A quick and enjoyable read.  Witherington gives a straightforward, candid look at the academic doctorate in biblical studies, offering succinct advice in the way of both encouragement and warning.  Below, I offer some notable quotes:

“If languages are not your gift, or at least not something you are prepared to work hard on, then abandon any hope at becoming a good biblical scholar, or a good graduate or post-graduate level teacher of the Bible. You cannot get around the language requirement.” (42)

“It is not enough to know the Bible well. Greater minds than ours have reflected on the Bible before we ever thought of doing so, and our reading of the Bible will only be enriched if we read the classic Christian works and so end up reading the Bible with the saints.” (72)

“The lifeblood of a good scholar is, of course, good researching, and then conveying what he or she has learned through good writing and giving good lectures based on the research.” (81)

“Without question a prerequisite to becoming a better researcher is being able to work with the three major research languages — English, French, and German. . . . Anyone wanting to be a good scholar has to deal with the primary and secondary sources in various languages. Period. Exclamation point!” (85)

“There are some acquired skills that can help make research less onerous and time consuming For example, there are shortcuts. You should start by reading through New Testament Abstracts and its English summaries of articles, monographs, and commentaries. You should look for seminal articles, monographs, and commentaries and read the footnotes carefully to see what sources these writers consulted. One should concentrate on the major NT journals everyone is expected to read: Novum Testamentum (NovT), New Testament Studies (NTS), Journal for Biblical Literature (JBL), Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (ZNW), to name but four. You should start by reading those who have labored long in the Pauline vineyard or the Johannine vineyard and who are experts in these areas. They will survey the landscape for you and help you figure out quickly the most helpful resources.” (85)

“With the professionalization of ministry, including the ministry of teaching and of doing scholarly work on the Bible, one of the tendencies has been to judge a person’s fitness to teach purely on the basis of their knowledge or talent. Paul frankly would have found this tendency profoundly troubling. A person needs to grow up in the Christian faith, and indeed grow in faith, and as he or she does, that person is better able to rightly use the spiritual gifts and knowledge God has given. I have known Christian people of enormous intelligence and with good teaching gifts who nonetheless were not mature Christians, who were not growing in faith and in largeness of soul. Paul would have had some issues with that person being given free rein, without accountability, to teach God’s people as they want.” (98-99)

“As Jerome once put it: “’Defend the Bible? It needs about as much defense as a lion!’” (130)

“There is, in fact, no purely objective, value-free scholarship. It is just that some do a better job of admitting this and owning up to their presuppositions and inclinations. I dare say that those who are aware of their own commitments and take them into account and even correct them are those who really ought to be called critical scholars, whether they are persons of no apparent faith, agnostic, or of ardent faith A critical scholar is one who is capable of being self-critical and self-corrective, as well as being able to cast a discerning eye on the biblical text. A critical scholar is one who is honest about the text and about what they do and don’t understand about the text.” (131, original italics)

“One of the important things to say about graduate work, if you really are strongly led to be a teacher, is that you must learn all the biblical languages and take exegesis classes in both OT and NT to build a good foundation.” (146)

“. . . here is a list of twenty useful monographs for New Testamentlers that you might want to start with, and read them long before you get to the doctoral process:
 Adolph Deissmann: Light from the Ancient East
 Edwin Judge: The First Christians in the Roman World
 Joachim Jeremias: The Parables of Jesus
 E. P. Sanders: Paul and Palestinian Judaism
 N. T. Wright: Resurrection and the Son of God
 Richard Hays: The Faith of Jesus Christ
 Ben Witherington: The Christology of Jesus
 Anthony Thiselton: The Two Horizons
 Gerd Theissen: The Historical Jesus 
 Richard Bauckham: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses
 Gordon Fee: God’s Empowering Presence
 Raymond Brown: The Death of the Messiah
 Craig Hill: Hebrews and Hellenists
 Murray Harris: Jesus as God
 Allen Culpepper: Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel
 R. Tannehill: The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts
 Christopher Bryan: Render unto Caesar
 Margaret Mitchell: The Rhetoric of Reconciliation
 John Barclay: The Obedience of Faith
 Ben Witherington: New Testament Rhetoric” (147-148)

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 24,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Are the Differing Narratives of Peter’s Denials Reconcilable?

