New Testament Studies – Page 24 – ACTS and MORE—Steve Walton’s blog on New Testament Studies

9 July 2014

A valuable online resource from SBL

The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) have just released their excellent new online resource, Bible Odyssey. It’s a very useful set of articles, aimed at a ‘lay’ audience (although it will be of great value to students, I reckon), about aspects of the Bible. It is well-organised around a series of ‘hubs’, which are places, people or passages. This...

Uncategorized Comments: 2

26 May 2014

An evil success! The St Mary’s conference on evil

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...

Conferences/Speaking Comments: 7

12 May 2014

Chris Keith’s thought-provoking and worthwhile new book

Chris Keith Jesus against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014; ISBN 978-0-8010-3988-1 [As many readers of this review will recognise, the author of this book is my colleague at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. Professor Chris Keith was kind enough to give a copy of the book I review here, but without any request...

Books and articles/Reviews Comments: 5

17 March 2014

Learning and church structures: a stimulating book by Claire S. Smith

This book addresses a really important topic, the ‘learning’ nature of the Pauline communities (especially in Corinth, Ephesus and Crete)—although the title is technical rather than inviting—and it’s stimulated me to write about a particular point arising from it. In general, I’ve enjoyed reading Claire Smith’s book and a full review (I wrote almost 2500 words) will appear on the...

Books and articles Comments: 3

11 March 2014

Judy Redman on the parable of the wheat and weeds (tares)

Here’s a great piece by Judy Redman from her blog about the parable of the wheat and weeds (tares) in Matthew 13:24-30—well worth reading. I’m particularly struck by the way she uses her training in agriculture to inform her reading of this parable and to show how much sense it makes in the first century, where agricultural practices were different...

Books and articles Comments: 0

5 February 2014

Two scintillating links

Here are two scintillatingly good links to pieces I’ve really enjoyed watching (the video) and reading (Joel Green’s article). The video is a short (12 mins) talk by Ian McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary, one of the most interesting books of recent times. McGilchrist is a neuroscientist who reflects seriously, and non-superficially, about the relation of the two...