tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23996056825271178552012-01-25T12:01:13.465+01:00My students will find here some resources and tools for the study of the New Testament. Occasionally I add a quotation from a noteworthy scholar or historical figure.J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.comBlogger381100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-19467218105956969202012-01-18T22:02:00.002+01:002012-01-25T10:52:05.729+01:00

The above link takes you to the syllabus for BS 505 "Pauline and General Letters and Revelation," which I will teach this term beginning Wednesday, 25 January, at Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology in Addis Ababa.

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-38678257406450154152011-12-10T18:29:00.002+01:002011-12-12T18:07:52.178+01:00

" John the Baptist is said to be 'more than a prophet'; but if that is said of John, what must be said for Jesus himself? At this point some will want to jump without more ado into a full Nicene christology, and will, not for the last time, have to be severely restrained. It will not do for the elder brother (orthodoxy) to set terms and conditions for the return of the younger (history). But the

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-15325528297553365272011-12-08T09:17:00.002+01:002011-12-08T09:22:35.523+01:00

Växelläsning jag använde i morgonbön på Johannelund den 7 dec 2011 Ett barn är oss fött, en son är oss given. Hans namn är Underbar i råd, Väldig Gud, Evig Fader, Fridsfurste.                                         Jes 9:6       Han ger oss kraft; vi kan göra allt genom honom.         Fil 4:13       Utan honom kan vi ingenting göra.                                  Joh 15:5Han ger våra själar

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-59101078393170777752011-11-25T20:15:00.006+01:002011-11-25T21:26:48.987+01:00

"God's Word is neither a human discovery nor a human invention; it is divinely disclosed truth. It requires all the intellectual and scholarly skill the student of Scripture can muster to determine what a given passage or book means, for the Word of God has been given to us in human words in non-English languages and in ancient historical situations. But when the message of Scripture has been

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-72930399166759790272009-11-13T17:13:00.008+01:002010-05-25T13:27:10.773+02:00

"How can Matthew, originally functioning as a catalyst for character formation, serve this end in our time? In order to allow Matthew to function in line with its original aim, it must be read and proclaimed not as a "striver's manual" but as a "verbal icon"."Reading and proclaiming a gospel text rightly are not acts of moralism in which the text is assumed to be law and the purpose of reading

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-76133162076714252872009-11-03T21:57:00.006+01:002010-05-25T13:27:58.896+02:00

But we are speaking of the external word, preached orally by people like you and me, for this is what Christ left behind as an external sign, by which his church, or his Christian people in the world, should be recognized.... Now, anywhere you hear or see such a word preached, believed, confessed, and acted upon, do not doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica, a "holy Christian people" must

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-49564755343556213532009-10-13T17:26:00.007+02:002011-12-12T18:05:02.979+01:00

A book from the ancient East, and lit up by the light of the dawn, a book breathing the fragrance of the Galilean spring, and anon swept by the shipwrecking north-east tempest from the Mediterranean, a book of peasants, fishermen, artisans, travellers by land and sea, fighters and martyrs, a book in cosmopolitan Greek with marks of Semitic origin, a book of the Imperial age, written at Antioch,

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-63507073156485047362009-10-06T17:09:00.012+02:002009-10-06T17:33:07.149+02:00

If, then, man came into being for these reasons, viz., to participate in the divine goodness, he had to be fashioned in such a way as to fit him to share in this goodness. For ... something akin to the divine had to be mingled with human nature. In this way its desire [for divine goodness] would correspond to something native to it. Even the natures of irrational creatures, whose lot is to live

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-15751217496412508272009-09-28T12:59:00.004+02:002009-09-28T13:21:48.992+02:00

If [the Bible] is, as we devoutly believe, the very source and measure of our religious faith, it seems impossible to insist too earnestly on the supreme importance of patience, candour and truthfulness in investigating every problem which it involves. The first steps towards the solution of a difficulty are the recognition of its existence and the determination of its extent. And, unless all

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-34332896564379094482009-09-27T16:06:00.006+02:002009-09-27T16:29:38.076+02:00

The first enemy is excitement--the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defence is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-44657975563634873972009-09-15T09:57:00.011+02:002009-09-15T11:14:00.354+02:00

"Is sin, man’s refusal to be reconciled with eternal, absolute Goodness, really an organ essential to life? Is it not much more like a spreading cancer? Can we say that God is robbing man of anything by restoring his health? Furthermore, if a man has become locked in a syndrome of refusal, if he refuses to keep faith with God, can he free himself from his own obstinacy? He may think he can, but

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-15273783742383540442009-08-28T13:29:00.007+02:002009-08-28T13:41:05.543+02:00

Although translation participates in the fluidity of all interpretation and can never provide an exact equivalence, it remains possible to distinguish a translation from a mistranslation -- where, for example, the translator of a New Testament text has failed to understand that the semantic range of a Greek term is quite different from that of its normal vernacular equivalent. Translation can at

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-91942613681252649982009-03-31T10:55:00.010+02:002009-03-31T11:23:21.006+02:00

