A few weeks ago we celebrated the launch of Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski's book on the Apostles' Creed in Piotr's Parish in Richmond (London). Piotr has done a wonderful job in inviting other scholars and friends to give a short paper each on the importance of the Early Church for us doing theology today.
To be frank - I was amazed not only by the quality and wide range of the responses, but also by the large number of people from the Parish and beyond who came to take part in this inspiring afternoon!
The speakers were:
Revd Dr Andrew Gregory, University College, Oxford
Dr Marcus G. Plested, Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge
Revd Dr Paul Collins, University of Chichester
Martin Warner, University of Warwick
Revd Dr Darrell Hannah, Ascot
We have asked the contributors to send us their papers to be published here on the blog. So watch out for a mini-series of posts on the relevance of the Early Church!
I am delighted to announce the publication of a new book on the infancy narratives.
So few books have been published in the last ten years on these most evocative of New Testament texts and this new volume goes a long way to fill this much needed gap.
The contributors include Warren Carter, John Kaltner, Ann Loades, Henry Wansbrough, Ian Boxall and Benedict Viviano - who address not only the state of play in New Testament studies since Raymond E. Brown's magisterial 'Birth of the Messiah' but also the virgin Mary in Islamic belief, and depictions of the nativity in modern poetry and film. This is a collection of truly diverse essays and in my opinion it is a book which every NT academic (and many non-specialists) will read voraciously and enjoy. I am delighted that we have been able to publish it.
Get buying it now from all the usual places or visit our website
We have received the manuscript for Margaret Barkers new book on "Creation - The Biblical Vision".
In Margaret's own words, her book is an attempt to outline what the first Christians could have known about Creation, thinking as they did within the framework of Temple Theology, and set this alongside some striking parallels in today’s environment discourse.
Here is an excerpt from the third chapter:
"The biblical view of creation is rarely questioned, not in the sense that people have never taken issue with the seven day scheme, but in the sense that the seven day scheme, as usually understood, is assumed to be the biblical view. We are asking the question: How might Jesus and the first Christians have understood the creation? and already we have seen that their understanding of Genesis was a sophisticated and far from literal reading of the text.
Material available in the time of Jesus and from the era of the early church shows that they saw creation as one intricately woven system that could be destroyed by human action. In this chapter we shall recover something of that picture; most of the evidence has been well known for a long time, but it has been read differently.
Continue reading "Margaret Barker on the Biblical Vision of Creation" »
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We are very pleased to announce that Paul and the Dynamics of Power. Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement, by Kathy Ehrensperger will be available in paperback this summer. This volume examines Paul’s use of power and authority, though Ehrensperger also discusses a wide assortment of ideas on how this use of power should be evaluated.
This careful analysis of many interpretations of this subject illustrates Kathy Ehrensperger’s way of understanding the power, and she conveys her thoughts beautifully by employing in her study such wide-ranging figures as Derrida, Michel Foucault and James Scott.
I imagine many of you are already familiar with this volume, for those who are deciding whether Paul and the Dynamics of Power should be their next purchase; here are some very interesting and commendable views:
'This is a beautifully written and immensely stimulating book, with which every serious student of Paul ought to engage. One of its greatest merits is to show that even asymmetrical power relationships are not necessarily relationships of domination/ subordination, nor temporally permanent, nor lacking in mutuality and interdependence. Not only might this encourage a rethinking of our images of Paul; it also represents a challenge for Christian life and practice within contemporary Church and society.' - Ian Boxall, St Stephen’s House, Oxford, UK in Scripture Bulletin
‘This is an excellent book for New Testament courses in Paul and in hermeneutics. Courses in Paul need to be engaging these contemporary approaches and this book provides an excellent and accessible discussion.’ – Warren Carter, Professor of New Testament, Brite Divinity School, Forth Worth, Texas, USA
‘Ehrensperger’s Paul and the Dynamics of Power is the kind of book that appears once in a decade. From page one, it is exciting, well-defined in terms of its limits, but wide-ranging in its research.’ – Robert L. Brawley, Professor of New Testament Emeritus, MCCormack Theological Seminary, Chicago, USA
Paul and the Dynamics of Power is available in the UK in May 2009 and in the US in July 2009.
We are delighted to announce the publication of The Non-Canonical Gospels.
Edited by Paul Foster (Univeristy of Edinburgh), this important new work includes contributions from Christopher Tuckett (on the Gospel of Mary), Andrew Gregory (Jewish-Christian Gospels), April D. DeConick (the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas), Keith Elliot (an overview of the non-canonical gospels and Christian apocrypha), Paul Foster (the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Philip), and Simon Gathercole (the Gospel of Judas - taking an opposing view to Professor DeConick).
While the aim of the book is to make the current academic debates accessible to wider audience, the authors also put forward fresh perspectives on a number of points.
The Non-Canonical Gospels is available now in the UK and will be released in the US in November.
This book follows on in some ways from The Writings of the Apostiolic Fathers, also edited by Paul Foster, which was published in January last year 
It's been brought to my attention that an online review of Jonathan Knight's Christian Origins has been posted at kata ta biblia, a blog kept by a student of Christian origins at UCLA.
You can read the review here.
Esther de Boer, author of The Mary Magdalene Cover-Up, will appear in a documentary this Sunday called Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner. The programme, part of Channel Five's Secrets of the Cross series, will be shown at 11am.
Matt Page has already posted a review of the programme on his website Bible Films Blog.
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