Studies on ‘Mission in the New Testament’

 New Testament scholarship and missiology have for some time been understood as two different fields of studies. Few scholars are prominent in both fields. Evidence of the wide separation between the two fields includes aspects as different chairs in distinct departments; different journals for the specialities, and the lack of awareness of the scholarship in the biblical discipline by missiologists and vice versa.

On the other hand, now-a-days some are also calling for for a closer co-operation between these two fields of studies and in recent years we have seen a promising revival of New Testament studies dealing with issues of mission in the New Testament.  Below here are listed some studies on ‘Mission in the New Testament’ that I have found available on line.

History and Theology of Mission in the New Testament
Directed by Professor Jostein Ådna (E-mail: jostein.aadna@mhs.no)

Professors Jey J. Kanagaraj (Bethel Bible Institute, India), Stelian Tofana (Faculty of Orthodox Theology at Babes-Bolyai University, Romania) and Jostein Ådna (School of Mission and Theology, Norway) coordinate the seminar “History and Theology of Mission in the New Testament: Global Challenges and Opportunities” in Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS). So far the seminar has convened during the 62nd, 63rd and 64th General Meetings of SNTS in Sibiu, Romania, 2007, in Lund, Sweden, 2008, and in Vienna, Austria, in 2009. It will continue its work during the next two annual General Meetings, i.e. in Berlin, Germany, 2010, and Annandale-on-Hudson, USA, 2011.

The link above will lead you to the pages were the papers delivered at the seminars so far are available.

In addition, here are three studies by Andreas Köstenberger;

“The Challenge of a Systematized Biblical Theology: Missiological Insights from the Gospel of John,” Missiology 23 (1995): 445–64. Get the Article.

“The Place of Mission in New Testament Theology: An Attempt to Determine the Significance of Mission Within the Scope of the New Testament’s Message as a Whole,” Missiology 27 (1999): 347–62. Get the Article.

“John’s Trinitarian Mission Theology.” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 9/4 (Winter 2005): 14-33. Get the Article.

More Philo studies . .

Just three more studies on Philo that you may have missed:

Thom Thatcher,
Philo on Pilate: Rhetoric or Reality?
printed in Restoration Quarterly 37:4 (1995):215-218.

Adam Kamesar,
‘The Logos Endiathetos and the Logos Prophorikos in Allegorical Interpretation: Philo and the D-Scholia to the Iliad,’
in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 44 (2004) 163–181.

Harold Remus,
Moses And The Thaumatutges : Philo’s De Vita Mosis As A Rescue Operation
Laval théologique et philosophique, 52, 3 (octobre 1996) : 665-680.

More Philo studies available on-line

There are more and more studies available online, most of them in .pdf format. Here are some relevant for those of you interested in ongoing research on Philo of Alexandria:

R. Alston,
‘Philo’s In Flaccum: Ethnicity and Social Space in Roman Alexandria,’
Paper delivered at a panel of the AAR/SBL/ASOR conference in Philadelphia in November 1995.

Manuel Alexandre,
‘Rhetorical Hermeneutics in Philo’s Commentary of Scripture,’
Revista de Retórica y Teoría de la Comunicación Año I, nº 1 • Enero 2001 • pp. 29-41.

Jason Rust,
‘Women in 1st Century Mediterranean Culture: A Comparison Between Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus,’
Probably a paper presented at The Religious and Cultural Environment of Early Christianity
NS 562 Dr. S. Scott Bartchy March 8, 2006.

G.H. van Kooten,
‘Balaam as the Sophist Par Excellence in Philo of Alexandria: Philo’s Projection of an Urgent Contemporary Debate onto Moses’ Pentateuchal Narratives’, in: G.H. van Kooten & J.T.A.G.M. van Ruiten (eds), The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam (Themes in Biblical Narrative 11), Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008, 131-161.

Jean Laporte,
“Models from Philo in Origen’s Teaching on Original Sin,”
Laval théologique et philosophique, vol. 44, n° 2, 1988, p. 191-203.
Pour citer la version numérique de cet article, utiliser l’adresse suivante: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/400377ar
Note : les règles d’écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir.
Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l’URI http://www.erudit.org/documentation/eruditPolitiqueUtilisation.pdf
Document téléchargé le 2 February 2010.

