Yes, this is funny

Michael F. Bird strikes again!

Here he's doing a silly little promo for the SBL's (Society of Biblical Literature's) new critical Greek Text of the New Testament. They are doing their best to give the NA27/UBS4 a run for their money! And yes, in case you weren't sure, this is funny.

And while we're at it, I want to share a link with you that may prove to be extremely valuable for those who care. Here (yes, click here) is a website that someone has put up listing EVERY SINGLE CHANGE in the various forms of the NIV (NIV'84 - TNIV - NIV'11). This is an insane amount of information! So, if you want to know how these various updates differ, this is the place to go.

Ah, good ol' Joshua:

Yesterday Ben Witherington posted an interesting discussion between himself and colleague Lawson Stone. Drs Witherington and Stone are both Profs at Asbury Theological Seminary. Witherington is Professor of New Testament Studies and Stone is Professor of Old Testament Studies. Here they get into a gracious debate about the nature of violence in the Bible and the idea of God as a Warrior. If you've ever struggled with the violence in the Bible or the whole issue of war, non-violence, and pacifism you should check this out. Very interesting.

They both posted the discussion:

Witherington's Page (here)

Stone's Page (here)

Who wrote Hebrews?

So, I have a pretty busy week going on here and don't have time to do a proper post... sorry.

Instead I will leave you in good hands. Here is an interview from the Euangelion Blog that I read recently talking about the authorship of Hebrews. Michael Bird provides us will a little preface and then conducts the interview:

The authorship of Hebrews is a funny question. The eastern church attributed it to Paul, Origen was ambivalent about it, suggestions have included Barnabas and Apollos, but a small cohort of scholars have suggested Luke's authorship of Hebrews or else Pauline authorship via Luke. There has been interesting proposals on this topic of late. One contribution is David Allen, Lukan Authorship of Hebrews (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, forthcoming 2010) - which I have not read yet. The other contribution to the subject is an essay by Andrew W. Pitts and Joshua F. Walker entitled "The Authorship of Hebrews: A Further Development in the Luke-Paul Relationship" which is forthcoming in S.E. Porter (ed.), Paul's Social Relations (Pauline Studies 7; Leiden: Brill, 2010). I spoke to Andrew Pitts about their essay and he answers my questions below:

1. What started your thinking about the Pauline "source" of Hebrews?

We began working on this project during the 2008 annual meeting of the ETS-SBL meetings in Providence and Boston. At the meetings, we talked about the different features of Hebrews that point to authorship—style, vocabulary, its apparent oral qualities, theological viewpoints and manuscript tradition, among others. We had always thought that a Luke-Paul collaboration was possible and so we set out to examine various strands of evidence to see what direction they might point in. The somewhat recent trend toward understanding Hebrews in an oral context seemed to have some significant implications for authorship. If Hebrews is a speech, then it may have had stenographer (speech recorder). The content and manuscript (external) evidence pointed to Paul while the linguistic and literary (internal) evidence seemed to us to indicate Lukan involvement. This theory seemed to handle the bulk of the evidence presented on this matter, evidence which was often dichotomized into Luke only and Paul only data. But both sets of data, to our mind, seemed significant and neither could be easily side-stepped. We found, then, that a Pauline origin best explained the main content of Hebrews, accounting for elevated style of the document via Luke’s involvement.

2. What is the basic thesis of your chapter on the authorship of Hebrews?

The evidence we examine suggests that Hebrews likely represents a Pauline speech, probably originally delivered in a Diaspora synagogue, that Luke documented in some way during their travels together and which Luke later published as an independent speech to be circulated among house churches in the Jewish-Christian Diaspora. From Acts, there already exists a historical context for Luke’s recording or in some way attaining and publishing Paul’s speeches in a narrative context. Luke remains the only person in the early Church whom we know to have published Paul’s teaching (beyond supposed Paulinists) and particularly his speeches. And certainly by the first century we have a well established tradition within Greco-Roman rhetorical and historiographic stenography (speech recording through the use of a system of shorthand) of narrative (speeches incorporated into a running narrative), compilation (multiple speeches collected and edited in a single publication) and independent (the publication of a single speech) speech circulation by stenographers. Since it can be shown (1) that early Christians pursued parallel practices, particularly Luke and Mark, (2) that Hebrews and Luke-Acts share substantial linguistic affinities and (3) that significant theological-literary affinities exist between Hebrews and Paul, we argue that a solid case for Luke’s independent publication of Hebrews as a Pauline speech can be sustained. We don’t claim to have “solved” the problem of authorship in terms of absolutes or certainties, but we do think that this is the direction that the evidence points most clearly.

So, what do you think?

If you find this interesting and want to read more, please do so. The interview continues: here

A Pharisee and the Gospel

Last week we looked at the way the Gospel/Good News (euangelion) was used in the writings of Matthew and Mark. In these books my thesis that euangelion is a proclamation of the Lordship of Christ held up pretty well. The majority of the time euangelion is coupled with the kingdom of God/Heaven which makes a perfect connection.

But the fact is that compared to Paul, the biographers of Jesus barely used the word gospel. Here's the full break-down of euangelion:

Matthew x4

Mark x7

Acts x2

Paul x59

So while there is definitely a huge level of significance as to how Jesus used the word (or it was used in direct reference to His ministry) if we want to really wrestle with this we have to wrestle with Paul.

