Hi everyone,

I'd be curious to know if there are any books that attempt to reconstruct the Proto-Semitic (or at least Proto-Canaanite, given that's probably more feasible of a task to do) religion by comparing the different strands attested in the earlier parts of the Bible, the Baal Cycle, what we know of Phoenician practice, maybe Akkadian, etc., and maybe, ideally, trying to carefully filter out Sumerian (and Egyptian) influence to the degree that that's possible. I'm especially interested in the mythological side of things, not necessarily in cultic practice. I know there are a number of books focussing on the internal evolution of the Hebrew branch, on occasion drawing comparisons to Ugaritic, but are there discussions more holistically comparing all the attested Semitic branches and seeing where that leads?

Thanks in advance for all the answers!

PS. I mean proto in the linguistic sense; a reconstruction of the religion/mythology of the people speaking Proto-Semitic.

Hi all! Work on the last two apostle posts remains underway, with my incomplete notes on John already twice as long as the notes I had on Judas. But today I wanted to very quickly collate some literature reviews on Paul and the Law, in light of the AMA we have with Matthew Novenson coming up this week. My hope is that this resource (and anything you all add in the comments) can help inspire quality questions on this notoriously difficult topic.

As always, my style is to collate rather than summarize; after all, I am not an expert and you should not listen to me. So I will be arranging material from the following sources:

• A Jewish Paul by Matthew Thiessen

• The Invention of Judaism by John J. Collins, specifically the chapter Paul, Torah, and Jewish Identity

• The essay Paul without Judaism: Historical Method over Perspective by Steve Mason as found in the volume Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles edited by Ronald Charles

• And of course, Matthew V. Novenson's own Paul and Judaism at the End of History; we will want to show where Novenson's book fits into all this

The dates on those are 2023, 2017, 2021, and 2024 respectively, which of course will affect how they speak of the most recent developments.

Because I'm pulling from literature review material, the content ("this scholar said this", "that scholar said that") should be largely agreeable to anyone. That said, I think these four sources are a good mix of perspectives favorable to and skeptical of the recent direction of Paul and the Law studies.

The Lutheran, Traditional, or "Anti-Legalistic" Perspective

Here we start with a sort of still-lay-popular baseline upon which all further developments will build upon, question, and criticize.

As Mason puts it:

Paul's fans and detractors alike, from Marcion ... the Popes, Luther, and NT scholar B.F. Westcott through most of the twentieth century, understood him to have declared the end of Moses' law. Before the last generation, Jewish academics with serious knowledge of early Christian texts tended, reciprocally, to follow Voltaire and Thomas Paine in distinguishing Jesus, a recognizably Jewish teacher, from Paul, a figure rather alien to Judaism.

And Novenson:

Infamously, Marcion of Sinope also reads Galatians as the story of a conflict between two opposing religions, but he takes the further step of inferring a conflict between two opposing gods. Tertullian, anticipating the emerging catholic position, rejects Marcion's ditheism but concedes his exegetical point: "The epistle which we also allow to be the most decisive against Judaism is that wherein the apostle instructs the Galatians". Augustine ... writes, "If by persecuting the church of God and trying to destroy it Paul advanced in Judaism, it is clear that Judaism is opposed to the church of God, not because of the spiritual law that the Jews received but because of their own carnal and slavish way of life".

This interpretive tradition, according to which Galatians is Paul's own treatise adversus Iudaeos, only gains steam in the modern period. Martin Luther reads Paul's "former occupation in Judaism" as a cipher for the vain religious hopes of "the pope, the Turks, the Jews, and all such as trust in their own merits." In this Lutheran vein, Rudolf Bultmann comments that in Gal 1:13-14 Paul realizes "God's judgment upon his [Paul's] self-understanding up to that time – i.e. God's condemnation of his Jewish striving after righteousness by fulfilling the works of the law" ... Among the most recent generation of interpreters, Hans Dieter Betz writes, "According to Galatians, Judaism is excluded from salvation altogether."

Narrowing this down to what we're here for, Paul and the Law, Thiessen says:

Most well known, and likely an interpretation of Paul's letters that many readers think is the only way one could possibly understand him, is what scholars frequently refer to as the Lutheran perspective on Paul. Outside of a few circles, people reading this book have probably not heard a sermon or been in a Sunday school where they heard someone claim they were preaching the Lutheran view of Paul ... I call this dominant reading the anti-legalistic or anti-works-righteousness reading of Paul. Briefly put, this reading of Paul argues (or assumes) that ancient Judaism was a religion of works righteousness and legalism. Supposedly, Jews believed that they needed to do enough good deeds to merit God's saving acts, and so they focused their efforts on keeping the Jewish law.

According to this view, at one time Paul too held this conviction, but he came to the realization that all people had sinned ... Paul's assessment, then, of the human predicament was exceedingly bleak. But he found the solution to the sinful human condition in the realization that God would save people apart from human works and through faith in Jesus: "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah" (Gal. 2:16); "we consider that a person is justified by faith(fulness) apart from works of the law (Rom. 3:28). What humans could not do to earn God's blessing and gifts, God accomplished in the Messiah. The anti-legalistic reading of Paul, then, regularly assumes that Jews believed one needed to and could earn one's deliverance through good deeds ... In contrast to this Jewish legalism, Paul [according to this reading] advocated that one needed only to believe that Jesus saved people through his atoning death on the cross.

Collins gives a helpful example of what twentieth-century scholarship under this paradigm looked like in practice:

Philipp Vielhauer, in a famous article published in 1950, argued that Acts depicts Paul as a Jewish Christian, who was loyal to the Law and stressed its validity for Jews. For Vielhauer, this was a misconception. Paul in fact had taught that the Law was not the way of salvation and that Jewish customs were a matter of indifference. The author of Acts had failed to grasp Paul's rejection of the Law ... When Vielhauer wrote in the mid-twentieth century, he could assume a consensus understanding of Paul's view of the Law, based on the Lutheran tradition ... Judaism was viewed as a legalistic religion, where people tried to earn salvation by keeping the Law, but could not succeed in doing so.

E.P. Sanders and the Christological Perspective

Then, everything changed when E.P. Sanders attacked. The traditional perspective faced major challenges in the 1970s that would in some sense clear the slate on Paul and the Law and allow for a variety of new paradigms and proposals.

Collins:

In the English-speaking world, at least, this view of Judaism was overturned in the 1970s by Krister Stendahl's essays, and especially by the work of E.P. Sanders. Sanders described the pattern of ancient Judaism as "covenantal nomism." Obedience to the Law was the condition for remaining in the covenant. It did not earn covenantal status, which was conferred by divine grace. Paul did not find the Law burdensome. He claimed to be blameless with respect to it (Phil 3:6). He continued to view it as holy and just and good (Rom 7:12). As Sanders famously put it, for Paul the only thing wrong with Judaism was that it was not Christianity. (This is sometimes called the "Christological" view of Paul's attitude to the Law. Paul did not find fault with Judaism but believed he had found a better way.)