Since high school, I’ve understood there to be at least some wealthy people in the Corinthian church based on 1 Cor 1:26, and was confirmed in that understanding as I studied 1 Cor 11:17-34 in seminary.  Schnabel suggests a number of indicators (not all equally convincing, but collectively significant):

The range of problems in the young church that Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians indicates that members of the local elite had become Christians as well: people who belong to the wise and powerful (1 Cor 1:26; 3:18), who expected orators to display brilliant rhetoric (1 Cor 2:1-5), who were able to initiate official legal proceedings (1 Cor 6:1-11), who visited prostitutes (1 Cor 6:12-18), who dined in the temples of the city (1 Cor 8:10), who covered their heads during the worship services of the church as signs of their superior social status, as priests did when they officiated in the temples (1 Cor 11:4), people who had time for meals in the afternoon (1 Cor 11:21-22). (105-106)

On the term “Christian”, I’ve noted that it was an appellation given by non-Jesus-followers: “were called Christians” (Acts 11:26).  Schnabel suggests more detail:

Luke concludes his brief report about Paul’s missionary work in Antioch with the note that ‘it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’” (Acts 11:26).  The term Christianoi (Lat. Christiani) occurs in the New Testament only here and in Acts 26:28 on the lips of Herod Agrippa II during the legal proceedings involving the apostle Paul . . . and in 1 Peter 4:16 in the context of Christians in Asia Minor who face the possibility of having to give an account of their beliefs before the magistrates in the cities in which they lived. . . . The ending -iani suggests that this appellation originated outside of the church in Latin-speaking circles (a Greek-speaking context would suggest formulations such as Christeioi or Christikō.  Jews called the followers of Jesus usually Nasrayya or Nosrim (Gr Nazōraioi), that is “Nazarenes.”  Jews who did not acknowledge Jesus as Messiah would hardly have called the believers in Jesus “Followers of the Messiah” (Christeioi or Christianoi).  It is quite possible that the term Christianoi was an official designation coined by the Roman authorities in Antioch for the new religious group. (72-73)

It is important to realize that in Acts 13, when Paul and Barnabas are set apart for missionary work, that this is by no means Paul’s inaugural work in the way of “missions”.  After summarizing the likely chronology of Paul’s early Christian ministry, Schnabel concludes, “This means that when he left Antioch in A.D. 45 for Cyprus and Galatia, Paul had nearly fifteen years of missionary experience.  Neither Barnabas nor Paul were missionary novices: they were experienced missionaries who had seen many people come to faith in Jesus Christ, both Jews and Gentiles, who had seen churches established, who had taught new believers, and who had seen churches grow” (75, original emphasis).  Schnabel suggests that the scenario in Acts 13:1-3 doesn’t necessarily point to a “surprise” selection of Paul and Barnabas to missions work — that is, the church undergoing routine prayer and fasting and the Spirit suddenly indicating that Paul and Barnabas were to pack their bags — but Luke’s record is compatible with the church seeking divine confirmation of prior planning which involved two leading preachers and teachers of the church at Antioch engaging in missionary outreach in other locales.

I met with my NT professor Jon Pratt to try to gain a better understanding of the role of the law (if any) in the believer’s life.  He recommended this book.  I’m glad he did.  Houghton’s extensive theological studies under Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran, and Dispensationalist teachers has put him in good stead to address the topic.  In this volume, he presents the Roman Catholic view of the law (mixes law and grace), the Reformed view of the law (presents the Law as a rule of life, Calvin’s “third use of the Law”), and finally his own Dispensationalist view of the law.  He spends a chapter or two on application of his theological work to several practical issues such as Sabbath-keeping, tongues-speaking, and stewardship.  I think it would be fair to characterize the book’s major thesis with this quote: “Believers today are not under the law, either as a way of salvation or as a rule of life” (157).

