It's great to have Stan Porter's volume on Tischendorf out to celebrate T's bicentenary. Copies of the volume have been sent to the Tischendorf library, and to exhibitions in Leipzig, where Tischendorf was born. You can also listen to our recent podcast about the book in which Stan gives some insights into Tischendorf's life and work.
It's great to have two extremely positive reviews for the book straight away, one on Jim West's blog, which includes such wonderful lines as:
"...This little book is a model of the biographical art. Here Porter introduces Tischendorf and his historical context. He describes T’s life. And he describes T’s work... Another thing that Porter has, and should have, done here is to awaken a new generation of critics and exegetes to a man who is far too often overlooked or, among some, even unknown. Tischendorf was no fool, nor was he a neutral party in a quest for manuscripts merely for the sake of science..."
"Porter gives a very readable brief account of Tischendorf’s career, and a concise discussion of his contributions to several areas of study (palaeography, textual criticism, the Greek Old Testament, the Greek New Testament, and his critical engagement with “higher criticism and theology”).. a timely tribute Tischendorf and an accessible reminder of his remarkable career and many contributions to scholarship."
I hope this little book will get a wide readership and give people access to a key figure in the history of the discipline.
“This book delivers what it promises. In clear prose, Dr Noll offers an introduction in the art of history-writing and applies his theoretical insights to the evidence on past events in Canaan and Israel in Antiquity. His non-prejudiced position functions as an oasis amidst the heated and at times over-ideological debate on the (re)construction of Israel's past. This second edition is not just a reprint of his earlier book. Noll has included new insights as well as recently discovered archaeological and epigraphic evidence in his inquiry of the past.” – Bob Becking, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
“This book delivers what it promises. In clear prose, Dr Noll offers an introduction in the art of history-writing and applies his theoretical insights to the evidence on past events in Canaan and Israel in Antiquity. His non-prejudiced position functions as an oasis amidst the heated and at times over-ideological debate on the (re)construction of Israel's past. This second edition is not just a reprint of his earlier book. Noll has included new insights as well as recently discovered archaeological and epigraphic evidence in his inquiry of the past. I am looking to use this text-book in my undergraduate class soon.” – Bob Becking, Utrecht University, The Netherlands - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/canaan-and-israel-in-antiquity-a-textbook-on-history-and-religion-9780567204882/#sthash.pmSNsnzI.dpuf
“This book delivers what it promises. In clear prose, Dr Noll offers an introduction in the art of history-writing and applies his theoretical insights to the evidence on past events in Canaan and Israel in Antiquity. His non-prejudiced position functions as an oasis amidst the heated and at times over-ideological debate on the (re)construction of Israel's past. This second edition is not just a reprint of his earlier book. Noll has included new insights as well as recently discovered archaeological and epigraphic evidence in his inquiry of the past. I am looking to use this text-book in my undergraduate class soon.” – Bob Becking, Utrecht University, The Netherlands - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/canaan-and-israel-in-antiquity-a-textbook-on-history-and-religion-9780567204882/#sthash.pmSNsnzI.dpuf
“This book delivers what it promises. In clear prose, Dr Noll offers an introduction in the art of history-writing and applies his theoretical insights to the evidence on past events in Canaan and Israel in Antiquity. His non-prejudiced position functions as an oasis amidst the heated and at times over-ideological debate on the (re)construction of Israel's past. This second edition is not just a reprint of his earlier book. Noll has included new insights as well as recently discovered archaeological and epigraphic evidence in his inquiry of the past. I am looking to use this text-book in my undergraduate class soon.” – Bob Becking, Utrecht University, The Netherlands - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/canaan-and-israel-in-antiquity-a-textbook-on-history-and-religion-9780567204882/#sthash.pmSNsnzI.dpuf
1. What particular areas or themes of Biblical Studies interest you and why?
Every time I read a biblical text, I cannot avoid asking about the people who wrote or handled the text. Who were these people and what were their lives like? In my view, one should ask why does this text exist? Why did an ancient scribe, or a group of scribes, or a series of generations of scribes, produce the words that I now see on this page? What was the point? In my view, the Bible’s status as sacred literature has undermined the Bible. I am not convinced it was designed to be sacred literature. It is an anthology, and the anthology includes incredible diversity. Who produced this anthology and why? What was the Bible before it got saddled with the unenviable status of sacred writ? That question is the drive train of my research and teaching.
