Those of us who love the BBC/PBS dramas are well familiar by now with the quality of such shows. They make most American made TV programs look like pure drivel, or worse. There is a reason for this. Britain is a more literate society. People actually read serious fiction, care about their history, think a mind is a terrible thing to waste on drivel or endless video games for that matter. I quite agree. Into the lists of such serious... Read more

Weary, worn, welts on hand Work has whittled down the man To the bare necessities Of what he is, and what he’ll be Was this then his destiny? Defined, refined by what we do, The toilsome tasks are never through Thorn and thistle, dirt and dust Sweeping clean, removing rust All to earn his upper crust? Sweat of brow, and carried weight Rose too early, slept too late Slaving, striving dawn to dusk Til the shell is barely husk Staunch... Read more

The “Did Jesus Exist” Controversy–Encore by larryhurtado Well, in the four days since I posted my weariness with being asked to engage erroneous statements and often re-treaded claims by a new mini-circle of people attempting to deny that there was a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, there has certainly been some lively interest. I’ve tried to engage serious comments and queries, but it remains to be seen whether those to whom I’ve responded are really interested in considering matters patiently... Read more

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The long running SNTS seminar ‘Paul and Rhetoric’ has produced some excellent discussion about Paul’s use of Greco-Roman rhetoric, and various collections of essays have been published on this subject, as a direct product of this seminar, and on the basis of other such seminars in the SBL and elsewhere. This particular volume with the same title as the SNTS seminar includes various essays, variously revised or translated or both (everything is in English), from the period of about 2002... Read more

Critique of Bousset Article Available by larryhurtado In one of my very first academic publications, I gave a critique of certain key positions taken in Bousset’s classic work, Kyrios Christos (1913), and called for an equivalent effort to build a sounder portrayal of the emergence of earliest Jesus-devotion: Larry W. Hurtado, “New Testament Christology: A Critique of Bousset’s Influence,” Theological Studies 40 (1979): 306-17. A number of my own publications thereafter were devoted toward that end, culminating in my 2003... Read more

Kruger on P. Antinoopolis 12 (0232) by larryhurtado Over the weekend I read with interest the newly-published study of the fragment of 2 John known as P.Antinoopolis 12 (Gregory-Aland 0232) by Michael J. Kruger (former PhD student). The manuscript was dated by C.H. Roberts to the 3rd century CE, and proposed that it originally other Johannine writings, making it the earliest evidence of an early “Johannine corpus” of writings. (The single leaf extant has page numbers preserved: 164-165, so the... Read more

Here is a program I appeared on recently in Australia. Check out this link. BW3 http://christianmeetsworld.com/cmw050 Read more

Here is a sane response to the recent kerfuffle (which is much ado about not very much) about the existence of Jesus. The “Did Jesus Exist” Controversy and Its Precedents by larryhurtado Well, the internet is buzzing nowadays with positive and negative responses to Bart Ehrman’s recent book: Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, written in response to the recent mini-wave of people denying that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure. I haven’t read... Read more

One of the more interesting bits of discussion comes in addressing the issue of the Collection for the Jerusalem Church mentioned in 1 Cor. 16 (pp. 484-85). Bailey is of the opinion that when Paul refers to letters of commendation he is talking about letters the Corinthians must write to commend their own members who will carry the collection to Jerusalem, accompanied by Paul. That is, it is not Paul writing the letter of commendation but the Corinthians themselves. This... Read more