Australia's First Female Prime Minister

Yep, no election - just some internal party conflict. Now we have a new PM - Australia's first female PM.

Through 2006-08 Kevin Rudd was the golden child of the Australian Labour Party and it was him as a person opposed to ALP policies that really won the last election. In fact, I was beginning to like him! And last night out of nowhere in typical unstable ALP fashion the fraction leaders ousted him in favour of someone I have never liked.

See more.

What's up with Dearborn?

I was sufficiently confused last year when the guys and girls with Acts 17 Apologetics were harassed at the Arab Festival. What about this year? They were arrested. I am even more confused. In Australia we don't have a formal Bill of Rights (yes, we're practically Communists!) so it is just embarrassing for the US.

Forthcoming Library of NT Studies books

I was originally going to share the news of a forthcoming book on the Son of Man question, Who is This Son of Man? (Continuum, 2011) ed. Larry Hurtado and Paul Owen when I noticed  a number of other interesting forthcoming books in the Library of New Testament Studies series. These include:

• Jesus as Peasant Sage: Engaging the Work of John Dominic Crossan ed. Robert L. Webb and  Robert J. Miller
• Jesus as Restoration Prophet: Engaging the Work of E. P. Sanders ed Robert L. Webb and Mark Goodacre.
•  Jesus as Israel's Messiah: Engaging the Work of N. Thomas Wright ed. Robert L. Webb and Mark Allan Powell
• Jesus as Spirit Person: Engaging the Work of Marcus Borg J. Borg, ed. Robert L. Webb and Scot McKnight
• Jesus in Early Christian Memory: Essays in Honour of James D. G. Dunn ed. Scot McKnight and Terence Mournet.

Events Downunder (or just in Sydney)

Just some upcoming events this year related to early Christian and Jewish studies. If anything else comes up I'll update this page.

July:
27 July: Ben Witherington: Dining with Demons: Food Offered to Idols and the Controversy that Rocked Early Christianity. with the Society for the Study of Early Christianity [More Information]

28 July: Ben Witherington: Preaching with power: Harnessing the persuasive power of the New Testament in preaching @ Morling College, 120 Herring Rd, Macquarie Park. [Facebook event page]

August
24 August: Professor Hannah Cotton, Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Bar Kochba Revolt & the Documents from the Judean Desert with the Society for the Study of Early Christianity and the Sir Asher Joel Foundation  [More Information]


September:
St Andrew's Patristic Symposium 2010: St Gregory the Theologian or the Poetry of Theology:

Every Wedensday of September this year St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College, Sydney, will be hosting its second annual Patristic Symposium showcasing the life and works of St Gregory the Theologian, a fourth century Cappadocean bishop, poet, and father of the Church. The presentations, ranging from aspects of his worldview, approach to history, and Trinitarian and biblical theology, are by various scholars of distinction and not to be missed!

James McGrath Reviews "Did The First Christians Worship Jesus?"

James has "reviewed" James D.G. Dunn's Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? And it comes with its very own disclaimer:

I probably should preface this post with a disclaimer that this should not be thought of as your typical review. I studied for my PhD under Jimmy Dunn. He is my Doktorvater, mentor and friend.... I also had a chance to read an earlier draft of Did The First Christians Worship Jesus? a couple of years ago and to discuss it with Jimmy and another of his former students. And when my copy of the published book arrived, I found that my own recent book on monotheism and Christology (The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context) was cited in the notes on numerous occasions. And so I make no claim to being an "impartial observer" but am rather an engaged participant in the ongoing conversation about monotheism, Christology, and worship that encompasses Jimmy, many of his former students, and a wider community of scholars as well as many others interested in the subject.

Diglot earlier reviewed the book here. As I have said earlier, I am intentionally avoiding this book until I have the time so second hand reviews will have to do me. That said, at this stage I do remain to be convinced by Dunn's earlier work (I believe I'm more of a Bauckham man).

On a final note, the book isn't overpriced!

KJV Onlyist Rabidly Attacks the IBR Jesus Group

I was looking for the videos on the IBR Jesus Group that I came across a year or two ago but instead came across this article on the IBR Jesus Group. It is...insane.

It makes some nasty pronouncements towards the IBR Jesus Group:

Regardless of their silence, every pastor, every preacher, every teacher, every scholar, every Christian who in any way accommodates these scholars, is equally guilty of the same sins and blasphemies, and while a man may scoff at that today, Jesus Christ will verily condemn that man for it on the day of judgment, and without respect of persons.

They go on

And yet, as surely as day follows night, there are those who don't believe this; there are those who will still in any way traffic with these men, not knowing that their trafficking will lead them into a fire that they cannot escape, all their skills notwithstanding, and thus they don't really believe this is true, they don't really believe that the above Scripture...

So, apparently, the IBR Jesus Group and their "defenders" are vipers, heading straight to an unescapable fire and are "enemies of the cross of Christ." Ridiculous! When you get to the final pages they show that the whole attack was simply because the NET Bible is not the King James Version.

And for those interested in the IBR Jesus Group videos, they may be found here.

Confused about Orthodoxy and Heresy? A short interview with Darrell Bock

Confused about orthoodxy, heresy and all these strange diagrams? Interested in the topic but don't know where to start? Or just curious about what it all means? When I was first interested in this topic a number of years ago, one of the first books I came across was Darrell Bock's The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities.It has a name to match Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew but doesn't leave you hanging about the important questions and implications.

Darrell Bock is Research Professor of New Testament Studies and Professor for Spiritual Development and Culture  at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is an author of a number of books many of which I own on the historical Jesus and Luke-Acts. I asked Bock some questions related to recent discussions as related to his book and he gladly replied.

Was there such a thing as early orthodoxy in the NT period, and if so what were the defining features? (Or what was their essential unity?)

Yes. I think you can see it in the doctrinal summaries in our earliest texts. 1 Cor 8:4-6, 1 Cor 11:23-26; Rom 1:2-4, 1 Cor 15:3-5. plus baptism and the Lord' table show the core theology of Jesus'  person and his death, as well as salvation. These show how Jesus' death for sin brings blessing in new life. For example, baptism is death to sin then alive to God (Rom 6). These texts are important because they come from the first century making them our earliest witnesses to what was believed.

Does a broadly defined early orthodoxy in the NT period have any theological implications for Christian's today?

Yes, it let's us know what early Christianity believed. It tells us what the hub of faith is in terms of content. Jesus' person and work stand at the core of this teaching.

How do we know the orthodoxy that "won out" was the legitimate heir of early Christianity? Or, why shouldn't we be Gnostics?

Orthodoxy has apostolic roots Gnosticism does not have. The teaching on creation is also different. Gnostics believed God did not create and the creation was bad. In contrast Christianity inherited it's view of creation from Judaism-- God created and it was good.  

 Do you think Walter Bauer's thesis is a valid model? That is, of heresy preceding orthodoxy and orthodoxy dominating through Roman control?

No, His theory has major problems. I wrote a chapter on this in my book, The Missing Gospels. His theory has problems in terms of overestimating the presence of heresy in several of the regions he mentions. Bauer did not argue that heresy preceded orthodoxy, but that it existed alongside of it and was more predominant in several regions of the early church. Only in the region of Edessa might the claim he makes be true 

I will be exploring New Testament period diversity in a number of posts comparing an early Aramaic Christian preaching with that of the early Pauline preaching.  

• Part 1: An Early Aramaic Kerygma?