Recently, Mark Goodacre put out a new episode of his excellent podcast. This one probed the question of Luke's role as a historian. Here is the video version of that episode. Goodacre makes a lot of great observations, some I've never really considered or at least haven't thought about in some time. And he is absolutely correct that Luke is a historian of the ancient variety.

"[L]et everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger" - James 1:19, NRSVue Back in December, Marc Zvi Brettler announced his retirement, which will happen officially later this year. I've benefited from Brettler's work time and again, from his contributions to volumes like The New Oxford Annotated Bible and, more importantly, The Jewish Annotated New Testament…

Florence M. Gillman, Mary Ann Beavis, and HyeRan Kim-Cragg, 1-2 Thessalonians, Wisdom Commentary 52 (Liturgical Press, 2016), 55-56. Some commentators hold that Paul's thought in 1 Thess 2:13-16 may be illuminated through a postcolonial interpretation. From that perspective Paul is understood to have been aware that he was spreading a subversive movement that was "an alternative to the Roman imperial order," which, as he saw it, was subject to God's negative judgment.

F. Scott Spencer, Reading Mark: A Literary and Theological Commentary, Reading the New Testament Second Series (Smyth & Helwys, 2023), 86-87. The younger girl, Jairus's daughter, relates more proximally with Jesus's sleeping and more remotely with his rising from the dead, although the connections are disrupted by key distinctions. Jesus slept in the storm-tossed boat as a sign of his peaceful confidence in God's protection and awoke - or rather was awakened by deathly terrified disciples - to calm the tempest and preserve life (4:38-41).

Happy New Year! In case you missed it, Bart Ehrman has retired from teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman has been a force for good in the world (evangelical ire notwithstanding), both in terms of his scholarship on the Bible as well as the money he has raised through his blog for food banks, the unhoused, and more…

Phillip J. Long, The Book of Enoch for Beginners: A Guide to Expand Your Understanding of the Biblical World (Rockridge Press, 2022), 82. Modern readers of 1 Enoch might be surprised that one of the great evils the rebellious watchers introduced into the world is writing. In this section , Enoch says humans should not prove their trustworthiness through pen and ink.

John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Doubleday, 1991), 1:211-212. More difficult to harmonize are the differing accounts of the journeys of Joseph and Mary in the two Infancy Narratives and the two "geographical" plots at the basis of the two stories. In the case of Matthew, the first place name that occurs in his narrative proper (1:18-2:23) is Bethlehem of Judea (2:1).

V. George Shillington, An Introduction to the Study of Luke-Acts, second edition) T&T Clark Approaches to Biblical Studies (T&T Clark, 2015), 17. For the Gospel of Luke, it is reasonably safe to say that the author relied on Mark, although less so than Matthew did. The sequence of events in Luke 1:1 to 22:53 is essentially the sequence of Mark - even though Luke has only about seven-tenths of the material of Mark.

Robyn Faith Walsh, "City and Country," in The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, edited by James Crossley and Chris Keith (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), 329-330. The gospels are no more singularly concerned with chronicling the life of the historical Jesus than the Aeneid is a vessel for the historical Aeneas. And, to the extent that they are engaged in a traditional form of bios-writing..., we should be well served to recognize that one-dimensional comparisons are insufficient to the task of explicating the who and why of the gospels.

Matthias Konradt, "The Commandment of Love for Enemies in Matt 5.43-48 and Its Early Jewish Context," translated by Wayne Coppins, Accessible German New Testament Scholarship 1 (2025), 36. Matthew has removed the Golden Rule from the direct context of love for enemies and placed it at the end of the body of the Sermon on the Mount in 7.12. The connection to love for enemies is not, however, eliminated with this rearrangement.

Michael J. Kok, Four Evangelists and a Heresy Hunter: Investigating the Traditions about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (self published, 2025), 103. The historical books of the Hebrew Bible are anonymous. The authors or editors behind the texts are not in the spotlight. The focus is on the narratives about how God was working among the covenant people of Israel throughout their history.

