Me—TIME person of the year? It has taken a couple days for this news to sink in. Yes, no joke, TIME Magazine has named me—and every other blogger—person of the year. Talk about riding a wave; I haven’t even been blogging for a year yet! Of course, I can’t take all the credit for this honor, since I share it with literally millions of other bloggers and internet creative types. Along with bloggers, TIME mentions open source software providers such as the increasingly popular Linux.

And why is TIME making such a big deal of all of this? The answer is that bloggers and open sourcers, according to TIME, have inaugurated a new era of the individual. Lev Grossman, who wrote the TIME article, sees this use of the internet—dubbed “Web 2.0”—as a “new tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.” Grossman goes on to declare Web 2.0 “a revolution,” one for which the world is ready. Grossman writes:

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Grossman rightly notes some benefits of Web 2.0. One such benefit is that community and collaboration can be good things. After all, humans are communal beings, having been created that way. Teamwork can be extremely productive and rewarding. As the old adage has it, “Two heads are better than one.” Community can be a great tool for productivity and innovation, but it also has its disadvantages, especially in a global community made up of people with differing beliefs and worldviews.

Grossman lauds Web 2.0 as “an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person.” In this postmodern world, however, it seems that this “social experiment” may be doomed to failure. Without an external frame of reference for truth and morality, individual communities will not be able to see past their own horizons. Instead of ushering in a new era of understanding and community, Web 2.0 most likely will produce multiple communities rather than a single one.

Interestingly, while Grossman and TIME’s optimism regarding Web 2.0 knows no bounds, a recent BBC News article is considerably more skeptical. According to analysts at Gartner, “during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million.” In addition, “the firm has said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs.” Apparently, by the middle of next year, everyone who wants a blog will have one. The BBC article appeals to Technorati, which claims that approximately 55% of the 57 million blogs it monitors are inactive. The blogging fad is nothing more than that—a fad. Just like pet rocks and macramé, Gartner projects that blogging will slowly fade into history.

So whom should we believe? Will blogging change the course of history, or will it peak and slowly dwindle away? Is blogging the beginning of a new utopia? Hardly. History—and the biblical doctrine of fallen humanity—tell us that utopias are elusive pipe dreams when left to humanity to produce them. Is blogging, then, just another flash in the pan? No one knows for sure. I seem to remember that analysts predicted that the PC would be doomed to failure, and that certainly didn’t happen. Blogging is such a recent phenomenon that any prediction about its future is premature.

What can be said is that blogging, just like the internet, can be a powerful tool for good or evil. Blogging may not change the course of history in a grandiose way, but for the time being, it seems to be a force to be reckoned with. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: blog, Time Magazine, open source, internet

Any of you ready for a “Puritan Christmas”? Be careful now, because—some of you already guessed this—a Puritan Christmas is in fact—no Christmas at all. That’s right, as The Globe and Mail notes on its December 13, 2006 Facts & Arguments page, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain, on Christmas Day the poor customarily went to the home of the richest person in town where they were given food and strong drink, resulting in jolly, though at times a bit tipsy, celebration (citing a 2004 article by Jeff Guinn in The Fort-Worth Star-Telegram).

The Puritans, however, set out to eliminate Christmas. When they took control of Scotland’s Parliament in the 1580s, they ruled that Christmas no longer existed. As can be imagined, this did not permanently settle the matter. Nevertheless, the anti-Christmas sentiment in England gained momentum, producing proponents such as Blue Richard Culmer, an ex-minister who smashed stained-glass windows of churches celebrating Christmas, and Praise-God Barebones, a street preacher whose message was that observing Christmas was tantamount to blasphemy.

In 1642, the article notes, “the Puritan-led English parliament asked citizens not to celebrate Christmas in any way, other than private respectful prayer.” Yet not everyone was prepared to abide by this ordinance. In 1645, then, Parliament went one step further, declaring that only Sundays were holy days. Unless Christmas fell on a Sunday, people must report to work. Consequently, “Christmas riots” broke out in the streets of London, with apprentices singing carols and kicking soccer balls. The riots were dispersed.

