Karamat's Xanga

Biblical Studies Carnival V

Tue, 02 May 2006 20:22:52 GMT

April's biblical studies blog carnival is up and running at Blue Cord. Please drop by there for the best in biblical bloggings from the month of April.

Call for Submissions

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 06:29:43 GMT

The Biblical Studies Blog Carnival for April will be hosted on Blue Cord, my new blog. This post is the call for submissions to the carnival.

To quote from Tyler F. Williams, the grand poobah of the Biblical Studies Blog Carnival:

The goal of the Biblical Studies Carnival is to showcase the best of weblog posts in the area of academic biblical studies. By "academic biblical studies" we mean:

Academic: Posts must represent an academic approach to the discipline of biblical studies rather than, for instance, a devotional approach. This does not mean that posts have to be written by an academic, PhD, or professor -- amateurs are more than welcome! Nor does it mean that posts must take a historical critical approach -- methodological variety is also encouraged.
Biblical Studies: Broadly focused on discipline of biblical studies and cognate disciplines, including Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Christian Origins/New Testament, Intertestamental/Second Temple literature (e.g., LXX, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, etc.), Patristics, Biblical Criticisms and Hermeneutics, Biblical Studies and popular culture, among other things.

I encourage you to submit your nominations from April. You may do so either by going to the Blog Carnival home page and using their form or by e-mailing the following information to blogcarnival@bluecord.org:

The title and permalink URL of the blog post you wish to nominate and the author’s name or pseudonym.
A short (two or three sentence) summary of the blog post.
The title and URL of the blog on which it appears (please note if it is a group blog).
Include "Biblical Studies Carnival V" in the subject line of your email.
Your own name and email address.

Please note that you may nominate your own posts or those of another blogger. You do not have to be a biblioblogger to submit a post. Those who read the blogs are also encouraged to submit nominations.

Biblical Studies Blog Carnival V will be posted the first week of May.

Blue Cord

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:15:03 GMT

I apologize if anyone has tried to go to my new Blue Cord blog. There was some miscommunication between me and the host, and they had not registered the domain name. It is now up and running, but it can take up to 24 hours for all domain name registries to be informed of the new domain. After that, everything should go smoothly.

Changes at Karamat

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 07:29:09 GMT

For some time I have been wanting to move my blog to a space that is more flexible and would allow me to use WordPress, a rather powerful blogging tool. So, just last week I purchased my own web space and domain name.

As of today, Karamat is no longer a biblioblog. I will be continuing to post information about our work in Lithuania here as well as information about our travels. But I have started a new blog on the study of the Bible at my new site, bluecord.org. Eventually, I will be starting another blog on bluecord.org that will deal with our travels and work, but right now I don't have the time to do that. Bluecord.org will expand overtime to include a number of sections on biblical studies, as well as information about our family, our work, and blogs by my wife and son.

I am taking this step not only because of a desire to use WordPress, but also because of the poor service I have received from Xanga. Although I bought the premium service, they almost never respond to e-mails for help. I sent five or six of these over a two month period, but only got one response. Their help pages are not set up well either. Xanga is fine for small blogs, but it is difficult to do serious work here. So, I am moving on.

For those of you who are bibliobloggers, I would like to request that you update the links to my blog on your pages. If you would like to continue reading what I write, you will also need to update your RSS feeds. I look forward to seeing you at the Blue Cord.

Easter Grace

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 06:09:41 GMT

Grace comes in many forms on Easter, including some that are unexpected.

While on my way to church yesterday morning, the nice police officer with the radar gun wanted to have a chat with me. I was doing the equivalent of 35 mph in a 30 mph zone, and two of them were pulling in car after car.

He asked to see my documents (you must always have ownership papers with you when you drive). Those I had with me. Things got a little sticky, however, when he asked for my driver's license, which was sitting at home. He decided to let me go home and get it. I returned with it in a few minutes. Fortunately, the police officer did not speak English, so he did not see the section where it said the expiration date was two months ago (I can't renew until I return to America next month). He examined them and told me he was going to have to write a ticket. I said I understood, and then he let me off with a warning. So, I was driving without my license, which was expired anyway, and he let me off.

This means I have still have never received a speeding ticket. I have only gotten one prior to this, and on appeal the judge overturned the ticket.

Paper Presentation

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 09:02:06 GMT

I just got word that my paper on Deuteronomy and Joshua as a combined document has been accepted for presentation at the European Association of Biblical Studies meeting in Budapest, Hungary, this coming August. I have delivered papers at Society of Biblical Literature meetings in America before, but this is my first European conference. Given the difference between European and American scholarship on the Pentateuch, it will be interesting to see how my paper is received.

The Tree of Life

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 07:28:46 GMT

An idea occurred to me this past weekend as I was reading over the galley for my forthcoming book on the legal sections of the Pentateuch. I wanted to share this with fellow biblical scholars to see if it sounded plausible or simply old hat. I could not find this idea discussed in any of the commentaries here, but my personal collection of books plus the college library hardly amounts to a research collection.

The candelabra in the tabernacle is described as a seven branched lamp stand. It has often been connected with the tree of life, a motif that is common in ancient Near Eastern iconography, especially in temples. The biblical text never calls it a tree of life, however. The only two places that the tree of life occurs in the Old Testament is in Proverbs, where wisdom is called the "tree of life," and of course in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3.

