teaching and research: resisting the tyranny of either/or

Over at PEJE IESOUS, Christopher Skinner has linked to a very good reflection piece from Inside Higher Ed on the challenges (and methods) of balancing the aspirations of an active research agenda with the demands of a heavy teaching load. Dr. Hollis Phelps offers some very helpful thoughts (and tips!) for those of us who are carrying a significant teaching load and trying to keep up with and contribute to the larger academic discipline to which we belong.

Speaking for myself, I am currently preparing to shop a book proposal for what I hope will be a fairly significant work on Romans. I only ventured into Pauline and Romans studies because my university assigned me to develop a course on Romans for our graduate students. Among the potential synthetic consequences of the tug-o-war between teaching and research, I would identify the following:

• my research deepens the content of my in-class lecture and discussion materials;
• my research strengthens my identification with and passion for my field, which communicates directly to my students as they wrestle to decide whether my field matters to them;
• my teaching broadens the scope of my reading and knowledge, which directly affects the quality of my research and writing;
• my teaching forces me to improve my writing and thinking (especially since I encounter so much bad writing and thinking in [Father, forgive me] student papers).

While not all researchers would be good teachers, and not all good teachers would be good researchers, in the Venn diagram of higher education, there is more overlap between the two than not.

does Paul quote Hosea from memory?

The concept of "memory," especially of "social memory," is a live issue among New Testament scholars. (Social memory refers to a field of inquiry within the Humanities that raises questions about the social distribution, function, and contestation of knowledge about the past. In other words, how do humans, as part of the social groups of which they find themselves members, remember, utilize, and argue about the images, narratives, and rituals of the past?) I'm certain that social memory research holds potential for Pauline scholarship just as much as it has opened up new questions and routes of inquiry in Jesus scholarship, but I don't know specifically how.

As I was working on my comments on Romans 9 for a graduate course I'm teaching, I noted that Paul's citation of Hosea (and Isaiah, too) in this chapters seems a bit haphazard. Robert Jewett (Romans [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007], 599) provides a nice chart showing how re-arranged is Paul's citation(s) from Hosea 2:

It might be difficult to read, but the basic point is that Paul cites passages from Hosea in the following order:

• Hos. 2.25c
• Hos. 2.25b
• Hos. 2.1b
• Hos. 2.1c

My question: Does this suggest that Paul is citing Hosea from memory? Does it matter that neither his citations from Hosea here or of Isaiah in 9.27–29 exactly match the Septuagintal form of either text? If Paul is citing from memory, does this offer us a glimpse into how the traditions as well as the written texts of the Hebrew Bible worked (or functioned) in early Christian memory?

gendered pronouns in a discussion of Romans

I'm sure I should know this already (perhaps it has already been explained). But, Does anyone know why Robert Jewett, in his commentary on Romans (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), uses feminine English pronouns in his translation of masculine Greek pronouns that refer to God? For example, he offers the following translation of Rom. 9.19: "You will say to me then, 'Why then does he still find fault? For who has resisted her design?'" (Jewett, Romans, 587) The Greek text behind the Jewett's translation, "who has resisted her design," is τῷ βουλήματι αὐτοῦ τίς ἀνθέστηκεν; This isn't the only time Jewett does this, but it is the first time I've noticed him doing it. Doe anyone know whether he offers any justification for this way of rendering the text?

more on "weakness" in Romans 8

In a previous post, I commented on the strange use of "weakness" in Rom. 8.3, where Paul seems to say that Torah itself was rendered weak. This doesn't sound so strange in the Christian's ear, perhaps. But Paul no where else uses the stem ἀσθεν- [asthen-; "weak"] in relation to Torah. In fact, what is "weak" is always Paul and/or some or all of his readers, the flesh, etc. But the translators and commentators I was reading seemed to accept, in their translations, that Paul says Torah [ὁ νόμος; ho nomos] was weakened, even if their comments on the passage denied that Torah was actually weakened in any real sense.

I don't think N. T. Wright solves the problem, but he at least acknowledges it. Wright asks, "What was impossible for the law? That it should give life. It offered it, but could not deliver" ("Romans," NIB 577). He then says,

It could not do so because it was "weak because of the flesh." Despite many commentators and preachers who have been eager to see Paul say negative things about the law, he declares, summing up the argument of chap. 7, that there was nothing wrong with it in itself. The problem lay elsewhere: in the "flesh"—not the physicality of human nature, which was God-given and will be reaffirmed in the resurrection (8:11), but in the present rebellious and corruptible state of humankind, within which sin had made its dwelling (7:18, 20, 23, 25). (Wright, "Romans," 577)

I think this is the right track. The flesh, rather than Torah itself, was the cause of weakness. But of course, this creates some tension with the actual grammar of the passage itself. Paul does indeed say that Torah's weakness came "through/by the flesh" [διὰ τῆς σαρκός; dia tēs sarkos], but nevertheless it looks like Torah itself "was weakened." And this idea, as Jewett noted, is unique among the Pauline corpus and even the NT itself. And I still cannot escape the suspicious that, v. 3 notwithstanding, the rest of Romans 7.7–8.11 does not portray a weakened Torah.

I'm still not sure we've understood this verse rightly. Any suggestions?

"weak[ness]" in Rom. 8.3

I'm working my way through Romans 8, and perhaps it occasions no surprise to find that this passage is kicking my butt. For example, my reaction to v. 3: "Focus, Paul. Focus." Complete sentences are not only useful for effective communication but also for theological clarity. But Paul seems to have had other ideas.

