Paul's letters to the Thessalonians are the earliest surviving Christian documents. They are also... more Paul's letters to the Thessalonians are the earliest surviving Christian documents. They are also among the most easily overlooked parts of the New Testament. What could these short, simple letters possibly have to say to a world caught in the throes of racial discord, political polarization, fears of an uncertain future, and fights over truth and false news? While Paul and his companions could not have imagined anything like the twenty-first century, their letters in the mid-first century to non-Jewish followers of Jesus in northern Greece address problems we still wrestle with today: race and ethnicity, family, ethics, an unknown future, how to respond to strangers, and more. These letters, rather than being an outdated part of Paul's collected letters, provoke us to throw ourselves into the great challenges of the modern world, to resist the temptation to repay "another person evil for evil," and to "pursue the good, both for one another and for everyone" (1 Thess 5:15). Will we read these ancient letters anew?
Jesus Darkly: Remembering Jesus with the New Testament, 2018
New Testament students have not always been well served by study of the historical Jesus, which t... more New Testament students have not always been well served by study of the historical Jesus, which tends to segregate Jesus from his significance vis-à-vis Israel’s scriptures and God’s agenda as this is developed among the New Testament writers in the living context of a faith community’s memory. The witness of scripture does in fact help us remember Jesus well. From beginning to end, the Bible tells the story of God putting God’s family back together. Its plot develops in multiple, sometimes competing, ways. It exhibits the full range of human emotions and, perhaps surprisingly, it claims that these are also God’s emotions. But on every page, we hear the call of a God whose family has chosen an early inheritance instead of an intimate relationship. That God – pictured as a parent, often a father – beckons God’s children, inviting them to return and to sit at the table, clothed by mercy and affirmed as God’s very family.
Decades ago, Werner G. Kümmel described the historical problem of Romans as its "double character... more Decades ago, Werner G. Kümmel described the historical problem of Romans as its "double character": concerned with issues of Torah and the destiny of Israel, the letter is explicitly addressed not to Jews but to Gentiles. At stake in the numerous answers given to that question is nothing less than the purpose of Paul's most important letter. In The So-Called Jew in Paul's Letter to the Romans, nine Pauline scholars focus their attention on the rhetoric of diatribe and characterization in the opening chapters of the letter, asking what Paul means by the "so-called Jew" in Romans 2 and where else in the letter's argumentation that figure appears or is implied. Each component of Paul's argument is closely examined with particular attention to the theological problems that arise in each.
If You Call Yourself a Jew reads Romans as a dialogue between Paul and a Gentile proselyte to Jud... more If You Call Yourself a Jew reads Romans as a dialogue between Paul and a Gentile proselyte to Judaism. This fresh reading brings Romans into focus as Paul's exposition of the revelation of God's righteousness--his faithfulness to his covenant promises to Abraham, which climaxed in the announcement that "in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed" (Gen 12:3). Paul insists that the righteousness of God is revealed, "for the Jew first as well as for the Greek" not through Torah but through the faith(fullness) of Jesus. Torah and the prophets provide corroborating witness for God's righteousness, but Gentiles who bend their necks to Torah's yoke miss the actual mechanism for finding peace with God. Paul found in the story of Jesus the image of complete faith in/faithfulness to God; in Jesus' resurrection he found the image of God's complete faithfulness, "for the Jew first as well as for the Greek" Whereas Torah resulted in curse and death, it also anticipated the unconditional faithfulness of God for both Jew and Gentile. For Paul, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the account of the outworking of God's faithfulness: the end of Torah's curses and the fulfillment of its blessings.
The last three decades have seen an explosion of biblical scholarship on the presence and consequ... more The last three decades have seen an explosion of biblical scholarship on the presence and consequences of the oral expression of tradition among Jesus' followers, especially in the earliest decades of the Common Era. There is a wealth of scholarship focused on 'orality'. This scholarship is, however, abstract and technical almost by definition, and to date no introductory discussion exists that can introduce a new generation of biblical students to the issues being discussed at higher levels of scholarship. Rafael Rodríguez addresses this gap.
