A classic hermeneutical question is, Where does meaning lie, in the author, text, or reader? One exercise I have given students when I taught hermeneutics courses a few years ago is a play on the old ‘if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it’: If a book falls open in the middle of a… Continue Reading
I have just read a really nice article in JSNT by David Horrell and Wei Hsien Wan on the politics of time inherent to the ‘eschatological Christology’ in 1 Peter. In other words, setting up Christ as the centre of time (and the sweep of history) reorients one’s assumed associations of power. Continue Reading
One thing I have enjoyed for the past few years in the UK, both in Durham now and while I was in Edinburgh, is attending seminars and conferences to hear world class scholars visit to lecture. I would estimate that, for one out of every five or six papers, I will venture a question (generally if… Continue Reading
For the past many days, memories of I. Howard Marshall have been shared by many (see, e.g., Mark Goodacre’s post and Steve Walton’s post). I particular enjoyed watching snippets of Marshall’s past lectures, like these. My own interactions with Prof Marshall came late in his life. Dr Terry Wilder, a former student of his, introduced us… Continue Reading
Ben Witherington talks here about his discovery of many unpublished commentary manuscripts by J. B. Lightfoot that Witherington discovered at the Durham Cathedral library while on sabbatical at St John’s College, Durham University (where I work, as it happens). Some of this material is found in the notes of Witherinton & Still (eds.) Acts of the… Continue Reading
I was just referencing Ernst Haenchen’s The Acts of the Apostles (transl. from 1965 German edition) and reminded once again of how concise some of the older commentators can be. It is refreshing, really. It is for this reason I still prefer to consult I. Howard Marshall’s (1978) commentary on Luke often–He can say in half as many… Continue Reading
On 4 July 1843, Revd Dr William Cunningham was one of five professors recommended for service to the New College that the Free Church of Scotland, having recently broken away from the Church of Scotland, was establishing for theological training (one of them, Dr Black, was to serve in Aberdeen, the four others in Edinburgh). Before the present… Continue Reading
In the evenings I have begun reading New College Edinburgh: A Centenary History (1946), which I picked up at an Edinburgh book sale last year (a gem, I’ll say). I was interested to learn that in setting up the college in the mid 19th century, Revd. Dr. Cunningham, one of four early professors involved, was sent to America to survey… Continue Reading
That was the subtitle of a talk I gave at a seminar of the Centre for Humanities Innovation (CHI) at Durham University yesterday. What I wanted to do was initiate a conversation about new and old forms of scholarly communication and offer a way of classifying them to help scholars consider taking up new forms. Along the way,… Continue Reading
Joel Marcus of Duke University recently wrote a tribute to J. Louis Martyn in which he said, But he was even better as a seminar leader, and even better than that in one-on-one conversation, because he always conveyed the sense that, however stupid you thought yourself to be, he was learning something from you. And I… Continue Reading