Probs. w/ abbrev.

[Context: I'm in the middle of finishing up two big research papers and staring at countless number of bibliographies brought this to my attention.]

If you're wondering what the title means, it's my way of saying "problems with abbreviations." It must be the careful attention to the little details that my professors here embody (for example, Carl Holladay is an amazingly careful and at the same time, a very charitable reader; he's been a great mentor thus far in many regards) which is affecting me, because I don't think I would have noticed this problem before. This is almost like an exercise in textual-criticism, so if you are into that kind of detail-oriented careful study, I hope you will find this somewhat interesting. Allow me to explain by way of showing you a screenshot of two bibliographies from recent works:

Do you see anything? I hope you do. It may not be a "big deal" I suppose, but I still think it's important to make sure you have the right references. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to how the two works refer to the same publishing house existing in two cities in the same year. So in 1977, Scholars Press existed (at least according to these two bibliographies) in both Missoula, Missouri and Missoula, Montana! Obviously Scholars Press did not exist at two places in the same year. So which one is right? Again, to go back to the analogy of textual-criticism, what is the "more difficult" reading? To put it another way, is it more likely that an author would mistakenly write "MO" for Montana or "MT" for Missouri? Without even having to search for the two cities, I chose the first option, which evidently seems to be the right choice (a search shows that a city called "Missoula" only exists in Montana).

I have not done a thorough search of the bibliographies of all the monographs, articles, etc., that are out there (I'm not even sure if this is possible), but a quick search yields a ton of secondary literature that cite "Missoula, MO: Scholars Press." While one might argue that this is all harmless, all of this is creating an entire tradition of "corruption" in terms of bibliographic integrity. My professors, when it comes to textual-criticism, preach an unyielding level of care and caution (rightly so), as not to introduce an error that further muddies the waters. In the same way, this is a message for anyone out there who is reading a book that is published by Scholars Press: Montana is abbreviated MT not MO.

[Postscript: I guess I could seriously be mistaken and that somehow Scholars Press existed also in Missoula, Missouri (simultaneously as Missoula, Montana), a city that no longer exists. I'm willing to be corrected, so if you know something, let me know.]

HELP: Syriac Font

Dear readers,

Does anyone know how to type Syriac fonts in Mac OSX?  I know Hebrew is easy enough and typing in Syriac was fairly easy to figure out for Windows but I have no idea how to do this on Macs.  Please help!

New Issue of JSNT

I see that the new issue of JSNT is out and one article in particular seemed interesting:

"Whose Abraham, Which Promise? Genesis 15.6 in Philo’s De Virtutibus and Romans 4"

Here's the abstract: 

This article creates a dialogue between Philo’s and Paul the Apostle’s interpretations of Gen. 15.6 specifically, their understandings of Abraham’s faith. Both Philo and Paul see Abraham as functioning in a formally analogous way: for example, Abraham’s faith identifies him as a representative or paradigmatic figure for those who follow him. Yet Philo and Paul develop their interpretations in remarkably divergent fashions. Accordingly, this article will seek to discern the hermeneutical fault line that allows two near-contemporary readers of the same text to construe it so differently. As will be demonstrated, Philo reads Abraham’s story as the narrative of Abraham’s becoming virtuous, and thus how one attains virtue is the key to Philo’s hermeneutic; Paul, by contrast, interprets Abraham’s faith from the vantage point of the Christ-event, such that the focus is on the incongruity between God’s gift and the human recipient.

I haven't been reading much Paul scholarship lately (my coursework right now isn't dealing with any Pauline letters), but two of my classes (Acts and Greco-Roman Backgrounds) deals heavily with working with primary sources outside of the NT, so this seems like an interesting exercise in using a Greco-Roman source for NT exegesis. Also, in my Pauline theology seminar at Duke, we had to read some Alisdair MacIntyre, and I don't know if this author did it on purpose, but his title reminds me of a book by MacIntyre, so we'll see. I haven't read it yet, but for those that are interested, go check it out here.

Quote of the Day: Diogenes the Cynic

While reading through Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ran into this little piece from Diogenes of Sinope (6.42):

ἐνεκάλει τοῖς ἀνθρώποις περὶ τῆς εὐχῆς, αἰτεῖσθαι λέγων αὐτοὺς ἀγαθὰ τὰ αὐτοῖς δοκοῦντα καὶ ουʼ τὰ κατʼ ἀλήθειαν

"He criticized men about their prayers, saying that they asked for things which seemed good to them and not for the things which are actually good."

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

Interested in Jesus research?

In a fairly recently started blog by Anthony Le Donne and Chris Keith, they asked Helen Bond who she would recommend doing Jesus research with (UK and US). It was nice to see her vote of confidence in one of my former teachers at Duke, Mark Goodacre (he also has his own blog with a lot of interesting posts, check it out here). You can see the rest of her interview in the post above, but in her own words, she said she'd "go for Dale Allison or Mark Goodacre." So there you go! If you're interested in doing some Jesus research, you have two options, go to PTS to work with Allison (not Princeton, but Pittsburgh) or Duke University to work with Goodacre. He was gracious enough to  agree to serve as my MTS thesis advisor even though he's housed in the Religion Department and not the Div School, and both classes I took with him (Synoptic Gospels and Greek Non-Canonical Gospels) were very good. I might be biased, but if you're in the search for programs to apply to do PhD work in Jesus research, I would definitely tell you to put Duke at the top of your list!

Update (9.29.12): Just saw that Le Donne and Keith are also interviewing Mark on their blog. Check it out! (Part I, II, III, and IV). Also, he has a book coming out on the Gospel of Thomas, parts of which he showed us in class last semester, I recommend purchasing it when it's out next month!

New issue of JBL

Seems like the Emory folks (and grad) are represented well in the most recent issue of JBL:

On the Hebrew Bible side, we have a current student, Ryan Bonfiglio who has an article titled, "Archer Imagery in Zechariah 9:11-17 in Light of Achaemenid Iconography":

The last six chapters of the book of Zechariah (chs. 9-14) present numerous interpretive challenges. Though widely recognized as a product of a postexilic context, these chapters, known collectively as Second Zechariah, lack the clear chronological framework and explicit historical signposts that are so evident in First Zechariah (chs. 1-8). Therefore, when it comes to historical-critical approaches to Second Zechariah, there is considerable debate and disagreement in the scholarly literature. In view of this impasse, an increasing number of scholars have turned to alternative interpretive methods to advance the study of Second Zechariah.


On the New Testament side, we have a recent graduate, Joshua Jipp, who has an article titled, "Paul's Areopagus Speech of Acts 17:16-34 as Both Critique and Propaganda":

Interpretations of Paul's Areopagus discourse in Acts 17:16-34 are often radically incongruous. They range from seeing it as a placid pantheistic sermon on natural theology all the way to seeing it as a scathing demonization of Gentile religion. Interpreters who emphasize the speech's similarities to Greco-Roman philosophy incline toward the former view, while those attuned to the Jewish context incline toward the latter. Both types have a significant amount of supporting evidence and are able to provide strong readings for their argument, given that the speech does indeed utilize Hellenistic philosophical concepts and Jewish critiques of idolatry. I suggest, however, that matters are more complex than an either/or interpretation of the Areopagus discourse and that Luke's purposes are more subtle than either “accommodation” or “critique/resistance” would allow.


I'm glad to see Emory folks contributing in a productive way to the guild. Go check these articles out.