I. Howard Marshall on Luke (NIGTC) (1978), though its been around a while (!), nearly always hits the significant exegetical issues of a given passage. Marshall is also concise: Whereas some commentators need two volumes, Marshall is able to pack it into one. I always consult Marshall.

Joel B. Green on Luke (NICNT) (1997) is good especially for his narrative-critical sensitivities in the text. Like Marshall, Green is concise, but he is unable to cover near as much ground! I usually consult Green.

François Bovon on Luke (EKK in German and Hermeneia in English) (1989–2013) is a seasoned Lukan scholar. He has produced commentaries on Luke for more than two decades (though the latest works are essentially updated English versions of the EKK commentaries). Bovon is aware of a breadth of scholarship in more languages than most commentators know. I always consult Bovon. (I’m waiting to get my hands on the second and third volumes of the Hermeneia series, one of which was out just last year).

John Nolland on Luke (WBC) (1989–1993) is certainly helpful, though I increasingly find the commentary “hit and miss.” Am I the only one who finds him majoring on minors and minoring on majors? Even so, I usually consult Nolland.

Darrell Bock on Luke and Acts (BECNT) (1994–2007) used to be a ‘go to’ commentary, though both the two Luke volumes and the one on Acts have fallen in line with the others. Bock is exegetically rigorous, perhaps the greatest strength of volumes, and I like the layout of the BECNT series. I just don’t find myself reading much in the Luke volumes that I’ve not read in Marshall, Bock’s Doktorvater. Of course, the Acts volume is a bit different. I almost always consult Bock.

John T. Carroll on Luke (NTL) (2012) is helpful for its awareness of recent scholarship, as well as its narrative and theological sensitivity. You can read more in my recent reviews (part one, two, three). I sometimes consult Carroll.

Joseph Fitzmyer on Luke (AB) (1981–) is helpful for its attention to detail. I find also him concise, in many ways like Marshall. I consult him sometimes but that is only because I don’t have my own copies! (The library copies are in high demand).

Craig Keener on Acts (Baker) (2012–?) is exhaustive. That’s an understatement. You’ve probably heard how big it is. The first volume (of four!) is over 1,000 pages. He’s left me no choice but to consult him! On a more serious note, I’ve found the first volume helpful, up to date, and showing a great awareness of ancient primary sources.

Richard Pervo on Acts (Hermeneia) (2008) is reasonably up-to-date and concise. I’m not crazy about the layout of the Hermeneia series, but Pervo is helpful and I find myself consulting him often.

I’ll stop there. These are among those I find most helpful.

Increasingly I consult the German commentators, the likes of Schürmann (1969, 1994), Wolter (2008), and Schneider (1977, 1984) particularly. Of course, I’ve left out older commentators (Plummer, Cadbury, Conzelmann, Haenchen, etc.) though I often make use of them, too. Tannehill, Tiede, Johnson, Garland, Evans (C. A. and C. F.), Loisy, and others deserve mention, but to be honest, they’re not among those I consult immediately unless I am looking at an issue I know one of them covers well.

I’d be happy if you have one that ought to have made the list!

Related Posts:

• Reflections on Ebojo’s Review of The Early Text of the New Testament
• James-Brother-of-Jesus Ossuary
• Too Many Ph.D.’s?
• John T. Carroll’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (pt 2)

The Video Review

To see the product in action, I’ve put together the follow video which focuses on the book scanning use of the camera. You can watch it in HD (1080p) if you want to really see the text capture in detail.

Highlights

The camera comes with its own software which is intuitive and ‘light weight’ (easy on the hardware!).

The camera can be used with a computer to project images, take still shots, or capture/project video.

It has auto and manual exposure settings, and single or continuous auto-focus settings.

It is able to take a sufficiently high resolution photo of an open book, capturing both pages at OCR quality.

The ‘shutter’ can be controlled with the enter or return key, making for fast page turning and image capturing when scanning a book section.

I was able to scan as fast as one image every three seconds (that is 2 pgs/3 secs), though I would sometimes slow down when auto-focus delayed or my grip on the book faltered.

Scanning a book while holding it open has the disadvantage of ‘curved’ text in the captured image (fixable in scantailor), but it has the advantage of speed (in my case).

I used single auto-focus rather than continuous which seemed to work better for scanning multiple pages.

The stand itself is heavier than I expected, and this is a good thing. It keeps the camera stable.

