Free access to Sage online journals until October 15th

Sage publications has an unmissable offer of online access to journals until October 15th. Can't fail to mention that the September 22nd 2010 issue of Expository Times has a review of Bruce Chilton's and my book Starting New Testament Study by Derek R. Brown of New College, Edinburgh.

STARTING NEW TESTAMENT STUDY:

LEARNING AND DOING

Bruce Chilton and Deirdre Good, Starting New Testament Study: Learning and Doing (London:

SPCK, 2009. £12.99. pp. 192. ISBN: 978-0-281-05354-4).

Chilton and Good’s Starting New Testament Study is a well-designed and appropriately aimed introduction to NT studies. In a sense it functions as a crash course for those taking their first steps into the academic study of the NT, providing a sweeping overview of the social world of first-century Palestine, the towns to which Jesus travelled, the relationship between Paul and his churches, and many other background issues which provide a solid foundation for further studies. Readers will be introduced not merely to the writings of the NT, but to the places in which it took place, the people with whom it is concerned, and the world from which it emerged.

This scope is reflected in the first chapter as Chilton and Good discuss the first-century social world of Jesus (e.g., the rule of Herod Antipas and rural Galilee). In chapter two Paul and his letters are covered. Here the authors focus on Paul’s upbringing in Tarsus and its implications for his education, call to apostleship, and the letters he wrote to his fledgling churches (including those allegedly written by others in his name). The gospels are the subject of chapter three, which begins with a helpful introduction of the sources of the canonical gospels. Finally, in chapter four the catholic letters and apocalyptic writings of the NT are treated.

Overall this short book suits it purposes. Its chief strength is its aim to introduce undergraduate students to the field of NT studies generally rather than the individual NT writings. In terms of weaknesses, occasionally the authors’ own views come through too strongly for a work of introductory nature. For instance, Ephesians and Colossians are uncritically introduced as letters written by Timothy in Paul’s name. Such a view surely fails to acquaint readers with the ongoing and heated debate within the NT guild on Pauline authorship. That said, the book is well-tailored to introduce debutants to elementary matters in the study of the New Testament.

Sabbatical

When I had my first sabbatical at the institution where I now teach, a faculty colleague advised that I should arrange a flight to a European city during the first week of classes so that I would appreciate the sabbatical. I did then and I do now.

That first sabbatical I spent some time travelling around Puglia visiting churches with 14th C Byzantine frescoes of Jesus as Sophia and taking photographs of them.  I worked these images into an article I presented to the Byzantine Studies association with mixed results. But the time I spent in southern Italy that September was wonderful. A sabbatical spent writing an article for publication...

Decades later, here I am in the first week of school working on a website to accompany this book. A priest friend working in the west of the country has just told me that he will look at the website _before_ he reads the book for good resources. If that isn't an incentive to make the website as inviting and as useful as possible, I don't know what is. In fact, it's something all authors should keep in mind even as we publish in traditional formats. And something publishers ignore at their peril.

Back to the sabbatical...

Simone Weil

BBC Radio 4 in the series Great Lives with Matthew Parris: tomorrow, August 31st, at 4.30pm Eleanor Bron discusses the life of the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil. Available after the program and for quite a while.

Update: the programme discusses her work with Elanor Bron and Grahame Davis and the unlikelihood that she committed suicide. 

Prof Seth Schwartz: Columbia NT Seminar, September 15th at 7pm

Presentation: How Many Judaisms Were There?

Seth Schwartz, Jewish Theological Seminary

This paper is a critique of the idea of Judaismlessness, which shares with its predecessor -- the idea that there were "Judaisms" in antiquity -- the fact that it is rhetorically extreme shorthand for a set of ideas which, whether or not they prove to be valid, certain merit careful analysis. On one level, the correct response to Judaismlessness is straightforwardly empirical: Steve Mason may be battled effectively on his own positivistic turf. But Mason's argument, and Boyarin's appropriation of it, also raise fundamental issues about the entire project of writing about ancient Judaism (for lack of a better formulation), chief among which is in my analysis of the following: given that, strictly speaking, we can never eliminate anachronism and ethnocentrism (which amount to much the same thing) from the way we think about an "other," what then are we entitled to say about it? This may seem a rather strange and general concern to derive from a small body of scholarship about a small group (if that is what they were) of people who ostensibly lived long ago, but for various reasons, some of them a result of the character of the ancient sources and others of modern interests, the Jews provide an opportunity to address these issues in an especially focused way. One of the core critiques of "Judaism" is that the word apparently denotes a religion, a category whose applicability to antiquity, indeed perhaps to any period before the Enlightenment, is questionable, or at least debatable. I will argue for a pragmatic but highly cautious approach to the issue, while acknowledging the validity of the critique. 

Key readings:

S. Mason, "Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History," JSJ 38 (2007) 457-512.

D. Boyarin, "Rethinking Jewish Christianity: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (to which is Appended a Correction of my Border Lines)", JQR 99 (2009) 7-36.

Additional readings:

M. Satlow, "Defining Judaism: Accounting for 'Religions' in the Study of Religion", JAAR 74 (2006) 837-60.

T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, 27-54.