In 1647, the Puritans threatened to throw anyone celebrating Christmas in jail, but relented when this provoked large protests in Canterbury and other locations. The anti-Christmas laws remained in effect until 1660 when the monarchy was restored, yet it took almost another 300 years before Christmas became a full national holiday in Scotland in 1958. Truly a worthy entry into a book yet to be written—takers, anyone?—on The Christmas Wars or The Battle for Christmas (though I am aware by existing similar volumes). Was the Puritans’ zeal misguided?

In any case, as we fast-forward to our country in 2006, oddly enough, many conservative Christians have risen to advocate Christmas as an essential Christian outpost and bastion in an increasingly secular culture. We must “put Christ back into Christmas,” we are told, and reminded that “the first six letters of Christmas spell “Christ.’” Is this really a cause worth fighting for? And how can Christians in one age seek to outlaw Christmas and in another champion the cause of celebrating Christmas?

I could flesh out my own views on this in some more detail, but perhaps it is better to ask you what you think. Should we cast our lot with the Puritans or with modern-day Christian pro-Christmas advocates?

NOTE: The following is an actual sermon preached by Dr. Köstenberger at Christ Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

When we think about Christmas and the Bible, we naturally think of Matthew’s account of the virgin birth and the visit of the Magi or Luke’s account of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. We think of the decree going out from Caesar Augustus, of Joseph and Mary going up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and of Mary giving birth to Jesus in a manger. We think of the shepherds in the field, of the heavenly host announcing peace on earth to those of good will and of the shepherds finding the baby in the manger. This is what Christmas is all about, isn’t it? Well, yes, this is what Christmas is all about.

And yet, there is more. Jesus’ birth in the stable that day was only the culmination of a long history that reached its climax in that remarkable event. As Paul writes in the book of Galatians, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:5; see also Heb. 1:1–3). What does Paul mean when he says Jesus was born in “the fullness of time”? He means that all the divine preparations for the Savior’s birth had been completed. All the prophecies regarding the coming Messiah had been uttered. All the lessons had been taught to God’s people Israel. All the OT symbolism anticipating and pointing to Christ had been instituted. Now there was only one thing left to do: For God to send his Son.

John talks about this in chapter 3 verse 16 of his Gospel: “For this is how much God loved the world: he gave his one-of-a-kind Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Who is this one-of-a-kind Son? As the prologue of John’s Gospel makes clear, this Son pre-existed with God from eternity past, even before creation. He was with God in the beginning (an echo of Gen. 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”). Not only was he with God, but he, the pre-incarnate Word, was himself God. Also, he was the one through whom the world was made. He was the Creator before he became the Savior of the world. And then, most wonderful of all, he, the Word, who was in the beginning with God, was made flesh and dwelt among us.

In what follows I want us to dwell on this amazing depiction of Jesus in John’s prologue and to pause and ponder the amazing depths of this revelation of who Jesus is. I want us to reflect on what you might call “Christmas according to John,” a Christmas that is not focused on the paraphernalia surrounding Jesus’ birth, such as the manger or the shepherds, important as these might be in describing the humble circumstances in which Jesus was born. John’s Christmas, if you will, his perspective on Jesus’ taking on human form, does not so much try to bring Jesus down to earth so that we can understand him and relate to him (who cannot relate to a cute little baby?). No, rather than focusing on bringing Jesus down to earth, John wants to take us up with him to heaven, to a time when there was no creation, no humanity, no animals, not even angels, a time when Jesus, the Word, co-existed with God in perfect love and unity of purpose.

Let’s, then, look at John 1:1–18, the opening of John’s Gospel, and try to find answers to the following three questions: (1) Who is that Word that was made flesh? (2) Why did that Word come into the world? And (3) What is Christmas according to John, and how can understanding John’s message transform the way we celebrate Christmas?

First, then, who is that Word that was made flesh? Let’s read John 1:1–5 [. . .]. In vv. 6–8, we are told about John the Baptist’s witness to Jesus, so let’s keep reading vv. 9–11.]  As mentioned, John uses a different style of reporting than the other evangelists. Luke takes you to the stable, and makes you feel like you were there with Jesus and Joseph and Mary and the angels and shepherds. John tries to give you a bird’s eye view, so he takes you on a journey in a time capsule, as it were, that takes you to the beginning of time.

