In The Atlantic is a great piece by Graham Ward on What ISIS Really Wants, which I think is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the conflict. We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it … We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny... Read more

Christmas has come early for NT geeks as Codex Vaticanus (B) is now available on-line including LXX and NT. The Vatican Library has digitised Codex Vaticanus. It is an majuscule manuscript that dates to the mid-fourth century and contains almost the entire Christian canon in Greek, including most of the Apocrypha. This is the sequel to the digitization of another important manuscript Codex Sinaiticus. I spent many hours with my friend “Vinny” Vaticanus when I was working on my 1 Esdras commentary. Wish I had... Read more

Zondervan is having a big ebook sale on books about the Apostle Paul. I thought I’d annotate these a bit with Paul’s own comments. Zondervan’s eBook Sale ends Sunday, March 1 at 11:59pm ET. (3/1/15) Four Views on the Apostle Paul Michael F. Bird, General Editor Deal $3.99 | Original $11.99 What’s the best framework for understanding Paul’s theological perspective? Four leading scholars present their views: Thomas R. Schreiner (Reformed View), Luke Timothy Johnson (Catholic View), Douglas A. Campbell (Post-New Perspective... Read more

Benjamin L. White Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle Oxford: OUP, 2014. Available at Amazon.com This book is a revised version of Benjamin White’s doctoral dissertation written at Chapel Hill under the supervision of Bart Ehrman. In a nutshell, White argues that there is no reconstruction of the “real Paul,” a type of “wie es eigentlich gewesen,” only the exploration of collective memories of Paul that produce meaningful pasts for the present. Note, White does... Read more

I just read a great piece by Jeremy R. Treat, “Gospel and Doctrine in the Life of the Church,” SBET 32.2 (2014): 180-94. (Read the whole thing here). I liked it because it dovetails nicely with many of the things I was arguing for in my Evangelical Theology about the centrality of the gospel for theology, ethics, ministry, and life. Here’s Treat’s sub-headings: Doctrine: The Product of Faith Seeking Understanding of the Gospel Doctrine Promotes the Primacy of the Gospel Doctrine Defends the... Read more

I’m looking forward to this book coming out!   Read more

Congrats to my former PhD student Dr. David Wenkel for the publication of his thesis with Paternoster entitled, Joy in Luke-Acts: The Intersection of Rhetoric Narrative and Emotion. According to the blurb: This monograph explores the joy theme in Luke- Acts as it relates to the dynamics of rhetoric, narrative and emotion. The Gospel of Luke has been called the “gospel of joy”, and the joy theme has also been recognised in Acts. This theme, though, has received relatively little attention in... Read more

I was on a silent retreat recently and during my quiet time I read Richard B. Hays’ new book Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness.  Its just over a hundred pages and makes a wonderful weekend read. In short, Hays demonstrates that you have to understand the OT to understand the Gospels and the Gospels do illuminate the OT. It is a great work about the type of intertextuality in the four Gospels and how it is indelibly connected... Read more

Recently N.T. Wright was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sewanee University of the South. It is Wright’s 15th honorary doctorate as well. However, not everyone at Sewanee was terribly pleased about granting Wright this honour. Paul Holloway has written what can only be called a nasty and intemperate rant as to why Wright should not have been awarded such an honor. He says things about Wright like: “he is little more than a book-a-year apologist.” Yes, that Paul and the Faithfulness of God... Read more

Over at Commonweal Magazine, Luke Timothy Johnson (Emory Uni) reviews Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. Johnson is particular critical of Ehrman’s failure to engage the religious experiences of the earliest churches. According to Johnson: The greatest deficiency in Ehrman’s work is that he does not even seem aware of the language of religious experience that pervades Paul’s letters and that paradoxically provides us with the earliest historical evidence for the basis of Christian convictions. The deficiency is not his alone, to be sure. It... Read more