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.

_____________________________________________

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)

_____________________________________________

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

Intertextuality in the New Testament Section SBL Denver 2018

Invited Plenary Speakers for the Intertextuality in the New Testament Section
Theme: Ancient Exegetical Methods in
Greco-Roman Discourse and the New Testament
SBL Denver 2018

It's been quite some time since I revisited my blog but I have not forgotten about it. But I did need the timely break to get a sense on how to manage my time as the chair of the biblical field at North Park Theological Seminary.
    In this post, I'm excited to announce the opening plenary session of the Intertextuality in the New Testament Section at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Denver this November 2018. The theme of the session is Ancient Exegetical Methods in Greco-Roman Discourse and the New Testament. Much ink has been spilt on how the New Testament authors quote, cite, echo, and allude to Old Testament and Jewish texts in their writings, but little has been done on the way they quote, echo, allude or recontextualize Greco-Roman sources. The three main presenters who are giving papers on various intertexts between Greco-Roman discourse and the New Testament are all experts in their respective fields and have masterfully engaged with a wide range of rhetorical, religious, political and philosophical material by Greek and Roman authors. The speakers and their papers titles are listed below. 
     I especially want to highlight that the respondent to each of the papers is Peter Oakes. Anyone having read his 2005 journal article in JSNT entitled "Remapping the Universe," where he outlined four possible ways the New Testament texts allude, echo, appropriate or compete with Roman imperial texts/theology would know that there are few who could comment on not only the specific content of the papers but on the broader issue of how to map out a method for detecting Greco-Roman textual and conceptual allusions in the New Testament. It's sure to be a fantastic session. I hope all attending SBL and reading this post will come to the session on Saturday morning Nov 17, 2018. Best! MJL



Intertextuality in the New Testament
11/17/2018
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Room TBD - Hotel TBD

Theme: Ancient Exegetical Methods in Greco-Roman Discourse and the New Testament
Each paper will be 25-30min long. Peter Oakes will be responding after each paper for 10min. 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)

Peter Oakes, University of Manchester, Respondent (10 min)

Judith M. Gundry, Yale Divinity School
Roman Household Religion and the Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:14 (30 min)

Peter Oakes, University of Manchester, Respondent (10 min)

Paul Trebilco, University of Otago
Echoes in Ephesus: ‘From the beginning’ in the Johannine Letters and in Ephesian Foundation Myths (30 min)

Peter Oakes, University of Manchester, Respondent (10 min)

Discussion (30 min)

Business Meeting (0 min)

An Ideal Setup Can Help with Research

Here is a not-so-popular addage: "Good administration is no guarantee for success, but bad administration can certainly stiffle it" (a Max Lee quotable). This is true of business, profane or holy, and it is true for academics who are plugging forward on their research projects. I have longed to find the perfect computer screen setup for writing. I finally saved enough dough to put it together this past week. Here is a photo of it: 

My Research Computer Setup: Left Screen: MS Word Doc of a chapter I'm working on
Right Screen: Top is Plato's Theaetetus from the HathiTrust Digital Library and
Bottom has the Greek morphology engine on the Perseus Project website

I used two 22-inch Dell flat screen's (refurbished price $140 each) and rotated them to portrait mode, set the display to extended screen so that the two monitors act as a single screen together, got a used docking station ($20) for my North Park issued Dell Latitude E5440 laptop (free as long as I keep teaching at the seminary), found an old keyboard, and voilà! The perfect setup. 
    Because the screens are rotated to portrait mode, on the left one, I can get a full page view of whatever part of the monograph I'm working on (more like 1 1/2 pages) at 150% zoom. I don't have to squint anymore at my 14 in. (X 10 in.) display on my dinky laptop which only allows me to see less than 1/2 a page at a given moment. To my right, I can keep the top window open on whatever electronic document I'm working in (i.e., the photo above has Plato's Theaetetus on screen, courtesy of the HathiTrust Digital Library) and on the bottom right window, I can keep a web browser open (i.e., the photo has the Greek morphology engine on the Perseus Project website). Of course, the most important item on the desk for any researcher, an absolute must, is a cup of java to keep the blood pumping.
   I just thought I would share this setup since the scholarly world sometimes seems so solitary and we academics, professors and students alike, need to help each other out with whatever productivity hints we can share. 
   FYI, I received the idea for the above setup from a post by James Warren, Reader at Cambridge University, whose kenodoxia blog I follow. In his post, James (with whom I enjoyed a very helpful conversation one day in 2010 when I stole away from my post-doctoral studies at Durham University to visit Cambridge) showed a two-screen setup as he was compiling the indices for his now published book The Pleasures of Reason (2014). When I saw his post, it gave me the inspiration for the above desktop arrangement. But I had to save for a few months before I could buy what I needed. Cheers!

