Danske Tidskrifter - Danish theological journals online

I don't presume that you all read Danish, but as I know some readers do, I would like to point out that several Danish theological journals are now going on-line. Forlaget ANIS announces that
Kritisk Forum for Praktisk Teologi,
Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift, and
Bibliana
are available from this webpage:ANIS-Tidsskrifter

The first one deals primarily with Pastoral Theology, the third one is a popular one, written more for the general interested public.
But Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift (DTT) is the only serious well qualified Danish journal (Danmarks eneste fagteologiske tidsskrift med artikler af høj videnskabelig klasse), publishing articles of high quality.

The following articles from the most recent issues of DTT might be interesting to Philonic scholars: Henrik Tronier: Åbenbaring, himmelrejse og opstandelse hos Paulus (Revelation, heavenly journeys and resurrection in the works of Paul)(1/2000)

Per Bilde: Nye træk i Josefus-forskningen. Om nogle overvejelser over deres betydning for studiet af antik jødedom og kristendommens grundlæggelse (New issues Josephus research. Some considerations on their importance for the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity)(1/2000).

Niels Hyldahl: Troels Engberg-Pedersen: Paulus and the Stoics (Review article on T. Engberg-Pedersen's book: Paul and the Stoics)(4/2000).

Jesper Hyldahl: »Gnosticisme« eller »Gnosis«? Overvejelser over en vanskelig forskningsterminologi ('Gnosticsism' or 'Gnosis'; some reflections on a difficult terminology (2/2001)
So far only the issues of 2000 and 2001 are online, but it looks like more is to come.

EABS Annual Meeting 2004

The Annual Meeting of the European Association of Biblical Studies will be held this year in Groningen July 25-28, in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting. The programme and abstracts are now available.
Skimming over the program, several topics are related to Judaism, but none deals explicitly with Diaspora Judaism, and no papers seem to deal directly with the works of Philo. Some of the topics are nevertheless relevant, as this one: Early Christianity between Hellenism and Judaism, focusing especially on Magic.

Review of Biblical Literature May 24th.

New Reviews in Review of Biblical Literature have been published. This time the following reviews should be of some interest to philonics and those interested in Diaspora Judaism in general: Whealey, Alice, Josephus on Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Controversy from Late Antiquity to Modern Times (Studies in Biblical Literature, 36). New York: Lang, 2003. Reviewed by Dennis C. Stoutenburg.

King, Karen L. What is Gnosticism? Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. Reviewed by Marvin Meyer

Back again....

Well, I'm back again after a week of absence; being busy doing some completely different things that I am used to; that is, doing some carpenter work at our leisure cabin in southern Norway. It is probably not my favorite work (resulting in a aching back..), but as I am a son of carpenter, and a brother of a carpenter, I'm doing my best too....

Getting back to my PC; the first thing I had to do was to clear out 700 junk mail from my private e-mail box. It turns out that my site provider does not have a spam filter, so I probably will have to change provider in a few days. That will probably, alas, result in some problems of acessesing my Resource Pages for Biblical Studies. But I can't live with a hundred spam-mails each day.

Another issue; I finally got to see The Passion of Christ! After having read a lot about it, I was well prepared... My personal conclusion is that I liked it, but do think the 'violence-scenes' were somewhat overloaded. The fleash-backs functioned wonderfully. I haven't seen any commenting on the waterdrop that fell from the sky (heaven?) in one of the last scenes. How should that be interpreted?

And I have changed the layout. The light house at the left corner is of course to remind you about the lighthouse at Alexandria! :)

OK, I'll be back soon with some Philo related stuff.

Blogger offline..

In the rest of this week, and to the end of the next I will be offline, with no opportunities for blogging.
Maybe Kåre will find something to blog about; if not,- see you later......:)

Writing in the Greco-Roman World

"The skills and techniques that are necessary to be able to write any number of genres are taught in every educational system. Education in the Greco-Roman world was no different, though perhaps it did so with a rigor and thoroughness that would surprise those who are familiar only with current methods of teaching writing. Writing was also central to Greco-Roman education, at least in the latter stages of the curricular sequence. Just when and how writing was taught will be the burden of the following discussion of Greco-Roman education." Read further in this brief, but interesting article by Ronald F. Hock. You can find the article on the SBL site.
For further reading on 'reading and writing in the Greaco-Roman world, I would suggest you might turn to H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (London, 1956); HarryJ. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church. A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, 1995), and Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (Sheffield, 2001).

Remember Amalek!

Because of my own work with the traditions of 'zealotism' in ancient Israel and up to 1. century CE, I have notified a new book by Louis H. Feldman. I have not seen the book yet, as it is published quite recently. But I will have to look into it.Louis H. Feldman, “Remember Amalek!” Vengeance, Zealotry, and Group Destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus. Published by Hebrew Union College Press/Wayne State University Press, 2004. $34.95s cloth. 250 pages.
The Publishers own announcement runs thus: The divine commandment to exterminate all the Amalekites—men, women, children, even animals who have no free will—is what in contemporary terms has been called no less than genocide. Louis Feldman helps us to understand how three ancient Jewish commentators on the Bible—Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus—wrestled with the issues involved in this divine command, especially its provisions that an entire people must be punished for all time for the misdeeds of their ancestors.
Feldman broadens the issue by examining several biblical parallels both where God commands the destruction of whole groups of people, and where there was no specific divine commandment. Finally, he considers the issue of the justification of God's reward to Phineas for his zealotry in bypassing the law when he put to death a Jew and a non-Jew for their immorality. All of these biblical passages raise difficult questions, to which, Feldman demonstrates, there are no simple answers.

May update of RPBS

The May version of my Resource Pages for Biblical Studies are now online. The update consists mainly of some Bible translations, and several articles by Vernon K. Robbins. You can see the latest update here.

I now do think the time has come for me to seriously rethink if I have the time resources available needed to continue updating these pages. Most probably by the end of this year I will limit my update to the Philo pages;that is the Philo Resource pages, and perhaps, - this weblog. I need the summer to make my decision; untill autumn times arrive, I'll still do some updating.