Archives of Reception of the Bible

Top ten deaths in the Bible

2009-11-27T21:57:00.002Z

For reasons I can't yet explain (to myself, never mind to anyone else), I'd like to compile a top ten list of deaths in the Bible. I can't offer you any useful criteria on which to grade these, but if you don't find the request too outlandish, do make any suggestion that comes to mind.

Is anyone still out there?

2009-11-08T10:33:00.001Z

This is the end!

2009-03-16T06:40:00.000Z

Great song.

Now to follow NT Wrong into the wide blue yonder...

Deadline for EABS paper offers approaching fast

2009-02-08T18:27:00.005Z

Concerning the final date of the EABS call for papers.

The following is needed by the EABS from all Seminar
chairs *by the end of February*. 

1.  names of speakers
2.  titles of papers
3.  abstracts of papers

One week to go!

Call for conference papers, EABS, Lincoln, July 26th-30th 2009

2009-02-03T20:05:00.000Z

The Biblical World and its Reception

Chair

W. John Lyons (W.J.Lyons@bristol.ac.uk)

Programme

Agenda for 2009

Following its successful first meeting in Lisbon in 2008, the seminar will be looking to organise two sessions in Lincoln 2009. The first session will consist of invited papers on the reception history of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The second session will be open - paper proposals should be submitted to the Chair - and will also include a closing discussion about the direction of the programme and possible future topics. Audience participation on the day is warmly invited, and short papers will be presented with an equivalent time provided for discussion.

Call for papers for the Bible and Music section, International SBL, Rome, Summer 2009

2008-12-19T16:59:00.003Z

Meeting Begins: 30/6/2009
Meeting Ends: 4/7/2009

Call For Papers Opens: 15/9/2008
Call For Papers Closes: 31/1/2009

Requirements to Submit a Paper Proposal

Bible and Music

This program unit will include a session of papers devoted to the Bible and Popular Music and an open session for which papers concerned with any aspect of music in relation to Biblical Studies are invited.

Program Unit Chairs

William John Lyons (w.j.lyons@bristol.ac.uk)
James Crossley (james.crossley@shef.ac.uk)

To propose a paper for this program unit, click here.

The wait is nearly over.... Or is it?

2008-11-17T20:25:00.003Z

Roland announces the nearly end of the first Quest for NT Wrong.

Much has been learned, some of it useful, most of it complete rubbish. Technology has proved less than conclusive, though no DNA has yet been tested and Roland has so far refused to let Her Majesty's GCHQ get involved.

All the speculation about the fullness of Wrong's humanity seems strangely familiar as does his tendency to appear all over the globe to diverse audiences, all of whom are beginning to develop their own mythologies about the good Bishop.

The use of logical arguments has been pretty flawless so far, but that surely can't last as we enter the final quarter of the game.... Oh sorry, went off topic there for a mo....bloody Crossley and his games.

And then we have the curse of NT Wrong. His name cannot be revealed because the death of the revealer will swiftly follow (Go on, Jim, tell us - you know you want to - it is a price I am willing for you to pay :)

Lyons, cunning type that he is, has laid a trap (but for whom?). Wrong has even more cunningly sprung said trap and now Lyons will be crushed by hoards of Wrong questers as he desperately tries to say one or two things about Johnny Cash in Boston. Or not. :)

Well, all very exciting and lots of material for the Second Quest which will begin when Lyons scrapes himself of the floor in Boston at precisely 6.28pm EST on Sunday 23rd November 2008 (Got to get your dates right for posterity, don't you know), and Chessie is left holding (and covetting big time) a single glass slipper, in which there is a single purple sock. With holes in it. And DNA.

Happy hunting, everybody!

Aaargh! I've Been Memed 2

2008-11-13T23:16:00.003Z

Roland Boer over at Stalin's Moustache has 'memed' me. Have never done this before, so let's see what is involved.

1. Link to the person who tagged you. DONE!
2. Post the rules on your blog. DONE!
3. Write six random things about yourself. MMM!
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them. MIGHT MANAGE THAT!
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog. SCREW THAT - LET THEM DO THEIR OWN BLOODY RESEARCH!
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. JEEZ, THIS IS COMPLICATED!

OH AND TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK! Done. Phew.

Six random things:

1. My life was irrevocably altered by the 1981 Monaco Grand Prix.

2. I spent five years working as a photographer.

3. I have flown out to a North Sea oil rig in a helicopter while wearing - and looking good in - a rubber suit.

4. I drive a gas guzzling giant of a motor - and I won't apologise for loving it.

5. I often find the people I work with far more interesting than the work itself.

6. I have contemplated my (uninsured) library being burned up - and I don't think I'd miss it at all.

Six people to tag: Okay, James Crossley, Sean Winter, Simon Woodman, Jim Davila, NT Wrong, and Pat McCullough. It is all Roland's fault, guys. Sorry.

OFFICIAL NOTICE FROM THE OFFICE OF BISHOP N.T. WRONG

2008-11-13T05:39:00.001Z

OFFICIAL NOTICE FROM THE OFFICE OF BISHOP N.T. WRONG

I am thrilled to announce my presence (Deo Volente) at W. John Lyons' SBL paper, 'The Apocalypse of John and Its (Many, Modern) Mediators: John of Patmos's Apocalypse, Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around", Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and the Videographers of YouTube'.

I look forward eagerly to what should be one of the most exciting and stimulating presentations at SBL. Due to baggage restrictions, I will be attending in mufti rather than in the full regalia of My Kingdom of Dirt.

I note that I may have to slip in late to the session from SBL24-108 -- but in plenty of time for W. John Lyons' paper.

SBL paper online

2008-11-12T05:58:00.005Z

One of my two SBL papers is now available on-line (Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan [Like 10.25-37]). This paper is at 4pm on Sunday, 23rd, and is the first paper in one of the Contextual Biblical Interpretation sessions (SBL 23-118). I guess it won't be online for long, and I won't be putting it online myself later, but any comments gratefully received.

The other has to be seen, I'm afraid (The Apocalypse and Its (Many, Modern) Mediators: John's Revelation, Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and the Videographers of YouTube). There are only 2400 words in it, but you also get 4 minutes of a Zombie film and then four YouTube videos, playing simultaneously and all soundtracked with Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around". Always assuming the technology works, of course! :).

This is the last paper in the late afternoon session of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media seminar on Monday, 24th Nov (SBL 24-105), and so will have as its audience - who knows. It follows two papers on Ruth and two on Job (so there could be a mass exodus at the start). Many also go home on Monday night. Others will be getting ready for a night of carousing at the receptions, a last night blowout. So, Bishop Wrong, to boost my audience, you really should announce that you are going to be present, everyone will come, and in the ensuing melee, your identity will remain unknown. In fact why don't I just announce your presence for you! Hey, everybody.... :)

Top 50 bid

2008-11-01T11:49:00.001Z

Will blogging more get me higher up the list? :)

William John Lyons

2008-11-01T11:37:00.003Z

I knew this would catch up with me one day.

Like an idiot I published a couple of things early on as John Lyons. They were on Charismatic Hermeneutics, a former interest of mine. (Sorry NT, I am probably back sliding out of 'liberal' even as I write and you read, but they are on my CV and available from my university webpage to those poor souls trapped, sorry, involved in that form of Christianity so you can't say I have been hiding my past.) But when I cottoned onto the significance of publications for, say, getting a job, I started using my Sunday name, "William John Lyons". Simple fact is I have never used William and wouldn't respond if anyone ever did use it to address me. So I don't tend to use William J because that seems totally disconnected from me. Formally it is William John, informally, John.

But now you are all so bored that you don't care any more. Good, neither do I :)

John

Addendum on comments

2008-11-01T11:07:00.003Z

I find in my filter - put there, I assure you, just to stop spam - a comment like the following posted by Mike at evepheso.

"I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed in finding your blog. I was really hoping you were John Lyons the linguist - or are you?"

How should I respond? Should I

(a) think it is a joke (poorly signposted perhaps), chuckle a bit, publish it, and respond in a - hopefully - jocular fashion?
(b) feel slighted and sulk?
(c) [take the Jim West option] feel really slighted, ban him for life, and [okay, not quite the Jim West option] tell him to fuck off?

Or

(d) get all literal and think I have better things to do with my time than deal with someone who is supposely into linguistics but doesn't know anything about the real John Lyons, perhaps the greatest name connected with Semantics in the known universe. Would John Lyons really waste his time biblioblogging?

Or

(e) Just give up blogging?

Just asking... :)

John

PS the use of the swear word above is very unusual for me (on-line anyway :). Personally I blame Roland Boer's deeply satisfying question to a commenter on his blog as to whether "a really good crap" equates to a 'deep sense of experience". It is all going down the toilet, I am afraid.

Who read biblioblogs?

2008-11-01T10:36:00.002Z

A number of things make me wonder about who the audience for biblioblogs is:

1) NT Wrong's recent attempt to measure popularity and the potential for cross-referencing this to find out just how conservative our audience is (or their audience because no-one reads this blog anyway :), here, here, and here.

2) Some of the very long - and often off topic - responses to, e.g., James Crossley's posts.

3) Roland Boer's recent and fleeting musing on whether he should filter wayward comments on his blog.

4) I also seem to recall Jim West blocking the odd person :)

Some folk obviously have their pet peeves and can be expected to bend every comment made so that it is about their topic. But others do want to interact more seriously. But then a number of people also keep referring to the limited number specific blogs they actually read, and Wrong's numbers show why this almost has to be the case. So just how are these chosen - accidentally, organically, or ideologically?

What I am wondering is this. Are there many liberals out there reading liberal blogs and the same for conservative? Or are people in these camps mainly reading blogs with opposing viewpoints? Or are people reading a bit of everything? Is biblioblogging - both in terms of bloggers and audence - dominated by those with a conservative or extreme mind-set (and here that means something like Wrong's categories)?

(The nice thing about blogging is I haven't got a cat in hell's chance of working that out, but I can always toss the question out into the ether.)

One final question, do we actually like each other very much? Is there anyone you wouldn't want to meet up at SBL with? Or do you feel that asking that question is just wrong-headed?

Love to all,

John

Now, should I filter any comments....?

What kind of blogger are you?

2008-10-29T06:13:00.002Z

In an inspired burst of pedantic and nerdish endeavour, Bishop Wrong has done us all a great service and rated all (or most) biblioblogs on a scale between "very conservative" and "very liberal". His methodology does require some thought, I reckon, but even so, there is a very clear predominance of the extremes and particularly of the very conservative. So the question is, why is this?

Oh and I come out as liberal.

Is Ulrich Zwingli alive and well and living in Croydon?

2008-10-29T06:09:00.004Z

I was reading an article about people who hate James Bond and came across this in the comments.

"Isn't the underlying silliness the key to it all? With that it portrays a day beyond our gritty ordinary lives, full of mortgages and the school run, showing us glamour, adventure, and escapism that otherwise we wouldn't have. Inherently it all has to be about entertainment, and let's face it, for all cinema verite is great, there are times when I want James Bond much more than "I am curious (yellow)". If the author is looking for a sombre, serious James Bond who is a true mirror of society then they're welcome to it."
Ulrich Zwingli, Croydon, UK

Now if Jim can tell us if the ideology and tone of this matches that of the original, we might have a real resurrection story to tell here! :)

'Bible in Art, Music and Literature series, Centre for the Reception History of the Bible, Oxford

2008-10-15T10:41:00.000Z

The Bible in Art, Music and Literature

Michaelmas Term 2008

** Important notice regarding change of venue ** The seminars will take place at Queen's this term, in Lecture Room (Back Quad 3). Please ask at the Porters Lodge for directions on how to reach the room.

Week 2 (20 Oct): Dr Cathy Oakes (University of Oxford) ‘Secreta Mea Mihi’: Some Late 16th-Century New Testament Allegorical Wall-Paintings formerly in the Old Deanery, Bristol

Week 4 (3 Nov): Dr John Walliss (Liverpool Hope University) Visions of the End: The Contours of Contemporary Evangelical Christian Rapture Films)

Week 6 (17 Nov): Dr Bernadette Nelson(Universidade Nova, Lisbon) The Word Made Flesh: Mary, Christ and Symbolism in the Sacred Music of Cristobal de Morales

Week 8 (1 Dec): Dr Hester Jones (University of Bristol) ‘Deep Calls to Deep’: David Jones and the Book of Psalms

Mondays: 5pm
Lecture Room (Back Quad 3), The Queen’s College

Convenors: Prof Chris Rowland (Queen’s) Dr Christine Joynes (Trinity)

ALL WELCOME. Refreshments provided.

Images of Lisbon

2008-10-04T08:23:00.008Z

Images of Oslo

2008-10-04T07:56:00.009Z

I went to Oslo in February. I did put one picture on-line at the time, but here are a few more from one of Oslo's parks, the Gustav Vigeland Sculpture park. Apparently, there are 192 of these, with more than 600 figures. Amazing.

Ten commandments of blogging...?

2008-09-26T16:36:00.003Z

Ruth Gledhill notes on her blog that the Evangelical Alliance is about to publish the Ten Commandments of Blogging. They are apparently the work of the EA's church mission director Krish Kandiah:

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity.
2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.
3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.
5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.
6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.
7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.
8. You shall not steal another person’s content.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.
10.You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content.

Given my last post, I am obviously delighted to see no. 8!!

But I think a bit more humour might also have been appropriate too. Is blogging really meant to be this negative? Not to mention, this dull, serious, and honourable? Hope not :)

Just depressing...

2008-09-25T05:31:00.003Z

How depressing is it when you put your published essays on-line hoping to get Google to pick them up in searches only to find that they then begin to appear on links to essay writing web-sites! Still, if any of my students try to use them like that there is a reasonably good chance I might just recognise my own work.... :)

Thinking about the difficulties of tracing the impact of the Bible on events and ideas is one thing that occupies me professionally. But I can't help wondering if some of our current problems with plagiarism have something to do with Harry Potter. That boy may have been the chosen one, but he and his witless mate, Ron 'can I copy your work' Weasley, should have been chucked out of school for cheating on their assignments long before book 7 began. At one point, if I remember rightly, J K Rowling has anti-plagiarism quills for exams, but that is not when you need them. You need them when Hermione is handing over her latest script to her cheating mates. What role models!!

Other than that I quite enjoyed the Potter books....

Essays on-line updated

2008-09-23T17:18:00.000Z

A number of my essays and articles are now available on-line through my University web-page.

New Testament

'The Hermeneutics of Fictional Black and Factual Red: The Markan Simon of Cyrene and the Quest for the Historical Jesus', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 4.2, (2006) 139-54.

'On the Life and Death of Joseph of Arimathea', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2 (2004), 29-53.

'The Words of Gamaliel (Acts 5:38-9) and the Irony of Indeterminacy,' JSNT 68 (1997) 23-49.

Old Testament

" 'Outing' Qoheleth: On the Search for Homosexuality in the Wisdom Tradition", Theology and Sexuality, 12.2, (2006) 181-202.

‘A Man of Honour, A Man of Strength, A Man of Will? A Canonical Approach to Psalm 137’, Didaskalia 16, (2005) 41-68.

Reception History

'When is a Jew Not a Jew? Adventures of a 1st Century Pharisee in 4th Century Antioch and Constantinople', in M-L Luxemburg (ed.), Proceedings of the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, Vol. 10 (September 2005-August 2006) (Bath: Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, 2007).

Charismatic Hermeneutics

'The Gamaliel Principle,' in The Mark of the Spirit' A Charismatic Critique of the Toronto Blessing (ed. L.K Pietersen; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), 92-121.

'The Fourth Wave and the Approaching Millennium: Some Problems with Charismatic Hermeneutics,' Anvil 15 (1998) 169-80.

A response to the Toronto Blessing that is just as valid today because charismatic Christians learn exceptionally slowly (if at all)

2008-09-22T21:51:00.004Z

I've put a couple more published essays on-line from the days when I cared about charismatic Christianity enough to argue about it.

'The Gamaliel Principle,' in The Mark of the Spirit' A Charismatic Critique of the Toronto Blessing (ed. L.K Pietersen; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1998), 92-121.

'The Fourth Wave and the Approaching Millennium: Some Problems with Charismatic Hermeneutics,' Anvil 15 (1998) 169-80.

Sadly they are still applicable today because it seems that no one in that tradition has learned anything over the last ten years. Pity.

My last word on the subject - ever.

A nice review of our New Directions in Qumran Studies volume

2008-08-29T12:10:00.003Z

I came across a very nice review by Maxine L. Grossman in DSD of a 2005 volume entitled New Directions in Qumran Studies, that I co-edited with Jonathan Campbell and Lloyd Pietersen.

'The introduction of new methods or approaches to the study of ancient texts brings with it two basic challenges. First, does the approach help the researcher to make observations or draw conclusions that would have been otherwise inaccessible? And, second, does the use of the approach spark readers to new insights and new lines of research of their own?

Happily, this collection of proceedings from a recent conference at the University of Bristol provides some positive answers to both of these questions. The volume combines state-of-the-field articles on more-familiar scholarly approaches with explorations of methods and theories from further afield. Its ten chapters incorporate such diverse approaches as sociology (of sectarianism, deviance, and asceticism), literary and ideological criticisms, narratology, post-colonial theory, and theories of constructions of space. In his introduction to the volume, Campbell describes its purpose as a modest one, of focusing “attention on what some of the alternative approaches might offer the world of Qumran scholarship . . . thereby beginning the process of advancing Qumran Studies in exciting new directions” (4). Without attempting to be “programmatic or prescriptive” (8), the volume offers possibilities for new, often eclectic, approaches to scrolls scholarship....'

And her last paragraph.

'Campbell notes in his introduction that this volume represents the sort of work that can be done in the next stage of scrolls scholarship. While not every article will appeal to every reader, the volume as a whole succeeds admirably in this goal, both as an example of such new work and as a springboard for the sort of work we can hope to find in the future.'

The rest of the review is available by subscription only.

'An article I never thought I’d see...'

2008-08-29T11:36:00.004Z

In a review of the most recent JSHJ, Chris Weimer (at least I think it is Chris Weimer) begins his discussion of my article on the prophet-hometown saying with the following words.

'An article I never thought I’d see is William John Lyons’ “A Prophet is Rejected in His Home Town (Mark 6.4 and Parallels): A Study in the Methodological (In)Consistency of the Jesus Seminar.” Therein he argues that the Jesus Seminar was wrong, and that the pericope should have stayed black.'

I am not sure exactly what he means by that, but then I always like to be surprising in some way shape or form. Perhaps the thinking behind the essay might be clearer if you know that it was originally written for Philip Davies - a methodologically interested, yet very playful scholar - and intended for his ill-fated Festschrift. Maybe not :)

Essays online

2008-08-26T21:38:00.001Z

A number of my essays and articles are now available on-line through my University web-page.

New Testament

'The Hermeneutics of Fictional Black and Factual Red: The Markan Simon of Cyrene and the Quest for the Historical Jesus', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 4.2, (2006) 139-54.

'On the Life and Death of Joseph of Arimathea', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2 (2004), 29-53.

'The Words of Gamaliel (Acts 5:38-9) and the Irony of Indeterminacy,' JSNT 68 (1997) 23-49.

Old Testament

" 'Outing' Qoheleth: On the Search for Homosexuality in the Wisdom Tradition", Theology and Sexuality, 12.2, (2006) 181-202.

‘A Man of Honour, A Man of Strength, A Man of Will? A Canonical Approach to Psalm 137’, Didaskalia 16, (2005) 41-68.