But I could use your help (especially you Pauline and Romans specialists out there). Romans 8.3 begins with the incomplete phrase, "For the impossibility of the Torah in that which it was weak through the flesh . . . " [Τὸ γὰρ ἀδύνατον τοῦ νόμου ἐν ᾧ ἠσθένει διὰ τῆς σαρκός; to gar adynaton tou nomou en hō ēsthenei dia tēs sarkos]. Clearly I'm making certain interpretive decisions already (e.g., nomos = Torah). But I'm struggling to determine the subject of the imperfect verb ēsthenei The obvious option, grammatically, is nomos, and every translation and commentator I've consulted takes this option.

But here's the problem. Everywhere in Romans, when Paul uses the language of "weakness," the what that he describes as weak is a person. And with the exception of 4.19, where Abraham did not grow weak [μὴ ἀσθενήσας; mē asthenēsas] in his faith, Paul is always referring to his readers (sometimes including himself [5.6; 8.26], sometimes differentiating some of his readers from others [14.1; 15.1]). A wider search reveals a similar pattern; nowhere in forty-four uses of ἀσθενέω, ἀσθενής, ἀσθένεια, or ἀσθένημα does Paul describe Torah (or nomos on any other interpretation) as "weak." While it's certainly possible that, this one time here at Rom. 8.3, Paul describes the nomos as "weakened by the flesh, I am surprised at the lack of discussion of this unusual usage.

Robert Jewett illustrates the problem, but I don't think he provides any real help in solving it. He rightly notes that the verb ēsthenei is "an expression ordinarily referring to someone becoming ill" (Romans, 483). He also, again rightly, notes that Paul's usage here, if it refers to the nomos, would be "unique to the NT." But then he says, inexplicably I think, that this unique phrase "recapitulates the argument of the preceding chapter about human arrogance and the quest for honor, which corrupt the law and destroy its capacity to achieve the good." The problem here, however, is that Paul never in Romans 7 described the nomos as weak or corrupted or powerless; the image in Rom. 7.7–25 was of Paul's persona—the role from within which he speaks ("speech-in-character")—as helpless and impotent to stop sin from acting within/among his members. Paul's persona, and not nomos, was weak in Romans 7. So how 8.3 "recapitulates" the argument of Romans 7, as Jewett suggests, is unclear to me.

So I'd like to ask the following questions:

• Are there contextual reasons that make us confident that Paul must be describing the nomos here as weakened (notice that I'm not asking whether nomos = Torah, though that might be a factor that affects the question I am asking)?
• Are there other ways to understand the relative clause en hō ēsthenei, so that we interpret ἀσθενεῖν in 8.3 in such a way that fits with every other use of this word in the Pauline corpus?
• Are there discussions in the secondary literature that note and address this complex of issues?
• If Paul is saying that the nomos was weakened through the flesh, what does he mean?

Any thoughts?

Romans in one sentence

Related to my previous post, let me ask you Pauline and Romans scholars: Would you approve of the following as a one-sentence summary of the entire letter? If so, why? If not, what would you add/change/delete? (Or is a one-sentence summary, in your opinion, inadvisable?) Here's my summary:

Romans is Paul's presentation of the gospel message of the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus, the Son of David and of God, which results in peace with God, first for Israel and then for all the nations.

the opening of Romans: a question

I'm preparing a graduate-level course on Paul's letter to the Romans. One of the very many famous features of this letter is the credal formula in Rom. 1.3–4. First, let me give my translation of the opening four verses:

¹ Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called [to be] an apostle, having been set apart for [the] gospel of God, ² which he announced beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, ³ about his son,

• who came from the seed of David according to the flesh,
• ⁴ who was appointed son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead,

Jesus Christ our Lord.

One of the complicating factors of this passage is the relation of 1.2 with the formula in 1.3–4. In verse 2, Paul refers to "the holy scriptures" [γραφαῖς ἁγίαις] as the location in which God announced beforehand the gospel. These are the last two words of the verse. The very next verse then begins with the words "about his son" [περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ]. I'm sure I've heard/read somewhere that Paul here frames the Hebrew scriptures in terms of their witness to Jesus; i.e., the scriptures are "about his son." Theologically, of course, this isn't a problem; Paul will say something similar in 3.21. But I don't think this is what Paul is saying here.

Here's my question. Would you Pauline and/or Romans scholars be comfortable describing verse 2 as a parenthetical adjectival phrase modifying "the gospel of God" [εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ]? In this case, we should read verse 3, which begins "about his son," in connection with the end of verse 1. A modified translation might be:

¹ Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called [to be] an apostle, having been set apart for [the] gospel of God—(² which [gospel] he announced beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures)—³ [the gospel] about his son,

• who came from the seed of David according to the flesh,
• ⁴ who was appointed son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead,

Jesus Christ our Lord.

What think ye?

new term

Fall 2011 semester classes at Johnson Bible College University started this morning. The summer was great (busy, but great), and it always seems the autumn comes too quickly. And even though it's hard for me to put down the various projects I get to work on from May til August, it really is good to see returning students and to meet the brand-new freshman.

Speaking of brand-new freshman, new students moved onto campus last weekend. In all the hustle and bustle of meeting new roommates, unpacking milk crates, and trying to get to Walmart to buy more stuff we really needed, I snuck down and filmed a group of incoming freshman. Unfortunately, I had to edit out some language; I guess that's bound to happen when you drop "Bible" from your name. Here's what I got:

identifying Paul (again)

I'm currently reading through Tim Gombis's introductory volume, Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark International, 2010). Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, I read Rodrigo Morales's published doctoral dissertation, The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), last week. So all things Paul have been on my mind these last few days.

Gombis's discussion of Paul is introductory and pitched at beginning ("perplexed") students, so of course there is lots of room to nitpick and complain about lack of nuance or precision. But the goal of the book isn't to provide nuance or precision; it's to speak in broad strokes and get people into the discussion. Details can come later.

