Divinity United

For a longer and more well-informed critique  on the New New Testament (the same topic as my previous  post ) see Daniel Wallace's post here .

I recently received an email from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishers about the release of a book edited by Hal Taussig called A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts . The book is the traditional or canonical New Testament with the addition of ten texts that have been found in Egypt and elsewhere over the last one hundred years. The Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary are two of these texts. Hal Taussig is a founding member of the Jesus Seminar, and he gathered "a council of scholars and spiritual leaders" to talk about the various apocryphal New Testament texts and to vote about which ones to include in the New New Testament. I could only find the list of council members on the short video on the website. Some of this group include Karen King, Stephen Moore, and John Dominic Crossan. The case made in the promotional material is that these ten texts are early Christian literature and some of it "has be...

News just broke Tuesday in the New York Times on the appearance of an ancient papyrus that speaks about Jesus as possibly having a wife. The papyrus has been dated to the fourth century. Karen King who has presented the only known information about the fragment has pointed out that it may have been composed in the second century. According to Christian Askeland , the majority of Coptologists (the fragment is written in Coptic) seem to think at this time that the document is a forgery (see also the comments to Christian's post). See further information here , including comments from Simon Gathercole who is a specialist on apocryphal gospels. A high resolution image and a translation of the document may be found in the NY Times article.

Dr. Simon Gathercole will be giving two lectures at Tyndale University College on Thursday, November 17, 2011. The formal announcement has now been made. The first lecture is entitled "In Defence of Substitution: The Atonement in Paul" and will be given over lunch (11:45-1:00) on the Tyndale Ballyconnor Campus. The second lecture is open to the public and is entitled "Who were the Gnostics? Their Beliefs, Practices, and Gospels". This lecture will take place at 7:00pm in the auditorium (NB: not the chapel!) at the Tyndale Bayview Campus (Sisters of St. Joseph). If you would like further information on either lecture, please let me know and watch the Tyndale website for further information. Dr. Simon Gathercole is Senior Lecturer in New Testament in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. He is editor of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament and is well-known for his books Where is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's Respon...