Translation

This past year, in my work as one of the SIRE (Scholarly Inquiry and Research at Emory) Graduate Fellows, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with a team of other fellows in a variety of fields including Biology, English, Environmental Health, and Physics. One of the things we had to learn, as part of our professional development. is how to talk about research to an interdisciplinary group of researchers. This is certainly not easy, even less so when you start mixing humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences altogether. Still, I think this is supremely important in the current climate of academia, and there seems to be a real push (and not just in words) for interdisciplinary dialogue and getting out of our mini silos.

During the school year, then, we taught a group of undergraduate researchers on how to create an "elevator pitch," basically a ~3 minute presentation about their research that even the most novice of listener should be able to reasonably comprehend. This is important, as it shows the listener the value of the research being conducted as well as providing a helpful bridge between serious scholarly inquiry and the general public (= translation).

All this to say, I just finished a wonderful book by Professor Susan Eastman, who was one of my first teachers at Duke Div. She was an amazing teacher and a great person overall, who seemed to have that gift in straddling the academician/practitioner divide. Her book titled, Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul's Anthropology, is a great example of how she melds her interests in serious scholarly inquiry as well as in practical outcomes (the so what question) of that research:

This is a serious book. She wrestles closely with even contemporary discussions in neuroscience, personhood, etc., all in the service of her bigger questions in thinking about Pauline anthropology afresh. Her use of other disciplines, however, is not amateurish or faddish, she seriously took the time to digest and understand what contemporary scientists and thinkers are saying about these issues.

Anyway, in her concluding reflections, she wrote some words that really struck me as being a wonderful example of translation (or at the very least provoking translatable questions, as we will see with her probing questions at the end):

"... the complex overlapping of relational systems means that social institutions must live with imperfection rather than demanding closure and a resolution of differences that will inevitably benefit some and harm others. One aspect of Christian witness is thus to name the lack of closure and the continued ruptures and suffering in all humanity, including the body of Christ. To fail to do so betrays the bodily interconnectedness that underlies Paul's thought; when a community claims to have achieved perfect unity, one wonders who has been left out; when an individual claims to have achieved wholeness, one wonders at what expense that 'integration' has happened. Rather than pushing for some kind of personal or social perfection, perhaps speaking truthfully about the lack of wholeness most perfectly manifests Paul's realism about Christian existence this side of the eschaton … 
I suggest that a conversation between Paul and current work on the person affords new opportunities for resourcing Paul's thought in pastoral and clinical settings … the participatory logic of his gospel needs interpretation and articulation to address particular contexts of care in churches and other institutions today. Those contexts include situations in which the worth and identity of the person seems to be at risk, such as the understanding and care of those who suffer from dementia and those who care for them; the articulation of personhood and relationship among and with autistic persons; support for people suffering the aftereffects of trauma; and articulating real hope in the face of death. All of these situations often result in social isolation; all of them are unavoidably embodied; all of them require care in interpersonal networks. How might Paul's understanding of the body as a mode of connection and communication be deployed in such care? How might his depiction of sin as a hostile, enslaving agent be deployed diagnostically in some traumatic situations? Does his view of persons as relationally constituted overlap with debates in psychology and psychiatry about the relationship between biomedical care and talk therapy? Does the understanding of personhood as a criteria-free divine gift speak to debates about the human status of limit-cases, such as fetuses, those in comas, extreme dementia, and so forth?"

If you are currently engaged in research, how do you imagine "translating" it for others and what kinds of provocative questions could be raised on the basis of that research?

VIDEO: Paul and "gift"

If you were at AAR/SBL this year in Atlanta, and your interest is in NT, or even more narrowly, Pauline studies, you would have likely heard about John Barclay's just published book, Paul and the Gift. On top of that, maybe you had the chance to attend the session devoted to reviews of Barclay's book, with a very serious panel consisting of Joel Marcus, Margaret Mitchell, and Miroslav Volf. I had kind of a packed schedule, so I only caught the back end of Dr. Marcus's review (honestly, all I remember is him saying that Paul and the gift is a gift that keeps on giving and some comments about 4 Ezra) and stayed for most of Dr. Mitchell's review before I had to scoot out for a meeting and run back when Barclay was giving some final comments. Again, I had to leave early again, so needless to say, I didn't get to hear a lot of the interactions regarding Barclay's book.

Also, I had meant to finish reading Barclay's book before this session but my schedule got ahead of me, so it was helpful to hear from Marcus and Mitchell on some of the perceived shortcomings of Barclay's book–though as far as I could tell, it was very well received despite the critical comments about it. In my opinion thus far, the book is very well organized and clearly argued; it seems to me that Barclay's book dances along that fine line between the appropriation of method(s)/analytical tool(s) (in Barclay's case, the 6 "perfections" of gift/grace) and careful sifting through the primary sources. Honestly, it's rare to find a book of this length and quality that doesn't seem unnecessarily long or difficult to read given the technical fine points of book x. It's so clear and well organized to the degree that I think even a non-specialist could derive huge benefits from reading his book.

