SBL and Heresy Hunting

Because I love using the word heresy, and because I hate when people try to defeat an argument by misrepresenting it, I found this article very interesting.


**10/24**
Mike Bird has written a great response to the article.

Back from Chicago

I'm back from Chicago and wow, what a trip! U of Chicago's campus is absolutely gorgeous. It looks like Hogwarts (one of the dining halls on campus is the backup dining hall in case something happens at their present location - Oxford, I think). The professors were incredibly nice. In Hans-Josef Klauck's "Farewell discouses in John" class we discussed the anointing at Bethany in John 12. I met later that day with Margaret M. Mitchell and I think scandalized her by saying I hold for a Pauline authorship of Hebrews and I also believe in Matthean priority (crazy, I know!). I figure, if anything, it will atleast make me memorable when I put in my application. She was incredibly nice.

In Dr. Klauck's class I met a Ph.D student named Matthijs Den Dulk. Matthijs, his wife, my girlfriend, and myself all went out for beers in Chicago later that night and it was fantastic. I don't really have anyone here at ECU that's doing any real work in New Testament/Early Christianity, so to have a chance to nerd it up with someone was great. He's an incredibly smart guy - I think the academy will definitely want to watch out for him.

Also, I want to wish Chris Tilling a belated 33rd birthday. He's a great guy and we all look forward to atleast a few more years of good work out of him (33 is exceptionally old, after all).

Bibliobloggers in Chicago?

I'm heading to Chicago this weekend for my fall break to go to the University of Chicago and chat with some professors about grad school there. This trip has been in the works for about a month now and I don't think a day goes by that I'm not completely stoked about it. Monday morning I'm sitting in on Hans-Josef Klauck's "Farewell Discourses in John" class, then I'm meeting with David Martinez, who is the head of a Ph.D program "New Testament and Early Christian Literature" (yes, please!), and in the afternoon I'm meeting with Margaret Mitchell, who is one of my favorite scholars of the early Church.

If anyone knows of some must-see places around the University, I'm all ears (I've heard there's a good bookstore). I'm all stomach if you can recommend a good restaurant nearby.

Is a Christological interpretation of the OT an honest one?

It seems that, among Hebrew Bible scholars, there is a bit of trepidation about letting New Testament scholars and theologians alike have a go at interpreting the Hebrew Bible. There seems to be a sense of injustice done to the text by the NT scholar, not letting the text "speak for itself." This happens quite a lot, but here's the post over on James Getz's blog that has sparked my question.

Certainly, Christological interpretations of the OT occur in the NT itself - but again, were the NT authors being fair in their hermeneutical practices? Were they allowing a text to speak for itself or were they ripping it out of context?

Can one have a Christological interpretation that also pays due respect to the particular OT text in its particular context, or is this having one's theological cake and eating it too?

EDIT: (10/7/08):
Douglas Mangum gives a bit more reasoning behind his answer on his blog.
Phil Sumpter responds to this overall issue on his blog (not my questions specifically, but still good answers).

The Celebration of the Baptism of Christ by the Basilideans and the Origin of Epiphany: Is the Seemingly Obvious Correct?

A very interesting article in the Journal for Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, Volume 5:
by Hans Foerster.


THE CELEBRATION OF THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST BY THE BASILIDEANS AND THE ORIGIN OF EPIPHANY: IS THE SEEMINGLY OBVIOUS CORRECT? (PDF)


(HT: Mark Goodacre)

Bonehead moves in translating Greek AND "Thank God there are no original manuscripts"

Because neither of these thoughts were really long enough to mandate their own blog post, I figured I'd throw two completely unrelated things together...

First, every student of any language makes mistakes (atleast that's what I tell myself so that I feel better). One thing I've been doing over the last few months is confusing words that end in -νται as a participle instead of recognizing them as using the primary middle-passive suffixes. After having crammed as much as I could today into my head about Participles, I feel silly.


Ever done something while learning a language that you later realized what completely incorrect?


Secondly, a strange thought occured to me the other night. I think I'm actually glad that we don't have original copies of the New Testament documents. After seeing various posts around the net of the over-theologizing of grammar that goes on now, can you imagine the fervor with which pseudo-theologians and grammarians would pontificate upon the tense or mood or aspect or whatever of a particular word? It would be unchecked and without the caution that people have to exercise now due to lack of these originals. An odd thought, but there you have it - thank God we have no original manuscripts.

Michael Barber on various Criteria of Authenticity in Historical Jesus Research

You've probably already read these great little posts; but if you haven't, I wanted to point you to them. They're all short, but insightful (and well-sourced!!).

The Criterion of Dissimilarity to Judaism

The Criterion of Dissimilarity to Christianity


The Criterion of Multiple Attestation

The Criterion of Coherence