Here are some of the books, articles, blogposts, and other media I enjoyed over the last month or so.
Books, Articles, & Reviews
- One of the books I finished this past month was Brandon Grafius’s Reading the Bible with Horror (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2018), the inaugural volume in the series Horror and Scripture. There’s a lot to love about it, especially the closing chapter entitled “The Monstrous YHWH.” I am not planning on writing a review of it, but you can read Lauren Kemmerer’s review over at the website What Sleeps Beneath.
- I’ve been picking at the chapters in The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus and one that I recently enjoyed was Mark Goodacre’s “Missing Pieces.” In short, he argues there are limits to what we know and can know about the historical Jesus such that our confidence in this or that vision of who Jesus was should be tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism. He writes that “knowing things about the historical Jesus is not the same as being able to write his biography” (p. 114).
- Here at my website, Lex Lata has written a review of Ronald Hendel’s commentary on Genesis 1-11 for the Anchor Yale Bible commentary series.
Blogs
- Biblical Studies Carnival #225 (February 2025) can be found over at Phil Long’s site. Lots of good stuff there, including a number of links to various book reviews.
- Michael Kok discusses the authorship of the Gospels in dialogue with Bart Ehrman’s book Behind the Gospels. He looks especially at Papias’s views on authorship, a topic broached in Kok’s The Gospel on the Margins.
- Over at his blog Behind the Gospels, John Nelson lays out a few of the reasons that Matthew’s Gospel is probably not an eyewitness account.
- Need some resources on Christian nationalism? Greg Carey has you covered.
YouTube
- YouTuber HatsoffHistory looks at the response of two apologists to Bart Ehrman’s claim about a contradiction between Mark 14:30 and Matthew 26:34. In short, the apologists get it wrong.
- Just how reliable are the dates for the Gospels? Robyn Faith Walsh answers that question!
Podcasts
- Over at The Biblical Time Machine you can catch an interview with James Barker on how the Gospels were written. This isn’t an episode about the Synoptic Problem (though check out Barker’s recent book on the subject.) Instead, it’s about material issues: papyrus, wax, stylus, etc. Interesting stuff!
- Mark Goodacre posted a review of the film The Last Supper. I always appreciate scholars who engage popular media and offer the nuance and correction most of us simply are unable to offer.
- Bart Ehrman discusses Markan Priority in a recent episode of his Misquoting Jesus podcast.
The Amateur Exegete 