In Honor of John Emerton

This email just arrived from SOTS headquarters,

There is to be a one day symposium at St John’s College, Cambridge to honour Professor John Emerton on his 80th birthday, Thursday 5th June, 2008. All academic sessions will take place in the Palmerston Room in the Fisher Building at St John’s College.

9.00 a.m. Coffee and welcome (Foyer of Fisher Building)
9.30 a.m. Professor Rudolf Smend (Germany), “Wellhausen on Psalms.”
10.45-11.15 Coffee (Foyer)
11.15 a.m. Professor A. van der Kooj (The Netherlands), “The Story of Paradise in the Light of Mesopotamian Culture and Literature.”
12.30 a.m. Celebratory Lunch (Dining Hall, St John’s)
2.00 p.m. Dr O Lipschitz (Israel), “From Stone to God and Back”
3.15 p.m. Professor Bertil Albrektson (Sweden), “Novelists as Interpreters of Genesis.”
4.30 p.m. Tea and departure.

Conference fee: £25 a head (including lunch). Please fill in a booking form and return (with cheque payable to K J Dell) to:

Dr Katharine Dell
The Faculty of Divinity,
West Road,
Cambridge CB3 9BS

The booking form, in pdf, is available here.

The Holy Land: Archaeologically Digitized

Sorry for the miserably worded post title- it’s the only thing I could come up with which summarizes this excellent site in the short space provided for such titles.  With thanks to Antonio Lombatti (which is Italian for Anthony of the Gifted Mind and All Seeing Eye).

I’m off now to add a link to it on the Biblical Studies Resources page.

The Murfreesboro Bible Theme Park

They want to build a bible theme park in Murfreesboro, TN (about 2.5 hours from my residence) and the public down there are, to put it gently, a bit miffed about it. In a letter to the editor of the local paper, after attending a planning committee meeting, one good soul wrote

It would seem then, that this will be a $300 million park with limited access, hidden from neighbors, passers-by, and orbiting satellites, advertised via water cooler chatter, “the grapevine” and perhaps divine revelation … “Get thee into thy minivan and go to a place I will show thee.” To top it off, there’s a chance it will need to be paid for by people who don’t want it. Sounds like a real recipe for success.

It sounds more like a recipe for failure. Not to mention, of course, the all too easily made presumption by ‘park goers’ that what they see is really ‘things as they were’.  But who, among the builders and their consultants, is qualified to make such decisions regarding historicity or theological historiography?   In other words, who are the biblical scholars and / or theologians consulting on the project to ensure that it is accurate?  Or does that even matter (and I have the feeling it doesn’t).

Very Sad News: The Death of David Wright

The Scotsman is reporting

David Wright, a professor of ecclesiastical history at New College, Edinburgh University, has died aged 70. A distinguished evangelical church historian, theologian and a Kirk Elder, Professor Wright played a major role in Church of Scotland debates about sexuality and baptism.

In case you’ve not heard of him (it’s a Church History thing you know)

An expert in Reformation theology, he published extensively on the early church fathers, especially St Augustine, and on the magisterial figures of the European Reformation – Calvin, John Knox and Peter Martyr. He also wrote on contemporary ethical issues facing the Church, particularly questions of sexuality, where he took up a thoroughly conservative position. In 2005, he published a book entitled What has Infant Baptism Done to Baptism? An Enquiry at the End of Christendom (2005). However, in some ways Professor Wright’s greatest academic contribution was as an editor, particularly of Reformation and patristic texts, and of reference works such as the notable Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (1993).

May he rest in peace.

Union Theological Seminary Gets a New President

The New York Times is reporting

Union Theological Seminary in New York City named the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, 48, as its new president, making her the first woman to hold the post in the institution’s 172-year history. Currently a professor of theology at Yale Divinity School and chairwoman of its department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Dr. Jones is only the fourth woman to run an independent, mainline school of theology in the country. In the case of Union, Dr. Jones is taking on an institution emerging from serious financial problems.

Congratulations to her, and here’s to hoping Union will move beyond it’s difficulties and be the astonishing bastion of theological scholarship it has been in its past.

More Total Depravity

Today’s winners (losers) are a couple of teenagers who thought it would be a hoot to torture a disabled girl for over six hours. The Associated Press reports

Two teenagers hid overnight in a house and spent more than six hours torturing a disabled woman after her mother left in the morning, authorities said. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said the teenage boy and girl tied up the 18-year-old woman, clubbed her, kicked her, shaved her head and soaked her with water before making her walk barefoot outside in the snow. They also ignored pleas from the woman, who had undergone brain surgery, not to hit her in the head, investigators said. “This is one of the worst crimes I’ve ever seen,” Jones said Monday. “They are sick animals, apparently just doing this for kicks and no other reason.” Cheyenne Blanton, 17, and Joseph Nagle, 16, both of Hamilton, were arraigned Monday on juvenile delinquency charges that include aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, felonious assault and vandalism, according to juvenile court officials.

I concur with the officer- these kids behaved like animals.  It’s the sort of story that makes one long for the good old days when such miscreants would be placed in the stocks in the public square and humiliated out in the open for a good period of time before being strung up.   Almost.