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Archive for December, 2022|Monthly archive page


The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels

In Canon, Jordan Almanzar, Marcion, Matthias Klinghardt, New Testament, Peeters, Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic theories on December 23, 2022 at 12:21 pm

2022.12.13 | Matthias Klinghardt. The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels. Biblical Tools and Studies 41; Leuven: Peeters, 2021.

Review by Jordan Almanzar, Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts.

Matthias Klinghardt’s study, The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, is a two-volume work in which he proposes Marcion’s Evangelion as the key to explaining origins of the canonical Gospels. The work was inspired by a certain disharmony Klinghardt sees in 19th-century scholarship existing between two discourses that largely took place in Germany: 1) the so-called synoptic problem and 2) the relationship of Marcion’s Evangelion to canonical Luke. These discourses developed simultaneously yet independently of one another, and Klinghardt seeks to not only bring them together, but to display the results of doing so.

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Mark, A Pauline Theologian

In Biblical Criticism, Gospel of Mark, Gregg S. Morrison, Historical Criticism, Mar Pérez i Díaz, Mohr Siebeck, Paul on December 19, 2022 at 3:00 pm

2022.12.12 | Mar Pérez i Díaz, Mark, a Pauline Theologian: A Re-reading of the Traditions of Jesus in the Light of Paul’s Theology. WUNT II 521. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020.

Review by Gregg S. Morrison, Birmingham, Alabama.

Petrine influence on the Gospel of Mark has been a well-attested assertion in Gospel studies for centuries, based primarily on the affirmation attributed to Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Historia ecclesiastica (Hist. Eccl.3.39.15). There it is said that Mark served as Peter’s interpreter (ἑρμηνευτής). This perspective went unchallenged until the early 1900s when scholars began to argue that the evangelist was influenced by the Apostle Paul and his teachings/theology. Some scholars considered the matter resolved with Martin Werner’s 1923 publication, Der Einfluss paulinischer Theologie im Markusevangelium, which held that perceived Pauline elements in the Second Gospel reflected primitive Christianity in general and not a conscious effort on the behalf of the evangelist to put Paul’s imprint on the Gospel. But not all scholars accepted the findings of Werner and the debate over Pauline influence on the Gospel of Mark continued and has picked up steam in the last 30–40 years—especially with the two-volume collection of essays published in 2014 for the Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZNW) series, entitled Paul and Mark and Mark and Paul, respectively. Enter Mar Pérez i Díaz and her fine work, Mark, a Pauline Theologian. 

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Ethnicity and Inclusion

In Eerdmans, ethnicity, history of interpretation, inclusion, Jonathan Rowlands, NT reception history, Reception history on December 5, 2022 at 3:00 pm
Book cover

2022.12.11 | David G. Horrell. Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020. 

Review by Jonathan Rowlands, St. Mellitus College

In Ethnicity and Inclusion, Horrell examines the ways in which the contested categories of ethnicity, race, and religion coalesce in and arise from conceptions of the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity. Seeking to focus “on the log in my own eye rather than the specks in others’ eyes” (pp. 2–3), Horrell brings these issues into conversation with the implicit whiteness (another contested term) of contemporary biblical scholarship. In so doing, he not only upturns claims about Judaism and early Christianity, but also offers sobering critique of NT studies itself. Horrell articulates the need to re-examine conceptions of race, ethnicity, religion, and identity in antiquity, as well as the ways in which these categories are apprehended in contemporary scholarship. 

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