M. Eugene Boring's Mark: A Commentary (New Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006). Although now a few years old, I have only just started reading and using it in earnest, and can thoroughly recommend it, not least to preachers in this Year of Mark.

Of special importance is Boring's insistently theological reading of the Markan story:

"[T]he story is about God, who only rarely becomes an explicit character, but who is the hidden actor in the whole drama, whose reality spans its whole narrative world from creation to eschaton, and who is not an alternative or competitor to the view that regards Jesus as the principal subject. To tell the story of Jesus is to tell the self-defining story of God." (3)

Boring makes the creative suggestion (building on his earlier research) that the author of the Gospel is suspicious of literary reminiscences of Jesus that took the form of sayings collections (Boring thinks that Mark knew Q or a Q-like collection). Such collections were 'dangerously open to contamination by sayings of Christian prophets' (14) and in their place 'Mark' writes an unparalleled (much less like a Graeco-Roman bios than many would suggest) and subversive narrative which is fundamentally kerygmatic rather than sapiential in its intent.

All of this has no small contemporary resonance. The teaching of Jesus in the Gospel takes its rightful place in the context of the claims that the Gospel makes about the identity of Jesus - no ethics without Christology. For that reason alone it would be a useful commentary for any preacher seeking to direct a congregation's attention towards the key kerygmatic intention of gospel texts (kerygmatic in the sense that they both narrate the gospel and call for decision). But this is a commentary that also draws on the latest Markan scholarship (throughout there is a judicious supporting case made for Marcus' deeply apocalyptic reading of Mark), leads the reader clearly into the detail of the Markan text, provides any number of helpful summaries and excurses, and is constantly alert to the text's capacity to surprise the reader into new ways of understanding.

The Markan text for the coming Sunday (2nd in Lent) is Mark 8.31–38. Here are a few lines from Boring's commentary on that section:

"The call to deny oneself does not mean to relinquish the enjoyment of certain things, as though doing without or enduring suffering as such made one holy or a disciple of Jesus. The word translated "deny" (aparnesastho) is found elsewhere in Mark only in reference to Peter's denial of Jesus (14:30,72). "Deny" is thus the opposite of "confess," "acknowledge"; the hearers are called to deny themselves rather than deny Jesus, that is, no longer to make oneself the top priority and the center of one's own universe ... likewise, taking up one's cross does not refer to the inconveniences, or even the sufferings, that are a part of human life as such, as often interpreted when one's troubles are described as "just the cross I have to bear." The Markan Jesus is not commending endurance of the inevitable pains of life, but the voluntary taking up of the cross as sharing the suffering involved in discipleship and Christian mission." (244)

If you haven't yet bought a commentary to accompany you through the year of Mark, I can highly recommend the Boring commentary.

Biblical Studies Position at University of Sheffield

News has come through of a newly advertised Lecturship in Bible and Contemporary Culture at the University of Sheffield, joining the strong team already in place there. There is a preference for someone in the NT field.

Details can be found on the Department's blog here.

Larry Welborn's New Book on 2 Corinthians

This is just a book notice, but some of you Pauline scholar type people might be interested to know that Larry Welborn's long awaited book on the background and purpose of 2 Corinthians, An End to Enmity: Paul and the 'Wrongdoer' of 2 Corinthians (BZNW 185) is now available from de Gruyter at the entirely manageable price of €129.95 / $US195!!! I saw a copy at SBL and it looks lovely (with a nice colour plate in the front of the book, which probably added $20 to the price).

Here is the blurb:

“An End to Enmity” casts light upon the shadowy figure of the “wrongdoer” of Second Corinthians by exploring the social and rhetorical conventions that governed friendship, enmity and reconciliation in the Greco-Roman world. The book puts forward a novel hypothesis regarding the identity of the “wrongdoer” and the nature of his offence against Paul. Drawing upon the prosopographic data of Paul’s Corinthian epistles and the epigraphic and archaeological record of Roman Corinth, the author shapes a robust image of the kind of individual who did Paul “wrong” and caused “pain” to both Paul and the Corinthians. The concluding chapter reconstructs the history of Paul’s relationship with an influential convert to Christianity at Corinth.

Welborn reads 2 Corinthians very differently from the way that I do. He holds to a complex partition theory (as does Margaret Mitchell who is writing the Hermeneia commentary on the letter), for example. But his scholarship is always first rate, so this will be a major interpretation of the letter.

Justice, Justification and the Problem of Translating Paul

I have just taken a closer look at Michael Gorman's excellent article in the first issue of the Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters: 'Justification and Justice in Paul, with Special Reference to the Corinthians' (Volume 1 (2011), 23–40.

I guess anyone who has tried to teach Paul knows that many students are unaware that significant terms from their English translations (justification, righteousness, making righteous, just, justice etc) are all related at the semantic level, and thus, so the argument goes, at the level of Paul's convictions. I have long used a little table in E. P. Sanders' short Paul volume to convey the point.  In the past I have always preferred a solution that maintains the link by translating δικαιόω as 'make righteous' thus preserving some connection with δικαιοσύνη, 'righteousness'. I think, however, that Gorman has now convinced me that the better option is to consistently translate δικαιοσύνη as 'justice' (understood primarily in restorative rather than retributive terms).

However my reason for taking this step is the diametric opposite of Gorman's. He argues (p.28) that it is necessary in order to counter the commonly found 'privatistic interpretation of Paul'. This is a well made argument especially in relation to certain forms of Protestant evangelicalism where Paul's language is too narrowly read to refer to the relationship between the individual and God.

However, the argument works with equal force when directed towards certain Christian traditions in which an emphasis on the divine mandate for social justice is in danger of being detached from what are, in my view, theologically necessary accounts of divine action, the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ that is revealed in the gospel. In other words, for my students who state that they are Christian because they believe in social justice, to translate δικαιοσύνη as 'justice' and to make explicit the connection to 'justification' serves to remind them that their commitment is itself predicated on a particular narrative of salvation, centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that cannot be stepped around without distorting the motivation for and practice of justice in the social sphere.

The next step is to think again about what we do with πίστις language in Paul. I think that the language of faith needs to be preserved in English translations across the range of the Greek. But that is for another time.

Oh, and finally, if you are planning to attend the important conference at King's College London on Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God in December (unfortunately we leave Italy for the UK that weekend, so I am unable to be there) or if you want to know what all the fuss is about in relation to that book, then the three articles by Chris Tilling, Michael Gorman again, and Douglas Campbell himself, are essential reading. Get hold of a copy of JSPL, or better, take out a subscription - its really cheap, especially in the light of this end of year offer that came through just as I finished writing this post.