Anyway, if you are interested, I also saw that there is a short clip of Barclay explaining his project. Check it out:

QOTD: John Barclay

Teaching/dissertating has been taking up most of my time, hence very little blogging as of late. I recently borrowed John Barclay's Paul and the Gift, a book that has been a highly anticipated work.  As far as I am aware, Barclay doesn't publish a ton of monograph length material, but when he does, people read and listen. I'm less than a 100 pages in, but so far, I think this book is no exception. The book is not germane to my research, but I've very much enjoyed reading it when I can make time. It is a refreshing investigation into a term/concept in Pauline theology that continues to receive much attention, though as Barclay shows, with much terminological and conceptual slippage among those that talk about it. 

Back to the title of my blog post, I will leave you with a short quotation:

"When two different authors speak of divine benevolence or grace, but disagree on its meaning and its implications, this may be not because one emphasizes grace more than the other, or grasps its 'true' meaning while the other does not, but simply because they are perfecting different facets of grace. As we shall see, Pelagius held firmly to the superabundance of divine grace, which was prior to all human activity; but (for theological reasons) he could not accept Augustine's perfection of the incongruity of grace. Augustine did not believe in grace more than Pelagius; he simply believed in it differently." (p. 77)

If you are attending SBL/AAR this year, you probably know that there is a review of his book. I'm planning to catch the session, which I expect will be very well attended. Unfortunately, I also have a meeting with a publisher that overlaps, so I'm hoping someone out there will have some kind of review of the entire session... If you read this and you are attending, please take some notes! :)

Book Review by LTJ

My teacher here at Emory University, Luke Timothy Johnson, has recently posted a short book review of Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God on the Commonweal Magazine website. Check it out here.

On this note, if you are interested in pursuing LTJ's comments further, check out his Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity.

New issue of Interpretation

The October issue of the journal, Interpretation, is out. Over the summer, I read a book titled, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, by Christian Smith, so this issue is especially interesting given Joel B. Green's review of the book. He recognizes that he is not an "expert" in the field by any means (he is a Harvard-trained sociologist) but at the same time tries to give his own account of how some of the fundamentalist reading of Scripture has become untenable. I thought it was a bit of fresh air to see how someone outside the biblical-studies guild would engage this issue, and though I haven't read Green's review (I will later today), it should be interesting to see how an "expert" in the field receives Smith's account. One interesting fact: Christian Smith was a professor of sociology at UNC prior to his appointment at Notre Dame, and apparently, he is a good friend of one of my former teachers at Duke, Douglas Campbell (at least it seems that way from Smith's Foreword in the book).  

If you haven't read Smith's book yet, I highly recommend you do so (it's a quick read), then jump over to Joel Green's review and see how he understands Smith's arguments.

HT: Nijay Gupta

Book review

New Testament Apocrypha, Volume One: Gospels and Related Writings

Editor: Wilhelm Schneemelcher
Translator: R. McL. Wilson
Publisher: Westminster John Knox, rev. ed., 2003
Paperback: 560 pp.

WJK (Thoughtful Christian)
Amazon

Thanks to Emily Kiefer and the team at Westminster John Knox for this review copy. I already had volume 2 of the NT Apocrypha and was hoping to get my hands on the first volume, so this is a very welcome addition to my library.

From the Table of Contents, I can see that this book is well organized. It first begins with a General Introduction by Schneemelcher on things such as the history of the NT canon, apocrypha, testimonies of the early fathers, the history of research in apocryphal literature, and an introduction to non-biblical material about Jesus. These first 70-some pages are very helpful for one to gain some knowledge about this topic. Then it is divided into twelve sub-sections, each devoted to specific materials from the perspective of various scholars.

They are divided into: (I) Isolated Sayings of the Lord (Otfrid Hofius), (II) Fragments of Unknown Gospels (Joachim Jeremias and Wilhelm Schneemelcher), (III) The Coptic Gospel of Thomas (Beate Blatz), (IV) Jewish-Christian Gospels (Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker), (V) The Gospel of Philip (Hans-Martin Schenke), (VI) The Gospel of the Egyptians (Wilhelm Schneemelcher), (VII) The Gospel of Peter (Christian Maurer and Wilhelm Schneemelcher), (VIII) Dialogues of the Redeemer (various), (IX) Other Gnostic Gospels and Related LIterature (Henri-Charles Puech and rev. Beate Blatz), (X) Infancy Gospels (Oscar Cullmann), (XI) The Relatives of Jesus (Wolfgang A. Bienert), and (XII) The Work and Sufferings of Jesus (various). These chapters contain some very interesting books that we might have heard of (from say... a certain movie?) such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary, Protevangelium of James, and more.

At the beginning of each chapter, there is an overview of some important topics such as the literature (e.g. different editions, translations, etc.), attestation, tradition, genre of text, provenance, theological themes, relationship to canonical Gospels, etc. [each chapter varies because not all contain any relevant information for each sub-topic]. Overall, this is an excellent volume that will be of benefit for anyone interested in the canonical and non-canonical Gospels. There is a wealth of information from a whole array of scholars that are contained in this book. I have some interest in possibly pursuing some research in this topic so this is a very important volume that I will start digging into bit by bit in the coming months.

