Biblical Studies Carnival #204 (February 2023)

Can you believe it’s already March?!? (Some of you can’t believe it’s 2023. The way you date your checks proves this.) It doesn’t help that February only has 28 days. Despite that, the world of online biblical studies for the month was very full. Below you’ll find just a fraction of what various professional scholars and amateurs put out into the Interwebs in the field of biblical studies. As it tends to be the case when I do the Carnival, it’s heavy in New Testament related stuff. I make no apologies for this.

Before you dive in, let me give a plug for hosting the Carnival. It’s a great way to promote your own work (The clicks! THE CLICKS!!!) and it also forces you to search around the web and interact with material that you might not otherwise. One of my favorite ways to use the Carnival is to promote bloggers/YouTubers who you might not otherwise know about. There are a lot of great content producers who don’t get any attention because they’re just not well-known. That’s a shame, and I try to do my part to correct this.

If you’re interested in hosting the Carnival, you’re in luck: there is no one scheduled to host it for the rest of this year! You get your choice of month to do it! So, reach out to Phil Long (the Carnival’s ringmaster) on Twitter (@Plong42) or email him (plong42@gmail.com) and let him know. He’s always looking for hosts and you – yes, you – are an ideal candidate.

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In Memoriam

• Early in February, Andrew Thiselton, a scholar best known perhaps for his work in hermeneutics, passed away. 
  
• The Twitter account of scholar Michael Heiser, the author of multiple books on angels, 1 Enoch, and more, announced that he had died on February 20^th. You can also read a tribute to him over at logos.com. 
  
  

Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East

• You’ve probably seen memes making the rounds about “biblically accurate angels” that feature some weird looking creatures covered in eyes. In a recent video for his YouTube channel Religion for Breakfast, Andrew Mark Henry looks at angels and other heavenly creatures found in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament, including those eye-covered weirdos known as ophanim. Henry offers great analysis and much needed context, historical and otherwise. 
  
• Want to learn more about the Philistines? Aren Maeir has the hookup over at his website. He has videos covering the identity of the Philistines, their fate, excavations of Gath, and more. It’s a one-stop shop for all things Philistines. So don’t be a Philistine – click on the link and expand your knowledge! 
  
• Over at asor.org, Robin Derricourt talks about what the absence of archaeological findings can tell researchers. He offers three examples related to Islamic, Christian, and Jewish understandings of history. These lines from the end stand out: “Archaeology can confirm the traditional views of a religious, national or ethnic group; it can refine them; or it can provide a different story. Where archaeology is absent, traditions remain neither proven nor eroded. Where archaeology is present and an expected result is absent, we need to change our assumptions and interpretation.”
  
• Where did the Decalogue come from? This is the subject of Cynthia Edenburg’s piece “The Origins of the Decalogue” published at thetorah.com. She contends that “the Decalogue appears to be a later addition into both the Exodus and Deuteronomy narratives.” How, you ask, does she get there? To find that out, you need to read Edenburg’s interesting argument.
  
• Famously, the Exodus as described by biblical authors leaves much to be desired in the way of historicity. While many, especially skeptics, disregard the story as worthless because of this, there is still much to be gleaned from it. Seth Sanders does just this in a post entitled “The Exodus Inside Out.” For example, he notes that there is power in the story of a journey, and in the case of the Israelites it functioned as a way to set themselves apart from their Canaanite cousins. 
  
• Over at the YouTube channel Reconstructed Bible you’ll find a video that questions the idea that Solomon built the temple to Yahweh. In fact, Michael questions not only that but whether Solomon was even David’s son or that the temple to Yahweh was a temple to Yahweh! The ideas are controversial, and I agree with virtually nothing in the video, but every time I watch something from @ReconBible (formerly @MiraScriptura) I walk away with some new ideas and ways of looking at biblical texts and their authors’ claims. 
  
• Of all the stories in the Hebrew Bible, the tale of Joshua’s long day is one of the weirdest. It’s obviously an impossible tale, but from the vantage point of the author of the book of Joshua, what was its import? Ray Inkster answers that question in a recent post. He notes that since many ancient cultures viewed the sun as a deity worthy of worship, the idea that Yahweh could suspend its motion in the sky was a “way of making the claim that Yahweh was superior to all such so-called ‘gods’, and that these were, in reality, no gods at all. Literalism misses the essential crucial point, and turns eye-and-ear-catching story telling into something entirely incredible, if not deservedly risible.”
  
• What is it with certain conservative apologists and slavery in the Bible? Keith Giles talks about the way in which apologist James White turns slavery into a moral good due to his a priori commitment to biblicism. Frankly, this sort of language is at once disturbing and unsurprising.
  