The camera can be used with other software (like skype, etc.). While I do not anticipate using it for such, it may come in handy a time or two.

Concerns

The auto-focus occasionally produced an image that was not as sharp as expected. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t seem on par with the resolution setting. Of course, when scanning pages from a book, the distance between the camera and the book slowly changes. Even so, I think there is some room for improvement here. Having said that, the easy of use, mobility, and sufficient quality overcomes any deficiency as far as my needs go.

Also, I wonder how well the joints on the camera stand will hold up. I have no reason to believe the joints will wear quickly, but any joint will deteriorate over time.

Tech Specs

From the IPEVO site:

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• Brice Jones’ Review of Early Text of the NT and Kruger’s Response
• Print vs. Digital: The Effect of Pagination on Interpretation
• Book Reviews Series, Coming Soon
• Deissman’s Light from the Ancient Near East on sale $5.99

Empire in Luke (and Acts)

The longest excursus in the commentary (it is one of four given) is “The Reign of God and the Roman Empire in Luke’s Gospel” (398–404). Luke and Acts have received quite a bit of attention in regard to early Christian views of Rome, etc. Carroll adequately summarizes the positions, essentially creating three categories: (1) Pro-Empire (i.e., Luke-Acts basically paints Rome in a positive light); (2) Anti-Empire (i.e., Luke is critical of the empire, the narrative presents Jesus and/or the Christian community as a rival to Rome/Roman domination); and (3) A middle position (following James Scott): “In the circumstances of colonial subjugation, resistance is necessar­ily indirect, partial, ambivalent, and accompanied by varying levels of cooperation and participation.”

Carroll favors this third (middle) position:

The circumstances of Jesus’ arrival and his programmatic opening message and conduct of ministry—all these challenge and subvert conventional notions of power and authority, of honor-seeking and status maintenance. And the alternative political community and discourse and alternative social practices that come into being around Jesus, symbolically enacted in inclusive, status-blending, boundary-crossing meals, are deeply countercultural. Nevertheless, the movement, its founder, and its adherents can be characterized, not only by the narrator but also by more than one Roman judicial arbiter, as lawful, just, and posing no threat to Roman order. . . . Jesus and his followers, despite radical, visionary rhetoric, actually depose no one from a physical throne; the divine realm of which they speak will reconfigure the powers of the nations—but that world-reconfiguring will extend into the eschatological future. In the meantime, they are charged to continue to proclaim “the Lord Jesus and the reign of God”. . . . (403)

Related Posts:

• Brice Jones’ Review of Early Text of the NT and Kruger’s Response
• Book Reviews Series, Coming Soon
• Review of the Ziggi HD Document Camera
• Reflections on Ebojo’s Review of The Early Text of the New Testament

*via webcopyplus.

The Short Story

I migrated my site from sakeoftruth.com to joshualmann.com. I have also changed a few other things that made the whole migration work. Using 301 redirects, all the old links from within and without should work fine. Everything should look and function essentially the same, but a major migration like this often results in at least a few broken links. I have yet to find any, but if you do, please let me know. Thanks!

The Not-So-Short Story

For those interested in the nerdy details of the process, here’s what I did:

1. In preparation, I blocked google bot access to new domain with the following in my robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

2. I copied everything (basically) from my sakeoftruth root folder to the new one (i.e., wordpress files and databases).

3. I added the following to the wp-config.php file:

define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://www.example.com');
define('WP_HOME', 'http://www.example.com');

4. I ran a search and replace script (available for download here) to automatically (and intelligently!) replace old urls with the new in migrated databases (and yes, I deleted the script after using it!).

5. I set a permanent (301) redirect from sakeoftruth links to the new ones.

6. I modifed the robots.txt file to allow google bot access to the new domain.

7. I let Google know of the domain change (via websmaster tools) and tweaked my feedburner info.

At this point, everything was working fine, but I wanted to make an additional change.

8. I changed the blog permalink structure to “example.com/post-title,” requiring 301 redirects from all the old links (“example.com/blah/blah/post-title”) to the new ones. Because Joost de Valk is awesome, I added a simple line to the htaccess file which automatically redirects all my old post links to the new ones (find it here).

In fact, this entire process is largely based on a 2008 tutorial Joost posted on migrating a wordpress site. I also found a bit of help here.

Update: I discovered that it was necessary to manually change the upload directory for media (via “settings,” then “media” in the wordpress backend) from the old to the new, an easy fix. Had not read this anywhere, but now it appears I can upload media as usual.