Rodríguez adopts a fourfold structure to cover the topic, beginning with basic essentials for further discussion of oral-tradition research and definitions of key terms (the 'what'). He then moves on to discuss the key players in this area (the 'who') before examining the methods involved in oral-tradition research among New Testament scholars (the 'how'). Finally Rodriguez provides examples of the ways in which oral-tradition research can bring texts into clearer focus (the 'why'). The result is a comprehensive introduction to this key area in New Testament studies.
Social memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present because it is a ... more Social memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present because it is a relationship which finds expression in memorial acts such as storytelling and text-production.
This relationship has emerged as a dialectic in which "past" and "present" are mutually constitutive and implicating. The resultant complication directly affects the procedures and products of "historical Jesus" research, which depends particularly on the assumption that we can cleanly separate "authentic" from "inauthentic" traditions.
In Structuring Early Christian Memory Rafael Rodriguez analyzes the problems that arise from this assumption and proposes a "historical Jesus" program that is more sensitive to the entanglement of past and present.
Pauline scholars have read ὁ Ἰουδαῖος in Romans as a native-born Jew who stands over and against ... more Pauline scholars have read ὁ Ἰουδαῖος in Romans as a native-born Jew who stands over and against τὰ ἔθνη (“the nations,” or “gentiles”). The ethnonym Ἰουδαῖος, however, applied also to proselytes, to non-Jews who became Jews. Paul lived in a world in which Ἰουδαῖος applied to people Paul did not accept as Ἰουδαῖοι. In Paul’s view, being a Ἰουδαῖος is an immutable, genealogical identity unavailable to anyone not born a Ἰουδαῖος. In some cases, the Ἰουδαῖος in Romans 1–3 is a so-called (or self-styled) “Jew.” Paul demonstrates how gentiles’ efforts at becoming a Jew (sans scare quotes) nevertheless leaves them closer to the gentile-as-gentile than to the native-born Jew.
Paul's letters to the Thessalonians are the earliest surviving Christian documents. They are also... more Paul's letters to the Thessalonians are the earliest surviving Christian documents. They are also among the most easily overlooked parts of the New Testament. What could these short, simple letters possibly have to say to a world caught in the throes of racial discord, political polarization, fears of an uncertain future, and fights over truth and false news? While Paul and his companions could not have imagined anything like the twenty-first century, their letters in the mid-first century to non-Jewish followers of Jesus in northern Greece address problems we still wrestle with today: race and ethnicity, family, ethics, an unknown future, how to respond to strangers, and more. These letters, rather than being an outdated part of Paul's collected letters, provoke us to throw ourselves into the great challenges of the modern world, to resist the temptation to repay "another person evil for evil," and to "pursue the good, both for one another and for everyone" (1 Thess 5:15). Will we read these ancient letters anew?
Jesus Darkly: Remembering Jesus with the New Testament, 2018
New Testament students have not always been well served by study of the historical Jesus, which t... more New Testament students have not always been well served by study of the historical Jesus, which tends to segregate Jesus from his significance vis-à-vis Israel’s scriptures and God’s agenda as this is developed among the New Testament writers in the living context of a faith community’s memory. The witness of scripture does in fact help us remember Jesus well. From beginning to end, the Bible tells the story of God putting God’s family back together. Its plot develops in multiple, sometimes competing, ways. It exhibits the full range of human emotions and, perhaps surprisingly, it claims that these are also God’s emotions. But on every page, we hear the call of a God whose family has chosen an early inheritance instead of an intimate relationship. That God – pictured as a parent, often a father – beckons God’s children, inviting them to return and to sit at the table, clothed by mercy and affirmed as God’s very family.