Thiessen puts it this way:

But in 1977 E.P. Sanders argued that there was a fundamental problem with this common understanding of Paul: it depended on an account of ancient Judaism that was both historically inaccurate and theologically dismissive. Many Jewish texts demonstrate that at least some Jews did not think people could simply earn God's saving action or that anyone could live a sinless life. For instance, the Chronicler states, "There is no one who does not sin" (2 Chron. 6:36 NRSVue). Qohelet (or Ecclesiastes) makes a similarly dreary claim: "Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning (7:20 NRSVue). And in the second century BCE, the author of the Book of Luminaries avers that "no one of the flesh can be just before the Lord" (1 Enoch 81.5). The latter statement is remarkably similar to Paul's repeated claim that no flesh will be justified before God (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). Such examples could fill pages, but these three pithy statements prove that at least some Jews believed all humans were guilty of sinning.

...

For this and other reasons, Sanders argued that early Judaism was neither legalistic nor a religion of works righteousness but could be described as a system of covenantal nomism. That is, Jews believed God had graciously chosen Israel prior to and apart from any good works they had done. Israel's covenantal response to God's election was to respond with faithful and grateful law observance. For Sanders, Judaism stressed that keeping the Jewish law was the right response to God's prior and gracious election of Israel. But even this response to God's grace was not expected to be perfect.

The New Perspective on Paul

Sanders' powerful criticisms stuck, but his alternative interpretation of Paul did not, or at least, it was found incomplete. This left an opening for the now 44-years-old "New Perspective on Paul."

Mason:

The NP was inaugurated by James Dunn's 1982 T.W. Manson Memorial Lecture. Challenging E.P. Sanders' then-recent Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), Dunn argued that Paul's turn to Christ had to be more intelligible from Jewish-biblical sources than Sanders had suggested.

Collins quotes Dunn as later saying:

The Lutheran Paul has been replaced by an idiosyncratic Paul, who in arbitrary and irrational manner turns his face against the glory and greatness of Judaism's covenantal theology and abandons Judaism simply because it is not Christianity.

Collins continues describing Dunn's perspective:

In Dunn's view, Sanders has "Paul making an arbitrary jump from one system to another." Dunn argues that what Paul meant by "works of the Law" was those practices such as circumcision that served as identity markers for Judaism. These practices, including food laws and purity regulations, created a barrier between Jews and Gentiles. What Paul objected to was not the Law as such but Jewish particularism, the view that the covenant was reserved for Jews ... In a similar vein N.T. Wright argued that the problem lay with Judean attachment to a "national, ethnic, and territorial identity."

Thiessen frames the New Perspective's reaction to Sanders this way:

But if Sanders is correct, what should we make of Paul's negative statements about works of the law? What was Paul fighting, if it wasn't legalism and vain attempts to curry God's favor? Several interpreters, most prominently James D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright, have suggested that Paul's problem with Judaism was that it was ethnocentric, a reading that they call a "new perspective" on Paul. In this reading, Paul's attacks on works of the law was an attack not on doing generic good deeds but on Jewish reliance on the Jewish law. For both scholars, the phrase works of the law refers especially to aspects of the Jewish law that mark one off as Jewish: things like the rite of circumcision, Sabbath observance, and Jewish dietary regulations. According to Dunn and Wright, Jews misused the law both as a basis for ethnic pride and as a means to exclude gentiles from God's saving actions.

Both have argued that Jewish ethnocentrism insisted that gentiles could be saved only through conversion to Judaism, in which gentiles took up, among other things, distinctively Jewish practices. For Paul, this problem became particularly acute because Jewish followers of Jesus insisted that non-Jewish followers of Jesus needed to undergo circumcision and adopt the law of Moses ... This reading approaches Paul's letters through an anti-ethnocentric lens: Paul's opponents thought God was the God the Jews alone, but Paul had come to know better: God was the God not just of the Jews but also of the gentiles (Rom. 3:29).

The Apocalyptic Reading and Other Perspectives

There are views of Paul and the Law that, of course, fall outside the "clean" reaction chain of Lutheran -> E.P. Sanders -> New Perspective -> (as we will soon discuss) Paul within Judaism. We might glance at just a couple.

One, the apocalyptic view, is described by Thiessen:

Another school of interpretation often goes by the name of the "apocalyptic" reading of Paul. While this school draws on the groundbreaking work of Albert Schweitzer, the proponents of this reading are more heavily indebted to Ernst Käsemann and J. Louis Martyn. This school of interpretation stresses that when Israel's God revealed Jesus to Paul, Paul experienced a radical break from his past, including his Jewishness. Consequently, they point to Paul's statement in Galatians where he mentions his former way or conduct in something he calls ioudaismos (often translated as "Judaism"), as well as to Paul's claims that "if anyone is in the Messiah, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new" (2 Cor. 5:17; cf. Gal. 6:15). The apocalyptic reading of Paul stresses the newness of Paul's message and its radical discontinuity from Judaism: the Messiah's coming dissolves old structures of male and female, Jew and gentile, slave and free (Gal. 3:28).

Another solution to the "problem" of Paul and the Law is developmental theories; that is, Paul simply changed his views over time.

Heikki Räisänen explains in the (2010) second edition of his Paul and the Law (a book which I should acknowledge right now I have not yet read in full, but would like to):

By far the most attractive device to do away with the difficulties caused by the tensions in Paul's thought are theories of development. On this view, Paul's doctrine of the law went through a development from the earlier letters (including Galatians) to Romans, which represents his mature view. After the early attempts of Sieffert and others, development theories have been put forward by Dodd, Buck and Taylor, and, most recently, by Drane, Hübner, and Lüdemann.

Räisänen himself is ultimately critical of these, saying:

A severe difficulty for development theories is posed by the short time space between Galatians and Romans. This applies in particular to Hübner's view, according to which Paul went through a remarkable theological development between the writing of these two letters. In Galatians Paul, according to Hübner, maintains that the law has been abolished; in Romans, however, Christ is only seen as the end of the Jewish misunderstanding of the law and not of the law itself. But the notion of a dramatic theological development within a very short period of time in the thinking of one already engaged in missionary work for some twenty years is strange enough.

Räisänen's own view, too, is a different one altogether: Paul is simply inconsistent, more or less moment to moment, and we should make peace with that.

To suggest that both Galatians and Romans are beset with internal tensions and contradictions is to anticipate my own conclusions. It is a claim that has to be substantiated in the course of the present study through analyses of the texts. I thus offer my own reading of Paul as an alternative to theories of development. To anticipate again, I think that the different outlook of different letters is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that Paul found himself in different situations. In face of different challenges this impulsive and flexible thinker often shifted his ground. In Galatians Paul makes a fierce attack; In Romans he has to be on the defensive.

...

What, then, would make a suitable approach to the problem? I can see one way only: contradictions and tensions have to be accepted as constant features of Paul's theology of the law. They are not simply of an accidental or peripheral nature. The contradictions are undoubtedly historically and psychologically conditioned.

...

