Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint

The famous and learned James K. Aitken, Reader in Hebrew and Early Jewish Studies in the University of Cambridge, is presenting this year’s Grinfield Lectures on the Septuagint and the History of the Book (in the University of Oxford):

The Material World of the Septuagint (2020–2021)

The schedule is as follows, and are open to anyone interested (sign up by clicking on the embedded zoom link):

• Monday 15 Feb.: ‘The Septuagint—A Translation Among Translations’, 17.00
• Tuesday 16 Feb.: ‘The Septuagint, Editing, and Textual Production in Ancient Judaism’, 14.00
• Wednesday 24 Feb.: ‘The Septuagint and Scribal Creativity in Egypt’, 17.00

Dr. Will Kynes to Lecture at Phoenix Seminary Next Month

I am excited to announce that Will Kynes will be giving a lecture in the Chapel at Phoenix Seminary on his latest OUP monograph: An Obituary for “Wisdom Literature”: The Birth, Death, and Intertextual Reintegration of a Biblical Corpus. Students and the general public in and around the Phoenix area are invited to attend the lecture on February 4th at 10:00. I hope to see you there.

P. J. Williams to Give Cooley Lecture at Gordon-Conwell

At the end of this month, Peter Williams is set to give the Cooley Lecture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Charlotte) on a topic that will be of interest to our readers. Here is the info from the brochure.

Can We Know the Exact Words of God? 

Peter J. Williams
Principal of Tyndale House in Cambridge
January 24–25, 2019

About the Event 

These lectures engage with some of the most common questions asked by those seeking a solid grasp of an evangelical doctrine of Scripture. They argue that God can be correctly described as having given us books, which are made up of specific verbal sequences, which are in turn made up of specific words.

Schedule and Location 

Patrons’ Reception: Thursday, January 24, 2019 - 6:00 PM – Room 122A
Lecture: 7:00 PM each evening – Room 219

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
14542 Choate Circle
Charlotte, NC 28273-9103

For any questions concerning the lecture events, please contact Mark Poe at mpoe@gordonconwell.edu or 704-435-6408.

Lecture 1 (January 24) 

Can we know the exact words of Scripture? Evangelical Christians hold Scripture to be their supreme authority. Evangelicals often identify their supreme authority as the ‘original text’ of the Bible. But haven’t the originals been lost? Isn’t it problematic to adhere to a non-existent authority? And how are we to decide which text to follow when manuscripts disagree? What are we to do when a New Testament quotation seems to differ radically from the Old Testament text it is quoting? This lecture will argue that the classic evangelical understanding of Scripture is robust today and is able to deal with the data of the manuscripts. However, one of the main risks to evangelicals comes through widespread misunderstanding of what they believe. Lazy thinking and confused use of terminology represent major threats to the spread of evangelical approaches today.

Lecture 2 (January 25) 

Can we know the exact words of Jesus? For Christians the teachings of Jesus hold a key place within their supreme authority. But if he taught in Aramaic and we have his words only in Greek, aren’t Christians cut off from their supreme source? Haven’t Jesus’s words been corrupted during transmission to us? Has the church been corrupted by Greek culture and ideas away from its original Semitic identity? This lecture explores various contemporary claims which stress the distance between us and the teaching of Jesus and argues that we can have reliable knowledge of the teaching of Jesus today

For a list of past Cooley lectures from speakers that include Dan Wallace and Mike Holmes, see here.

Dirk at Southern Seminary on Tyndale Edition

We interrupt your regularly scheduled updates on the Mark fragment for this message from Rob Plummer:

I would like to invite you to a free lecture on the Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament by the lead editor of this recent publication, Dr. Dirk Jongkind. Wednesday, June 20th, 1pm (Eastern Standard Time), in the basement of the Southern Seminary library.

After Dr. Jongkind’s presentation and following discussion, I will be giving a private tour of the seminary archives. Some of the Greek treasures there include a 1522 Erasmus 3rd edition Greek New Testament and the original handwritten manuscripts of A.T. Robertson’s magisterial grammar. I hope you can join us!

Title and description of the lecture:

Treasuring Detail in Untraditional Ways: The Tyndale House Edition of the Greek New Testament 
Since the early 18th century the approach to the textual criticism of the GNT has been dominated by a received set of ‘canons of textual criticism’. This set of guidelines determines the categories with which individual textual variants are discussed. A lot has happened over the last 300 years. One of the most important developments for textual criticism has been a growing appreciation of the actual way in which scribes copy a text. This notion, together with the wealth of manuscript material that is easily available, led scholars at Tyndale House to produce a new critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Regardless of how one thinks about the employed method, the project has provided a new impetus to be attentive to the detail of the Scriptures of the New Testament.

