The T & T Clark Blog

Biblical Studies Update

I suddenly realised that I've been very bad at blogging this year so far... I haven't! So here is a little round-up of the exciting things that have been happening on the biblical studies side of things.

The year started with SOTS in Durham, under the presidency of John Sawyer. It was a varied conference, and great fun to have a bus trip to the presidential paper at Newcastle Reform Synagogue. The food was great. Whilst I was in Durham I was also able to catch up with friend, teacher, and author Dom Henry Wansbrough, who hot-footed it over from Ampleforth as modern technology had let us down with regard to some proofs we needed to exchange.

Books have started coming in thick and fast, including Lee McDonald's new 'Guide for the Perplexed' on Canon formation. This book is particularly exciting because it features a companion website

We've also just received advance copies for a new book by Steven Voorwinde on the emotions of Jesus in the Gospels. This a a great NT coursebook for courses on Christology and the ways in which each evangelist develops a picture of Jesus. The book also features useful discussions on the synoptic problem. It'll be out in April in the UK.

There are some great LNTS books coming up in the next few months, including a new monograph on the conversion of the nations in Revelation by Alan McNicol, and a new book by Chris Keith on Jesus' Literacy. 

I'm currently rather glad that there are a few months before the summer conferences kick off, although we did have confirmation of our SBL booth space yesterday... which means it'll be Christmas before we know it.

 

Herbert McCabe

This is a blog post from Robin Baird-Smith, Publishing Director at Continuum.

Herbert McCabe, the Dominican friar who died in 2001, was arguably the most important English Catholic theologian of the post war years. Not however `arguably` to us, as we believe he was indeed just that. In his lifetime he published only three or four books but his influence was enormous. This is confirmed by people as diverse as the philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, the poet P.J. Kavanagh and the literary critic Terry Eagleton.

McCabe was a Thomist through and through but in his Thomistic explorations he was also profoundly influenced by Wittgenstein. Since his death, Continuum has published more McCabe books than were ever published during his own life time.- seven in all. We have also reissued two of his earlier books Law, Love and Language and The New Creation.

To our enormous satisfaction all these books reprint regularly and Mc Cabe`s influence seems to grow accordingly. On March 5th, there will be a one day symposium held at Blackfriars, Oxford entirely devoted to McCabe`s work and thought. The impressive line up of speakers include Fergus Kerr op and Sarah Coakley, the Norris Hulse Professor in the University of Cambridge. The title of the symposium is Faith Within Reason, which is the title of one of the McCabe books we publish.

In a sentence, of McCabe one could say this: `It is only through the disclosure of God`s hidden life to our human minds that we can know of the one primary truth from which all his theology derives and to which it always returns:not that we ought to love God but that we are only able to do so because from eternity, God has loved us first`. That is the only gospel that MCabe ever preached.

For a complete list of McCabe titles in print please refer to the Continuum website.

‘Psychological Analyses and the Historical Jesus’

‘Psychological Analyses and the Historical Jesus. New Ways to Explore Christian Origins’ by Bas Van Os is now available to the readers in the UK, and all those interested in the US will be able to read it at the end of February 2011.

As the author says: ‘This is not a theological study although it may yield some insights that theologians can use. Neither is it a historical-critical analysis of the Gospels, although some findings may be of importance to the methodology employed in such analyses. I am not looking for absolute truths or relatively certain facts behind the Gospels, although my findings could be relevant for that enterprise as well. Rather, this is an attempt to reintegrate psychology in the search for the historical Jesus and his earliest followers from an interdisciplinary and social-scientific point of view.’

Although this volume comes from our LNTS series and we usually do not solicit endorsements for books in this series, we have received four great blurbs for this title, which are posted below:

'Impressively interacting with advanced biblical scholarship, and cognizant of the dangers in moving too easily from psychobiography to historical studies, Bas van Os presents a major contribution to Jesus Research (which as I have emphasized is not driven by theology). He agrees with Albert Schweitzer who rightly protested any psychiatric study of the historical Jesus; yet, he demonstrates how recent psychology theory helps in Jesus Research. Employing psychobiology, Bas van Os demonstrates how psychological insights can make plausible what seemed impossible. Using modern research in conversion patterns, new religious movements, and social memory he demonstrates that, within the Jesus Movement, there is continuity between Jesus and his followers. This study is well informed and will be welcome to all who realize that all methodologies can help us avoid subjectivity as we advance Jesus Research.' - James H. Charlesworth, author of The Historical Jesus.

Lecture on Authority by Fr Victor Austin, St. Thomas' Church, NYC

Fr Victor Austin, Theologian in Residence at St. Thomas' Church Fifth Ave. in New York has given a lecture on the theme of his most recent book with T&T Clark on 'Authority'. The lecture is available on the internet and you can listen to it here. Enjoy!

 Fr Austin is also the author of our forthcoming Christian Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed

The Origin of the Bible

Today I was reading the article on the King James Version of the Bible in the January 11 issue of The Christian Century. The KJV celebrates its 400th birthday this year. I really enjoyed the article, as I am not that familiar with the KJV. I grew up Lutheran (ELCA) and always used the NRSV. I still have my leather-bound Bible that I received when I was confirmed, which has survived many many moves (most recently to New York City). I'm fascinated by all the different translations out there and which denominations lean toward which versions.

 

Related, I was pleased to see that our new Guide for the Perplexed, The Origin of the Bible by Lee M. McDonald, just arrived in our warehouse here in the US (available in April in the UK). Take a look at the preview on our website.

 

Kara