Was Bultmann's Impact Good for New Testament Studies?

If you have an opinion about Professor Bultmann's impact on New Testament studies please take moment to vote in the above poll. Feel free to explain or qualify your answer in the comments below. I would also greatly appreciate it if a few of you took the time to criticize the poll itself, calling it simplistic and/or poorly worded.

thank you,
-anthony

UPDATE: The poll widget on blogger is malfunctioning this week. I will try to re-post this poll another day.

-anthony

A Poem I Love - Le Donne

I don't know poetry well enough to have an opinion that matters. But I was a founding member of the "Wood Shed Society" during my university days. This was an elite group of five college students who met for midnight poetry readings once a week for a couple years. So I have a bit of street cred in the Vancouver area, at least.

I was recently given a copy of Stephanie Barbé Hammer's wonderful collection of poems How Formal? I don't mind saying that some of these poems are breathtaking. I particularly like a poem called "Ars Judaica" which provides several windows into conversion experience - in this case, conversion to Judaism. This is something that I know nothing about. Really quite gripping. Here is a poem that I love:

~

Torah Bones

listen:

cradled for the first time in these arms

there is a clicking of sticks

a soft settling of joints

all ribs, spines, and shanks

this curious body's ungainly

cumbersomely easy to hold

strange

ancient child

whose flesh is

texts.

~

You can hear more from Stephanie at http://stephaniebarbehammer.net/

-anthony

Do Good Teachers have Good Student Evals?

This Daily Beast article addresses the complicated relationship between patient satisfaction scores and good medical care. It seems that the most well-liked doctors are not always the best doctors. But it has become monetarily advantageous to score high on patient satisfaction. One easy way to do this is to have very low standards with regard to pain medication.

I wonder if there is an analogy to be drawn between this assessment and student evaluations.

thoughts?

-anthony

...Sweet Jesus

Jesus in American cultural memory circa 1971. This has to be one of the more bizarre intersections between religion, media, and pop culture:

HT to Donelle Swain for this gem. Our runner up comes by way of Jamie Smith:

...if you're looking for the correct response for this and cannot find one, you're pretty close to the correct response.

-anthony

“What Language Did Jesus Speak?” with the Pope, Benjamin Netanyahu, and guest appearances by Christopher Rollston, Stan Porter, and John C. Poirier—Chris Keith

On Facebook, Christopher Rollston posted this article about the Pope and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu getting into a disagreement about what language Jesus spoke.  When Netanyahu claimed that Jesus had spoken Hebrew, the Pope interrupted and said he spoke Aramaic.  According to the article, Netanyahu conceded that Jesus spoke Aramaic but that he knew Hebrew as well.

In terms of the state of the discussion, Pope Francis is right.  Most Jesus scholars now agree that Aramaic was Jesus' everyday language, though he may also have had some facility in Hebrew and possibly even Greek.  Stan Porter has argued for the Greek side of things.  All of these languages, as well as Latin and Nabatean, are attested from Jesus' time and locale.  The endlessly complex issue, however, is the degree to which any given instance of one of these languages is indicative of everyday realities, and further whose "everyday" we're talking about, since things would have been very different for, say, someone in rural Galilee, someone in the Jerusalem temple or at Qumran, and someone in Pilate's house when he's come to town from Caesarea Maritima.

What's perhaps most interesting about this question, however, is that it has a seriously long and detailed history of research.  Although not all of it is motivated for this reason, most of it is motivated by a search for the original words of Jesus in the Gospel texts.  For the most recent statement on languages in Jesus' milieu, see the excellent article by John C. Poirier, friend of the Jesus Blog:  "The Linguistic Situation in Jewish Palestine in Late Antiquity," Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Jduaism 4 (2007): 55-134.  To my knowledge, this is the most thorough treatment since Fitzmyer's famous article and confirms Fitzmyer on a number of issues.

Steve Walton Summarizes the Evil Conference--Chris Keith

Over at Acts and More, my colleague Steve Walton provides a good survey of this past weekend's "Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity" conference at St Mary's University, Twickenham.  I'll write some thoughts up myself here in due course.  We did record some of the lectures and they will be available . . . in due course!

Jesus' Self-Understanding

Dale Allison on Jesus scholars' preoccupation with Jesus' self-understanding:

Nobody’s identity can be reduced to words or to deeds or to self-consciousness, or to combination thereof. Let me explain. In serious moments, people sometimes ask themselves, “Who am I?” It’s a perplexing question. It encompasses the past, the present, and the future. It must account for feelings as well as thoughts. And the point I wish to underline: it sets before the mind’s eye the faces of the many people with whom one has had significant interactions. So the question quickly becomes: who am I in relation to others, and who are they in relation to me? 

I’m reminded of the Russian sociologist, Alexander Luria, who reported that when in the 1930s he asked an illiterate peasant in Uzbekistan about his character. The answer was this: “How can I talk about my character? Ask others. They can tell you about me; I can’t say anything.” 

Makes sense to me. 