Houghton finds the typical “Law-Gospel” divide inadequate, in that it does not account for NT “demands” on the believer — the believer is not under the OT Law, and the Gospel does not make demands.  He therefore introduces the category of “Grace”, which includes (as an overarching category) “Gospel” and stands opposed to “Law”.  And Law-Grace is not to be understood as an OT-NT divide.  ”… law, gospel, and grace can be found throughout the Bible” (12).  ”Any passage that makes demands by causing the reader to be afraid of God, whether in the Old or New Testament, is to be considered law.  By the same token, any passage that offers God’s free forgiveness apart from demands, whether in the Old or New Testament, is to be considered gospel” (115).

Houghton demonstrates from the NT (especially Romans) that the believer is not under the OT law (Rom 6:14) in any sense or to any extent (not even the “moral law” of the Torah, or the summarizing Ten Commandments), but is dead to the law (Rom 7:4) and free from the law (Rom 8:2).  This is not to say that the believer is to live “lawlessly”, for grace makes demands on believers as we see in the NT (e.g., Tit. 2:11-14), and these are followed out of gratitude, not fear of God’s wrath.  To summarize Houghton’s summary (!) on the biblical teaching on Law and Grace, (1) The moral law should not be equated with the Ten Commandments; (2) Scripture indicates that the Mosaic Law was only in place for a certain period of time (Gal 3:18-19); (3) The function of the law is to make sin known to the unbeliever; (4) Law-giving is not a means of salvation or a means of living a godly life; (5) Though not under law, believers are under grace, which makes demands on believers.

I appreciate Houghton’s clarity of thought and writing.  I also appreciate his theological method: instead of proof-texting, he carefully works through the passage or two that he believes most directly and clearly addresses the issue at hand.

“But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.”  

(1) The “extended solitary reflection” scenario Perhaps, like me, you’ve read suggestions that Paul retreated into sort of a secluded retreat into Arabia for some time to consider the mind-bending, life-altering implications of his new understanding of Jesus after his conversion.  Indeed, such a view was apparently once commonly held, and perhaps still is in popular teaching and preaching: “It is commonly thought that Paul went to Arabia for solitary communion with God and reflection on his position in the light of the new revelation.” (Fung, Epistle to the Galatians, 68-69)  Such an understanding might be derived from the KJV rendering in Gal 1:16-17 that after Paul was called, “immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood . . . but I went into Arabia.”  This wording might been seen to imply that as opposed to “conferring” with “flesh and blood” Paul “conferred” with God in the wilderness instead.   Frederic William Farrar, writing in 1879, suggests,

“. . . nothing can seem more natural than that St. Paul, possibly already something of a fugitive, almost certainly a sufferer in health and mind, driven by an imperious instinct to seek for solitude, should have turned his lonely steps to a region where he would at once be safe, and unburdened, and alone with God.” (The Life and Work of St. Paul, vol. 1, 710)

A well-known older commentary on Galatians by Ernest De Witt Burton suggests,

“The only natural, almost the only possible, implication [of the phrase 'conferred not with flesh and blood'] is that he sought communion with God, a thought sufficiently indicated on the one side by the antithesis of ‘flesh and blood’ and on the other by the mention of the relatively desert land to which he went.” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 55)

More recently, and with a related though not identical approach, N. T. Wright suggests parallels between Paul and Elijah in violent “zeal”, and understands Paul’s retreat to Arabia (which equals Sinai for Wright, based on Gal 4:25) in terms of Elijah’s discouraged flight to Horeb (= Sinai) in 1 Ki 19:8.  ”Saul certainly did not go to Arabia in order to evangelize.  He might have been doing what a puzzled zealous prophet might be expected to do: going back to the source to resign the commission.” (“Paul, Arabia, and Elijah (Galatians 1:17),” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 [1996], 687; see critique in Witherington, Grace in Galatia, 101-102).

