SBL 2010

I went to the SBL 2010 online program book and searched for "duke". This is what came up, in the order that it came up.

If I missed something let me know.

See you in Atlanta!


Donyelle McCray, Duke Divinity School
When Illness Calls: Insights from Julian of Norwich’s Call to Frailty (20 min)

Carol Meyers, Duke University
Sustenance and Sacrality: Household Foodways in Ancient Israel (20 min)

Tom McGlothlin, Duke University
Patristic Rhetorical Analyses of Romans 3:1-8/9 (30 min)

Andrew D. Rowell, Duke University
John Howard Yoder’s Missional Exiles and Jeremiah 29: A Case Study for Missional Hermeneutics (20 min)

Richard B. Hays, Duke University
Intimations of Divine Identity Christology in Luke's Reading of Scripture (30 min)

Kavin Rowe, Duke University
The Return of Allegory: Scholarly Exegesis and the Literal Sense of Luke-Acts (30 min)

Nathan Eubank, Duke University
To Fulfill All Righteousness: Kenotic Glory in Matthew (20 min)

T.J. Lang, Duke University
Luke’s ‘Little Apocalypse’ is not about the Parousia: Reconsidering the Subject and Setting of Luke 17.22-37 (30 min)

Erin Darby, Duke University
Icons in Context: Judean Pillar Figurines from the Top Down or the Bottom Up? (30 min)

Jill Hicks-Keeton, Duke University
Rewritten Gentiles: Joseph and Aseneth and the Greek Bible (30 min)

Lori Baron, Duke University
Did Matthew Misunderstand Mark? The Shema in the First Gospel (25 min)

Matthew Thiessen, Duke University
Proselutos in Light of the Translation Techniques of the LXX Translators (30 min)

Laura Lieber, Duke University
The Poetry of Creation: Amittai’s Yotzer le-Hatan (25 min)

Dave Nielsen, Duke University
Singular Readings in the Text of the 'Unknown Gospel' (30 min)

C. Kavin Rowe, Duke University
The Grammar of Life: the Areopagus Speech and Pagan Tradition (30 min)

Stephen C. Carlson, Duke University
Eschatological Viticulture in 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and Papias (30 min)

David M. Moffitt, Duke University
Blood, Life, and Purification: Reassessing Hebrews’ Christological Appropriation of Yom Kippur (20 min)

Rebekah Eklund, Duke University
The Identity of the Crowds in the Passion Narrative (30 min)

Matthew Thiessen, Duke University
Circumcision in the Early Church according to Acts (28 min)

T.J. Lang, Duke University
Critical Interaction with Paul’s Exodus Exegesis (1 Cor 10): Origen and Augustine (30 min)

Dave Nielsen, Duke University
Singular Readings and the Community Behind the 'Unknown Gospel' (20 min)

Bradley R. Trick, Duke University
The Singular Abrahamic Seed and the Law’s Supplementing of the Promise in Gal 3:15-20 (30 min)

Ken Olson, Duke University
Eusebius, Porphyry, and the Testimonium Flavianum (35 min)

Susan Eastman, Duke University
"The evil I do not want is what I do": Sin and Evil in Romans (30 min)

Stephen M. Wilson, Duke University
David’s Initiation into Manhood: Reading 1 Samuel 17 as a Rite of Passage Narrative (30 min)

Presian Burroughs, Duke University
Ethical Readings of Romans 8: Compassionate Attention or Liberative Action in a Groaning World (30 min)

Timothy Wardle, Duke University
Mark as a Sectarian Document? An Investigation into Mark’s Views on the Law (35 min)

Christian Theology and the Bible
11/21/2010
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: International South - Hyatt Regency
Theme: Book Review: C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford, 2009)
Stephen Fowl, Loyola College in Maryland, Presiding (10 min)
Beverly Gaventa, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (25 min)
Robert Wall, Seattle Pacific University, Panelist (25 min)
Douglas Harink, King's University College (Edmonton), Panelist (25 min)
Stephen Fowl, Loyola College in Maryland, Panelist (25 min)
C. Kavin Rowe, Duke University, Respondent (25 min)

Ideological Criticism
Theme: Book Review: James Crossley, Jesus in an Age of Terror (Equinox, 2008)
Randall Reed, Appalachian State University, Presiding
Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (25 min)
Zeba Crook, Carleton University, Panelist (25 min)
William Arnal, University of Regina, Panelist (25 min)
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, Australia, Panelist (25 min)
James Crossley, University of Sheffield, Respondent (30 min)

Finding Your “Niche” in Biblical Scholarship
11/20/2010
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Hanover Hall AB - Hyatt Regency
Theme: Hosted by the Student Advisory Board
Patrick George McCullough, University of California-Los Angeles, Presiding
Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Dale B. Martin, Yale University, Panelist (10 min)
Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (10 min)
Paula Fredriksen, Boston University, Panelist (10 min)
Discussion (90 min)

Mounce on Deponent Verbs

The third edition of Mounce's Greek textbook has a little note in the margin on p. 152 where he discusses deponent verbs:

There is some interesting research currently happening that questions whether there is such a thing as deponency. For example, many deponent verbs are intransitive (36.10) and therefore cannot be passive. See the class website for an ongoing discussion.