So I hope it's clear that I'm not nitpicking here (or at least I don't think I am). And I should also disclose that I know Gombis personally, and I've found him to be one of the nicer, more congenial younger biblical scholars. I think he and I think a lot alike. But as Gombis briefly introduces Paul's letter to the Galatian communities, he attributes the problem Paul confronts to a "very conservative Jewish Christian faction . . . seeking to make certain that the Christian communities that sprang up in Asia Minor were thoroughly Jewish" (25). A little later, Gombis explains that Paul bristles against the claim that gentile converts "must adopt a Jewish way of life." I'm not sure what to make of Gombis's use of the term Jewish; even (or perhaps especially!) in an introductory volume such as this I think a little more nuance is necessary.

The problem comes down to this: If Paul sets out to correct the claims of the "agitators" (see Gal. 5.10) that gentiles "must adopt a Jewish way of life" (25), what should we think Paul set up as an alternative to that Jewish lifestyle? Should the converts remain gentiles? If so, we need to explain the continued negative references to gentiles in Paul's letters (e.g., Eph. 2.11–12; Gombis accepts Pauline authorship of all thirteen letters attributed to Paul). Should the converts become Christians? If so, we need to explain how Paul never uses the word Christian in any of his letters.

Since neither of these terms—gentile or Christian—will work for Paul, the question remains: What should we think Paul set up as an alternative to the Jewish lifestyle the "agitators" were advocating to Paul's gentile converts in Galatia? I think the only answer that will work, historically or theologically, is, Paul proposes a differently Jewish lifestyle to the universal Torah-obedience advocated by his opponents. If I learned anything from Morales (which I wouldn't expect Gombis to cite even if they weren't both published in 2010), Paul understands his vocation as "apostle to the nations/gentiles" in terms of bringing the blessing of Abraham to bear upon the nations of the Roman Empire, and this precisely because God has poured out his Spirit upon his people Israel and brought an end to their experiences of the covenantal curses (exile and, especially, death).

In other words, and to sum up Morales's point and wrap up this post, the problem Paul has with Torah in Galatians isn't that it's Jewish. The problem is that Israel has failed to keep the terms of the covenant and has brought upon itself the covenantal curses—exile and death (see Deut. 27–30)—rather than the covenantal blessings. But God has not abandoned his people or his promises to them; instead, Israel's messiah, Jesus, overcame the covenantal curses brought on by Israel's failure to observe Torah. (Notice the problem isn't Torah itself but the people's failure to keep Torah.) Now the gentile Galatian believers have a choice to make. Do they take on a Jewish lifestyle defined by Torah? Or do they take on a Jewish lifestyle defined by the blessing of Abraham, now unleashed on God's people in the aftermath of God's Spirit poured out on Israel and a new heart given them? This latter might be what we mean when we refer to a "Christian lifestyle," but we need to recognize (and teach others to recognize) that in all likelihood, for Paul, this was simply a better way to be Jewish.

on imagining new worlds

I'm currently reading Richard Horsley's essay, "The Gospel of Mark in the Interface of Orality and Writing," in The Interface of Orality and Writing: Speaking, Seeing, Writing in the Shaping of New Genres (A. Weissenrieder and R. Coote, eds.; WUNT 260; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). If you're familiar with Horsley's other works then you'll already know what to expect from this essay: a critique of certain culturally inappropriate models sustaining biblical scholarship and a striking reliance on certain key binary oppositions (Judean vs. Galilean, élite vs. ordinary people, etc.).

Despite the need to improve on and further Horsley's work, he nevertheless does provide a helpful opportunity to think more largely about biblical studies and the concrete social functioning of the texts we analyze. This has always been one of the key strengths of Horsley's scholarship. So I thought I'd reproduce this helpful quote on the need for us to get past ourselves and appreciate Mark's gospel as, perhaps, a single performance of the Jesus tradition rather than a collection of previously independent short stories (novella, according to Dibelius).

What remains difficult even for those who recognize Mark as a sustained story, I think, and perhaps also for those of us who also recognize the interface of orality and writing, is to imagine the formation, the composition, of the whole (Gospel) story. Perhaps because we are so habituated to composition in/as writing we have particular difficulty imagining how a text of the length and complexity of Mark could have been composed other than in writing—even though many epics that are orally performed (and composed) are much longer and more complex in plotting than Mark and the other Gospels. (157)

Of course, worlds of difference separate Mark and the other gospels from the epics I think Horsley has in mind (Homer, Moslem Yugoslavian epics, etc.). But that's not the point Horsley's making. He's reminding us that Mark's story—impressive and complicated as it is—isn't really so impressive and complicated that it had to be composed by an author in possession of himself, deliberate and laboriously working at a table or desk, free of the distractions of the wide world around him.

Instead, Mark certainly could have been (I think probably would have been) the kind of story Jesus' followers told as they gathered together to learn, to worship, to fellowship, and to pray. Certainly at some point someone (let's call him Mark) wrote the story down—though strangely Horsley would disagree. But that doesn't mean that Mark's written gospel was the first time the story ("the whole [Gospel] story") was apprehended in a single social engagement by women and men devoted to Jesus. In fact, given that the first mention of Mark's gospel doesn't occur until early in the second century CE (Papias), I suspect no one thought what Mark had done to Jesus' story was particularly groundbreaking or innovative (pace Kelber). Mark's gospel provided another in a very large number of possible performances of the Jesus story, and before long Matthew and Luke (and even John) would show that Mark's story, indeed, wasn't even that long!

the gospels and "gospel tradition"

In my gospel narratives class I regularly refer to "tradition"—whether "gospel tradition" or "Jesus tradition"—though I don't necessarily explain what I mean. This is a problem, I think, because tradition is one of those words, like myth or criticism, whose connotations overshadow their denotations. Tradition connotes negatively; after all, didn't Jesus condemn the Pharisees for their privileging tradition vis-à-vis the word of God? Aren't tradition-al things bad, like hymnals, bee-hives, and racism?

