The April Carnival: The ‘You Can’t Be Serious With All This Wife of Jesus Fragment Chatter’ Edition

This month’s carnival will bring the best of the best to you with a special focus on the debunking of the absurdities which always spring up around Easter and Christmas (i.e., ‘Noah’ and ‘The Jesus Wife Fragment’).  To keep the Carnival of sensible length, much will be left aside that surely might be included (but which weren’t because either you lot didn’t tell me about them or I thought they were boring and pointless or had too many misspelled words or poor grammar or mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer or worst of all, you sport a soul patch and have a lifesize cutout of yourself on your blog header).  Explore for yourself the great blogs merely sampled here.

Hebrew Bible

George Athas debunked the notion that an Egyptian stele had some connection with the Exodus and he also debunked the rabid lunacy (!) of the blood moon nutbaggers.

Antonio Lombatti does what he does best- he busts some Exodus myths.

Ken Ham had something to say about the Noah Movie…  (and I’m including this one just for the sake of Joel Watts who is, unlike me, a HUGE fan of Ham’s work.  HUGE fan.  Fanboy fan level).  Much better are the observations of Joel Baden, Jacob Wright, and of course Bob Cargill.  Bob Mattson’s remarks are also worth reading.

Bryan Bibb has some thoughts on idols and idolatry in connection with a new book he’s reading (and reviewing)- called Divine Substitution: Humanity as the Manifestation of Deity in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, by Stephen L. Herring. 

[Gabe Martini interviewed someone called T.Michael.Law about some book on the LXX which suggests, it seems, that God only spoke Greek or something along those lines.  I haven’t read it but I think it’s a graphic novel or something marginalia-ish.  And since this is the Hebrew Bible section of the Carnival and the LXX isn’t in Hebrew, I’ve had to place this entry as an appendage to this portion].

 

New Testament

Al Street shares a review of his book.

Roberta Mazza has some fascinating thoughts on the Green Manuscript Collection.

Bart Ehrman took notice of Paul’s ‘judicial’ model of salvation.

Peter Kirby has assembled every post under the sun concerning the ridiculously insignificant thoroughly inauthentic ‘Jesus Wife’ fragment.  If such things as that are of interest, don’t skip Pete’s post.   Christian Askeland has shown that the ‘Jesus Wife’ fragment is totally bogus.  It’s time for those who assert authenticity to admit that they’ve been duped- or suffer the loss of academic credibility (in this matter alone).  Mark Goodacre had a few things to say about the ‘Jesus Wife’ thingy, along with links to various and sundry responses by people not convinced by hype and wishful thinking.  And then he broke the sad news that the Smithsonian channel would pollute the airwaves (cable waves, satellite waves, whatever) with their Dreck.  Farewell, media integrity.  Mark then added a post rounding up all the posts (or some of them, or a few of them) which focused on the silly thing.

Chris Tilling lamented the self-preening of much NT scholarship at the end of March.  The sell by date is expired, but it’s still edible.  And more important than the Noah film AND the Jesus Wife fragment combined and multiplied 5000 times.

Phil Long has an interesting book excerpt post on the 7 Churches of Revelation.

Cliff ‘I Am Not Producing the DCH Just To drive You Mad Jim West’ Kvidahl has a brief but nice post on the New Testament scholar Adolf Schlatter.

Krista Dalton isn’t a fan of the ‘Christian Seder’.  I don’t blame her.  They’re not only supercessionistic, they’re also more than a little absurd.  They are the sort of thing that people who spend 15 minutes in the soup line doling out gravy to feel good about themselves and believe doing so makes them good and compassionate would do.  Christians aren’t Jews.  Unless they are Jews.  Who happen to be Christians.  There’s no point ‘play acting’.

Michael Barber posted a blog entry and a podcast on Crucifixion.  Very nice work.  Nice.  Nice too is Chris Brady’s piece on the Passover.

T&T Clark have posted another excerpt from Geza Vermes’ last volume posthumously published on Herod.  Great stuff.  (But, I’ve always wondered, does T&T stand for Tommy and Timmy?)

Archaeology

The ASOR blog had a great essay on the Passover as Jesus would have known it.  Spectacular sensibility.  ASOR also has a piece on the participation of women in the field of archaeology.

George Athas found the jawbone of a Hasmonean Ass!

There’s loads of great stuff on Israel Finkelstein’s blog.  You’ll find days of reading.

Aren Maeir lectured in a couple of places in the US of A in April.  If you weren’t able to attend, maybe you could write and ask him to share his paper with you.  I love hearing Aren present.  He’s super bright.

Lee Ritmyer disclosed the glorious news that the chisel which Jesus used to build Herod’s Temple single handedly has been found!  It’s a miracle!!!!  [That sentence may or may not be true as it stands.  What is certain is that an ancient chisel has been found.  Wow… By the time this Carnival appears there will probably already be a book out on it titled ‘Chiseling History With The Chisel of Jesus’].

George Athas and Antonio Lombatti both divulged the discovery of a Seal which proves that the Assyrians occupied the land of Israel (and so consequently can lay claim to it today).

Digging in the Digital age is a new blog that may be worth keeping an eye on.  Maybe.

Miscellaneous

Antony Perrot (who is just a delightful, insightful, clever lad) has mention of a conference which folk may find interesting.

Bryan Bibb attended a conference of sorts- something called ShalomFest.  He even presented a paper there.  Bryan is a great presenter.  In fact, and I think those who have heard both he and Amy-Jill Levine present papers will agree (or should) – Bryan is sort of the male AJL.  Yes, he’s that good (and everyone knows how much I love AJ).  If you ever have a chance to hear Bryan at SBL or elsewhere- DO IT.

Peter Enns had a really fine essay on being criticized and criticizing others.  Sadly, though, he committed the unpardonable sin and misspelled Rudolf Bultmann’s name.  Here’s a screen shot lest he fixed it (I hope he did) and someone accuse me of making something up (which I would NEVER do [on a day of the week whose name ends in a Z].

I wept when I saw that.  Wept.

Wayne Coppins tried to cheer me up a bit with a discussion of various German words.  It almost worked.  For a few minutes I was in what it seems some people call ‘a good mood’…

They celebrated Bruce Metzger’s life and scholarship at Princeton in April.  Those who attended were doubtless amazed and delighted.

Michael Pahl had some thoughts in a guest post on Scot McKnight’s blog (Michael used to blog but he quit) on the World Vision fiasco.  He also had something to say about the Bible… so, maybe he’s back to blogging after an 8 year vacation.

Akma Adam posted something with words in it about words and words.  It’s not very wordy. But it does have words.

Larry Hurtado had some nice things to say about Eldon Jay Epp.  Take a moment to read it.

The End…

That’s it.  Those are ALL of the good posts this month.  No need to visit the official carnival (if there even is one).  Come back next month when there will be another one, less gritty and more entertaining… I promise.  If not, Joel Watts will eat a raw possum freshly killed on a West Virginia backroad.