Decades ago, Werner G. Kümmel described the historical problem of Romans as its "double character... more Decades ago, Werner G. Kümmel described the historical problem of Romans as its "double character": concerned with issues of Torah and the destiny of Israel, the letter is explicitly addressed not to Jews but to Gentiles. At stake in the numerous answers given to that question is nothing less than the purpose of Paul's most important letter. In The So-Called Jew in Paul's Letter to the Romans, nine Pauline scholars focus their attention on the rhetoric of diatribe and characterization in the opening chapters of the letter, asking what Paul means by the "so-called Jew" in Romans 2 and where else in the letter's argumentation that figure appears or is implied. Each component of Paul's argument is closely examined with particular attention to the theological problems that arise in each.
If You Call Yourself a Jew reads Romans as a dialogue between Paul and a Gentile proselyte to Jud... more If You Call Yourself a Jew reads Romans as a dialogue between Paul and a Gentile proselyte to Judaism. This fresh reading brings Romans into focus as Paul's exposition of the revelation of God's righteousness--his faithfulness to his covenant promises to Abraham, which climaxed in the announcement that "in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed" (Gen 12:3). Paul insists that the righteousness of God is revealed, "for the Jew first as well as for the Greek" not through Torah but through the faith(fullness) of Jesus. Torah and the prophets provide corroborating witness for God's righteousness, but Gentiles who bend their necks to Torah's yoke miss the actual mechanism for finding peace with God. Paul found in the story of Jesus the image of complete faith in/faithfulness to God; in Jesus' resurrection he found the image of God's complete faithfulness, "for the Jew first as well as for the Greek" Whereas Torah resulted in curse and death, it also anticipated the unconditional faithfulness of God for both Jew and Gentile. For Paul, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the account of the outworking of God's faithfulness: the end of Torah's curses and the fulfillment of its blessings.
The last three decades have seen an explosion of biblical scholarship on the presence and consequ... more The last three decades have seen an explosion of biblical scholarship on the presence and consequences of the oral expression of tradition among Jesus' followers, especially in the earliest decades of the Common Era. There is a wealth of scholarship focused on 'orality'. This scholarship is, however, abstract and technical almost by definition, and to date no introductory discussion exists that can introduce a new generation of biblical students to the issues being discussed at higher levels of scholarship. Rafael Rodríguez addresses this gap.
Rodríguez adopts a fourfold structure to cover the topic, beginning with basic essentials for further discussion of oral-tradition research and definitions of key terms (the 'what'). He then moves on to discuss the key players in this area (the 'who') before examining the methods involved in oral-tradition research among New Testament scholars (the 'how'). Finally Rodriguez provides examples of the ways in which oral-tradition research can bring texts into clearer focus (the 'why'). The result is a comprehensive introduction to this key area in New Testament studies.
Social memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present because it is a ... more Social memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present because it is a relationship which finds expression in memorial acts such as storytelling and text-production.
This relationship has emerged as a dialectic in which "past" and "present" are mutually constitutive and implicating. The resultant complication directly affects the procedures and products of "historical Jesus" research, which depends particularly on the assumption that we can cleanly separate "authentic" from "inauthentic" traditions.
In Structuring Early Christian Memory Rafael Rodriguez analyzes the problems that arise from this assumption and proposes a "historical Jesus" program that is more sensitive to the entanglement of past and present.
Pauline scholars have read ὁ Ἰουδαῖος in Romans as a native-born Jew who stands over and against ... more Pauline scholars have read ὁ Ἰουδαῖος in Romans as a native-born Jew who stands over and against τὰ ἔθνη (“the nations,” or “gentiles”). The ethnonym Ἰουδαῖος, however, applied also to proselytes, to non-Jews who became Jews. Paul lived in a world in which Ἰουδαῖος applied to people Paul did not accept as Ἰουδαῖοι. In Paul’s view, being a Ἰουδαῖος is an immutable, genealogical identity unavailable to anyone not born a Ἰουδαῖος. In some cases, the Ἰουδαῖος in Romans 1–3 is a so-called (or self-styled) “Jew.” Paul demonstrates how gentiles’ efforts at becoming a Jew (sans scare quotes) nevertheless leaves them closer to the gentile-as-gentile than to the native-born Jew.
