Tag Archives: Pastoral Epistles

A cracking read: Luke Timothy Johnson’s autobiography as a scholar

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a ScholarGrand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022. ISBN 978-0-8028-8011-6. I read Luke Timothy Johnson’s book with great appreciation over the weekend. It’s clear, lucid, engaging, and very encouraging and stimulating. I’ve long been an admirer of his work: his published PhD dissertation, The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke-Acts (SBLDS 39; Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1977) was a pioneering ‘narrative’ reading of Luke-Acts which I found very helpful in my own PhD work a few years later, Continue reading →

The ‘evil book’ is out!

I’m delighted to say that the book arising from our excellent conference on evil in second temple Judaism and early Christianity in the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, held in May 2014, is now out and available from Mohr Siebeck. Edited by my excellent colleague Chris Keith and Loren Stuckenbruck, it’s a splendid collection of excellent material from a stellar collection of contributors which will fill a real gap in scholarship. Here’s a listing of the contents: Christopher A. Rollston: An Continue reading →

Review: Claire S. Smith, Pauline Communities as ‘Scholastic Communities’: A Study of the Vocabulary of ‘Teaching’ in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus

    I commented on this stimulating and thoughtful study by Claire S. Smith some while ago on this blog, here, and sketched some of its implication. Now my review has been published by Review of Biblical Literature online, so you can read it here. There’s also a shorter, but helpful, summary-review by Andrew D. Clarke in Themelios online here.

Learning and church structures: a stimulating book by Claire S. Smith

This book addresses a really important topic, the ‘learning’ nature of the Pauline communities (especially in Corinth, Ephesus and Crete)—although the title is technical rather than inviting—and it’s stimulated me to write about a particular point arising from it. In general, I’ve enjoyed reading Claire Smith’s book and a full review (I wrote almost 2500 words) will appear on the excellent Review of Biblical Literature in due course (I’ll post here when the time comes). The particular point that I want to note here is Continue reading →