Kyle R. Greenwood and David B. Schreiner, Ahab's House of Horrors: A Historiographic Study of the Military Campaigns of the House of Omri (Lexham Press, 2023), 126. The inscription praises the important role of Chemosh, who sanctioned the oppression and the rebellion of the Moabites. In addition, Chemosh is the direct recipient of military honor, which is clarified not only by his stated ownership of Ataroth (line 12) but also his receipt of the plunder of Nebo.

Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (W.W. Norton & Co., 2019), 1:xlix. The Torah is manifestly a composite construction, but there is abundant evidence throughout the Hebrew Bible that composite work was fundamental to the very conception of what literature was, that a process akin to collage was assumed to be one of the chief ways in which literary texts were put together.

Michael Kochenash, "Better Call Paul 'Saul': Literary Models and a Lukan Innovation," JBL 138, no. 2 (2019), 441. Although Luke’s presentation of Saul appears to be modeled on King Saul, the influence of this imitation extends only to Saul’s name, his belligerent disposition, and his persecution of the Son of David. Luke supplements this characterization with language that recalls Pentheus’s persecution of Dionysus in the Bacchae.

Michael J. Kok, Four Evangelists and a Heresy Hunter: Investigating the Traditions about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (self published, 2025), 15. The editorial choices behind the writing of the Gospel of Mark seem puzzling if its author aimed to produce a shortened, harmonized version of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The latter Gospels' accounts of Jesus's miraculous birth and appearances to his disciples after rising from the grave, and many aphorisms, parables, and ethical imperatives that they attribute to Jesus, are not reproduced in Mark's Gospel.

"Since the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of history are intricately connected, we cannot tell with certainty where one begins and the other ends. And we are always dealing with ancient subjective testimonies from a past and culture we can only access imperfectly." - Mitzi J. Smith, "Born of a Doulē," in The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus…

Hey, everyone! I’m Ben - the Amateur Exegete, and this is episode seventy-six of Bible Study for Amateurs. Today’s episode is, “Elizabeth Shively’s ‘Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,’ part 10.”1 We have come to the end of our series looking at Elizabeth Shively’s 2020 piece “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark.”

"The main reason so many conservative Christians today so publicly and so belligerently condemn homosexuality and wave their Bible around as their authorization (even as they reject and abandon other elements of the Bible's sexual ethics) is precisely because that condemnation has become a central identity marker. This is particularly true for conservative Christians seeking to structure power, values, and boundaries in favor of their right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation." …

Maurice Ryan, "Creating Judas Iscariot: Critical Questions for Presenting the Betrayer of Jesus," Journal of Religious Education 67 no. 3 (October 2019), 31. Matthew’s account of Judas’ actions after handing over Jesus demonstrates an aspect of Matthew’s theological agenda: Judas, the betrayer immediately recognises the innocence of Jesus and the injustice of his deed. A similar theme will play out in Matthew when Pontius Pilate, after interrogating Jesus, likewise can see no fault in Jesus and absolves himself of any responsibility: “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves” (Matthew 27:24).

"There is no difficulty in principle with including oral tradition in discussions of gospel interrelations, but the use of it as a default position at every step can mask evidence of literary links. The problem with the appeal to oral tradition is not what it affirms but what it denies." - Mark Goodacre, The Fourth Synoptic Gospel: John's Knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke…

Hey, everyone! I’m Ben - the Amateur Exegete, and this is episode seventy-five of Bible Study for Amateurs. Today’s episode is, “Elizabeth Shively’s ‘Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,’ part 9.”1 In her 2020 piece “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,”

"If there is anyone who is sure that he can cope entirely on his own with every eventuality, I might agree that for him knowledge of the past is unnecessary. It would still be a good thing for such a person, but not necessary. But no mortal man is so rash as to make such a claim. Whether he is acting as a private individual or as a public official, even if things are currently going well, no one of any sense takes that as a reliable harbinger of what will happen in the future.