I have talked a lot on the blog about my understanding of how biblical scholarship relates to Christian faith claims.   Since the early 19th century critical scholars have dug deeply into the Bible and discovered discrepancies, contradictions, historical errors, geographical mistakes, anachronisms, and claims that make no sense in light of what we know about the world today from biology, geology, astronomy, physics, anthropology, and … and well the list goes on. Different people draw different faith conclusions from this kind of scholarship.  Some think it’s irrelevant to their faith;  others think it requires them to change what they believe, possibly radically; yet others think that it negates the possibility of faith altogether  -- either confirming the atheism they already hold or driving them to abandon their faith and become non-believers. Is any of these a sensible option?  Is any of them the obvious and necessary option?  What about the obstacles that stand in the way of change, unrelated to biblical scholarship, such as not being able to leave a conservative evangelical community because of [...]

Soon after Jesus’ death, his disciples claimed that he was God. What did they mean by that?  Did they think he was God *before* he died, during his public ministry?   Did they think he had always been God?  Did they think he Was he the One and Only God, Yahweh? More important still:  Did Jesus himself think he was God?   To find an answer, we have to explore two issues:  does Jesus actually ever call himself God in the Gospels, or give any other indication that he thought he was God?  If so, given the problems with the Gospels -- can we know if they are accurate on this point?  Can we show what the historical figure of Jesus actually said about himself? These are terrifically important questions.   Traditional Christianity, as it has come down over all the centuries, has always claimed Jesus himself is a divine being.  Did that teaching start with Jesus himself? Announcing a Webinar on the Topic! I will be doing a webinar on the topic on Sunday, November 7.  I [...]

In my last post I pointed out that the famous passage of the so-called “bloody sweat” in Luke 22:43-44 is thought by some scholars not to have been original to the Gospel of Luke.  I count myself in that number.  One of my very first scholarly articles was devoted to the question; I wrote it when I was a first-year graduate student – or rather, I co-wrote it, with a friend of mine who was in the PhD program at Princeton Seminary with me, a fellow named Mark Plunkett. Mark had done a study of the passage of Jesus’ prayer before his arrest and had realized something about the structure of the passage, which made me, in turn, realize, that if he was right, then the two verses about the bloody sweat could not have been original to the passage.  I’ll say more about that in my next post.  At the time, one of the reasons I thought that was so significant is that it confirmed what was already clear to me otherwise: these verses [...]

I will give just one other textual disagreement that I have with the translators of the NRSV: by “textual” disagreement I mean a disagreement over what the original Greek text of a passage was that should have been translated. For this second example I’ll stick with Luke, and again with the Passion narrative.  The full passage of Jesus’ prayer in the garden in Luke 22:39-46 reads as follows in the NRSV:  39 He came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him.  40 When he reached the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.”  Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”  [[ 43 Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. 44 In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling [...]

I was very sorry to learn last month that John Shelby Spong died (Sept. 12, 2021; age 90).  Many of you know who he was; for those who don’t: he was one of the most important spokespersons of our generation for a critical understanding of the Bible for the general public, in particular for Christians.  He himself was a Christian.  In fact, for many years he was a bishop in the Episcopal church (bishop of Newark NJ from 1979-2000). Even though Spong never left the Christian faith, he certainly had a rigorously historical understanding of the faith and he spent many years writing influential books and lecturing around the world to proclaim it.  He was not well-loved among traditional Christians, and was openly declared a heretic by other church leaders.  That was because his historical studies led him to realize that the Bible cannot be interpreted as the literal, historical truth. Some other Christian bishops found his views dangerous and many people today, both Christian and non-Christian, do not understand how a real Christian can [...]

Translators of the Bible have a terrifically complicated and difficult (and usually thankless) task.  I always knew that, of course, with my head – ever since taking Greek back in college.  But I did not relate to the problems emotionally until I started publishing translations of my own.  It’s HARD.  My first translation project was a two-volume edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library (published by Harvard University Press).  It was at that point that I realized that what translators do is not at all what the rest of us do who can teach the ancient languages and read Greek and assign Greek translation exercises to classes of graduate students.  When you are with a class of students, you can sit around the table, discuss the various options about how a text can be translated, talk about the pro’s and con’s of various English renditions, make a few suggestions for how to provide nuance to a rendering, explicate the fuller meaning of the Greek by paraphrasing a phrase or a clause in [...]