Of course, this isn't the technical sense of tradition, and the term itself is ubiquitous in biblical scholarship. In fact, tradition as an analytical concept is in need of some precision; in the current environment it's only too easy to write whole books on some aspect or other of tradition without ever really spelling out precisely what we mean by it.

Vincent Taylor, in his famous book, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: MacMillan and Co., 1933), reflects on the term explicitly on the very first page. There's much to disagree with here, especially eighty years after the book was published. But it is helpful for thinking about how far thinking about tradition has come.

It is important that we should appreciate the distinction between the 'Gospel tradition' and the Gospels. Before the Gospels were written the 'tradition' was organic; it was a thing of life, and as such was always changing and growing. Just because of this it was subject to the accidents and experiences of life; it could be corrupted, but it was also capable, through growth and change, of becoming more truly itself, as the sapling grows into the tree and as the child becomes the man. In the Gospels the 'tradition' has attained a relatively fixed formation; it is no longer subject to change, except as it is altered by copyists or by the writers of the later Apocryphal Gospels. Whenever we return to our Gospels we find the tradition as we left it, and the only changes which can happen are those which take place within our own minds through fuller knowledge and understanding. Before these books were written the position must have been very different. At that time the tradition was more plastic; it was a story of life and a product of life; its formation was determined by its contents and by the mental and spiritual environment in which it lived; it grew, and developed, and had a history. (1–2)

Many people recognize that tradition (as distinct from texts, as Taylor is using the term) is hardly made static or fixed by virtue of being written down. Certainly Matthew and Luke, if they knew of and used Mark as a source for their own gospel texts (the standard position among NT scholars) did not think of the tradition in Mark's gospel as "fixed" or "static." And the early Christians who recognized these texts as the word of God did not, apparently, experience angst at the variation and fluidity of the tradition as evident across the three synoptic gospels, to say nothing of John's gospel (!). However counterintuitive it may seem to us that tradition remains "organic," vibrant and adaptable, even in written form, this seems to be the clear perception of the texts among the early Christians. It may seem weird to us, but I suspect that, if they could analyze us, our own preoccupations with the verbal fixation of written/printed texts would seem equally alien.

the battle of the G[r]eeks wages on (or, pt. III)

In my previous post on first-year Greek grammars, I briefly laid out four aspects of my Elementary Greek class and what I'm looking for in a first-year grammar in light of those aspects. It's been a while since that post, so here's a quick recap:

1. The class is quick-paced and intense, so I don't need an intense grammar. I want a text that presents the book quickly, basically but accurately, and without excessive nuance.
2. I don't need a grammar that is "all things for all persons." A flexible grammar leaves room for the classroom experience to do more than simply read through the book. I will add material as I see appropriate, but my grammar just needs to establish a solid foundation.
3. I prefer an approach that balances morphological analysis (and the dreaded memorization) with early and thorough-going exposure to actual Greek texts. Students can't do the latter reliably and quickly until they've mastered the former, but the motivation for the former comes from the latter.
4. I want a grammar that ranges broadly across and progressively deeper into Greek linguistic structures rather than that presents all the material in a certain area (say, indicative verbs) before presenting other material.

If these are my four most basic expectations, how do Black and Croy line up on the issues? Here are my basic thoughts on each.

Regarding my first concern—a basic, quick-and-dirty presentation of the material—both Black and Croy come out strong. This, in fact, is why I have evaluated every introductory grammar in terms of Black's. Croy does explain in a parenthetical comment,

The original endings for the present active indicative were -μι, -ς, -σι, for the singular, and -μεν, -τε, -νσι, for the plural. In some cases, however, the original endings have undergone such changes that it is best simply to learn the resultant forms rather than the process by which they came about. The original endings are preserved in another conjugation to be learned later. (p. 8)

This is about as complex an explanation as I would be willing to give my beginning [nineteen-year-old!] students. Compare the nuanced discussion in Mounce (131–34), which is largely unnecessary. However, one of my students' frustrations with Black is the stuttered presentation of vocabulary. Some of Black's chapters have over thirty vocabulary words to learn (some considerably more than thirty!), while some have almost none. Croy, on the other hand, presents a steady dozen-or-so vocabulary words for each of his lessons. Less intense = good.

Regarding my second concern—a flexible grammar that allows me to tailor my class to my own idiosyncrasies—Croy's discussion of present active indicative and infinitive verbs (Lesson 2) does little more than present the necessary morphology and the very basic grammar of the present-tense verb (i.e., its aspect). Croy does, however, briefly discuss the "accentuation of verbs" (§13; pp. 9–10). But this is ideal for me, as this was one of the areas I would bring into my classes from Black's book. Black has a general discussion of accentuation in an appendix (§§184–87; pp. 216–19). I like that Croy has tailored his discussion of accents specifically to verbs and, later, to nouns (see Lesson 3; §20; p. 15). So this just happens to provide material that I was already providing beyond Black's chapters, and it does so in smaller, more focused bits that fit my purposes.

Regarding my third concern—an approach balanced between inductive and deductive instruction—I'm torn between the two books. Croy's presentation of Greek morphology is . . . well, it's awful. Black has the clear upper hand here. You simply have to compare the look of the page to appreciate how little thought and effort went into presenting the material. Black, on the other hand, employs clearly laid out tables with (in the newest edition) shading to help the student see what's going on. This will be an area where I will have to provide students with more helpful ways of presenting and organizing the information. But Croy provides something Black doesn't: For every lesson, beginning in Lesson 1, Croy has four kinds of exercises. First is the all-too-familiar "practice and review" exercises comprised of made-up Greek (of the "The apostles loose the slaves in the church" ilk). Second and third, however, Croy provides actual texts from both the LXX and the NT, respectively. In order to aid students with these exercises Croy provides a "Vocabulary for LXX and NT Sentences" section at the end of each lesson. Finally, and fourth, Croy provides a few English to Greek exercises. Compare Black's exercises, which are only ever Greek-to-English and which aren't drawn from actual biblical texts until into the second half of the book.