EABS and Reception History

2008-08-08T06:50:00.006Z

James has already posted a report on the Reception of the Biblical World session in Lisbon. I have to agree with him about Lisbon being a great city, though I suspect I saw a much more sedate and touristy version than he did. Strange then that EABS didn't have an empty session partway through for people to schedule a trip out. The end result seemed to be that people just took off at anytime, and you could not rely on anyone being there at a given time. The distance of the Faculty from the conference hotels meant you couldn't just pop in and see who was around (something I will definitely consider in future decisions about attending these conferences). I also understand (because I didn't go, of course) that one or two later sessions also moved papers around when speakers didn't turn up, which adds to the sense of a conference not quite comfortable with itself. I hope EABS will manage to sort this out because the three and a half hour slots are brilliant (though my timekeeping was pretty poor), much better than the SBL format, and the lack of dominant text based themes makes the possibilities much more exciting than the BNTC's depressing reliance on text seminars (yet another added this year on the Catholic Epistles!). The sooner the BNTC abandons these, the better!

Anyhow, enough whining.

The session on Reception history took place on Monday morning and was both great fun (very important) and full of academic interest (also important, but slightly less so :)

Emma England's paper on the retelling of the Noah story in children's stories analysed the ways in which the stories characters were represented as the tale was being re-told. Very striking was the freedom that these authors felt to refocus and alter the tale to achieve their own ends, whether moral or literary. One suspects that if asked about this, they would feel none of the guilt that many other bible readers would feel if caught out doing the same thing.

My paper was... well, my paper. I got away with arguing that Cash wrote a better apocalypse that John of Patmos, I think. Of course, I had loaded the dice somewhat, but, hey, it was my paper and hence my prerogative. I also felt a certain weight lifting from my shoulders. When I first started out writing about Cash, I took his own words about his puzzlement too literally and saw him as a poor exegete. But scrap the term exegete - as I wish we all would - and in fact his song is a great apocalypse, written by an inspired interpreter of the biblical texts. It was also good to get Depeche Mode's "John the Revelator" in there. Why bother critiquing Revelation when they did such a good job of it!

James Crossley's paper on the Manchester music scene was an inspired tour through the changing musical tasts of the late 70's thru early 90s. The use of biblical materials was spectacularly broad, but very noticably different as you went through Joy Division, The Fall, The Stone Roses and The Smiths. As James went on to show, so much related to the social setting of the music scene of each of the segments of the period, with each one's drugs of choice and differing takes on Manchester as either dull and dreary or as Madchester. There was so much there, and clearly James was enjoying himself hugely.

Whereas James and myself had kept biblical materials light or late on, Mark Blackwell started his paper with the Genesis 19 narrative of Lot in Sodom before going on to The Grateful Dead's song "Gomorrah". An excellent analysis of the song and its setting against the background of gay activism in the San Francisco of the late 70s ended the paper. Call me a bit hardcore, but I found the readings of the song with its "don't look back" motif against 70's San Francisco really intriguing and wanted more of that rather than the traditional readings that Mark started with. But that is the thing with presenting in a session - sometimes it is not just about your paper but also about the order in which they come. In Boston, the Cash Youttube paper follows two papers on Ruth and two on Job, before the Apocalypse and the Zombies hit town. Not a clue how to handle that yet .

James has written quite a bit about Reception History recently, here, here, and here, and I just haven't had the time to respond. We had a good chat about this with others on Monday lunchtime and it is clear that there are different views on what all this means. For some, the discipline will continue as it is, with the withholding of jobs being the primary means of restricting Reception History. For others, the discipline is on the verge of collapse as its narrow concerns become less convincing to those who fund our departments. I guess I am somewhere between the two. I think jobs remain an issue, and I think it wise for someone working in Reception History to try to write a traditional piece if they can easily do so (just to prove they can teach NT 101). But the truth of the matter is that there is no real difference between Historical Criticism and Reception History in terms of method - in fact, what else is the synoptic problem but a study in Reception History, or Schweitzer's Quest or Sanders' Paul? Anyone well trained in the skills needed for the latter, can do the former (if they have the language skills). They won't be a Neutestamentler in some people's eyes, but that breed is losing ground anyway. The fact is that New Testament studies is a narrow over-studied field (as anyone who strays into Patristics can tell you) which offers little in the way of exciting PhD topics for students. (Other will no doubt disagree, but then some people can get excited about anything - I certainly have in the past :) In the near twenty years that I have been doing this, Sheffield has had a significant influence on things, and its former students are placed at a number of institutions now. Some are very traditional, but others are not. Glasgow and Bristol, with certain folk in Oxford mean that more opportunities are available now than then and this can only continue, I think.

Perhaps the biggest change coming is that Reception History is going to lose any sense of embarrassment about itself. Unlike James, I don't think that Reception History and Historical Criticism will peacefully co-exist because they have different interests. I think that the former is going to 'colonise' (and I use that word advisedly) the current discipline of New Testament Studies and effectively make it a sub-set of Reception History regardless of its protestations. This is the obvious outcome of the ideological criticism of current scholarship and its social location. It is really all about naming the old discipline correctly. What is currently thought of as OT or NT Studies is really an imaginative game played by scholars and it is those people and their interests and ideas that are an irreducible part of what Reception History will one day call the 'Historical Critical method'. Personally I am looking forward to it :)

BNTC paper, Durham

2008-07-22T11:46:00.001Z

I'd forgot about this abstract but it is now up on the BNTC website as the first paper in the Use and Influence seminar. Many of the seminar sessions are now on-line, so why not have a look.

John Lyons (University of Bristol)

'What is Reception History and How Should it Affect Biblical Studies in the Academy?'

In this paper an attempt is made to discuss two prominent, but supposedly separate, modes of discourse within Biblical scholarship — ‘Historical Criticism’ and ‘Reception History’ – and to examine the exact nature of their inter-relatedness. The former finds the meaning of these texts in a virtual encounter with an imaginary audience constructed by the scholar/theorist (i.e. the ‘what they meant’ to the kind of audiences envisaged by much of current historical criticism) whereas the latter sees the meaning of these texts in a visible encounter with a real audience (i.e. the “what they have meant” to the specific individuals and groups whose recorded responses form the core subject of much of the history of exegesis). Historical critical approaches will be illustrated here by the account of the person and actions of Joseph of Arimathea in Mark’s Gospel and its meaning for the otherwise unknown audience constructed by historical critical scholars. Reception History will be illustrated by the actual response to the Markan account of Joseph preserved in the Gospel of Matthew. The paper will go on to argue, however, that the role of the scholar/theorist in the construction of the imaginary audiences of the historical critics inevitably means that such methods can only be understood as a specific sub-set of ‘Reception History’, one in which the real response of the contemporary critic is enfolded within and re-categorised as the imagined response of the original audience(s). The paper concludes by discussing how an acceptance of this re-description of our discipline might affect the kinds of academic activities associated with Biblical Studies, here primarily the teaching of that subject to undergraduates.

Title for Lisbon paper

2008-07-21T08:50:00.001Z

I haven't had the mental energy to do anything but comment on other blogs recent. The Lisbon piece is one reason why. Here is my current title for it.

A Comparative Study of Two ‘Apocalypses’ and Their Chains of Tradition, or Why Johnny Cash Wrote a Better Apocalypse than John of Patmos!

But I have four days of writing time left, so who knows what it will end up as. :)

Michelle Krejci's paper fom the Bible and Justice Conference

2008-06-18T21:09:00.002Z

New on the SBL forum is a shorter version of Michelle Krejci's intriguing Bible and Justice conference paper, 'An Atheist's Dilemma: Should We Bend the Bible for Justice?'

Bible bending, anyone?

Letter to UCU from Anthony Julius On UCU Boycott Motion

2008-06-04T09:31:00.002Z

The following letter to Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the UCU, was circulated by e-mail by the Scholars For Peace in the Middle East group.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The following letter was sent to Sally Hunt, General Secretary of the UCU from attorney Anthony Julius representing various members of the UCU on June 3, 2008.

Sally Hunt
General Secretary UCU
Egmont House
25-31 Tavistock Place
London
WC1H 9UT
United Kingdom

3 June 2008

BY EMAIL AND POST: SHUNT@UCU.ORG.UK

Dear Ms Hunt

Motion 25

I act for certain groups of UCU members adversely affected in one or more ways by the passing of Motion 25, in respect of which they reserve their legal rights. The purpose of this letter, however, is not to threaten legal proceedings. Such a letter, couched in more formal terms than the present one, may follow in due course. My clients’ object here is to set out their concerns, in the hope that these concerns will be addressed when the NEC next meets.

Preliminary

On Wednesday 28 May 2008. UCU Congress passed Motion 25. Following a skewed and partial account of one aspect of the Israel - Palestinian conflict, and an affirmation that "criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are [sic] not, as such, antisemitic," it resolved upon a course of boycott initiatives.

Prior to the vote, you announced, "the union will defend their right to debate this and other issues Implementation of the motion within the law will now fall to the national executive committee." I understand that the NEC is meeting shortly for this purpose.

My clients consider Motion 25 to be both a "boycott motion" and anti-Semitic.

Motion 25 is a boycott Motion

That the motion cowers in the shadow of an (unpublished) legal opinion regarding the illegality of last year’s boycott motions does not mean it is not itself a boycott motion. It is merely a craven version of a boycott motion.

The invitation to "colleagues... to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions," the commitment to distribute material intended to promote "discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions," and the resolution to "investigate [Arid College] under the formal Greylisting Procedure," comprise the opening stages of a campaign of boycott. it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise.

Motion25 is anti-Semitic

Motion 25 is anti-Semitic because it is, in combination:

(i) Irrational, that is:
(a) It does not tiow from any general principle, given general application. On the contrary. It is no different in character to a motion that resolved to boycott all Jewish-owned businesses considered delinquent, but no other businesses, though similarly or more delinquent. Its promoters could not give a non-anti- Semitic answer to the question: why just those businesses?
(b) It is contrary to the equality principles that the UCU itself embraces, and which it constitutionally binds itself to promote.
(c) It is incoherent on its face. The merely "apparent complicity of most of the Israeli academy" cannot furnish the justification for any sanction by the union. What is "apparent" may not be real. in addition, the "complicity" identified by the Motion is not related to any specified vice, It is enough, it would seem, for the promoters and supporters of the Motion that Israeli academics are "apparently" complicit in some or all of the things that the Motion lists in its opening section. This should not, however, he enough for any rational or fair-minded person.

(ii) Continuous with episodes in anti-Semitisms history, that is, in
(a) Its completely false claim that attempts were made "to prevent UCU debating boycott of Israeli academic institutions," which rehearses the anti- Semitic trope that Jews endeavour to stifle free expression in pursuit of their own nefarious interests.
(b) Its stipulation that Jews ("Israeli colleagues") submit to questioning on their views as a precondition to continued collaboration with UCU members, which revives the anti-Semitic programme that what others may enjoy as of right, Jews must work for.
(c) Its conceptualising of the Israel / Palestine conflict as a melodrama (pure villain confronting pure victim), which reproduces the anti-Semitic scenario of wicked Jews preying upon defenceless and innocent gentiles.
(d) Its proposed boycott of Jews. which has been a staple of anti-Semitic programmes for at least 800 years. Indeed, the history of anti-Semitism is in substantial part the history of boycotts of Jews.

(iii) Frivolous (both intellectual/i,, and iizoralli), that is, it is
(a) Indifferent to the pain it will cause Jewish members.
(b) Indifferent to anti-Semitism, by implication treating the charge of anti-Semitism as made in bad faith.
(c) Indifferent to the anti-Semitism it will foster.
(d) Dismissive of the possibility that some "criticism" of Israel may indeed be anti-Semitic, and fails to consider whether its own proposals fall within that category.
(e) Ignorant of/indifferent to the impact of a boycott campaign on Israeli society, and/or Palestinian society and/or research projects currently being undertaken by UCU members. an society and/or research projects currently being undertaken by UCU members.

Causes of action

Of course, in the event that Motion 25 is not rescinded or otherwise treated as defunct by the NEC, litigation may well follow. The possible causes of action against the UCU and its trustees have been set out in detail in the unchallenged legal opinion obtained by Stop the Boycott (STB). and there is no need to repeat its contents here. It is, however, worth elaborating the ambit of the likely claim against the UCU for harassment under s. 3A(l) of the Race Relations Act. that is, the creating of an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and / or offensive environment for Jewish members of the union and/or violating their dignity. Such a claim would rely upon, among other matters:
(a) The conduct of the boycott debate, which (contrary to Standing Orders) was not balanced.
(b) The moderating of the on-line forum for UCU members, known as the "Activists’ List," which sanctions the open and incontinent expression of anti-Semitic opinion.
(c) The penalising of anti-boycott activists, by exclusion from the Activists’ List or by causing manifestly unfounded allegations of racism against them to proceed to formal inquiry.
(d) The failure to engage adequately or at all with concern regarding the union’s institutional anti-Semitism expressed by Jewish union members and by representative bodies of the Anglo-Jewish community.
(e) The failure to respond adequately to the Report of the Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism.
(f) The rebuffing of Gert Weisskirchen, the OSCE’s special representative on anti-Semitism.
(g) The failure to respond adequately to the steady stream of resignations by Jewish union members from the union.

Motion 25 is just the latest discreditable manifestation of the UCU’s culpable indifference towards Jewish union members, and indeed, to the many Jewish and non-Jewish members who believe that unless an academic union is committed to academic freedom and the equal treatment of academics, it is nothing.

Yours sincerely

Anthony Julius
Direct Tel: -4-44 20 7440 7025
Direct Fax: 44 207404 l7I
E-mail: anthony.julius@mishcon.com

Visit Scholars For Peace in the Middle East website http://www.spme.net

Bible and Justice Conference

2008-06-02T20:54:00.002Z

A very convivial event. Just to tease, here is another photo of Dr Crossley, this time trying to work something out (suggestions on a card, please). Can't you just feel the mental energy here? :)

Comment on Pat McCullough's blog

2008-05-11T06:57:00.003Z

In response to this.

Pat,

You put it exactly right for me. Some see a PhD in terms of its use, while perhaps giving a bit of a nod to the difficulty of it translating into a job. But for me the number of PhDs being (over-)produced means that the main reason to do a PhD these days is because you will always regret not having done one. If your heart beats faster because of (a) meeting someone like Jewett, (b) going to a conference, or (c) reading something and going, "hey, what about...", well, that's it. You are hooked and might as well sign up wherever it leads. Sorry if that sounds too hedonistic, but it is really a case of know yourself well. Of course, most candidates will also go, "I know jobs aren't easy but someone has to do them." Arrogance makes the decision to do it that bit easier :)

Best,

John

Revised Seminar, EABS, Lisbon, 3rd-7th August, 2008

2008-05-07T06:04:00.000Z

European Association of Biblical Studies, Lisbon, 3-7th August 2008

The Biblical World and its Reception

* * *

Emma England, University of Amsterdam, Holland

‘Hide and Seek with Noah’, or How to Find God in the Flood Story for Children: A Case Study in the Reception and Recreation of a Biblical Text (45 mins)

By looking at various retellings of the Flood Story (Gen.6:1-9:19) published for children I aim to demonstrate how the character of God has been appropriated to meet the apparent needs of the producers and consumers of the text. This will focus our gaze on the multiplicity of ways we choose to read and can read the character. By doing so I aim to demonstrate the significance we must place on reading children’s literature within the field of biblical studies. An analysis of the retellings reveals how God has become a less significant character than Noah, even though Noah is silent in the Genesis narrative while God makes ten direct speeches. I will present numerous texts including those where God is denied a voice and a physical appearance, where God speaks but is not described or illustrated, the illustrated God, the human belief in the absent God, as well as the total absence of God. The texts will be drawn from English publications from the religious and secular publishing trades, illustrating that in today’s Western world the Genesis Flood Story has been swallowed by the dominant cultural text that is ‘Noah’s Ark’.

William John Lyons, University of Bristol, UK

A Comparative Study of Two ‘Apocalypses’ and Their Respective Chains of Tradition, or Why Johnny Cash is a Better Exegete than John of Patmos! (35 mins)

Johnny Cash’s description of his 2002 song, The Man Comes Around (from his American IV album), as being ‘based, loosely’ on the Apocalypse of John is in fact a considerable understatement. The song quotes verbatim from that and other biblical texts, echoes a number of its most important apocalyptic motifs, and effectively moulds John of Patmos’ material into a functional, available, and culturally significant ‘mini-Apocalypse’. The formal relationship between the song and its ‘parent’ texts and Cash’s own characterisation of his role in mediating between the two are first briefly examined. The paper then analyses the ongoing impact of the book of Revelation – as mediated through the song and its first significant soundtrack outing in Zack Snyder’s zombie film, Dawn of the Dead (2004). The origin and development of this modern apocalypse and its chain of tradition is then compared with scholarly proposals about the origin, development, and reception of the ‘major apocalypse’ that is the Book of Revelation, before the paper concludes by asking—and perhaps even answering—the question of which of the two is the best exegete, John of Patmos or Johnny Cash!

* * *

Break (10 mins)

* * *

James Crossley, University of Sheffield, UK

Black Monks or Hip Priests? Using Biblical and Religious Language in the Manchester Alternative Music Scene, 1977-1994 (40 mins)

The city of Manchester between the late 1970s and the early 1990s is frequently regarded as a major UK centre for alternative music, boasting bands such as The Fall, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, 808 State, Happy Mondays, and Stone Roses, the record label Factory Records, charismatic figures such as Tony Wilson, a major club in The Hacienda, and prominent figures in influential music scenes such as post-punk and acid/rave. While there is increasing intellectual attention paid to this place and period in the history of popular music, it is rarely noted that there was a constant and creative use of the Bible, biblical texts, and religious imagery throughout. Moreover, this use of Bible and religion is notably different between the late 1970s and early 1990s, from being used in the name of dark introspection, cynical observation, nihilism and pessimism to being used in the name of self-congratulation, self-importance and (largely misguided) optimism. This paper will look at the different and diverse reasons for this stark shift by looking at, for instance, the dominant personalities, musical experimentation and trends, changes in drug use, the influence of Thatcherism, the increasing lure of mainstream popular culture, and the changing cityscape of Manchester.

* * *

J. Mark Blackwell, Francis Marion University, USA

A Tale of Two Cities, a Tale of Two Lots: Robert Hunter, The Grateful Dead, and a Song of “Gomorrah” (40 mins)

From 1965-1995, the legendary Grateful Dead were a San Francisco-based band and support community who became known and remembered for their unique musical approaches. They fused root elements of bluegrass, folk, gospel, Negro spirituals, rock and roll, blues, jazz, and country and western into their sound. Of course, the Grateful Dead were most famous for their live performances that featured long instrumental improvisations, and this feature has resulted in them being dubbed “the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world”. Guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter collaborated to produce the majority of songs in the Grateful Dead catalogue, as well as music for its spin-off groups, which include the Jerry Garcia Band. Hunter’s lyrics frequently turn upon biblical phrases and imagery, and the Bible influences his writing more than any other religious instrument or heritage. “Gomorrah” first appeared on the Jerry Garcia Band three-year album project “Cats Under the Stars” (1978) as a re-telling of the Gen. Ch. 19 narrative. Blair Jackson, in his 1999 biography Garcia: An American Life, describes the song as “a Sunday school parable (with a dash of irony delivered by the Reverend Garcia).” This paper will investigate Hunter’s reading of the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative by (a) briefly reviewing the general arguments about Lot from interpretation histories on Gen. Ch. 19 and 2 Pet. Ch. 2, (b) considering a place for “Gomorrah” in that history and (c) examining the cultural scenes and social influences surrounding San Francisco’s sexual revolution in the mid-1970s. The conclusion will comment on irony in Hunter’s “Gomorrah” and suggest how his reading addresses the figure of Lot in broader cultural discussions.

* * *

Discussion of music papers (10 mins)

Web page for the Baptist Hermeneutics Colloquium

2008-04-25T08:17:00.001Z

There is now a web page for the Baptist Hermeneutics Colloquium. More speakers are listed and there are proposed paper titles for a number of them. Shaping up to be a very interesting event, I reckon.

The Bible in Art, Music and Literature Seminar Series, Centre for the Reception History of the Bible, University of Oxford

2008-04-21T21:17:00.003Z

The Bible in Art, Music and Literature Seminar Series

Trinity Term 2008

Week 2 (28 April): Prof John Sawyer (Professor Emeritus,
University of Lancaster),The Use of Hebrew in Renaissance Art.