Verdict::Recommended! (Granted that this is not really a "book" but more of a reference volume.)

Review copies

Checked the mail today and got two books for review copy. Big thanks to Emily Kiefer and the generous folks at Westminster John Knox, I received these two books:

New Testament Apocrypha, Volume One: Gospels and Related Writings, Revised ed. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson

The New Testament World, Insights from Cultural Anthropology, Bruce J. Malina

It's been a while since I received books for review, so I'm excited to have received these two titles. Both of course are books in fields I am interested in (i.e., NT vs. the non-canonical Gospels and the sociological background of the NT), so these two books should be welcome additions to my library. Look for reviews in the upcoming weeks.

Book review

History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel

Author: J. Louis Martyn
Publisher: Westminster John Knox, 2003
Paperback: xvii + 182 pp.

WJK
Amazon

Thanks to Emily Kiefer and the folks at Westminster John Knox for this review copy! I lament this is way overdue because I've been swamped with finals and traveling and getting engaged. Anyway, this book is part of the New Testament Library series, which seems to have a pretty good lineup of scholars writing commentaries on the NT as well as 'Classics' (which this book falls under) and 'General Studies.' J. Louis Martyn's perspective as seen in this book is setting John against Jewish (not Christian) background. There are two major assumptions for Martyn as an impetus for his understanding the Gospel of John: (1) the prevalence of the hostility of "the Jews" toward Jesus & co. representing a genuine historical setting and (2) that this setting could not be that of Jesus and his original opponents. As D. Moody Smith writes in the foreword, "Martyn is actually invoking the modern, form-critical principle that the Gospels bear testimony primarily to the life-setting in which they were produced, and only secondarily to their subject matter."

Martyn states that the problem that often plagues any interpreter of the Gospel of John is the tendency to read this Gospel apart from its original setting. He lists a slew of questions that he will attempt to answer such as: In what general thought-world did John move? Whom did he wish to have as his readers and for what purpose? Where did he live? And as far as method is concerned, Martyn wants to focus on how exactly 'traditional material' has been assumed and reinterpreted by John.

Martyn begins in chapter 1 with a form-critical analysis of John 9. The rest of the book is largely devoted to establishing his thesis of the 'two-level drama' that seems to play itself out in the Gospel of John. Basically, Martyn sees within the fourth Gospel not just facts about the times of Jesus' day but also that of the evangelist and the circumstances surrounding his own life. Martyn understands the motivation for writing the Gospel to have stemmed from a major fallout between the leaders of the Jewish synagogue and the local Christian community.

I think one interesting section of this book is the one titled 'Glimpses into the History of the Johannine Community.' It seems to be an essay which he printed earlier that was included in this book. In this section he traces the development of the Johannine community starting from the 'Early Period' that developed within the synagogue, the 'Middle Period' with its excommunication from the synagogue followed by martyrdom of some of its members, and the 'Late Period,' with the community forming its own theological and sociological identity.

This book was definitely challenging because it assumes one to be well versed in the discussions surrounding the Fourth Gospel. Not only that, Martyn seems to take the reader down many different rabbit holes, filled with many brilliant ideas that are nonetheless conjectures. I think this book is one that I will definitely pick up again in the future to think deeply about the situation surrounding the Gospel of John, and for those interested in that sort of thing, this seems to be a must-read.


EDIT (Jan. 22, 2010): This book would have been much easier and more enjoyable to read if I read Raymond Brown's introduction first...

Book review

Social-Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul

Authors: Bruce J. Malina, John J. Pilch
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress, 2006
Paperback: x + 417 pps.

Amazon.com
Augsburg

Thanks to the great folks at Augsburg Fortress for this review copy! I'm quite interested in the 'world' in which the NT authors lived in (i.e., their socio-economic background, customs, worldview, attitude, etc.) and so this seemed to be a good book to look at to see how they understand Paul from that perspective. First, a quick caveat: they are adamant that only seven letters are Paul-authored and the rest are possibly second, third, or even fourth-generation "Jesus-group documents"! I'm not sure how I feel about that, but since this review is not dealing with that issue, I won't stir that hornets' nest. Therefore, this commentary only looks at those seven letters. Second, the writers are equally convinced that a phrase such as Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην in Gal. 3:28 are not referring to racial distinctions between Jews or Gentiles, but refers instead to "Judeans," ones practicing Judean traditions, and "Hellenists," those civilized folk characterized by the use of the common Greek language.

As the title suggests, this is a commentary, so each chapter is devoted to each of the seven letters of Paul. The big plus for me in this book was the chapter that followed these sections, what they titled 'Reading Scenarios for the (Authentic) Letters of Paul' (Seemed like they really wanted to drive home this point...) This section focuses on anthropological themes that help to interpret the letters. Some of the topics mentioned are: challenge-riposte, purity-pollution, collectivistic personality, demons-demon possession, encomium, and patronage system. There's much more, but you get the idea. Again, this is a commentary, not a book meant to be read cover to cover, so I think it is a good supplement to understand some of the things that are going on the NT world. I'm sure I'll look at this book from time to time to see what social conventions might have been detected in the Pauline letters.

Recommended!