“For the focus of Mark’s narrative, from first line to last, is Jesus and if the narrative functions to intensify any kind of eschatological longing on the part of its readers, it is for reunion with Jesus. Mark is written from the perspective of christological absence, we might say, that is indistinguishable from Mark’s still-future and unrealized eschatology.” – Tucker S. Ferda, Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), 195.
- Anders Runesson’s book Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew (Fortress Press, 2016) is available for a free download at the author’s academia.edu site.
- Biblical Studies Carnival #227 came out last month and can be found at Phil Long’s website. Lots of good stuff there! (Go for the links but stay for the hilarious memes.)
- Eric Harvey’s Reading Creation Myths Economically in Ancient Mesopotamia and Israel, part of the Cambridge Elements series, is available for free download for a short period of time. Get it while the gettin’s hot!
- Mark Goodacre continues in his series of YouTube shorts discussing Gospel-related topics. Here he is talking about whether we can “dispense” with the hypothetical document Q altogether.
- Joel Christensen talks about why he left Substack. (In short, Nazis.)
- As a someone who buys and uses commentaries, I’ve always wondered why people write them and how long they’ve been doing it. Over at thetorah.com, Uri Gabbay talks about ancient commentaries of cuneiform literature and why they are important.
- Scholar of ancient Rome Lauren Ginsberg answered questions related to the ancient empire for Wired. Unfortunately, I only recently discovered this (HT: Shailey Patel) so I’m late to the game. But the video is really informative!
- Some of you may or may not know that the journal New Testament Studies often has open access articles that you can download for free.
- Ditto for Novum Testamentum.
The Amateur Exegete 