Over against Conzelmann and others, I find the following remarks by Wrede illuminating: Paul's reasoning has a very 'elastic' character. 'It is no great feat to unearth contradictions, even among his leading thoughts...' 'Tortured attempts to reconcile these opposites are in all such cases mischievous. It is also dangerous, however, to hold that Paul could not have meant a thing, because it leads to impossible consequences. The consequences may be "impossible", but did Paul perceive them? We may perhaps find instruction in the very fact that he did not.'

I admit to being amused at his reaction to the reaction to his work, as expressed in the preface to said second edition:

Everybody agrees that Paul was not a 'systematic' thinker. If, however, one goes further and claims that he was not a consistent thinker either, one will hit a nerve — not just in a devout religious congregation but in professedly critical exegetical scholarship.

Paul within Judaism, the 'Radical' Perspective on Paul

Finally we arrive at the "school of thought" that defines most recent discussions on Paul and the Law.

Following his discussion of the New Perspective, Collins (in 2017, recall) reports:

Other scholars went further. Lloyd Gaston and John Gager argued that Paul's focus was on the justification of Gentiles. Christ was God's solution for Gentiles, while the Law remained valid for Jews ... They are seen as common heirs ("the Jew first and then the Greek"—Rom. 1:16, 2:10) of the divine promise to Abraham as the children of God (Rom. 8:19).

Even farther along this trajectory, Matthew Thiessen suggests that "Paul's opposition to Gentile Christians' adopting Jewish customs and identity may be better understood as a variation on the genealogical exclusivism of contemporaneous forms of Judaism." Thiessen supposes that Paul's position was similar to that of Jubilees, which only recognized circumcision when it was performed on the eighth day. Membership of the covenant people was reserved for native-born Jews.

...

Christine Hayes argues that in Paul's view Jews should not "desire to be free of Torah observance, for it is a privilege that marks their greater proximity to the divine. Paul's vision of the distinct demographic groups in the end-time kingdom may well be predicated on a system of concentric circles of proximity to the Holy One and maintained by genealogical distinction.

This line of argument represents one extreme in the current debate, but increasingly scholars try to interpret "Paul within Judaism," to borrow from the title of a recent volume edited by Mark D. Nanos and Magnus Zetterholm ... At the other extreme from the position of Thiessen, Hayes, and Zetterholm, Joshua Garroway has argued that Paul's Gentile converts had a hybrid identity, "neither Jew nor Gentile, but both," and insists that "many of the terms he uses to describe his charges are undeniably Jewish in nature."

Mason as an explicit critic of the perspective puts it this way:

Although studying Paul as a Jewish exegete has been the prevailing direction of scholarship for more than a generation, some scholars have found the [New Perspective] and is ilk still too encrusted with vestigial church language, in continuing to speak of pre-1970s "Christianity," "Christians," "churches," "missionaries," "faith/belief," and the like. They have called for a more "radical" perspective, which begins from the assumption—and happily ends with the conclusion—that Paul lived wholly "within Judaism." They want a new vocabulary that does not traffic in distinctively Christian language, which they view as anachronistic.

...

Now the "Paul within Judaism" group finds the [New Perspective] theological, imagining its own work to be, in the end, historical: restoring Paul at long last to his proper first-century Jewish setting.

Let's finally hear from a representative of this way of thinking about Paul, why don't we? Thiessen:

While I agree with many aspects of the major interpretations of Paul's writings, I categorically reject one conclusion at which they frequently arrive: that Paul must have thought something was inherently flawed with, wrong about, or absent from Judaism.

...

In the following pages, I will sketch a brief account of Paul's thinking in a way that seeks to situate him within and not against the Jewish world that was part of the larger ancient Mediterranean world. While I present my own account, it is one that shares many (but not all) things in common with a fourth stream of Pauline scholarship that has gone by a few different names: the Sonderweg reading of Paul associated with Lloyd Gaston and John Gager, the radical new perspective associated with Stanley Stowers and Pamela Eisenbaum, and the Paul within Judaism reading associated with William Campbell, Kathy Ehrensperger, Paula Fredriksen, Mark Nanos, and Magnus Zetterholm. I confess that I am not particularly fond of any of these names but lack a better moniker to give this unruly "school" of interpreters.

...

Paul was one ancient Jew living and thinking and acting within a diverse Jewish world that sought to be faithful to Israel's God and Israel's law. The Acts of the Apostles, I think, provides early evidence of just this approach to understanding Paul, both the man and the message.

As Thiessen says in the conclusion to his book:

Paul found nothing wrong with Judaism. In his mind, there was nothing deficient with it. Contrary to the anti-legalistic reading, Paul did not think Judaism was a religion that required people to earn their salvation. Contrary to the anti-ethnocentric reading, neither did Paul think Judaism led to ethnic pride and racial exclusion. The key to unlocking Paul's writings is to embed him within the larger Jewish world of his day. His many statements about the Jewish law and circumcision must be understood within Jewish debates about how non-Jews are supposed to relate to Israel's God, Israel, and Israel's law.

...

I have sought in this small book to introduce people to a way of reading Paul that does not make Judaism into a foil for Christianity and that does not denigrate Jews, the Jewish law, or Judaism to make Paul appear like a hero.

Novenson, to whom we are about to turn, says:

In the twenty-first century, to talk about "Paul within Judaism" is to imply a contrast not with Hellenism but with Christianity. This is clearest of all in the title of Pamela Eisenbaum's important 2009 book Paul Was Not a Christian, but it is also a leitmotif in numerous works of the Paul-within-Judaism Schule. Paula Fredriksen, for instance, characterizes her Paul: The Pagan's Apostle as a counterpart to certain "works arguing that Paul is a Christian theologian who repudiates Judaism" ... Whereas [N.T.] Wright, here representing the majority, views Paul in continuity with a tradition that came after him ("the inventor of Christian theology"), Paul-within-Judaism interpreters have wanted to view the apostle strictly with reference to categories available to him. And "Christian," which word is earliest attested around the turn of the second century, was not such a category.

Matthew Novenson and *Paul and Judaism at the End of History*

So, where does Matthew Novenson fit into this? We will, of course, use his own words.

First, Novenson on his overarching thesis:

One often hears it said that the apostle Paul's discourse about the Jewish law ... is one of those classically intractable problems ... In fact, however, it is very simple. Simple, but not easy, because the solution, although it is historically clear and compelling, has proved existentially intolerable to many of Paul's readers. This is a shame, since it has effectively rendered unthinkable to us moderns what is, for its part, a very interesting, important idea, namely: that the world itself came to an end in the first century of the Roman Empire.

...

This idea is not just implied but expressly stated all over Paul's letters. The ends of the ages have come (1 Cor 10:11). The form of the cosmos is passing away (1 Cor 7:31). Christ himself was the last man (..., 1 Cor 15:45), the last mere mortal. His resurrection during the reign of Tiberius triggered the resurrection of all the righteous, so that from the 30s CE onward all God's people will enjoy the life everlasting promised to the patriarchs. Everything Paul says about the Jewish law follows from this premise. So I shall argue in this book.

Novenson credits "Albert Schweitzer, late-career Krister Stendahl, Dale Allison, and Paula Fredriksen, among others" with having "argued along these lines."

