Daily Gleanings: New Books (18 June 2019)

"Documents from the Luciferians" cover imageColin Whiting has a new volume out with SBL Press, Documents from the Luciferians: In Defense of the Nicene Creed:

This volume includes English translations of several documents written by the Luciferians, a group of fourth-century Christians whose name derives from the bishop Lucifer of Cagliari, that highlight connections between developments in Christian theology and local Christian communities in the course of the fourth century. The most important document, the Luciferian petition called the Libellus precum, has never been published in English. The theological tract De Trinitate was last published in English in an otherwise unknown anonymous version from 1721. An introduction provides an overview of the development of late antique theology and Christianity, a discussion of Luciferian beliefs, and discussions of the texts.


Forthcoming from Bloomsbury this November is Matthew Crawford and Nick Zola’s The Gospel of Tatian: Exploring the Nature and Text of the Diatessaron.

The volume is currently available for pre-order. Ahead of the volume’s release, Bloomsbury has published an interesting interview with the editors about the volume. They comment, in part,

There are several provocative chapters in this volume. Francis Watson contends that the Diatessaron is much better read as a Gospel in its own right, and not a gospel harmony. James Barker, on the other hand, suggests that however Tatian might have classified his work, he could not have hoped to supplant the Gospels that came before him. Ian Mills argues that what is commonly considered the oldest surviving fragment of the Diatessaron (the Dura Fragment) is actually a piece of some other gospel harmony entirely. Charles Hill overturns a general consensus by demonstrating there is no direct evidence that Tatian employed extra-canonical written Gospels as sources for the Diatessaron. Finally, the opening chapter features the last published essay of a recently passed pioneer of the field, Tjitze Baarda; and the final chapter (by Nicholas Zola, one of the co-editors) calls for a moratorium on citing the Diatessaron in the apparatus of the Greek New Testament, after tracing the general failure of this enterprise.

For the balance of the interview, see the original post.

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