Meade on Canon on Camera

My sources tell me that John Meade is currently hiding out in the outer banks, camping or some such thing. Lucky for you, he was recently captured on camera talking about all things canon with several faculty from Southeastern. Take a watch.

New Book: The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity

The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (OUP) by yours truly and Ed Gallagher releases in the UK this week (see the preview on Google Books here; see Amazon UK here; see Amazon USA here). It will be available on the tables at SBL in Boston, MA, and it will release in the USA on Jan. 2.

What is the relevance of this book for canon studies? The biblical canon of the Old and New Testament was formed over centuries. There were many Jewish “scriptures” or sacred writings of inviolable authority as shown from the MSS from Qumran and the deuterocanonical literature from Palestine and Alexandria. Even significant works such as the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas reveal the early impulse for Christian literary output. Answers vary for how and why the churches settled on the same core Jewish canon with variation at the edges (N.B. the differences between the modern HB/OT Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox canons). Furthermore, the answers differ over the formation of the twenty-seven-book NT canon. These questions focus on the quantity and the quality of our evidence. Scholars have noted the variegated nature of the evidence for the biblical canon. What do we learn from MSS (e.g. Dead Sea Scrolls; Christian codices), citations of religious literature (e.g. early Christian usage of the Shepherd), ancient translations (e.g. Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures), ancient notices (e.g. “The Law and the Prophets”), and canon lists? Thus, a book on canon lists will necessarily not tell the whole history of the canon, but we suggest that the various, early lists provide the most specific information about the ancients’s canon.

Review of Brotzman and Tully’s Old Testament Textual Criticism (Meade)

Over at the Books as a Glance website, our one-time (corr: two-time) ETC blogger, John Meade, has a detailed review of the new updated edition of Ellis Brotzman’s Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction. John concludes:

As an introduction to textual criticism, this volume has heuristic value in that it orients the reader to the discourse and practice of textual criticism. As an introduction to textual criticism, the volume is not as helpful as it could have been. The discussion on the text history of the Old Testament is not current. The information on the Greek versions was incomplete and mistaken in places. The volume appeared to follow other chief works in the field such as Tov’s and as a result it lacked fresh analysis and presentation of the immensely important subject matter. The field of textual criticism is already challenging enough to the novice, but when there are mistakes and discussions are presented in an incomplete and stale manner, the authors make it harder for the student to learn this skill than necessary.

Brotzman’s new co-author, Eric Tully, thinks John missed the aim of the book as an introduction and gives a lengthy response as a result.

I will say that writing an introduction is tough. It requires a real mastery of the field in question but also a good sense of what students need and how they will be able to digest it. Moreover, it needs to introduce students both to the history of the discipline but also to the current “state of play.” For a long time, my personal favorite in this genre has been Jobes’ and Silva’s introduction to the Septuagint. It’s a great model in this. I haven’t seen the 2nd edition yet but I understand it keeps the same basic structure of the original edition.

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As an addendum, I think we can all agree that John Meade needs to blog more for us here at ETC. Besides benefiting all of us with his OTTC expertise, it would make up for the fact that he roots for the Denver Broncos.

New ETC Blogger: John Meade

The ETC blog team proudly presents a new blog team member:

John Meade

Meade is a candidate for the PhD (ABD) at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky in the department of Old Testament. His dissertation is “A Critical Edition of the Fragments of Origen’s Hexapla of Job: 22-42,” which is also being compiled for the Hexapla Institute, of which he is a part (www.hexapla.org).

He has many interests in the area of biblical textual criticism including Hebrew Bible, LXX, Hexapla, NT, and the study of the ancient versions for their interpretation of the text.

The ETC team is particularly happy to strengthen its competency in the field of Septuagint studies, and we look forward to many interesting blogposts by John.

Welcome!