by larryhurtado In preparation for an invitational conference on early papyri coming up late next week in the USA, I read William Johnson’s excellent contribution, “The Ancient Book,” in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (ed. R. S. Bagnall). I first “encountered” Johnson in reading his PhD thesis, “The Literary Papyrus Roll” (Yale, 1992), and later his essential book, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). I regard anything by him as worth my time, to say... Read more

The following is a blog post by Timothy George. See what you think— BW3 ——– His real name was George Pease Williams, but to ward off insensitive school-yard taunts as a young boy he constructed a more elegant middle name for himself, and this is how he was known for the rest of his life: George Huntston Williams (1914-2000). When I arrived at Harvard University in 1972, he was already a legend in that place and widely known elsewhere as... Read more

Here is an interesting analysis of a recent article by Peter Malik, courtesy of my friend Larry Hurtado…. BW3 Earliest Corrections in Codex Sinaiticus by larryhurtado The latest issue of The Bulletin of the American Society of Payrologists includes a valuable study (by Peter Malik) of the earliest corrections in Codex Sinaiticus, as evidenced in the Gospel of Mark: Peter Malik, “The Earliest Corrections in Codex Sinaiticus: A Test Case From the Gospel of Mark,” Bulletin of the American Society... Read more

If you’ve been wondering why there has been a regular spate of guest posts on this blog as well as some unanswered questions, it is because— I be gone. Since May 12th I’ve been to Israel and Turkey for a week each, and now I’m cruising on the Gulet boat down the coast of Turkey heading for Rhodes and various other islands. Yes the island life for me…. very temporarily. Never fear, I shall return to tell many tales about... Read more

Certainly one of the more important topics to be discussed when it comes to eschatology is ‘the day of the Lord’ or ‘the day of Jesus’ and on pp. 1079-80 Tom provides a helpful listing of references to ‘that day’ ranging from 1 Cor. 1.8;5.5;2 Cor. 1.14; 1 Thess. 5.2; 2 Thess. 2.2; Phil. 1.6,10; Phil. 2.16; Rom. 2.5,16; Rom. 13.12; 1 Cor. 3.13; Ephes. 4.30; 2 Tim. 1.18; 2 Tim. 4.8. In every case this is a reference to... Read more

Eschatology is a tricky subject in various ways. On the one end of the spectrum one can make the mistakes we see Dispensationalism making again and again when it tries to co-ordinate contemporary events with generic or more universal Biblical prophecies about the future. On the other end of the spectrum there are those who want to subsume all the NT discourse under the general label of apocalyptic and suggest there really is no continuous narrative, as Wright keeps asserting,... Read more

As Tom informed us early on in this opus, the three major or central chapters including finally Chapter 11, on eschatology, are the most crucial parts of this major discussion on Paul. So we will be working carefully through pp. 1043-1266 for quite a few posts. That Wright is treating eschatology last in these three main chapters is in some ways traditional, but it is also in some ways a problem because all of Paul’s thought is done in an... Read more

In the discussions of Tom Wright in his recent opus, he stresses again and again that Christos is not merely a name, rather it regularly indicates that Jesus is the Jewish messiah, the anointed one of God. Here is reflection of another scholar, meditated to us by a fine post by Larry Hurtado that offers us a third choice…. which may break new ground. BW3 — The Messianic Jesus in Paul’s Christology by larryhurtado Some time back, in a posting... Read more

Philip Jenkins Alexandrian Attitudes A new source for the “Secret Gospel of Mark.” In 1973, Morton Smith announced a spectacular discovery that promised to reshape the understanding of the New Testament. The authenticity of that alleged find is still hotly debated, and I belong to the school that believes it to be fiction. Actually, I would go further. I think his find was from the first inspired by fiction, by novels. One of those fictional sources is now well known,... Read more