The Symposium of Philo’s Therapeutae

Maren Niehoff has published a new study of Philo’s Therapeutae:

Maren Niehoff,
‘The Symposium of Philo’s Therapeutae: Displaying Jewish Identity in an Increasingly Roman World,’
in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 50 (2010) 95–117.

The study is for the time being available here

Niehoff introduces her study thus:
“PHILO’S ENCOMIUM of the Therapeutae, a group of Jewish philosophers living near Alexandria, contains a remarkably
long passage on their symposia. This passage clearly extends beyond the framework of a factual report and contains
extensive comments by Philo himself, who distinguishes the proper form of a symposium from its deteriorated counterparts.
1 In this context Philo takes a new look at the subject of wine and conversation, offering views which significantly differ
from his earlier discussions. I shall argue that the description of the Therapeutic symposia, composed towards the end of
Philo’s career, is used to locate Jewish identity in a distinctly Roman context. The treatise is an important and highly selfconscious contribution to the discourse of contemporary intellectuals, who negotiated the memory of their Greek past with
the exigencies of their present-day identity.”

An interesting aspect is that she dates Philo’s work on the Therapeutae to be rather late in his career, probably even at the time of his participation in the Jewish delegation to Rome (38-40/41 CE; see. p. 98).

Furthermore, she posits that Philo has a different attitude to the Greek Symphosia here than in his earlier writings; she argues that Philo earlier adopted a far more positive and distinctly Greek attitude towards the subject of wine and meals (p. 104-105). “Philo writes on the subject of wine and conversation with a sense of belonging to a larger community of philosophers. No dichotomy is yet visible between Jews and Greeks.” A new approach to the subject of wine and meals is visible in a series of Philo’s work known as the Exposition of the Law (p.106). Then concerning the Terepeutae, Philo continues this line of thought, adding many details of the Other symposia and invoking “Greek” excesses. Hence:

“these new aspects together with stringent Stoic ethics remarkably resonate with contemporary Roman notions.
Philo thus went particularly far in inscribing Jewish identity into a prominent Roman discourse, using the symposium to
suggest that the paradigmatic Jewish philosophers are located on the same side of a substantial dichotomy as Roman intellectuals like Seneca.”

I am not yet quite convinced of this suggested development in Philo’s descriptions, and am also a little surprised that she does not draw upon the studies concerning symposia )and associations) to be found in the volume of J. S. Kloppenborg and S.G. Wilson (eds.), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (Routledge; London, 1995). There might be some additionaøl viewpoints there.

Bibloi.NET

Over at the Biblical Studies and Technology Tools Blog  I became aware of that the good old company of Silver Mountain Software has launced a new web instrument, called Bibloi.NET.  It is a Web based Bible program, and they promise that it provides easy, fast, and complete access to the Analytical Greek New Testament and the Analytical Lexicon with a unique Interlinear display and fast and efficient searches. It is said to work on  iPhone, mobile phone or desktop web browser.

It is not, however, accessible for free on the Internet. You have to pay a fee of  $49.00 which  includes a one time setup fee and a one year subscription to the site.  According to the Biblical Studies and Technology Tools Blogpost, the Analytical Greek New Testament (AGNT) and Fribergs’ Analytical Lexicon are not available anywhere else online.

And while we mention Silver Mountain Software company, they still seel the much praised program of Workplace Pack, now in version 10; the program to search the TLG CD’s. New features include regular expression searches and a host of productivity improvements.

Update in progress

I have just posted a slightly updated version of my Resource Pages for Biblical Studies, but I am also working on a major update.

However, it is very timeconsuming, and worse: I have some problems figuring out how I should arrange the new pages.

After Mark Goodacre and his NTGateway became affiliated with Logos, and have more persons getting involved in updating the pages, I probably should narrow the focus of my own pages.

If anyone out there have any suggestions, they are sure welcome. Use the comments field below.

