Tag Archives: scholarship

A new book on healing and exorcism in second temple Judaism and the New Testament

Mikael Tellbe & Tommy Wasserman, eds.Healing and Exorcism in Second Temple Judaism and Early ChristianityWUNT 2/511; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019; ISBN 978-3-16-158936-2 Another month, another new book! Just out from Mohr Siebeck is this collection of essays from an excellent conference hosted by Tommy Wasserman and Mikael Tellbe at the theological college in Örebro, Sweden. I hugely enjoyed participating in the conference (see my report here), and am now delighted to see the revised papers published—with one or two additions, including a very helpful essay Continue reading →

A fascinating discussion of Matthew Novenson’s The Grammar of Messianism

There’s a really interesting conversation about Matthew Novenson’s fascinating The Grammar of Messianism going on at Syndicate, the home of many such book discussions, at present. A key claim of the book is that it helps to think about ‘Messiah’ passages in Jewish and Christian texts as engaging in a ‘language game’ in which they use the term in a variety of ways—and this is better than the ‘idealist’ tradition of constructing one view of ‘Messiah’ and then reading the texts in the light of Continue reading →

Tavis Bohlinger on choosing the life of the mind

Tavis Bohlinger posted this excellent reflection on choosing the life of the mind, highly relevant for scholars, doctoral students, and those considering doctoral study. He has kindly given me permission to share it here as a ‘guest post’ on my blog. Over to Tavis… Why, in the face of material prosperity and the endless production of greater and better goods, would anybody choose the life of the mind? I use the definite article with purpose. There are plural “lives” of intellectual priority that one might Continue reading →

An interview about my book The Urban World and the First Christians

Tavis Bohlinger of the Logos Academic blog recently interviewed David Gill, Paul Trebilco and me about our edited book The Urban World and the First Christians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), and combined the result with some fab photos of Corinth and Philippi taken by David Gill. The interview is here. The good news is that the book is now available electronically from Logos, here at a bargain price! For my summary of the book and links to other material about it, see here, and for my summary Continue reading →

More Bible reading notes on Luke—and a free offer again!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had the fun of writing daily Bible reading notes on Luke for Bible Reading Fellowship’s Guidelines notes. The second chunk, covering Luke 14–18, appears in the edition just out—it has notes dated for January to April 2019. This issue has lots on Luke’s writing, including (Bishop) Jill Duff on women in Luke, and my good friend Ian Paul on resurrection in Acts. Here’s the free offer: Bible Reading Fellowship have offered to send a free set of these notes to Continue reading →