“‘Christianity.’ ‘The faith.’ ‘The church.’ By using these terms in the singular, we repeat the rhetoric of the retrospectively ‘orthodox,’ and we obscure the vital variety that always characterized this protean movement.”
– Paula Fredriksen, Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Princeton University Press, 2024), 198.
- Robyn Faith Walsh talks the “real” Paul over at the YouTube channel Bible & Archaeology. We have some of Paul’s correspondence with various communities and we have interpretations of Paul in second century works like the Acts of the Apostles or the Acts of Paul. Walsh does a great job of unpacking some of this. She also hints at some of her future research.
- Charles Hedrick looks at the mythological Tartarus in the New Testament and its implications.
- I just noticed that the latest issue of Novum Testamentum has a couple of open access articles, including a piece by Nicholas Moore on the epistle of Jude and the Watchers from the book of 1 Enoch.
- Paul Davidson has a new video out, this time on cherubim. It’s really informative!
- In the above video, Davidson quotes from Esther Hamori’s excellent book God’s Monsters. And wouldn’t you know, Hamori was recently interviewed about sea monsters in the Bible!
- In response to an op-ed in The New York Times that compares Donald Trump to a pagan king due to his largely immoral and ethically rudderless “might makes right” philosophy of governing instead of a more “Christian” one, Stephen Young notes that this is far too simplistic and that the Bible has its share of problems too, from genocide to sexual slavery to sexual violence generally. (It’s why I tend to shudder when I hear people get their morality from the Bible because it usually means they’ve never read it fully.)
- Need some reading material? The articles in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism are available for free! (HT: Ekaterini Tsalampouni.)
- I’m reading!
The Amateur Exegete 
Hamori raises a good question about how many (most?) of us don’t notice or recall the conspicuous creation of “the great sea monsters” (התנינם הגדלים, hattanninim haggedolim) in Gen 1:21–surely a memorable image.
Gotta wonder if a key cause of our semi-ignorance/amnesia is at least partially a function of the translations to which we’ve been exposed, especially as kids. The more traditional, orthodox-inclined translators seem to have been uneasy with the implications of Elohim releasing the krakens and cthulhus and whatnot. So the KJV gives us “the great whales”–cool, but somewhat forgettable. The NIV is even blander, with “the great creatures of the sea.”
More modern, scholarly translations (JPS, NRSV, NABRE, among others), likely drawing in part on what we’ve learned about the תנינם in Canaanite/Ugaritic and Babylonian sea myths in the past century or two, have the good stuff: “the great sea monsters.”
(Happy to say I have a copy of God’s Monsters; embarrassed to say I haven’t read it yet.)
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In whales’ defense, they can be monstrous! But I wonder if sea creatures like whales influenced monstrous imagery. I’m reading through the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters at the moment so maybe I’ll get to that.
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Neat Selection for the Latest Roundup. There’s even more from Robyn Faith Walsh and an appearance from Esther Hamori- cool! (I put God’s Monsters on my reading list and hope to get a copy a some point.)
And Stephen Young’s point is quite apropos with believers on both sides of the isle trying to appeal to the Bible or their understandings of Christianity while presenting their group as “true” Christians.
One of my observations about Christianity (and maybe religion is general) is that it tends to become a sort of Rorschach Test. A person will tend to project their own values or thoughts onto the “ink blots” that are revered passages in scripture or church traditions. Using scholarly methods like historical criticism might be the best chance of ensuring there is at least a common outline for the picture being painted in the minds of different readers when they encounter a verse.
There’s also a tendency among many Christians to engage in what I sometimes call “Christian chauvinism.” They tend to think that anything good (or personally appealing) must be “Christian” and everything else must be “pagan,” “Muslim,” “New Age,” etc.
Variations on this theme might be them talking as if morality came down from heaven at Mt. Sinai or thinking that (outside of Ancient Judaea) everyone was busy getting drunk, engaging in every sort of sex act, or slaughtering babies until the Church came along. (Alright, guess that’s two observations on Christianity.)
To be honest, though, other religions can do this as well: I once read a book on Hinduism claiming that there was a ancient Indian saying about “worshipping your women.”
If they were truing to promote the idea that the Vedic culture was progressive for its time, then this might be a mirror image of the “chauvinism” above. (Not saying necessarily that the author was wrong but without seeing the context of the saying, it might not be as feminist as they claim.)
Oh, as a final side note, I did have an interesting adventure trying to get a copy of The Origins of Early Christian Literature:
So after checking for it at the local library, I ended up submitting a purchase request in the hope that they might get a copy.
