Alan Garrow’s solution to Synoptic Problem: Matthew used Mark and Luke

Dr Alan Garrow presents a studio version of the paper presented at the NT Research Seminar of the University of Durham on Monday 12 January, 2015 (h/t: Chris Tilling):

“Streeter’s ‘Other’ Synoptic Solution: The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis”

A published version of this paper is available here: Alan Garrow, “Streeter’s ‘Other’ Synoptic Solution: The Matthew Conflator Hypothesis“, New Testament Studies 62, no. 2  (April 2016): 207-226.

However, Mark Goodacre (NT Blog) points out a serious flaw in Garrow’s argument. Garrow argues that that when Matthew uses Luke alone, there is a high level of verbatim agreement; but when Matthew uses Luke and the Didache (which Garrow identifies with Q), there is a low level of verbatim agreement. According to Garrow, Matthew gets distracted when he uses two sources, and is less verbatim. However, Goodacre points out that we would then expect a similar pattern when Matthew uses Luke and Mark. But that is not the case. When Matthew uses Luke and Mark, there is still a high level of verbatim agreement – which is not what we would expect if Garrow’s theory were correct.

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Gospel of Jesus’ Wife a Forgery

New Testament Studies has released a thematic issue on the so-called Gospel of Jesus’ Wife for its July 2015 issue (61.3). The articles are freely available online.

Editorial Francis Watson

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: Constructing a Context

Simon Gathercole

A Lycopolitan Forgery of John’s Gospel

Christian Askeland

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife: Textual Evidence of Modern Forgery

Andrew Bernhard

Material Criteria and their Clues for Dating

Myriam Krutzsch and Ira Rabin

The Jesus’ Wife Papyrus in the History of Forgery

Christopher Jones

How a Papyrus Fragment Became a Sensation

Gesine Schenke Robinson

See also

• This talk by Dr Simon Gathercole, also provided by Cambridge University Press:

• Dr Simon Gathercole’s article “5 Reasons Why the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Is a Fake“, aimed at a popular audience, from Christianity Today, July 13, 2015.

h/t: Mark Goodacre

David J.A. Clines: The scandal of a male bible

Professor David J.A. Clines delivered the 2015 Ethel M. Wood lecture at King’s College, London on February 24. Clines speaks on the male values within the Bible and the failure of readers to recognize those values. A video of the lecture is available here:

A copy of the paper is available on Academia.edu.

Being a male text, the Bible inevitably enshrines and perpetuates male power, which makes it a problematic text for anyone in the modern world who has some sense of the social injustice of gender inequality. And the scandal of a male Bible, in the second place, is that the Bible’s masculinity is for the most part invisible, hardly ever noticed or mentioned, even in our world that is much more egalitarian than that of the Bible.

Steve Moyise on N.T. Wright’s Misunderstanding of Paul’s Use of the Old Testament

Professor Steve Moyise presents a lecture on “NT Wright’s understanding of Paul’s use of scripture” at Newman University, Birmingham, on February 12, 2015.

An mp3 audio file of the lecture is available.

A handout containing the text of the lecture is available, in pdf format.

A second lecture by Steve Moyise examines the question, “Was the Birth of Jesus According to Scripture?”

Lecture notes are available: Birth of Jesus Newman handout.

Powerpoint slides of Was the Birth of Jesus are available in pdf format.

 

h/t: Newman Research Centre for the Bible and its Reception

David Clines: Varieties of Creation in the Bible

Emeritus Professor David J.A. Clines (University of Sheffield) discusses the different ideas about Creation found in the Bible, criticising the tendency to homogenize these differences. He discusses Genesis 1, Job 38-41, Psalm 104, and various New Testament texts.

His talk was delivered at the New Directions in Cosmology Conference, St John’s College, Durham University, January 10-11, 2013, and is available both on Vimeo and as a pdf.

Journal of Theological Studies (old series)

From biblicalstudies.org.uk: Journal of Theological Studies old series, volumes 1 – 10 (1899-1909), are available here. Additionally:

Journal of Theological Studies is now published by Oxford University Press. The original series ran from 1899-1949 and the new series began in 1950, continuing to the present day. The printed index of Vols. 1-30 (1899-1929) can be downloaded here.

Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò: “Food or Drink? Pork or Wine? The Philistines and their ‘Ethnic’ Markers”

Dr Łukasz Niesiołowski-Spanò, of the University of Warsaw, provides a lecture entitled “Food or Drink? Pork or Wine? The Philistines and their ‘Ethnic’ Markers”, delivered at Food, Kitchen and Cuisine in Antiquity: The First International Conference in Ancient Mediterranean and Oriental Languages and Cultures, Wrocław (Poland), June 11-13, 2013.

The aim of the paper is to review the value and usefulness of the ethnic-markers of ancient societies, based on the assumption that certain populations practice certain eating and drinking habits. In other words, the conviction that some food and drink habits may be used as reliable tools for determining the ethnicities of ancient societies, will be questioned. This argument is applied to the case of the Philistines, a population of Aegean or Aegeo-Anatolian origin, who settled in Palestine in the early twelfth century BCE.

The paper is also available for download from Academia.edu, with registration.

Israel Finkelstein’s Website: Including eBook, Articles, Videos, and Lectures

Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations, Tel Aviv University, has a very useful personal website containing resources on the Bible and Archaeology.

The site includes his eBook:

The Forgotten Kingdom: The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, Ancient Near East Monographs 5 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013).

a number of his journal articles and book chapters, for example:

“The Historical Reality behind the Genealogical Lists in 1 Chronicles“, Journal of Biblical Literature 131 (2012): 65-83.

“A Great United Monarchy? Archaeological and Historical Perspectives“, in: R.G. Kratz and H. Spieckermann eds. 2010. One God – One Cult – One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives. Berlin (2010): 3-28.

and a number of videos and lectures, including:

The Wilderness Itineraries: Who, How and When did Biblical Authors Know About the Southern Deserts

h/t:`Jim West

Disability Studies Quarterly and Biblical Studies

Disability Studies Quarterly is an open access journal which has a number of biblical studies articles. These include:

Jennifer L. Koosed and Darla Schumm, ‘Out of the Darkness: Examining the Rhetoric of Blindness in the Gospel of John’ (Volume 25, No. 1, 2005)

Darla Schumm and Jennifer L. Koosed, ‘From Superman to Super Jesus: Constructions of Masculinity and Disability on the Silver Screen’ (Volume 29, No. 2, 2009)

Pauline A. Otieno, ‘Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Disability: Implications on the Rights of Persons with Disability in Kenya’ (Volume 29, No. 4, 2009)

Emily Askew, ‘(Re)Creating a World in Seven Days: Place, Disability and Salvation in Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’ (Volume 31, No. 2, 2011)

Online List of Q Scholarship and Resources

Dr Michael Kok has assembled a useful list of scholarship and resources on the Q hypothesis, the theory that, in addition to their use of the Gospel of Mark, Matthew and Luke independently used an extensive second source (Quelle) to compose their gospels.

Kok divides the scholarship and resources into the following categories:

• The Synoptic Problem and the Case for/Against Q
• The Text of Q as reconstructed from Matthew/Luke
• Theories about Q and Christian Origins

Larry Hurtado – Selected Published Essays etc

Emeritus Professor Larry Hurtado (formerly of the University of Edinburgh) makes available a large number of essays and articles on his personal website. The main topics are Jesus, the theory of early worship of Jesus, and the Gospels.

Examples include:

Son of Man–Hurtado.  This is the pre-publication version of my essay published in ‘Who is This Son of Man’?  Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling Expression of the Historical Jesus, eds. Larry W. Hurtado & Paul L. Owen (London:  T&T Clark, 2011), 159-77.

The Women, the Tomb and the Ending of Mark The manuscript of my contribution published in A Wandering Galilean:  Essays in Honour of Sean Freyne, eds. Zuleika Rodgers & Margaret Daly-Denton (Leiden:  Brill, 2009), 427-50.

Richard Bauckham: Lectures on Jesus and the Gospels

Professor Richard Bauckham’s personal website provides the document files of several unpublished lectures and unpublished essays on Jesus and the Gospels. There are further links to audio and video files of a number of lectures and discussions on Jesus and the Gospels, with the audio of one lecture apiece on Revelation and ecology.

Bauckham is the author of several works on Jesus and the Gospels, including Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006). Until 2007 he was Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of St Andrews.

According to the phonetic system used by the Oxford English Dictionary, Bauckham is pronounced Borkem…. For readers in the UK it may help to say that Bauckham rhymes with Morecambe, the name of the great English comedian Eric Morecambe of the duo Morecambe and Wise.
– “How to pronounce the name BAUCKHAM“