How is it October already? Don’t get me wrong – October contains what is probably my favorite holiday: Halloween. But it just seems like this year has flown by. Or, more accurately, that the years have flown by. My oldest is in eighth grade and my youngest just started kindergarten. And with the COVID pandemic, it feels like I worry for them more than I ever have. These gray hairs aren’t just for show!
This month I have the distinct honor of publishing the 187th iteration of the Biblical Studies Carnival. This is my third time hosting and I really enjoy doing it. You’ll notice a heavy emphasis on topics related to the New Testament. This is for two reasons. First, I tend to pay more attention to New Testament related topics as a force of habit. Second, it seemed like there was more put out in the month of September on the New Testament than on the Hebrew Bible, Apocryphal literature, and other non-NT related subjects. (Or maybe I’m just not looking hard enough. I am an amateur after all!)
In any event, I hope you enjoy my contribution this month.
Hebrew Bible/Hebrew Bible Background
- Who were the Hittites? Claude Mariottini addresses that question in a neat, succinct post.
- James McGrath reflects on David’s census recorded in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21 in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- On his YouTube channel, Michael (AKA @mirascriptura) has been doing short videos looking at texts using the technique of mirror reading. At the beginning of the month, he did a video on Psalm 84 and sees it as an attempt to rehabilitate Yahweh’s reputation in light of the fall of Jerusalem and its aftermath.
- Steven Weitzman discusses Deuteronomy and sensory perception (i.e., touch, taste, sight).
- Thanks to Joel Baden, I was made aware of an open access paper by Kevin Burrell entitled “Slavery, the Hebrew Bible, and the Development of Racial Theories in the Nineteenth Century” that appeared in the journal Religions.
- Bob MacDonald is getting ready to publish a new work on the Hebrew Bible entitled The SimHebrew Bible – The Hebrew Bible in Simulated Hebrew – with English Guide.
- Yom Kippur occurred in the middle of the month and Jim Davila linked to some posts he and others have written on the subject.
- Relatedly, Yitzhaq Feder compares and contrasts biblical and post-biblical confessions of sin and their relationship to confessions in ancient Near Eastern literature.
- There’s a new podcast you should subscribe to: The Two Testaments. Featuring Rony Kozman and Will Kyne, this new show seeks to talk about biblical texts by interviewing experts on those texts. The first season will look at the books of Job and Romans.
- Jonathan Ben-Dov goes over several verses in Deuteronomy and looks at how later authors appropriated them for their own theological aims regarding gods, angels, and demons.
- Do we find heaven or hell in the Hebrew Bible? Meghan Henning contends that all we actually find is She’ol. She also talks about 1 Enoch!
- Tom Bolin wrote a post on translating the book of Ecclesiastes for the website Sententiae Antiquae.
- Over at Evangelical Textual Criticism, Kaspars Ozoliņš discusses some of the problems with the translation notes in the English Standard Version. (Don’t shoot the messenger!)
- Twitter user @SumerianHittite linked to a free downloadable version of The Book of Hebrew Script: History, Palaeography, Script Styles, Calligraphy & Design by Ada Yardeni.
- Isabel Cranz talks about royal illnesses in both the Hebrew Bible and in the ancient Near East. Sickening!
- Need a list of all the women prophets in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament? Have no fear! Marg Mowczko has you covered!
Apocrypha/Dead Sea Scrolls
- Over at The Bible and Beyond podcast, Brandon Hawk discusses apocryphal texts and why they are worthy of reading.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls…of New Jersey? Brent Nongbri writes about DSS manuscripts that made their way to the United States and were housed for a while in a Syrian Orthodox Church in New Jersey of all places.
New Testament and Early Christian Literature
- Over at the Biblical Studies Blog, Rob Bradshaw has provided a link to A.H. McNeile’s 1928 commentary on the Greek text of the Gospel of Matthew. It’s free! (Who doesn’t love free stuff?)
- Marg Mowczko offers some insight into Paul’s comments on hair and hair covering in 1 Corinthians 11. In her words, it’s about neither theology nor biology.
- Michael Kok continues his look at Papias with a post from the beginning of September covering the date of Papias’s Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord.
- Some people look at Paul’s “conversion” (yeah, yeah – I know) and find good reason to believe in Jesus’s resurrection. Others like Matthew Hartke look at it and find good reason to doubt. An interesting video!