In that beginning, he says, was the Word. What (or who) is the Word? The Word is God’s self-expression; the Word is who God is. So what that tells us is that Jesus, when he was made flesh, knew God intimately and personally the way no one has ever known God. That is why he could, as it says in v. 18, “explain” God, or, perhaps even better, “give full account of him”: “God no one has ever seen; the one-of-a-kind Son, God in his own right, who lives in closest relationship with the Father—that one has given full account of him.”

Continuing in v. 1, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Jesus stood in close relationship with God, so he could explain him, yet he also was God in his own right. So God (the Father) is God, and Jesus (the Son) is God as well, and the two stand in the closest possible relationship to one another. Even when Jesus was a baby in the manger, he was in “the Father’s lap,” as you might translate chapter 1 verse 18. He was secure in God the Father’s love and care and protection, no matter how fragile and vulnerable he was in his humanity. God sent him in the fullness of time, and everything surrounding the circumstances of Jesus’ coming was under God’s perfect control.

Not only was Jesus with God, and himself God, he was active in God’s creation. As Paul says, “For by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth . . . all things have been created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16). Or as John writes, “Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.” Here are two important implications that flow from Jesus’ activity in creation.

To begin with, John’s message is that, when God sent his Son, this was not the first time in human history that the Son served as God’s agent. No, before Jesus became the Savior of mankind, he had already been the Creator.

Also, the fact that the world was made through Jesus makes it even more striking that the world rejected Jesus when he came to earth. Not only did the world reject Jesus, it was the very world that Jesus had made that rejected its Creator! This is John’s message in vv. 10–11: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” He, the Creator, did not only create light and separate it from the darkness; he himself was the Light that came into the world. And he, the Creator, did not merely create life and was the Life-giver; he himself was the Life that came into the world. As John says in vv. 4–5, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all people; and the Light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.”

Now when John refers to Jesus as the Light, I believe he does not only think of creation, he may also think of Jesus as the Messiah. There are several important OT passages where the Messiah is referred to as the light. As early as in Numbers 24:17, we read, in Balaam’s famous oracle, “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; A star shall come forth from Jacob, A scepter shall rise from Israel . . . One from Jacob shall have dominion . . .” And several hundred years later, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them” (Isa. 9:2; quoted in the NT); and again, “And I will appoint You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those who dwell in darkness from the prison” (Isa. 42:6–7; also quoted in the NT). And Malachi 4:2 says, “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings,” after God’s messenger, the new Elijah, has come (Mal. 3:1; 4:2).

Finally, when John says in v. 5 that the light shines in the darkness, but darkness has not overcome it, we see hints of the cosmic battle in which Satan tried to defeat Jesus but where Jesus overcame Satan (I know some translations have “did not comprehend” rather than “did not overcome” in v. 5, but “overcome” is much more likely here. I’m not sure what it would mean for the darkness to “understand” or “comprehend” the light).

So, then, who was that baby who was born on Christmas Day? According to John, he was God, the Creator, the Light, and the Life. He was the eternal Son of God who has life in himself and who, like God, dwelled in inapproachable light in eternity past. It is this Word that, in Jesus, has become flesh and dwelt among us.

Second, why did the Word come into the world? We find the answer in vv. 12–13 [read]. It is interesting that John carefully structured what is really a poem in the original to form a chiasm, that is, he structured verses 1–18 in the form of concentric circles. In vv. 1–5, he talks about the Word’s activity in creation (A); in vv. 6–8, he introduces the witness of John the Baptist (B); in the center of the chiasm, in vv. 9–14, he speaks of the incarnation of the Word and of the privilege of becoming God’s children (C); in v. 15, he returns to John the Baptist (B’); and in vv. 16–18, he speaks of the final revelation brought by Jesus Christ (C’). So, at the very heart of the prologue is John’s teaching about the incarnation and about its primary purpose.

