Ipad vs. the Rosetta Stone

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament.
Ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Pp. xxvii + 1239.
Hekman Library ThRef 511.3 .C653 2007

In one volume Beale and Carson and sixteen other New Testament scholars have produced a unique reference tool that will be helpful for pastors, theological students, and biblical scholars. Each contributor (typically one per gospel or epistle) focuses his attention on those places where the NT writer actually cites or alludes to the OT. In their introduction, Beale and Carson outline six questions each contributor was asked to bear in mind:

1. What is the NT context of the citation or allusion?
2. What is the OT context from which the citation or allusion is drawn?
3. How is the OT source handled in the literature of Second Temple Judaism?
4. What textual factors come into play in this use of the OT (e.g., MT, LXX, Targum, etc.)?
5. How is the NT writer using or appealing to the OT?
6. To what theological use does the NT writer put this OT allusion or citation?

A good number of the contributors use these six questions as an outline in treating clear OT allusions or citations, with more generic discussions of less obvious allusions which do not lend themselves well to such a prescribed format. Each contribution has its own bibliography, with convenient author-date references within the text for those who wish to pursue matters more deeply.

This work succeeds in its goal of being a good comprehensive survey of specific instances of the use of the OT in the NT. While the contributors are informed by contemporary debates over the nature of the exegetical methods used by the NT writers and developments in the field of typology, the book does not attempt to address these issues comprehensively. For good, quick summaries of such issues, one might consult the relevant articles and bibliography in the recently published Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. VanHoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005) :

• “Relationship between the Testaments,” by R. T. France, pp. 666-672
• “Intertextuality,” by Paul E. Koptak, pp. 332-334
• “Jewish Exegesis,” by Craig A. Evans, pp. 380-384
• “Typology,” by Daniel Treier, pp. 823-827

Religion Past and Present = RGG4 (1)

Probably the preeminent theological dictionary published in the twentieth century is the German-language Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. From 1908-2007 it went through four editions: RGG1 (1908-1913), RGG2 (1927-1932), RGG3 (1957-1962), and now the newly completed 4th edition, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1998-2005).
This 4th edition is now being published in English translation by Brill as Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (2007-). At Hekman Library we've received the first five volumes (A-Haz) so far, with seven more to come. These four editions, taken together, contain a chronicle of changes in theological thought over the course of the past century.

RGG1 was initially conceived in 1900 as a cross-disciplinary work which would incorporate the research of the new "history of religions school" and other liberal theological movements, as well as speak to the current situation of the church (hence the "gegenwart" (present) in its title. This "present" orientation was to be a corrective to the more academically oriented Realenzyclopaedie fuer protestantische Theologie und Kirche (3rd ed., 1896-1913), which formed the basis for the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1908-1912) [full-text online].

RGG2 (1927-1932) was a completely new work, covering a cross-section of German theological thought and reflecting the rise of neo-orthodoxy. Selected articles from it have been translated and published in Jaroslav Pelikan, Twentieth-Century Theology in the Making (3 vols., 1969-71).

RGG3 (1957-1962) had a more international character, with some contributors from throughout the world, but retained its fundamentally German Protestant orientation and its many articles of interest to German readers. The "present" focus continued (with articles on the ecumenical movement, the New Deal), and the Fraktur script of the first two editions was replaced by roman type.

RGG4 is a fundamentally new work. One notes that its title is now Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, dropping the definite article "Die", perhaps indicating a desire to conceive "religion" more generically, with more emphasis on world religions. In my next post I'll look at RGG4 and its English translation more closely.