C. Brumann, "Writing for Culture: Why a Successful Concept Should Not Be Discarded", Current Anthropology 40, Supplement, (1999) 1-13, with responses following, especially Lila Abu-Lughod and Ulf Hannerz.

B. Nongbri, "Dislodging 'Embedded' Religion: A Brief Note on a Scholarly Trope", Numen 55 (2008) 440-60

S. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties, Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999, 109-39.

Will Barnet at Colby College and CMCA

Colby College has an exhibit on Will Barnet's New York Drawings and Prints and a current exhibit at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) includes prints by Will Barnet. Absolutely worth a visit.

The exhibit at CMCA, Will Barnet--Master Printmaker: Selected Prints from Five Decades, combines 14 widely known representational prints of family and personal memories with a series of very rare, less well-known abstract prints from the 1950s and '60s that appeared at the Lieber Museum on Long Island, New York, in 2009.

Together the exhibition offers a strong cross-section of Barnet’s interest in printmaking, which reaches back to his early days as a student at the Boston Museum School and continues when he was a student specifically chosen by his mentor, Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League, beginning in 1931. Five years later, Barnet became the official printer for the Art Students League in New York, where he taught printmaking and painting for four decades. His own teaching -- there as well as at Cornell University, Cooper Union in New York City, Yale University, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art -- influenced many famous American artists, including the late Bob Blackburn, an African American artist whose legendary fine art print shop got underway thanks to his mentor, Will Barnet.

In a new documentary by Dale Schierholt on Will Barnet, the artist explains that this image -- showing his wife and their child--separates the child from her mother, unlike traditional Madonna images. The strong lines, he says, are impressionistic. The documentary is very engaging and informative.

Summer Reading

Ah, the pleasures of summer reading...at present I am reading these novels: Gervase Phinn, Head Over Heels in the Dales (third volume in a series) suggested by my mother in light of my interest in teaching; Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith (which author, btw, my mother heartily dislikes as she finds it unrealistic on the basis of her experience in Kenya); and Pat Barker, Double Vision: A Novel. I'm locating Tana French's Faithful Place through interlibrary loan.

For more serious reading, I'm reading a book on Galatians (see previous post) and Henry Plummer on the various uses of light in Shaker Architecture. Just reading the chapter headings is an education: Simplicity--Pristine Light; Order--Focused Light; Luminosity--Inner Light; Equality--Shared Light; Time--Cyclic Light. I've never thought of light in this way. The book's illustrations are illuminating.

On Friday I'm going to a booksigning of The Hidden Children of France edited by Danielle Bailly, translated by Betty Becker-Theye and just out From SUNY Press.

Is there anything more wonderful than a good book?

Excerpt from a recent sermon, "Martha's Table" preached at Ely Cathedral by the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev. John Pritchard.

When I was at Canterbury with your Dean I was once taking the early morning eucharist and standing by at the end of the service to say goodbye. An American visitor came up to me and said, 'I haven't been to that service for 30 years.' I wasn't sure what to say, so I just said, 'Welcome home.' 'That's exactly it,' he said, and his eyes filled with tears. Something special happened to that man at that table that day.

With Jesus the ordinary table becomes the holy table, and your life and mine – ordinary lives – become holy lives. When we come to Communion we aren't coming to eat a piece of bread and drink a little wine. We're coming to be transformed, to be made a little more like Christ.

The offer – you might say – is still on the table.

I'm reading Brigitte Kahl's new book on Paul: Galatians Re-Imagined--Reading Paul with the eyes of the Vanquished.  Vernon K. Robbins reviews the book by saying:

This book is breathtaking not only in depth and scope but also in its goal with the reader. Kahl builds a complex, richly supported case that Paul’s argument for justification by faith and freedom from the law in Galatians is not properly interpreted through any mode of Christianity versus Judaism. Rather, Paul presents a Jewish-messianic monotheism that subverts and reconfigures the claims of imperial monotheism, which enacts an ideology of universal law and order.

He concludes: In its overall import, Kahl’s Galatians Re-imagined has an importance for the twenty-first century that writings such as F. C. Baur’s “The Christ-Party in the Corinthian Church,” D. F. Strauss’s Life of Jesus Critically Examined, W. Wrede’s The Messianic Secret in Mark, or K. Barth’s The Epistle of Romans had for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Hard to imagine a better review than that.

Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations ejournal (latest issue)

The latest issue of the ejournal (Vol.5 #1, 2010) of Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations published by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College is here.

Studying the New Testament (US Edition)

Studying the New Testament published with Bruce Chilton by Fortress Press is here! Thanks to the Fortress Press people particularly Ross Millar and Profs Davina Lopez, Sean Freyne and Richard Pervo for the endorsements. There are sample chapters here.

"Acts of God" courtesy of the New Yorker

Questions of agency, divine or otherwise, dog us these early-summer days, amid a pileup of ill tidings: an intractable war; hints, once again, of economic depression; the deep-sea oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Who’s to blame? Who’s in charge?

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/07/12/100712ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz0tpRTDbFE