Sound like fun. May I recommend Skyline Chili for lunch, Dirk?

Lectures: A material history of the Bible in England 1200–1600

If you happen to be in Cambridge for the summer, Cambridge University Library is hosting a series on the Bible in England that looks good.

From the rise of mass-produced Vulgates in the thirteenth century to the proliferation of innovative vernacular prints in the sixteenth, five lectures will chart the history of the Bible in England across print and reform. Manuscript and early printed bibles from the collections of Cambridge University Library will support a new history of the Bible in England, one which blurs the boundaries between reform and conservatism, and between the Church and heresy. Among their pages we will encounter a hidden portrait of Jane Seymour, the marks of scholars, children and crooks, and the discovery of America.

Each lecture will be accompanied by a display of manuscripts and books from the Library’s collections and will be followed by a discussion led by a respondent.

• 22 May — The Late Medieval Bible: Beyond Innovation
• 29 May — Wycliffite Bibles and the Limits of Orthodoxy
• 5 June — 1535 and the First Two English Bibles
• 12 June — The Great Bible as a Useless Book
• 19 June — The Bibles of Edward VI and Beyond: Moving Fast Forward

Each lecture will take place at 5:30pm in the Milstein Room at Cambridge University Library. Lectures are free and open to everyone.

HT: CUL Special Collections 

Lecture: Lee Irons on the the ‘Righteousness of God’ in Paul

This October, Charles Lee Irons will be speaking at Phoenix Seminary on what Paul meant by the “righteousness of God” (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ). This was the topic of his book The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation (Mohr, 2015). His thesis challenges the interpretation of this term which has been crucial in the interpretation of Paul by scholars like N.T. Wright, Richard Hays, and others. For a positive review of Irons’s book, see Tom Schreiner’s here; for a strong critique, see John Frederick’s in JBTS (vol. 1)  with a response from Irons.

If you’re in the area, come join us. It’s free and open to the public. No registration needed. Register here.

Marc Polonsky Talk on the ‘Digitisation of Cultural Heritage’

Of interest to those readers forced to live in Oxford.

The Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles is pleased to welcome Marc Polonsky, trustee of the Polonsky Foundation, who will deliver a talk on the ‘Digitisation of Cultural Heritage’.

Tuesday 24th May, 5.30pm
Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College - All welcome

The Polonsky Foundation, originally founded in 1985 by Dr Leonard Polonsky, an Oxford alumnus (Lincoln), has devoted a large amount of energy and resources to the digitisation of significant representatives of our written cultural heritage, in an effort to democratise access to some of the greatest treasures of humanity, too often unknown to the wider public due to their own rarity.

Over the last few years, in particular, the Polonsky Foundation has cooperated with a number of major libraries and institutions, including the Bodleian and the Vatican Library, to sponsor one of the greatest digitisation projects of manuscripts and early printed books in the world.

Marc Polonsky, son of Leonard Polonsky, is a leading lawyer in corporate law and mergers and acquisitions (White & Case), specialising in Russia and Central and Eastern European countries. An Oxford alumnus himself (Univ), he divides his time between legal practice and the Polonsky Foundation.

Heide Lectures on Textual Criticism in Salzburg

Co-blogger priv.-doz. dr. Martin Heide will give three lectures at Salzburg University on 14 November 2009.

The general theme is:

"Die Bibel im Spannungsfeld zwischen Forschung, Medienrummel und Fälschungsverdächtigungen"

In the first lecture Heide will discuss falsifications and authentic archaeological finds from Old Testament times (9.30AM)

The second lecture is on the general trustworthiness of the New Testament textual transmission (11.30AM)

The third lecture will treat the so-called "Jesus tomb," the entombment and the resurrection of Christ.

More details here.

Since May 2008 Martin Heide is research fellow of the DFG-Projekt "Testament Abrahams" at Phillips-Universität Marburg – Centrum für Nah- und Mittelost-Studien – Fachgebiet Semistik. He is working on a critical edition and translation of the Arabic and Ethiopic versions of the Testament of Abraham. We very much look forward to this edition.

In December 2008 Martin completed his second thesis and had his habilitation in Semistik, received the venia legendi and became Privatdozent (roughly equivalent to Associate Professor).