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2018
As Pontius Pilate nearly asked, What is history? This article draws upon memory and media studies... more As Pontius Pilate nearly asked, What is history? This article draws upon memory and media studies to question the notion that we find history within the text of the Fourth Gospel. Rather than trying to identify and isolate history within John’s Gospel, our discussion aims to recover how the Gospel works as a set of historical claims, joining with or competing against other historical claims within the social sphere of its author, redactor, and/or audience. After a précis of memory’s and media’s significance for our question (What is history?), we will localize these abstract issues by turning to the Johannine portrayal of John the Baptist and his testimony for Jesus. This approach respects the Fourth Gospel as a written text that developed and was compiled/redacted in the late first century without imposing a rigidly atemporal conception of Johannine theology onto John’s claims about events six or seven decades earlier.
This article clarifies a perennial problem relating to the concept of 'orality' in Gospels studie... more This article clarifies a perennial problem relating to the concept of 'orality' in Gospels studies and attempts to provide some resolution to that problem. Specifically, Gospels criticism has struggled to conceptualize the relation between the Jesus tradition as it was orally performed and early textual (written) expressions ofthat tradition. The binary opposition 'literacy/orality' has failed to provide any help in this conceptualization, and this failure is rooted especially in the rather nebulous (yet widespread) concept of 'orality'. New Testament scholarship requires a set of culturally specific models of textuality, including the non-communicative functions of written texts and the non-literate use of written traditions. Before we can develop the necessary models, however, we need to deal with the problems we have created by appealing to 'orality'. We must suspend the processes of composition familiar to our own literate minds and try to enter into a process that makes sense within the ancient world where orality was not only the dominant form of transmission and preservation, but also the dominant form of consciousness.
In this essay I analyse the usual (mis)use(s) of the criteria of historical authenticity in histo... more In this essay I analyse the usual (mis)use(s) of the criteria of historical authenticity in historical Jesus research. Whereas the general appeal to the criteria has pursued at least a semblance of objectivity in historical-critical research, in practice the criteria have provided useful and clearly identifi able windows into how scholars have conceived the task(s) of historical reconstruction (i.e., their particular subjectivity). After surveying the relevant literature, I question the analytical concepts authentic and inauthentic as schemata orientating historical reconstruction. We should recognize and employ the criteria as tools that facilitate and aff ect the interpretation of historical traditions rather than (merely) their authenticity .
A very rough, unedited, too-long draft of my review of Michael J. Thate's volume, Remembrance of ... more A very rough, unedited, too-long draft of my review of Michael J. Thate's volume, Remembrance of Things Past? Albert Schweitzer, the Anxiety of Influence, and the Untidy Jesus of Markan Memory, WUNT 2/351 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). Thate, despite his inadequate engagement with similar contemporary work on the historical Jesus, has put together an interesting and informative volume that turns to memory studies to reconceptualize the program and procedures of historical Jesus research. This volume joins a growing chorus of scholarship that is bending the future of the Quest for the Historical Jesus away from its tripartite heritage and toward a greater sensitivity to Jesus’ reception among his followers in the decades between the crucifixion and the rise of the written Gospel tradition.
This volume serves as a valuable tool in helping one get inside of John's head and make sense of ... more This volume serves as a valuable tool in helping one get inside of John's head and make sense of the more confusing passages in the fourth Gospel while also seeing new depth to those that are more seemingly simple. It is not always the most exciting of reads and, largely due to the topical nature of the book, occasionally repeats certain points, but it evidences a solid grasp of John and fairly catalogues his theology., the Voice, and the Text: Beyond the Oral and the Written Gospel. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008. 317 pp. $39.95.
A review of Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, published in Biblical Theology B... more A review of Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, published in Biblical Theology Bulletin 38/3 (2008): 144–45.
This paper provides an all-too-brief review of Rodney J. Decker's two-volume Handbook on the Gree... more This paper provides an all-too-brief review of Rodney J. Decker's two-volume Handbook on the Greek Text of Mark (Baylor University Press, 2014).