Why did Jesus come into this world? A lot of people in our culture and around the world don’t understand why Jesus was born. They never get past the trappings of Christmas, the presents, the tree, Santa Claus, stockings, candy canes, Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. Likewise, many people don’t understand why Jesus died on the cross. The reason for this lack of true understanding, I believe, is that it takes eyes of faith, and the Holy Spirit, to understand the spiritual purpose of Jesus’ coming, the true meaning of what we celebrate at Christmas.

Why did the Word become flesh? According to John, the reason is that “to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, to those he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (vv. 12–13). Children of God! Aren’t we all children of God by virtue of being created by him? Not according to John. According to John, we become God’s children only by being born spiritually, by being born, “not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” So when we look at that baby in the manger, we should think of the spiritual birth that Jesus, God in his own right, made possible by becoming a human being and by dying in our place.

Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel, failed to understand the necessity of this new, spiritual birth, when Jesus told him: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” He thought Jesus was talking about a second physical birth. But Jesus explained that the birth he was talking about was a birth “of water and the Spirit,” that is, a birth characterized by spiritual renewal and transformation. That birth, Jesus explained, is like the wind. How do you know it’s there? By seeing it directly? No; by seeing its effects. When we look at leaves blowing in the wind, we think we see the wind, but what we are actually seeing is the effects of the wind.

If this is too difficult for you and me to understand, let’s stop trying to understand and start receiving what God has for us. When I was a university student in Vienna, Austria, and then by God’s grace experienced a spiritual awakening when I was in my early 20s, I at first tried very hard to understand things such as how a God who was sovereign could allow Jesus to die on the cross. Or, closer to home, how he could allow certain things to happen in my life, like my parents getting a divorce just after I graduated from high school. How can God be sovereign and allow such bad things to happen? No matter how hard people around me who were already Christians tried to explain it to me, I could not grasp it. (I also found it hard to forgive my Dad.) In my utter despair, I cried out to God, like Peter cried out when he started to sink in the water, “Lord, save me!” By his grace, I had come to understand that the bottom line was, I was a sinner, and I needed a Savior. In the end, nothing else really mattered. Don’t wait to understand the cross, or any other spiritual truth, before you put your trust in Jesus. If you know you’re a sinner, and you know that you need a Savior, do what John says in John 1:12: receive him, believe in him, and as you do so, become a child of God.

Third, what is Christmas according to John, and how can understanding John’s message transform the way we celebrate Christmas? [Read John 1:14–18.] As we have already seen, for John, Christmas, that is, Jesus’ coming in to this world as a baby, is the Word-become-flesh, the incarnation of the Word of God. This is what John 1:14 talks about, and in vv. 14 and 16 we see two major ways in which Jesus’ incarnation involves us. In both of these verses, we find statements using the word “we.”

In v. 14, John says, “And the Word was made flesh and pitched his tent among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the one-of-a-kind Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” When we look at the baby lying in the manger, when we look at Jesus’ life and ministry, and when we look at Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, we ought to see God’s glory. We ought to realize that what God did in and through Jesus is a wonderful thing, a thing that ought to give us great occasion for wonder, and praise, and worship. Do you, and do I, perceive God’s glory in Jesus? Is there any time left for us in our busy Christmas schedule to marvel at the wonder, and the glory, of God in the Lord Jesus Christ? John wants to call us back to this attitude of worship and praise. He wants us to be still and to know that God has sent his one-of-a-kind Son into the world. He wants to lift us up far above any preoccupation with the external trappings of Christmas, so we can contemplate the wonder of a God who would care enough for the world and the people he has made to send his Son to die, knowing that the world would reject him, knowing that glory would come to him through rejection and suffering and brokenness.

