Larry Hurtado on ‘The Chosen One’ in 1 Enoch

I’m catching up on reading at present, and have just read with great appreciation Larry Hurtado’s judicious and helpful summary on his excellent blog of what we can say about this important figure in 1 Enoch, and the possible implications (or not) for New Testament Christology. It’s well worth a read, not least because of the gorgeous statement about scholarly reconstructions in footnote 2: In lectures I’ve sometimes referred to [scholarly reconstruction] using what I’m told originated as a US military term applied to war-games: SWAG = Continue reading →

A lovely J. Louis (Lou) Martyn obituary by Beverly Gaventa

   Following on from my notice of the sad loss of the eminent New Testament scholar J. Louis (Lou) Martyn, the excellent Beverly Gaventa has written a lovely obituary on the SBL website here. It’s well worth reading. To give you a flavour, here are the last couple of paragraphs: Lou’s life in all its parts reflected Christian commitment that was secure enough not to need publicity. In a statement he prepared for a class on I Corinthians in 1971, he wrote: I believe that God is Continue reading →

Review: Nicholas King’s translation of the Bible by Will Ross

    Many thanks to Will Ross, a Cambridge PhD student working on the Greek Old Testament, for his guest review of the Old Testament part of Nicholas King’s one-person translation, The Bible. The Old Testament in Translation: NETS and King’s Compared A few weeks ago Steve invited me to contribute a post to his blog evaluating Nicholas King’s recently published The Bible: A Study Bible Freshly Translated (Kevin Mayhew, 2013). I have been overviewing several modern language translations of the Septuagint on my own blog (see Continue reading →

Vale, J. Louis (Lou) Martyn

   News is coming through of the death of the NT scholar Lou Martyn, a real giant of the discipline. I always find his Galatians commentary fresh and stimulating to look at, and come away informed and educated from it. Here’s a fine tribute from Sean Winter.

‘Cities of God?’ conference: a resounding success!

The ‘Cities of God?’ conference, held within the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary’s University, Twickenham last week was excellent, with fine papers, stimulating conversation, and enjoyable socialising. Here are some summaries of the papers and the conversations. The abstracts are still available here. In due course, videos of some of the papers will be available online, and I will blog about that when they’re ready. The conference addressed two central questions, and had one significant distinctive. The two questions were: (i) how Continue reading →