As a supplement to my recent blog “Best of 2008,” here is a brief listing of other important recent publications in biblical studies of which the readers of this blog will want to be aware.

The Baker Exegetical Commentary Series is rapidly filling out, with new volumes on Mark (Robert Stein), Jude & 2 Peter (Gene Green), and 1–3 John (Robert Yarbrough). Each of these volumes continues to maintain the high standard set by previous volumes in the series (with the possible exception of John; the reader will have to judge). Also from Baker is an important volume edited by Markus Bockmuehl and Alan Torrance, Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s Bible, with contributions by N. T. Wright, Oliver O’Donovan, and others.

Three important recent contributions published by Zondervan are Lee Fields, Hebrew for the Rest of Us: Using Hebrew Tools without Mastering Biblical Hebrew; Constantine Campbell, Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek; and Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Walter Kaiser, Darrell Bock, and Peter Enns). Hebrew for the Rest of Us looks to be a very helpful tool; Campbell’s book seems to bring a very important, but complex, topic down to the level of the serious Bible student; and the latest book in the Three Views series received an enthusiastic response at the recent ETS meeting at which a session was devoted to the volume.

Two recent contributions are parts of fairly new promising series. The first is John Harvey’s Anointed with the Spirit and Power: The Holy Spirit’s Empowering Presence (P & R), the second volume in the Explorations in Biblical Theology series edited by Robert Peterson, a solid survey of an important subject. The second is Christopher Bass’s That You May Know: Assurance of Salvation in 1 John (B & H) in the NAC Studies in Bible & Theology edited by Ray Clendenen. Both of these new series are welcomed, and we can look forward to forthcoming volumes.

Tom Thatcher has turned into one of the most prolific editors of works in Johannine studies. Two volumes edited by him appeared this year: Anatomies of Narrative Criticism: The Past, Present, and Futures of the Fourth Gospel as literature (co-edited by Stephen Moore; SBL), with contributions by Alan Culpepper, Robert Kysar, Mark Stibbe, and Francis Moloney; and Jesus, the Voice, and the Text: Beyond the Oral and the Written Gospel (Baylor University Press), seeking to carry further the seminal work by Werner Kelber (interviewed by the editor).

Finally, among the important recent works on biblical studies published in recent months are two new books by Greg Beale: We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (InterVarsity) and The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority (Crossway). Beale also delivered an address on the second topic at the recent ETS meeting in Providence, RI. The Crossway volume carries on Beale’s interaction with Peter Enns. InterVarsity also published The Lord’s Supper: Five Views (edited by Gordon Smith).

This should keep the readers of this blog busy for the Christmas break. Happy reading, and Merry Christmas!

Recently I participated in the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) in Providence, RI and the annual meetings of the Institute of Biblical Research (IBR) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in Boston. Here is my roundup of events.

ETS

The ETS voted unanimously in favor of a new bylaw that makes provision for a new executive director to be hired, a much-needed development in light of the rapid growth of the society over the past couple decades. A motion to change the doctrinal base of the society and to replace it with an 11-point doctrinal statement was roundly defeated. In other business, Clinton Arnold of Talbot Seminary was elected Vice President of ETS, putting him on track to become ETS president in due course.

The four plenary addresses dealt with the main theme of the conference, “Text and Canon.” I was unable to attend the OT papers by Peter Gentry and Stephen Dempster on the OT text and canon, respectively (though I heard excellent reports). I did hear the NT papers by Dan Wallace and Charles Hill. Dan Wallace’s presentation was very clear and practical, calling for more evangelicals to help with the unfinished work of textual criticism. Charles Hill’s lecture on the NT canon was thoroughly evangelical in its outlook, taking its cue from the NT teaching and from a narrowly constrained definition of the word “apostle” in the NT. Over against the view that the canon was only finalized in the 4^th century of the Christian era, Hill argued that the idea of the NT canon was already implicit in the Hebrew Scriptures and the new covenant established by Jesus. I hope to include the four plenary addresses in the March issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society; they may also be published in a separate edited volume at a later point.

I also listened to a paper on eternal life in John’s Gospel by John Dennis and attended the session by my wife Margaret. Margaret’s paper was on Jesus and feminism, presenting case studies on radical and reformist feminist views of Jesus’ approach to women. The paper was based on her new book with Crossway, Jesus and the Feminists. I also heard good things about Eckhard Schnabel’s review of Mark Strauss’s Four Portraits, One Jesus (Zondervan) and obtained a copy of the review, though was not able to attend the session.

ETS president Hassell Bullock delivered a fine presidential address at Thursday’s banquet entitled “Wisdom, the ‘Amen’ of Torah,” in which he explored the interrelationships of major themes in OT theology. The address will appear in the March issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Overall, it appeared that attendance was down at ETS this year owing to the economic crisis, the location of the conference (an hour’s distance from the SBL meeting in Boston), and possibly other factors.

IBR

The IBR meeting featured papers by Joel Green (Luke-Acts as conversionist narrative; I did not hear this paper) and by Doug Moo on “new creation” theology in Paul, among others. Doug Moo’s presentation was thorough and judicious, as one has come to expect from this leading Pauline scholar. In IBR business, it was decided to move to quarterly publication of the journal, Bulletin of Biblical Research.

SBL

The John, Jesus, and History section of SBL featured a review session of three new books on John’s Gospel by Paul Anderson, Moody Smith, and Richard Bauckham. The session included three reviews of these books by Judith Lieu (Lady Margaret professor of NT at Cambridge University), Amy-Jill Levine (Vanderbilt), and myself; responses by the three authors; and a half-hour Q & A with questions from the floor. Read my presentation.

