Category: Academics

The new issue of Bible and Critical Theory not only has a new article I wrote about the Triumphal Entry in Mark’s Gospel, but also a review of my book by Robert Myles! Check them out!

For those interested, an article I co-authored with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio was recently published in Scripta Classica Israelica: Where Were the Romans and What Did They Know? Military and Intelligence Networks as a Probable Factor in Jesus of Nazareth’s Fate. Here is the abstract, for those interested:

In the wake of the Gospels’ accounts, modern scholars do not pay much attention to the role Romans played in Jesus of Nazareth’s arrest, and are prone to give credit to manifestly biased sources. Besides, some misconceptions (e.g. that the military in pre-War Judaea was exclusively confined to its largest cities) prevent them from seriously weighing up the possibility that the role of the Romans in Jesus’ fate was more decisive than usually recognized. In this article, we reconsider a number of issues in order to shed light on this murky topic. First, the nature and functions of the Roman military in Judaea are surveyed (for instance, Palestine before the Jewish War had a robust network of fortlets and fortresses, which Benjamin Isaac has argued largely served to facilitate communication into the hinterlands). Second, we track some traces of anti-Roman resistance in the prefects’ period (6-41 CE), Third, the widely overlooked issue of the intelligence sources available to Roman governors is tackled. Fourth, the extent of the problems of the Passion accounts is seriously taken into account. The insights obtained are then applied to the Gospels’ story, thereby rendering it likely that Pilate had some degree of “intelligence” regarding Jesus and his followers before their encounter in Jerusalem that led to the collective execution at Golgotha.

Finally, that very issue has a nice review of my book by the great scholar Oliver Stoll. For those that care to read it, it can be found here.

I wanted to alert any interested that an article I recently wrote for the magazine Ancient Warfare on Jesus and the Demon Named Legion (Mark 5:1-20) was published.

Others may be interested that my book is now available for pre-order on Rowman and Littlefield’s website.

The Database of Military Inscriptions and Papyri of Early Roman Palestine (DMIPERP) has launched! It’s been a lot of effort and is still a work in progress, so expect regular updates.

Check it out at http://www.ArmyofRomanPalestine.com

Just a quick update. An article I wrote for the Journal of the Jesus Movement in Its Jewish Setting was recently published.  The article concerns Mark’s use of Latinisms and the location of its geographic setting.  JJMJS is an open-access journal, so it can be found online free here: http://www.jjmjs.org/

Loanwords or Code-Switching? Latin Transliteration and the Setting of Mark’s Composition

Abstract

The composition of Mark’s Gospel is variously located in metropolitan Rome, Syria, and Palestine, with nothing close to a consensus emerging. This article takes up one particular line of argumentation for Markan provenance and provides it a clearer methodological and theoretical apparatus, namely the issue of Latin transliteration. Some commentators note that the prevalence of Latin suggests a Roman context, while others contend that Markan vocabulary is consistent with the Roman East. This article examines the distinctive ways in which Latin was transliterated in the aforementioned regions in epigraphs, papyri, and literary texts. Comparative work will indicate that Mark’s use of transliterated Latin verges on incompatible with pre-War Palestine, is quite dissimilar for the city of Rome, but overlaps in significant ways with that of Syria and post-War Palestine. Though this argument is not conclusive about Markan origins in its own right, it may clarify the utility of the argument from Latinisms for future discussions.