I figured that, besides my interest in Walsh’s book, other people (who might not know much about the latest scholarship on the New Testament) would have the opportunity to borrow something on biblical studies (in addition to the Bart Ehrman volumes they tend to carry).
Three months after submitting the request, I saw a hold mysteriously appear on my account. They apparently accepted it and automatically put me first on the queue after adding it to their collection!
Since I had never requested an item for purchase before, I had no idea they automatically gave the requesting patron first dibs.
Thanks (and sorry for the long post),
J Source
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Getting good biblical studies materials in public libraries is a great idea! I might need to do that here where I live.
You should definitely read Hamori’s book. It’s really good.
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Ben, is it your view that the Acts of the Apostles dates to the second century?
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Yes, I think it dates to around 100-125.
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What convinced you to date Acts to the second century, even though the majority position places it between 60 and 80?
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I’ve never heard of any secular scholars dating Acts to 80 eve, forget about 60? I think there’s general consensus developing that all of the gospels have been dated too early.
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I have to ask respectfully (as the commenter below does):
Which scholars date the Acts of the Apostles to 60-80 A.D?
What makes this the “majority position” of scholarship?
I also thought that most attempts to date Matthew or Luke (and consequently the Acts of the Apostles) before the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. were considered “fringe.”
60 A.D. seems to be around the earliest that scholars are usually willing to consider dating the Gospel of Mark (which is considered earlier than Luke or Acts by a near-consensus). And even this has been questioned on the basis of pericopes like the Gerasene demoniac containing a possible reference to the aftermath of the Temple: the apparent reference to a standard carried by one of the Roman legions occupying Jerusalem. (The entry on the Gospel of Mark on the Early Christian Writings website notes that William Harwood claimed the name “legion” and the demonic collective being driven into a herd of pigs hints at the swine icon used by the Tenth Legion.)
Regarding the Acts of the Apostles, I quote the following sources on its date:
a. “Luke probably wrote both volumes in about 80-90 C.E., although no precision is possible on this question. Acts must have been written after the appointment of Festus as procurator, in about 59 C.E (…) and probably after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. (…) Quotations from and allusions to Acts appear in Christian writings by the middle of the second century, which means it must have been completed before that time. (Beverly Roberts Gaventa, “The Acts of the Apostles” in The Harper Collins Study Bible, pg. 2057) (Italics mine)
b. “According to its opening words, Acts was written after Luke’s Gospel, which scholarly consensus dates to 85-95 CE (though some arguments have been advanced for an early second-century date). The considerations on the relation between Luke and Paul (…) support a late first- or early second-century date.” (Christopher R. Matthews, “The Acts of the Apostles” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible (With the Apocrypha), Fifth Edition, pg. 1955-1956) (Italics mine)
c. “The earliest Gospel is the one attributed to Mark. It was probably written very close to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. The Gospel of Matthew was probably written with a decade or two after that, and the Gospels of John and Luke, as well as the Acts of the Apostles, were probably composed toward the end of the first century CE, although some scholars are making a compelling case that both Luke and Acts weren’t written until the early second century CE.” (Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues, pg. 25)
One good argument for a date toward the end of the first-century (or beginning of the second-century) would come from the notion that the author made use of writings by Josephus. The two major works of Josephus that would be relevant to “Luke” would be the Jewish War (released in 78 A.D.) and The Jewish Antiquities (from about 94 A.D.) (Dates taken from Early Jewish Writings website)
If there is a relationship between the two writers, it would make more sense for the author of Luke-Acts to be dependent on Josephus than the other way around: Why would a first-century Jewish writer (who would presumably have familiarity with the events of his homeland) need to rely on a Christian gentile (most likely from Greece or Asia Minor) for historical information about events in Judaea and Galilee? (Josephus has little interest in the early Christian church outside of John the Baptist, who doesn’t feature in the Acts of the Apostles. I believe the alleged overlaps relate to general events in 1st Palestine, which it would make sense for Luke to “borrow” from Josephus.)
The fact that a potentially authoritative source (in the eyes of early Christians) for church history would be ignored in the writings of church fathers until the mid-second century A.D. is also difficult to reconcile with giving Acts a date of composition in the 60-80 A.D. span.
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I’m not sure the majority position is that Acts was written between 60 and 80. Evangelicals typically place it in the 60s but many scholars place Luke-Acts into the late 80s and early 90s. A growing number of scholars take the view that it is a second century composition. On this, see the work of Stephen Mason (‘Josephus and the New Testament,’ esp. ch. 6).
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I meant 60–90; I wrote it wrong.
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It would have been better to have said first century.
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