My family and I attend a Methodist church in Durham and Ben Blackwell (another Methodist) told me CK Barrett was on the preaching schedule for our area’s circuit a few times this year.  keep in mind, he just turned 90.  So, we decided to travel a bit further than usual to Langley Park to a small village church with about 20 members (15 in attendence!).  Between Ben’s family, mine, and Mark Mathews (with his 3 kids), we doubled the church!... Read more

I recently finished reading Helmut Koester’s Paul and His World.  It is a collection of essays that derive from various lectures and articles throughout his life and span nearly half a century!  His main interests are in 1-2 Thessalonians, but has discussions of other epistles as well.  He is at his best when he is dealing with matters of epistolography, archaeology and textual criticism.  One may find his theological discussions…eccentric?  But, on methodology especially vis-a-vis archaeology he rightly exposes common... Read more

The schedule for the NT seminars at Durham has been posted.  If you are in or around Durham, or perhaps planning a visit, take note of these speakers and dates.  I noticed that several of these papers are previews of the same topics to be presented at SBL in Nov.  Eddie Adams is technically the only one on the list not a ‘Durhamite’, but it is a truly fine list of speakers in any case. Upcoming Seminars 15 October 2007... Read more

I received, earlier, a comment asking me to offer a place to start for reading Phil. 3.  Now, my paper at Exeter was more focused on Phil. 1, but I did have to dip into chapt. 3, so I can offer a few thoughts.  Chapter 3 deals with several issues (enemies, Paul’s background, suffering/glory-resurrection), but my interest was just in the motif of suffering.  That will be the focus of my comments.  COMMENTARIES For more general resources I recommend the... Read more

Well, my family and I are back from BNTC (Exeter). Afterwards we spent a couple of days with a friend in Wales – a beautiful place with friendly people. This was my first BNTC and it was a real delight. There are a number of seminars going on simultaneously including Synoptic Gospels, Revelation, Johannine, Social World of NT, Second Temple Judaism, Acts…etc…I went to the Paul seminar to hear Francis Watson speak about his latest major revision of his published... Read more

I commend to you a new book from Hendrickson: Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (eds. O. Skarsaune & R. Hvalvik). I just obtained a copy yesterday and it looks fantastic. I remember it was coming down the pipeline when I was working at Hendrickson and they did an excellent job. The list of contributors is impressive: James Carleton Paget, RIchard Bauckham, DonaldHagner, Craig Evans, Graham Stanton, Oskar Skarsaune, Reider Hvalvik, Philip Alexander, James Strange. On their website HP... Read more

I emailed Matthew Collins (who helps organize SBL conferences) about the sessions on Nov. 16th and he mentioned that many of them are not open for anyone to attend.  He is not sure whether this ‘Pistis Christou’ session is open or not.  That makes me feel a bit better, but Matthew said that soon SBL will have to expand the dates of its future conferences to accomodate its growth.  So, if you are still in process of arranging transportation, I... Read more

The program for the upcoming SBL conference has now been online (www.sbl-site.org/congresses/Congresses_ProgramBook.aspx?MeetingId=7).  One of the unfortunate scheduling issues is that even though the conference technically begins on Nov. 17, there are a good number of sessions on the 16th that I wasn’t aware of when I booked my flight.  One session, in particular, appears very promising, but I fear many will miss it because they, like I, assumed that the sessions would actually fall within the dates they advertised.  Note:... Read more

For some of my pictures from Vienna go to my family blog: gupta3.blogspot.com. Read more