Week 4 (12 May): Dr Louise Lawrence (University of Exeter),
"Crumb Trails and Puppy-Dog Tales": Some Afterlives of the
Canaanite Woman('Biblical Women and their Afterlives' series,
funded by the AHRC).

Week 6 (26 May): Dr Mary Charles-Murray (University of Oxford,
Representations of Biblical Women in Christian Art ('Biblical
Women and their Afterlives' series, funded by the AHRC) 

Week 8 (9 June): Dr Zoe Bennett (Anglia Ruskin University
and The Cambridge Theological Federation), John Ruskin's
Paradise Lost: Ruskin, the Bible and the Death of Rose de la
Touche

Mondays: 5pm

The Danson Room, Trinity College

Convenors: Prof Chris Rowland (Queen's) Dr Christine Joynes
(Trinity)

ALL WELCOME. Refreshments provided.

Colloquium on Baptist Hermeneutics, January 2009

2008-04-07T21:26:00.003Z

Sean Winter gives notice of an excellent development in the study of Baptist Hermeneutics, a Colloquium co-organised by Simon Woodman and Helen Reynolds.

The ‘plainly revealed’ Word of God? Baptist Hermeneutics in theory and practice.

Baptists have always been proud to declare their reliance on scripture. However in the light of the plethora of internationally renowned twentieth century British Baptist biblical scholars, there is surprising absence of overt reflection on the practice of Baptist hermeneutics. This colloquium will therefore provide an opportunity to explore the theory and practice of Baptist hermeneutics, consisting primarily of contributions from current British Baptist scholars, enhanced by insights from international participants. It is anticipated that an edited volume will arise from the colloquium, exploring both the distinctives of a Baptist approach to scripture, and the application of this approach to specific texts."

The list of currently confirmed participants, in addition to Woodman and Reynolds, is:

Paul Fiddes (Regent’s Park College, Oxford)

Sean Winter (Northern Baptist College, Manchester)

Simon Perry (Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, London)

Mikeal Parsons (Baylor University)

Bill Bellinger (Baylor University)

Alan Culpepper (Mercer University)

Brian Brock (Aberdeen University) - Who will write a response chapter in the published volume

The proposed date for the colloquium is Tuesday 20th - Thursday 22nd January 2009.

My essays on-line

2008-04-07T21:15:00.002Z

I have wanted to do this for ages. A number of my essays and articles are now available on-line through my University web-page.

New Testament

'The Hermeneutics of Fictional Black and Factual Red: The Markan Simon of Cyrene and the Quest for the Historical Jesus', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 4.2, (2006) 139-54.

'On the Life and Death of Joseph of Arimathea', Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 2 (2004), 29-53.

'The Words of Gamaliel (Acts 5:38-9) and the Irony of Indeterminacy,' JSNT 68 (1997) 23-49.

Old Testament

" 'Outing' Qoheleth: On the Search for Homosexuality in the Wisdom Tradition", Theology and Sexuality, 12.2, (2006) 181-202.

‘A Man of Honour, A Man of Strength, A Man of Will? A Canonical Approach to Psalm 137’, Didaskalia 16, (2005) 41-68.

EABS seminar, Lisbon, 3-7th August 2008

2008-04-07T09:42:00.004Z

European Association of Biblical Studies, Lisbon, 3-7th August 2008

The Biblical World and its Reception

The Bible in the 19th Century: The Word and Its Re-wordings in British Literature and Thought (Eds. Frédéric Slaby & Élise Ouvrard)

2008-04-03T15:08:00.006Z

A link sent to me recently by Frederic Slaby (of the University of Caen, France) to the latest issue of the LISA e-journal. Here are the contents of the issue, some of which look very intriguing indeed and all of which are freely available.

THE BIBLE IN THE 19th CENTURY: THE WORD AND ITS RE-WORDINGS IN BRITISH LITERATURE AND THOUGHT (Eds. Frédéric Slaby & Élise Ouvrard)

INTRODUCTION
FREDERIC SLABY 1-10

HISTORY OF IDEAS
Overview of a Controversy: The Scriptures and 19th-Century Biblical
Criticism in Great Britain
FREDERIC SLABY 11-42

S. T. Coleridge, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (1840): Its Place
in the History of Biblical Criticism
DAVID JASPER 43-54

Newman and the Bible
PAUL VAISS 55-84

Trollope, Liberalism and Scripture
HERVE PICTON 85-102

Thomas Henry Huxley and the Bible
CHRISTOPHE DUVEY 103-121

LITERATURE

Hirelings and Laborers: Biblical Parable in Blake’s Milton
LESLIE TANNENBAUM 122-132

The Bible and Literary Inspiration in T. De Quincey’s Suspiria
de Profundis
FREDERIC SLABY 133-153

For the Letter Killeth, but the Spirit Giveth Life: Elizabeth
Gaskell’s Rewriting of the Gospels
BENJAMINE TOUSSAINT-THIRIET 154-169

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and the Power of the Letter
STEPHANIE BERNARD 170-181

Myth and Biblical Imagery in De Profundis
IGNACIO RAMOS GAY 182-205

Getting to Grips with the Gospels: Interpretation and elaboration
in Marie Corelli’s Barabbas (1893)
LIZZIE WHITE 206-219

Kipling’s ‘Anglo-Indian’ Bible
ROBERTA BALDI 220-239

New Job in Bristol

2008-04-02T11:13:00.001Z

Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies (ref. 13860)
Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Based in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, you will become an active participant in the Department's Centre for Christianity and Culture. The Department of Theology and Religious Studies seeks to build on its standing in Christian and Jewish studies. Preference may be given to those working within Biblical reception, Jewish history, or/and Reformation theology. You should have an excellent publication record and you will be expected to teach at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Grade: Level b in Pathway 1
Salary: £31,840-£35,858

Contact for informal enquiries:
Dr C A Muessig C.A.Muessig@bristol.ac.uk Tel. 0117 9287763

Timescale of appointment :
Contract: Permanent

Anticipated interview date: 02 June 2008
Anticipated start date: 01 August 2008

Closing date for applications: 9.00 am on 24 April 2008

Further information: http://www.bris.ac.uk/boris/jobs/ads?ID=72130

Second SBL paper

2008-03-27T14:26:00.002Z

I always thought folks were mad when they did two SBL papers, but here goes.

Accepted for a Contextual Biblical Interpretation session in Boston.

‘Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37)’: A Study of Shifting Meaning in a (Published) Sermon

William John Lyons
University of Bristol

A comparatively little studied phenomenon is the shift in biblical meaning produced when a sermon designed for oral delivery in a Christian communal setting is published in an edited volume designed for a different purpose. The Bible has—hopefully—been successfully inculturated for an audience in a certain time and place, but its subsequent usage, and especially its reproduction in print, potentially shifts that cultural tone into a somewhat different key.

The sermon considered here was delivered in Sheffield in 1992 by Professor John Rogerson of Sheffield University. Its text, set by the Anglican lectionary, was the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37) and its setting was the ‘First Celebration of Holy Communion’ of the newly ordained vicar of the Nine O’clock Service (NOS), Chris Brain. The sermon’s discussion of the need for the divine risk-taking as exemplified in the Scriptures to be echoed by human risk-taking in the present was originally heard in the context of a fast approaching move into a long awaited mission-field. It took on a different meaning, however, following the contextual shift brought about by the collapse of NOS in a public sexual scandal in 1995.

Although it could have been presented as prescient, the decision to publish the sermon in 2002 did not revolve around an attempt to claim foreknowledge. Rather it was the abrupt closure of NOS by local Church authorities that provided a third context—the deafening silence now reigning over its mission-field, the club culture of Sheffield—in which the published sermon could now effectively function as the protest of one still angry individual, a protest aimed at those Church leaders who refused to echo the divine risk-taking so prominent in the sermon and who by their risk-averse behaviour effectively destroyed a Church already badly damaged by internal abuse.

This paper will need to be available before the conference so at least I won't be trying to write two papers at the last minute :)

Another world!

2008-03-24T19:23:00.003Z

Once again Jim West appears to demonstrate conclusively that he lives in a very different world to me. In my world, it is simply not possible to delete one's opponents (though I'll grant that some academics do give a very different impression of their powers!). As Chris Heard himself points out, in reality Jim's powers are really rather limited. Jim, do us all a favour. Keep up the tirades. And when folks respond and disagree with you, don't sulk. Dish up some more!

Paper title for Lisbon

2008-03-20T00:00:00.002Z

I am thinking of my paper title for the 'Biblical World and Its Reception' seminar at EABS in Lisbon in August. I am toying with the following:

A Tale of Two Exegetes, or Why Johnny Cash Kicks John of Patmos' Ass!

Any thoughts... (other than "you can't be serious", "don't do it", "you should be ashamed" and so on)... ?

JSHJ 6 (2008)

2008-03-19T23:51:00.004Z

Volume 6 of JSHJ is now available on-line. A fine line-up including yours truly. Notably, on p. 79 of the piece, a blog comment of Mark Goodacre is cited to good effect.

Editorial Foreword
pp. 1-2(2)
Author: Webb, Robert L.

Did the Historical Jesus Prohibit All Oaths? Part 2
pp. 3-24(22)
Author: Meier, John P.

A Response to John P. Meier's 'Did the Historical Jesus Prohibit All Oaths?' pp. 25-32(8)
Author: Hagner, Donald A.

The Prohibition of Oaths and Contra-scriptural Halakhot: A Response to John P. Meier
pp. 33-58(26) Author: Klawans, Jonathan

The Historical Jesus and Oaths: A Response to Donald A. Hagner and Jonathan Klawans
pp. 49-58(10)
Author: Meier, John P.

A Prophet Is Rejected in His Home Town (Mark 6.4 and Parallels): A Study in the Methodological (In)Consistency of the Jesus Seminar
pp. 59-84(26)
Author: Lyons, William John

Eyewitnesses and the Oral Jesus Tradition
pp. 85-105(21)
Author: Dunn, James D.G.

Morton Smith as M. Madiotes: Stephen Carlson's Attribution of Secret Mark to a Bald Swindler
pp. 106-125(20)
Authors: Pantuck, Allan J.; Brown, Scott G.

Book List
pp. 126-128(3)

Books Received
pp. 129-130(2)

Biblical women and their afterlives - A few Oxford pics

2008-03-19T22:53:00.008Z

A few pics of the conference - which was great fun by the way.

The grounds at Trinity College, Oxford.

Lesleigh Cushing-Stahlberg, with Chris Rowland chairing.

Caroline Vander Stichele, Peter Loewen, Nancy Graham, and John Darr.

Chris Rowland chairing John Darr's paper.

Jennifer Knust, on the Adultress woman pericope.

Jennifer Knust answering questions, with Chris Joynes chairing.

Last one - Heidi Hornik on Mary Magdalene by Michele Tosini.

SBL paper

2008-03-13T08:06:00.002Z

A few bloggers posted their abstracts for SBL a while ago, taking the risk that their papers might be rejected and 'never' be delivered (ok, overstatement, I know). Lacking their confidence, not to mention their organisational abilities, I didn't post either of the two abstracts I submitted. Well, one has now been accepted and here it is. The session is Holly Hearon and Richard Swanson's Bible in Ancient and Modern Media - the topic, Johnny Cash, of course. I might also add that the paper has the longest title of any I've ever written.

‘The Apocalypse of John and Its (Many, Modern) Mediators’: John of Patmos’ Apocalypse (c. 80-100CE), Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around (2002CE), Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004CE), and the videographers of YouTube (2006-08CE).

William John Lyons (University of Bristol)

Johnny Cash’s description of his 2002 song, The Man Comes Around (from his American IV album), as being ‘based, loosely’ on the Apocalypse of John is in fact a considerable understatement. The song quotes verbatim from that and other biblical texts, echoes a number of its most important apocalyptic motifs, and effectively moulds John of Patmos’ material into a functional, available, and culturally significant ‘mini-Apocalypse’. The formal relationship between the song and its ‘parent’ texts and Cash’s own characterisation of his role in mediating between the two are first briefly examined. The paper then critically analyses the ongoing impact of the book of Revelation – as mediated through the song and its first significant soundtrack outing in Zack Snyder’s zombie film, Dawn of the Dead (2004) – upon a specific media set, the growing number of YouTube videos that are being created to illustrate Cash’s ‘mini-Apocalypse’ (2006-present). Finally, certain aspects of the early impact of John of Patmos’ own Apocalypse are re-considered in the light of the assumptions and processes that have been observed within this modern chain of traditions.

The Bible for Sinners

2008-03-05T20:35:00.002Z

A new book by Chris Rowland and Jonathan Roberts, The Bible for Sinners. The blurb on Amazon states:

"Product Description

In this book, two experts in biblical and literary studies offer a wide-ranging discussion of what is going on in different types of Christian interpretation. They consider examples from history, from literature, and from a range of contentious present-day situations. Rather than providing answers, the authors open out the fundamental interpretative questions raised by same-sex relationships, justice in society, religious heresy, and marriage and divorce.

Synopsis

The context and approach of the reader have been underestimated in Biblical Exegesis. The Biblical text is generally credited with an abstract quality that lifts its words above time and space, above mere human contingencies. This has made it monolithic - a stone on which countless individuals have been dashed to pieces. Yet this interpretation has been developed by interpreters who have institutional power, and who have been unaware that they are interpreting in the interests of those who have such power. This book looks at past and present interpretations, as well as how certain subjects have been understood within them, including homosexuality and marriage."

Anything these two have come up with together is worth investigating further, trust me!

When is a March 1st deadline really a February 29th deadline?

2008-02-23T07:51:00.005Z

The answer...

When it is the closing date for submission of paper abstracts to the SBL Annual Meeting!

I noted the strangeness of this last year and sure enough Chris Brady has received an SBL e-mail containing the following (I didn't get one so I am not sure what that says about the difference between me and Chris):

"Don’t forget, the Call for Papers
http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/Congresses_
CallForPapers.aspx?MeetingId=12 closes at midnight, Eastern US time, on Friday, February 29."

I guess this has been happening for so long that no-one submits their paper on the 1st March. But I'd love to know what happens to anyone who does. Do they ever argue about this ridiculous practice?

For the record, there seems to be new sessions that were not in the original call for papers, so you might want to take a look.

http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/Congresses_
CallForPapers.aspx?MeetingId=12

A visit to Oslo

2008-02-17T18:09:00.003Z

A very cold foggy day in Oslo!

Disappearing blog posts

2008-02-07T17:49:00.000Z

Interestingly my last post referred to two pages on Jim West's blog, and these have now mysteriously disappeared. Does this mean Chris Heard is now alive again for Jim West?

A very different world to me!!

2008-02-07T06:47:00.000Z

In one of his periodic 'boardings' Jim West has deemed Chris Heard dead to him. In response to a question in the comments, will you read Chris' Genesis commentary when it comes out, he writes: "I won’t bother with it because there’s no point. I only read people I like. As you get old, you see you value your time too much to bother with dreck."

At this point, I began to laugh. Not only do I find myself having to spend most of my time reading people I disagree with - after all, what else is an academic supposed to do? - I usually have to buy their books full price! I am still naffed off that, just as I was finishing my thesis, James Barr's The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective was published and I had to buy it at only a 20% discount!! Still hurts after all these years!!!

So, while I would never pronounce Jim dead to me (he's far too entertaining for that) I would definitely say he lives in a very different world to me. Perhaps to stress just how different and also just to annoy him a little bit, I might ask what form his daemon takes? :) (Suggestions on a postcard...)

What a crazy idea!

2008-02-01T15:37:00.000Z

Jim West mentions an Independent article on Theology in the UK. Mark Goodacre is far too nice in criticising the piece by Tim Walker. Just to take one example.

"Who are the stars? Paul Heelas and Robert Segal at Lancaster, for their research into alternative spiritualities and myth & ritual respectively; Hugh McLeod at Birmingham, for his work on the social history of religion in the West; Stewart Brown at Edinburgh, an ecclesiastical historian; David Clines at Sheffield, a biblical studies expert; and John Milbank at Nottingham, who teaches political theology."

Does anyone who writes a blog agree that precisely these six are the premier THRS academics in the UK (and I don't mean to offer disrespect to any of the folk listed, all of whom are doubtless worthy individuals)? Listing six people like this is just crazy.

I'd offer this up as a meme but I am not sure I can take it seriously enough to offer a list of my own. Still someone else might be brave enough to have a go. Sean?

BIBLICAL WOMEN & THEIR AFTERLIVES: NEW TESTAMENT CHARACTERS

2008-01-31T11:52:00.000Z

Centre for the Reception History of the Bible
www.crhb.org

BIBLICAL WOMEN & THEIR AFTERLIVES:
NEW TESTAMENT CHARACTERS

Trinity College, Oxford
16-18th March 2008

Conference Programme

All lectures take place in The Danson Room, Trinity College

Sunday 16th March

4.00-4.45 Registration & tea/coffee

4.45 Welcome

5.00-5.40 Christopher Rowland (University of Oxford), Mary Magdalene as witness of apocalypse

6.00 Dinner

7.30-8.30 Poetry reading and Film (including the specially commissioned poem 'To cast a stone' by the acclaimed Irish writer John F. Deane)

Monday 17th March

9.00-9.40 Melanie J. Wright (Open University), Mary, Marty and Mel

9.40-10.20 Lesleigh Cushing-Stahlberg (Colgate University), Just Another Jewish Mother? Mary in the Jewish Imagination

10.20-11.00 John Darr (Boston College)Belittling Mary: Insult Genre, Humiliation and the Early Development of Mariology

11.00-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.10 Sarah Jane Boss (University of Wales, Lampeter), The Work of St. Luke's Own Hand: The Black Virgins of Western Europe

12.30 Lunch

1.30 Trip to Christ Church Picture Gallery

3.00-3.40 Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (Georgetown University), Imagining Salomé, or how la sauterelle became la femme fatale

3.40-4.20 Fiona Maddocks (music critic for the London Evening Standard), Vamp Till Ready: Salome in Music with a special emphasis on Richard Strauss's 1905 Opera

4.20-4.40 Tea

4.20-5.00 Caroline Vander Stichele (University of Amsterdam), Herodias Goes Headhunting

5.00-5.40 Paula Gooder (Birmingham), The Many Faces of Junia(s): The Afterlife of Romans 16:7

6.00 Dinner

8.00 Concert

Tuesday 18th March

9.00-9.40 Ruth Steiner (Catholic University of America), The Samaritan Woman at the Well in Liturgy and Chant

9.40-10.20 Jennifer Knust (Boston University), Too Hot to Handle? The Woman Taken in Adultery in Late Antique Christian Liturgy, Text and Art

10.20-11.00 Peter Loewen (Shepherd School of Music, Rice University), Mary Magdalene as Joculatrix Domini: Franciscan Music and Vernacular Homiletics in Medieval German and English Dramas

11.00-11.30 Coffee

11.30-12.10 Heidi Hornik (Baylor University), The Mannerist Magdalene Paintings by Michele Tosini

12.30 Lunch

For further information contact: Dr Christine Joynes, Trinity College,
Oxford. OX1 3BH
Tel: 01865 321827; Email: christine.joynes@trinity.ox.ac.uk

The Biblical World and its Reception, Seminar at EABS, Lisbon, 3-7th August 2008

2008-01-19T06:57:00.000Z

The Biblical World and its Reception

Chair

W. John Lyons (W.J.Lyons@bristol.ac.uk)

Programme

This seminar aims to provide a forum in which participants can engage in the theoretical issues pertaining to the reception of the 'biblical world' throughout the last 2500 years and/or present specific examples of how biblical and chronologically related texts have been appropriated within later cultural, political and artistic contexts. Insights drawn from a wide range of range of disciplines are encouraged and the reception history of any relevant text from the biblical period will be considered suitable material for presentation and discussion.