Regarding my fourth concern—a grammar that ranges broadly and progressively deeper into Greek—I rather like Croy's substance even if his form leaves something to be desired. For some reason, Croy doesn't give each lesson a title, so you actually have to look into the subtitles of each lesson to get an idea of what's covered when. But when I do this, I like what I see. The first real lesson—Lesson 2—presents present active indicative and infinitive verbs. Lessons 3 and 4 present the first and second declensions, respectively (I think I would agree with Black in reversing these), and Lesson 5 presents the full form of the article and first/second declension adjectives. Lesson 6 presents feminine second declension and masculine first declension nouns; I think I like breaking these off into a separate chapter. A little further on, Lesson 9 presents the present middle and passive indicative and infinitive verbs, and Lesson 10 introduces the difference between primary and secondary tenses (as well as the imperfect active indicative). Again, I think I like that Croy sticks with the first principal part before jumping to other verb stems. After Lesson 11 (imperfect middle/passive indicative), Lesson 12 introduces the concept of principal parts and then covers the second principal part (future active and middle indicative verbs). While Croy's order of presentation is, perhaps, the point of widest departure from Black's approach, and while I approve of and appreciate Black's approach, I think I prefer Croy's. A year or two in the classroom will help me decide whether or not I actually do.

Related to this last point, I've always thought—first as a student and then later as faculty—that the second half of Black's grammar does not divide the material into sufficiently manageable chunks. Third declension nouns, contract and liquid verbs, and participles each have one whole chapter. Croy, however, offers two lessons on the third declension (Lessons 17 and 25), three chapters on participles (Lessons 18–20), and a chapter each for contract (Lesson 21) and liquid verbs (Lesson 22). In addition, Black covers -μι verbs in a single chapter, whereas Croy provides three (Lessons 28–30). I anticipate my students will find these smaller, bite-sized lessons helpful (though I have some concerns, which I'll raise in a fourth and final post in this series).

I have learned and taught from Black's book for a dozen years now, and I'm very appreciative of Black's approach to Greek pedagogy and grammar. None of my comments here convey a sense of disappointment with Learn to Read New Testament Greek. In fact, I'm a little nervous about switching texts next year. I have never used another grammar, and I anticipate a bit of a learning curve as I figure out how this book fits within the structure of my particular class. But I'm also excited about any new challenges teaching from a different grammar will present. I remember another exciting switch, one that involved a bit of a learning curve but has certainly improved my quality of life. And as long as I continue to experience God's blessing, I shall never go back to using a PC!

battle of the G[r]eeks, pt. II

In my previous post I mentioned that I am teetering on the verge of abandoning David Alan Black's first-year Greek grammar, Learn to Read New Testament Greek (Nashville: B&H Academic, 1994), the book from which I learned Greek back in the late 90s and I have used since I began teaching Greek two years ago. I also mentioned a few other introductory grammars I've looked at and briefly explained why each wasn't right for my class. Before I explain my attraction to N. Clayton Croy's, A Primer of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), I thought it might be helpful to explain my approach to teaching elementary Greek and what I expect an introductory grammar to provide my students.

First, as with any first-year Greek program my class is intense. We cover a lot of material quickly, and to make things worse the material is cumulative. Students can't forget present active indicative verb forms just because that was five chapters ago; neither can they forget vocab from earlier in the semester as we move on. Because the class is so intense, I don't want an intense first-year grammar. This is my main criticism of Mounce and, even more so, of Porter & Co. I need a grammar that breaks up the material into manageable chunks, presents it clearly and without excessive nuance, and moves on. I don't need my students to know that the third-person singular primary verbal ending "actually is τι, but the tau dropped out" (Mounce, 133n. 8); I want them to learn it just as -ει. Too much detail muddies the issues for first-year students, and I really don't want them to have to figure out what's important and what can be ignored for now.

Second, I don't want a grammar that explains everything for my students. Again, Mounce provides a helpful foil. An independent student could purchase Mounce's grammar and, with the aid of the website an the CD, learn everything s/he needed to learn about Greek alone. But my students aren't learning Greek by themselves; they're with me, my lab assistant, and their fellow students. What I like about Black's book, then, is that it quickly and concisely explains the most critical information and leaves plenty of room for me to supplement the material with my own. My students spend about one day (out of four) per week working out of Black's book; the rest of the week is spent working on supplementary materials that either I or my lab assistant have devised. More detailed introductory grammars strike me as, well, a bit over-determined.

Third, I think I prefer a balance between inductive and deductive approach to language acquisition. (I say "I think" because I've never been clear about what people actually mean when they use these terms.) Whatever the technical jargon, here's what I strive for. I expect students to be able to fill in grammar charts (verbal conjugations and nominal declensions). The age-old gripe that Greek is about "never-ending endings" doesn't move me to compassion; if you ever hope to be able to read the language you simply have to master its morphological paradigms. Even so, none of my students sign up to endure Elementary Greek in order to be able to fill in grammar charts, and so I try to introduce them to actual Greek texts as early as possible. Black, however, doesn't begin to provide actual exercises from the GNT until chapter eighteen, which is the second chapter of the second semester. Black's exercises are excellent after chapter eighteen, but I can't expect my students to endure six months of studying Greek before they turn to actual biblical texts.