For a good review of the history of RGG in its various editions, see John Fitzgerald, et al., "Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: The Past and Present of a German Theological Dictionary," Religious Studies Review 27.4 (Oct 2001):319-329 [ DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-0922.2001.tb00374.x ]

Flannery O'Connor - New Biography

I've not read Brad Gooch's new book Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown & Co., 2009), but the review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes today has a great quote from some correspondence between F.O. and her friend Betty Hester: " I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both."
Gooch's biography supplements the last O'Connor biography, published in 2002 by Jean W. Cash, Flannery O'Connor: A Life (University of Tennessee, 2002), and makes use of a significant amount of hitherto unpublished correspondence. For excerpts from the O'Connor-Hester letters (in the Emory University Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library), see the 2008 article by Christine McCulloch, "Glimpsing Andalusia in the O'Connor-Hester Letters" in the online journal Southern Spaces . Here's a sample:

Gabriel's Revelation

Today's New York Times contains an article by Ethan Bronner, Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection :

"A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days."

According to a translation of the tablet by Israel Knohl, the text relates a vision of the archangel Gabriel who speaks of the resurrection of a messiah after three days, a motif previously not attested prior to Jesus.
See Knohl's article: Israel Knohl, "'By Three Days, Live': Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel," Journal of Religion 88, no. 2 (April 2008):147-158.

Here's a summary of some of the discussion and links to articles, posted by Jim Lauer:

Hershel Shanks noted that the first English publication of the tablet appeared in an article “A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone?” by Dr. Ada Yardeni in the January/February 2008 BAR. The Hebrew and English texts of the tablet are linked at the BAS website at http://bib-arch.org/news/dss-in-stone-news.asp .

In addition, as also circulated on Dr. Jack Sasson’s Agade list, in that article, Dr. Yardeni described the 3-foot-by 1-foot stone inscribed with a lengthy text that she would refer to as a Dead Sea Scroll had it been written on leather. A photo of the stone appears in the issue; for the transcription of the Hebrew text go to
< http://bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_hebrew.doc >; for an English translation, go to < http://bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_english.doc >.
Yitzhak Sapir noted that an April 4, 2007 Nfc Hebrew-language article about the Cathedra article mentioned by the Times (in which Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur analyzed the tablet), could be read at http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127652-00.html?tag=11-28-43 (or http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127652-00.html ). He also noted that through links in the Nfc article a PDF of the Yardeni/Elitzur Cathedra Hebrew article (no. 123, Nisan 5767, pp. 155-166) could be read at http://www.nfc.co.il/uploadFiles/138240993022919.pdf and a drawing and a Hebrew transcription of the tablet could be viewed at http://www.nfc.co.il/uploadFiles/848324000835419.pdf . See

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/8651 and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biblical-studies/message/18003

As some may remember, I circulated an April 20, 2007 Ha’aretz article by Prof. Israel Knohl (”In three days, you shall live”) in which he discussed the tablet and his book and his theory, mentioned in the Times article. The article may be read at

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=850657 [English]
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=850111 [Hebrew]

Henry Chadwick - Historian of Early Christianity

Henry Chadwick, a British historian of early Christianity died last month on June 17. See his obituary in the New York Times. The church was (and continues to be) well-served by his work. The quotation attributed to him in the Times obituary is worth noting:
“Nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory, and the church which has lost its memory is in the same state of senility.”

WorldCat Collection Analysis, John Calvin, and ATLA

I'm back from a few days in Ottawa at the ATLA (American Theological Library Association) Annual Meeting. Ottawa is a great city, with good public transportation and a tremendous network of bike paths along rivers and canals and throughout the city. I rented a bike and managed to ride about 80 miles during the four days I was there.

This has little to do with theological reference, but my presentation (with Terry Robertson from Andrews University) was an introduction to and analysis of WorldCat Collection Analysis, a tool designed to help librarians evaluate library collections. I'm posting a link to my PowerPoint (creatively entitled WorldCat Collection Analysis) for the benefit of those who attended the session and may have dozed off during the presentation.

While we're distributing our PowerPoint Presentations, a couple of years ago my colleague Paul Fields and I gave a presentation at the same conference with the engaging title: Bibliographic Resources for the Study of John Calvin. More interesting presentation, I thought, but not nearly as well-attended as the WorldCat Collection Analysis session this year.