Movie Review: Apostle Paul - A Polite Bribe by Robert Orlando

I'm glad that I can get back to blogging. I was taken aback by how busy the 1st week of the Spring 2015 term was and missed already my aim to post regularly at least once a week here. Hopefully, I can get back on track, though I make no promises (note: posting 1x a week was not a new year's resolution!). I am teaching 4 classes this semester, and if I include a co-taught course on Reconciliation, Race and the Corinthian Correspondence with Paul De Neui (North Park's missiologist) in May (a 2-week mission trip to the Equateur province of Congo), that's a whopping 5 courses that I need to prep and teach. Ouch! But I'm all-in and ready to charge out of the gates with gusto as far as human agency, divine help, and prayer can take me. 

Purchase or rent the movie at amazon instant video

A preview/promo of the film can be watched here: 


   That said, I have been meaning to watch and review the recent documentary on the apostle Paul with the provocative title: Apostle Paul - A Polite Bribe (2014). I finally watched this and like it enough that I am currently requiring that my undergraduate Paul course and my seminary New Testament 2 class view the film. Their research project will involve an engagement with Orlando's central thesis on the purposes and motivations of Paul to collect, transport, and deliver an offering to the church in Jerusalem (mentioned explicitly by Paul in 1 Cor 16:1-4; 2 Cor 8:1-9:15; Rom 15:25-32; and likely Gal 2:1-10 though Bruce Longenecker would argue otherwise; and recorded by Luke in Acts 11:27-30 [famine impetus]; 21:17-26 [delivery of the collection]). 
    Orlando, if I did not miss anyone, interviews some 24 different New Testament scholars on the life and mission of Paul, using the Jerusalem collection as a kind of thematic thread to unite the interviews and illustrated narrations (using some impressive comic-motion style graphics) that reconstruct the historical Paul of Acts and his letters. It's a relative who's who of top names in the academy on Pauline studies, including (roughly in order of their 1st appearance): Paul Achtemeier, Ben Witherington, Candida Moss, Bart Ehrman, N.T. Wright, John Dominic Crossan, Jeffrey Bütz, Philip Eisler, Gerd Thiessen, Paula Fredriksen, Pamela Eisenbawn, Larry Hurtado, Neil Elliott, Elaine Pagels, Richard Horsley, Amy-Jill Levine, Robert Jewett, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Dale Martin, John Reumann, Douglas Campbell, Victor Furnish, Daniel Boyarin and Edgar Krentz. Whew... did I miss anyone?
    Just to hear in person the above scholars offer their expertise on Paul is worth the price of admission. They together represent a wide range of confessional, ecclesial, and ideological commitments which range from conservative evangelical scholars to radical source critics. You get the whole spectrum. But while a range is represented by the choice of interviewees, and while the critical listener can glean from these interviews diverse and competing theories on Paul's missionary enterprises, the interviews themselves have been expertedly edited to promote one central thesis: that Paul's monetary offering functioned as some sort of "bribe" to assuage suspicions from a hard-line faction in Jerusalem (= the Judaizers of Gal 1-2) who did not consider Paul's Gentile churches full converts to Jewish-Christianity. How the offering functioned as a bribe was not clear in the film. Perhaps, Paul hoped that the acceptance of the offering by the Gentile converts by the famine-stricken Jerusalem church would also mean that the Jerusalem church accepted the donors as full members of God's people without the Jewish requirements of circumcision and food law observance. If so, this meant that Paul paid Jerusalem to by-pass the Jewish legal requirements and hence the subtitle, "a polite bribe." 
   However, if one simply reads the key texts in Paul (cited above) where he explains his own motivations for asking the Gentile churches to contribute to the Jersusalem collection, we read that 1) his Gentile churches could have simply wanted to help the poor in Jerusalem who were recovering from a horrible famine (mentioned in Acts 11:27-30) as a sign of their transformed lives and genuine conversion; or 2) the collection demonstrated that there was one church, Jewish and Gentile, united by their common fidelity to one Lord and one gospel, and so the needs of one were the concern and burden of the other; or 3) perhaps Paul saw in the collection an eschatological fulfillment of Isaiah (60:6-7) and other OT prophetic texts (cf. Micah 4:13) that promised a day when Gentiles would bring gifts to Jerusalem as an act of worship and recognition of Israel's one true God. There have been other suggestions by scholars like Klaus Berger that 4) the collection functioned to substitute for the cost of Jewish initiation rites required from Gentile converts to Judaism (a stretch in my opinion). Johannes Munck theorized that 5) Paul wanted the collection to draw Israel's attention to how the influx of Gentile converts into the church and somehow provoke Israel's jealousy and conversion to the gospel (less of a stretch, but still a stretch). This list of possible explanations is not exhaustive either. There could also be a non-competing coalition of several motivations that drive Paul to pursue the collection and deliver it (see Down's The Offering of the Gentiles). But the movie, unfortunately, really focuses on the idea of a polite bribe.
   So in the end, Orlando's thesis is not satisfying, and it creates more questions than answers. But the latter is not a bad result. In fact, his film is a fantastic segue into larger historical issues surrounding Paul and hence my keen interest to show the film in class and let it generate further discussion. 
   A number of other bibliobloggers share my same sentiments and evalution of the film, in varying degrees. Worth reading are the posts by Larry Hurtado, James McGrath, and Richard Fellows. Also check out the interview of Ben Witherington in the Lexington Herald, as well as his video question and answer session after a film viewing. Mark Goodacre posted a pre-showing interview with Orlando on his NT blog as well. 

