Courtesy of the very kind folk at Hendrickson Publishers, I have a free copy of Chris VanLandingham’s Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul to give away (I’ve written about the book previously here and here). However, rather than first come first served, I thought it would be fun to make a little competition out of it.The competition is simply this: Whoever manages to pull off the most persuasive and sycophantically frenzied brown-nosing and sucking up in the comments will win the book!
OK, not really.
If you want the book, leave a comment about what you think will be the next big breakthrough in New Testament scholarship, and the most interesting or amusing contribution wins the book. Both Anja and I will judge the entries and announce the winner in about a week.
(Thanks for the idea, Ben!)
21 comments:
Jesus turns out to be gay. Oh wait, they've already said that.
I'm thinking quickly here...*makes a quick online donation to CTRVHM, says a quick prayer*...
...here's what's going to happen. The US will elect a very liberal president in 2008, probably Hillary Clinton. She will very quickly be labeled the whore of Babylon. A large segment of fundamentalist Xianity in N. America and elsewhere will then REVERSE previous trends in apocalyptic "scholarship". America and the democratic, individualistic, capitalist West are the "heroes" (versus Islam, Communism, secular humanism in Europe, etc) are no longer the "New Jerusalem" sorts. Instead, America will become the bad guy. A new Left Behind series will have to be produced as a result. Apocalyptic video games will be produced where Christians must burn the Constitution of the United States, assassinate liberal leaders, etc.
I realize I'm using the word "scholarship" loosely here, but please give me bonus points for likelihood here--this will happen in the next ten years.
It will turn out that the King James bible really *IS the bible Jesus and Paul read
The biggest revolution in biblical scholarship is already present, but not yet fully come. You and I are a part of it Chris, though you may not know it.
Within the next 18 months, the current ivory tower elite of NT scholarship will be replaced. The new innovative thinkers won't be the big book writers, but non-PhD bloggers. We will reside over meetings, make all the major decisions in the SBL, and every unformatted and unedited blog post will be as powerful as Scofield's notes. Our elite group's (over which I officiate—you're the treasurer) posts will be the subject of countless commentaries, which will be nicknamed the blogarim (playing on pesharim of course).
I shouldn't even be telling you this, but I wanted to let you in on it. Just a heads up. I will warn the rest of the illuminati in due course.
Danny
Greek variants. One will find that the Gospels intended to read oikos instead of oinos. This means that fundamentalism holds true and drinking wine will remain a sin and Jesus will retain his sinlessness.
Whereas the text currently reads oinos 'wine' it should read oikos 'house'. This will be determined by really smart PhD people such as the distinguished Tilling as shorthand for 'house blend coffee' and will be inserted back into the translations as such.
Hence, when Mary complains to Jesus that they are out of *coffee* she is obviously irritated by the lack of caffienne and is demanding mocha. And Luke 5 will take on a renewed meaning because we all know that the freshly brewed house blend is much better than the older. Further, we will be reminded of the hypertension and excitement which can arise from drinking too much coffee (Acts 2).
I think the next big breakthrough in New Testament studies will be the dissolution of the Q hypothesis. I also think that redating some of the early papyri will take place in light of new manuscript evidence.
Short and sweet.
Keep up the good work, Chris!
-Josh
The NPP will be found to be a hoax?
The revolution has already take hold with Bauckham's new book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, following on from the successful demolition of the [Gospel's] Community Hypothesis.
My prediction is that Crossan & Co will repent and believe for the Dramatic [read: Eyewitness] Turn is so close, you can reach out and touch it. This means, the Jesus Seminar will recant and Bauckham's fame will rub off on you, due to your associations with him.
Failing that, I'm a poor newly married student, give it to ME! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanx...
: )
Sadly, I can't divulge that, because the time is not yet full.
Well...
Jimmy, +Tom and myself are working on a collaborative project entitled, 'Chrisendom - three visions'. Dunn will propose that your motives for blogging aren't about trying to 'get in' to the worldwide theological community but are, instead, an expression of what it means to already 'be in' the community. Wright plans to demonstrate how your posts sequentially echo the great jewish metanarrative of Creation-Fall-Election-Exile-Redemption/Restoration, with your posts about Bauckham's new book 'reimagining' the giving of Torah from Sinai. And I plan to juxtapose their scholarship with a brief overview of how you're a lovely, kind, generous, supportive friend, husband, colleague, son and brother and how your dikaiosune positively radiates through your blog.
