Come to our conference on cities and early Christianity!

24 January 2015 by Steve Walton
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Following our very successful 2014 conference on evil in second temple Judaism and early Christianity, the St Mary’s University Centre for Social Scientific Study of the Bible announces this exciting conference: Cities of God? An Interdisciplinary Assessment of Early Christian Engagement with the Ancient Urban Environment(s) Friday 22 and Saturday 23 May 2015, at St Mary’s University, Twickenham This will be a fascinating and stimulating conversation between Classicists, New Testament scholars and Human Geographers, with a top class list of speakers, including a keynote paper by Professor Continue reading →

Simon Gathercole on the canonical and non-canonical Gospels

14 October 2014 by Steve Walton
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A highlight of the British New Testament Conference this year was Dr Simon Gathercole’s scintillating and provocative plenary paper, ‘Jesus, the Apostolic Gospel and the Gospels’. Dr Gathercole is Senior Lecturer in New Testament in the Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge, and in this paper he asked whether there is anything distinctive about the four canonical Gospels relative to the other Gospels we have. This is a hot question in New Testament Studies at present, for study of the non-canonical Gospels is a growth industry (to which Dr Gathercole himself Continue reading →

An evil success! The St Mary’s conference on evil

26 May 2014 by Steve Walton
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I’m delighted to report that the first conference organised by the Centre for Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary’s University, Twickenham was a resounding success. About fifty of us met to hear papers and engage in fascinating conversation about the topic of evil across a wide range of texts in the Second Temple and early Christian period. My esteemed colleague Chris Keith had done a masterly job in putting this together. Here are some notes on papers which caught my ear—that’s not to say Continue reading →