I recently came across a post by Roger Olson called “The Absurdity of “Higher Criticism” of the Gospels.” I think I am as bothered about his characterisation of higher criticism (hereafter HC)–indeed, even the use of the term–as he is about HC itself. Olson implies that HC is basically a kind of biblical criticism* that is “…negative or destructive… Continue Reading
Recently someone asked me what I was up to with my work. I answered that in addition to my New Testament work (a discipline we share), I was doing front- and back-end web development for a project related to biblical studies. The response: “Oh. Well, I’m sure that will come in handy in the future.” Perhaps it was… Continue Reading
Proofing:Debugging::Writing:Development I spent a lot of yesterday troubleshooting some website issues related to one of my work projects. In one case, a theme developer had left three absolute urls to a development sandbox in the code (which means on a new server, those urls no longer work, resulting in long page loads and 404 errors). Reflecting on the… Continue Reading
In November of last year, the second edition of The SBL Handbook of Style (a style guide for biblical studies and related fields) was released, updating the previous edition that was published in 1999. Because I’m a member of the SBL, I was hoping to pick up a free pdf version (as I did the previous edition).… Continue Reading
Can a scholarly book be (semi-)self-published, peer-reviewed, available near cost in print editions and free in pdf? Yes. Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies: An Introduction Edited by: Alessandro Bausi (General editor), Pier Giorgio Borbone, Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, Paola Buzi, Jost Gippert, Caroline Macé, Marilena Maniaci, Zisis Melissakis, Laura E. Parodi, Witold Witakowski Project editor: Eugenia Sokolinski Printed… Continue Reading
(A personal note.) Things got quiet around here for much of July as I became unexpectedly but delightfully busy. One outcome of July’s work was, I am pleased to say, a job. In September I am happily taking up the post Research Fellow in Biblical Literacy with CODEC, a research centre of the University of… Continue Reading
Larry Hurtado writes of a freshly minted PhD with research promise from Edinburgh who will return to his home country to take up a post that lacks the resources to provide a robust research environment. He envisions a means of supporting such scholars in their research and makes a plea: …for a charitable trust or… Continue Reading
I am nearing the halfway point of Watson on a close read (i.e., every word, every footnote), and I found Markus Bockmuehl’s recent JTS review to be a nice summary overall. I also agreed with many of the his critiques. One small point I wish Bockmuehl would have expanded (even with just an extra sentence): In particular,… Continue Reading
These are fun stories: In January, nine papyri documents almost 2,000 years old were discovered by a student in the Luther College library archives, where they had remained hidden in a cardboard box for decades. Luther sophomore Brittany Anderson was conducting a routine inventory of the papers of the late Orlando W. Qualley, longtime professor… Continue Reading
This news has just arrived in my rss reader via Brice Jones’ blog, though the actually post link doesn’t appear to be working. Jones states: I learned through an e-mail from Prof. Louis Painchaud of Laval that the Coptic “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” will be published in the next issue of the Harvard Theological Review.… Continue Reading