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• No Related Posts

1. I can’t recall ever reading a book review which spends close to 50% of its words on typos, etc.
2. I hadn’t heard of rbecs.org prior to reading about the review on the ETC blog. Why didn’t I think of starting a book review site with some other postgrads? Free books! [Seriously, I like what I see there. Check 'em out].
3. This might be the last book OUP will be sending to RBECS.
4. If Ebojo is in interested in proofreading as a side job, interested clients need only visit the book review for an example of the quality of work.
5. This confirms what I often think after hearing Text-crit. folks speak or write: They mind the details. (Nevermind that a bunch errors wound up in a book written and edited by them). [For the record, I am pro TC and try to keep my TC skills sharp.]
6. I suspect that very few people, including the editors and authors themselves, read as carefully as Ebojo. In fact, I doubt few, if any, will read through all the observed typos pointed out in the review. Perhaps we should!

On a more serious note, I question how helpful it is to mention typos in this manner in a book review:

Is the purpose to hold authors, editors, publishers accountable? 

Is it to help the publisher make corrections if the book goes into a second printing (which few in our field do)? Why not just inform the publisher, then?

Is it to aid readers who might be confused apart from being alerted to the errors? Perhaps, but few errors cause such confusion.

Related Posts:

• James-Brother-of-Jesus Ossuary
• John T. Carroll’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (pt 2)
• John T. Carroll’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke
• Huggins on Taussig’s ‘Prostituting of Scholarship’

*Photo: Washington Post.

He addresses the claim that the James Ossuary and the “Lost Tenth Ossuary” of the Talpiot tomb are the same, especially with reference to their dimensions:

At the time Tabor claims to have checked and discovered that “the dimensions of the missing tenth ossuary are precisely the same, to the centimeter, to those of the James ossuary,” anyone who bothered to look it up knew that what he said was false, that in fact, the lost tenth ossuary was 4 centimeters longer than the James Ossuary, 1 centimeter wider, and .5 centimeters taller.

James Ossuary (Lemaire):  56 x 25 x 30.5 cm.

Lost 10^th Ossuary (Kloner): 60 x 26 x 30 cm.

All this is old news.In the 2007 book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, released in connection with Jocobovici’s The Lost Tomb of Jesus, the dimensions of the James Ossuary are reported, this time as 56.5 x 26 x 30.2 cm. (The Jesus Family Tomb, 210).

James Ossuary (Lemaire):                       56  x  25  x 30.5 cm.

James Ossuary (Jacobovici & Pellegrino) 56.5 x 26 x 30.2 cm.

Lost 10^th Ossuary (Kloner)                      60   x 26  x 30 cm.

Related Posts:

• Reflections on Ebojo’s Review of The Early Text of the New Testament
• John T. Carroll’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (pt 2)
• John T. Carroll’s Commentary on the Gospel of Luke
• Huggins on Taussig’s ‘Prostituting of Scholarship’

According to Rymer, one issue stimulating debate about Ph.D. education is the view that, at least in some disciplines, universities are producing too many Ph.D. graduates.

. . . In a 60-page paper published by Australia’s Group of Eight research-intensive universities, Rymer describes the rise of the Ph.D. in universities across the globe, the reasons why nations want more and more Ph.D.’s, the increasing diversity among doctoral students, funding constraints facing universities and efforts to improve the quality of research training.

He notes that questions have been raised about the number of Ph.D.’s a country produces, or their quality, or the relevance of the training students receive given the employment opportunities on offer.

There is also questioning of whether the intention to increase the number of Ph.D. graduates will be at the expense of their quality and whether the rewards of having a Ph.D. compensate for the costs of acquiring one.

Obviously,

. . . with an increasing proportion of the population holding the qualification, its “elite” nature tends to disappear “as does the premium that can arise from having a credential that very few other people possess.”

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• Tools in the Toolbox: Insisting Your Expertise Should Be Everyone’s
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Carroll’s introduction is succinct and adequate, not ground-breaking yet covering real ground. I give it a mark of ‘good’ on a scale of bad to excellent (that’s something like 7 out of 10), particular in view of a semi-technical audience.

On authorship, Carroll lays out the data but remains neutral, advocating for an understanding of the implied author, likely a Gentile of social status, perhaps a God-fearer. Carroll assumes the author has some amount of rhetorical training.

Regarding the date, he says the evidence only allows a date between 75 (allowing for the composition of Mark and the destruction of the Temple) and 125 AD (time for dissemination to Justin and Marcion). More precise dating relies on assumptions (4).