Fourth, even if it's more difficult for students to move back and forth between verbal and nominal forms, syntax, and grammar (and I don't think it actually is), I want a grammar that presents the material in a way that gets progressively more familiar with the language as a whole rather than tackling, say, all three noun declensions before presenting any verbs. Again, even if students find it more difficult to move between grammatical categories, students draw motivation from their noticeably and steadily advancing abilities to work with the language, to decipher ideas in Greek and communicate them in English, and even to provide sketchy versions of English thoughts in Greek-esque. So what Mounce might gain in terms of simplifying the material he looses in terms of his students' motivation.

I think that's enough for now. In my next post on this subject I'll explain how Black and Croy line up on these four issues. As always, your comments are welcome.

battle of the G[r]eeks

When I first took Elementary Greek back in the fall of 1998, we used the Revised Edition of David Alan Black's first-year grammar, Learn to Read New Testament Greek (Nashville: B&H Academic, 1994). I have loved Black's book, and when I started teaching Elementary Greek in the fall of 2008 I went with what I knew. But I don't want to be blindly loyal to Black, so I've taken occasion to look at a number of comparable books:

• William Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), is simply too much material, in too much detail, to be helpful for my purposes. I also strongly dislike the order in which Mounce covers the material; even with the two-track option, I can't understand why anyone would present the entire nominal system before introducing verbs. Mounce is a great supplement for my more advanced students, and it comes with great support materials (a CD, along with its own website), but it isn't right for my class.
• Jeremy Duff, The Elements of New Testament Greek (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), which I really like. But I could never get past the decision to omit accent marks from the text. I was worried that my students would be intimidated by the sudden intrusion of accents on nearly every Greek word when they looked at the Greek New Testament. Given how strange the unaccented text in Duff looked to me, I didn't want my students to react similarly (perhaps even more strongly) to their GNTs.
• James Hewett, New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), which I haven't looked at in as great detail. One of my teaching assistants and former Greek students looked through the first couple chapters and liked a lot of Hewett's explanations. But his rather informed opinion matched my more superficial one: Black was still the better choice for my students.
• And last month I received an examination copy of the long-anticipated Fundamentals of New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), by Stanley Porter and friends. If Mounce is too much information in too much detail, Porter & Co. is that much again. I love this book. I would use it if I ever taught first-year Greek to a class of students who've had at least a year of Greek and are retaking the course in preparation for seminary, graduate school, or any other academic pursuit. But even I can't impose this book on unsuspecting nineteen-year-olds.

But now I think I've found the book that will pull me away from Black. My Greek lab assistant recommended I look at N. Clayton Croy's introductory grammar, A Primer of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999). There's nothing sexy about Croy's book (the same could be said about Black's, at least before the release of the third edition last year). But I like Croy's order of presentation as well as his selection of material to present; I like his explanations of Greek grammar, syntax, and morphology, and I even prefer some of his pedagogical methods over Black. At this point I think I'm 75-25 in favor of Croy for the Fall 2011 semester. In the next week or two I'll explain why I'm contemplating the switch.

My hopes, however, are that some of you with experience with Croy, Black, or any other first-year Greek grammar would chime in, critique my thinking, come to the defense of your favorite text, or whatever. What have you found most helpful in learning/teaching Greek? Or even, Is the choice of textbook not a/the most significant factor affecting student comprehension and enjoyment of the language? I would greatly appreciate your input and/or feedback with this.

on proper types of documentation

As part of the orientation program to our in-coming MA New Testament students, I give a presentation entitled, "The Nature and Expectations of Graduate Education." In one section of that presentation I explain the difference between primary and secondary literature and the importance of becoming expert in both as part of pursuing graduate-level research. Part of the perennial problem I encounter when I grade my students' papers concerns knowing just what kind of documentation is necessary for what kind of claims. As luck would have it, I've just encountered a similar problem in an otherwise excellent published article, and I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify how we ought to engage in historical discussions of the ancient world.

In his article, "The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21–7:12)," Glen Stassen makes a fairly standard claim about alms-giving, prayer, and fasting in late-Second Temple era Judaism.¹ He writes,

Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting went together as the three traditional Jewish practices of righteousness in the first century. "The three disciplines were almost certainly traditionally associated with one another. . . ." Clearly these are "traditional righteousness, as expected. (284; citing Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:575; Weder, "Rede der Reden," 158; Davies, Setting, 305–15)

To be clear: I don't have any issue with Stassen's claim; he, like the scholars he cites, are almost certainly right. But notice what Stassen has done (rather that what he has claimed). Stassen has made a claim about how Jews in the ancient world perceived the practices of alms-giving, prayer, and fasting, and then he has cited modern historians in support of that claim. This, I suggest, is the problem.

How could Stassen have been more precise and helpful in his use of documentation? I think either of two options would have been preferable. First, Stassen could have made the claim that his documentation supported. That is, he could have said something along the lines of, "Scholars typically understand Jesus' teaching on these three practices together, which suggests that they see them as largely overlapping expressions of piety." If Stassen had cited Davies and Allison, Weder, and Davies in support of this claim, his citation would have provided examples of the very thing he was discussing.

Alternatively, Stassen could have provided documentation for the ancient phenomenon in question (viz., the association of alms-giving, prayer, and fasting together). That is, if these three practices did go hand-in-hand in Second Temple Judaic piety, then presumably we have texts that exhibit the connection between them. Certainly Matt. 6.1–18 might be one of these texts. But I would want to see other texts, whether from pseudepigraphical and/or apocryphal texts, the DSS, Josephus, Philo, etc., that make this connection and make it more explicitly than Matt. 6.1–18. These texts—and not claims made by Davies and Allison, Weder, and Davies—support the claim Stassen is making. Now, I assume that the secondary literature Stassen does cite provide references to the primary sources, but that actually exacerbates the problem rather than eases it. If other scholars have already gathered the primary evidence, then it should have been very easy for Stassen to provide references to that evidence.