Before returning to Jesus, it might be helpful to ask what critical methods you might employ to investigate the identity of some other human being, say, yours truly. Who am I, really? I suppose you could ask me. But if you stop there, the picture would be woefully incomplete and distorted, wouldn’t it? I might, of course, be full of helpful facts about myself. Although, I fear that I might—like Davy Crockett—enjoy throwing in a few entertaining whoppers, not wholly tethered to the truth. But I think that you would also want to talk to some other people, say, my wife and children. In fact, you can be confident that they know all sorts of things about me that I don’t know! Or would not think, or forgot to tell you. You might want to interview my brother or other relatives, lifelong friends, and current students…. All of these informants—it goes without saying—will enrich your understanding of me, of who I’ve been and who I am today. To suppose instead that one could find the real, or the authentic, or the original, or the “historical Allison” by disregarding the testimonies of family, friends, and acquaintances, in order to focus solely on what I have said or done would be silly. Maybe, however, we’ve been somewhat silly with regard to the historical Jesus. Maybe we have unthinkingly reduced biography to autobiography. Certainly we have set aside Matthean redaction, and Markan theology so that we can get back to Jesus as he was before people wrote him up. But shouldn’t we be more circumspect here?

Listen to the full lecture here: http://www.baylor.edu/truett/index.php?id=83790

My thanks to Ken Berry for the link.

-anthony 

The Stuckenbruck

Jesus' as Teacher of Happiness

The ever-impressive Luke Timothy Johnson explores Matthew's portrait of Jesus as teacher in this lecture. LTJ sets Jesus' view of happiness in conversation with other ancient philosophers.

I'd love to hear what students of ancient philosophy think about his assessment of Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus. Does LTJ get their view of happiness right? And would elements of Jesus' sermon on the mount seem vulgar to them, as LTJ claims?

I would have liked to hear him bring Theodorus the Atheist into this discussion.

-anthony

p.s. My thanks to Jeff Peterson for pointing me to this lecture.

Durham Continues Excellence

Durham University continues to excel in rank among UK universities.

https://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=21162

"All of Durham University’s courses are ranked in the UK’s top ten, according to the 2015 Complete University Guide. This secures Durham’s position as one of the finest all-round universities in the country, delivering excellence in education and research across all its disciplines.

The Complete University Guide 2015, published today, places Durham as the leading University in the UK in terms of proportion of its courses (100%) ranked in the top ten in the country. It is the only University to achieve this result."

So glad to see my alma mater do well!

-anthony

Leonard Greenspoon on Religious Literacy

With religion departments all over being pressured to downsize, dilute, and desist, we need more nuanced and well-informed discussions about religious literacy.

To this end, Leonard Greenspoon's voice is to be admired. Indeed, I have admired it and him for a long time. Great reading here.

-anthony

Jesus' Dance Card at the Evil Conference—Chris Keith

The "Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity" Conference here at St Mary's is this Friday and Saturday.  For readers of the blog, I wanted to highlight those papers that will deal with the historical Jesus or the Gospels.  There are four papers in particular, and I'm looking forward to all four.

The first paper that addresses Jesus will be the keynote address from Loren Stuckenbruck on Friday night:  "How Much Does the Christ Event Solve?: Evil in New Testament Theology and Its Relation to Jewish Theology."  As those familiar with his work can attest, Loren Stuckenbruck has forgotten more about Second Temple Judaism than the rest of us ever learned.  In conversations, he's indicated to me that he would be excited to address the topic of evil from a theological perspective, so we're looking forward to giving him precisely that opportunity.  Honestly, I can't wait.

The second session on Saturday morning will then host the other three papers dealing with Jesus and the Gospels.  James Crossley will present a paper on "Release from Satan in the Healings of Jesus."  James has recently been publishing work on modern receptions of the Bible, but he has also written some incisive work in Jesus studies as well, from his early work on Mark's Gospel to his recent work on the quests for the historical Jesus and the "very Jewish Jesus" phenomenon.  See Anthony's description of one of his works here.  James also has an unheralded quality, that of being a very good and interesting writer.  Remarkably, I've only ever heard one paper from James, so this will be the second time.  The word on the street is that he's just finished a new book on Jesus, so hopefully this will be an early presentation of that work.

Christopher Skinner, whom you may recognize from your local marathon finish line, his famous business cards, his blog Crux Sola, or one of his many books and edited books, will present on "Overcoming Satan, Overcoming the World: Exploring the Cosmologies of Mark and John."  Skinner is one of the leaders among younger narrative critics in Gospels research, and I've also never heard him give a paper, so I'm looking forward to this paper as well.

Finally Jonathan Draper will present on "Darkness as Non-Being and the Origin of Evil in John's Gospel."  Not only does Jonathan clearly have the best goatee in New Testament studies, he is a king among media critics of the New Testament.  He has recently been working deeply in Philo, and I suspect this paper will reflect some of that work.  I have heard Jonathan present before, but not on this topic.  So . . . you guessed it, I'm looking forward to this one, too.  Basically, I'm looking forward to everything, which is appropriate since I organized the conference.

One thing I've been particularly excited about with this conference is its international representation.  Just with these papers we have presenters who teach in Germany (Stuckenbruck), the UK (Crossley), the USA (Skinner), and South Africa (Draper).  We also have scholars coming to the conference from Ireland, Sweden, and Israel, so it will truly be an international dialogue.

You can still register here.

Congrats to LCU grads!

Several of my former Lincoln Christian University students graduated today.

Well done, my friends! Celebrating with you here in California!

-anthony

UPDATE: This goes for me, too.

-Chris