- Katapetesma looks at John 1 and the Logos in a post from the beginning of the month. He thinks the text should be looked at teleologically rather than ontologically.
- Over at PhD Students to Follow you’ll find an interview of Dr. Nathanael Vette. Vette is the author of the forthcoming Writing with Scripture: Scripturalized Narrative in the Gospel of Mark, a book that I hope is cheap enough that even I can afford it!
- Our beloved Phil Long reviews Herman Bateman’s and Steven Smith’s preaching commentary on the book of Hebrews. And they think Barnabas wrote Hebrews!
- Over at Ancient Jew Review, Robin Faith Walsh, the author of The Origin of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 2020), talks with Cavan Concannon about her work.
- Is the Gospel of Thomas a Gnostic text? Mark Edward explains why he thinks that it isn’t.
- In a recent episode of Religion for Breakfast, Andrew Mark Henry talks about the Synoptic Problem. And, as it turns out, Ian Mills helped with the episode!
- Grace Emmett recently surveyed 28 women on why they weren’t working in Pauline studies. The results are disconcerting but not unexpected. Male scholars have a lot of work to do.
- Ian Mills talks with Derek Lambert about the reasons scholars believe Mark’s Gospel came beforethe rest of the canonical Gospels.
- Heather Anne Thiessen briefly discusses one of my favorite stories from the Gospel of Mark – the healing of Bartimaeus and its placement in the Gospel.
- If you’re interested in the book of Revelation, Bart Ehrman recently gave a lecture on the book that covers a wide range of topics including the book’s reception among particular dispensationalists.
- Speaking of the book of Revelation (shameless plug time), I recently interviewed fellow amateur Mark Edward on my new show Amateur Hour about the mysterious book. Check it out!
- Spencer McDaniel talked about how we know the Gospels were originally anonymous.
- Over at Koine Greek, Mike Aubrey goes over the difficulties in using certain Greek dictionaries and lexicons for post-classical Greek (e.g., Koine) using σύμπλοκή (“intertwining”?) as a test case.
- Isaac Soon draws upon the recent work of C. Rebecca Rine to talk about canon lists.
- An online symposium was held to discuss Matthew Thiessen’s 2020 book Jesus and the Forces of Death. So far, Hannah Harrington and Darrell Bock have offered responses to the book in the symposium with Holger Zellentin’s and Malka Simkovich’s own coming in October.
- Ronald Charles reviews Emma Wasserman’s Apocalypse as Holy War. He has but a few quibbles.
Misc.
- Spencer McDaniel wrote a post for his website Tales of Times Forgotten on whether the Bible uses pronouns. This may sound like a ridiculous thing to write about but he’s responding to conversative Lavern Spicer who claimed that “There are no pronouns in the Bible” in a months old tweet.
- Have you heard of the God Bless the USA Bible? Well, if you haven’t you should know that there’s a lot of controversy surrounding it and its implications regarding Christian nationalism in the U.S. Over at Slate, Molly Olmstead has an interesting piece discussing it.
- Bart Ehrman talks about what it was like working as a secretary for the NRSV at the invitation of Bruce Metzger.
- Brent Nongbri and Liv Ingenborg Lied recently signed on with Yale University Press to cowrite a book on textual criticism entitled Working with Manuscripts: A Guide. I’m eager to see this one come to print!
- Drawing on the work of sociologist Samuel Perry, Rob Stegmann talks about how translations of the Bible can be powerful weapons in culture wars. In particular, he considers the English Standard Version.
- Amy-Jill Levine was recently named the Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford Seminary. Hurray!
Well, that’s it for this month! If you’re interested in hosting the carnival on your blog, contact Phil Long either on Twitter (@Plong42) or by email (plong42@gmail.com). It’s a great way to showcase your website and it exposes you to the work of others across the blogosphere and more. Dr. Long is looking for people to host in 2022. So, reach out to him and sign up!
In the meantime, here’s who is hosting the carnival in the next few months:
188 October 2021 (Due November 1) – Jim West, Zwingli Redivivus @drjewest
189 November 2021 (Due December 1) – Bob MacDonald at Dust @drmacdonald
190 December 2021 (Due January 1) – Phillip Long, Reading Acts @plong42
The Amateur Exegete 
Thanks for this, Ben!
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Thanks for promoting The Two Testaments podcast! We hope your readers enjoy our first season on Job and Romans. We have some great guests.
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