Instead—and this is the point I want to make—the pattern of (a) making a claim about the ancient world and (b) supporting that claim with a reference or references to secondary sources enables us to root our historical claims in scholarly consensus rather than concrete historical data. Even when we're making fairly straightforward claims that probably are rather indicative of the ancient world (as is Stassen in this example), we need to get in the habit of more rigorously distinguishing the historical world(s) we have reconstructed in the critical mass of historical scholarship, on the one hand, from the actually historical data upon which that scholarship depends (and beyond which it extends).

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¹ Glen H. Stassen, "The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21–7:12)," JBL 122/2 (2003): 267–308.

on the psalms, again

For nearly ten years now I have been intrigued by the social aspects of individual life, or—in other words—the way the world outside us becomes the world inside us. Think, for example, of the kinds of dreams you have: what they're like, what happens in them, how they make sense until you wake up and realize they don't make any sense at all. Dreams may be the most private aspect of our lives (we never dream with other people!), and yet we all seem to have fairly similar dreams. Even more importantly, we all understand the people around us when they describe completely nonsensical dreams. This is because our private worlds—who we are inside, apart from all of our relationships with others—are formed and shaped by the same (or at least heavily overlapping) social worlds. I would suspect that the understandability of our very weird dreams begins to break down cross-culturally; if a person from sub-Saharan Africa or pre-Renaissance Europe were to describe their strangest dreams to us, we would have a harder time making "sense" of them.

This sense of the outside-world-in finds marvelous expression at the end of Ron Heine's discussion of the Psalms. Heine writes:

We can also learn from the fathers that even if we must pray the psalms in private, we still pray them in community. When I pray the psalms my voice blends in praise, petition, and confession with that of the whole people of God, whether my contemporaries or my predecessors in faith, who have lifted and who continue to lift up these prayers to God. This solidarity with the whole church in prayer includes even Christ himself, the head of the church. In this communal sense all the words of the psalms become my prayer even if I am not at the moment experiencing the joys or sufferings they express. I can lift up even the words of Psalm 22:1, which Jesus prayed on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" for I am one with the whole body of Christ, and where "one member suffers all suffer together." My prayer is one with those in seemingly God-forsaken situations who cry out for deliverance but none comes, even as Jesus cried out for deliverance in Gethsemane, when none was forthcoming.¹

Prayer in private is nevertheless prayer in community. The point of my doctoral thesis was similar: Memory in private is memory in community.² Or even more simply, Memory is community—community in the present with the past. "So it is when people think that they are alone, face to face with themselves, other people appear and with them the groups of which they are members."³

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¹ Ronald E. Heine, Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought (Evangelical Ressourcement; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 174.
² Rafael Rodríguez, Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text (European Studies on Christian Origins; London and New York: T&T Clark, 2010).

³ Maurice Halbwachs, The Social Frameworks of Memory (L. A. Coser, ed. and trans.; Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 49.

reading the Prophets in the early church

I've picked up (again) Ron Heine's Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought (Evangelical Ressourcement; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). At the end of his chapter, "The Gospel in the Prophets" (97–141), Heine borrows an image from masonry to explain the function of the prophets among the church fathers and their understanding of the gospel.

It might be said that the prophetic texts of the Old Testament served as the mortar for the church's construction of its understanding of Christ. Mortar is not the primary material in the edifice. Bricks are the primary material. The primary material in the church's understanding of Christ is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Mortar, however, is essential to the edifice, enabling it to take form and hold together. Without the prophetic texts of the Old Testament, the early Christians would not have drawn the conclusions that they did concerning Jesus. The ancient Jewish prophetic texts that the early Christians read and wrestled with in their attempt to understand who Jesus of Nazareth had been and what his life meant for their lives lie close at hand in the Christian Bible. The early Christians were the first to make their way through these texts from a specifically Christian viewpoint.¹

One of the few things scholars of Christian origins agree upon is that Jesus' followers, historically, have read the texts of the Hebrew Bible through the lens of the gospel traditions. When God refers to "my son" in a Hebrew biblical text, early Christians hear "Jesus" (not "David," "Solomon," "Israel," or any of a number of other historical referents for that term). Heine shares that agreement (according to the quote provided above).

But we often neglect how the influence also moved in the opposite direction: Through the first four or five centuries of the church's history (and even beyond, including to the present day), the church has also—and simultaneously—understood Jesus from the perspective of Hebrew biblical traditions. If Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead, brought the nations (= gentiles) into the kingdom of God, etc., Jesus' followers insisted on understanding these activities in light of Israel's history and sacred texts.

Heine draws our attention to this point. Jesus did not simply transform his followers' exegetical and hermeneutical understandings (though he did transform them). Jesus himself was recognized and portrayed in tones and hues directly evocative of Moses, David, the prophets, et al. I dare say that without these latter, early Christians (and we, too) would not know what to make of Jesus of Nazareth.

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¹ Heine, Reading the Old Testament, 141; my emphasis.

Heine on the ancient Church and its Bible

For the last couple weeks I've been working on a course on the history of New Testament interpretation, which is far enough afield from my own specialty to force me to research a number of interesting topics and historical figures. I'm dissatisfied with approach of the course I inherited, which provided brief synopses of how the Church has read the NT but did not require any primary readings. The approach I'm taking is to provide brief introductory comments on significant figures and then feature extended readings of actual examples of biblical interpretation from those figures.

For unrelated reasons, I picked up Ronald E. Heine's book, Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), which is part of Baker's "Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church's Future" series. Heine's goal is to examine "the central role that the Old Testament played in the formation of Christian thinking and life in the early centuries of the church" (11–12). His book feeds my growing interest in the history and writings of the post-Apostolic church, and it overlaps considerably with the material I'm researching and writing for my history course.

