Biblical Studies

On a beautiful day in San Diego at #SBL2019 I had wonderful opportunities to connect with friends (Elna Solvang, Michael Patella, and Deanna Thompson). Yes, I did skip some sessions. I also looked into options for a travel seminar in the footsteps of Paul for students at Concordia. I attended an academic session on Corinthians and a fascinating session exploring the various roles of space in Biblical interpretation.

I found the concepts of first space (physical), second space (theoretical) and third space (representational) to be potentially helpful tools in pursuing meaning of a text. Four speakers worked with the Hodayot psalms from Qumran (1QHa), 1 Enoch, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida in Mark, and Paul’s shipwreck voyage to Rome in Acts. I must ponder these concepts more. #WeAreCSP

Saturday afternoon I moved to the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (#SBL2019). I first attended a session on the Johannine Epistles. I found particularly helpful the analysis of the languages similarities between the fourth gospel and the epistles by Hugo Mendez. He argues that the density of the parallels in the epistles point to an effort of the author to identify with the fourth gospel, rather than the similarities being the product of a Johannine school. I have never been convinced of the “school” hypothesis. The work here give another way to look at the data, although I am also not comfortable of immediately assuming a pseudepigraphic agenda.

I was also able to meet with reps from Zondervan to set up Concordia’s participation in a pilot of their new enhanced digital textbook project.

The presidential lecture rounded off the day. #WeAreCSP