This seminar will begin in 2008, and proposals for papers for that meeting may be submitted to the Chair. Audience participation on the day is warmly invited, and short papers will be presented with an equivalent time provided for discussion.

Agenda for 2008

The initial meeting of this programme in 2008 is planned to include a session of papers devoted to a special theme (The Bible and Popular Music) and an open session. Papers are invited for both sessions. There will also be a discussion of future topics and the direction of the programme.

Oxford Seminars, Spring term

2008-01-11T14:37:00.000Z

'The Bible in Art, Music and Literature' seminar series.

Hilary term 2008

Week 2 (21 Jan): Dr Eric Christianson, University of Chester, ‘Empathy with Qoheleth: An Insight from Film Theory to the Reception History of Ecclesiastes’

Week 4 (4 Feb): Dr Kevin Mills, University of Glamorgan, A Parable of Criticism

Week 6 (18 Feb): Dr Harriet Sonne de Torrens, University of Toronto, ‘Ecclesia and Fovea: Female Sexuality and Baptism in the Middle Ages’ (‘Biblical Women and their Afterlives' series funded by the AHRC)

Week 8 (3 Mar): Prof Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London, ‘Mary: A Challenge to the (Medieval) Historian’ (‘Biblical Women and their Afterlives’ series funded by the AHRC)

Mondays: 5pm
The Danson Room, Trinity College

Convenors: Prof Chris Rowland (Queen’s) Dr Christine Joynes (Trinity)

Refreshments provided. ALL WELCOME.

Please also note the date of our forthcoming international conference:

'Biblical Women and their Afterlives: New Testament Characters' from 16-18th March 2008 at Trinity College, Oxford. Further details to follow soon.

Oxford seminars

2007-10-05T11:07:00.000Z

MA in Reception of the Bible 2

2007-09-12T08:35:00.000Z

We also had some cards made up with details of the MA and the Centre in which it is based for those of you more visually oriented.

MA in Reception of the Bible 1

2007-09-12T08:17:00.000Z

We are now recruiting for the new MA in the Recption of the Bible, running for the first time in 08-09. I am no longer running the MAs here so contact details for the directors of the programme have changed. That said, I would be happy to answer any query. Please feel free to pass the details on to anyone you think might be interested in such a programme.

MA The Reception of the Bible: Theology, Tradition & Culture

Introduction

The MA The Reception of The Bible: Theology, Tradition & Culture is a taught Masters programme covering one year (full time) or two years (part time). In the Department of Theology and Religious Studies we have 6 full-time members of staff involved with the MA (Jonathan Campbell, Jo Carruthers, Oliver Crisp, Gavin D’Costa, John Lyons, Carolyn Muessig). In addition to the strong Department-based support, the MA will draw on staff from within the Faculty of Arts.

The MA builds upon the various strengths found in the Department. From 1992-1999 we had an MA in Contemporary Theologies and an MA in Religion and Gender. From 2001—2006 we had an MA in Christian Studies (re-named the MA in Christianity and Culture in 2004). The MA in The Reception of The Bible has enabled the Department to consolidate its energies and specialties into a unified whole which works toward the same aims and objectives while offering a variety of subject areas.

Aims and Objectives

This programme aims to develop the students’ interest in and knowledge and understanding of how the Bible has been compiled, received and transmitted throughout its history (i.e., Biblical Reception). In the core units, special emphasis will be placed on historical, theological, philosophical, critical, reception and cultural theories which highlight the relation between text and context. Trained in these skills of theoretical analysis students will then take optional units in which they can explore the use of the Bible in distinctive contexts which include: biblical origins of Christian/Western hostility to the Jews; modes of scriptural reception in Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities; medieval understanding and use of biblical authority; the interaction between Bible and literature; modern theology and the Bible; and modern philosophical theories and their application and relation to biblical studies.

More specifically this programme aims:

1) To provide students with a substantial understanding of how the Bible has been used/received in a variety of settings with emphasis on developing proficiency in critical theory.

2) To introduce students to primary material.

3) To teach how various methodologies and theories can be applied to the understanding of biblical culture.

4) To develop the student's ability to think critically and independently.

Programme Structure

The degree structure is designed to engage students in a cumulative process of developing skills and knowledge through a sequence of complementary stages. In TB1, the student develops research skills: “The History of Christianity: Texts” introduces students to primary sources which deepen one’s understanding of biblical culture, tradition and theology; “Reception: Readers, Viewers, Audience” will familiarize students with a variety of theoretical perspectives which will help them understand the processes which produce historically and culturally situated readings and readings practices and in turn how to apply this to understanding Biblical Reception. To deepen this introduction to methodology, students are also required to study “Introduction to Critical Theory” offered by the Arts Faculty in TB1 and TB2. In TB2 students explore specific subject areas through a combination of options taught by members of staff. The options enable students to extend and apply the range of skills and concepts introduced in the mandatory units. The dissertation serves as the culmination of the student's progress through the degree programme. The programme is designed to provide a solid background in Biblical Reception and theoretical analysis for students planning to go on to do research in Theology and Religious Studies and other relevant fields (e.g. English, History, Cultural Studies) as well as to be of interest for people who wish to devote a year to learning in depth about Biblical Reception.

1) Core 60 Credits (Teaching Block 1&2)

The History of Christianity : Texts (TB1) 20 Credits
Reception: Readers, Viewers, Audiences (TB1) 20 Credits
Introduction to Critical Theory 1 [AFAC 70004] (TB1) 10 Credits
Introduction to Critical Theory 2 [AFAC 70005] (TB2) 10 Credits

2) Options (Teaching Block 1&2)

Students take a combination of seminar courses in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and in the Faculty of Arts. Normally students will take all options in TB2. NB: Not all the options listed below will be available every year. Students may also have the opportunity of taking relevant language units.

Biblical Hermeneutics and the Dogmatic Status of Scripture in Modern Theology (TB2)* 20 Credits
The Bible and the Myth of Jewish Evil (TB2)* 20 Credits
The Bible and Zion (TB2)* 20 Credits
Philosophical Issues in the Rise of Historical Biblical Criticism (TB2)* 20 Credits
The Reception of the Bible in the Middle Ages (TB2)* 20 Credits
The Reception of Scripture in the First Millennium CE (TB2)* 20 Credits
Reformation, the Bible and Renaissance Literature (TB2)* 20 Credits
Rewriting the Bible (TB2)* 20 Credits
The Bible in the Contemporary World: Hermeneutics (TrinityCollege, TB2) 20 Credits
Newman and the English Theological Tradition (WesleyCollege, TB2) 20 Credits

*Pending approval

3) Dissertation of 15,000–20,000 words (60 credit points)

Assessment and Student Progress

Assessment of the above-mentioned learning outcomes is by means of the following:

History of Christianity: Texts: 4000-word essay.

Reception: Readers, Viewers, Audiences: a 4000-word essay.

Introduction to Critical Theory 1: one 2000-word essay.
Introduction to Critical Theory 2: one 2000-word essay.

Each option in Teaching Block 2 will be assessed by means of one essay, 4000 words in length in the case of 20 credit-point units, and 2000 words in the case of 10 credit-point units.

The dissertation will be of 15-20000 words, excluding notes and bibliography; the minimum/maximum band is intended to accommodate the variation in disciplinary methodologies and source types utilized by different students. The pass/fail threshold for all units will be set at 50% (or the standard level to be established by the Faculty of Arts, if different).

The criteria for the award of credit points are as follows:

Core Options

1. Satisfactory attendance at seminars (normally 100%).
2. Submission of the assessed essay by the specified deadline.
3. In the case of the language units completion of an exam and a passing grade of 50%

Programme Directors:

Dr Jo Carruthers (jo.carruthers@bristol.ac.uk) and Dr Oliver Crisp (oliver.crisp@bristol.ac.uk)

We will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the MA programme by letter or email, or to meet you to discuss your own possible progression on to our MA.

Staff Associated with the MA

Dr Jonathan Campbell, Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd edition; Blackwells, 2002;
Dr Jo Carruthers, The Strange and Difficult Book of Esther, forthcoming;
Dr Oliver Crisp, Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin, Ashgate, 2005;
Professor Gavin D'Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity, Orbis, 2000;
Dr John Lyons, Canon and Praxis: The Canonical Approach and the SodomNarrative, Sheffield Academic Press, 2002;
Dr Carolyn Muessig, The Faces of Women in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry, Peregrina Publishing Co, Toronto, 1999.

SBL Vienna

2007-08-25T09:15:00.000Z

Just a quick pic to prove I went. Or at least that James Crossley and I met somewhere this summer....

The book that has most influenced me...

2007-07-09T21:45:00.000Z

Looking over recent discussion about the resurrection, it occurs to me that my own response remains heavily marked by one of the very first books I ever read as an undergraduate.

I had read a chapter by Michael Goulder on the synoptic problem in an edited volume on alternative approaches to the New Testament. The title was something to do with houses built on sand, I think. The gist of his argument was that the elasticity of the two source hypothesis was its major flaw, and he used the work of two philosophers of science, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, to show this. This led to me reading A.F. Chalmers' book, What is this thing called science? (I remember the cover has a cat on it which was apparently significant for a previous edition but had now been removed from the text and remained only on the cover - weird what you remember, eh). The book was itself heavily influenced by the work of Paul Feyerabend and his Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, but what I remember most was Chalmer's rehearsal of the problems of induction, of Popper's falsificationism, and his critical comments on Kuhn's paradigms and Lakatos' research programmes.

Though this book was the start of my journey into the work of the pragmatists, the development of my thinking was never just theory led. The simple fact of the matter was that the methodological and exegetical questions that arose at each level of my studies always seemed to be best answered by the work of people like Stanley Fish. That this still seems to be the case is why I count this book as the one that has marked me the most.

Response to comments on April DeConick's blog

2007-07-09T19:13:00.000Z

A final response to the comments on April's blog re-resurrection

---------------------------------

Dear Wade (and April),

"...Either we use inductive reasoning, knowing its flaws mean we can never have absolute certainty and that we may well have to revise theories based on new evidence, or we don't and we basically give up the search for knowledge...."

Please don't attribute to me any kind of nonsense about how we may as well just give up and go bake cookies or something. I have no problem with April's historical methodologies if we all agree that what we are trying to do is make good arguments about the probability of things happening and basing them on the data we have (such as it is). All I am trying to do here is make a technical point. Such probability cannot be a function of induction because if it were it would always be zero. (Don't shoot the messenger - go read Hume!) Instead it is a psychological probability - what we think is most likely to have happened. That is fine, normal and what historians (amongst others) base their lives on, but it is no use to us if we wish to claim that we have absolute certainty about the impossibility of something like the resurrection. Induction just won’t give us that.

Best wishes,

John

A comment on resurrection

2007-07-09T06:52:00.000Z

A comment left on April Deconick's blog following the recent discussion of resurrection occasioned by James Crossley's post on Tom Wright and resurrection.

-------------------------

Fascinating discussion. But I doubt you’ll find it touching someone who believes in the resurrection. Part of the problem is that a certain utilitarianism keeps echoing - without ‘x’ we can’t do history. True, but not the ‘Truth’, I can already hear your critics saying.

Without wishing to criticise your historical methods, virtually all of which I habitually use, child of the Enlightenment that I am :), I would like to point out that your take on induction is badly flawed.

‘Tomorrow I might wake up to find myself green, or the floor no longer solid, or dead bodies rising out of the tombs. But I doubt that that will be the case tomorrow or the next day or any day of my life. Mr. Walters is correct that an inductive argument does not lead to a logically necessary conclusion. But the point of making arguments from history is that they are very strong inductive arguments.’

This is incorrect for two reasons. Historical arguments do not work from the events themselves, but rather from the traces of the events left in history. In other word, you are not operating as an empirical scientist would work, from present experimentation, but rather extrapolating from our texts and artefacts. Not problematic, but not very strong either – it is commonly called a weak form of induction.

The second reason is much more damning. The problem with induction - long recognised by the likes of David Hume and Karl Popper – is that however many times an event happens, there is an infinite number of times it has yet to happen. Dividing the sample by infinity always leaves a probability of virtually zero. In terms of induction, you can *never* have a strong argument. All I think you could say is that you have a strong psychological argument against resurrection.

Incidentally, Altmann’s solution is basically a version of Kuhn’s paradigms or Lakatos’ research programmes, both of which are responses to and replacements for induction. But both are very susceptible to a relativistic interpretation and quite probably will never be able to quell your opponents.

Best wishes

John

Death of Brevard Childs

2007-06-25T20:22:00.000Z

A number of bloggers had already mentioned the death of Brevard Childs over the weekend. Here is an official brief obituary on the Yale Dvinity School site.

The Jesus Project

2007-06-19T16:00:00.000Z

April Deconick has an interesting post on some of her concerns about the Jesus Project that she is involved with. It is apparently the successor to the Jesus Seminar, but with a rather different mix of folks involved; e.g. Bauckham and Brueggemann appear alongside the former members of the Jesus Seminar and many others. Alongside April, we also have the likes of James Crossley, and then a list of individuals whose credentials for the task are somewhat less clear to me, but who perhaps come from the range of disciplines implied by the following from the Intro: 'the Project will be limited to fifty scholars with credentials in biblical studies as well as in the crucial cognate disciplines of ancient history, mythography, archaeology, classical studies, anthropology, and social history'.

There is also a list of pre-task thoughts and aspirations, including rather predictably 'We believe the mixing of theological motives and historical inquiry is impermissible'. Since it seems to me rather 'inevitable', I think they are off to a bad start. Has ideological criticism really passed so many of us by?

The Intro concludes with the following statement. "Our aim, like Pilate’s (John 18:38), is to find the truth." Personally, I always doubted that John had such a high view of Pilate. But if the Project has already found the 'real Pilate' for us, then that should surely give us hope for the future :)

I'll certainly be fascinated to see what the outcome is, but I can't say I am waiting with baited breath. Given that I am making a good living from pondering the working and publications of the Jesus Seminar, however, maybe I should be more grateful for their efforts.

Student publishing 3

2007-06-10T20:18:00.000Z

Angela Roskop Erisman writes: "I have to disagree with John Lyons. There are more than two options about what kind of scholar you want to be. I think you ought to take it VERY seriously, because at this point in your career you're forming a reputation. (I'm in this stage of my career, too, so I'm speaking from experience.) Take the time and put out the energy to make it a good one."

I doubt Angela and I really disagree here. My point is that to make a reputation at all you now seem to have to publish, and that taking the time out to do this 'well' (or even at all) means taking time out from working full-time on the PhD. By all means it should be good, even very good. But as Angela's example shows, you can wait a long time and still not be very good! Do it early if at all possible and use anyone you can to make it better, but don't wait for some mythological point when you will be good enough to publish. It could now, it could be never. Give it a try.

Student publishing 2

2007-06-10T19:00:00.000Z

In response to Shawn's reply (see comment 4)

Shawn,

I know what you mean about publication for publications sake, but sadly that too is part of our world at the moment. I hope your idealism lasts, but mine fled long ago. :) (Remember also this is a competitive game and not all the advice you will receive will be helpful to you. Back-stabbing has its place in academia too, I'm afraid.) I don't know if you've ever been to SBL or are planning to go, but I think you'll find conference papers are even worse. That said, we work in a very small over-worked field (compared to e.g. patristics or Early Church) so it can be difficult to be creative. It is a personal quirk, I know, but my definition of a contribution to discussion can include being deliberately provocative rather than being simply informative. (our teachers mark us and I blame Philip Davies for that particular trait).

Best wishes for your endeavours, wherever they take you (and don't let the *******S grind you down).

John

Student publishing

2007-06-10T13:21:00.000Z

In response to a post on Palimpsest.

Shawn,

It is naive of anyone in our discipline to discourage students from publishing at the earliest opportunity. Worse, it is potentially harmful. Jobs in many institutions nowadays require publications to even get through the door. This is especially the case in the UK (and may be the case elsewhere as well). With AHRC funding trying to get students to finish in three years, here is what happens. A student rushes through, finishes, and ends up with a dead fourth year when (a) there is no job til next year and (b) any publication submitted will take three to six months to go through a review process and 12-18 months to come out. If you are to get a job at the end of that fourth year, my advice to any student is to finish late and publish as early as possible.

Oh, and get to conferences, become visible. One thing that really messed me up before my viva was the need for an external referee, not an easy thing to acquire when you didn't do a master elsewhere.

Another point is that the review process is flawed for everyone, not just students. Sometimes major changes are required, sometimes stuff gets through that shouldn't. This is the case for all and shouldn't put students off submitting.

Two final comments. Any journal editor that rules out something because of the stage a person is at in their career is doing the discipline and their journal a disservice. How can a system be peer-reviewed properly when the journal editor censors the material submitted.

Finally (thank goodness, I hear you saying), don't worry about something published being there for all time. You have a choice to be two kinds of scholar. (1) The kind who never does anything incoherent and never changes his or her mind. Or you could be more playful and NOT take this so seriously. One of my lecturers once said to me that all work should be locked in a drawer for six months before publication. Her view was that most of it would be trashed. My view is that this just means you should be prepared to publish and change your mind later. Some great scholars have done this. As Emerson once said, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Don't have a small mind, publish and then recant! After all, that's two publications for the price of one!!

Seven deadly sins of blogging?

2007-05-17T08:36:00.000Z

There is some discussion at the moment of the seven deadly sins of academic writing. I wonder what would be the equivalent in blogging?

1) 'Laziness'. I can't, for instance, be bothered to think up seven (or to tell you where the discussion about writing is taking place) so here are four 'sins' to be going on with.

2) 'Repeating news over and over and over again'. Did you take up blogging only to become part of closed self-referential group who only seem to read each other's stuff'? For goodness sake, most people can find discussions if they want to - you did! if you have nothing much to add, why not just let it go?

3) 'Getting guest scholars in to give their opinion'. Seriously. Don't mind the jokey ones, but what the hell is going on when people get eminent scholars to speak on a topic already spoken to death by other eminent scholars?

4) 'Becoming a part of the establishment'. Since when did advertising books that publishers have sent you become such an industry? Most publishers are nice people (until they change your title to something dumb and put a weird picture on the cover of your latest masterpiece - b*****ds). Do we really need to hear about your recent love affair with one of them (especially when they prefer you to us and don't send us books - b*****ds)?

5) 'Putting people down for absolutely no good reason'. Be humble. You don't know much, after all. Didn't your studies even teach you that!?!

6) 'PEOPLE RANTING ON AND ON AND ON ABOUT THEIR PET PEEVE (HAVING LEFT THE caps lock button pressed).'

7) Saying you are only going to do so much (e.g. have only four sins and not seven) and then going on long after you should have stopped!

8) Having no idea how to count, reason, or any of the other useful tools which most normal people possess, never mind the academically inclined.

9) Oops!

The Bible in Art, Music and Literature, Centre for the Reception History of the Bible, Oxford

2007-05-01T14:08:00.000Z

Centre for the Reception History of the Bible
www.crhb.org

The Bible in Art, Music and Literature

Trinity Term 2007

Week 2 (30 April) : Dr Michael F. Suarez, S.J. (University of Oxford & Fordham University), ‘An horrid heap of blasphemy’: British Political Satire and the Sacred Page

Week 4 (14 May) : Dr Margarita Stocker, Short Story, Maximal Imbroglio: Salome and John the Baptist (‘Biblical Women and their Afterlives’ series)

Week 6 (28 May) : Professor Jonathan Draper (Kwa-Zulu Natal University), A Zulu Reading of the Book of Revelation: The Case of George Khambule (1884-1949)

Week 8 (11 June) : Dr Martin O’Kane (University of Lampeter), Hussey seminar ‘The Bosom of Abraham’ (Lk. 16:22): Father Abraham in the Visual Imagination

Monday, 5.00pm
The Danson Room, Trinity College

Convenors: Professor Christopher Rowland (Queen’s) & Dr Christine Joynes (Trinity)

ALL WELCOME

The problem of secularist rhetoric

2007-03-16T19:53:00.000Z

Hi Colin (see comment on previous post),

It is in theory not about ‘objectivity’. That is commonly said to be beyond us and no secularist I am aware of wants to appear openly as ‘positivistic’.