• As a kid, I remember uttering the statement, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” (This didn’t happen often. My conscience wouldn’t let me keep stuff like that for long.) This sort of selfishness is commonplace in modern society and even some ancient ones. But not so the Torah. Yael Landman (PhD, Yeshiva University) asks why there are so many laws about returning lost property to its owner. She concludes, “It is easy to ignore lost property; after all, no one would ever know. But the Torah and Jewish law require a finder to go out of their way, even if it is difficult or inconvenient, and even if no one would ever know the difference.”
  
• Volume 17 of the Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures series, The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew is free to download and read! What are you waiting for, Hebrew language nerds?
  
• Bob MacDonald has been working on setting the book of Amos to music. You can look at his sheet music for the first two chapters at his website. MacDonald’s love for Hebrew and love for music results in really interesting results. And setting things to music is often a good way to memorize things. 
  
• Brain surgeons in the Bronze Age? Kinda sorta. Recent excavations at Megiddo point to the practice of cranial surgery in a skull of a man found there. The man had several issues, including fused bones and perhaps tuberculosis or leprosy. There’s also evidence that this man was a person of means based upon artifacts buried with him. An interesting piece!
  
• In a video entitled “The Bible’s Dark Side, @AlchemistNon briefly examines the sacrifice of Isaac story found in Genesis 22. Among other things, he considers whether God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, in light of his own omniscience, is an act of deception on God’s part. It’s brief video but gives a lot to think about. 
  
• Who killed Goliath? Most of us take for granted what we learned in Sunday School: David did it! But over at the YouTube channel Bible Unboxed you’ll find an interview of Paul Davidson from the Is That in the Bible? blog that looks at the development of the killing of Goliath tale and why it might not have been about David at all. Interesting stuff! 
  

LXX & Second Temple

• February 8^th was the 17^th annual Septuagint Day! (You forgot, didn’t you?) In celebration of it, Mike Aubrey posted a relevant quote from the late James Barr on the relationship of LXX Greek to NT Greek.
  
• Also celebrating Septuagint Day was (no surprise here) William Ross, using it as an opportunity to talk about the Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint for 2023-2024. 
  
• If you’re interested in prayer in and around the Second Temple period, there is an open access volume edited by Stefan Reif and Renate Egger-Wenzel you can read online! The volume specifically looks at the connection of emotions and prayer and surveys texts in Jubilees, 1 Maccabees, 1 Enoch, and more. 
  

Dead Sea Scrolls (CONTROVERSY!)

• Earlier in February, Craig Evans appeared on apologist Sean McDowell’s channel and made the startling claim that some of the recent Dead Sea Scroll forgeries found in collections at places like the Museum of the Bible were, in fact, not forgeries at all! This was breaking news, a McDowell exclusive courtesy of Evans.
  
• While Evans’s claims may have been welcomed news to many in the apologetics community, there were some scholars who found it all dubious. For example, Kipp Davis, an expert in the DSS, has offered a response to Evans that goes into the nitty-gritty, looking at the timeline of the relevant pieces, the painstaking examination that went into confirming that they are forgeries, and noting the consensus views among scholars with relevant credentials. It’s a long video but well worth the time.
  
• Another dissenting voice came from Drew Longacre, a specialist in ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, over at his website. He had responded to a question on Facebook about Evans’s assertions and wrote a response that he shared in a post. Responding to some of the issues Evans raised, Longacre writes, “I think you will have a very hard time convincing many specialists of the authenticity of most of the contested fragments today.” 
  
• On a related note, Morag Kersel’s paper that was presented at the Bryn Mawr Classical Review’s 30^thanniversary celebration on whether to publish unprovenanced materials anonymously owned is available to read. As she describes, there are ethical considerations that are sometimes swept under the rug when discussing certain artifacts. In short, provenance matters, and scholars should strive to make sure that the materials they work with have been handled with the utmost moral concern. 
  

New Testament and Early Christian Texts

• Claude Mariottini, who normally posts on matters related to the Hebrew Bible, wades into the waters of the New Testament to talk about Junia who is mentioned in Romans 16:7. He pushes back specifically against the idea that if the name Junia is a Jewish theophoric then “Junia” (feminine) is probably Junias (masculine). As he points out, there are examples of women in the Hebrew Bible who bore theophoric names and so the argument proffered by those who want to turn Junia into a man “is not very strong.” 
  
• E.J. Pond is coming out soon with a new entry in her series of workbooks on the Greek New Testament. This one will cover the epistle of James. If only she had produced it sooner! I could have used it last year when I was working on my own translation of the epistle. 
  
