The 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise to Chris Keith!

Congratulations to Chris Keith who is one of the winners of the 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise by the Forschungszentrum Internationale und Interdisziplinäre Theologie at the University of Heidelberg. Chris presents himself and his work on the website:

Award Winning Publication

The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John and the Literacy of Jesus, Leiden: Brill, 2009.

The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus argues that John 8:6, 8 is a claim that Jesus was grapho-literate (capable of writing). As the first thorough exegetical analysis of John 8: 6, 8, this study shows that the narrative accomplishes this claim specifically by borrowing vocabulary, syntax, and themes from the account of God's authorship of the Decalogue in Exodus 32:15 (LXX), and is thus also a deliberate attempt to identify Jesus with, or in terms of, the god of Israel. This book combines its exegetical focus with a detailed original proposal of a transmission-history of the Pericope Adulterae in light of this interpretation of the passage, focusing particularly on the stage of transmission at which an interpolator inserted this passage into the Gospel of John. The argument is ultimately that the individual(s) who inserted the Pericope Adulterae into the Gospel of John was an astute reader of both the Exodus account of the Decalogue's origins and the Johannine narrative and sought to bring those two narratives into dialogue in order to make a statement about the figure of Jesus.

Current Project

I am currently working on two projects. The first project is a monograph on the literacy of the historical Jesus, entitled Jesus’ Literacy: Education and the Teacher from Galilee, under contract with T&T Clark. Whereas my first book left the historical Jesus aside and focused on the social/exegetical/text-critical significance of the claim for Jesus’ literacy in one particular passage (John 8.6, 8), this monograph focuses on the issue of Jesus’ literacy in early Christianity as a whole and assesses the historical accuracy of early Christian claims from the perspective of social/cultural memory theory. My second current project is a textbook I am co-editing, entitled Jesus Among Friends and Enemies, under contract with Baker Academic.

I have presented Chris' award winning monograph here and here.