2. How would you describe your book in one sentence?
Canaan and Israel in Antiquity is a one-volume introduction to ancient Israel’s history, which stresses both the evidence and the necessary methods for evaluating that evidence.
3. What do you think makes the Second Edition particularly useful for teachers/on courses?
The second edition is a vast improvement over the first, because it includes a chapter that explains what an ancient Near Eastern patron god was, and how the ideology of divine patronage shaped biblical literature. In the classroom, I have found that students need a specific focus on that topic so that they can begin to understand the strange divine personality they encounter in the pages of the Bible. Also, the first edition had made its mark by being the only English-language textbook that helped a student understand basic research method, but the second edition has improved on the first by devoting even more careful attention to matters of method. Even if my reader has no background in this field of study, the reader will achieve a strong competence because this volume enables the reader to understand how we draw conclusions about people who lived their lives and died more than two thousand years ago. It walks through the steps of gathering the data, evaluating the data, and constructing a portrait of the past.
4. Which part of the book did you enjoy writing the most?
I guess what excites me most is giving my student the tools for deconstructing the simplistic assertions that one so often encounters about the Bible and the people who produced the Bible. Much of the conventional wisdom about biblical literature and biblical history is incorrect. Even many biblical scholars who should know better pay lip service to the tedious notion that biblical texts were designed to proclaim a religious message among a vast, illiterate agrarian people, and that most ancient Israelites were familiar with the texts contained in the Bible, such as the tale of Moses and the exodus. If genuine understanding of these ancient people and their literature is to be achieved, those conventional truisms must be dismantled. Reality is so much more interesting than the modern folktale that emerges when people try to squeeze the many and varied narratives and poetry of the Bible into an awkward harmonization with ancient evidence. By doing that, they do violence to the ancient evidence and they insult the ancient scribes who produced the biblical literature.
5. Any tips for people reading the book or using it in their studies?
This book is written in a particular order, so that a student who has little or no background can advance step-by-step to a clear understanding of the ancient evidence and proper research methods. So my advice for a reader is to start with chapter 1 and do not skip around in the book, at least not during the first reading. Chapter 2 builds on chapter 1, and chapter 3 builds on chapter 2, and so forth. With this book, steady attentiveness is rewarded.
6. What is next in your research projects?
Currently, I am trying to bring together more than a dozen years of peer-reviewed essays and articles, add some additional insights, and produce a book that will, I hope, define some positive advances that can be made in our field if researchers will just let go of some tired truisms that linger in our field in spite of the overwhelming evidence against those truisms. For example, the hypothesis that portions of the Former Prophets once constituted a Deuteronomistic History retards any genuine advance in the study of the Former Prophets. I hope my next publication will enable scholarship to get past that roadblock in their thinking. But, as always, my greatest joy is the classroom. I am passionate about the people of the ancient past, and I want to find ever-new ways to bring that passion into the lives of my students.
As part of our True Herod series, we have the following guest blog post from Professor James Charlesworth, who not only knows the work of Geza Vermes, but knew also the man behind them. Read his review of The True Herod:
'Of the kings in the East, few are so well known as Herod, whom within the Roman Senate Antony and Octavian [Augustus] voted to be “King of the Jews (rex socius).” Along with the Roman armies, Herod defeated the Persians after they invaded the Holy Land and briefly entered Jerusalem, an account made famous in the Parables of Enoch. The recent discovery of Herod’s tomb near Bethlehem has been hailed as sensational; it is heralded in an unprecedented feature in the Israel Museum. Herod is the evil king who killed his sons and wife, and (according to Matthew) was frustrated by “the Wise Men” who came to honor Jesus, a Jew who was crucified as the “King of the Jews.”