Problem is we're desperately in need of source material by VanLandingham...
That's easy.
You will be the next big break through in NT scholarship!
And to boot you are definitely going to sex up the whole NT scholarship enterprise with your dead sexy good looks! Dancing Wright has nothing on you Chris!
The next big thing? Tom Wright will abandon Wrightianity and it will even make the headlines of the world's secular papers. He will come to his senses, abandon his illicit theories, and become a thoroughgoing Bultmannian.
As a result, a great revival of interest in Bultmann's theology will come about and people will actually read Bultmann himself instead of stupid garbage ABOUT Bultmann by funda-gelicals.
Further, with the new Bultmannian era, global warming will end. The war in Iraq will cease and all will throw away their guns for flowers and boxes of chocolate. Then, George Bush and Tony Blair will admit that they were wrong to go to war and apologize, weeping, to the people of the world.
Finally, Switzerland itself will become the promised land of Biblical studies and theology. Hordes of seekers will flood Zurich in search of Zwingli's spirit, but, alas, that spirit has already been deposited elsewhere... in Tennessee of all places! And why? Because the whole earth will come to realize that Zwingli was the finest theologian to walk the planet and Bultmann the finest exegete.
And Wrightianity will die....
*makes another online donation to CTRVHM*
With all the money JB is donating, he could buy the bloody book! Clearly he has plenty of money to toss around and hence should be eliminated from the competition.
;-)
The same could be said for Jim, the book donation king!!!
Postmodernism takes a real solid hold of the academy of New Testament studies and through intensive research (and some good ol' fashioned meditation), we discover that the Bible never actually existed.
The next big breakthrough in NT scholarship? The Rapture.
In a few months time a thousand theological debates will be settled in one fell swoop as all the true believers and their books are swept up by the heavenly vacuum cleaner. All of those associated with the Beast ... uh ... Bishop of Durham will find themselves left behind, trapped in the tribulation, in which they must repent of their theological iniquities and figure out the BIBLICAL way to view Second Temple Judaism.
After the rapture Christ will return and will spend the next thousand years writing refutations of NPP theology for denominational journals.
An attempt at a serious prediction:
In the next couple of decades there will be a few more shocks in scholarship (of the NPP sort), as Social-Context research really starts fully filtering in to mainstream scholarship. The initial diversity seen in the variety of NPP positions will begin to coalesce toward one main view. This view however, having resulted from a number of significant modifications to the traditional Protestant view, will stand in a somewhat stark antithesis to traditionalist Protestantism – far more so than current NPP views. A fight for the gospel will result, with traditionalist Protestants in somewhat united mass pitched against the obviously different doctrine now being taught by most scholars. The minor bickering that resulted from the NPP will look like a tempest in a teapot by comparison. A major split will occur across Protestantism over this, with the traditionalist churches sticking to their guns but ending up in obscurity as a theological backwater, while the more mainstream, academic, and emergent groups will follow the new view and become the major players in New Protestantism.
Andrew has just described Dante's 11th level of hell.
Dang, Alastair's answer was good.
Here's my take on the next big break in NT scholarship:
NT scholars will continue to blur the distinctions between "biblical studies," "theology," "spirituality," and "Christian living." This is a trend that has already begun (cf. Brazos' "theological commentary series" on the bible, or books like Colossians Remixed by Walsh and Keesmaat) but it will overflow in some very interesting ways.
For example, as more and more people come to accept the genre of "apocalyptic" literature as polically subversive material that provides a theological perspective on current or imminent events, there will be a resurgence of apocalyptic writing that has nothing to do with the "end of the world." Biblical scholars, having learned from the "theopolitical imagination" exhibited in the stories told by Jesus, John, and the prophets, will wrest a whole genre of literature from quacks like LeHaye and Jenkins, and all those who want to take a dangerously subversive form of literature and dilute it into impotent nonsense.
Furthermore, with the increasing dominance of narrative criticism, and the postmodern emphasis upon story-telling, biblical scholars, who will emphasize that all stories are not equally valuable (something the emergent stream may wish to consider?). Instead, having learned from the parables of Jesus, biblical scholars will engage with society by crafting contemporary parables -- stories that sound familiar but contain a shocking twist -- and in this way they will provide the foundation for a Christian worldview that challenges the dominant worldview(s) of our culture.
Historical Theology will develope into the biggest focus of NT scholarship.
Crikey, I'm stuck - there are some flippin good responses here.
Post a Comment