Some thoughts from Philo…

” How long shall we, who are aged men, still be like children, being indeed as to our bodies gray-headed through the length of time that we have lived, but as to our souls utterly infantine through our want of sense and sensibility, looking upon that which is the most unstable of all things, namely, fortune, as most invariable, and that which is of all things in the world the most steadfast, namely, nature, as utterly untrustworthy? For, like people playing at draughts, we make changes, altering the position of actions, and considering the things which are the result of fortune as more durable than those which result from nature, and the things which proceed in accordance with nature as less stable than those which are the result of chance. And the reason of all this is, that we form our judgment of present events without paying any prudential attention to the future, being influenced by the erroneous guidance of our outward senses instead of the secret operations of the intellect; for the things which are openly conspicuous and before our hands so as to be taken up by them, are comprehended by our eyes, but our reasoning power outstrips them, hastening onwards to what is invisible and future; but nevertheless, we obscure the vision of our reason, though it is far more acute than those bodily powers of sight which are exercised by the eyes, some of us confusing it by indulgence in wine and satiety, and others by that greatest of all evils, namely, ignorance.”

Kamesar, Cambridge Companion to Philo

Gregory Sterling has a review of A. Kamesar (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Philo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009 pp. xv + 301. $29.99), over at Review of Biblical Literature. You can access the review here.

Update Jan 22:
Another Review has been added; see www.bookreviews.org

New Testament Studies in the 20th Century

At the Edinburg Research Center, there is an article available that I might point to here, foususing on the interesting topic: New Testament Studies in the 20th century. It is written by Larry W. Hurtado, and   is the pre-publication text of the article, now published in the journal, Religion 39 (2009): 43-57, and available online:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.religion.2008.03.006.

Hurtado starts thus: “Twentieth-century New Testament scholarship is a story of a great proliferation in approaches, emphases and methods, a growing diversity of scholars in gender, ethnicity, geography, and religious stances, and also a greater diversity in the types of academic settings in which their scholarship was conducted than had characterized preceding centuries.  One of the most observable changes apparent in the latter decades of the century was the considerably greater salience and influence of North American scholars and issues arising from their work, whereas previously the field was heavily dominated by the work of European (especially German) figures.  Another major development was the much greater participation of Roman Catholic scholars, particularly after World War II, this flowering of Catholic biblical scholarship flowing from the Papal Encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943).  Also, perhaps especially in the North American setting, but also in other locales as well, an increasing number of women obtained doctorates and became significant contributors to the field.  In the final decades, there were also indications of a far greater trans-cultural diversity in scholars and approaches, involving figures and developments in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.  One way to survey these and other important developments is to take a diachronic approach, and this will be followed here.

If you want to read on, the article is available in this pre-publication form here.

Does Philo Help Explain Early Christianity?

At Edinburgh Research Archive I recently discovered there is available an article by Larry W. Hurtado on “Does Philo Help Explain Early Christianity?”
This is a pre-publication version of the essay, which is published in Philo and the New Testament–the New Testament and Philo, eds. Roland Deines, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 172; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 73-92. But for those who don’t have that volume available, it might be interesting to read Hurtado’s study in this format. If, however, you should want to refer to it in any publication, the printed version is to be used.

To wet your interest even more, let me cite his conclusion:
“For New Testament scholars, Philo is a resource of unsurpassed value, especially for developing a sense of what Diaspora Judaism represented. In Philo’s voluminous body of extant works, we have a major reservoir of material that is probably not yet studied adequately. Those of us whose primary concern is to understand early Christianity receive gratefully all that Philo specialists can furnish.
Yet, with all sincere appreciation for the importance of Philo and for the labours of those who devote themselves to study of him, neither Philo nor other second-temple Jewish texts “explains” key features of earliest Christianity witnessed in the New Testament, in the sense of accounting for their appearance. In my experience, Philo specialists have only rarely ever suggested otherwise. So, if my discussion of matters in this essay serves any good purpose, it will likely be as exhortation to fellow New Testament scholars to avoid simplistic use of “parallels,” and, instead, with the aid of experts in Philo, to acquire as deep an acquaintance as we can with this remarkable Jewish leader of Alexandria so that we may grasp better what first-century Christianity represented in the context of Roman-era Judaism.”