G(r)eeking out over Online Tech Tools

My YouTube channel where I post all my instructional videos

It's been a whirl-wind couple of weeks culminating at SBL-AAR 2018, enjoying Thanksgiving, and getting back to work on grading and teaching. I wish I had more time to reflect on the SBL conference and the sessions that I heard but I think I'm just going to have to plunge into the end of the Fall semester since the final exams are coming around the corner in a few weeks. 

    That said, it was nice to see my 2nd blog post published at the Wabash Center for Teaching Theology and Religion as part of their ongoing series in online education. In the 2nd blog article, I write on the tech tools necessary for the would-be course designer and instructor to teach biblical languages online, focusing on the current course I'm teaching at North Park. The technology is available and affordable to teach beginning Greek (and Hebrew) well and effectively for today's online learning community. If you're curious, check out my blog article entitled: "G(r)eeking out over Online Tech Tools" here.

    Blessings as we head into Advent in one week's time. MJL

AAR-SBL 2018 in Denver: A Last Minute Invitation

As I do some last minute packing for the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Denver this year (November 16-20, 2018), I wanted to give a final shout out to the plenary session of the Intertextuality in the New Testament Section which I co-chair with Alice Yafeh-Deigh at Pacific Azusa University.
    If you're like me, when I plan for SBL, I first get all my requisite business meetings, lunches/dinners with colleagues, and publisher's appointments all in my calendar first. Then on the plane, I thumb through the annual program and plan out what sessions I attend. If so, I hope you'll consider as you travel to Denver attending and participating in the session on Greco-Roman allusions in the New Testament. We have a stellar roster of leading New Testament scholars who work with the Greco-Roman material and texts which illuminate the interpretation of the New Testament. Their papers titles and abstracts are listed below. 
    Much ink has been spilt on the Old Testament echoes and the intertextuality between ancient Jewish discourse and the New Testament. Little has been done in analyzing systematically how the New Testament authors allude to Greco-Roman texts and artefacts and what exegetical methods they use to deploy such material. This session is an attempt to offer some initial explorations. Hope to see you there! MJL


S17-131

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Intertextuality in the New Testament
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
11/17/2018
Agate (Third Level) - Hyatt Regency
Ancient Exegetical Methods in Greco-Roman Discourse and the New Testament
Each paper will be 25-30 min long. Peter Oakes will be responding after each paper for 10 min. There is a general discussion at the end of the session

Max Lee, North Park Theological Seminary, Presiding

	Bruce Longenecker, Baylor University Intertextuality in Pompeian Plaster: Can Vesuvian Artifacts Inform Our Expectations about Intertextual Expertise among Sub-elite Jesus-Followers? (30 min) Abstract: Audiences of New Testament texts are often enticed into intertextual tropes embedded within those texts. One of the difficulties regarding the effectiveness of intertextual tropes pertains to the expertise required by the audience in order to recognize and appreciate them. Was expertise of that kind restricted to the educated elite (as evidenced, for instance, by Seneca), or were intertextual tropes appreciated by a broader segment of Greco-Roman society? This paper (1) addresses that issue by canvassing a selection of the archaeological data from the first-century town of Pompeii and (2) suggests the relevance of that data for the study of New Testament texts.
	Judith M. Gundry, Yale Divinity School Roman Household Religion and the Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:14 (30 min) Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 7 is widely assumed to address a Roman concern with mastery over the passions, or a Stoic ideal of freedom from distraction through celibacy. It is thus curious that virtually all scholars suppose that in 1 Cor. 7:14 Paul is addressing a “Jewish concern” with purity: “For the unbelieving husband ἡγίασται by his wife and the unbelieving wife ἡγίασται by her husband. For otherwise your children are ἀκάθαρτα, but as it is, they are ἅγια”... A more plausible reconstruction, as this paper will argue, is that Paul is addressing a Roman expectation of religious uniformity in the household, where religion played an important role (e.g., Plutarch, Tibullus, Hierocles). Apart from such unity, divorce may have seemed inevitable to the former Gentiles in Corinth. But, according to Paul, the unbelieving spouse who is willing to “live together” “is consecrated” to God – for the (also unbelieving) children are “consecrated” to God – similarly to the Christ-believer, who is a “consecrated one” (ἅγιος). Hence, Paul forbids divorcing the unbeliever.
	Paul Trebilco, University of Otago Echoes in Ephesus: "From the beginning" in the Johannine Letters and in Ephesian Foundation Myths (30 min) In 1 and 2 John, the phrase ‘from the beginning’ is used a total of ten times – a surprising number, given their short length. In each case, the stress is on ‘antiquity’ or on ‘foundations’. This emphasis resonates with the foundation stories of the cult of Artemis and other stories in the city of Ephesus; the sense of ‘looking back’ to antiquity was a vital part of what it was to be an Ephesian. In this context, it was entirely understandable for John as an author to speak of ‘what was from the beginning’, which for him referred to the one true ‘foundation story’, the one they had heard ‘from the beginning’, concerning the person, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
	Peter Oakes, University of Manchester, Respondent