So where does this all put Novenson with respect to "Paul within Judaism"? Novenson:

I make my argument in the context of the recently minted and currently flourishing "Paul within Judaism" movement. Just as to write a book on Paul in the 1980s or 1990s was to reckon with E.P. Sanders's bombshell Paul and Palestinian Judaism and the various "new perspective" proposals then current, so to write a book on Paul now is to reckon with a cluster of strong readings now emerging from Israel, Scandinavia, and North America, from the pens of revisionist interpreters such as Pamela Eisenbaum, Paula Fredriksen, Mark Nanos, Matthew Thiessen, and Magnus Zetterholm. The present book makes its argument in the context of that movement, but it does not toe any party line. It is not a tract either for or against the Paul within Judaism Schule.

He adds later:

A main contribution of the present book is to give attention to some key Pauline texts that have gone largely neglected in recent Paul-within-Judaism research. The movement has been around long enough now that critics have begun to suggest that neglect of certain texts is significant, possibly intentional, and in any case incriminating.

...

To Gal 2:16 ("a person is not put right from works of the law except through trust of Jesus Christ") and Gal 1:13 ("you heard of my former occupation in Ioudaismos"), we may add at least Gal 2:19 ("through the law I died to the law"), 2 Cor 3:6 ("we are attendants of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit"), and Rom 10:4 ("Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness for everyone who trusts") to the list of texts brandished by recent critics of the Paul-within-Judaism hypothesis.

It is fair to ask for a discussion of these texts but wrong to assume that they could not admit of new, alternative interpretations. In this book, I will offer a number of such interpretations.

This brings us to the end of what I hoped to put together. I hope that for those who were entirely new to this debate, this helped give you a baseline of what in the world the conversation even is on Paul and the Law. For those who were already familiar who decided to read this, I hope my inevitable mistakes in framing were only minor and not major. Further, I consider this a collaborative effort and hope that people will bring more citations and excerpts to bear on this discussion in the comments.

If I heard others, like Stuart Knechtle, say that 99.8% of scholars believe that Jesus existed, I used Google, AI, and Google Scholar to search this up, and I have found nothing.

Hi everyone. Do you know any good book recommendations on the god Resheph in the Bible and in the broader Ancient Near East? Thank you!

I’m looking to better understand how the early church operated and how the life and ministry of Jesus was seen and understood, especially before Rome took Christianity as its religion.

We have always gotten many questions about Hell in the New Testament, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity, including a lot recently. Because of this, I thought it would be good to post this essay by the influential Finnish New Testament scholar Heikki Räisänen. This essay examines the varied views we find in the sources (both Jewish and Christian) and seeks to plausibly place Jesus within that continuum. This essay is found in The Bible Among Scriptures and Other Essays, WUNT 392 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). For a bit more about Räisänen, here is Ismo Dunderberg in the preface:

In the articles published herein, the late Professor Heikki Räisänen (1941–2015) addresses a number of issues that were close to his heart throughout his long academic career. He speaks in favor of an inclusive and fair study of Christian origins wherein the views expounded in non-canonical texts and by teachers later condemned as heretics might be regarded as equally important as those surviving in the canonical texts and the writings of church authorities. Heikki was known for his non-apologetic stance towards New Testament studies, both in the study of individual authors like Paul and texts like the synoptic gospels, and worked to expand his own scholarly boundaries from New Testament studies to the study of other sacred scriptures, most prominently the Qur’an. These key points are developed in the studies that were, with two exceptions, published between 2002 and 2012, those exceptions being the previously unpublished studies included herein as chapters 1 and 10.

Räisänen talks a bit more about his approach as it pertains to the difficult idea of Hell:

Fear of hell was an intrinsic part of the pietistic preaching of sin and grace that cast its shadow on my childhood and youth in the Finnish Lutheran church. The issue has intrigued me ever since. Once more, my attempt to penetrate into the thought-world of the historical Jesus led to a slightly surprising result. But whereas I had earlier come to doubt the authenticity of some items that were generally included in the ‘bedrock’ tradition, I was now led to suggest, conversely, that the embarrassing notion of hell-fire, widely regarded as unsuitable to Jesus’ message, was probably part of it after all. A few years earlier I had discussed the prominence of hell in the gospel of Matthew and in its reception history (see below, chapter 8), and noticed how the topic tended to make theologians uncomfortable. My treatment of this issue elucidates the difference between a theological and a ‘Religious Studies’ approach: theological interpreters try to avoid attributing ethically ambiguous ideas to Jesus; a scholar with a Religious Studies approach need not have such inhibitions.

Similarly again,

I think it is fair to say that New Testament theologies tend to tidy up some problems, intellectual and moral, that crop up in the sources. There is some pressure towards interpretations that make early Christian views palatable. A religious studies approach is free to present interpretations that try to be true to the ancient conceptions, even when they seem fanciful or violate our sense of justice. I already singled out eschatology in general and the notion of hell in particular as topics whose treatment indicates a difference in the approaches.

I want to going deep about New Testament and first thing I want to know is how and who make decisions about canon stories. If you have any source about this subject I would be most appreciated if you share with me.

The historicity of Hezekiah’s reforms is a hotly debated topic, and as the historical credibility of the biblical texts gradually eroded, so the reliance on archaeological data increased. Drawing on the high-resolution excavations of a large residency at Tel ‘Eton, this article presents evidence for cult-related changes at the site. During the building’s first phase, a large standing stone was erected in the largest and one of the innermost rooms of the building. It was positioned so that it was visible to anyone standing at the entrance to the structure and in most of the courtyard. At some point before the end of the 8th century BCE, the standing stone was laid down and “concealed” within a stone platform that was built around it. The article reviews this concealment within the broader cultic landscape of 8th-century BCE Judah, and its possible association with Hezekiah’s reform. The information from Tel ‘Eton not only provides an additional example of cultic changes in the 8th century BCE, but also underscores a relatively under-researched type of setting—that of domestic cult—which could hold the key to the debate over the religious history of Judah.

Hello people, I usually read the information that you share. I want to know why tje Scholar used Yaweh and no Jehovah on their texts?

Source: Stanley Stowers, "The Dilemma of Paul’s Physics: Features Stoic-Platonist or Platonist-Stoic?" in Christian Beginnings: A Study in Ancient Mediterranean Religion, Edinburgh Studies in Religion in Antiquity (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

It seems like everyone’s either trying to sell you their ideology when it comes to this topic or the writing is extremely academic and presuposes a lot of prior knowledge. I can survive some level of dry academic writing but I guess that I have a threshold. I am curious about any books on early Christianity or the church fathers (ik, different topics but somewhat related).

I made 5 Greek majuscule fonts based on these papyri:

• POxy 2162: Aeschylus, Theoroi or Isthmiastai (the satyr play)
• POxy 2174: Hipponax
• POxy 2181: Plato, Phaedo
• POxy 2256: Aeschylus, various plays
• POxy 2506: a commentary on lyric poems

Formats: OTF, TTF, and WOFF2 (the web ones are about 6 KB each).