The audience, according to Carroll, is a diverse group (along side of Theophilus, the named recipient in Luke 1:1-4), likely in an urban center in the eastern Mediterranean (possibly broader than one city) (3). Carroll mirror-reads to gather information about the audience and their situation: “Information about the audience  . .  . only becomes evident as the Gospel unfolds . . .” (17). He suspects the readers already belonged to Christian groups, facing increasing Gentile membership, recent synagogue conflict, left wondering about its identity with the Israel of the Scriptures in the context of the Roman Empire (3–4, cf. 398 ff.). This supposed situation of the audience features prominently throughout the commentary. I will comment more at length on this in part three of my review (next week).

Regarding the unity of Luke and Acts, Carroll takes a strong view, seeing the same author behind both works, the first volume anticipating the second, and so on (9). I’ll offer a bit more on this in part three.

Carroll calls Luke “genre-bending,” a mix of bios and historia, favoring Sterling’s category of “apologetic history” (2, 5). (Not to be confused with the modern notion of historicity, which does not feature prominently in the commentary. Carroll’s focus is on the literary and theological features of the text).

Themes are also introduced here, many of which are unpacked throughout the commentary, especially in excursuses. I will dig into a few of these next time.

(Part one here. You’re reading part two. Part three here.)

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• Book Reviews Series, Coming Soon
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• Tools in the Toolbox: Insisting Your Expertise Should Be Everyone’s
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I would classify Carroll’s commentary as semi-technical with a broad target audience, owing in part to the purposes of the series of which it is part. It comes in at just over 550 pages (including indices) which, for the Gospel of Luke, is about the right length for an adequate pericope-by-pericope analysis (but not verse-by-verse). Even so, Carroll is able to cover a lot of ground in a short space, and most of the time he does so without sacrificing his prose. The introductory and summary paragraphs that introduce units of text are especially well-written. The nitty-gritty commentary sometimes feels a bit clunky, as is the case with most commentaries.

Carroll is very sensitive to literary and theological issues, and this is perhaps the greatest strength of the commentary. A good example is a line from p. 15:

With regard to time, the web of prophecy (or promise) and fulfillment links the events of the Gospel to the OT and ‘Jewish antiquities,’ and the teleology of the story moves to divine vindication of the crucified Messiah ‘on the third day’ (Luke 24) and onward, through a period of witness under duress (prolepsis in 21:12–19, with realization in Acts) that will span the destruction of the temple, toward the triumphant return of the Lord Jesus in eschatological judgment and deliverance (Luke 21:25–36)

In spite of sparing interaction with secondary sources (I assume this owes again to the purpose of the series) Carroll makes room for brief commentary on text-critical issues. Noteworthy is that Carroll follows the Western non-interpolations of D in Luke 22 and especially 24 (Luke 22:19b­–20; 24:3, 6, 12, 36, 40, 51–52).

On Greek grammatical and syntactical issues I found the commentary wanting. I noticed two issues right off the bat: (1) Claiming the traditional view that the perfect tense indicates a past action with present results (this was applied to the substantival participle in Luke 1:1- τῶν πεπληροφορημένων); and (2) Applying the Granville Sharp rule (which states that an articular, singular noun followed by kai and an anarthrous noun share the same referent) to two plural nouns (“eyewitness” and “ministers of the word” in the preface of Luke). This is true of most commentaries coming off the press today. I am not sure if authors are simply not sure how to incorporate recent linguistic studies in exegetical discussions or whether they are just ignorant of the issues altogether.

Part two here.

Related Posts:

• Dillon on Gospel Narratives and Historical Proof
• Evangelical Exegetical Commentary by Logos
• More Reflections on Paul and Palestinian Judaism
• Best Places to Find Greek ‘Nuggets’

 I am not sure of the exact number but I am quite certain I have at least ten other English translations of the Gospel of Thomas on my shelves in addition to this one. Do we really need another, when so many competent ones are already available?  Yet even then I do not object to someone producing another.  What I do object to is what I consider the prostituting of scholarship through the use of cheap sensationalistic packaging  of the sort employed on Taussig’s ”New” New Testament, which essentially seeks to peddle serious scholarship by reducing it to the level of sensationalistic rubbish.

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• Jon Levenson on Writing Well
• Tools in the Toolbox: Insisting Your Expertise Should Be Everyone’s
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