• Over at The Jesus Memoirs, Michael Kok has a post linking to all his other posts in his series covering the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew. This, he points out, is a very condensed version of his recently published book Tax Collector to Gospel Writer: Patristic Traditions about the Evangelist Matthew (Fortress Press, 2023). That volume is on my shelf, and I hope to get to it after I finish Andrew Perriman’s recent book on the preexistence of Jesus in the letters of Paul. 
  
• Speaking of Andrew Perriman, earlier in the month he engaged with Craig Bartholomew’s book on hermeneutics, particularly the idea of the Trinity within the two testaments and a “trinitarian hermeneutic.” Perriman writes in his conclusion that we need not a “trinitarian hermeneutic” but a “historical hermeneutic of trinitarianism” so that we might “restore some historical perspective on the doctrine.” He is no doubt correct.  
  
• Interested in the Gospel of Thomas? Mark Goodacre was interviewed by Bart Ehrman for the Misquoting Jesus podcast on the apocryphal text. The pair talk about the Gospel’s understanding of Jesus and salvation, the enigmatic nature of some of its sayings, and whether or not it is dependent in part on the Synoptic Gospels.
  
• Heather Thiessen offers some thoughts on Richard Burridge’s Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading. She writes, “Often, it seems to me, in the gospels, which are interpretive treatments of the life of Christ, the details are more about what the story means, and less about what we would have captured with our time traveling video cameras.”
  
• Need more books? Well, James McGrath’s latest book is available for preorder! (And preorder it I have.) 
  
• Sarah Rollens, a professor of religious studies at Rhodes College, is going to serve as the new executive director of The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. I doubt she’ll see this, but congratulations Dr. Rollens! 
  
• Last year, Kregel Publications put out a commentary on 1 Peter written by Timothy Miller and Bryan Murawksi, and Phil Long has a review of it! 
  
• What in the world is going on with Acts 19:35? Clearly, something fell down from the sky and was venerated by the people in Athens, but what? Marg Mowczko has some thoughts, surveying examples from Greco-Roman texts about artifacts that fell from the sky. 
  
• Donald Guthrie’s commentary on Galatians for the New Century Bible Commentary series is available to download for free! (That’s my favorite price.) 
  
• Oh, and you can also get G.R. Beasley-Murray’s commentary on Revelation for free too!
  
• Let’s talk about sex! Well, let’s have Paul talk about sex! That’s the subject of a short piece from Jimmy Hoke for Bible Odyssey. Hoke considers Paul’s views on sex in light of typical Roman views, including their opinions on penetration, agency, and desire. He thinks that Paul “connects sex and sexuality with ethnicity,” noting that Romans considered only elite-born Romans capable of “good” sex, while women, foreigners, the poor, the enslaved, and other non-elites were incapable of it. File this piece by Hoke in the” NT backgrounds” folder! 
  
• Luke has a man named Lazarus who is poor in life, dies, and wakes up in paradise. John has Lazarus who dies and is raised to life again. Are these two stories connected? And if so, how? Philip Jenkins tries to take a stab at all this in a post entitled “The Story of Lazarus and the Making of the New Testament.” In it he argues that this is neither a case of a parable becoming history (Luke to John) nor a history becoming a parable (John to Luke). Instead, he thinks it may be derived in part from the epistle of James! Quite the twist if you ask me! 
  
• In light of the publication of her recent book Finding Phoebe, Susan Hylen was interviewed by Eerdmans about it. I’ve already put this book on my wishlist!
  
• Over at his website A Bible Darkly, Mark Edward looks at the Markan Passion Narrative and questions the historicity of the Evangelist’s account. Edward’s post is a useful examination of many of the issues posed by just taking the Evangelists at their word. (While this post is technically from January, I’m in charge of the carnival this month and I have power to do what I want. ABSOLUTE POWER!)
  
• How often has Mary Magdalene been associated with prostitution? I would venture to say quite a bit. Jennifer Byrd wants to set the record straight in a recent video over at her YouTube channel. 
  
• Jonathan Robinson was interviewed about his 2022 book Markan Typology over at the New Books Network. Robinson describes the process of writing the work (via dissertation) as a “sermon preparation gone out of control.” Mark’s use of typology is criminally underrated and it sounds like Robinson’s volume is an important contribution toward correction. 
  
• Over at the YouTube channel History for Atheists, Tim O’Neill interviews Joseph A.P. Wilson over a paper he recently published on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and whether Paul wrote it. Wilson supports the “quotation/refutation” hypothesis in his paper and goes into it more in the interview. 
  
• What is going on with the Sabbath controversy stories found in Mark 2-3? To answer that question (and more), Lyn Kidson interviewed Michael Kok on her YouTube channel as part of her ongoing series looking at the Gospel of Mark.