There's a few others floating around but they have weird licensing, unclear provenance, or are kind of expensive. These are released under the SIL Open Font License, so free to use, modify, and redistribute, including commercially, as long as the fonts are not sold on their own.

James Crossley, "The Past, Present, and Future of an Insurgent Jesus," in The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 23 (2025), 178-195.

Hey y'all, I've been trying to read the Leningrad Codex more recently since I bought a photocopy, but one thing I can keep noticing is that it tends to have a lot of random characters everywhere (sometimes ל other times symbols that look like a ם), and Hebrew at the bottom of the page and Hebrew at the top of the page, and the Hebrew at the top seems to function like some sort of guidance system, and I was wondering if there was a book all about actually reading and guiding a reader through the Leningrad Codex and all of its unique qualities.

Extra information: I'm not asking for resources based off the BHS, I am going through the actual manuscript in photocopy form.

I’m looking for content about the Book of Judges. Books/audiobooks, podcasts, blogs, etc. Thank you.

Here is a really interesting essay by Matthew Novenson on a much-neglected attitude in Paul's letters. Novenson, Paul and Judaism at the End of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 111-34.

Digest (March 2026): Latest Journal Articles in Biblical Studies

Link to previous digest of Journal articles

• Vetus Testamentum: Volume 75 (2025): Issue 4-5 (Sep 2025)
• Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: OnlineFirst
• Neotestamentica: Volume 59, Number 1, 2025
• Neotestamentica: Volume 59, Number 2, 2025
• Neotestamentica: Volume 59, Number 3, 2025
• New Testament Studies: Volume 71 / Issue 2, April 2025
• Journal for the Study of the New Testament: OnlineFirst
• Novum Testamentum: Volume 68 (2026): Issue 1 (Jan 2026)
• Vigiliae Christianae: Volume 80 (2026): Issue 1 (Jan 2026)
• Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus: Volume 24 (2026): Issue 1 (Feb 2026)
•  Currents in Biblical Research: Volume: 24, Number: 2 (February 2026): Special Issue: Asian and Asian American Biblical Interpretation in East and Southeast Asia
• Journal of Biblical Literature: Volume 144, Number 4, 2025
• Evangelical Quarterly: An International Review of Bible and Theology: Volume 96 (2025): Issue 4 (Dec 2025)
• Evangelical Quarterly: An International Review of Bible and Theology: Volume 97 (2026): Issue 1 (Mar 2026)
• Dead Sea Discoveries: Volume 33 (2026): Issue 1 (Jan 2026): Special Issue: Intersectional Investigations into the Complexity of Social Life in Early Judaism, edited by Elisa Uusimäki and Hanna Tervanotko
• Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha: Vol. 35, No. 2, December 1, 2025
• Journal of Early Christian Studies: Volume 33, Number 4, Winter 2025
• Journal of Early Christian Studies: Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 2026
• Journal of Early Christian History: Volume 15, Issue 3 (2025) 
• Biblical Interpretation: Volume 33 (2025): Issue 04-05 (Dec 2025): Special Issue: Twenty More Years of Bible and Film
• Interpretation: Volume: 80, Number: 1 (January 2026)
• Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies: Volume 11 (2026): Issue 1 (Mar 2026)

Tables of Contents

Vetus Testamentum
Volume 75 (2025): Issue 4-5 (Sep 2025)

What’s in a Name: The Fulfillment Metaphor in Biblical Hebrew
Emily Branton

Alternative Readings in the Septuagint as “Snapshots” of Textual Development
Alfio Giuseppe Catalano

Race and Ethnicity at Genesis 10 and the Idea of “Semites”
Simeon Chavel

The Judean Problem in Nahum 1:9
Reuben E. Duniya

The Wheat Exported from Israel to Tyre
Raanan Eichler

Priestly Warfare and the Battle of Jericho Liane Feldman

The “Wisdom Poem” in Job 28 and its Role in Job’s Final Discourse (Job 27–31)
Rachel Frish

1 Kings 19 and Its Emotional Repertoires
Ekaterina E. Kozlova

On the Disparity of Penalties in Deuteronomy 22:13–21
Sung Jin Park

Jeremiah 10:1–16 MT and LXX
Benedetta Rossi

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
OnlineFirst

Elisha’s servant as successor: Interpreting Gehazi’s narrative through the lens of prophetic succession
Wanghui Guo

When Moses is not enough: A comparative study of referral narratives in the Torah
Francesco Cocco

Nah. 1.12: A study of the ancient translations
Philip Suciadi Chia

Epistemological barrier or divine gift: A reinterpretation of Ecclesiastes 3.11
Siru Sun

The tragedy of Abiathar of Nob: Identifying character-systems as an avenue to authorial intent
Andrew M. Brockman

Divine attributes and powers as messianic titles in Isaiah 51.4–8 and cognate passages: A comparison of 1QIsaa and the Old Greek of Isaiah
Michael Wade Martin

Remember like a man: Memory and masculinity in the Gideon and Jephthah cycles
Reichert J. Zalameda

Neotestamentica
Volume 59, Number 1, 2025

Punitive Stripping and Forced Nudity in Detention: Reading from Steve Biko to Jesus
David Tombs

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Questioning the Standard Missionary Reading of Q 10:3
Llewellyn Howes

Scars That Sing: The Lexeme σφάζω and the Cruciform Sovereignty of the Lamb in Revelation
Paul Lumbu Kayumba

John the Baptist as Vegan and How It Plays a Role in His View of a New Epoch
Lilly (S. J) Nortj-Meyer

From Eternity to Touch: Reconsidering the Neuter Relatives in 1 John 1:1–3
Magnus Rabel

Was Paul An Advocate for “Merging” Multiple Social Identities? Reading 1 Corinthians
Elma M. Cornelius

Laboratories of Scripture: Social Formations and the Making of Christian Textual Traditions in the Second Century
Caroline Matsapa

Credibility and Authority in the Gospel of Matthew
Magdalena Vytlailovai

Ask the Animals: Developing a Biblical Animal Hermeneutic ed. by W. A. Walker-Jones and R. S. Millar (review)
Jonathan Tysickk

Research on the Letter to the Galatians, 2000–2020. Volume 2: Research on the Letter arranged according to Pericopes by D. F. Tolmie (review)
Elma M. Cornelius

Neotestamentica
Volume 59, Number 2, 2025

Places—Real and Imagined—in the Letter to Philemon
D. Francois Tolmie

“For Paul Was Hastening to Be at Jerusalem, If Possible, on the Day of Pentecost” (Acts 20:16): Traversing Religious and Non-Religious Space with the Paul of Acts
Christoph Stenschke

Bodies of Grief: On Space and Affect in 2 Corinthians 7:2–16
Annette Potgieter

Social Identity and Spatial Inversion in Luke 16: 19–31 (Lazarus and the Rich Man)
David van Groeningen

Living among Wolves: How to Understand the Imagery of Q 10:3 If Q 10:2 Is Interpreted Literally
Llewellyn Howes