Now, Professor Geza Vermes shares with us his last thoughts on this evil genius, the greatest builder in ancient Israel. Vermes is famous for his “full” translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and his mastery of Early Judaism as well as the historical Jesus. For Vermes, Herod – hailed for 2,000 years as “Herod the Great” – was “a powerful and athletic man,” excellent on horseback and in hunting, an “outstanding soldier,” a “brilliant general,” had “good judgement,” a politician “with exceptional gifts,” and “generous to the Pharisees and the Essenes” (which promoted “the intellectual and spiritual life” of Jews). Herod was fiercely devoted to Rome and his Idumaean family.
Unfortunately, Herod also returned minor antagonisms with “the severest retribution,” was “patently and atrociously cruel to his in-laws,” and possessed a “suspicious and brutal temperament.” Herod desecrated and robbed David’s tomb of priceless gold treasures. Vermes judges that Herod could never fully “overcome his inferiority complex.” One may appreciate Caesar Augustus’ comment, near the end of Herod’s demise: “It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”
This is a fascinating journey into the past; the stimulating narrative causes the reader to ponder, wonder, and speculate about human frailties and fortunes. How does an evil genius succeed in building monumental cities and the Temple (“one of the marvels of the ancient world’), even bringing peace to a tortured land? The great Jewish historian of the first century CE, “our best informed witness,” Josephus, imagined Herod was schizophrenic, being both remarkably generous to humankind and a brute to his subjects and relatives. Yet, Josephus’ cannot be expected to be fair; he was a Hasmonean, the archenemy of Herod. And Matthew’s report of “the massacre of the innocents” is a crime Herod “never committed.”
Vermes’s work fits neatly within the new perspective of Herod; he was not just an evil madman or an “infamous king” (according to S. Mason) but a person of compassion, improving the lifestyle of many artisans in Judea, remitting taxes when his subjects were in financial collapse, supplying grain for those starving, and distributing warm garments for the elderly during winters. Thus, Vermes’s portrayal is close to the portraits of Herod found in the research by A.H.M. Jones, A. Schalit, and E. Baltrusch. Vermes avoids non-commitment, writes with passion and clarity, and points out, inter alia, that Herod’s household was “a hornet’s nest” and that the Christian and Rabbinic views of Herod are “a caricature of the true Herod.” Bravo.
Herod’s life epitomized the fall of an icon, early on raising to heights in Rome and finally expiring in loneliness and great pain in Jericho. This biography of Herod, “a genuine tragic hero,” is another of Vermes’s monumental achievements from a life devoted to research, study, and reflection. I highly recommended Vermes’s masterpiece for all searching for human understanding or historical insight. The work is ideal for undergraduate or church classes.'
Professor James Charlesworth is George L. Collard Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at Princeton Theological Seminary. Some of his publications with T&T Clark include: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament: Prolegomena for the Study of Christian Origins (1998), New Discoveries in St Catherine's Monas(1975) and Sacra Scriptura: How "Non-Canonical" Texts Functioned in Early Judaism and Early Christianity(2013).
Some lovely clippings from reviews of recent Biblical Studies titles in CBQ.