The antithesis between [the gospel] and modern idealism arises, not because Jesus and primitive Christianity were less human than humanitarianism, but because they were infinitely more so. The primitive Christians found the revelation of God in an historical figure so desparately human that there emerged within the early Church a faith in men and women so deeply rooted as to make modern

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-39967363171262002792009-03-11T17:28:00.011+01:002009-03-11T17:41:58.954+01:00

"Our journey began by suggesting a diagnosis of a discipline that is now widely felt to lack agreed criteria not just for appropriate methods and results, but in many cases about even the very subject to be studied. What future can there be for scholarly New Testament studies amid the ruins of so many "assured results" of the past? Two initiatives in particular, I suggested, may hold promise for

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-31074202030209478932009-02-27T09:16:00.004+01:002009-02-27T09:29:11.832+01:00

We begin that effort by defining the theological school as intellectual center of the Church's life. Though anti-intellectualism within the Church and anti-ecclesiasticism among intelligentsia outside it will object to the close correlation of intellect and Church, their ill-founded objections need not detain us. We content ourselves at this stage with the reflections that to love God with the

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-42627552913024445792009-02-18T07:48:00.010+01:002009-02-18T08:21:02.011+01:00

"To read Scripture rightly we must trust the God who speaks through Scripture. As Schüssler Fiorenza rightly insists, this God is not a God of violence, not an abuser, not a deceiver. This God so passionately desires our safety and wholeness that he has given his own Son to die for us..."What, then, of the hermeneutics of suspicion? Is all questioning to be excluded, all critical reading banished

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-29832898716039470032009-02-11T16:24:00.007+01:002009-02-18T08:12:11.678+01:00

" Above all, what is noteworthy about Paul's theology in Romans is the way the pivotal significance of Jesus' death and resurrection emphasizes the character of God. The theology of Romans is theocentric because it is christomorphic. That is, the understanding of God, which Paul inherited from the Pharisaic Judaism he had once advocated assiduously (Gal 1:14), was reshaped in light of his

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-54579684944136745492009-02-04T09:34:00.005+01:002009-02-04T10:08:51.257+01:00

We may well find curious the way the psalmists can abstract, out of all the ambiguities of lived experience, this unambiguous portrayal of the glories of the created order. The psalmists knew famine, disease, violence, and death. And yet, in some of the psalms at least, no trace of evil of any kind is part of the picture. ... To dismiss such texts as naive would only show our own naiveté. Rather,

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-80063455409368636532009-01-26T17:35:00.006+01:002009-02-13T10:12:25.073+01:00

"Our own conviction is that if scholars are genuinely open to the possibility that the Gospel portrait of Jesus is possible, an assessment of all available evidence in this light will lead them to the conclusion that the historical veracity of this portrait is not only possible but most plausible. To state it differently, we believe that once the “plausibility” criterion is no longer used as an

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-14256575986075902402009-01-21T10:43:00.004+01:002009-02-04T10:16:43.536+01:00

"As the biographical genre of the gospels means that we should take Jesus' deeds and example into account as much as his words, so the epistolary genre of Paul's letters directs us to set his ethical teaching within the contingent context of his early Christian communities. As Jesus' pastoral acceptance of 'sinners' means that his extremely demanding teaching cannot be applied in an exclusive

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-21400853666029094902009-01-19T14:45:00.014+01:002009-02-18T08:20:02.066+01:00

The following lines from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy do a fine job of exposing the inadequacy of one of the still very common objections to Christianity, namely, that it is old."In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves -- the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-12246268257617105832008-12-30T18:57:00.006+01:002009-02-04T10:13:26.780+01:00

A cold coming we had of it,Just the worst time of yearFor a journey, and such a long journey:The ways deep and the weather sharp,The very dead of winter.And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,Lying down in the melting snow.There were times we regrettedThe summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,And the silken girls bringing sherbet.Then the camel men cursing and grumblingAnd running away,

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-70302621434242694682008-11-24T16:28:00.006+01:002009-02-04T10:15:02.269+01:00

Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,And love with fear the only God, to walkAs in his presence, ever to observeHis providence, and on him sole depend,Merciful over all his works, with goodStill overcoming evil, and by smallAccomplishing great things, by things deem'd weakSubverting worldly strong, and worldly wiseBy simply meek; that suffering for Truth's sakeIs fortitude to highest victory,

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-14723776186142046772008-10-24T11:44:00.009+02:002009-01-19T15:47:48.062+01:00

"Now we, who have been baptized, are all uniformly priests ... The only addition received by the priests is the office of preaching, and even this with our consent... Thus it says in 1 Peter 2, "Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, and a priestly kingdom." It follows that all of us who are Christian are also priests. Those whom we call priests are really ministers of the word and chosen by

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-12928430732018939852008-10-24T11:16:00.009+02:002009-02-04T10:11:53.941+01:00

"The work of Christ is described in Hebrews as the abolition of the priesthood. The perfect high priest, fully obedient among His brethren, by sacrificing Himself, puts an end to the recurrent functions of all priesthood, and gives us all access into the holy place. Priesthood, to the extent that it applies at all in the new covenant, is the character of the entire people of God, not of any

