Life and Letters of Paul is a writing-intensive seminar taught on two-year rotation at Ferrum College.

Jesus in History and Tradition is an upper level elective course at Ferrum College (VA).

In 1958, American historian of religion Morton Smith made an astounding discovery in the Mar Saba monastery in Jerusalem. Copied into the back of a seventeenth-century book was a lost letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215 CE) that contained excerpts from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark written by Mark himself and…[Read more]

Forty thousand infantry prepared for battle slowly march south toward Judea from the Seleucid capital in Antioch. They are joined by seven thousand cavalry with a single command: destroy Judea. Upon reaching the land they make camp at Emmaus and wait for a rather small band of Judean rebels to respond. Such is the opening scene of the battle of…[Read more]

Many scholars have used two verses from an epistle appended to the main body of 2 Maccabees to suggest a canon, proto-canon, or body of scripture is present already during the Hasmonean era and even before. We question such conclusions by investigating the background and contents of the epistle, using both historical-critical and rhetorical…[Read more]

This brief study investigates the desire for a fixed textual form as it pertains to scripture in the Judean tradition. It particularly delves into this phenomenon in three early versions of the Septuagint origin myth. is paper argues that this myth is invaluable for the study of transmission and reception of scripture, as it is one of the…[Read more]

One goal of this essay is to offer an exploratory, historiographical analysis of the conquest account in the book of Joshua, an analysis that focuses upon the sociocultural milieu of ancient Judah. I propose to show how this narrative of conquest might have contributed to discourse(s) among the literate Judean community that perpetuated the text,…[Read more]

This essay works toward three goals. First, it lays some groundwork for researching prophetic literature as a source for ancient Judean historical thought. Prophetic literature reveals a great deal about how ancient Judeans thought about and with their past, as it was represented in their literary repertoire. Second, it examines Isaiah 40-48, to…[Read more]

An interview with Francis Landy on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Alberta

Review of Transforming Literature into Scripture: Texts as Cult Objects at Nineveh and Qumran by Russell Hobson

Review of The Ways of a King: Legal and Political Ideas in the Bible by Geoffrey P. Miller

Review of The Literary Imagination in Jewish Antiquity by Eva Mroczek

An examination of Judean Pillar Figurines in relation to cultural discourse and identity construction in the late Iron-Age Levant

This essay offers a close reading of the dirge in Ezek 27, the metaphorical description of the famed and sinking Tyrian ship. The analysis pays close attention to the symbolic world of the text, situating it within the literary and historical milieux of fourth-century BCE Judah, when Jerusalemite literati began codifying their authoritative texts…[Read more]

An examination of the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) and allusions to it in the book of Isaiah

In a recent ZAW article, Michael Chan argues that II Reg 25,27-30 alludes to Gen 40-41, and that this allusion provides a hermeneutical key for understanding the purpose of II Reg 25,27-30 in an Enneateuchal context: it points to an imminent exodus, a return from exile and a gathering of diaspora in the promised land. This article picks up where…[Read more]

This essay summarizes Runar Thorsteinsson’s groundbreaking book, Paul’s Interlocutor in Romans 2, and situates the remaining essays in the volume.

This essay reexamines the logic of Paul’s argument in Romans 2, in light of Jewish traditions that insisted that God gave Israel, and Israel alone, the law.

In the Ba‘al Cycle’s description of the threshold separating the realms of the dead from that of the living, the key reference point is described as “the two tells (at) the boundary of the netherworld” (CAT 1.4 viii, 4). The specific word used to describe both topographical features is tl, the tell, an object well known in the archaeology of the…[Read more]

An exploration of the book of Chronicles vis-à-vis the concept of utopia