A pleasant evening

I gathered this afternoon with about fifteen fellow faculty members for a discussion with James H. Charlesworth, who taught at Duke University for years and who now serves as the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature and the director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at Princeton Theological Seminary.

I’m not sure whether I first met him in Jerusalem in 1993; it’s possible that I met him prior to that year — I vaguely think that I did — but that was our first significant encounter.

He presented a very stimulating paper  that he’s working on, regarding a puzzling anthropomorphic image of God found in the pseudepigraphic Odes of Solomon 19.  Then we talked informally about the paper, sharing reactions and offering additional references and observations.

Good clean academic fun.

Afterwards, a smaller group of us (including my wife) joined him for dinner and excellent conversation in BYU’s still quite new University Guest House, which is a very congenial place.

Thoroughly enjoyable.  Thanks to Jack Welch for organizing this.