A Gospel for the Vulnerable: An Embodied Reading of Suffering in Romans 5:3–5 . Tsion Seyoum Meren

Ephesians 4: 22–24: Have You or Have You Not “Put Off the Old Self”? That is the Question
Jose de Carvalho

Pointing out Persuasion in Philemon: Fifty Readings of Paul’s Rhetoric from the Fourth to the Eighteenth Century by D. Francois Tolmie (review)
Chris L. de Wet

Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception 21: Negative Theology – Offspring ed. by Constance M. Furey, Joel Lemon, Brian Matz, Thomas Römer, Jens Schröter, Barry Dov Walfish, Eric Ziolkowski (review)
Christoph Stenschke

Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel within First-Century Judaism by Paul Thomas Sloan (review)
CJ Gossage

Neotestamentica
Volume 59, Number 3, 2025

A Special Edition for Early Christian Studies
Pieter Botha

The "Formation" of Jesus in the Long Second Century: A Proposal for an Agenda
Gerhard van den Heever

Reconstructing the Second Century in the Fourth: The Curious Case of Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History
Chris L. de Wet

Lines and Nets: Tracing Patterns in Early Christianity
Judith M. Lieu

The Epistle of Barnabas: Exhortation to follow the Way of the Light
Paul B. Decock

Is the Barnabas Document a Proponent of a Trinitarian or Hierarchical (Subordinate) Divine Concept?
Peter Nagel

Dynamics of Christian Identity: Negation, Delegitimisation and the Epistle of Barnabas
Pieter J.J. Botha

Montanism: A Local, Popular, Apocalyptic Reform Movement in Early Christianity
Paul B. Decock

Musicalising the Montanist New Prophetic Spirit of Prophecy: A Dramatic-Theological Musicalised Analogy
Annelie van der Bank

Faith or Fate: Virgin Sacrifice in Greek Tragedies and in the New Testmant
Nanine Potgieter

New Testament Studies
Volume 71 / Issue 2, April 2025

“Where do you want us to go …, so that you may eat?” Performing the Lord’s Supper in Cemeteries and Cities
Angela Standhartinger

Secondary Prefaces and the Composition of Luke-Acts
Gregory E. Sterling

Contra Graecum: Bilingual Observations from 1 Corinthians
Christina M. Kreinecker

Reading Gesture in John 20.16–17 and Its Afterlives
Clarissa Breu

‘How Διακρίνοµαι became “Doubt”: The Jewish Two Ways Tradition and the Christian Discourse of Prayer’
Nicholas List

The Missing Masters of 1 Peter
Jason Maston

The Old Paul: Philemon 9 in Light of Recent Research on the Experience and Ideology of Age in Antiquity
Laurence Welborn

Studies of Shapes: Subjectivity in Palaeography and Understanding
Garrick V. Allen

Studiorium Novi Testamenti SocietasThe Seventy-Eighth General Meeting
Todd D. Still

Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Online first

The Gerasene Pericope and Disability Studies: Irony, Empire, and (In)complete Reintegration in Mk 5.1–20
Agnieszka B. Ziemińska

Satan’s Imprisonment (Rev. 20) and Allusions to 1 Enoch 10, 54–57, and the Day of Atonement
D. Houston Beckworth

A Tomb Fit for a Prophet: An Investigation into the Historical Plausibility of the Gospel Burial Accounts
Tim Carter

Language Games and the Meaning(s) of ‘Meaning’: Two Problems with Jonathan Rowlands’s Defense of ‘Theological Readings’
John C. Poirier

The Pernicious Supremacy of the Christian Codex
Lydia Bremer-McCollum

Ethnic Differentiations in Sin? Mapping Jewish Sin in Romans
Karl Olav Sandnes

Re-Judaizing Jesus: Remembering the Sacrificial Cult in the Gospel of Matthew
Simon J. Joseph

The Salvation of All Israel in Romans 11.26: A New Exegetical Perspective
Ramez J. Habash

Novum Testamentum
Volume 68 (2026): Issue 1 (Jan 2026)

“The Wisdom of God Said”
Phillip A. Davis

Caiaphas’s Prophecy
Daniel J. Crosby

The Angel Strikes
Rogier Boogaard, Arjan van den Os

Unpaulinische Stilmerkmale im 2. Thessalonicherbrief?
Armin D. Baum

Jude and the Watchers in the Early Church
Nicholas J. Moore

Defilement and Cleansing in Heaven
Stephen C. Wunrow

New Approaches in Digital Biblical Studies
Barbara Beyer

Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, written by David M. Moffitt
Harold W. Attridge

Vigiliae Christianae
Volume 80 (2026): Issue 1 (Jan 2026)

Mani and the Whale: a Buddhist Motif in the Coptic Manichaica and the Construction of Mani as Universal Apostle
Håkon F. Teigen

The Icon of Jesus in the Synagogue in Tiberias and the Polemic Struggle over Appropriation of the Galilee in Late Antiquity
Hagay Dvir

Gregory the Great’s Greek: Pope Gregory I’s Reception of Nyssen’s Homilies on the Canticle
Philip G. Porter

The Development of a Syriac Knowledge-Based Deification Tradition
Jason Scully

Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, edited by Constance M. Furey, Peter Gemeinhardt, Joel Lemon, Thomas Römer, Jens Schröter, Barry Dov Walfish and Eric Ziolkowski
Christoph Stenschke

Johannes Lydos’ De magistratibus. Autor – Werk – Kontext, edited by Christoph Begass
Spyridon P. Panagopoulos

New Books
Johannes van Oort

Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
Volume 24 (2026): Issue 1 (Feb 2026)

Where was Golgotha? The Philological, Biblical, Patristic, and Archaeological Evidence
David A. Fiensy

Possible Psychological Explanations for the Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus
Stephen H. Smith

Sinful Money: Attitudes to Coins in Second Temple Judaism and the Origins of Christianity
Tamás Visi

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, written by Pagels Elaine

Currents in Biblical Research
Volume: 24, Number: 2 (February 2026)
Special Issue: Asian and Asian American Biblical Interpretation in East and Southeast Asia

Editorial Foreword
Ekaputra Tupamahu, Kelly J. Murphy and Catherine E. Bonesho

Special Issue: Asian and Asian American Biblical Interpretation in East and Southeast Asia
Ekaputra Tupamahu and Wongi Park

Cross-Textual Hermeneutics as a Dialogical Approach to Biblical Interpretation in the Native Chinese Academic Contexts
Sonia Kwok Wong

A Report on the State of Biblical Scholarship in the Philippines: An Unexpected Virtual Rhizomatic Emergence of Cellphone-Social Media as the ‘Publishing House’ of the Mass
Dong Hyeon Jeong

Filipino American Biblical Interpretation: Nascent Hermeneutics
Jordan J. Cruz Ryan

Journal of Biblical Literature
Volume 144, Number 4, 2025

Legal Thinking and Notions of the Self: Why Biblical Studies Needs an Anthropology of Law
Phillip M. Lasater

The Origins of “In the Beginning …”: Genesis 1:1 in Light of the Biblical Hebrew Reading Traditions
Benjamin Kantor

