Jun 20, 2020

The Latest Issue of the Review of Biblical Literature

The latest issue of Review of Biblical Literature is out. Reviews can be accessed by clicking the links below but unfortunately you must be a SBL member. 

Ronald Charles, The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts
Reviewed by S. Scott Bartchy

Radcliffe G. Edmonds II, Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World
Reviewed by David Frankfurter

Jörg Frey and Nicole Rupschus, eds., Frauen im antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum
Reviewed by Catherine Hezser

Friedhelm Hartenstein and Thomas Willi, eds., Psalmen und Chronik
Reviewed by Manfred Oeming

Christoph Heil, Gertraud Harb, and Daniel A. Smith, eds., Built on Rock or Sand? Q Studies: Retrospects, Introspects, and Prospects
Reviewed by Olegs Andrejevs

Matthias Henze and Liv Ingeborg Lied, eds., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Fifty Years of the Pseudepigrapha Section at the SBL
Reviewed by Susan Docherty

Carol A. Newsom, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics: Approaches to Text, Tradition and Social Construction in Biblical and Second Temple Literature
Reviewed by Malka Simkovich

Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile
Reviewed by Jennifer M. Matheny

Stewart Penwell, Jesus the Samaritan: Ethnic Labeling in the Gospel of John
Reviewed by Vien V. Nguyen, SCJ

Johannes Unsok Ro, ed., Story and History: The Kings of Israel and Judah in Context
Reviewed by John W. Herbst

Justin M. Rogers, Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo
Reviewed by Andrew M. King V

James A. Sanders; Craig A. Evans, ed., Scripture in Its Historical Contexts: Volume I: Text, Canon, and Qumran
Reviewed by Sidnie White Crawford

Jens Schröter, Tobias Nicklas, and Joseph Verheyden, eds., Gospels and Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Experiments in Reception
Reviewed by Jacob A. Lollar

James W. Thompson and Richard A. Wright, eds., Ethics in Contexts: Essays in Honor of Wendell Lee Willis
Reviewed by Nicholas J. Zola

Jonathan Vroom, The Authority of Law in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism: Tracing the Origins of Legal Obligation from Ezra to Qumran
Reviewed by Phillip Michael Lasater

Jun 18, 2020

Introduction to Sumerian and Akkadian Cuneiform Video

I attended a Zoom presentation last Sunday on Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform presented by Susanne Paulus, associate professor of Assyriology and sponsored by The Oriental Institute. A video of the presentation is available for a limited time here.

Jun 17, 2020

Preaching with Amos

Antony Billington has an article in Preach magazine on preaching Amos. It is good overview and agrees with some recent talks that I did on the book. You can access a free PDF of the article here.

HT: Antony Billington

Jun 16, 2020

New Volume in the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands

I woke up this morning to find a new BiblePlaces Newsletter in my email which contained an announcement that the twentieth volume in the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands has been released. This volume devoted to the Western Mediterranean contains 1,400 photos and 25 PowerPoints. In the newsletter, Todd Bolen writes,
The Western Mediterranean volume may not strike you as part of what we normally think of as biblical lands. It's true that we have no certain events in the Bible that occur in ancient Gaul and Hispania (France and Spain). But this region was very much part of the biblical world, particularly in the days of the New Testament, and my appreciation for its value grew immensely in the course of this project.

This looks to be an excellent resource and you would do well to check it out and take advantage of the special launch price this week of $25 with immediate download and free shipping in the US. You can purchase it as a DVD+download or download-only.

Jun 15, 2020

How Names Help Affirm Jeremiah’s Historicity

Those who keep up with biblical archaeology might not find all that much new here, but this article in the Jerusalem Post does a nice job of summarizing Mitka Golub's recent work comparing the names found in epigraphic artifacts with the names found in the book of Jeremiah.