I just came across what looks to be a fascinating dissertation by Randall Heskett entitled “Messianism Within the Book of Isaiah as a Whole.”  I haven’t read anything past the table of contents but if the TOC is any indication then this looks like it will be very informative.  And might I add that I was able to access this dissertation through the goodness that is Open Thesis which is one more in the ever-growing list of online research databases making dissertations & theses available to the public.

(HT: Brian LePort)

B”H

My nephew just walked in the house carrying a box from Wipf & Stock containing the following:

• The Anointed Son: A Trinitarian Spirit Christology — Myk Habets
• One of a Kind: The Relationship Between Old and New Covenants as the Hermeneutical Key for Christian Theology of Religions — Adam Sparks

Not that Wipf & Stock doesn’t always publish good stuff, but lately, I’ve really been impressed with what they’ve been putting out.  I’m in the process of reading Suzanne Nicholson’s Dynamic Oneness: The Significance and Flexibility of Paul’s One-God Language and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it (I hope to have it reviewed in the next few days).  Likewise, I just got an email today announcing the third printing of Paul N. Anderson’s The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6 (with a new introduction, outlines, and epilogue), a book that I’ve eyed with great interest for a few years now.  And if you’ll remember just a few months ago I received a copy of Aquila H. I. Lee’s From Messiah to Preexistent Son: Jesus’ Self-Consciousness and Early Christian Exegesis of Messianic Psalms which I promptly reviewed with great pleasure.  I’m chomping at the bit to get into Hybets’ book so I imagine some stuff is going to go further on the back burner so I can read and review it.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

B”H

Michael Brown recently had Anthony Buzzard on his radio show to debate the deity of Christ.  Here’s the program:

B”H

The very first footnote in Moisés Silva & Karen Jobes’ Invitation to the Septuagint touches on the subject of pronunciation, which is always of interest to me, mainly because I pronounce everything correctly and am amused by those who pronounce things incorrectly.  Silva & Jobes note:

The “proper” way to pronounce Septuagint is the subject of lighthearted debate among specialists. English dictionaries typically suggest the pronunciation SEP-too-ajint or sep-TOO-a-jint or the like, but many scholars in the discipline treat it as a three-syllable word, SEP-twa-jint. In Europe, one often hears the last syllable pronounced with hard g, after the pattern of Latin Septuaginta. (Invitation to the Septuagint, 19, n. 1)

Just last night I was listening to a course by Rikk Watts on the NT use of the OT and he kept pronouncing Septuagint with a hard g and I kept cringing because this is certainly wrong.  The correct pronunciation is of course sep-TOO-a-jint and if you can’t say it that way then just say LXX!

And this is my contribution to International Septuagint Day; have a good one!

B”H

Chris Tilling is now a Dr.! But I’d suggest giving it a couple of years before allowing him to operate on you.  New docs tend to have shaky hands and that could result in a sharp instrument being dropped inside if you and possibly even getting sewn up without being removed.  But if you’re looking for some answers or fresh insight into Pauline Christology (not the book by Fee which gets a thorough review and thrashing in Chris’ thesis) then Dr. Tilling would be a great person to turn to.  It’s no secret that I had the pleasure of reading Dr. Tilling’s thesis from its early stages and it’s also no secret that I’m a great admirer of his work (= methodology & conclusions).  I look forward to receiving an autographed copy of the published version of this thesis which I believe is the most significant contribution to the divine Christology debate since Larry Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ (and that’s saying something!).  So congratulations Chris; you deserve it!  I can’t wait to see what comes next!

B”H

So often we (and I fully include myself in the ‘we’ here) criticize modern Charismatics/Pentecostals for their abuse of the gifts of the Spirit and compare them with the Corinthians.  We rightly point to Paul’s correctives in 1Corinthians 12-14 and wonder how it is that Paul can be so misunderstood when he spoke so clearly.  But am I alone in noticing that there were other* Corinthians (let’s call them the ’strong’) who also messed up quite a bit in other areas?  They were the Corinthians who were confident in their knowledge and thought that they shouldn’t be blamed if others weren’t as confident as they were.  These were the Corinthians who knew that there were no other gods so eating meat sacrificed to idols was fine and dandy, but this knowledge wasn’t shared by their ‘weak’ counterparts, and thus it posed some big problems (see 1Cor. 8-10).

More to the point, this knowledge wasn’t what it was cracked up to be since they missed the bigger picture and didn’t seem to understand what was really important (you know, stuff like unity in the body of Christ and whatnot).  Do these ’strong’ Corinthians have modern analogues?  They sure do!  I submit that there’s any number of Christians who are reliant upon their own knowledge, but who alienate their allegedly weak brothers and sisters for not knowing as much as them.  It’s great to be able to engage in rigorous exegesis and dismiss apparently ridiculous ideas and interpretations of Scripture, but if such knowledge and ability doesn’t promote unity, then what good is it?  When Paul said that ‘knowledge puffs up’ did he mean that we should all be ignorant?  Of course not!  But he did mean that knowledge not grounded in love (which for Paul and the rest of the NT writers was evidenced in our actions toward God and each other) was useless.  Remember, ‘love builds up,’ and this is precisely the same corrective he offered to those abusing the gifts.  The major offense wasn’t as much in the disorder as it was in the disunity and selfish display of what God had given.  The focus should have been on the building up of the body because ‘love builds up.’

B”H

*N.B. that for the sake of my point I’m referring to these Corinthians as ‘others’ when Paul doesn’t clearly make the distinction that I am making.

Nuff said…

B”H

We’re in the middle of a mild blizzard and my daughter is begging me to take her out into the devil’s playground.  Unfortunately my mom just bought her a sled so I have to comply.  My morning will be spent in snow; God help me!

B”H

In the post before my last one I linked to Justin Taylor’s summary of some guy’s thoughts about MMA and evangelism.  Note well that my beef was with the things he attributed to MMA and by implication its fans.  In addition to that I’d like to register a complaint about that guy’s characterization of Jesus as ‘weak.’  I don’t think Jesus was the least bit weak, in fact I think he displayed the extreme opposite of weakness, i.e., he willingly submitted his entire life to following the will of the Father which culminated in his being crucified as an innocent man on behalf of people who really deserved it.  Weak people do what they want to do when they want to do it without thought for the effect that their actions have on others.  Weak people submit to temptation rather than finding their strength in God and struggling to overcome it.  Weakness isn’t synonymous with the pacifism that some like to attribute to Jesus (I’d take issue with the idea of Jesus being a pacifist like the many and varied hipster pacifists of modern times but I digress), no, weakness is the opposite of what Jesus was and is.  Was he humble?  Absolutely!  Did he serve others?  Without a doubt!  Did he refuse to resist when he was taken to trial and condemned to death?  Of course, and thank God that he did!  But none of this makes Jesus weak.  It makes him much stronger than any of us could ever hope to be!

B”H

UPS just dropped off the books I ordered from the WTS Bookstore yesterday.  Again, I got:

• Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement
• The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Sample pages)

Both are published by Baker Academic and both are written by bloggers.  Brant Pitre blogs at The Sacred Page (formerly known as Singing in the Reign) which is probably one of the top 10 or 15 blogs I read, and Greg Boyd blogs here (I don’t know the name of his blog because I don’t actually read it and I can’t access it right now because of an internal server error).

B”H