British New Testament Society

This paper sets out to formulate in brief a set of eight theses about the nature and extent of 'scripture' in Early Judaism, including nascent Christianity, from circa 200 BCE to circa 100 CE.

The former date reflects the fact that, from the early second century BCE at the latest, explicit belief in a scripture inherited from ancient times emerges, while the latter date marks the approximate close of the Second Temple period, after which the scriptural canons of classical Judaism and Christianity eventually became dominant. In much previous scholarship, these later Bibles have provided the interpretative key to reconstructing the contours and boundaries of scripture in Early Judaism, given the ambiguous nature of surviving evidence from the period concerned.

However, we now have fully at our disposal the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls, a literary corpus representing that earlier phase of Jewish religious history. Not only do these manuscripts inform us directly about the community or communities behind them, but, when placed alongside longer-known contemporary evidence, they also have much to tell us indirectly about the wider world of Early Judaism, including the state and status of the scriptures.

Therefore, building on both strengths and weaknesses in recent discussion about the Scrolls, scripture, and Early Judaism, this paper presents eight propositions regarding: (1) the bipartite arrangement of the scriptures; (2) the redaction-compositional process' continuation to 100 CE and beyond; (3) the Torah and the Prophets as 'amorphous pools' of scripture; (4) the '(re)discovery' of previously unknown scriptures; (5) the desideratum of perceived antiquity in the reception of scripture; (6) the pseudepigraphical production of scripture; (7) disputes over scriptural authenticity in particular cases; and (8) the impact of geography and finance on scripture's production and reception.

Overall, this paper aims to achieve two things. First, it will bring together a range of important interrelated insights about Early Jewish scripture, countering some of the anachronism and contradiction of recent discussion. Second, the cumulative effect of presenting eight theses in one study will be to offer a radical overview in which the whole adds up to more than the mere sum of its parts.

This paper highlights important developments in the study of biblical and Jewish monotheism and offers some criticism of recent treatments of the subject from the point of view of the New Testament and the study of early Christology (by, for example, Richard Bauckham, L. Hurtado and W. Horbury). It will be argued that New Testament scholarship now has to radically revise its assumptions about Jewish monotheism in view of evidence that biblical theology is not aniconic and that it has no essential, hard and fast distinction between creator and creation. A revisionist reading of biblical and post-biblical Jewish traditions invites a fresh consideration of the shape of New Testament Christology. Where previous scholarship has had to postulate an evolutionary development of early Christology - the product of complex ecclesiological, psychological or intellectually speculative impulses - it now emerges as a far simpler and smoother outgrowth of pre-Christian Jewish faith. And, besides a transition from a monotheistic to a Trinitarian pattern, it is the particular ethical and political shape of Christian theology that separates it from its Jewish predecessor.

This paper is a part of my Ph.D dissertation. My topic of Ph.D is Directionality of Transmission of Jesus Tradition in the Context of Bilingualism.

Many scholars including Martin Hengel and Craig Hill consider that the distinction between the Hebrews and the Hellenists at Acts 6:1 should be drawn by a monolingual, geographical, and ethnic distinction. This means that the Hebrews refer to Aramaic - speaking Palestinian Jews whereas the Hellenists Greek - speaking Diaspora Jews.

However, bilingualism of first - century Roman Near East casts a fresh light on this issue. It seems that the two terms, the Hebrews and the Hellenists, at Acts 6:1, 9:29 and 11:20 refer to bilingual speakers without respect to geographical (e.g. Palestine or Diaspora) or ethnic (e.g. Jews or Gentiles) distinction.

In this paper, I will investigate bilingualism of the Hebrews and the Hellenists including the Seven in the bilingual Jerusalem community from the perspective of bilingualism of the Roman Near East in relation to directionality of transmission of Jesus tradition.

Gospel Practice Criticism seeks to develop insights into the ways in which discernable originating practice of Jesus, disciples or Christian community recorded in the Gospels provokes, inspires, or supports corresponding, identifiable, or identified practice or "outworkings" in a reader's community and discipleship, in each church times, historically, and today. This approach is illustrated in a study of Mark Chapter 2, using an inner city community in Sheffield as the contemporary "site". The paper develops the method outlined in OUTWORKINGS: GOSPEL PRACTICE AND INTERPRETATION (Urban Theology Unit, 2005) and in MARK: GOSPEL OF ACTION. PERSONAL AND COMMUNITY RESPONSES (SPCK, 2006).