Post-script 03/11/15: Here is a link to the post-screening discussion which took place over the film at the SBL showing in San Diego on Nov 22, 2014 between the director Robert Orlando, and scholars Larry Hurtado and Ben Witherington. 

Grace and Gift according to Professor John Barclay of Durham University

There are others who take much better advantage of educational videos and lectures on youtube than I do. However, every now and then, I do stumble across a lectureship series by Tom Wright or other New Testament scholars that catch my attention. The biblioblogosphere has made several mentions of Prof. John Barclay's highly anticipated two-volume magnum opus on "Grace and Gift in Paul's Thought" (I have yet to see the definitive title for the work to be published by Eerdmans). 
   I had the pleasure of visiting Durham University back in 2010 for post-doctoral work, and Prof. Barclay was my patron and supervisor for a project on Philo of Alexandria (funded by the Lilly Theological Scholars Grant). Though my stay was short, I learned a great deal from him, Prof. Francis Watson, and Prof. Walter Moberly and am forever grateful for the warm welcome I received and the insights I was able to glean as I studied, wrote, and presented my work to them and others at the NT Seminar held by Durham's Department of Religion and Theology. 

photo credit: http://dunedinschool.wordpress.com

Needless to say, when I heard that John recently gave a lecture summarizing some of the basic tenets of his work on χάρις (translated as either "gift" or "grace"), I "youtubed" it (is this a verb?) and enjoyed the lecture thoroughly. His basic tenet: we in a North American and European context often associate with grace false/wrong/distorted notions on how gift-exchange operates. 
   Barclay attempts to outline a more nuanced understanding of how in the ancient world the complex relationships between giver, gift, and receiver operated from which Paul drew his own description of salvation as a divine gift to believers. The youtube link to the video is below:



   Quick highlights: after a fairly thorough explanation of his methodological (social-scientific) approach to understanding how gift exchanged worked in the wider Greco-Roman world, starting at 34:08 into the video, he explains the core of his argument: What constitutes the perfection of grace? Grace or gift has six common perfections or ideal components by which an ancient giver and receiver can measure the quality of the gift. 

1. Superabundance: the scale or size of the gift: The larger the gift, the more important the gift is.
2. Priority: manner in which the gift is given: the gift-giving is initiated by the giver without having received a previous gift from the recipient
3. Singularity: motivations behind the gift: the goodness / benevolence of the giver is what motivates him/her to give the gift.
4. Incongruency: relationship between the recipient and gift-giver: the more undeserved the gift is, the more perfect the gift. Or, in other words, this category focuses on the unworthiness of the receiver
5. Efficacy: goal of the gift-exchange: that gift accomplishes what the giver has set out to do for the receiver
6. Non-Circularity: the response of the receiver: this category does not mean that there are not expectations made of the recipient. This category means that no material response, or gift of equal value, was expected from the recipient. However, there were non-material expectations. Often this meant the loyalty of the recipient to the giver.

