Tag Archives: Gospels

Reflecting on SBL Denver 2022

I greatly enjoyed being in Denver a couple of weeks ago for the annual SBL meeting. It was a lovely opportunity to reconnect with people, many of whom I’d not seen in person for three years because of covid—I cannot recall a day when I have hugged so many people as the Friday! In particular, it was great to see current and former doctoral students in person again. I went to a bunch of papers, although I found myself generally selecting individual papers in a Continue reading →

Slides on Matthew 8–9

I had the delight of addressing the Leicester Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship today on Matthew 8–9, a section which focuses on Jesus’ authority. Here are the slides from that talk for those interested (they’re an adapted version of slides I shared as part of my larger Matthew teaching for Blackburn diocese a couple of weeks ago here). Comments and thoughts most welcome!

A cracking read: Luke Timothy Johnson’s autobiography as a scholar

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a ScholarGrand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022. ISBN 978-0-8028-8011-6. I read Luke Timothy Johnson’s book with great appreciation over the weekend. It’s clear, lucid, engaging, and very encouraging and stimulating. I’ve long been an admirer of his work: his published PhD dissertation, The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke-Acts (SBLDS 39; Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1977) was a pioneering ‘narrative’ reading of Luke-Acts which I found very helpful in my own PhD work a few years later, Continue reading →

Slides for my talks on Matthew

I’ve had a fun day with lay ministers and clergy from Blackburn (Anglican) diocese today, organised by my friend Amy White. Here, here and here are the three sets of slides from my input to the day, covering (i) an introduction to Matthew and how he orgnises his Gospel; (ii) listening to Matthew using Tom Wright’s four ‘louspeakers’ from his excellent book How God Became King on the Gospels; and (iii) walking through Matthew 8–9. Above is one of the books I recommended, by my Continue reading →

A live performance of Richard Burridge’s new translation of the Gospel of Mark

My friend the New Testament scholar Richard Burridge has worked on a new English translation of Mark’s Gospel, seeking to be as true as possible to the word order, verb tenses, word-plays and puns in Greek, and the like. I’ve read sections of this and it’s fascinating—at times it sounds rather Yoda-like in its word order, and that helps recognise the strangeness of Mark’s writing in our English-orientated world. Richard is giving a live performance of his translation with Justin Butcher reading the narrator, Andy Continue reading →