Divinity United

My colleague Daniel Driver directed my attention to Oxford Bibliographies Online (Biblical Studies) . I have been looking around on the site and have only become more and more impressed. There are a signficant number of bibliographies and each one has been put together by top notch scholars in the various fields. You can search or browse alphabetically. The bibliographies name the author and the date the bibliography was posted. Each bibliography includes introductory information about the topic as well as introductory surveys, general overviews, and themes and topics related to the title topics. The specificity of these latter bibliographies continues to surprise me. All of the sources listed have a brief annotation as well as a links to World Cat and often to Google Preview. (I should mention that Oxford Bibliographies is only available through subscription which my university library has.) The editor-in-chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online is Christopher R. Matthews who is also...

In his book Studies on Matthew , Ulrich Luz has five essays at the end of the book that address questions of interpretation, and the primary interest with most of these is Reception History or how has the Bible been understood throughout the centuries. The following is a longer quote that I found thought-provoking from his essay entitled "The Significance of the Church Fathers for Biblical Interpretation in Western Protestant Perspective". The essay was originally published as "Die Bedeutung der Kirchenv ä ter f ü r die Auslegung der Biblel. Eine westlich protestantische Sicht", in : James D.G.d Dunn, Hans Klein, Ulrich Luz, and Vasile Mihoc (eds.), Auslegung der Bibel in orthodoxer und westlicher Perspektive , WUNT I/130 (T ü bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 29-52. "...we are reminded by the patristic interpretations that behind the plurality of voices in the Bible itself and behind all the interpretations there is an interpretative community of which we ours...

Mark Goodacre posted a podcast entitled "Who is this 'Son of Man'?" over at NT Pod in early April. I have finally had time to listen to it, and as usual, he has done an excellent job introducing a NT topic (which is why I continue to make use of his podcasts in class). Goodacre points out that "the Son of Man" ( ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ) was only spoken by Jesus and it is almost non-existent outside of the Gospels. So what did the phrase mean to Jesus? what did it mean to his followers? and why did early Christians essentially not use it? Such questions are why there is no end to scholarly discussion on the topic. I recognize that Goodacre is only giving an 11 minute introduction to a complex topic, but I did want to clarify a couple points. The Jewish Second Temple text the Similitudes of Enoch does make reference to a son of man figure and there are clear indications that Daniel 7 has influenced this text (chs. 46-48). Although Goodacre states that Similitu...

Tyndale University College and Seminary have just relaunched the institution's magazine. It was formally titled "Connection", but has now been given the title "Tyndale: The Magazine". The new version is c ompletely available online , but print copies will also still be published.