What do we mean by "unconditional gift" or "pure grace" depends on the interpreter. The challenge, then, is to de-aggregate the umbrella category of gift into its constituent parts so we can identify the particular emphases of a given interpreter. Barclay argues that the great 16th century German reformer, Martin Luther, focused on the feature of non-circularity: that is, God's grace is freely given to the believer without any expectation of receiving back anything from the recipient. It is arguably Luther's emphasis on free grace as non-circularity which has dominated Protestant views of justification, especially those from the Lutheran and Reformed traditions.
    Barclay provocatively insists, however, that Paul's emphasis lies elsewhere. Paul focuses on the incongruity of grace rather than the non-circularity. In fact, Paul expects the believer to respond to grace in concrete ways. Paul, for example, expected the Corinthians to participate in the offering to Jerusalem as a response to their having received God's grace (2 Cor 8:1-14). 
    Here, I break from Barclay to offer my own thoughts and reflections on this initial presentation. I, for one, never thought of grace as being "free" in the modern sense of the word. To me, this is just "cheap grace" to quote Bonhoeffer. Grace is costly. We can never earn salvation so it always remains a gift. But the response to the incongruity of the gift should be complete surrender. Faith is an absolute trust in God that is costly, not cheap. 
    If Barclay is correct in arguing that the Lutheran/Reformed emphasis of grace as non-circularity is incorrect, and this is not what Paul has in mind when the apostle talked about salvation as a gift (Rom 3:24 δικαιούμενοι δωρεὰν τῇ αὐτοῦ χάριτι), then Barclay has done us a great service in helping us to understand the particular emphases of gift language used by Paul. He has given us tools by which to evaluate past interpreters of Paul as well. I wonder how many Pauline interpreters have attributed to Paul a feature of gift-exchange that Paul himself did not emphasize. 
   Of course, we all have to read Barclay's work to see if he is correct in positing that Paul's focus was on incongruity (vs. non-circularity). I'm also curious to see how Barclay interacts with a previous study on grace and benefaction by James R. Harrison (Paul's Language of Grace in its Graeco-Roman Context - 2003). Nevertheless, even before the book is out, John has given us plenty to ruminate over. I, for one, cannot wait until his 2-volume work is published by Eerdmans. Hopefully, it will happen before this 2014 year ends. 

Anecdote: When I was in Durham, to my chagin, I never took a photo with John, Francis, or Walter. Hence I borrowed the above photo from John's time in New Zealand when he was working on his "grace and gift" project. Next time I'm in Durham, I'm going to remember to take more pictures. 

Postscript 02/20/15: Eerdmans announced the book's release date. Click here for more details.

Postscript 06/13/14: Exegetical Exercise: 1) Read the above post. 2) I suggest listening to the lecture directly but start at 34:08 minutes into the video and finish to the end. 3) Go to the bible dictionaries/encyclopedias in the reference section of library and learn more about "grace" or "gift" in the Greco-Roman world (in Greek charis/χάρις). 4) Interpret 2 Cor 8:9-15 ("For you know the grace (χάρις) of our Lord Jesus Christ...") drawing insight from your background study. In other words: how does understanding how grace was expressed, or gift-exchange operated, in the Greco-Roman world help you to understand Paul's message/exhortations in 2 Cor 8:9-15? 4) Be sure to consult at least one academic commentary on your biblical text from the reference section.

Defining a Critical Method for Detecting Greco-Roman Allusions

So much work has been done on OT echoes in the NT, and several monographs have attempted to refine Richard Hays' 7 criteria for recognizing an echo (Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 29-32; cf. Leroy Huizenga, The New Isaac, 61ff; Christopher Beetham, Echoes of Scripture in the Letter of Paul to the Colossians, ch. 2). But so little has been done in defining a critical methodology for detecting Greco-Roman allusions in Paul's letter corpus. I'm going to start blogging on this soon. I'm going to first define different categories for Greco-Roman allusions. The challenge right now is to develop the right terms or technical categories for defining the types of allusions Paul and other New Testament writers make in reference to Greco-Roman literature or even general encyclopedic knowledge that was shared between the author and his/her readers.

First up is what I would like to call "competitive acculturation," i.e., when Paul uses a word or phrase (e.g., εὐαγγέλιον) that has a technical use in the discourse of a particular political, social, or religious group (e.g., the imperial cult) in order to say that Christianity outdoes and out-competes the group in its own game (e.g., who is really the author of good news? Christ or Caesar).

However, right now, I am neck deep in grading final exams and final papers at North Park. I have a stack of exegesis papers to go through. Duty before pleasure, so I'm going to have to post on this later. MJL