Heine's discussion of the Hebrew Bible among early Christians highlights just how foreign contemporary (i.e., post-Enlightenment) Christianity is to its ancient counterpart. From the end of Heine's introductory chapter:

[T]here can be no doubt that there has been an erosion of the position and authority of the Old Testament in much of Protestant theology since the beginning of the Enlightenment. Protestant theology has not had a consistent position on the role of the Old Testament in the church.

We will see in the chapters that follow that the church fathers never questioned that the Old Testament held a central position in the life of the church. They did not all agree on how it should be read in order to speak to the church but, with the exception of Marcion and perhaps a few Gnostics who were not church fathers, they never thought that it should be dismissed as uncanonical or treated as second-class literature in comparison with the New Testament. Averil Cameron has correctly observed that the energies exerted by the fathers in their explanations of the Old Testament demonstrate "how tenaciously Christians" defended it in spite of the difficulties they often encountered in interpreting it. (Heine 2007: 29, citing A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991], 110)

As I read Heine's book and the writings of the Church Fathers (esp. the Ante-Nicene Fathers), I'm beginning to think that the early Christians had a clearer sense of the importance of Israel's history and texts for their own identity than they did of how that history and those texts informed and sustained their identity. Justin, Irenaeus, Origen, et al., might not have known what to do with the Hebrew Bible (though they spent a lot effort trying to figure it out), but they knew they had to do something with it. The contemporary church, perhaps, shows itself unwilling to continue the struggle to reconcile an emphatically Christian identity with that identity's foundationally Israelite (or Mosaic, or Abrahamic, or whatever) pedigree.

some helpful articles

Both Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education frequently run interesting or helpful (or sometimes both) articles and blog posts on various issues relating to higher education and academic life. It's a commonly noted problem that many of us (myself included) spend a lot of time (and money) learning how to be practitioners of an academic discipline and then find ourselves becoming teachers. It is, perhaps, akin to apprenticing to become a carpenter and then taking a job as an architect. At any rate, here are links to some articles I've found useful (or just interesting) lately:

• Responding to Rejection (Kerry Ann Rockquemore)
• 30 Writing Tips (Curtis J. Bonk)
• Do Your Job Better (Rachel Toor)
• Why I Hate Annual Evaluations (Ben Yagoda)
• FUNQs: Won't Ask, Won't Tell (Mary W. George)

more on panning a book

In July of 2009 I wrote a brief post on how to pan a book, which is actually a very difficult skill to acquire. I have had personal experience commenting on a book I found less than helpful, and as I look back over my comments I find I'm not always as successful as I would like (why did I feel the need to mention Gidget?). Even so, there is a quantum leap between the sometimes less-than-gracious comments we make in the heat of frustration at another scholar's arguments (again, Gidget?!) and the complete breach of professionalism and courtesy that we sometimes find in critical book reviews. (I'm reminded of Bruce Malina's scathing review of David A. deSilva; feel free to mention any other shockingly, even scandalously negative reviews you may have encountered in the comments to this post.)

So it's with a measure of dismay and—to be honest—embarrassment that I point out J. K. Elliott's review of Chris Keith's book on the Pericope Adulterae (which I also reviewed for Biblical Theology Bulletin; you can find some of my comments here). Keith's book is a well-written, focused, clear, and insightful monograph on the problematic story (textually and theologically) of Jesus and the adulterous woman. There are certainly things to argue with in the book, especially if you disagree with the book's theoretical and methodological underpinnings (I don't, but one certainly could).

But instead of summarizing the book's argument and then identifying its most conspicuous strengths and weaknesses (which is, after all, what critical book reviews are for!), Elliott engages in a rambling discussion that ranges erratically across the book's clear structure. He makes idiosyncratic judgments at multiple points (referring to "the pretentious title to chapter 8" as well as one "ugly heading" and "another ugly term") rather than engaging Keith's argument, which raises the question why Elliott found himself unable to spar with the book's substance rather than its surface. The final paragraph of the review, which I reproduce below, is only ad hominem attack rather than critical engagement.

J. K. Elliott: You've embarrassed yourself by publishing this review. You are clearly a top-rate and well-respected practitioner of biblical scholarship, and rightly so. Your contributions to the field are enviable. But your conduct is reprehensible. It takes a big person to train up and nurture a promising young scholar (e.g., Helen Bond, whom you mention in your review); it takes an average person to co-exist within the professional guild. However, it takes a small person to take pot-shots from on high. If Keith's book suffers logical, evidentiary, or other weaknesses, engage them. If you cannot or will not, kindly return your gratis copy of the book to the publisher (given "the enormous cost of this reproduced thesis as a book") so that someone with more interest in distilling and evaluating its argument can do so. You, sir, owe the paid subscribers to the Journal of Theological Studies an apology.

As promised, here's the closing paragraph of Elliott's review. In case I haven't been clear: This is shameful public behavior that I wouldn't accept from my undergraduate students; I certainly wouldn't expect this from an accomplished and storied scholar.

A few weeks before the publication of the book Keith allowed himself the luxury of repeating the contents of most of chapter 5 concerning the textual evidence for the pericope in an article in Novum Testamentum 51 (2009), pp. 209–31: ‘The Initial Location of the Pericope Adulterae in Fourfold Tradition’ [sic]. Given the enormous cost of this reproduced thesis as a book, its essential argument as given in the journal article may be a sufficient summary of the whole for most busy and money-conscious readers. The embarrassing and overblown personal tributes in the Preface (currently a needlessly maudlin convention in too many a published thesis) end (p. xiv) with the realistic statement that only ‘a handful will really read’ this book of little consequence.

Shameful.