New, New Testament Resources

At the recent British NT Conference, the publishers, Mohr Siebeck kindly gave each of us a sample copy of their new journal, Early Christianity (edited by J. Frey, C. . Rothchild, J. Schroeter, F. Watson), which commenced publication in 2010.  The sample issue, vol. 1, part 3 (2010) has a focus on “Recent Trends in Jesus Research”, with major articles by J.D.G. Dunn, “The Thought World of Jesus”; Roland Deines, “Jesus and the Jewish Traditions of His Time”; Sean Freyne, “Jesus of Galilee:  Implications and Possibilities”; Maratin Ebner, “Face to Face-Widerstand im Sinn der Gottesherrschaft.  Jesu Warnehmung seines sozialen Umfeldes im Spiegel seiner Beispielgeschichten” (=”Face-to-Face Resistance in light of God’s Kingdom:  Jesus’ Perception of his Social Setting as Reflected in his Parable-Stories”); and Samuel Byrskog, “The Transmission of the Jesus Tradition:  Old and New Insights”.

In addition, there is a valuable survey by J. K. Zangenberg, “Archaeological News from the Galilee:  Tiberias, Magdala and Rural Galilee”, and notices of two major research/publication projects:

K. Bertheolot & T. Legrand report on the new French-Canadian Qumran Library Project supported by Les Editions du Cerf (Paris) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which will involve Qumran texts in original languages with a fresh French translation.

Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett report on the “Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts” project (published by Oxford University Press), a series of volumes in which extra-canonical gospel texts are given fresh introductions, a critical edition of the text in original language, English translation, and critical notes.  Two volumes in the project have already appeared:  The Gospel of Mary (ed. C. Tuckett, 2007), and Gospel Fragments (eds. T. Kraus, M. Kruger and T. Nicklas, 2009).

Judged by this sample issue, Early Christianity looks like a valuable new journal in the field.  In future postings I’ll comment further on some of the articles in this issue.