DeConick’s beef appears quite specific. Christians privilege the NT Canon as historical sources in a way that is inappropriate in one who is claiming to talk about Christian origins. Fair enough, some are no doubt guilty of this. But others seem quite capable of working with a wide variety of sources and may still end up privileging the canonical sources as a result of their studies. That seems quite different to me. Others might even end up preferring other texts (e.g. Jesus Seminar members are often practicing Christians and yet they love Thomas as a source). But my problem is that the rhetoric appears to exclude these from the discussion as well.

If this was all just about a group going into a huddle, then hell, I agree with you, let them. But it is not. What do we make of DeConick’s claim about the ‘impossibility’ of doing historical criticism as a believer? Surely the claim about the new list – taken in the same vein - is that only the list is doing serious ‘possible’ work. Others cannot even begin to approach their clarity. And it is here that that old chestnut ‘objectivity’ rears its ugly head. Whatever the claim to the contrary, a hint of positivism then emerges that is rather distasteful to me. No doubt we could ignore them because it is not what we are interested in anyway (as you say). But Christianity has a historical core that will always draw our attention. Can we really withdraw totally from that discussion? I don’t think so. And that is why I object to DeConick’s project.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I do not think dividing academia up is a very useful way to go. The philosophical underpinnings of all this are science-based and pretty dodgy. Positivism is long dead and we should stop bowing down to it. We need to take each other seriously in other ways now, and not try to rule each other out on the basis of some increasingly questionable ideology. I can see why DeConick is embarrassed to meet historians who won’t take her seriously. But frankly, I think that is primarily their problem and not hers.

John

Christian Origins list - Don't do it!

2007-03-13T16:11:00.000Z

I really don't get it. Here we have a new discussion list which is avowedly sectarian. Only those with certain views are acceptable as participants and they even have their own creed to assent to - one rather unfortunately couched in religious terms. I must admit to wondering if the likes of Philip Esler would qualify here. I know I don't (though I reject the terms this is all put in - to me a belief in God does not oppose a belief in criticism except in the more fundamentalistic expressions of Christianity).

But won't the participants in the list one day have to come out of their conclave and expose their ideas to the rest of the academic world (which is still religious and won't have gone away in the meantime). At which point, a truly full and academic discussion can take place. Of course, if you think that religious commitment of any kind makes historical criticism 'impossible' as April DeConick would have it, then perhaps such exposure to criticism won't even be necessary because it is per se bad criticism.

Give me a break. I'll stay out here in the big, bad world with everyone in it, open to question for my every assertion. Why don't you all do the same? Please.

Journal of Theological Interpretation

2007-03-09T11:55:00.000Z

I was reading about this new journal (Eisenbraun's Journal of Theological Interpretation) with some degree of interest anyway (since theological exegesis is one of my interests) when I noticed that the list of contributions that the editors are explicitly interested included the following:

theological exegesis of selected biblical texts
concerns of theological method and the role of Scripture in theology and ethics
the history of reception or history of interpretation of biblical texts
major review essays interacting with key books, contemporary or classical
hermeneutical challenges in theological exegesis

Obviously the theological interest restricts the type of reception issues that could be tackled, but this is a welcome addition to the outlets for this kind of work.

Permissions to reproduce

2007-03-02T12:30:00.000Z

One of the additional complications about writing about modern interpreters, specifically authors of artistic compositions, is that reproducing their work generally involves the need to get specific permission to do this. This has proved difficult for the Johnny Cash paper, not least because I have had trouble finding out just who to ask. Always in the back of my mind was the thought that perhaps I shouldn't reproduce the whole of the song, 'The Man Comes Around", in print. So I decided to ask Michael Gilmour, of Providence College, Manitoba, for some advice. For those of you who don't know, Michael has produced a fine volume on Dylan and Scripture (Tangled up in the Bible: Dylan and Scripture [Continuum, 2004]). The fact that Dylan is still alive adds a further complication since libel may be an issue in some circumstances. He writes:

"When I was working on Dylan I contacted his company Special Rider Music about this issue. They advised keeping citations as brief as possible so they would fall under the 'fair use' clause of copyright law (whatever that is). Anything more than a few lines gets complicated and yes, there are costs involved. If you are wanting to include lyrics of a full song you might want to track down the copyright owner (it may or may not be Cash's estate). The formula they use to calculate costs involves number of copies of the book or article being published. That being said, academic books and articles are not mass produced so it's probably not a major expense. I would recommend describing lyrics and themes as much as possible without quoting often from the songs themselves."

I think this will be my line. After all, one section of the work refers specifically to different texts for one line of the song on various lyric web-sites, so people can easily look up the whole thing themselves.

A more sensible regime!

2007-02-09T11:16:00.000Z

Patrik Hagman, a Finnish theologian, follows Mike Bird and Jim West in putting his working day on-line. It is a much more sensible regime, the description of which he concludes with the words, 'People just work too much'. Significant for me is his emphasis on 'long lunches', described as 'one of my main sources of inspiration for work and life.' Damn right! Making time for inspiration is part of the job.

One of the first and best lessons I ever learnt as a student is that an hour is not a standard unit of time when doing this kind of work. You can slave all week at something and have it not work, and you can be inspired and produce something in a day. I tend to work 9-5 as a way of controlling my tendency to work all the time, but that is all it is - a matter of convenience. Working all hours may work for some people, but I don't find it a particularly attractive portrayal of academia, and I know that it would be bad for me. So right on, Patrik. I am with you, and not the Robobird!

RBL books

2007-02-08T15:59:00.000Z

A couple of useful new texts for those interested in the early commentary tradition of the Church on Old Testament texts

Robert C. Hill, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Commentary on Psalms 1-81
Reviewed by Claudio Zamagni

Robert C. Hill, Theodoret of Cyrus: Commentary on Daniel
Reviewed by Randall L. McKinion

Crazy academics!!

2007-02-05T23:32:00.000Z

What is Chris Tilling talking about?

“Have a read of this and prepare to be scared, humbled and made to feel guilty all at once. This is truly mental. As one friend at LST said: I got tired just reading it!”

These words relate to Mike Bird’s description of his working day.

“I like to keep myself active with the keyboard and juggle a few projects at once. People ask me what writing habits I have and how and when I write. Here's the Bird-Method.

I get up around 7.00 a.m. and wake, feed, dress kids and help my dear wife get them ready for school.
I get to work about 0815 and get a cup of tea, turn on my computer, check the mail, and annoy my bosses secretary with requests for sweeties.
At 0830-0850 is German practice: vocab, read an EJTh book review, Deutsch Bibel.
Then 0850-0900 is general prayer and readings from the Book of Common Prayer
At 0900-09010 I work on my Evangelical Missal project and collect a written prayer, a Bible reading, a stanza from a hymn, and part of a creed, catechism or confession which I hope to turn into a book by the end of the year.
The rest of the day is determined by preparation, teaching, answering emails, and admin.
Where possible I try to get the odd two-hour block of writing time. During the day I am working on the Two Views of Christians Origins book with James Crossley.
Try get home by 1720 and help my wife with dinner, cleaning up, feeding kids, night-time routine with kids (prayer, Bible reading, memory verse, story, game) and then coffee with my wife Naomi. Possibly a shower around 1930 (this is Scotland after all).
Around 2000-2045 I like to work on book reviews. I'm currently reading Phil Towner on the Pastorals.
Then 2100-2230 is more writing time working on soon-to-be finished projects. At the moment I'm doing some stuff on Jewish views of Paul for a journal article.
At 2230-2315 is a minor project I plug away at, at the moment a commentary on Colossians.
2315-2330 is Greek devotionals and prayer.
2330-0000 is blogging time, Aussie red-wine, and kicking an orange ball around my living room in order to wind down.

This at least explains why every journal I see seems to have a Bird article in it! (Surely Mike owes us another post entitled “finding time for family/ recreation/ etc”.) James Crossley also seems very prolific and plus has time to go debating with W.L. Craig – How’s the social life, James? I am worried about you!

Also in the same week, we get a description from Jim West of his working day.

“No day is really typical. There are always hospital visits to make or funerals to perform or weddings to officiate. But, in general, were none of those to occur, I get up at 5:30 or 6 and go to the gym. I’m back home and showered by 8 and then its down to the study to power up the PC and check email and alerts for news stories that may be of interest to myself and potentially someone else. Then the day is consumed with a mix of phone calls, writing (I’m working on a commentary series containing exegesis and interpretation of each book of the Bible subtitled “For the Person in the Pew”. E.g., “Matthew: For the Person in the Pew” as well as a weekly Newspaper column, and reviews for RBL alongside some Encyclopedia articles at present), blogging news events and theological observations, reading, and the like. I take a break at 5 for dinner and then I spend the evening reading and keeping up with goings-on in the news and watching American Idol (or some other senseless thing). I stop all sorts of activities at 10 and I go to bed between 10:15 and 10:30 but sometimes I’m wild and crazy and stay up till 11.”

Now I am tempted to join Chris in thinking that these guys are just plain nuts. In the past I have also worried about Jim Davila and Mark Goodacre and their respective families. But in fact there is a serious issue here for anyone who aspires to being an academic or is an academic – How do we separate our work from everything else? How do we stop everything we do being about work in some way or other?

I confess that seeing ‘Ralphies’ being awarded for a whole range of non-work things just makes me think how little I read/hear/do that does not in some way end up as work (Of course writing about Johnny Cash doesn’t help much). In one sense, this works for me. It is the source of many of my ideas and I obviously value those for a whole range of reasons. But it is also a source of some unease. Do I really love my work so much that I want pretty much everything I do to go through some sort of work sieve?

Most people I know who are not academics think the job is a total doss. The usual ‘teacher’ stuff: ‘students have gone again’; ‘long summer holidays’; ‘trips to foreign places for conferences’. I have stopped even trying to explain what I do. But the truth of the matter is that there is often a lot of pressure on you to produce something (e.g. especially if you don’t have a post/tenure/promotion yet). And you are not very good at switching off because you are usually being asked to do exactly what you liked doing in the first place.

I am always amused when people question just how much value for money they get from you as an academic. Mike and Jim, unfortunately in my opinion, show just how stupid it is to question people who would probably do the job for little or no pay (and as postgrads probably did so for years). What sad, but happy, muppets we are.

Paper for Genesis 18-19 Seminar, International SBL, Vienna

2007-01-30T12:06:00.000Z

Here is the abstract for my paper for Vienna. A return to my thesis topic for only the second time (see Psalm 137 paper for the other).

Lot at the Threshhold

William John Lyons
University of Bristol

This paper argues that Genesis 18-19 is dominated by global themes that are inextricably inter-twined with its particularist story: (i) The promised son to Sarah is contextualised by the deity within the universal context of Abraham as a blessing to all nations (Gen.12.3; cf. 18.17-19); (ii) The limitations of Abraham’s ‘god’ are raised by the patriarch, but rebutted by a divine claim of unlimited power (18.14); (iii) The judgement of a ‘nation’ by the deity serves as an example for Israel (18.17-21); And (iv) the deity’s universalising moves are echoed by Abraham’s appeal to the ‘Judge of all the earth’ .

The paper examines the porous boundary between universal and particular through the liminal figure of Lot. Though not included in the deity’s particularist directive to Abraham to go to Canaan (12.3,7), Lot is brought along by the patriatrch, presumably as his heir. Despite the patriarch’s attempts to keep him close by, however, Abraham’s nephew moves away from him—geographically and religiously—as the narrative progresses. His residence and actions in Sodom indicate his identification with that nation’s universality, and by rights he should die with its inhabitants. Yet he is saved by the deity for the remembrance of Abraham (19.29). Though his choice for the universal is now made concrete in that he becomes two ‘nations’—Moab and Ammon (19.30-38)—his status remains ambiguous. His ‘sons’ are given land by YHWH alongside Israel (Deut 2.9,19), and—through the Moabitess, Ruth—he is given a role by the deity in the particularist story of David (Ruth 4.17-22). What Abraham started by bringing Lot with him to Canaan is brought to particularist fruition—somewhat ironically, given the latter’s own preference for the universal and the repeated appeals made to it in Genesis 18—by Israel’s deity.

MA in Reception of the Bible: Theology/Tradition/Culture, University of Bristol

2007-01-30T09:30:00.000Z

MA in The Reception of The Bible: Theology/Tradition/Culture
Introduction

The MA in The Reception of The Bible: Theology/Tradition/ Culture is a taught Masters programme covering one year (full time) or two years (part time).

In the Department of Theology and Religious Studies we have 6 full-time members of staff involved with the MA (Jonathan Campbell, Jo Carruthers, Oliver Crisp, Gavin D’Costa, John Lyons, Carolyn Muessig). In addition to the strong Department-based support, the MA will draw on staff from within the Faculty of Arts.

Aims and Objectives

More specifically this programme aims:

1) To provide students with a substantial understanding of how the Bible has been used/received in a variety of settings with emphasis on developing proficiency in critical theory.

2) To introduce students to primary material.

3) To teach how various methodologies and theories can be applied to the understanding of biblical culture.

4) To develop the student's ability to think critically and independently.

Programme Structure

Students take a combination of seminar courses in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and in the Faculty of Arts.

Normally students will take all options in TB2. NB: Not all the options listed below will be available every year. Students may also have the opportunity of taking relevant language units.

Biblical Hermeneutics and the Dogmatic Status of Scripture in Modern Theology (TB2)* 20 Credits

The Bible and the Myth of Jewish Evil (TB2)* 20 Credits

The Bible and Zion (TB2)* 20 Credits

Philosophical Issues in the Rise of Historical Biblical Criticism (TB2)* 20 Credits

The Reception of the Bible in the Middle Ages (TB2)* 20 Credits

The Reception of Scripture in the First Millennium CE (TB2)* 20 Credits

Reformation, the Bible and Renaissance Literature (TB2)* 20 Credits

Rewriting the Bible (TB2)* 20 Credits

The Bible in the Contemporary World: Hermeneutics (Trinity College) 20 Credits

Newman and the English Theological Tradition (Wesley College) 20 Credits
*Pending approval

3) Dissertation of 15,000–20,000 words (60 credit points)

Assessment and Student Progress

Assessment of the above-mentioned learning outcomes is by means of the following:

History of Christianity: Texts: 4000-word essay.
Reception: Readers, Viewers, Audiences: a 4000-word essay.
Introduction to Critical Theory 1: one 2000-word essay.
Introduction to Critical Theory 2: one 2000-word essay.

Each option in Teaching Block 2 will be assessed by means of one essay, 4000 words in length in the case of 20 credit-point units, and 2000 words in the case of 10 credit-point units.

The criteria for the award of credit points are as follows:

Core Options

Programme Director: Dr John Lyons
(w.j.lyons@bristol.ac.uk)

We will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the MA programme by letter or email, or to meet you to discuss your own possible progression on to our MA.

Staff Associated with the MA

Dr Jonathan Campbell, Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd edition; Blackwells, 2002;

Dr Jo Carruthers, The Strange and Difficult Book of Esther, forthcoming;

Dr Oliver Crisp, Jonathan Edwards and the Metaphysics of Sin, Ashgate, 2005;

Professor Gavin D'Costa, The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity, Orbis, 2000;

Dr John Lyons, Canon and Praxis: The Canonical Approach and the Sodom Narrative, Sheffield Academic Press, 2002;

Dr Carolyn Muessig, The Faces of Women in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry, Peregrina Publishing Co, Toronto, 1999.

Presenting Johnny Cash

2007-01-24T10:40:00.000Z

Last night I presented the long version of the Johnny Cash paper here at the University. One person present, Simon Taylor, has blogged on his reaction to the paper here. What he doesn't mention is my collapse into hysterics ('corpsing', Michael Palin calls it in his diaries) over this YouTube video. Every time the girl on the donkey appears I have just had it completely.

Pre-publication work

2007-01-17T09:43:00.000Z

Mark Goodacre offers his own reflections on my previous comment about the issue of putting pre-publication ideas on a blog, and (a) is highly sceptical about journals not taking such material as articles, but (b) concludes by mentioning an intriguing untitled volume-in-the-making which he won't discuss on the blog. Others have also offered comments (Stephen C Carlson here and here, James Crossley here and here, Mike Bird, and J Archer), and I shall think on further about their comments, but I want here to try to be clearer about the form that my own reluctance takes. In other words, describe the phenomenon better.

So, my own reluctance surfaced again recently with the Johnny Cash piece mentioned in numerous posts over the summer. I tried intially to write this on-line, but my working methods don't really suit this and I only posted the opening section. Later, however, when the paper presented at the Reception of Revelation conference here in Bristol was complete, I did not put it on the blog (though I did send it to various people [including James Crossley] for comments or even their personal enjoyment [I know, weird, eh]).

This is a piece that already has an editor and a publisher. The editor is me (and my co-editor, Jorunn Okland of Sheffield University) and the publisher is Sheffield Phoenix Press. So I am not worried about journals here. But I have not asked either Jorunn or the Press how they would feel about me putting the short version on-line (the published version is fully referenced, corrected and twice as long).

I don't know why I haven't gone further with this, though I now realise that one element of this is that I don't actually reference my work fully until quite late on, preferring a kind of short-hand notation for convenience. But can it really just be about the need for a bit more work at that stage.

A second piece of 'evidence' here. In an article published last year, I used an on-line essay of David Clines on the Psalms and Honour. It was one of those pieces described as a work in progress and where the author asks you not to quote without permission. I did e-mail David about this, but confess that I find it a bit strange that you 'publish' some work on the net and then try to hold people accountable in this way. At the time I also found myself thinking, who would publish this now its been on-line. It seems unnecessary to expend the effort publishing something already available.

These are not intended to explain my reaction but just clarify what has caused that reaction in the first place. Like Mark, this will take some thought. But if blogging has a long term future in this discipline, I think it worth trying to get to the bottom of this.

"The Bible in Art, Music and Literature" Seminar Series, University of Oxford

2007-01-14T07:35:00.000Z

"The Bible in Art, Music and Literature" Seminar Series, University of Oxford

Hilary Term 2007

Week 2: 'To wirke sum god thing on Inglisse': Vernacular Theology at the End of the English Middle Ages

(22 Jan) Professor Vincent Gillespie

(University of Oxford)

Week 4: 'Whither our Saviour Christ is gone before': Bringing the Bible to life in Liturgy and Architecture

(5 Feb) Revd Dr Allan Doig

(Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford)

Week 6: Stress and Scripture: the use of the Bible in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins

(19 Feb) Professor Paul Fiddes

(Regent's Park College, University of Oxford)

Week 8: What kind of woman is this? A discussion of Luke 7: 36-50 in the light of Dante Rossetti's "Mary (5 Mar) Magdalene at the door of Simon the Pharisee"

('Biblical Women and their Afterlives' series, funded by the AHRC)

Revd Dr Rachel Nicholls

(University of Cambridge)

Monday, 5.00pm
The Danson Room, Trinity College

Convener: Very Revd John Drury (All Souls)

A comment on the interview with James Crossley

2007-01-05T12:40:00.000Z

In the most recent interview on Biblioblogs, that with James Crossley, of Earliest Christian History, I was intrigued to notice that he echoes something like my own reluctance to put pre-publication work on a blog.

"I think it is pretty clear to anyone who might read the blog that I am reluctant to put anything particularly new on the blog unless it is published or being published. I didn’t consciously make this decision but I just can’t bring myself to put too many pre-publication ideas."

True, he goes on to say that this was not why he started blogging anyway, but I still find in interesting that bloggers show such different attitudes to this issue.

I know that Jim Davila has put conference papers online (here and here), and that Mark Goodacre placed parts of his recent SBL paper on Galatians on his blog (starts here). Some more junior have also put unpublished conference papers on-line (e.g. Mariam Kamell, a PhD student at St Andrews, here and here). Christian Brady has even put his 'work in progress' paper, "God is not in this Classroom", originally available here, online as an MP3 file! Still others have started on-line commentaries, putting large amounts of work onto the web (e.g. Michael Pahl on 1 Thessalonians). Others have asked for papers to be put on line they have heard or can't hear at the SBL (here). So why are they so happy to do it and I (and James ) am (are) not?

Without a great deal of thought, I am beginning to wonder if this has something to do with how you approach blogging as an outlet for your work. You might, of course, not care about publishing your work in academic outlets, but I doubt that is the case with Mark and Jim (or with the others mentioned above). I am sure they are confident that their work is still publishable despite their blog offerings (after all, Mark has now published a 'substantially revised version' of his previously offered review of The Nativity Story in the--admittedly not very prestigious-- SBL forum). From his comments Mark appears to value the feedback he has received, apparently seeing it as akin to that which he might receive at a conference. Yet to me there is something public about the internet that makes me doubt anyone will want to take it for a journal. I have no evidence for this, but it seems very real to me. I'll have to think on about this.

Conference on The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity

2006-12-23T05:41:00.000Z

This on-line description of an 'International Colloquium' on The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 11-13 October 2006 includes a list of papers and a rationale for the meeting.

"This colloquium explores the reception and interpretation of the Bible in Christianity and Judaism of the late antique period (circa the second to seventh centuries). Three panels of papers are devoted to Patristic texts, and one panel each to the early Rabbinic literature, the Gnostic texts, and the post-biblical Jewish and Christian apocrypha"

Robert L. Wilken (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA) The Novelty and Inescapability of the Bible in Late Antiquity
Charles Kannengiesser (Concordia University, Montreal) Scripture as a Legacy of the Fathers Invited Participants and Papers

Pablo Argárate (University of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto), Penitential Biblical Texts in Maximus Confessor’s Logos Asketikos
Herbert W. Basser (Queen's University, Kingston, Ont.), What Makes Exegesis either Christian or Jewish?
D. Jeffrey Bingham (Dallas Theological Seminary, TX), The Bible and Hellenism in Early Christian Polemic
Pamela Bright (Concordia University, Montreal), The Word Made Flesh: The Christological Frame of Hermeneutics in Augustine
Tony Chartrand-Burke (York University), Completing the Gospel: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as an Addition to the Gospel of Luke
J. Kevin Coyle (St. Paul University, Ottawa, Ont.), Good Tree, Bad Tree: The Treatment of a Biblical Theme in Manichaeism and Its Adversaries
Lorenzo DiTommaso (Concordia University, Montreal), Biblical Form and Function in the Post-Biblical Historical Apocalypses
David G. Hunter (Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa), Priestly Virgins and Virginal Priests: Ambrose’s Figuration of the Ancient Levitical Priesthood
Shawn W.J. Keough (Univ of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto), The Eternal Gospel: Origen’s Eschatological Exegesis
Richard A. Layton (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL), When Literal Does Not Mean Historical: Origen’s Literal Interpretation of the Song of Songs
B. Barry Levy (McGill University, Montreal), What Did the Ancient Rabbis Mean When They Said Someone ‘Wrote’ a Biblical Book?
Jack N. Lightstone (Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont.), The Early Rabbinic Refashioning of Biblical Heilsgeschichte, the Fashioning of the Rabbinic Canon of the Scriptures, and the Formation of the Early Rabbinic Movement
Anne Pasquier (Université Laval, Quebec City, Que), Présupposés herméneutiques de la lecture de la Bible juive chez les gnostiques et procédés exégétiques
Lorenzo Perrone (Università di Bologna, Italy), Scripture for a Life of Perfection: The Reception of the Bible within Late Antique Monasticism
Timothy Pettipiece (Université Laval, Quebec City, Que), Separating Light from Darkness: Biblical Traditions in Manichaean Exegesis
Pierluigi Piovanelli (University of Ottawa), The Reception of Hebrew and Christian Scriptures in Late-Antique Apocryphal Texts
Paul-Hubert Poirier, Thomas Schmidt et Jean-Michel Lavoie (Université Laval, Quebec City, Que) Les scholies sur l’Evangile de Luc de Titus de Bostra
Gary Porton (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL), Methods of Early Rabbinic Biblical Exegesis
Annette Yoshiko Reed (McMaster University, Ont.), Pseudepigraphy, Authority, and Biblical Interpretation
Lucian Turcescu (Concordia University, Montreal), Gregory of Nyssa and Biblical Hermeneutics

The rationale is as follows.

"The idea of the proposed colloquium grew out of the publication of the magisterial, two-volume Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Brill, 2004), by our distinguished colleague, Professor Dr. Charles Kannengiesser, and his collaborators. Specialists worldwide have already proclaimed that the Handbook will stand as the new benchmark in the field for decades to come. Professor Kannengiesser was the successor to Cardinal Jean Daniélou at the Institut Catholique in Paris, Catherine Huisking Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He is the author of an impressive number of other books and articles whose subject matter is highly relevant to this colloquium."

David Gunn's unit on the Reception of Samuel

2006-12-23T05:31:00.000Z

I came across this course description a couple of days ago. It is for a unit on the reception of the books of Samuel delivered in 2002 by David Gunn, author of the Judges commentary in the Blackwell Bible Commentary series. I don't know if it has been taught since, but I hope so.

Title

HEBI 95963:Issues in Hebrew Bible: Reception of the Books of Samuel

Course description

A widely ranging investigation of the reception history of the Books of Samuel with special attention to the figures of David and Bathsheba. Topics include early Jewish literature, medieval theology and art, Bible illustration, reformation politics, renaissance sculpture, baroque painting, children's literature, and contemporary novels and movies. A study of the Bible and Western culture.

Class Schedule

January 15 Course introduction

January 22 Renaissance sculpture

January 29 Reformation theology and politics

February 12 Medieval theology and art

February 19 Early Jewish and Christian literature

February 26 Movies

March 5 Scripture biography

March 19 Voltaire and the deists

March 26 Baroque painting

April 2 Group presentation

April 9 Children's literature

April 16 Drama and novels

April 23 Group presentation [Last class]

May 6 Critical review due at 3:00pm

Jesus the Gunslinger

2006-12-22T22:51:00.000Z

This evening I caught part of the Today Show with Jon Stewart. Bitingly sarcastic, the guy makes me laugh without even opening his mouth. But this evening there was great sentence from someone during one of the reports, this one on selling the idea of using guns to the Vatican !?!

"If Jesus had had a handgun, do you think he might have won?"

Now why didn't I think of that. Probably because he really needed a flamethrower to do the job right :)

Teen Bibles?

2006-12-22T09:49:00.000Z

James Crossley has a hugely funny/tragic piece on teen bibles in the SBL forum. The NIV translation has now been so often surrounded by group-specific commentary that one wonders exactly what message is being sent here by publishers. Is it that the Bible really is applicable to all? Or is it that it really needs all of these accretions to even function in these settings? Or is it that its readers are just really stupid? The ongoing development of the NIV is becoming a reception issue in itself (I have always loved the idea of a spirit-filled Bible myself).

As James points out in this case, however, one common effect of the accretions can be to make the Bible subservient to some stereotypical cultural ideology. This means that one lot of texts are read (? - invoked?) as reinforcing the status quo and another (very large) set are not read at all. I wonder what this version does with Deuteronomy texts on caring for the poor and the widows, for example? Equally what do they do with holy war texts? Or on Jesus eating with sinners? Not a lot, I guess. Are teens really this shallow? Doubtful. Do older people think that they are. Oh yeah.

Most depressing for me is the thought that any useful liberative potential that the biblical text might possibly possess is painted over in orange/black and pink/peach/sky blue. I think I am going to be ill….

James, I am not an American as you know, but I’ll risk clarifying the 0 for 0 comment for you. American sports often use 0 wins, 0 draws, 0 losses, to indicate a teams progress. So I guess 0 for 0 means that you haven’t played yet :) Incidentally one of the best laughs I have had during a film was during Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge. The US marines’ score is given as 0, 1, 1. 0 wins, 1 draw (the Korean War), and 1 loss (Vietnam). When Grenada is invaded at the end of the film, the score becomes 1 win, 1 draw, 1 loss. Don’t you just love it!

Making things harder than they need to be ?!?

2006-12-14T11:14:00.000Z

Just fished this out of the spam trap. Maybe its just me, but isn't the idea that you set a deadline date and at the end of that day, the deadline happens. Obvious. Not for the SBL, so those of you who are late submitters should be careful here.

"Deadline for paper proposals [for the 2007 Annual Meeting]: March 1 (the Call closes at midnight February 28th)."

"Deadline for paper proposals [for the 2007 International Meeting]: January 15 (the Call closes at midnight January 14th)."

Why, guys? Why?

Philip Davies on the SBL Annual Meeting

2006-12-06T14:11:00.000Z

Jim West has a fascinating response to the SBL Annual Meeting from Philip Davies. The following quote made me laugh particularly.

"Fashion is the manifestation of neophilia and the SBL is the Milan or Paris of the biblical fashion trade, complete with its catwalks and supermodels."

Followed by

" Yes, the SBL is like a discotheque without the music; a frantic round of networking, updating, image polishing, and even learning. "

More tellingly, Philip concludes: "I get very little scholarly knowledge out of the SBL, and I don’t expect to. But without being there I would never have understood the sociology of knowledge as well as I do (still not all that well). That’s what it is all about, though."

It all sees such a shame that our institutions really want us to do papers (and the SBL obliges with millions and zillions of seminar spaces) when all we really want to do get together and chill.

BTW, Sean, did you actually go? Or is your blogging silence due to shellshock at the experience? :)

Reception Workshop, University of Bristol

2006-11-27T09:25:00.000Z

This event took place last week at Bristol, and was very enjoyable. (The cake was good too!) As I've said before, Ika Willis is the Faculty of Arts' Lecturer in Reception and she will be running a new MA in Reception and Critical Theory here in 2007-08. She organised the day as a kind of intro to what other people are doing here in terms of reception. As you can see below, a good number of departments were represented. Hopefully, when our MA in Biblical Reception is up and running, students can tap into a number of complementary courses (and this kind of event) elsewhere in the Faculty.

Monday 20 November 2006
10:00am-4:00pm
Verdon-Smith Room, Institute for Advanced Studies, Royal Fort House

Session 1: 10am-12:30pm

10:00am: Welcome and introduction, Dr Ika Willis
10:20-12:30pm: Informal presentations by attendees

10:20 Dr Ika Willis, Classics/English
10:30 Mr Paul Hurley, Drama: Theatre, Film, Television
10:40 Dr Dot Rowe, History of Art
10:50 Dr Neville Morley, Classics & Ancient History

11:00 Break

11:20 Dr Jo Carruthers, English/Theology
11:30 Mr David Tollerton, Theology
11:40 Ms Caroline Hadley, Drama: Theatre, Film, Television
11:50 Mr Joao Cosme, Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies
12:00 Dr Angela Piccini, Drama/Archaeology
12:10 Professor Charles Martindale, Classics & Ancient History

Lunch: 12:30-1:30
Lunch will be provided, and there will be an opportunity for discussion and feedback.

Session 2: 1:30pm-3:00pm

Informal presentations by attendees

1:30 Dr Regina Llamas, Historical Studies (BICC Fellow, CEAS)
1:40 Dr John Lyons, Theology & Religious Studies
1:50 Mr David Rose, Drama: Theatre, Film, Television
2:00 Dr Henry Power, English
2:10 Ms Fay Yao, English
2:20 Ms Cher Redman, Theology
2:30 Dr Simon Jones, Drama: Theatre, Film, Television

Coffee: 2:45pm-3:30pm Coffee and cake will be provided, and there will be an opportunity for further discussion, feedback and summing-up

Encyclopaedia of the Bible and Its Reception

2006-11-26T08:50:00.000Z

Jim West pointed out this project a few weeks ago. I first heard about it from David Thomas of the University of Birmingham, our external in Bristol for Islamic Studies. It sounds very ambitious, has some very good names attached to it, and I am really looking forward to seeing the volumes as they arrive.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE BIBLE AND ITS RECEPTION

Edited by
Hans-Josef Klauck, Bernard McGinn, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Choon-Leong Seow, Hermann Spieckermann, Eric Ziolkowski

in cooperation with
Dale Allison, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Donna Bowman, Brian Britt, Michael Cameron, Ran HaCohen, Ann E. Killebrew, David W. Kling, Volker Leppin, Eric Meyers, Martti Nissinen, Dennis Olson, Nils Holger Petersen, James Robinson, Christine Roy Yoder, Thomas Römer, Günter Stemberger, Marvin A. Sweeney, Johan C. Thom, David Thomas, Jan G. van der Watt, Samuel Vollenweider

Introduction

Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) pursues the twofold task of comprehensively rendering the current state of knowledge on the origins and development of the Bible according to its different canonic forms in Judaism and Christianity, and documenting the history of the Bible’s reception not only in the Christian churches and the Jewish Diaspora but also in literature, art, music, and film, as well as Islam and other religious traditions and current religious movements. With this broad program of reception history, EBR moves into new terrain, seeking to do justice to the fact that the biblical texts have not only their own particular genetic background and setting but also been received and interpreted, and exerted their influence, in countless religious, theological, and aesthetic settings. What follows is a brief account of both the historical background and the future plans of this project.

Bible studies, having emerged mainly under the auspices of European Protestantism during the ages of Humanism, Reformation, and Enlightenment, underwent a global upsurge in the twentieth century. Anglo-American research, which closely followed European initiatives up through the mid-twentieth century, has gained ever more autonomy since the 1970s. New exegetical approaches were developed, often with a more contextual focus, especially in the areas of social and literary history. This growth and the increasing diversification of interpretive methods were not confined to North America. Parallel trends occurred in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Moreover, at the same time that this process was de-Europeanizing and globalizing biblical studies, the field was further enriched by the religions and denominations whose members now entered it. While Protestant exegetical research has continued to prosper, invaluable contributions have been made by Jewish biblical studies, the center of which shifted from Germany to North America in the wake of the Shoah, and by biblical studies in the Catholic Church, where exegetical disciplines evolved rapidly in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

The foundation of the modern state of Israel led to great advances in biblical archeology, as the numerous excavations and surveys, and the increased technological precision of methods, made possible countless new insights. The same is true throughout the rest of the Mediterranean and the Near East. “Material culture,” iconography, epigraphy, and the discovery of new archives and libraries changed our understanding of the Ancient Near East and classical antiquity as essentially as it transformed our view of the background and formation of the Bible.

The rapid expansion of knowledge in biblical studies is exhilarating but creates complex difficulties, especially those associated with the splitting of the field into ever-multiplying areas of specialization. No biblical scholar today, regardless of the part or aspect of the Bible he or she may specialize in, can master the pertinent current research without confining his or her knowledge to a single biblical writing, a very limited area, or a particular approach. The view of the “whole” is ever remoter. Furthermore, the proliferation of languages in scholarly literature has heightened the challenge of communication. In the twentieth century, the leading means of communication, hitherto German, English, and French, were augmented by numerous other languages, including Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages, Russian, Japanese, and Korean. The advancement of English as the foremost language of communication since the 1970s, while largely beneficial, has had the unfortunate side effect that scholarly literature written in other languages can expect to be considered by a significant number of scholars only if translated into English or made accessible through reference works published in English.

The state of biblical studies sketched above demonstrates the need for an English-language encyclopedia with a broad, international scope. There currently exists no encyclopedia that summarizes and synthesizes the vast current knowledge of biblical studies and allied disciplines while creating links, identifying problematic areas and lacunae in scholarship, and stimulating new research. Nor has any encyclopedic effort been made to take stock of the major shift that occurred in most disciplines of the humanities during the last two decades of the twentieth century and the initial years of the twenty-first to an orientation informed by what has come to be called “cultural studies.”

Biblical studies have participated in this interdisciplinary exchange and have been further enriched by a burgeoning interest in reception history, a scholarly enterprise whose literary-historical roots extend back to late nineteenth-century Stoffgeschichte (the study of themes) and its expansion into twentieth-century Wirkungsgeschichte (the study of effects), and whose development was abetted by the popularity of reader-response theory in literary studies during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Today, aside from the classic historical questions about the conditions and circumstances of the Bible’s origins, inquiries into the reception and culture-forming influence of the Bible draw considerable attention. As a now well-established branch of Bible studies, Auslegungsgeschichte (exegesis history) continues to influence modern debates upon the theological sense and purpose of church history. Moreover a growing number of research projects have examined the interpretation of biblical themes, motifs, and characters in music, art, literature, and film, as well as in Islam and various non-monotheistic religious traditions and new religious movements. A result has been the illumination of how biblical traditions transcended the realms of church and synagogue and entered the cultural consciousness of both Western and non-Western societies.

EBR’s two major foci—the Bible and its reception—are reflected in the five main domains under EBR’s purview, each of which is overseen by its own “main editor” and comprises five or six specific areas managed in turn by their own “area editors.” One domain each is dedicated to the formation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament, including the contextual history of surrounding events, society, religion, culture, and economy. Two more domains cover the influence of the Bible in the Judaic and Christian traditions respectively, while the fifth domain encompasses biblical reception and influence in literature, art, music, and film, as well as in Islam and in other religions that do not ascribe exclusive authority to the Bible but in some way draw upon its traditions. While not omitting anything that may shed light upon biblical traditions, EBR aspires to completeness only in its coverage of the scriptures themselves and their formation. Inasmuch as a complete accounting of the global history of their reception and influence over two millennia is impossible, EBR documents that history in ways that pragmatically account for the major themes and issues and provides the necessary guidance for further research.

EBR is edited by an international team of scholars representing a wide variety of religious, denominational, and disciplinary perspectives, none privileged above the others. The work is produced in English to facilitate global compilation and reception, and scholars from around the world are being invited to contribute.

Designed to be primarily a user-friendly resource for scholars in biblical studies and related fields but also accessible to general readers interested in the Bible, EBR will consist of thirty volumes, of approximately 600 pages each, appearing over a projected ten-year period (2008–2017) and accompanied by a parallel online version.

The Editors
July 2007

Serious Man, Rhetorical Man, Straw Man: Just How Much of a Threat is Stanley Fish to Christian Theology?

2006-11-25T22:12:00.000Z

Serious Man, Rhetorical Man, Straw Man: Just How Much of a Threat is Stanley Fish to Christian Theology?

William John Lyons

Dept of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol,
3 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1TB

Introduction

In his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Theology’s annual meeting in Edinburgh in 1999, Anthony C. Thiselton read a paper subtitled, “Towards a Theology for the Year 2000 as a Grammar of Grace, Truth and Eschatology in Contexts of So-called Post-modernity”.[1] Fully half of this ‘constructive’ proposal was concerned, however, with his negative response to what he termed the “disastrous” American pragmatic tradition, especially the work of Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish.[2] His audience was informed of the use of these theorists by certain American theologians, but guided by his representation of the pragmatists, they were encouraged to regard this as an inexplicable error and left to wonder how the likes of Stanley Hauerwas could be so fooled.[3] And in the ensuing discussion, nothing happened to alter that situation.

Unlike many, if not most, people at Edinburgh, however, I have read Fish for myself—even some Rorty—and a number of theological appropriations of his work. And in Edinburgh I was reminded once again of the disparity between the theological implications which Thiselton draws from his portrayal of the pragmatists and those formed by my own understanding of Fish. This paper is an attempt, therefore, to draw out those differences by first describing the Fish seen by scholars such as Thiselton,[4] Paul R. Noble,[5] and Kevin J. Vanhoozer[6] and then suggesting an alternative view of Fish which may explain his attractiveness to some of our American colleagues. Rorty, I will leave to one side for now.

Paul Noble’s published thesis and his detailed response to Fish in a two-part article in the journal Religious Studies primarily represent the first view of Fish here. Noble characterises Fish as the apostle of free-play, as a “relativist” who argues that texts are “infinitely-open” in that they can be made to mean absolutely anything a reader might want them to mean. Not surprisingly, Noble rejects this portrait of Fish. The second view of “Fish” has been suggested by myself and others,[7] and is a rather more deterministic figure who would still argue that texts are ‘infinitely-open’, but also that possible interpretations are limited to those which flow directly from the context of the reader. In other words, texts are ‘infinitely-open’ only because reader contexts are ‘infinitely-open.’