Now, in my opinion, Paul was too educated for our own good :)

I don't remember where I heard it (so don't go spouting it off like I'm about to) but I remember hearing somewhere that today's equivalent of Paul's Pharisaical education is that of at least 2 doctorates.

Paul's writing is dense, intricate, "wordy", full of run-on-sentences (which are allowed in Greek), metaphors, mixed-metaphors, analogies, vague illusions... the list can go on. There is no doubt that Paul was an intellectual and wrote as an intellectual. Paul's writings make the Gospel of Mark and Peter's letters (for example) look like "Run Spot, run!"

As a side note, it is unfortunate for us as English readers when our translations "smarten up" rough Greek like Mark's and Peter's and at the same time "dumb down" Paul's Greek. We lose the personality of the writers when the language in our translations are homogenized.

Anyway, all of that is to say that Paul's usage of euangelion is rather diverse. He doesn't use it in a conveniently uniform way like we saw in Matthew and Mark. Instead we see him using phrases like, "the gospel of your salvation" (Eph. 1:13) or "the gospel of peace" (Eph. 6:15). These don't fit nicely with my thesis and therefore must be ignored... just joking.

Instances such as these fit better with a literal translation of euangelion ("good news") rather than an idiomatic (Lordship proclamation) translation. This brings me back to my original question from a few weeks ago: is it better to educate people on the semantic range of our word Gospel or is it better to translate it differently depending on its context?

Aside from that, I think I could probably make a case that "the gospel of peace" can still fit within my thesis (see Mounce's def'n in my original post). At the very least we can agree that euangelion is not confined to an announcement of personal salvation, nor is it quite so simple as a literal good news. The New Testament usage of it is way too broad to be simplified into either of those.

Michael F. Bird addresses complex words like gospel in his introduction to Pauline theology:

"In the ancient world, the title 'Lord' (Kyrios) was also used of the Roman emperor. In the Roman era, terms like grace, gospel, parousia, justice, freedom, Lord, saviour, and Son of God were employed in Roman political propaganda and utilized in the prayers and rites of the imperial cult, which focused on worship of the Roman emperor. By analogy, then, the 'good news' that 'Jesus is Lord' carried with it the implication that Caesar was not Lord... We see that Paul's gospel had theopolitical consequences in that it claimed for Jesus an immense authority and power which threatened that of Rome" (Introducing Paul, 84).

In fact, Bird uses the comparison that proclaiming the Lordship of Christ in the Roman world would have been pretty much the same as proclaiming 'Jesus ist Fuhrer!' in Nazi Germany!! An interesting analogy.

And I still think that a significant portion of the time that Paul talks about euangelion it fits closely with this idea of Lordship:

"gospel of Christ" x8 (Rom. 15:19; 1Cor. 9:12; 2Cor. 2:12, 9:13, 10:14; Gal. 1:7; Phil. 1:27; 1Thess. 3:2)

"gospel of God" x5 (Rom. 1:1, 15:16; 1Thess. 2:2, 2:8, 2:9)

"gospel of his son" (Rom. 1:9)

"gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2Thess. 1:8)

"glorious gospel of the blessed God" (1Tim.1:11)

"gospel of the glory of Christ" (2Cor. 4:4)

There is absolutely no doubt that the theme of Lordship is evident all throughout Paul's writings. After all, by my quick count, Paul uses the phrase "Lord Jesus" or "Lord Jesus Christ" a minimum of 72 times as well as referring to the Kingdom of God (of whom, of course, Jesus is Lord) a minimum of 14times.

However, a lot of the time the way Paul uses euangelion is ambiguous enough that you can't strongly argue for or against a specific definition. An example of that is Romans 15:20 - "and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel..." This usage is so generic that it doesn't exactly lend any weight to either side.

The phrase that got me scratching my head was "my gospel" x3 (Rom. 2:16, 16:25; 2Tim. 2:8).

This doesn't really fit with my "Lordship" definition. Here Paul seems to simply mean "the message that I preached to you."

So it appears that Paul's usage of euangelion does include, but is not limited to a Lordship proclamation. Depending on the context Paul flexes the word to make it fit his purpose; typical Paul!

Anyway, what do you think?

What other texts might tie into this?

What do you think about the translation issue?

A glimpse into the life of Tim

So, in lieu of a real post this week I BEG YOU to go and read Michael F. Bird's post over at the Euangelion blog (here). You may remember that I featured Michael Bird a few weeks ago (here). The reason why his post struck such a chord with me is because I also suffer from the INTJ personality type! His post applies to me in many ways!!

Anyway, enjoy some of the following INTJ humour!

A little fun...

So I'm going to be having a really busy week and won't have time to do a proper post. This will have to suffice.

For those of you who don't know, Michael Bird is an Australian NT scholar (and regularly posts on the Euangelion Blog) who teaches at a theological college in Scotland. He's a brilliant scholar and all-around good guy.

Anyway, Zondervan has been going around interviewing various prominent authors/scholars and asking them which authors/books have been influential in their lives. For example, here is the video of my favorite Greek scholar, Bill Mounce.

Mr. Bird decided to have some fun with his interview:

This has kept me laughing for a long time... My favorite is Joel Olsteen and Joyce Meyer as "sentinals" of the faith... hehehehehe.

You can see his real interview here.

Anyway, I'm off to have a bubble bath and read some Barth!