Originally Posted by Paul Foster, University of Edinburgh

Memory: Help or Hindrance in Historical Jesus Research?

This paper assesses the way memory studies are employed in the areas of cultural history and psychological research – the areas in which the approach was chiefly developed. It will be suggested that memory studies may assist in understanding some general aspects concerning the transmission of gospel traditions. However, it will be argued that either personal or social memory cannot be applied to the task of historical Jesus research, as that task has traditionally been understood. It will be suggested that a ‘category error’ is being committed, since the primary evidence that historical Jesus scholars work with is that of heavily redacted texts, not statements gleaned directly from memory. ....

Originally Posted by Toto

The program book for the next SBL meeting is online here. You can find out what the best and the brightest of mainstream scholars are up to.

There are several sections on the Historical Jesus, and it looks like the problems of methodology have not been solved!

Originally Posted by Grog

This looks interesting to me:

Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship

A gospel harmony composed around 172 C.E., the Diatessaron is one of the earliest witnesses to the gospels. Regarded as the first version of the gospels in Latin, Syriac, and Armenian, the Diatessaron was used by Encratites, Judaic-Christians, and “Great Church” Christians alike. This study is the first comprehensive treatment of the Diatessaron in more than a century. After sketching the second-century setting and Tatian’s biography, it describes virtually every Diatessaronic witness and provides a scholar-by-scholar summary of research from 546 to the mid-1990s. Criteria for reconstructing Diatessaronic readings are developed, and numerous examples offer the reader first-hand experience with the witnesses. It contains the first bibliography of research on the Diatessaron (more than 600 titles) and the only “Catalog of Manuscripts of Diatessaronic Witnesses and Related Works” ever published.

Originally Posted by Joseph A. Marchal, Ball State University

“Is There An Appropriate Context for an Appalling Paul?: Improper Uses of Onesimus alongside Other Slave Figures”

Scholars have long debated as to what historical background might provide an adequate contextualization of Paul’s all too brief arguments in the letter to Philemon, particularly because they have held that this letter will properly provide an answer about slavery. Only recently have a very small group considered the relevance of the sexual use (chresis) of slaves in antiquity as providing some clues for understanding Paul’s letters. This use of slaves was both ubiquitous and unexceptional, but is seldom noted when evaluating Paul’s claims about Onesimus being “useful” in Phlm 11 (previously achreston, then euchreston). This is likely because sexual topics are still seen as inappropriate for scholarly projects in biblical studies, perhaps especially when one is already treating another ethically fraught and politically troublesome topic like slavery. Yet, it is imperative that one confronts the appalling ways Pauline arguments glibly repeat and even joke about the sexual use of slaves. Beyond identifying such arguments, then, this project suggests that one productive way to counter this worldview is to juxtapose it with an alternative erotic ethic that signals other ways to configure scripts of sexual submission safely, sanely, and consensually, that is, among BDSM communities. BDSM (bondage discipline, dominance submission, sadism masochism) has long been an important and illuminating subject within queer studies, but has only occasionally been considered in biblical studies and rarely (if ever) in the study of Paul’s letters. Because the letter so painfully evokes horrifying circumstances around the use of human beings, this project suggests that it would be better to be inappropriate to these circumstances, unlike them in re-appropriating this letter, only now in light of this aspect of queer contextual hermeneutics. Though it is patently improper, it is queerly relevant to juxtapose two non-identical figures of opprobrium and vilification: the ancient slave and the “slave” role played in some BDSM scenes. Such a reading of the chresis of Onesimus adapts postcolonial and queer strategies of catachresis (“improper use”) in order to highlight how certain practices within BDSM have the potential to acknowledge, rework, and even transform social imaginaries. Such restagings do not cover over or evade the horrors and atrocities of embodied violence against slaves (as most biblical scholarship is still prone to do), but negotiate with them explicitly, making visible traumatic histories and structures of domination. Rather than reinscribing the inequalities that accompany these histories, BDSM dynamics can show that pleasures in scripts of power and control, as intertwined with sexuality and embodied states, are not in and of themselves problematic, but ancient slavery’s coercion and lack of consent are. This ancient system still haunts our sexual ethics, but BDSM shows that this is not the only possible combination of these features; their strategic use can generate not domination, but pleasures across multiple bodily sites. Such a contextual strategy brings atypical conversation partners together, while challenging what might count as the proper method for contextual biblical interpretation.

Originally Posted by Toto

I can imagine people clutching their pearls when they hear about this: