Saul’s change of name to Paul

The lovely people at the Logos Academic blog kindly commissioned and published a piece from me on what Saul of Tarsus’ name changed to Paul. This is an issue I had to think about in the light of this shift in Acts, and the fact that he’s always ‘Paul’ in his letters. Enjoy! Comments are most welcome.

Reflecting on SBL Denver 2022

I greatly enjoyed being in Denver a couple of weeks ago for the annual SBL meeting. It was a lovely opportunity to reconnect with people, many of whom I’d not seen in person for three years because of covid—I cannot recall a day when I have hugged so many people as the Friday! In particular, it was great to see current and former doctoral students in person again. I went to a bunch of papers, although I found myself generally selecting individual papers in a Continue reading →

Slides and handout on ‘Wealth and possessions according to Acts 11–28’ (my SBL paper)

I enjoyed contributing to to a seminar on ‘Wealth and Poverty in Luke-Acts, Revisited’ at the SBL annual meeting in Denver recently. I spoke on ‘Wealth and possessions according to Acts 11–28’, a neglected part of Luke-Acts in this discussion. Here are my slides from the talk, and here is the handout I made available through the SBL/AAR app (I liked this addition to the app this year)—I’d welcome thoughts and comments. Oh, and the sign above? It amused me!

My new book: Reading Acts Theologically

I’m delighted to say that my new book is now available. It’s a ‘collected essays’ volume, bringing together thirteen essays about Acts that I’ve written over the last twenty years as I’ve worked on my Word Biblical Commentary on Acts. Most have been published elsewhere; two are published for the first time here. Alas, it’s not cheap in the hardback which now appears, but there will be a paperback in 18–24 months, so be patient—and please, in the meantime, ask your library to get the Continue reading →

My paper about the significance of the authorship of Acts

A little while ago I put up the slides from my talk at the excellent conference on the pastoral implications of pseudepigrapha and anonymity in the New Testament, sponsored by the International Reference Library for Biblical Research, and held at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas. The organisers have now kindly made the video of my talk available (and the other talks from the conference) on YouTube, and you can access it above. And here’s a link to the YouTube page where you can Continue reading →