Not just anyone has a house named after their family name….. Check this out. I’m ready to move in BW3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE-eId-fFzM Read more

David deSilva has presented us with an excellent read in his latest offering ‘A Week in the Life of Ephesus’. Here is a summary of its plot—– “How should Christians live in an age of empire? As the city of Ephesus prepares for a religious festival in honor of the emperor Domitian, a Christian landowner feels increasing pressure from the city’s leaders to participate. Can he perform his civic duties and remain faithful to his Lord? Or has the time... Read more

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BEN: Your chapter on the death of Jesus does an excellent job of showing how a Roman audience might well hear the story of Jesus’ death, in light of Greco-Roman accounts of the death of notable figures such as philosophers. I noticed however that you didn’t deal with the irony in the Mark account, and its function. Since Mark is in the business of presenting a counter-cultural Jesus and his life, more could have been said about not only the... Read more

BEN: Granting the limited role that disciples and others play in a biography of Jesus, nevertheless, we could at least say that sometimes some of these figures do provide a glimpse of positive discipleship for the audience to follow, so while Jesus is overwhelmingly the main paradigm in this Gospel, we should not neglect the others. Is this a fair reading on your view? I ask because, as you say, Jesus cannot be entirely followed as an example. He’s the... Read more

BEN: While I am quite dubious in regard to claims of large chiastic structures in Mark, not least because that is a ‘visual’ device, one that has to be seen by a reader of a text, and Mark’s Gospel is largely meant to be heard by the majority audience, I think you have a good point about the use of synkrisis in Mark. This makes good rhetorical sense of various passages. What do you see as the main thing Mark... Read more

BEN: Granting that ancient biographies sometime involve fiction (e.g. in the Gospel parables are clear examples), I wonder what you see as the dangers of using a methodology applied to novels to analyze ancient biographies. I am referring, among other things, to complaints about lack of character development, or even calling the persons mentioned in the narratives characters, as though they were actors in a play or created characters in a work of fiction? It does not seem to me... Read more