Divinity United

The biennial Enoch Seminar will be meeting in Milan, Italy the last week of June. The topic of this year's seminar is "Second Baruch and Fourth Ezra: Jewish Apocalypticism in Late First Century Israel." The schedule of papers and participants can be found here . Some of top scholars in the area of Second Temple Judaism will be presenting on various aspect of these two late first century apocalypses. The format of the seminar is designed for discussion with responses to almost every paper. It looks to be a good conference.

Timothy George has an excellent article on the shift in biblical interpretation toward theological exegesis and history of interpretation/reception history in the March 2011 First Things . The article is entitled 'Reading the Bible with the Reformers: We ought to read Scripture the way Luther and Calvin did' and is not so much about Luther and Calvin as it is about renewed interest in the importance of theological hermeneutics and the avoidance the Enlightenment division between academic study Scripture and the devotional study of Scripture. Early in the article, George addresses the problem of 'biblical presentism' in which the main focus of biblical interpretation is to answer the question: 'What is the Bible saying to us now?' George traces this perspective to Friedrich Schleiermacher and argues that the Protestant acceptance the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation was a response to this sort of feeling-centered, biblical presentism. But ...

Just a disclaimer, I have not read the book and I probably will not in the near future for time reasons. But there has been a raging debate about the book, universalism, heaven, hell, etc. even before the book appeared. It started with Rob Bell's introduction video spot. Kevin DeYoung has responded to the book with a lengthy critique . Now, Rob Bell has been interviewed by Martin Bashir on MSNBC who does not throw any softballs. The difficult questions keep flying. And here are Ben Witherington's comments on the interview.