Acts and More

In Marginalia Review of Books online, St Mary’s University, Twickenham PhD student Sarah Prime has published a very good summary and review of the conference on the movie ‘The Life of Brian’, held at King’s College London in the summer. Well worth reading—she identifies some very good issues arising from the papers and conversations at the conference.

Professor Larry Hurtado has an excellent blog on New Testament Studies, and he’s always fun and stimulating to read. He’s recently put up two very helpful and useful posts on key issues in recent scholarship in Acts, and they are rich in valuable bibliographical resources, not least on the text of Acts. They are here and here. Highly recommended.

I am grateful to Larry Hurtado for drawing my attention to the excellent page of ‘classic’ articles from the journal New Testament Studies which have been made freely available until 31 December to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the journal. The articles have been chosen by the present editor, Professor Francis Watson, and he’s chosen well. NTS is one of the top journals in the field, and has published some very important articles over the years. There are some crackers here, too, not least—for those of us Continue reading →

There seems to be a growing movement to use ‘Judaeans’ to translate Ἰουδαῖοι in the New Testament and other ancient writings (e.g. Josephus), influenced particularly to Steve Mason’s key article, ‘Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: problems of categorization in ancient history’, Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 38 (2007) 457-512. Here’s a fascinating piece by Adele Reinhartz responding to this view and arguing for the continuing use of ‘Jews’—well worth reading.