Tag Archives: conference

Closing the Gap: a very worthwhile conference in Durham (2)

                      This is the second of three posts about this conference in Durham; the first is here. Prof. David Ford (University of Cambridge) gave us a swashbuckling paper, delivered with enthusiasm and panache, coming out of his own work over some years on a commentary on John’s Gospel. This was fascinating, for Ford is a theological scholar, rather than a biblical scholar (although it was pretty clear he’s no mean exegete!). He discussed a number of influences on his Continue reading →

Closing the Gap: a very worthwhile conference in Durham (1)

        I’ve spent a very enjoyable and stimulating couple of days in Durham this week at an excellent conference, ‘Closing the Gap: Best Practices for Integrating Historical and Theological Exegesis’ hosted by the Theology and Religion department of the university, and initiated and organised by two enterprising PhD students, Ben White and Justin Allison. Both had found that their PhD work in New Testament had raised theological questions which their supervisor, Prof. John Barclay, had encouraged them to pursue and to integrate into their Continue reading →

Conference summaries: Healing and Exorcism in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity

This is Rikard Roitto, me and Tommy Wasserman (left to right as you look) listening hard to a fascinating presentation by Anthony John Lappin of Maynooth on the moving of relics in the early Christian centuries during this conference last week in Örebro, Sweden. The organisers have now made a very helpful summary in English of this excellent conference available here, as well as a nice short video (with English translation of the bits of Swedish). Larry Hurtado has also blogged about his (excellent) paper on the role Continue reading →

Slides from my talk for the Healing and Exorcism conference

I’m in Örebro, Sweden at a conference on ‘Healing and Exorcism in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity’. (The picture is one of the two amazing cakes we had for dessert at the dinner!) My paper is about why Paul silences the demonised slave girl in Philippi (Acts 16:16-18), and I connect it with the silencing of a demonised man by Jesus in Luke 4:33-37. Here are the title and abstract of my paper, and this link will open a pdf of my slides. Why Continue reading →

The Urban World and the First Christians

I’m delighted to be able to share with you the opening pages of our new book which has very recently appeared from Eerdmans. I had the honour of editing this book with my excellent colleagues Paul Trebilco (University of Otago, New Zealand) and David Gill (University of Suffolk). These pages include the contents, authors, and the introductory chapter, which summarises the contents of each chapter. That should give you a good flavour of the book and (hopefully) encourage you to ask your librarian to order Continue reading →