Before continuing, I should respond here to a common understanding of Fish’s work; namely, that it implies that any meaning can be imposed upon his texts and that he cannot complain about how he is understood—my Fish is, therefore, no more ‘accurate’ than any other version. Such a criticism is actually based upon Noble’s version of Fish, but for the sake of argument, let me play the game here. The point is not whether or not I have presented the real Fish, but whether my version is more theologically relevant than the Fish rejected by Noble. The real problem here is that Noble, Thiselton, and Vanhoozer think that they have now dealt with Fish—the only Fish—and so cannot appreciate that theologians such as Hauerwas are dealing with very different marine life. Those who subsequently hear the debate are then unable to make any sense out of what is going on.

In what follows I want to take some current buzz-words in hermeneutical debate—say ‘relativism’, ‘infinitely-open’, and ‘indeterminacy’—and ask how they are to be defined in the light of each portrait of Fish. I shall begin by presenting Noble’s version before pointing out its flaws and following him in rejecting it. I shall then present my own version—though its acceptance here should certainly not be taken as a claim of perfection. Thirdly, I shall suggest that the hermeneutical approach of my version of Fish is virtually identical to the general hermeneutical stance taken by Noble, Thiselton, and Vanhoozer, albeit with one important difference: the loss of a text able to adjudicate between competing interpretations. Finally, I shall ask, very briefly, just how much of a threat is my version of ‘Stanley Fish’ to Christian theology.

Fish According to Paul Noble

For Noble, the defining characteristic of “Stanley Fish” is the assertion that an interpretive community may twist its text into any shape; this Fish can be fairly described, therefore, as an apostle of freeplay. This portrait is primarily based upon his reading of Fish’s infamous example of a ‘list’ of names on a blackboard that his students are asked to read as a ‘poem’.[8] For Noble,

"Fish’s hermeneutic entails that there is no question that a sufficiently ingenious interpretive community could not get a set text to answer, because as Fish himself explains, ‘while there are always mechanisms for ruling out readings, their source is not the text, but the presently recognised interpretive strategies for producing the text. It follows then that no reading, however outlandish it might appear, is inherently an impossible one."[9]

Fish’s distinction between “serious man” (the foundationalist) and “rhetorical man” (the non-foundationalist) Noble clearly understands as meaning that the latter can choose which face to wear, which text to hear. Being ‘infinitely-open’ here then means that a text is open to absolutely any interpretation, a ‘relativism’ exists in which anything and everything goes!

Noble illustrates his argument against this Fish by offering examples that purport to show that texts cannot be made to mean just anything. In a typical example he states that while a “pipe” may have be seen as a “telescope” by Galileo, no-one chooses sees the pipe as “a steamroller or as a killer whale” as this Fish implies they could.[10] Noble also enters into Fish’s debate with Wolfgang Iser about the ‘ironic’ nature of the chapter title, Arcadian Simplicity, in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.[11] He takes issue with Fish’s rejection of Iser’s claim that, regardless of its exact nature, one must surely accept its “giveness” as a title.[12] For Noble, there is no possible alternative reading and so the chapter title itself is a ‘reader-independent fact’. With this and other such objective ‘anchors’, Noble offers us a relatively secure text and guards us against the consequences of Fish’s radical anti-realist epistemology.

In responding to this portrait, there are two factors to consider. The first is that Noble’s Fish appears to be identical to the usual caricature of the mad deconstructionist, forever overturning the significance of his tax bill, his pipe, his text, his killer whale, his whatever. But since this is not a person who actually exists, this Fish is clearly not giving us an account of the mundane empirical reality we perceive. After all, we know that we don’t see a “pipe”—or a tax bill—as a “killer whale” and consider it highly unlikely that any one else would either.

The second point is that Noble’s Fish is internally inconsistent, a fact which I, at least, don’t like, preferring my theorists neat and tidy. Although the poem experiment is often read as asserting that readers can make texts mean whatever they want, the chapter in which it occurs contains both the argument that there is no such free standing reader and the statement that “a text cannot be overwhelmed by an irresponsible reader.”[13] Can Noble’s Fish make coherent sense of this? I think not. Should we accept such an ingenious, incoherent Fish as right (whatever that would now mean)? No, Noble is right to reject him and so should we.

Fish According to William John Lyons

In this portrayal of Stanley Fish, I would like to go back and begin at the beginning. Fish’s early work involved a close reading technique, ‘Affective Stylistics’, which slowed down the reading process so that one could see how the reader was responding to the text.[14] At this stage, his approach could be categorised as semi-formalist, the text existing independently of and constraining the reader. Fish later came to see such an approach as fundamentally incorrect, arguing that in his earlier work he had done

"what critics always do: I ‘saw’ what my interpretive principles permitted or directed me to see and then I turned around and attributed what I had seen to a text and an intention. What my principles direct me to see are readers performing acts; the points at which I find (or to be more precise, declare) those acts to have been performed become (by a sleight of hand) demarcations in the text; those demarcations are then available for the designation ‘formal features’ and as formal features they can be (illegitimately) assigned the responsibility for producing the interpretation which in fact produced them.[15]"

Fish’s change of mind can be summed up as an acceptance of the view that every human sense perception is ‘interpreted’; as he puts it, “interpretation is the only game in town.”[16] To accept this so-called ‘anti-realist’ position is not to conclude that there is no raw data out there as some might have us believe, but it is to argue that there is no way for humans to encounter it directly or to use ‘it’ to adjudicate between interpretations.[17]

From this position, Fish set out to explain the following conundrum.

"What is the source of interpretive authority: the text or the reader? Those who answered ‘the text’ were embarrassed by the fact of disagreement. Why, if the text contains its own meaning and constrains its own interpretation, do so many interpreters disagree about that meaning? Those who answered ‘the reader’ were embarrassed by the fact of agreement. Why, if the meaning is created by the individual reader from the perspective of his own experience and interpretive desires, is there so much that interpreters agree about? What was required was an explanation that could account for both agreement and disagreement.[18]"

Note here the empirical nature of the enquiry. This Fish is not trying to prescribe an absurd rule for playfulness or ingenuity, but rather to describe and explain a real situation that he regards as obvious within literary studies.

For Fish the explanation was found in the concept of an interpretive community,

"not so much a group of individuals who [share] a point of view, but a point of view or way of organising experience that share[s] individuals in the sense that its assumed distinctions, categories of understanding, and stipulations of relevance and irrelevance [a]re the content of the consciousness of community members who [a]re therefore no longer individuals, but, insofar as they [a]re embedded in the community’s enterprise, community property.[19]"

According to Fish, each person is a member of many different interpretive communities, some of which are unchanging (e.g., race) and some of which can change rapidly (e.g., religious conviction).[20] It should be noted, however, that his definition of an ‘interpretive community’ is somewhat ambiguous. Despite his statement above that it is “not so much a group of individuals who shared a point of view, but a point of view or way of organising experience that shared individuals”, it is clear that he does use the term to indicate both. For example, Fish writes elsewhere that “as a fully situated member of an interpretive community, be it literary or legal, [one naturally looks at the] objects of the community’s concerns with eyes already informed by community imperatives, urgencies, and goals.”[21]

This emphasis on the way in which readers are “grasped” by the interpretive strategy of their community/ies demonstrates that this ‘Fish’ does not see his “rhetorical man” as radically free and able to make the text say anything he wants. Here, the absolute “relativism” of Noble’s Fish can only be entertained on the theoretical level because real readers are always predisposed towards specific readings.[22] But it would be a mistake to see this, with Elisabeth Freund, as an imprisonment within a potentially oppressive interpretive community.[23] The constraints operative limit but they also actualise; without them, the interpreter can do nothing at all.[24] And although a set of constraints must always be in place, its exact contents are not set in stone; constraints may change over time.[25] Nevertheless, at any given point in time, they are responsible for limiting interpretation.

For Fish, words occur only in context and are understood immediately as heard in that context; there is no gap between hearing and interpreting.[26] Moreover, they generally have an obvious and purposeful meaning, an “intention”. Fish writes that

"[w]ords are intelligible only within the assumption of some context of intentional production, some already-in-place predecision as to what kind of person, with what kind of purposes, in relation to what specific goals in a particular situation, is speaking or writing.[27]"

But the meaning understood, the intention constructed, is always context dependent and slight changes in context will subtly change the way in which both are understood. But this does not necessarily mean that sense can be made of a communication in any context. If a ‘text’ proves incoherent, its readers will probably attempt to reduce the dissonance created by selecting interpretive assumptions which allow them to make sense of what they have encountered—for example, “Oh, its a first century text.”

There is no way, however, to encounter a neutral text. Indeed, because the ‘text’ is always being viewed through community spectacles, it no longer exists as a separate, free entity to which an appeal can be made in order to demonstrate the correctness of one’s interpretations. As Fish puts it in his book Is There a Text in this Class?

"[t]he answer this book gives to its title question is ‘there is and there isn’t’. There isn’t a text in this or any other class if one means by text what E.D. Hirsch and others mean by it, ‘an entity which always remains the same from one moment to the next’;[28] but there is a text in this and every class if one means by text the structure of meanings that is obvious and inescapable from the perspective of whatever interpretive assumptions happen to be in force.…[29] What I am suggesting is that an interpreting entity, endowed with purposes and concerns, is, by virtue of its very operation, determining what counts as the facts to be observed.[30]"

The Hirschian text disappears, and it is the Fishian text that now appears in its place and forms the ‘object’ of criticism.[31] Of fundamental importance here, however, is the fact that the fishian text that is now being encountered is, in Fish’s own words, “obvious and inescapable from the perspective of whatever interpretive assumptions happen to be in force”; it is solid to the touch.[32]

The existence of community-specific texts does not mean, however, that a community cannot encounter different readings or persuade another group to adopt its view. But since interpretations cannot be proved by an appeal to the text, other readers must be persuaded to discard their own assumptions and accept the assumptions which will lead them to see the same text.[33] As an example of how communication can take place across community boundaries, Fish utilises the question of one of his students to a colleague, “Is there a text in this class?”[34] The colleague’s immediate reaction was to say yes and name the text, The Norton Anthology of Literature.[35] However, the student did not mean this but was rather asking does a text exist as an objective entity?

In his discussion of this example, Fish argues that in order to hear the comment as it was intended to be heard the hearer must either already be in a position to hear or must move into a position from which the comment can be understood.[36] Here this can happen because Fish’s colleague is aware of a number of ‘rubrics’ within which the sense of the comment can be examined, and eventually he arrives at, “Ah, there’s one of Fish’s victims”,[37] a victim who can ask if the text exists objectively by using the phrase, ‘Is there a text in this class?’ If these rubrics had not been available, however, Fish writes that there would have been a need for the speaker to

"make a new start, although she would not have to start from scratch (indeed starting from scratch is never a possibility); but she would have to back up to some point at which there was a shared agreement as to what was reasonable to say so that a new and wider basis for agreement could be fashioned.[38]"

Agreement between communities will take place when they share reading strategies that enable them to see as evidence features that appear only as a result of those strategies. But because strong definitions of community boundaries are as beyond us as the Hirschian text, Fish concludes that we can recognise fellow community members only with a knowing “nod of recognition.”[39]

In this version of Fish, therefore, it is never the case that anything goes, but rather that only what goes, goes. ‘Indeterminacy’ is now to be defined as a ‘limited indeterminacy’; readings are infinite in number but limited in scope. Nothing in such a hermeneutic even begins to suggest that Noble’s “pipe” will necessarily be seen as a killer whale, but neither can this or any other interpretation be ruled out on the basis of the “text” in itself because such a thing cannot be invoked to resolve disputes. Two points are noteworthy here. First, we might say that a particular reading could not exist because no such interpretive community could ever exist. But apart from checking every interpretive community that has ever existed or ever will exist—obviously impossible—how can we know this definitively? But, second, and more importantly, the number of readings possible, though still infinite in number, is limited and so the situation we are looking at is more one of interpretive disputes over comparatively minor topics; for example, is a “pipe” a “telescope” and not, is it a “killer whale”. But minor only in one sense; relatively small changes may still have large effects. After all, seeing a grey tube as a telescope rather than as a pipe is likely to be of considerable significance when we come to describe the scene in which it occurs.

The loss of the text as adjudicator

The hermeneutical situation described—of a limited but infinite number of competing readings—differs in only one major respect from that proposed by Thiselton, Noble, and Vanhoozer; the loss of a text sufficiently ‘available’ to adjudicate between interpretations.[40] Thiselton has attempted to use Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of cross-cultural overlaps creating stable but fuzzy-edged concepts in order to reinstate the text proclaimed lost by Fish. According to Thiselton,

"[w]hen he looked at language, Wittgenstein observed that some language games could be thought of in entirely context-relative terms, but for the most part ‘we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing’. In other words, although social practices of given communities do indeed provide a background which contextually shapes concepts and meanings, overlapping and interpenetration also offer certain criss-crossings which constitute trans-contextual bridges. Sufficient bridging can occur for Wittgenstein to suggest that in many cases a trans-contextual frame of reference for meanings can be found in ‘the common behaviour of mankind’. It is not the case, as Fish suggests it is, that we must choose between the sharply-bounded crystalline purity of formalist concepts and the unstable concepts of contextual pragmatism. Concepts may function with a measure of operational stability, but with ‘blurred edges’. Difference of social context and practice may push or pull them into relatively different shapes but do not necessarily change their stable identity. For Wittgenstein... ‘concepts with blurred edges’ are situated on middle ground along the road from formalism to pragmatism.[41]
Presumably, a semi-formalist text results, with gaps filled in a variety of ways by different readers."

This situation mirrors the debate between Fish and Iser mentioned earlier. Fish’s response in that debate is therefore directly pertinent to Thiselton; how are we to say which concepts are of this type? Unless we can access raw data and prove its existence directly, we cannot claim it as evidence for a necessary stability without circularity. And any attempt to demonstrate a stable concept within interpreted reality (e.g. Noble’s ‘Arcadian Simplicity’) is open to the objection that we can never check all possible interpretive communities, all readerly horizons.

Please do not misunderstand me here; I have no wish to deconstruct every concept ad infinitum or to try to prove that no concept is solid. I just see no way that the solidity of any concept can be conclusively demonstrated. And, therefore, no way that Noble’s claim that ‘Arcadian Simplicity’ is a reader-independent fact can be made good. It does seem to me, however, that the history of biblical exegesis can be accounted for quite happily by my description of Fish’s hermeneutics. All biblical texts have a number of variations that cling to them and defy all attempts to point to the text as adjudicator. Recognising this brings the history of biblical exegesis alive as a rich source for Christianity instead of seeing it as a mere repository of interpretations—virtually all of them wrong.

A Threat to Christian Theology?

What is the effect of this portrait of Fish on Christian theology? Does disaster result? Or is it a useful description of our situation? Although there is no space here for a detailed study of the impact of ‘my Fish’ I should like to counter three charges of disaster. First, is Fish a threat to the Bible? No, he simply describes and explains both the variety of interpretation we have had—and will have in the future—and why, as the history of exegesis demonstrates, the Bible has never been able to function as an adjudicator of what it means in and of itself. Second, is Fish’s anti-realism a threat to the realist existence of a deity beyond the projections of humanity? No, because the essence of non-foundationalism is its recognition that it can say nothing about what lies beyond human perception. Fish represents absolutely no threat to a theology of revelation such as that of Karl Barth. If we talk of a God reaching into Creation through whatever means, he cannot deny the possibility, except—perhaps—to claim that Occam’s razor renders it unnecessary. Finally, does Fish’s claim that we are unable to touch reality in itself mean that we cannot discern God in creation? No, because such a view would be unnecessarily dualistic. We are part of creation ourselves and therefore our interpretive lenses are no barriers to encountering the divine in the created order.

It is my conclusion then, that Fish is not the great nemesis of Christian Theology that Thiselton, Noble and Vanhoozer would have us believe but rather the opposite. Fish is the provider of an important theological explanation of the effect of humanity’s finitude upon both our biblical interpretation and our God-talk. In accepting Fish’s arguments as accurate, our greatest gains as Christian theologians may well be a more humble restraint in expressing our own views and, hopefully, a newfound desire to give heed to the voices of those we have traditionally despised.

[1]Now published as ‘Signs of the Times: Towards a Theology for the Year 2000 as a Grammar of Grace, Truth and Eschatology in Contexts of So-called Post-modernity’, in The Future as God’s Gift: Exploration in Christian Eschatology (Ed. D. Ferguson; Society for the Study of Theology: Explorations in Contemporary Theology Series; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), pp . Interestingly, much of the discussion of the pragmatists has been removed, presumably because of space considerations (at 54 pages, the Edinburgh paper was rather lengthy.)

[2]Rorty’s works include Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982); Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Objectivism, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

The primary collections of Fish’s work are Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980); Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and Its a Good Thing Too (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); The Trouble with Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).

[3]See, for example, S. Hauerwas, and S. Long, ‘Interpreting the Bible as a Political Act’. Religion and Intellectual Life 9 (1989), pp 134-42; cf. also S. Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981); Unleashing the Scriptures: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America (Nashville: Abingdon Press , 1993).

[4]See also his comments on Fish in his New Horizons in Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollins, 1992), pp 537-42.

[5]The Canonical Approach: A Critical Reconstruction of the Hermeneutics of Brevard S. Childs (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995); ‘Hermeneutics and Post-modernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part 1’, Religious Studies 30 (1994), pp 419-36; ‘Hermeneutics and Post-modernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part 2’, Religious Studies 31 (1995), pp 1-22.

[6]Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, The Reader, and The Morality of Literary Knowledge (Leicester: Apollos, 1998).

[7]W.J. Lyons, ‘The Words of Gamaliel (Acts 5:38-9) and the Irony of Indeterminacy’, JSNT 68 (1997) 23-49; S.D. Moore, ‘Negative Hermeneutics, Insubstantiated Texts: Stanley Fish and the Biblical Interpreter’, JAAR 64 (1986), pp 709-19; A.K.M Adam, ‘The Sign of Jonah: A Fish Eye View’, Semeia 51 (1990), pp 177-92; F.W. Burnett, ‘Postmodern Biblical Exegesis: The Eve of Historical Criticism’, Semeia 51 (1990), pp 51-80.

[8]Is There a Text in This Class?, pp 322-337.

[9]The Canonical Approach, p 239; quoting Is There a Text in This Class?, p 347.

[10]‘Hermeneutics and Post-modernism, 2’, p 7.

[11]Stanley Fish, ‘Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser,’ Diacritics 11 (1981), pp 2-13; reprinted in Doing What Comes Naturally, pp 74-86; Wolfgang Iser, ‘Talk Like Whales: A Reply to Stanley Fish’, Diacritics 11 (1981), pp 82-87. See also ‘Interview’ in Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp 42-69.

[12] ‘Hermeneutics and Post-modernism, 2’, pp 17-18.

[13] Is There a Text in This Class?, pp 331-7; see esp. p 336. The remainder of Fish’s essay on the ‘blackboard assignment’ is, it appears, seldom read. Nevertheless, it should perhaps be acknowledged that, given the large number of misunderstandings generated (e.g., D. Blakemore, Understanding Utterances: An Introduction to Pragmatics [Oxford: Blackwells, 1992], p 172; A. Pilkington, ‘Poetic Effects: A Relevance Perspective’ [UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 1, 1989], p 121), the list/poem has often served to confuse rather than clarify the issues.

[14]Is There a Text in This Class?, pp 21-67.

[15]Ibid., pp 12-13.

[16]Is There a Text in This Class?, p 355. Both Gill (‘Moral Implications of Interpretive Communities’, p 53) and Thiselton (New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p 537) credit Fish with having pursued this basic insight to its fullest extent. Among the disciplines in which Fish has worked are law, critical theory, cultural studies, literary theory, and many more.

