The Inaugural Session of the Asian American Biblical Interpretation research group at IBR 2020 Boston

Milton Eng

, East Coast Project Director for ISAAC, and I are delighted to announce the inaugural session of the newly constituted Asian American Biblical Interpretation research group at the annual meeting of the

Institute for Biblical Research

(#IBRAABI) and the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, November 2020.

Our first session features plenary papers and a panel discussion with

Russell Jeung

(San Francisco State University),

Amos Yong

(Fuller Seminary), and

Janette Hur Ok

(formerly Asuza Pacific University, now Fuller Seminary). This first session focuses mostly on East AsianAm contexts but will expand in succeeding meetings to include Southeast Asian, South Asian and Pacific Islanders.

We invite all IBR members and friends to attend. The research group mission statement and the session programming is below. Many thanks to

Carmen Imes

, IBR Research Groups Coordinator, and

Lynn H Cohick

, IBR President, for their enthusiastic support.

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Inaugural Plenary Session for IBR/SBL 2020 (#IBRAABI2020) in Boston

Theme: Setting the Table: Asian American Studies, Evangelicals and Biblical Interpretation

Milton Eng, William Paterson University, Presiding

Max J. Lee, North Park Theological Seminary, Presiding

Welcome and Announcements (10 min)

Russell Jeung, San Francisco State University

Asian American Studies and the Development of Asian American Theology (30 min)

Amos Yong, Fuller Seminary

To the Seven Churches in Asia: An Asian (American) Apocalyptic Hermeneutic after Pentecost (30 min)

Janette Ok, Fuller Seminary

Asian American Biblical Interpretation: Evangelical Engagement and Critique (30 min)

Discussion (20 min)

These papers will be available on the IBR website after October 25th under the Research Groups tab at www.ibr-bbr.org (IBR Member login required). Attendees are encouraged to read the papers in advance though drop-ins are welcome. During the session, presenters will summarize their papers in ten minutes allowing for twenty minutes of discussion. Non-IBR members are welcome to attend. For further information, please contact Milton Eng (miltoneng@verizon.net) or Max Lee (mlee1@Northpark.edu)

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Research Group Description: This new research group (#IBRAABI) provides a space for Asian American evangelical scholars to engage with, critique, integrate and indeed pave new ground in current approaches in Asian American Biblical Interpretation. The fact that the majority of Asian American Protestants remain evangelical makes their voices even more imperative. “Asian American” is understood in its broadest sense to include East, Southeast, South Asian and Pacific Islander Americans.

Asian American biblical interpretation by its very nature is interdisciplinary. Thus, sessions will include invited guest theologians, historians, sociologists &scholars from other disciplines to inform our research.

Asian American Biblical Interpretation more broadly has come of age in recent years. Publications continue apace with works as recent as the encyclopedic T&T Clark Handbook of Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics (2019). In addition, Asian American biblical scholars have now attained the highest &most visible positions in the academy including presidents &deans of seminaries, the presidency of the Association of Theological Schools &even most recently the highest office in our premier guild, President of the SBL.

Yet, most of such scholarship &representation has come from non-evangelical or mainline theological schools. Evangelicals are less represented (see Chloe Sun, 2019). #IBRAABI hopes to fill in the gap on representation in this burgeoning field, explore how it connects with shared issues of concern with African American, Latinx American, and other ethnic American biblical intepreters, and explain why this work is relevant to the mission of the church at large. #AAPIHeritageMonth

A Book Review Panel Worth Going Early For: Craig Keener, Susan Eastman, and John Barclay on E.P. Sander's Paul

Nijay Gupta over on his blog Crux Sola has made this awesome panel review announcement, that I'm re-blogging here. This book review by Craig Keener, Susan Eastman, and John Barclay of E.P. Sander's recent work on Paul: The Apostle's Life, Letters and Thought is worth trying to fly out early to catch. It is part of the newly launched Pauling Theology group of the Institute of Biblical Research. This session coincides with the start of the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, this Novmember. The review is from 4-6pm Friday late afternoon (Nov. 18), just before IBR's plenary session in the evening at 7:00pm. I usually like flying in much later in the evening but I'm going to make an effort to arrive in San Antonio early to attend this review. Hope to see many of you there!

Postscript: Also, the Intertextuality in the New Testament Section of SBL is also planning a book review for one of our plenary sessions. Stay tuned for the announcement once all the details have been ironed out. MJL

Big News: EP Sanders to Present at IBR Research Group (Gupta)

FEBRUARY 12, 2016NIJAY GUPTA

Well, it’s been hard to keep this quiet, but I didn’t want to announce it until the plans were made final: E.P. Sanders has agreed to present at a new Institute for Biblical Research study group on Pauline Theology (the Friday when SBL begins, Nov 18, 4PM-6PM, 2016).

The new Pauline Theology research group is co-chaired by myself (Nijay Gupta) and John Goodrich. John and I were students together at Durham, we often room together at SBL, and very excited to move forward with this group together.

The program for our IBR Pauline Theology group for 2016 is as follows:

This year our group will launch the Pauline Theology research group with a special book review panel discussion. Fortress Press recently published Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought by E.P. Sanders. Dr. Sanders will participate in the book review panel, and other panelists include Dr. Craig Keener (Asbury Seminary), Dr. Susan Eastman (Duke Divinity School), and Prof. John M.G. Barclay (University of Durham).

More details to come regarding the program, but please mark this date and hope to see you there!

Craig Bartholomew on the Question of God and Historical Criticism (Nov 20)

Friday Night Plenary Session with Craig Bartholomew at IBR
speaking on "Old Testament Origins and the Question of God"

I don't know if I can do this for every session, but may be I can post on highlights of the day while I am at SBL-AAR 2015 in Atlanta. Last night, I heard a very challenging address by Dr. Craig Bartholomew, the H. Evan Runner Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Redeemer University. His paper title was "Old Testament Origins and the Question of God," which gives a nod to N.T. Wright's "Christian Origins and the Question of God" series now in its fifth volume. 
    There were many good challenges to Bartholomew's address, but the most poignant one was re-assessing how historical criticism should be practiced. He charged that any theory is underdetermined in relation to the data it seeks to explain. It is time to re-assess whether historical criticism underdetermines too much data so its interpretative model no longer remains useful for reconstructing and understanding a historical event. 
    Bartholomew gave this example from OT history: as soon as you read the Penteteuch at the literary and theological level, Moses is clearly a central figure. But at the level of historicity or historical criticism, scholars have virtually erased Moses from history and certainly do accept, even in mediated form, the idea that Moses contributes to the authorship of the Penteteuch. 
   Bartholomew went on to suspect that the need to re-assess how the scholar practices historical criticism would have come sooner had it not been for the "post-modern tsunami" which blew in alternative forms of criticism (new literary, rhetorical, reader-response, deconstruction, post-colonial, and others) into biblical studies. Before exegetes realized they needed to make revisions to the historical-critical method, scholarship, in response to the post-modern tsunami, retracted deeper into historical criticism as a default method because of the destabilizing effects of new and competing criticisms.
   Though delayed by the emergence of competing post-modern criticisms, Bartholomew feels that biblical scholars are long overdue in re-evaluating and revising how historical criticism is practiced, so data is more adequately determined and interpreted. 
    Wow! This lecture certainly gives me much to think about!