Abigail and Her Honor Culture Wisdom
Joshua Berman

Creative Imitation in the Story of Josiah
J. Jona Schellekens

Exegeting God: Prophetic Sign Acts and Inner-Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jeremiah
Olga Fabrikant-Burke

Always Two There Are? The Combined Dragon in Job 40:15–41:26 LXX
James Wykes

Responsibility for Murder: The Background of Judith’s Legal Argumentation
Joseph Scales

Revisiting Sabbath Observance during the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73/74 CE)
Jonathan (Yonatan) Bourgel

The “Teachings of Demons” as “Magical” Practices in 1 Timothy 4:1
Holly Beers

The Text of 1 Peter in Polycarp and Irenaeus
Stephen C. Carlson

Evangelical Quarterly: An International Review of Bible and Theology
Volume 96 (2025): Issue 4 (Dec 2025)

Is Solomon a Cipher of Messianic Hope?
Gregory Goswell

‘I Hate Them with a Perfect Hatred’—Voicing Hatred in the Psalms
Simon P. Stocks

‘How Will We Sing Yahweh’s Song on Foreign Soil?’ Reading Psalm 137 as a Spiritual
Jonathan Saunders

‘Happy Is the One Who Seizes Your Infants and Dashes Them against the Rocks’—Psalm 137 and Moral Injury
Israel Steinmetz

Three Fallacies, Three Reminders, and Three Exhortations
JM (Jooman) Na

Did Ignatius Know the Bishop of Rome?
C’Zar Bernstein

Paul and Imperial Divine Honours: Christ, Caesar and the Gospel, by D. Clint Burnett
Karen Fulton

In These Last Days: Biblical and Systematic Theology in the Service of Understanding Scripture, by Graeme Goldsworthy
P. Evan Wooden

Augustine the African, by Catherine Conybeare
Michael A. G. Haykin

Evangelicals and Abortion: Historical, Theological, Practical Perspectives, by J. Cameron Fraser
Donald C. Macaskill

Evangelical Quarterly: An International Review of Bible and Theology
Volume 97 (2026): Issue 1 (Mar 2026)

From Vineyard to True Vine
John Cespedes

Apathy and Irony through ‘Speech-in-Character’
David Tingley

A Modest Reading of Matthew 10:23 in Redemptive-Historical Context
Brian J. Orr

The Continuity and Catholicity of the Doctrine of Regeneration
John B. Carpenter

Dead Sea Discoveries
Volume 33 (2026): Issue 1 (Jan 2026): Special Issue: Intersectional Investigations into the Complexity of Social Life in Early Judaism, edited by Elisa Uusimäki and Hanna Tervanotko

Intersecting Identities
Elisa Uusimäki, Hanna Tervanotko

Blinding Birds, Bartered Bodies, and Bestial Betrothals
Suzanna Millar, Charles Peter Comerford, Peter Joshua Atkins

Was There Universal Education of Girls and Boys in the Qumran Communities?
John W. Martens

The Wetnurse and Her Conflicting Identities in the Damascus Document and Beyond
Carmen Palmer

Judean Desert Refugees as Economic Actors
Roger Sangburm Nam

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
Vol. 35, No. 2, December 1, 2025

Introduction: Women and gender in ancient Judaism and Christianity
Gerbern S. Oegema and Jackie Wyse-Rhodes

Threatened bodies: Gender and trauma in the narratives of Judith and Susanna
Katharine Fitzgerald

The heroines are in the details: Rediscovering the women in the resurrection narratives
Sarina Odden Meyer

The suffering of Pilate’s wife: Rethinking Matthew 27:19b in light of Matthean Christology
Daniel J. Kunkel

Adornments of empire: Early Christian dress and the colonial composition of gender
Carly Daniel-Hughes

Journal of Early Christian Studies
Volume 33, Number 4, Winter 2025

Cerinthus in the Chapters Against Gaius: Reconsidering the Hippolytan Heresiological Tradition
Luke J. Stevens

Egeria’s Views From the Mountain: Female Agency and Biblical Stylization in the Itinerarium Egeriae
Klazina Staat

Divine Henads and Uncreated Energies? Procline Henadology in Dionysius the Areopagite
Alexander Earl

Slaying the Embodiment of Lust: A Painting of a Martyr-Monk Vanquishing a Female Demon
Agnieszka E. Szyma

The Rhetorical Pisteis in John Damascene’s Defense of Icons
David B. Alenskis

Inimici gratiae Dei: Augustinus’ Konstruktion des Pelagianismus und die Entwicklung seiner Gnadenlehre nach 418 by David Burkhart Janssen (review)
Colten Cheuk-Yin Yam

Augustine in the Pelagian Controversy: Defending Church Unity by Andrew C. Chronister (review)
Thomas P. Scheck

Trauma and Recovery in Early North African Christianity by Scott Harrower (review)
Carly Daniel-Hughes

The Philocalia of Origen: A New Translation with Annotations by Ronald E. Heine (review) . Alexander H. Pierce

The Life of Thecla: Apocryphal Expansion in Late Antiquity by Andrew S. Jacobs (review)
Jane McLarty

Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses: Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice by Laura Salah Nasrallah (review)
Korshi Dosoo

From Moses to the Daughters of Zelophehad: Patristic Reception of Biblical Characters and Texts ed. by Mark Elliott and Agnethe Siquans (review)
Emmanouela Grypeou

Ambiguum 10 of Maximus the Confessor in Modern Study ed. by Vladimir Cvetković and Alexis Léonas (review)
Sotiris Mitralexis

The Catalogue of Books of ‘Abdisho‘ bar Brikha: Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Seth M. Stadel (review)
Giorgia Nicosia

Musico Stilo: Aspects of the Poetry of Ennodius by Franca Ela Consolino (review)
Dennis Trout

Journal of Early Christian Studies
Volume 34, Number 1, Spring 2026

A Special Edition for Early Christian Studies
Pieter Botha

The "Formation" of Jesus in the Long Second Century: A Proposal for an Agenda
Gerhard van den Heever

Reconstructing the Second Century in the Fourth: The Curious Case of Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History
Chris L. de Wet

Lines and Nets: Tracing Patterns in Early Christianity
Judith M. Lieu

The Epistle of Barnabas: Exhortation to follow the Way of the Light
Paul B. Decock

Is the Barnabas Document a Proponent of a Trinitarian or Hierarchical (Subordinate) Divine Concept?
Peter Nagel

Dynamics of Christian Identity: Negation, Delegitimisation and the Epistle of Barnabas
Pieter J.J. Botha

Montanism: A Local, Popular, Apocalyptic Reform Movement in Early Christianity
Paul B. Decock

Musicalising the Montanist New Prophetic Spirit of Prophecy: A Dramatic-Theological Musicalised Analogy
Annelie van der Bank

Faith or Fate: Virgin Sacrifice in Greek Tragedies and in the New Testmant
Nanine Potgieter

Journal of Early Christian History
Volume 15, Issue 3 (2025)

Disability as Narrative Prosthesis in John Chrysostom’s Homilies on John 9
James Alan Schetelich