Jesus'
Emotions in the Gospels 9780567620408
Reviewed in
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
“Voorwinde
now presents a more accessible study of all the canonical Gospels...By
concentrating on the references to Jesus' emotions and probing into the
presumed motivations behind them, he provides a fresh look at the Gospels'
descriptions of Jesus...The strength of the book lies in its careful exegesis
of individual passages...Many of V.'s concluding remarks regarding one Gospel
are equally appropriate for others...All in all, V. is to be commended for this
original and valuable contribution to our understanding of the evangelists'
picture of Jesus. The volume is also very well written. Since V. provides a
helpful overview of the characteristics of the four canonical Gospels in the
course of his discussion, the book may serve quite well as a supplementary textbook
for a survey course on the Gospels and exegesis of selected texts. It models
careful exegesis of a number of important passages and provides a fresh look at
many crucial issues along the way.” – Sigurd Grindheim, Fjellhaug
International University College, Norway
The Son
of Man in the Parables of Enoch and in Matthew 9780567027290
Reviewed in
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
“I was impressed with the clarity of the exegetical section in handling
commentary on the original languages. Walck's contributions lie in his
discussion of the relation between the Son of Man material in the Parables and
Matthew, which I find convincing, and in his application of narrative criticism
and social stratification analysis to the Parables to expand the window of
opportunity for its origin.” – David W. Suter, St. Martin’s University
Dialogue
Not Dogma: Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke 9780567145437
Reviewed in
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
“The thesis
of Raj Nadella's revision of his dissertation under John Carroll (Union
Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 2010) follows a straight trajectory with a
twist. Well written in direct, clear language, the book documents Lucan
diversity.” – Robert L. Brawley, McCormick Theological Seminary
The
Conversion of the Nations in Revelation 9780567026088
Reviewed in
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
“For those
convinced of the problem--that is, that the appearance of the nations in
Revelation 21 and 22 has not been adequately explained--M.'s monograph offers a
thought-provoking solution.” – Marko Jauhiainen
The
Messiah, His Brothers, and the Nations: (Matthew 1.1-17) 9780567432285
Reviewed in
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly
“The book
is useful for its extensive summaries of previous research, and its suggestion
to shift the focus of interpretation from Bathsheba to Uriah is a welcome
reminder of previous studies...The early emphasis on genealogies as having
narrative functions akin to those of summaries of Israel's history is
intriguing...there is some valuable material in this dissertation.” – Boris
Repschinski
Paul and
Rhetoric 9780567027047
Reviewed in
Review of Biblical Literature
“Sampley
and Lampe have developed a unique book, one that is in a sense a hybrid. It is
a hybrid in that it is neither purely a survey or monograph but a little of
both...this book will prove to be an indispensable tool for anyone interested
in further research in Paul and rhetoric. Highly recommended for research
libraries and Pauline scholars.” – Douglas Estes
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza has penned a wonderful endorsement of Jennifer Bird's book, 'Abuse, Power and Fearful Obedience'.
"Dr. Bird’s recent book Abuse, Power and
Fearful Obedience: Reconsidering 1 Peter’s Commands to Wives (Lodon/NewYork:
T&T Clark, 2011) indicates the great strength of her critical feminist
approach. She not only explores skillfully the socio-political rhetoric
of the letter but also contextualizes it in the socio-political and religious
experience of contemporary readers. It is paradigmatic not only for a critical
historical investigation of the letter but also for developing a feminist
cultural and contextual approach to religious texts."
Fr Henry is the former Master of St. Benet's Hall in Oxford, was for many years the only English member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and is the General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. He is a Benedictine monk of Ampleforth Abbey.
He is also one of T&T Clark's most valued authors. His bestselling book 'The Use and Abuse of the Bible' was published to great acclaim in 2010 - reprinting twice within its first year - and his new book 'The Sunday Word' has just come out under the Burns and Oates imprint. This book provides short commentaries on the Sunday Readings (and major feasts/solemnities) together with questions for personal reflection, and an introduction on the shape of the Lectionary. It will be a must for Lectio Divina and scripture study groups in both Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor says in his foreword to the book; 'In these commentaries the background and chape of every passage is opened up and shared with us. This is a great achievement by Henry Wansbrough and we should all be grateful to him'
and Prof Richard Burridge, Dean of KCL, says; 'Beautifully written and drawing upon a lifetime of Biblical scholarship, Dom Henry Wansbrough's explanations of the Bible readings Sunday by Sunday are as informative as they are a delight!'