(2) The “missionary work” scenario In reading through a recent work on Paul as a missionary, therefore, I was surprised to see how matter-of-factly this notion is dismissed:

Paul did not go to Arabia to work through the theological and practical consequences of his conversion.  He went to Arabia in order to engage in missionary work. (Eckhard Schnabel, Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies and Methods, 60)

Not that I had a strong attachment to the “extended solitary reflection” scenario! But I hadn’t given it much thought, and it appears that majority scholarly opinion is decidedly against it, and has been for some time.  In this connection, there is a geographical question as to the referent of “Arabia” (Sinai?  desert wilderness?  the populous Hellenistic cities of the northern region?), and a chronological question about how the “three years” (in Arabia and Damascus) of Gal 1:18 jibes with the narrative of Acts 9:19ff where no mention is made of time in Arabia.  As to the latter question, Schnabel places Paul’s mission work in Arabia after a period of initial preaching in Damascus.  As to the former question, Schnabel identifies Arabia thus: “In Roman and in Jewish terminology, Arabia (Nabatea) was the region to the south of the Roman province of Syria; it included Moab and Edom and extended from the Hauran Mountains in the north to the regions east and west of the Gulf of Aqaba” (60).  More to the point, “Arabia was not only a desert but a flourishing civilization, particularly in northern Nabatea” (63).  It included a good number of cities within easy striking distance of the eastern frontier of Judea, south of Damascus, in the region of the modern state of Jordan.

Schnabel suggests that the “missionary work” scenario is supported by the attempt on Paul’s life referenced in Acts 9:23-25 (highlighting the Jews of Damascus) and 2 Cor 11:32-33 (highlighting the governor of Damascus under King Aretas, the Nabatean king Aretas IV Philodemas).  ”The aggressive reaction of Nabatean officials who want to eliminate Paul suggests that people had been converted in noticeable numbers, provoking unrest in various cities that caused the intervention of the Nabatean king” (64-65).

Other works supporting the “missionary work” scenario include Schnabel’s longer treatment in Early Christian Mission (2004), 2:1032-45; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, ”Paul in Arabia,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55 (1993): 732-37; Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer, Paul between Damascus and Antioch: The Unknown Years (Westminster John Knox, 1997), 106-26; Martin Hengel, “Paul in Arabia,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 12.1 (2002): 47-66.

Irenaeus ( – c. 202) on the Incarnation

Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220) on the Incarnation

Cyprian ( -258) on the Incarnation

Methodius ( -311) on the Incarnation

Athanasius (293-373) on the Incarnation

Ambrose (c. 340-397) on the Incarnation

Chalcedon (451) on the Incarnation

Martin Luther (1483-1546) on the Incarnation

John Calvin (1509-1564) on the Incarnation (1)

John Calvin (1509-1564) on the Incarnation (2)

John Donne (1572-1631) on the Incarnation

John Gill (1697-1771) on the Incarnation

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on the Incarnation (1)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on the Incarnation (2)

Charles Wesley (1707-1788) on the Incarnation

Louis Berkhof (1873-1957) on the Incarnation

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) on the Incarnation

David Wells (1939- ) on the Incarnation

Robert Reymond on the Incarnation

Dillard and Longman point out, however, that there is a good bit of history behind the scenario.  The book of Esther takes pains to point out that, on the one hand, Mordecai is a Benjamite from the clan of Kish (5:2), while on the other hand, Haman is a descendant of Agag (3:1), who was king of the Amalekites.  Now, Amalek had been a thorn in Israel’s side for quite some time; witness this postlude to the battle between Israel and Amalek on the journey to Canaan:

“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD Is My Banner, saying, “A hand upon the throne of the LORD! The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Ex 17:14-16)

So we see conflict between Amalek and Israel in Num 14:45.  In Deuteronomy, we see another reminder about Amalek:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore when the LORD your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.” (Deut 25:17-19)

Amalek joins forces with Moab to subjugate Israel in Judges 3:12-14 and, along with the Midianites, stole Israel’s crops in Judges 6:1-6.  And under the united monarchy, Saul is tasked with bringing about God’s promise to Israel through Moses in Ex 17:14:

“And Samuel said to Saul, “The LORD sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore listen to the words of the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Sam 15:1-3)

Samuel had to finish the job, because Saul, the son of Kish, failed to kill Agag, king of the Amalekites.  Apparently, though, the strike against Amalek didn’t completely eliminate the nation, for we read later that David and his men raided the Amalekites (1 Sam 27:8), and the Amalekites  returned the favor (1 Sam 30:1).  An Amalekite brought the news of Saul’s death to David, whereupon David had him executed (2 Sam 1), and later brought the Amalekites into subjection (2 Sam 8:11-12; 1 Chr 18:11).

Now in Esther, we have another “son of Kish” (Mordecai, speaking in terms of ancestry) in conflict with a descendant of Agag (Haman).  The centuries-old conflict is renewed again in microcosm, and I suspect Jewish young people hearing the story for the first time would instantly make that connection (or have it made for them by their elders!).  And this background sheds light on a number of points in Esther:

1) The long-standing enmity between Jew and Amalekite may very well feed into the unwillingness of Mordecai to bow or rise in respect to Haman.

2) The same enmity sheds light on Haman’s seemingly excessive expansion of his wrath from Mordecai to the Jewish people.  The king’s servants who had acted as initial informants to Haman as to Mordecai’s unwillingness to bow, seem to have done so because he was a Jew, and Haman was very clear on that fact:

And when they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman, in order to see whether Mordecai’s words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew. And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone. So, as they had made known to him the people of Mordecai, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. (Esther 3:4-6)

This incident served Haman as an opportunity to re-engage a standing enemy of his people.

3) It is striking that when the counterdecree of Ahasuerus goes into effect, that the Jews killed tens of thousands of their enemies, but (as is repeated thrice!) “they laid no hands on the plunder” (Est 9:10, 15, 16).  Why not?  Likely, there is a connection with the initial command the Lord gave Saul: he was to destroy the Amalekites, but their possessions were to be devoted to the Lord: “the Jews at the time of Mordecai would not make the same mistake as Saul (1 Sam. 15:9-19)” (Dillard & Longman 197).

If your experience is like mine, you memorized Joshua 1:8 a long time ago:

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest
observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have
good success (KJV).

I am reading through Dillard and Longman’s An Introduction to the Old Testament (Zondervan, 1994) in preparation for doctoral entrance exams, and in demonstrating the many connections between Deuteronomy and Joshua, they draw the connection between Joshua 1:8 (“this book of the law”) and Deuteronomy’s self-designation as “this book of the law” (Deut 31:26) (Dillard and Longman 115) — the Hebrew is precisely the same.

I had never given much specific thought to the context of God’s words to Joshua at the beginning of the book of Joshua, but had sort of a picture of Joshua standing out in the open, perhaps looking over the Jordan toward the Promised Land, when God broke through his reverie and spoke to him in the words recorded in Joshua 1:2-9.  In giving it thought, however, I suppose Joshua must have been in the tabernacle before the ark of the covenant.  This is, after all, where God specially manifested his presence to Israel, and where Moses had spoken with the Lord (cf. Num 7:89).  Looking forward to the aftermath of Ai’s defeat (Josh 7:6), we find Joshua and the elders of Israel prostrated before the ark as representative of the presence of the Lord.  As a clincher, in Deut 31, just after the commissioning of Joshua (with language found reiterated in Joshua 1:2-9!), Moses gives the Levites instructions about where to keep the book of the Law that he has just finished writing:

And the LORD commissioned Joshua the son of Nun and said, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the people of Israel into the land that I swore to give them. I will be with you.”  When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to the very end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, “Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.” (Deut 31:23-26)

It would only make sense that when the Lord says to Joshua “This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth” (Josh 1:8), Joshua would be in the presence of the “book of the Law” referenced by “this”.  And the place for that book of the Law was by the side of ark of the covenant.