Hone Your Craft as a Biblical Scholar
The British Library has assembled a web portal, Discovering Sacred Texts, which “provides access to the richness and diversity of the texts from some of the world’s greatest faiths.”
Some of the links under the Judaism and Christianity sections will open full-text digitizations of manuscripts in the library’s catalog. One example is the text of Genesis below from a 17th-century Torah scroll.
HT: AWOL
Brice Jones discusses the probable (and problematic) recent offering for sale of P.Oxy. 83.5345 (a “first-century” Mark fragment).
Larry Hurtado discusses Darina Staudt’s, Der eine und einzige Gott: Monotheistische Formeln im Urchristentum und ihre Vorgeschichte bei Griechen und Juden (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012). According to Hurtado, the book is “particularly helpful, but has received a disappointing level of notice, even, it appears, in scholarly circles.”
For the balance of Hurtado’s review, see his original blog post.
Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal has a new issue available via open access. HT: Jim Davila
Freedom interviews Laura Turner on how she focuses on writing and avoids distractions.
In these chapters, a group of renowned international scholars seek to describe Paul and his work from “within Judaism,” rather than on the assumption, still current after thirty years of the “New Perspective,” that in practice Paul left behind aspects of Jewish living after his discovery of Jesus as Christ (Messiah). After an introduction that surveys recent study of Paul and highlights the centrality of questions about Paul’s Judaism, chapters explore the implications of reading Paul’s instructions as aimed at Christ-following non-Jews, teaching them how to live in ways consistent with Judaism while remaining non-Jews. The contributors take different methodological points of departure: historical, ideological-critical, gender-critical, and empire-critical, and examine issues of terminology and of interfaith relations. Surprising common ground among the contributors presents a coherent alternative to the “New Perspective.” The volume concludes with a critical evaluation of the Paul within Judaism perspective by Terence L. Donaldson, a well-known voice representative of the best insights of the New Perspective.
Apparently, the message with this title attached was intended for a different reviewer. But, since I hadn’t yet gotten a copy of this text, I was most grateful to have one, and Fortress was amenable to my keeping the copy in exchange for mentioning it here.
The decades-long effort to understand the apostle Paul within his Jewish context is now firmly established in scholarship on early Judaism, as well as on Paul. The latest fruit of sustained analysis appears in the essays gathered here, from leading international scholars who take account of the latest investigations into the scope and variety present in Second Temple Judaism. Contributors address broad historical and theological questions—Paul’s thought and practice in relationship with early Jewish apocalypticism, messianism, attitudes toward life under the Roman Empire, appeal to Scripture, the Law, inclusion of Gentiles, the nature of salvation, and the rise of Gentile-Christian supersessionism—as well as questions about interpretation itself, including the extent and direction of a “paradigm shift” in Pauline studies and the evaluation of the Pauline legacy. Paul the Jew goes as far as any effort has gone to restore the apostle to his own historical, cultural, and theological context, and with persuasive results.
I’m looking forward to working through the text and reviewing it for the Stone-Campbell Journal.
The new Judaism and Rome project “aims to:
Several interesting resources have already been made available with the promise of more to come.