We congratulate Fr Henry on his Professorial appointment, and hope that the inaugural lecture will be a tremendous success.
Great to see this post from Chris Skinner on Thatcher/LeDonne volume on Fourth Gospel in First-Century Media Culture.
Thanks for this, Chris!
I'm really pleased and proud with and of the volumes coming out in LNTS at the moment, particularly the edited collections, which are really focused. The FS for Loveday Alexander - Reading Acts Today is a real state of the art of current acts scholarship. I've found that whilst some publishers are a bit scared of doing festschriften nowadays if it's a really focused project it can almost function as a reader, and sell and review really well.
We've also just published Chris L. Keith's new book on Jesus' Literacy. And some great revised dissertations have been coming through of late. We're only signing up about 8 dissertations a year in LNTS now and some of the really solid work we've had to turn down points to the quality of what's coming through. We're a bit strict on reducing word-count to ensure a thorough revision and to force people to reconceive the project as a book. It seems to be working really well.
If you've got a proposal for LNTS do send it on, or feel free to make an appointment to discuss it with me at SBL. Book soon to avoid disappointment, as my diary's over half-full already.
A few months ago I have posted three author’s blog posts – all three form the Biblical Studies list. I have received some advance copies of God, Humanity and the Cosmos – 3rd Edition and then I thought that it would be good if Christopher Southgate could write a blog for this collection of essays – and here it is!
I hope you’ll enjoy reading this post and do follow it till the end as I have also included three endorsements, which are simply great:
‘This textbook for students of science and religion came originally out of meetings of those UK scholars who had won awards in the Science and Religion Course Program funded by Templeton. It became clear that there was no one book that offered a clear, lively and student-friendly account of the debate. In 2005 the book was strengthened by the inclusion of a new historical chapter, and additional material on the theology of creation. For the 2011 edition, further strengthening includes new chapters on climate change and the new atheism, as well as extensive updating of the other material and the bibliography. As the co-ordinating editor I am really grateful to my co-authors for all their insights, and for their loyalty to the book - fifteen years on from its original genesis. I'm also grateful to the members of the UK Science and Religion Forum who spent a whole day last year bombarding the authors with suggestions! Evolutionary psychology, transhumanism, and the 'dappled world' of Nancy Cartwright all get more attention as a result of their suggestions. The book has become an industry standard in countries all over the world. Check out the new edition, and feed back what you think!’ Christopher Southgate.
"One measure of a good biography is the degree to which it keeps this anachronistic tendency in check. When judged by this criterion, Ferdinand Schlingensiepen's new book is without peer. The author's knowledge of Bonhoeffer and his familiarity with the massive amount of research that has been done over the past 50 years are readily apparent, and they result in a clear and compelling picture of Bonhoeffer's life, work and witness. . . . Schlingensiepen excels at navigating through the many settings, characters and plots that converge to form the contours of this life. . . . Schlingensiepen is equally masterful at relating the intimate relationships of Bonhoeffer's life. . . . We are in his debt for the good work that he has done, opening a new window into the remarkable life, witness and scholarship of Dietrich Bonhoeffer."
John W. deGruchy has written a review of Schlingensiepen's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which he asked to be distributed widly. We are happy to oblige:
"The definitive biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and martyr, is undoubtedly that by his close friend Eberhard Bethge which, in the new English edition translated by Victoria Barnett runs to over a thousand pages. Bethge wrote his biography in 1967 when interest in Bonhoeffer’s legacy was growing apace, and he did so mindful of the historical and theological issues of that post-war time. Since then there have been a number of other biographies of Bonhoeffer, some good and some less so. But now, in the most recent by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, undertaken originally with the encouragement of Bethge, we have one that is not only a worthy successor to Bethge’s monumental volume, but in some respects better for our day.
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