Not only does John say in v. 14 that “we have seen his glory,” he goes on to say in v. 16 that “from his fullness we have all received grace for grace.” First we have to receive him (v. 12), and then we receive from his fullness an abundance of blessings. Those of us who are Christians have not only seen God’s glory, we have received an abundance of grace from his fullness. As Jesus says in John 10:10: “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Why is our experience impoverished at times? Why don’t we know the fullness of all that God has in store for us in Christ? It is because we fail to realize who Jesus truly is in relation to God and in relation to us. The essence of the Christian life is not adhering to an abstract set of beliefs. The essence of the Christian life is not even to act out a part of what we think a mature Christian person ought to look like. Jesus called this play-acting, or hypocrisy. No; the essence of the Christian life is a personal relationship with God in and through Jesus Christ, a grateful, receptive love and trust relationship between us and another person, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Do you and I truly love Jesus today? Do you and I truly trust him? Or do we love other things, or people, more? Do we trust him, or, if the truth were known, do we trust in the things of this world, or in other people, or in our own ability and human plans? In Jesus Christ, God wants to restore us to living in that constant sense of dependence on God that characterized Adam and Eve before they fell into sin. They were his creatures, and he had given them everything around them to enjoy and cultivate. The marvel about all of this is that, according to John, we don’t have to wait to heaven before this becomes a reality. Jesus came to give us abundant life already in the here and now, and we have already received from the fullness of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

What, then, is the “grace and truth” that John is talking about in vv. 14 and 16–17? Most serious students of the Bible believe that the expression “grace and truth” in John 1:14 is rooted in the OT expression “lovingkindness and faithfulness” (e.g., Exodus 34:6). The source of the grace we have received in Christ, then, is God’s lovingkindness, and the source of the truth that Jesus is and came to bring is God’s covenant-keeping faithfulness. If so, God’s sending his son in the fullness of time is an expression of his faithfulness to his people, and when we look at Jesus, we ought to be moved with gratitude for God’s faithfulness, despite our sin, of pursuing us, of coming to us, of rescuing us from the curse and the power of sin.

So, then, as John tells us in vv. 14–18, in Jesus we have seen God’s glory, and we have received from his fullness, both grace and truth. Just as we tell our children, Christmas is not all about Christmas presents, material things we put under the tree. Christmas is about the spiritual blessings we have received through Christ, by becoming his children. That’s the most precious gift of all. This Christmas, let’s ponder anew the wonder of what it means to be God’s children, and let’s say with Paul, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” (1 Cor. 9:15), who is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the Word who existed with God in eternity past and who took on human flesh and dwelt among us. As Matthew writes, quoting the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call his name ‘Immanuel,’ which translated means, ‘God with us.’”

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Gospel of John

Recently (November 14–20), I attended the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), the Institute of Biblical Research (IBR), and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Washington, D.C. I have participated in these events for the past 15 or 20 years, and every year this is an excellent opportunity to stay abreast of developments in the field and to renew friendships and make new acquaintances. In what follows allow me to give you a brief report “from the frontlines,” as it were.

At the ETS meeting, I attended a session devoted to Bob Yarbrough’s book, The Salvation-Historical Fallacy? moderated by Scott Hafemann (Gordon-Conwell), with an opening presentation by Yarbrough and responses by Elmer Martens and Frank Thielman (Beeson Divinity School). While duly noting the potential pitfalls of a salvation-historical approach, Yarbrough sought to make a case for the viability of a judicious use of it in contemporary scholarship. In their responses, Martens noted several concerns (none of which insurmountable, in my opinion); and Thielman strongly affirmed Yarbrough’s assessment. An interesting discussion ensued among the standing-room-only crowd (about 75 people packed into an all-too-small room).

Other interesting papers and discussions centered around Harold Hoehner’s (Dallas Theological Seminary) presentation on women pastors (also standing-room-only) and on the Trinity and the eternal subordination of the Son. On the former issue, Hoehner sought to make a case for the gift of “pastor-teacher” being given to women as well as men. On the latter issue, Bruce Ware (Southern Seminary) was pitted against Kevin Giles (Australia), who charged that Ware quoted Augustine out of context. Ware showed (successfully, in my opinion) that it was actually Giles who quoted Augustine (and Ware) out of context by omitting a portion of the source quote (see the article on the Ware/Giles exchange at the CBMW website; see also the article on Ware’s election as president at BPNews).