Debate about the identity of Paul's imagined dialogue partner in Romans 2 has focused on whether ... more Debate about the identity of Paul's imagined dialogue partner in Romans 2 has focused on whether Paul portrays a gentile or Jewish interlocutor in Rom. 2.1–16. The question is largely settled after v. 17, where Paul explicitly addresses his counterpart as one who calls himself a Jew. Paul's ensuing discussion focuses heavily on nomos (law, or Law), to which Paul refers twenty-six times in Rom. 2.17–4.25. Despite the breadth of interpretive options available for reading Romans, scholars are nearly unanimous in reading Paul's dialogue at 2.17ff. in terms of him addressing an actually ethnic Jew. In the face of this rare consensus, this paper tentatively proposes to read Paul's imaginary interlocutor in 2.17 as a gentile proselyte to Judaism, a gentile who "calls himself a Jew" and actively attempts to persuade other gentiles to do likewise. This proposal casts Paul's comments on nomos in a new light and opens up a way to account for apparent contradictions in Paul's estimation of nomos, which on the one hand results in knowledge of sin (3.20) but on the other hand is established by Paul's proclamation of the gospel (3.31).
When Mark says that the Spirit "drove" (or "cast out"; ekballō) Jesus into the wilderness to be t... more When Mark says that the Spirit "drove" (or "cast out"; ekballō) Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted/tested by Satan (Mark 1.12), his word choice reverberated with the Exodus tradition. Mark's comparatively abbreviated account of Jesus' wilderness temptation has engendered a surprising amount of discussion, including of his use of ekballō, which Mark will use in exorcistic contexts ten times. Scholars have offered various explanations of Mark's strange word choice, from Mark's rough and unpolished Greek to a "new Adam" typology. Rather than attempting to get into our author's head, this paper will offer a reading of Mark 1.12–13 that explores how Mark's audience might have received and interpreted ekball? in v. 12. The receptionalist and tradition-centered perspective developed by John Miles Foley known as Immanent Art offers us a critical methodology for offering this reading. Features of Mark's narrative (the wilderness temptation, but also the Gospel as a whole) guide audiences' interpretations of v. 12, and Matthew's and Luke's reperformances of the temptation story will demonstrate the efficacy of Mark's traditional and powerful use of language.
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Rodríguez adopts a fourfold structure to cover the topic, beginning with basic essentials for further discussion of oral-tradition research and definitions of key terms (the 'what'). He then moves on to discuss the key players in this area (the 'who') before examining the methods involved in oral-tradition research among New Testament scholars (the 'how'). Finally Rodriguez provides examples of the ways in which oral-tradition research can bring texts into clearer focus (the 'why'). The result is a comprehensive introduction to this key area in New Testament studies.
This relationship has emerged as a dialectic in which "past" and "present" are mutually constitutive and implicating. The resultant complication directly affects the procedures and products of "historical Jesus" research, which depends particularly on the assumption that we can cleanly separate "authentic" from "inauthentic" traditions.
In Structuring Early Christian Memory Rafael Rodriguez analyzes the problems that arise from this assumption and proposes a "historical Jesus" program that is more sensitive to the entanglement of past and present.
Rodríguez adopts a fourfold structure to cover the topic, beginning with basic essentials for further discussion of oral-tradition research and definitions of key terms (the 'what'). He then moves on to discuss the key players in this area (the 'who') before examining the methods involved in oral-tradition research among New Testament scholars (the 'how'). Finally Rodriguez provides examples of the ways in which oral-tradition research can bring texts into clearer focus (the 'why'). The result is a comprehensive introduction to this key area in New Testament studies.
This relationship has emerged as a dialectic in which "past" and "present" are mutually constitutive and implicating. The resultant complication directly affects the procedures and products of "historical Jesus" research, which depends particularly on the assumption that we can cleanly separate "authentic" from "inauthentic" traditions.
In Structuring Early Christian Memory Rafael Rodriguez analyzes the problems that arise from this assumption and proposes a "historical Jesus" program that is more sensitive to the entanglement of past and present.