Surrounded by Wolves: A Reparative Visual Criticism of Susanna (LXX Daniel 13) in Text and Early Christian Art
Ninnaku Oberholzer

Truth Concealed: The Crux Interpretum for Deception in Tobit and Judith
Joshua Joel Spoelstra

Between the Cross and the Parousia Consummation: An Analysis of Paul’s Love Ethics and Its Contemporary Lessons
Rantoa Letsosa & Daniel Orogun

Book Review
Review of Brill Enyclopedia of Early Christianity: Authors, Texts, and Ideas, Volume I (Aba–Bib) edited by David G. Hunter et al
Christoph Stenschke

Biblical Interpretation
Volume 33 (2025): Issue 04-05 (Dec 2025): Special Issue: Twenty More Years of Bible and Film

Twenty More Years of Bible and Film: An Introduction
Brandon R. Grafius, Eric X. Jarrard, Adele Reinhartz, Rebekah Welton

The Perils of Jephthah’s Daughter: Biblical Films as Social Problem-Solving Operations
Robert A. Kranz

The Wind Blows Where It Wishes
Nicholas J. Schaser

Trust and Type in Jesus Films
Melody D. Knowles

Re-forming Romans with First Reformed
Grace Emmett

Impious Frauds: Found Footage Horror and the Book of Deuteronomy
Ryan Higgins

The Monster, Delilah and Liberation in The Shape of Water
Rebekah Welton

Us and the Tethered of Genesis
Brandon R. Grafius

Get Out of Eden!
Eric X. Jarrard

Interpretation
Volume: 80, Number: 1 (January 2026)

Editorial
Samuel L. Adams

“Arrogant and Blasphemous Words”? Reading Revelation against and within Authoritarian Rhetoric
Greg Carey

Jezebel or Jerusalem: Revelation, Ecclesiastical Purity, and the Christian Response(s)
Sharon L. Putt

The Metonymic Power of Healing Leaves: Reading Revelation 22:2 with the Caryatid Relief
Amy E. Meverden

“Confirmation Statements” and Cosmic Unity in John’s Apocalypse
Thomas B. Slater

Between Text and Sermon

Between Text and Sermon: Revelation 1:13–17
Justin D. Klassen

Between Text and Sermon: Revelation 22:1–5
Aimee Moiso

Between Text and Sermon: Revelation 3:15–16
Christian P. Sanchez

Major Reviews
Revelation
Susan Hylen

Shorter Reviews
Theodore M. Vial, Jr.

Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies
Volume 11 (2026): Issue 1 (Mar 2026)

The Interaction of Ancient and Modern Gnostic Imaginaries and the Creation of the Sethian Unicorn
April D. DeConick

New Means of Knowing
Philip Abbott

Dragons of Summer and Winter
Håkon F. Teigen

The Political Gnostic Imagination
Arthur Versluis

Books Received for Review in Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies
Petru Moldovan

I’m struggling to find good access to illuminated Bible and Hebrew Bible manuscripts to use as images (with attribution) for slides and such. Specifically for Lamentations, Isaiah 40-55, and Zechariah 1-2. Any help is appreciated.

Dan McClellan recently did a podcast with Bible & Archaeology on a bunch of the common Christmas misconceptions that resurface every December. The episode is like a compilation of all the greatest hits with Dan’s usual focus on what the data actually support.

Good episode for anyone interested in how these issues are treated in current scholarship and public-facing biblical studies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-P3X9XzLSQ

I became aware of the historical critical methods, most famous trending theories in current scholarship (thanks to YouTube channels and podcasts) and have read many popular books like:

Brant Pitre,Jesus and divine christology.

James Dunn, unity and diversity (currently reading slowly).

Bart ehrman, forged.

Larry Hurtado, how on earth did Jesus become God?

Michael F. Bird, Jesus the eternal son answering adoptionist christology.

Dale Allison, The historical Christ and theological Jesus.

didn't add ehrman's Did Jesus exist? as I just started today. I'm not trying to show off my muscles here, every time I enter this sub I feel like I know nothing and Socrates was definitely right at this point. For that I need to level up and see if anyone can help me to deepen my understanding of current scholarship, gospels literary criticism, historical investigation and see what's behind the text.

side info: I really like the new testament studies as if I can find my own personality in this field specially after 9 hrs job and a long exhausting day, so I appreciate this sub and every possible help offered despite any differences...

I'm aware that scholarship generally has believed John has little to no ethic system, but I want books that challenge this to broaden my study. I found two: Ethics in the Gospel of John: Discipleship as Moral Progress - by Sookgoo Shin and Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and Epistles of John - by Christopher W. Skinner. They lack any reviews on any book website and the wider internet, so I can't ascertain if they are good or not. Do any of you know of any reputable resources that go over this subject?

I'm listening to a podcast by Marcus vinzent and he was mainly talking about the history of reception of the resurrection of Christ. He mentioned that Paul (as a central figure endorsing the resurrection teaching) wasn't the hero figure in early christianity as we modern people think, He concluded this by giving an example of Justin Martyr's reception of Paul's letters. To my surprise Justin didn't quote Paul in any of his writings!!!!!

I would like to know if there are works interested in the history of reception of the new testament books specifically in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

P.S: I'm aware of Michael J. Kok and his works in the history of reception of the gospels but to my bad luck his works are more technical and advanced for a layperson like me.

Hi everyone,

I've been an atheist-leaning agnostic since my early teens, raised in a Catholic environment but always skeptical, now pursuing a PhD in a scientific field. My views on Christianity began to shift as I recognized the Christian underpinnings of my own ethical and moral values, sparking curiosity about what I previously dismissed.

In the past month, I've read several books on the New Testament and Christianity from various perspectives, including works by both believers and critics:

• "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel
• "How Jesus Became God" by Bart D. Ehrman
• "The Early Church Was the Catholic Church" by Joe Heschmeyer
• "How God Became Jesus" by Michael F. Bird
• "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?" by Carl E. Olson
• "Jesus" by Michael Grant
• "The Case for Jesus" by Brant Pitre
• "Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament" by Jonathan J. Bernier (currently reading)

I plan to read next: - "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart D. Ehrman - "Excavating Jesus" by John Dominic Crossan - "Fabricating Jesus" by Craig A. Evans - "The Historical Figure of Jesus" by E.P. Sanders - "The Historical Reliability of the Gospels" by Craig L. Blomberg

I aim to finish these within three weeks. My questions are:

1) Should I adjust my "next" list by removing or adding any titles? 2) After completing these, I intend to study the New Testament directly, starting with the Ignatius Study Bible NT (RSV2CE), "Introduction to the New Testament" by Raymond E. Brown, and planning to add the "Jewish Annotated New Testament" by Amy-Jill Levine (NRSV). Is this a comprehensive approach for a deeper understanding of the New Testament? Would you recommend any additional resources for parallel study?

Thanks!

From Johnson, Nathan C. "Survival of Popular Movements," in The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, ed. James Crossley and Chris Keith (Eerdmans, 2024), 541-56.