I also attended sessions on interpreting the Synoptic Gospels (by various members of the Dallas Theological Seminary faculty) and on Larry Hurtado’s book Lord Jesus Christ. In the session on the Gospels, one of the DTS faculty made a surprising case that Matthew could have transposed a post-resurrection event to the pre-resurrection period of Jesus’ ministry (following a suggestion by Davies and Allison in their ICC commentary on Matthew). Under fairly pointed questioning in the Q & A period following his presentation, the presenter seemed to backpedal somewhat, saying he did not necessarily agree with this but did not necessarily have a problem with it, but several in the audience were still left wondering how this and some of the other theses presented in the paper fell comfortably within the context of ETS or DTS. In the session devoted to Hurtado’s work, Hurtado magisterially defended his work against the critiques by some of the other panel members, which included Richard Burridge, Scot McKnight, and others. This does not necessarily mean that Hurtado is right in absolutely everything he says in his book, but that anyone would critique him better do his homework, because Hurtado is highly articulate and extremely well-researched on this topic, which has occupied him for decades.

The ETS banquet on Thursday night was followed by the presidential address of ETS president Edwin Yamauchi. As is customary, the address will be published in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. At the business session on Friday, Bruce Ware of Southern Seminary was unanimously elected as Vice President of the Society, which puts him in line for the ETS presidency in 2009. Dr. Ware has been an outspoken opponent of Open Theism and has served as president of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). I also attended the very moving and spiritually nurturing lecture by John Piper on William Tyndale, in which Piper challenged his audience not to be Erasmian but to be Tyndales; not to minimize doctrine, especially sin, hell, wrath, and grace; and to be willing to pay the price for being followers of Christ and the cross and to suffer. Finally, I should also mention a very interesting (and largely compelling) critique of James Dunn’s Remembering Jesus I attended by Paul Eddy.

At this year’s IBR meeting, on Friday night Klyne Snodgrass (North Park) delivered a paper on parable research. Snodgrass took his departure from the German scholar Adolf Jülicher and proposed a new way of classifying Jesus’ parables in the Gospels. Snodgrass’s paper seemed interesting and suggestive to at least some in the audience until Craig Blomberg got up as the formal respondent and provided a rather compelling critique of Snodgrass’s paper. Blomberg himself has argued in several publications that the parables typically have a tripartite literature structure, which in some cases is reduced to a bipartite or even singular-unit structure. Unfortunately, the person who was supposed to give the opening devotional was stuck in traffic, so that the meeting proceeded without it.

The following morning (Saturday) Robert Stein gave a presentation on the ending of Mark’s Gospel in which he argued that (a) the “short ending” of Mark is not the actual original ending of Mark but (b) none of the available “longer” endings is the actual ending either, concluding that (c) the actual ending of Mark is lost. Formal respondent Craig Evans got up and said he agreed with everything Stein had said and added that this, on the assumption of Markan priority, leaves us with Matthew’s ending as the closest we have to the now-lost ending of Mark. The contrast between the sharp disagreement Friday night and the unanimity Saturday morning could not have been more pronounced.

Owing to my daughter’s dress rehearsal and orchestra performance early the following week, I had to leave the Society of Biblical Literature meeting early, but managed to attend briefly a meeting of the John, Jesus, and History group (again, a standing-room-only situation in an inadequate location). Ben Witherington made a case for Lazarus as the Beloved Disciple in John’s Gospel in light of the designation for Lazarus as “the one loved” by Jesus in John 11. Papers were also presented by Craig Evans, Derek Tovey, Sean Freyne, and Richard Bauckham. Bauckham has an interesting new book out, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans).

In my view Witherington is far too quick to dismiss the external evidence for Johannine apostolic authorship as divided. There is very little evidence for Lazarus being the author of John’s Gospel apart from the surface similarity of which Witherington makes so much. He was not one of the Twelve; is never paired with Peter anywhere in the New Testament tradition as the Beloved Disciple regularly is in John’s Gospel and elsewhere (see the monograph by Kevin Quast, Peter and the Beloved Disciple); and so on. To me this seems to be an example of a narrative approach gone awry.

This, to be sure, is only a very partial roundup of these recent meetings. I hope you find it nonetheless informative and helpful. Please let me know if I can provide any additional information on any of these or other topics or contact the presenters directly.

NOTE: For a survey of recent scholarship, see my lecture “Of Professors and Madmen: Currents in Contemporary New Testament Scholarship” published in Faith & Mission.

Technorati Tags: ETS, IBR, SBL