It occurred to me that there might be a connection between the Garden of Eden and the temple. There are several points of contact between them.

Both contain the tree of life.
Both are guarded by cherubim. Cherubim are placed at the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life (Gen.3:24) while the curtains in the tabernacle have cherubim woven into them (Exod.26:1).
Both are places where people cannot go. No one may enter the Garden of Eden, while only priests are allowed in the tabernacle.
The entrance to the Garden of Eden is on the east side (Gen.3:24). The entrance to the tabernacle and temple are on the east as well.
The garden is the place where God dwelled, or at least came for a walk in the evening (Gen.3:8). God also lives in the temple, enthroned on the ark of the covenant.

If this idea is true, then the tabernacle and later the temple could have been envisioned as a recreation of the Garden of Eden. Humans were driven out of the original garden, but now through God's grace the Israelites have been granted a limited access to the garden and the tree of life.

Extra Teaching

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:32:50 GMT

It's going to be a rough two weeks. We just found out that the mother of the other biblical studies teacher here is close to death. He is heading to the US, which means I will be finishing out the semester for him. This means an additional three sections of Intro to Bible (and he follows a different syllabus than I do) plus a Catholic Epistles class.

Please pray for Barrett, his mother, and his family for God's grace in this difficult time.

Gospel of Judas

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:22:46 GMT

Spring is in the air and Easter is fast approaching. And just as the forsythia that bloomed every year in our front yard in America, so is the regular crop of nutty ideas about Jesus, popularized each spring by Time and Newsweek. For the past few years, many of these ideas have centered around The Da Vinci Code. This year's favorite child, however, is the Gospel of Judas, a new gnostic text that was discovered in 1970 but just published in translation last week.

If you have not been following the Gospel of Judas saga, here it is in a nutshell. The Gospel of Judas is a text from c.300 CE that reports to be a secret gospel that was passed on to Judas by Jesus before his death. Of course, it was not written by Judas, since he immediately killed himself, but is instead a pseudepigraphal text. Iranaeus mentions a Gospel of Judas text around 180 CE, and this is probably (though not definitely) the same text. The text we possess is in Coptic and was written in Egypt. It comes from a group within early Christianity that was known as the gnostic, a group that is later declared to be heretical.

The publication of the Gospel of Judas has come with all kinds of overblown statements. Elaine Pagels, a scholar of gnosticism, claims that this document explodes the myth of a monolithic Christianity in the first century. Of course, no one has claimed that first century Christianity was monolithic in quite some time. Other have said that this would lead to a reassessment of Judas. Why this is so is hard to imagine, since a document from the second or even third century is unlikely to contain better information about Judas than the canonical Gospels, which were written in the first century. Those Gospels do not completely vilify Judas, but instead suggest that Judas betrayed Jesus in order to force Jesus to confront the Romans and begin a rebellion.

On the other side, of course, some scholars have been downplaying the importance of the Gospel of Judas. An interview with James Robinson was run under the headline "Gospel of Judas a Dud." This overlooks the fact that this text will increase our knowledge of gnosticism in the second and third century. Just because a text does not tell us about Jesus does not mean it is unimportant. But, of course, the news media want sensationalism, so they tend to depict the issue in simplistic terms.

It is not as if we do not have other gnostic texts from this period. The Nag Hammadi library, discovered in the middle of the 20th century, contains numerous text, some which are older than the Gospel of Judas. These have not only increased our knowledge of gnosticism but has also led to a better understanding of the background of the New Testament writings, since some of the authors were writing against gnosticism. And it is not like any of these documents are a secret. They are widely available in translation.

From a theological perspective, however, it is important to pay attention to the role of the canon. When the early church sought to clarify its beliefs, it did so in part by deciding that certain books accurately expressed who Jesus was while others did not. Even if the Gospel of Judas did contain new information about Jesus, that information would only be important to the extent that it helped us to understand the canonical gospels better. Other books may contain accurate historical information about Jesus, but only the canonical gospels present us with an accurate theological interpretation of who he was. These books, which are a living part of the church's heritage, are more important than those that were so unconvincing that people ceased using them and allowed them to be buried in the ground, only to be discovered hundreds of years later.

More than likely, churches will soon be offering study sessions on the Gospel of Judas. I have no problem with this, as long as it is done correctly. I am always amazed, however, that people in the church are often fascinated with the study of the latest and greatest discoveries when they have not yet taken the time to become familiar with the gospels we have known in the Bible for 2000 years. I guess familiarity breeds contempt.

Biblical Studies Carnival IV

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 05:17:16 GMT

The monthly biblical studies blog carnival is up and running at The Busybody. There you will find the best entries from biblical blogs from the month of March. Of particular interest is the continuing discussion started by Michael Fox's article on faith-based scholarship. Several bloggers have responded to his ideas, and the opening paragraph of the carnival lists some of these responses.

The next biblical studies carnival will be hosted here on Karamat. Although I will not post the official call for submissions until mid-month, you are able to submit them at any time. Submissions for blog entries posted in the month of April should be emailed to biblical_studies_carnival AT hotmail DOT com, or entered via the submission form at BlogCarnival.com. For more information, consult the Biblical Studies Carnival Homepage.