[17]Is There a Text in This Class?, p 165. Christopher Norris argues against Fish that reality eventually breaks into our constructions of the world (Review of Fish’s Doing What Comes Naturally, Comparative Literature 42 [1990], pp 144-82). But an obvious response from Fish would be that whatever it is that breaks in to our constructions of reality, is still itself only a part of that constructed reality; it can never be an extrinsic ‘reality’ apart from all construing.

[18]Doing What Comes Naturally, p 141).

[19]Ibid., p 141; cf. Professional Correctness, p 14).

[20]Doing What Comes Naturally, pp 30-32).

[21]Ibid., p 303.

[22]Is There a Text in This Class?, p 332.

[23]The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism (London: Methuen, 1987), pp 110-11. Vanhoozer also echoes this view, arguing that Fish, “by according a relative absolute authority to interpretive communities, has created an environment that is potentially User-unfriendly” (Is There a Meaning in This Text?, pp 170-71).

[24]Hence the title of Fish’s book There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech…and it’s a Good Thing, Too.

[25]In answer to criticism of Is There a Text in This Class?, Fish defined interpretive communities as “engines of change” (Doing what comes naturally, pp 150-52, 156).

[26] Is There a Text in This Class?, pp 307, 310, 313, 317-18.

[27]Doing What Comes Naturally, p 295; cf. pp 99-100.

[28]Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p 46.

[29]Is There a Text in This Class?, p vii.

[30]Ibid., p 8.

[31]When Jonathan Culler faults Fish for the immediate re-appearance of the text in Fish’s interpretations after its supposed demise, he is clearly confusing these two types of texts (On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism [London: Routledge, 1983], pp 71-72). It is only the Fishian text that reappears and forms the ‘object’ of criticism.

[32]Although Vanhoozer acknowledges that Fish is not guilty of a “silly relativism”, he goes on to present a Fish who is unable to explain the ability of texts to challenge communities. He writes that “we have to conclude that there is no text in Fish’s class—no text, that is, strong enough to resist interpretation” (Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p 170). By failing to appreciate the solidity of the Fishian text, Vanhoozer effectively reverts to Noble’s version of a Fish whose interpretive communities can make of texts what they will.

[33]Is There a Text in This Class?, pp 356-71.

[34]Ibid., pp 303-21; but cf. also pp 329-39.

[35]Ibid., p 305.

[36]Ibid., pp 314-16.

[37]Ibid., pp 313-14.

[38]Ibid., p 315.

[39]Ibid., p 173.

[40]This inability to use the text to falsify readings appears to be at the core of Vanhoozer’s problem with Fish. He writes that “the distinction between text and interpretation is vital if we are to maintain hermeneutical rationality and thus the possibility of deeming a particular reading false” (Is There a Meaning in This Text?, p 297). Although this fear of ‘false readings’ drives much of Thiselton, Noble and Vanhoozer’s work, we would do well to ask ourselves if we share their fear. For the Fish that I have portrayed here clearly implies that we can always say that other readings are false, and the response that we cannot because any reading is possible is not one which we need entertain except on a purely theoretical level. We cannot help but reject some readings and our encounter with all readings becomes a process of negotiation in which we learn from some and not from others. It is the need to go beyond this, to use the text as a kind of club to still interpretation, which truly marks out Noble, Vanhoozer, and Thiselton from Fish. Why is this so important to them?

[41]New Horizons in Hermeneutics, p 541.

Article on-line

2006-11-25T21:45:00.000Z

Something I've been keen to ask bloggers about has been about their experiences of putting articles on-line. Well, here is a first for me. This article was published last year, but uinfortunately the text was slightly defective (I was never sent proofs). So here on-line is a correct PDF version with page numbers from the published version inserted into the text.

'A Man of Honour, A Man of Strength, A Man of Will? A Canonical Approach to Psalm 137', Didaskalia 16 (2005), 41-68.

Sorry its not NT, Mark. Maybe next time :)

On Berlinerblau

2006-11-10T09:28:00.000Z

Bloggers seem to have found Berlinerblau’s comments fun (see Hypotyposeis for a list of links). I confess I just found them interesting for the Reception link. I have commented elsewhere (see on 25th March) on the secular and Biblical Studies, and my response is still the same. Every time someone (this time James Crossley) says "what can be done", I immediately want to first ask ‘who will do whatever it is and from what powerbase?’, and then ask ‘why is there a need to do anything at all? (James, I could be complacent, I guess, but it is a deeply peaceful mental complacency that feels fully justified in its indolence :)

The SBL committee is a reactive (though not very reactive) entity which reflects its history and its membership (many of whom were/are philologists long before they were/are theologians, if indeed they ever become the latter). This is not to say it can’t change or shouldn‘t change. But what I find remarkable with Berlinerblau is his feeling that the SBL must become something other than what it is. There is a driving need there that I just don’t recognise. Is it because Berlinerblau is based in Washington and is just infuriated by Bush et al and their use of the Bible? If so, does he really think the SBL could stop this?

At this point, certain comments about the Bible as just another text and Biblical Studies as just another discipline tend to fall flat for me. Which other text is interpreted correctly by large number of people outside the academy? The nearest analogy I can think of is drama or music. Does any current director of a play have to kow-tow to an academic opinion about what Shakespeare was all about? Hell, no. They just need bums on seats. Scholars can be upset about some of the claims these people make (e.g., history proves this), but there is little or nothing they can do about uses that contravene their norms in other ways. Nor should there be. Professional opinions about the Bible are just the same as those about Shakespeare – interesting to some and not to others. What is wrong with that?

It is also worth remembering here that not all non-academic readings of the Bible need to be heavily policed. Berlinerblau thinks of Bush, Koresh et al. I’d rather think of base communities. Every time I read liberation theology I tend to think as an academic, ‘that’s a crap reading’, but that doesn’t make me right about the value of their hermeneutics or about those of my scholarly tradition. If anything I feel a deep guilt about the rabid eurocentrism of the latter. I prefer base communities to Bush, but others in SBL will vehemently disagree. Let them. Its all grist to the academic mill.

As an aside, I want to mention something that has bothered me about the SBL on and off for years. Every year 10,000 or so academic fly to some US city and create huge amounts of greenhouse gases. If I organised an ecology seminar at SBL,… well, I just be embarrassed and wouldn’t dare do so. How would SBL give a prophetic voice to ecological issues in Berlinerblau’s model? Just wondered.

Sean, this isn't meant to give you a guilt trip, but I will be reporting you to the Baptists on Ethics and Air Travel [BEAT] Committee for your incredibly wasteful trip to the US :)

Goodacre on Berlinerblau and Reception History

2006-11-10T09:24:00.000Z

Mark Goodacre picks up on Berlinerblau’s implicit comments on Reception History and offers his own comments.

“I think this misreads the strengths and the attraction of Wirkungsgeschichte. One of the things that is so enjoyable and intellectually stimulating about reception history is that it is a collaborative enterprise. You do not have to be an expert on 16th century French renderings of Jezebel to be an expert on 20th century Ethiopian ones; indeed, you could organize a conference in which you get together a variety of scholars with different expertises to discuss Jezebel, and you could engage, each bringing something different to the table. Let me illustrate. I am not at all an expert on the reception history of the Passion Narrative, but I do know a bit about the Passion in twentieth and twenty-first century cinema. At a really stimulating conference in March 2005, I was lucky enough to talk about the Passion in film as one small part in a larger gathering at which there were experts on music, art and a variety of other things, all towards an appreciation of the Passion across history. I was not excluded from talking about the Passion in contemporary film because I didn't know about the Passion in eighteenth century European music. That the study of reception history is a growing concern at the conferences is quite clear, SBL included, and I repeat that one of its attractions is its collaborative, inter-disciplinary nature.”

Mark’s point is an excellent one as far as it goes. Those who specialise in many areas of Biblical Studies should definitely be encouraged to attend such conferences and give their input into some of these very interesting questions. But, of course, the problem is that these scholars will not likely organise such conferences. The Passion conference that Mark mentions was organised, I believe, by the Centre for the Reception of the Bible in Oxford (run by Chris Rowland and Chris Joynes). So someone probably still needs to sit between these people and draw them together, i.e. someone interested in Reception issues per se. The conference organised here in Bristol in September involved people rather more explicitly interested in these issues, but still some participants found the interdisciplinary aspect of the experience worthy of positive comment. The implication of Mark’s comments—and something I had not thought of before—is that a few people doing this could make a significant difference to the type of work being done if others are willing to view their efforts positively. Very encouraging thought.

Berlinerblau on the SBL and all its ills (and by implication, on Reception History)

2006-11-07T23:36:00.000Z

In a thought-provoking discussion of the SBL and all its ills, entitled 'What's Wrong With the Society of Biblical Literature?', Jacques Berlinerblau makes some comments that resonate with some of my own claims about the dilettante nature of reception history.

“Another problem: Under the mistaken assumption that it is an academic society like any other, the SBL has encouraged scholarly specialization. In so doing, it has always favored philology and archaeology, all the while avoiding the more capacious domain of hermeneutics. The study of how Scripture has been interpreted across history, and in contemporary society, has traditionally held little interest for a society that places a premium on the examination of ancient languages and artifacts. But the study of hermeneutics really forces one to be a generalist. It is a diachronic enterprise through and through.

Let's say that you are interested in studying depictions of Queen Jezebel in music and art. You will need to know about descriptions of her in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin (if not all three). You will need to know what the learned rabbis and fathers of the church had to say. Then you will need to look at renderings of the queen in, say, 16th-century France and 20th-century Ethiopia. In other words, you will need to abandon any pretense of being a specialist (my italics).

The Bible is a civilizational document, one that runs the course of history. So any attempt to study its continued interpretation must be interdisciplinary, and the scholar in question will have to step outside of well-defined fields of inquiry. But because the SBL models itself after specialist academic associations, it cannot speak to the very complexity of its own subject matter.”

Having heard Berlinerblau on the Bible’s use in Washington, I would be very happy to regard him as an exemplary ‘dilettante’ biblical scholar. The most significant point here though is the comparative lack of people involved in such interdisciplinary work. Like Berlinerblau I have no objection to those who work on weird minor texts, some of my academic friends do just that, and I have even been guilty of it myself, but are these really the major areas of work that exists in our discipline? I somehow doubt it.

SBL sessions on Reception 6 (American Politics)

2006-11-05T09:56:00.000Z

S18-119
John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Joint Session With: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern, The Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
11/18/2006
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: 144B - CC

Theme: Battle Hymns of the Republic: Clinton, Bush, Gore, Koresh, and Marilyn Manson

David Barr, Wright State University, Presiding

Harry O. Maier, Vancouver School of Theology, Bush’s Apocalypse: Themes from Revelation in Washington, DC (25 min).

David A. Bosworth, Barry University, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic": The Kingdom of God in American Politics (25 min).

Break (5 min)

Kenneth Newport, Liverpool Hope University, Clinton, Koresh, Culpability and Catastrophic Millennialism: The Book of Revelation, Negotiation and the Waco Siege (25 min).

Jacqueline Hidalgo, Claremont Graduate University, Averting the Apocalypse: The Horrors of Global Warming and the Rhetorical Power of the End (25 min).

Thomas Fabisiak, Emory University, Antichrist Superstar and Martyred Celebrity: Marilyn Manson's Appropriation and Transformation of Revelation's Beast and Lamb (25 min).

Discussion (20 min)

S19-77
Role of Scripture in the 2006 Elections
11/19/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 202A – CC

As Republicans continue their successful outreach to Christian communities and as Democrats try out new strategies to reach persuadable religious voters, this panel will examine the role of religion in general and the use of scripture specifically in the recently completed 2006 election cycle. By drawing on Washington based political experts, journalists, biblical scholars and other religion scholars, this panel will assess the relative quality and wisdom of the various political strategies to reach religiously motivated voters. The panel will also consider the implications of the 2006 results for the upcoming 2008 presidential race
.
Michael McCurry, Former White House Press Secretary and Member of the Board of Governors, Wesley Theological Seminary, Presiding
Shaun Casey, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary, Panelist
Missy Daniel, Editor, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Panelist
Terry Eastland, Publisher, The Weekly Standard, Panelist
Anna Greenberg, Vice President of Greenberg, Quinlan, a political polling and consulting firm, Panelist
John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress, Former White House Chief of Staff, Panelist

S20-76
Rhetoric and the New Testament
11/20/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 146A - CC

Theme: The Use of the New Testament in Contemporary Political Rhetoric

Thomas Olbricht, Pepperdine University, Presiding

C. Jan Swearingen, Texas A&M University, From Rome to Washington and Back Again (30 min).

Roland T. Boer, Monash University, Political Myth, or, the Antinomies of Christian Zionism (30 min).

Martin Medhurst, Baylor University, Political Proof Texts: Rhetorical Functions of the New Testament in American Presidential Discourse (30 min).

Khalil E. Jahshan, Pepperdine University, Seaver College, Onward Christian Soldiers: Religion as a Political Mobilizational Tool in Contemporary American Politics (30 min).

Discussion (30 min)

Remember Berlinerblau as well.

S19-41
The Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
11/19/2006
9:00 AM to 11:45 AM
Room: Bridge Room: Wilson - GH

Theme: The Bible's Impact in Private and Public Discourse

Paper 4: Jacques Berlinerblau, Georgetown University, Using the Bible in Contemporary American Political Rhetoric (30 min).

SBL sessions on Reception 5 (Various)

2006-11-05T09:55:00.000Z

S18-68
Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
11/18/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 302 - CC

Theme: A Panel Discussion of Marion Taylor and Heather Weir's new book Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-century Women Writing on Women in Genesis (Baylor University Press, 2006).

Nancy Calvert-Koyzis, King's University College, University of Western Ontario, Presiding

Marla Selvidge, Central Missouri State University, Panelist (20 min)
Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College, Panelist (20 min)
Judy Fentress-Williams, Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, Panelist (20 min)
Bernon Lee, Grace College, Panelist (20 min)
Marion Taylor, Wycliffe College, Respondent (20 min)
Heather Weir, University of Toronto, Respondent (20 min)
Discussion (30 min)

S19-58
Book of Acts
11/19/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 145B - CC

Theme: Acts in the Second Century and Beyond

Charles Talbert, Baylor University, Presiding

Richard I. Pervo, St. Paul, MN
Acts in the Suburbs of the Apologists (30 min).

Joseph B. Tyson, Southern Methodist University
Wrestling with and for Paul: Efforts to Obtain Pauline Support by Marcion and the Author of Acts (30 min).

Andrew Gregory, Oxford University, Irenaeus and the Reception of Acts in the Second Century (30 min).

François Bovon, Harvard University, Stages in the Reception History of Acts during the First Six Centuries C.E. (30 min).

Discussion (30 min).

S19-90
The Texts of Wisdom in Israel, Early Judaism, and the Eastern Mediterranean World
11/19/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Meeting Room 12 - RW

Katharine Dell, University of Cambridge, Presiding

Eric S. Christianson, University of Chester, Ecclesiastes in Reception: Understanding the Pervasive Appeal of the Preacher (30 min).

T. A. Perry, University of Connecticut, Joyous Vanity: Qohelet's Spirituality (30 min).

Stuart Weeks, Durham University, Qoheleth and his Creator (30 min).

John Jarick, University of Oxford, Unraveling the Threefold Cord of Ecclesiastes (30 min).

Discussion (30 min)

S20-54
Bible and Cultural Studies
11/20/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 302 - CC

Theme: The Bible and its Cultural Effects

Kathleen Nash, Le Moyne College, Presiding

Jeremy Punt, University of Stellenbosch, Popularising a Prophet (Isaiah) in Parliament: The Bible in Post-Apartheid, South African Public Discourse (20 min).

Katrina Van Heest, Claremont Graduate University, Scriptures and Piracy: Textual Politics in Public Intellectual Property Discourse (20 min).

Jesper Svartvik, Lund University, Hugo Odeberg's Pharisaism and Dejudaized Christianity Anno 1943 (20 min).

Discussion (30 min)

Benjamin Abelow, Great Neck, NY, Symbolic Images of Endemic Childhood Trauma Embedded in New Testament Writings: Cultural Functions and Implications (20 min).

Jeremy W. Barrier, Texas Christian University, Stigmata as a Language of Torture in Galatians 6:17: Paul's Body within a Postcolonial Optic (20 min).

Discussion (20 min)

SBL sessions on Reception 4

2006-11-05T09:54:00.000Z

S19-128
Romans through History and Cultures
11/19/2006
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: 153 - CC

Theme: Reformation Readings of Romans: From Erasmus to Bullinger

Khiok-Khng Yeo, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Presiding

Laurel Carrington, Saint Olaf College, Erasmus’s Readings of Romans 3, 4, and 5 as Rhetoric and Theology (20 min).

Edwin Tait, Asbury Theological Seminary, Pedagogue of the Groaning Creation: The Law in Martin Bucer’s 1536 Romans Commentary (20 min).

Peter Opitz, University of Zurich, Bullinger’s Reading of Romans (20 min).

William Campbell, University of Wales, Respondent (20 min)
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Respondent (20 min)
Troy Martin, Saint Xavier University, Respondent (20 min)
Discussion (30 min)

Papers will be summarized not read in their entirety. They will be available on the web by the 1. October 2006 at www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/religious_studies/SBL2006/home2006.htm

S21-22
Romans through History and Cultures
11/21/2006
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: 155 - CC
Theme: Reformation Readings of Romans: Luther, Calvin and their Influence

R. Ward Holder, Saint Anselm College, Presiding

Gary Neal Hansen, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Door and Passageway: Calvin's use of Romans as Hermeneutical and (20 min)

Sujin Pak, Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, “Romans 5 and 13 as Lenses into the Similarities and Differences of Melanchthon, Calvin and Luther’s Romans Commentaries” (20 min).

Deanna Thompson, Hamline University, Letting the Word Run Free: Luther's Lectures on Romans and Popular Reception (20 min).

David Whitford, United Theological Seminary, Respondent (20 min)
Kathy Ehrensperger, University of Wales , Respondent (20 min)
Kurt Richardson, McMaster University, Respondent (20 min)
Discussion (30 min)

Papers will be summarized not read in their entirety. They will be available on the web by the 1. October 2006 at www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/religious_studies/SBL2006/home2006.htm

S19-26
Romans through History and Cultures (Joint Session with Paul and Politics)
11/19/2006
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: 152B - CC

Theme: Panel discussion of Robert Jewett, Romans, Hermeneia. (Fortress, 2006)

Cynthia Kittredge, Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Presiding
Sze-kar Wan, Andover Newton Theological School, Panelist (20 min)
Brigitte Kahl, Union Theological Seminary, Panelist (20 min)
James Dunn, Durham University, Panelist (20 min)
Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University, Panelist (20 min)
Robert Jewett, University of Heidelberg, Panelist (20 min)
Discussion (20 min)
Discussion (30 min)

SBL sessions on Reception 3

2006-11-05T09:53:00.000Z

S20-124
John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
11/20/2006
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: 154A - CC

Theme: John's Apocalypse and the Creation of Community

Edith Humphrey, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Presiding

Brian C. Jones, Wartburg College, Narrating the End of the World: The Social and Psychological Function of Apocalyptic Literature (25 min).

Peter S. Perry, Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, The Rhetoric of Hymns: Revelation 5:8-14 (25 min).

Stephan Witetschek, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Who Crucified the Lord? And Where? Some Thoughts About Revelation 11:8 (25 min).

Heike Omerzu, University of Mainz, The Divine Child: The Reflection of Roman Imperial Cult in Revelation 12 (25 min).
David L. Barr, Wright State University Main Campus, Earth Opens Her Mouth: the Ruin and Renewal of Earth in John's Apocalypse (25 min).

Sigve Tonstad, Sykehuset Asker and Baerum, Blood "as high as a horse's bridle": The Devil is in the Details (25 min).

A further session-held jointly with the The Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible people is listed in a later post because of its focus on politics.