I join those who feel that the notion of deponency in Greek is problematic, and I will be instructing my class that the so-called deponent verbs should really be thought of as (inherently) middle verbs.

Again, Reno on places to study theology

Rusty Reno has once again offered his thoughts on where to study theology and once again has Duke at the top, this time alongside Notre Dame.

p.s. Reno again says that Duke's PhD is offered through the Religion department, which is false. This common misconception was debunked by Mark Goodacre the last time Reno wrote about this.

Duke's Graduate Program in Religion is at the top of the NRC rankings. In other news, Duke fails to mention their reception in the SBL program book

Good news and bad news.

The good news: while there are different ways of reading the data, the recent study of U.S. doctoral programs by the National Research Council ranks Duke's Graduate Program in Religion either at #1 or something close to it. The significance of all this will be debated, no doubt.

The bad news: according to the SBL program book there is no Duke reception. There is a rumor, however, that the reception is at this place and time:

11/21/2010 (Sunday)
9:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Hyatt Regency
Room: International North

Can anyone confirm this?

Update: as you can see in the comments, this is the correct place and time.
Thanks to Lisa and Mark!

Matthew Thiessen's new Canadian BS blog

Matthew Thiessen, a recent Duke NT PhD grad and current Senior Lecturer in New Testament College of Emmanuel and St. Chad and Lutheran Theological Seminary at the University of Saskatchewan, has a new blog.

Here's his description of the blog's purpose:

Greetings. Having just moved to Saskatoon, I thought it would be a good idea to begin blogging about teaching New Testament at the College of Emmanuel and St. Chad and the Lutheran Theological Seminary, member colleges of the Saskatoon Theological Union at the University of Saskatchewan. I hope to post notices of exciting events that are happening around here, as well as musings on the study of religion.

I hope you come by often!

Check it out.

Debugging Mounce: "Contraction" (?!) in the Neuter Plural

We are all using the very popular Mounce textbook for the introductory Greek course in the Duke Divinity School. On the Duke Newt blog, we are planning on blogging some of our experiences with this textbook.

Occasionally, Mounce's explanations don't seem quite right. One example occurs on p. 32 of the 3d edition, in section 6.12 on case endings. As a bit of background, Mounce takes the unusual approach of giving the first and second endings apart from the stem-vowel (alpha/eta or omicron, respectively), rather than, as more common, expect students to learn the endings with the stem vowel.

Mounce's approach, however, runs into a wrinkle for the second declension, nom./acc. neuter plural ending, as in ἔργα (from singular ἔργον), because the omicron stem vowel is no longer there. Here's how Mounce attempts to explain it:

6.12 ... The underline (α means that the case ending joins with the final stem vowel.⁵ ...

⁵ This is called "contraction," and I will discuss it in detail later. For example, the stem of the noun ἔργον is ἔργο. When it is in the neuter plural its form is ἔργα. The omicron and alpha have "contracted" to alpha. ἔργο + α > ἔργα.

This explanation is simply wrong. In particular, omicron and alpha do not "contract" to a (short!) alpha. Rather, omicron + alpha contracts to a (long) omega (as Mounce later recognizes in the chart on p. 343).

The explanation is also wrong as a historical matter. The alpha of the neuter plural is not the result of an o-vowel plus an alpha ending; rather, it is the ordinary reflex of the Proto-Indo-European ending of *-eH₂, which the vowel *e plus the a-coloring laryngeal H₂. In this case, the stem vowel *o changes to *e by ablaut, which then is colored to α by the following H₂.

Now, I don't expect introductory grammars of Biblical Greek to be giving the details of Proto-Indo-European morphology, but I do expect that their explanations of the Greek be correct. In this case, a more accurate explanation is that the neuter plural nom./acc. ending -α simply replaces the second declension stem vowel. There is no need to appeal to "contraction," which never occurred historically here and which apparently behaves differently from how omicron and alpha normally contract.

Nathan Eubank in JBL

Duke Newt's very own Nathan Eubank has a new article out in the latest JBL 129/3 (2010): 521–536.

A Disconcerting Prayer: On the Originality of Luke 23:34a

Besides making a persuasive case for the long reading of Luke 23:34 (Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing), Eubank also demonstrates the important (and so often ignored!) methodological point that "if the goal of transcriptional probability is to determine what a scribe is most likely to have written, it would seem prudent to examine what the scribe’s near contemporaries wrote about the passage in question" (536).

Eubank's article is an excellent example of the importance of the history of exegesis for textual criticism.