Here I will give two rather humorous stories (at least to me) connected with my work as the administrative assistant for the revision of the Revised Standard Version. In that capacity I was, of course, present for the various deliberations of the committee. Among the many issues they discussed was what to call the new revision. Ultimately it stood in the tradition of the “Authorized Version” – the technical name of the King James Version. In 1881, the KJV underwent an “official” revision (i.e., authorized by the ecclesiastical authorities who owned the copyright) in the Revised Version. Its committee received a lot of flak for the changes it made. Even though it was an English revision, there were several Americans who were on the committee. As part of their terms of involvement, they agreed not to publish an American version of the translation (making changes as they saw fit and bringing spelling and punctuation into conformity with American usage) for 20 years; and so in 1901 was published the American Standard Version. As I mentioned [...]

A CONTINUATION OF MY POSTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRUCE METZGER I served as one of the secretaries for the NRSV, as explained in my as explained in my post of Sept. 16th, for a couple of years. It was not onerous work and was quite a privilege to be able to associate with some of the greatest biblical scholars and Semitic philologists of the time. I was, of course, a complete nobody. Some of the members of the committee treated me (and the other secretaries) as complete nobodies (these tended to be the less qualified and more insecure members of the committee; I won’t name names!); others treated me (and the others) in a dignified and respectful way, realizing that we were, after all, just graduate students, but knowing that we were advanced and heading into academic careers of our own. When I graduated from my PhD program I was teaching part time at Rutgers, but I did not have a full time, tenure-track position there.   It was a slightly oppressive situation, as adjunct [...]

Reminder!  This Saturday, September 18, I will be giving a lecture with Q&A on the book of Revelation; I'm calling it "Expecting Armageddon: What the Book of Revelation Reveals."  Wanna come? The event is a fundraiser (not for the blog, but) for my Department of Religious Studies, which is trying very hard to sustain its work in training graduate students.  My own students are becoming experts in the kinds of things I do, engaging in serious research in the study of the New Testament and the history of early Christianity, teaching important aspects of the field to undergraduate students, and communicating broadly this kind of knowledge to broader audiences in the population at large. It is very important work, not just for the graduate students themselves but for the people they do and will teach and reach, as we try to keep the public educated in what we actually know based on scholarship on these issues of broad importance.  But we are having trouble providing students with the funds they need to complete their training. [...]

  Here I continue with another reminiscence of my interactions and relationship with my mentor, the great textual scholar Bruce Metzger.  This one has always struck me as a bit humorous. *************************** In almost (but not absolutely) all PhD programs in this country, the doctoral candidate has do an “oral defense” of the dissertation.  If s/he successfully defends, the PhD is then granted.  Here at UNC, the defense is conducted in front of the five-person dissertation committee, all of them experts on one or another aspect of the work.  Everyone on the committee has carefully read the dissertation, and the defense is designed to see if, well, the thesis is defensible. In other words, faculty members do not hold back but probe deeply into the work to see if there are any flaws in it.  If a student fails the defense, s/he has to revise the dissertation and try again.  Even if it is considered passable, revisions of some sort are often considered necessary. If you're interested in the blog, why not join?  It costs [...]

In case you didn't notice or inadvertently dropped it from memory or ... whatever:  I'd like to remind you about the fundraiser this Sunday (August 29).  I hope you can come!  Here's the announcement: ********************* Whatever our political positions, most of us are distraught about the situation in Afghanistan.  It will almost certainly get worse.  As a result of the crisis, relief agencies there are under enormous pressure, more than in a very long time. One of the charities supported by the blog is Doctors Without Borders, one of the truly great organizations in our world.  They are staying in Afghanistan for now (and hopefully for a long time) and their hands are incredibly full.  Naturally, they are desperate for additional resources (just look them up in relation to the situation there, and you can get some reports). We will be doing a blog fund-raiser for Afghanistan relief, this Sunday.  I will be giving a lecture and we will be taking voluntary donations of any amount, in hopes of raising substantial funds.   Every donation will [...]

Whatever our political positions, most of us are distraught about the situation in Afghanistan.  It will almost certainly get worse.  As a result of the crisis, relief agencies there are under enormous pressure, more than in a very long time. One of the charities supported by the blog is Doctors Without Borders, one of the truly great organizations in our world.  They are staying in Afghanistan for now (and hopefully for a long time) and their hands are incredibly full.  Naturally, they are desperate for additional resources (just look them up in relation to the situation there, and you can get some reports). We will be doing a blog fund-raiser for Afghanistan relief, this Sunday.  I will be giving a lecture and we will be taking voluntary donations of any amount, in hopes of raising substantial funds.   Every donation will go in toto directly to Doctors without Borders. The lecture is blog-related rather than crisis-related, since that is what I know about and is also why most of you are here.   It's an intriguing topic, [...]