This is still one of my favorite works on the history of baptism. Many are usually surprised to learn about Everett Ferguson’s conclusions… --> First, Ferguson concluded that the earliest subjects of baptism (= submersion with exceptions) in the New Testament and early Church were pious believers (cf. p. 855).

RIP Dieter Hagedorn (d. 2023). I knew I’d learn this news well afterward and did just discover that Prof. Hagedorn passed away two years ago. Probably not many know who he was. For his day job,…
(The picture is me with them in their home attic where they worked.) he was Professor of the Heidelberg Institute of Papyrology, the first to hold this esteemed position. But I knew him for the work that he and his wife, Ursula, produced over many weekends by collating and editing manuscripts: a critical edition of the oldest catena of Job. ->

Today, I start a new chapter of ministry @MBTS and couldn’t be more excited.

The Lord’s kindness led me to the desert 13 years ago, and I’ll never be the same person. The desert became a kind of magister, teaching me how the Lord provides. ->

When you’ve seen a family of desert quail moving from place to place, you stop and ponder how the Lord cares for them in this dry wilderness. He has cared for me and my family abundantly more.

Phoenix Seminary gave me my first teaching post.

I can understand takes on the book of Enoch like these, but Nick's first premise that the book was "banned from the Bible" and "kept hidden from the public" is incorrect.

1. Was Enoch ever in the Bible?
No early Christian Canon List has Enoch among the canonical books.->

https://twitter.com/NickDiFabio1/status/1883868229065392380

Thus, it's challenging to argue that Enoch was banned from the Bible if it wasn't there in the first place.

2. Did early Christians hide the book? Although the book would be labeled apocryphal, "hidden," early Christians were aware of the book, but only Tertullian advocated->

Carmen has given a good reading of the David & Bathsheba story, one mostly that reflects how I've read it over the years. David is clearly at fault; Bathsheba was no seductress.

But I question whether D&B parallels Amnon's rape of Tamar in 2 Sam 13 as she suggests. 1/

https://twitter.com/CTmagazine/status/1549124903705649156

I suspect that how we read the Deuteronomistic History will largely control how we read these horrific narratives.
Specifically, how we evaluate the two stories against Deuteronomy 22:23-27 will have a great bearing on how one interprets them. 2/

Mary did you know…that you would crush the serpent’s head? A 🧵

The depiction of Mary crushing the serpent is foreign to most Protestants, and yet here it is in art and it’s also in bronze at Notre Dame…1/ … University and in many other pieces of western art. Typically, the art is inspired by the inspired text, but this is a case where we must now ask “Which text is doing the inspiring?” 2/

1/ Brushing up on my 16th-century Old Testament canonical history this morning. Here's a bit from Cardinal Cajetan (Tomasso De Vio):
"And in this place, we conclude the commentaries of the Historical books of the Old Testament,... 2/ ...for clearly the remaining books (Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) were reckoned by St Jerome as outside of the canonical books and are placed among the apocrypha along with the book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus as is plain in the Prologus Galeatus.

Wow. To disagree is to be identified with Pharaoh, slaveholders, and advocating for a docetic hermeneutic. Yet, I will offer a different approach that doesn’t advocate for slavery but keeps the Bible’s metanarrative in view.

https://twitter.com/ThabitiAnyabwil/status/1304850794689290241

1) The literal reading starts in Exod 6 with the freeing of the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a covenantal approach to a specific oppression in Egypt, which liberation theologians exploit to mean ending all oppression everywhere. But...

1/5 "Stubborn and Rebellious"
In Deut 21:18, 21, the stubborn and rebellious (סוֹרֵ֪ר וּמֹ֫רֶ֥ה) son is to be stoned to death. The collocation "stubborn and rebellious" appears only 4x in #TaNaK: Deut 21:18, 21; Jeremiah 5:23; Psalm 78:8, and they are significant. 2/5 In the two other places, "stubborn and rebellious" describe the heart of the people (Jer 5:23) & the wilderness generation (Ps 78:8), further identifying Israel as the disobedient son of Deuteronomy 21, and it's only a matter of time, sadly, before the death penalty comes.

Canon Order: Thread
1/ There's a spicy debate over the order of books in the Jewish canon & then subsequently the order that the books should have in our Christian Bible today.

Was #Chronicles at the end of Jesus' Bible? 2/ Let's review some evidence.
1 It is said that Jesus' Bible was the long-closed Jewish canon that ended with the books of #Chronicles. Baba Bathra 14b (ca. 200 AD) has this order. But how old and well-known was it?

2 Many argue Matt 23:35//Lk 11:51 support this...

1/ The Complutensian Polyglot’s Prologue is filled with fascinating details about the canon. (cf tweet 3)

1 It affirms #Jerome’s Hebrew Veritas or Truth of the Hebrews.

2 It borrows Jerome’s trifarium: Pentateuch, Hagiographa, and Prophets; three divisions in Heb Bib. 2/
3 It explains the triple languages that its pages contain: Hebrew, Chaldean (Aramaic), & #Greek each w/Latin translation

4 Only the #Pentateuch will contain Chaldean because of the corrupt state of it in the other books

5 The Chaldean was prepared by experts in this language

1/10 The late date for Daniel is also at the heart of the so-called classic model of canonization, which says the Torah (Law) was canonized in the 5th century, the Nebi'im (Prophets) around 200, and the Ketubim (Writings) around 90AD (Daniel included here). Thus in 3 stages. 2/10 Because Daniel was placed in the Writings (so the argument goes), his book must not have been written to make it into the Prophets and had to be included in the third, later stage of the canon, which was closed at the Council of Yavneh/Jamnia around 90 AD.

1/ Listening to a good apologetics podcast (link 👇) today from @DrTimothyPJones, I was especially interested in his answers to the questions on the formation of the canon of Scripture around 40:45. The answer to the NT (about 40:50-46:30) was fine.

The OT one though (46:30)... 2/ I think he captured the early church's view of the deuterocanonical books well when he said "they were some really great books." But the story for how they ended up in the Roman Catholic canon and not the Protestant one is not quite right, IMHO.

1/ Researching #Origen’s philological work on #1Baruch these days. Interesting: Origen may have been the one to give the book its title. A thread summarizing and adapting P-M Bogaert’s insights on the early history of “Baruch.” 2/ Though the debate over whether there was a Hebrew Baruch continues, a consensus appears to be forming that the book only was ever in Greek. Certainly, by Late Antiquity, the book is only known in Greek, but by what title?