On the whole, Bauckham’s work (viewing the Gospels as eyewitness testimony) was the best received. It was judged that Anderson’s work is rather idiosyncratic and steeped in a historical-critical “quest” mentality. His proposal of John engaging in a dialectical mode of theology received mixed reviews. Moody Smith spoke of a “conversion experience” when reading Lou Martyn’s History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, yet he backed away from a two-level hermeneutic and professed belief in the primacy of Jesus’ story.

In my review of Bauckham, I noted my essential agreement with his thesis that John’s Gospel represents eyewitness testimony but challenged his opposition to apostolic authorship. In his response, Bauckham said we had to agree to disagree on the latter point. He did not respond to my critique of his treatment of the internal evidence and seemed to base his view more on the intuition that it was unlikely that both Mark (via Peter) and John came from the circle of the Twelve since they differ in so many respects. Yet later in the discussion, he himself suggested other possible reasons for the difference between Mark and John: Mark’s reporting vs. John’s reflecting, and John’s selectivity and greater narrative development of fewer miracles.

Another interesting session was devoted to the impact of R. Alan Culpepper’s The Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel (1983). Presenters included Tom Thatcher and Colleen Conway, among others, and Alan Culpepper himself offered a broad and helpful response.

The SBL meeting was smaller this year, since the American Academy of Religion did not meet jointly with SBL. This made lodging easier and the book displays less crowded. New publications of note are listed in my blog “Best of 2008.” On Sunday, I worshiped at Park Street Church in downtown Boston and enjoyed hearing an excellent sermon by Pastor Gordon Hugenberger.

In Other News

At the CBMW (Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) lunch, Bruce Ware delivered a warm-hearted address on the continuing need to engage the gender-related issues from a biblical perspective, and JBWM editor Denny Burk gave a brief address as well and issued a call for contributions to that journal.

In various Zondervan-related meetings, I heard the new president of Zondervan, Moe Girkins, speak and share her vision for the leading Christian publishing company. She has major experience in turning around billion-dollar companies and is currently halfway through a Master of Divinity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Moe brings to the Christian publishing industry a freshness of vision and an emphasis on multi-media. She also urged closer cooperation among Christian publishers. Zondervan also convened the contributors to the new Biblical Theology of the New Testament (BTNT) series of which I am the general editor. These include Darrell Bock, Doug Moo, Mike Wilkins, David Garland, George Guthrie, Alan Bandy, and Tom Schreiner (Tom was unable to attend). My Theology of John is slated to appear next fall.

Preparations are also underway for the publication of The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament, with B & H, in the fall of 2009. If you are teaching courses on NT Survey or Introduction and would like to receive a complimentary copy of the book when it becomes available, please send me an e-mail at akostenberger@sebts.edu, and I will see what I can do.

Other publishing projects are a 2d edition of God, Marriage & Family (Crossway), a hermeneutics text entitled Invitation to Biblical Interpretation (Kregel; Invitation series), and a book on orthodoxy and heresy (co-authored with Mike Kruger; Crossway).

That’s it! If you attended the meetings, please feel free to share any additional reflections you might have.

The end (of the year) is near, and once again it’s time to list the best books in biblical and theological studies that appeared in 2008. This year seems to have been an especially fruitful year for publications in these areas. Here is my list:

1. The ESV Study Bible (Crossway): While people may debate the merits of the ESV as a translation, the qualities of the ESV Study Bible are indisputable. An exquisitely produced, high-quality product that sets a new standard for study Bibles.
2. Eckhard Schnabel, Paul the Missionary (InterVarsity Press): A worthy sequel to Schnabel’s landmark 2-volume work Early Christian Mission. The new “Ronald Allan” on Paul’s missionary practice. Both thorough and practical.
3. D. A. Carson, Christ & Culture Revisited (Eerdmans): A timely book on an all-important subject, the relationship between Christianity and contemporary culture. Carson properly takes his starting point from Niebuhr’s classic work Christ and Culture. A very important book.
4. Robert Stein, Mark (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Baker): I haven’t read Stein’s work in toto yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, this commentary is first rate, as one would expect from this senior Markan scholar.
5. David Chapman, Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion (Mohr-Siebeck): The revised version of a dissertation at Cambridge University under William Horbury, this will be the standard work on crucifixion for a long time to come.
6. Margaret Elizabeth Köstenberger, Jesus and the Feminists (Crossway): This book should have been written a long time ago. A judicious survey of various feminist approaches to Jesus. J. I. Packer calls it “scrupulously fair.” In the interest of full disclosure: I am married to the author.
7. Cosmology of New Testament Theology (ed. Jonathan Pennington and Sean McDonough; T & T Clark): Finally, a monograph on this very important but widely neglect aspect of New Testament theology. Worldview matters, then and now.
8. Craig Blomberg and Mariam Kamell, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: James (Zondervan): A great start to an important new series from Zondervan. Blomberg here teams up with Mariam Kamell, a doctoral student at St. Andrews University.
9. Suffering and the Goodness of God (ed. Christopher Morgan and Robert Peterson; Theology in Community series; Crossway): Another promising start to a new series, with contributions by, among others, Robert Yarbrough, Walter Kaiser, Dan McCartney, and John Frame.
10. Clyde Fant and Mitchell Reddish, Lost Treasures of the Bible: Understanding the Bible through Archaeological Artifacts in World Museums (Eerdmans): A great publishing idea, and well executed. As a teacher and student of Scripture, this is a resource I will value highly.

Final note: Readers may want to be aware of the imminent publication of The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (ed. George T. Kurian; Blackwell), a massive, 4-volume compendium. Ambitious in scope, with a large number of fascinating entries. Publication has been delayed until early 2009, however.