CNN miniseries: Finding Jesus

I saw on my social media feed that one of my teachers from Duke University, Mark Goodacre, recently served as the lead consultant to a six-part miniseries airing this Sunday (March 1) on CNN called Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery (see here). Should be interesting! The miniseries will kick off with the first episode looking at the Shroud of Turin.

For more info, see the CNN website here.

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.

QOTD: Albert Schweitzer

In his typical colorful language, Albert Schweitzer probes the 19th century skepticism that attempts to show how the one who gives (der Darbietende) simultaneously is the one who is partaken of (der Genossene) in the supper:

Das üppige Schlinggewächs historischer und exegetischer Einfälle ist keine Brücke über den Abgrund des Selbstwiderspruchs!  - Das Abendmahl im Zusammenhang mit dem Leben Jesu und der Geschichte des Urchristentums, 21

The luscious plant of historical and exegetical ideas is no bridge over the gulf of self-contradiction! 

Kenneth W. Clark Lectures @ Duke Div

One of my teachers here at Emory University, Carl Holladay, mentioned to me sometime last year about giving the Kenneth W. Clark Lectures at Duke Divinity School in 2015. I'm glad to see that the details are now available for those of you that are interested (see here). If you are in the area, you're definitely in for some good talks and conversations. Carl is a fantastic teacher as well as a great mentor for all of us here so I hope the students/faculty at my alma mater will benefit also from his time spent at Duke in February.

On another note, he will be giving the presidential address for the SNTS meeting later this year in Montreal so if you are part of that society, look forward to his address then as well.

HT: NT Blog


EDIT: I should note an error above: Carl is giving the presidential address for the SNTS meeting in the summer of 2016.

Yet Another Book Notice

I guess November can be chalked up as a Duke month for my blog, as I have yet another post featuring a book by a Duke University professor. This book is a bit outside of my area of expertise, though still interesting. It is written by Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. If I'm not mistaken, he is a premier American religious historian, and I remember when I first got to Duke a few years ago, I talked with him for a while for a job as a research assistant that involved working on a book on Billy Graham. I should mention though that I did not get the job, but given my own area of interest that was completely incongruous with his project, he was still very gracious enough to meet with me and was great fun to talk to. Over four years later, his book seems to have come to completion with America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (according to Amazon, published Nov. 7, 2014). If you're at all interested in modern American religious history, this is a book you want to pick up.

Two Books

In keeping with the theme of Duke Div from my latest post, I want to bring to your attention two books that are out now, both written by my former teachers at Duke.

The first book is written by Richard Hays and if his earlier book Echoes reimagined the way we understood Paul's reading of the OT, then his new book, Reading Backwards may be akin to rethinking about how the four canonical Gospels have appropriated the HB. When I took my OT in NT seminar with him a few years back, he shared with us some portions of that book, and it seems that it has finally come to fruition this November. 

The second book is written by Douglas Campbell, titled Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography and like Hays' book, it's going to be important in how one conceives of Pauline chronology and the relationship between the epistles/Acts, the idea of a 'Pauline corpus,' etc. 

Both Hays and Campbell have a fair share of critics and a large number of supporters, though whatever side you may be on regarding their hermeneutical strategy(s), historical work, etc. etc., you will want to at least take seriously their arguments in these two books. I assume SBL will probably have a sale on them (and if I'm not mistaken there will be a session devoted to Hays' book), so go check them out.

Duke Divinity School & NT Wright

Just this past week, N.T. Wright was at my alma mater, Duke University's Div School and it appears that the school has recorded two videos: first a panel discussion with NT Wright that included three of my teachers at Duke (Profs. Campbell, Eastman, and Hays) and Ross Wagner (who was not at Duke at the time). The second video is titled "Why and How Paul Invented 'Christian Theology,'" a lecture by NT Wright on this issue.

Enjoy!