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-46467592080757000372008-10-16T22:02:00.009+02:002009-01-19T15:48:47.607+01:00

"Reading the Gospels as eyewitness testimony differs therefore from attempts at historical reconstruction behind the texts. It takes the Gospels seriously as they are; it acknowledges the uniqueness of what we can know only in this testimonial form. It honors the form of historiography they are. From a historiographic perspective, radical suspicion of testimony is a kind of epistemological

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-78005585879058304012008-10-09T17:15:00.008+02:002009-02-04T10:22:17.084+01:00

"Come hither, all ye that labour and are heavy laden." A strange invitation. For commonly when men assemble for joy or for united labour they say, it is true, to the strong and the joyful, "Come hither, take part with us, unite your strength with ours." But of the afflicted person they say, "No, we will not have him with us, he only spoils the joy and retards the work." Oh, yes, the afflicted man

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-26334885590473778182008-09-30T22:28:00.007+02:002009-02-04T10:09:57.874+01:00

I do not mean that God would have even his closest presence make us forget or cease to desire that of our friend. God forbid! The Love of God is the perfecting of every love. He is not the God of oblivion but of eternal remembrance. There is no past with Him.George MacDonald (1824-1905)from: Unspoken Sermons, Series 3, The Displeasures of Jesus

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-85618783442723847492008-09-24T16:25:00.009+02:002009-02-04T10:14:10.878+01:00

Christianity is not a religion. For whatever is human about it, all the manifestations in which it may resemble a religion, are merely the echo or reflection of a movement that does not proceed from man or have to be carried out by him, but happens to him and has to be responded to by him, a movement by a being of an entirely different kind. Alone among all the religions, Christianity is

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-10934169178594865112008-09-16T09:44:00.010+02:002009-02-04T10:16:02.589+01:00

Herre, vår Gud och Fader, du som har befallt oss att älska varandra, förläna oss nåd att älska varje människa som kommer i vår väg. Vi anropar din barmhärtighet för alla, men särskilt för dem som din kärlek har givit oss. Vår bön är matt och svag, men giv dem, o Herre, långt mera gott än vi bedja eller tänka. Ty din kärlek överträffar all mänsklig kärlek. Gör med dem efter din vilja, så att de

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-88751997313368106982008-09-13T12:03:00.010+02:002009-02-04T10:12:38.118+01:00

To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have the power of ourselves to do,is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.-John Owen (1616-1683)

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-68375029907547761602008-09-08T08:58:00.011+02:002009-02-04T10:17:33.778+01:00

You will never be younger; if not done soon it [the work] will never be done, to the end of all eternity . . . You may indeed excuse yourself and see reasons why the work should not have been done, but it will not have been done. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), Letters.

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-29617695060923103442008-08-08T23:49:00.006+02:002008-12-30T19:25:20.832+01:00

Sharers in Divine Nature: 2 Peter 1:4 in Its Hellenistic Context (Almqvist & Wiksell, 2000)Finns till salu på http://www.bokborsen.se/ ellerhttp://www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~STASHARER Early Christian Paraenesis in Context (de Gruyter, 2004)Finns till salu på: http://www.degruyter.de/cont/fb/th/detail.cfm?id=IS-9783110181302-1Partakers of the Divine Nature (Baker Academic,

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-75858187832328191682008-08-08T16:17:00.016+02:002009-01-19T15:52:09.637+01:00

"All right," you say again, "suppose we do have schools; what is the use of teaching Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and the other liberal arts? ... We do not see many instances where the devil has allowed them to flourish by means of the universities and monasteries; indeed, these have always raged against languages and are even now raging. For the devil smelled a rat, and perceived that if the

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-25121990726919524702008-04-22T13:07:00.014+02:002009-02-04T10:11:07.998+01:00

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books....This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology....But if [a beginner] must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-78952507567826469782008-03-10T15:39:00.013+01:002009-09-27T16:32:21.089+02:00

"From Plato's cave to Lewis's Narnia, ordinary religious metaphors tend to employ the literal and familiar to speak (however truthfully) of an otherworldly reality. The New Testament witness to the resurrection of Jesus, by contrast, redescribes earth in terms of heaven and history in terms of eschatology. For the early Christians, this marks the place in which God's world irreversibly invades

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-13895160685868873452008-02-29T11:24:00.014+01:002009-02-04T10:19:36.170+01:00

Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell,fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death,and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them,and the life that is in it, that shall live on and on for ever,and each one of you part of it,while many a man's life upon the earth from the earth shall wane.Dream of John Ball (1888)

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2399605682527117855.post-67337551232626688592008-02-29T11:17:00.014+01:002011-12-12T18:02:32.789+01:00

Not that we would be unclothed, but clothed, that mortality might be swallowed up in life . . . We do not wish to cast aside the body, but corruption; not the flesh, but death. The body is one thing, death another . . . What is foreign to us is not the body but corruptibility. De resurrectione mortuorum 256-274 (4th century)

J M Starrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00412055039130716356noreply@blogger.com0