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.
Here’s a very nice tribute and set of memories of Rod Decker, who died recently. Rod was a lovely man and a fine teacher and writer on Greek. I’m looking forward to seeing his introductory Greek grammar and his 2-volume handbook on Mark when they appear later in the year.
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
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The sad news has come today that Rod Decker has died after quite a long illness with cancer. Here’s the note from his wife. Rod is a lovely man and fine scholar (verb tense carefully chosen, as Rod would always have insisted): his introductory Greek grammar and his Baylor Greek Handbook on Mark (in 2 volumes) were his final major projects and they will be out later this year. We thank God for him and send much love to his family.
I’m really looking forward to Friday and Saturday this week when we have our first St Mary’s University Centre for Social-Scientific Study of the Bible conference on ‘Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity’—details here; you can still book to come! I’m working on a paper on ‘Evil in Ephesus (Acts 19:8-40)’ which is looking at issues of the nature of evil, and how Luke sees evil being overcome, in Paul’s visit to the city. There are lots of interesting things going on—the full
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