NAW Durham 5 -- When McDonalds is a dream

Continued from the last post
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30. Near the end of my first semester in England, I was so desperate for an American hamburger that I walked three miles to north Durham to get a McDonald's. It was wonderful. And I say that as someone who didn't particularly go to McDonald's much in the US.

There's a joke about European cultures that is both funny and pretty accurate. In heaven, the French are the cooks. The Italians are the lovers. The British are the police. And the Germans organize everything.

But in hell, the British are the cooks. The French are the police. The Germans are the lovers. And the Italians organize everything.

I did not find British food to be particularly delectable. There was this "American" restaurant in London everyone always bragged about, Garfunkels. I found their burgers mediocre. Frankly, I found Scottish Angus beef -- again, often bragged about -- pretty mediocre. I even bought hamburger from the store across Framwellgate Bridge and cooked it myself. It just was blah. 

Suffice it to say, although I am a meat eater, I had little craving for British meat. (England was also just getting over "mad cow's disease" at that time too. I wasn't able to give blood for years after I returned. As far as I know, I never developed it.)

I found the meals in John's generally mediocre, although the price was right (free for me). I have since come to believe that really high quality lamb can be tasty. But whatever they served in John's seemed pretty mediocre to me and sometimes gamey. (I'm also no fan of mint sauce.)

31. There was one English food I liked -- Yorkshire pudding. I've recently learned from Payne's -- an English restaurant out toward Upland -- that the Yorkshire pudding is actually the puff pastry. But it always came with a sort of beef stew, and I liked it. I would get it at the Half Moon, I think, across Elvet Bridge.

It was there also, I think, that I was introduced to the croque monsieur and the croque madame. The first was more to my liking, a ham and cheese basically. The latter adds an egg. It was there also that I was introduced to garlic mayonnaise, which I regularly would get with my chips. I was young and could eat such things.

I got to like an English breakfast. The sausages were quite different, tight on the outside and softer on the inside. 

By the way, I will never have a French hot dog again. I tried one in Paris and it was atrocious -- mushy on the inside. I have never understood the rumor that French cooking is the best (although Verzenay's in Chicago is a wonderful boulangerie). Angie and I actually ate at a French restaurant on High Street in Durham after a ceremony on Claypath in 1998. But I don't know what the fuss is all about French food.

32. The foods I loved most in Durham were foreign. I loved getting Chinese with Neil there, usually up on Claypath, I think. The Italian in town was fantastic. It was in Durham that I learned to love carbonara, I believe. The night before a ceremony we had, Angie and a group of us ate at an Italian place that was across Framwellgate. Delicious.

Durham was also the first place that I really tried Indian food. David Fox was particularly fond of Shaheen's on the Bailey. I always got "Bhuna Beef," not realizing that an authentic Indian restaurant wouldn't serve beef. Rachel Leonard and the others usually got far hotter food than me (Vindaloo, a song that came out while I was there, I think). Here I learned of peshwari naan and poppadom and chutney (which I didn't ever eat).

David had also seemed to think that "tak tak" was a euphemism for sex in Hindi. He would always ask the owner if he was going to be having "tak tak" later. Not sure what that was all about. I don't know that tak means anything in Hindi or any Indian dialect.

33. Getting used to British slang was a learning curve for me. For example, I had gathered from several conversations that to be "knackered" was to be exhausted. After one of the Tuesday evening worship services, I remarked to a woman that I was "a bit knackered" when she asked how I was. She grinned.

A little later, her husband informed me that, where he came from, "knackered" had the connotation of being tired from having sex. He grinned that I had told his wife I was knackered. Suffice it to say, even in the same country, there can be different idioms in different regions.

Which reminds me of the time I took a taxi in Newcastle. I haven't a clue what the driver was saying in his thick Geordie accent.

In my final year, a little store up near the viaduct started doing sandwiches. I would often walk there to get a ham with shredded cheese and mayonnaise.

34. I have never been particularly stylish. Rachel Leonard informed me that Doc Martins were all the rage. They were also more than I wanted to spend. I ended up getting a much less stylish pair of boots that I enjoyed nonetheless. Before we did our Scotland tour that summer of 1994, I got a green rucksack that I was quite fond of and used for many years.

I went to one rugby practice in the fall of 1993. The exercise was to get down on my knees (along with others) and then they would run into me. Of course no real padding in rugby. One practice and I thought, "That's going to hurt," and I didn't go back.

I was amazed one year when Phil Burns hurt something or another at football practice and we went to the hospital. In America, we avoided the hospital like the plague because of how much it costs, even with insurance. I think my father might have had a heart attack a few weeks before he died, but he didn't go to the hospital.

But with universal health care in England, when you needed to go, you went. After living in England, I really don't get people's resistance to it here. It seems mostly ignorance on our part to me.

[35. You'll have to buy the book to read this section.]

36. In those days, the fact that I was an American was very amusing to the people in the college. This was before the Iraq War -- and certainly before Trump. The British thought of us as funny, loud, somewhat ignorant people. They didn't yet think of us as dangerously ignorant people.

So, the students wanted me to be in their plays. I sang in the choir. It was all good fun. A German exchange student named Astrid did an American accent that I found hilarious. It was strange to think of Americans having an accent. I certainly never thought of myself as having one. Surprise!

I was Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. I was in Much Ado About Nothing. I also did a two person medieval play with a woman named Elizabeth. There was a suggestion to have a nude scene in it -- I passed.

The choir was particularly enjoyable. I had not known Faure's Requiem before, but it is now one of my favorite choral pieces of all time. I haven't remembered the director. He was a brilliant student named Andrew, I believe. He wrote some pieces and I assume went on to be a composer. 

All of these performances were student led, and they were brilliant.

I hadn't known Andrew Lloyd Webber before England. Or really Queen either, just a couple songs. I hadn't really been aware of British music or of the music I knew in the states that was British.

37. At the end of my first semester, I had to make a formal declaration of what I was going to work on for my dissertation. I had done all my fall work on Hebrews, but I would have proposed something different.

When I came home for Christmas, I thought long and hard about switching to something like the messianic secret in Mark. Did Jesus deliberately downplay a messianic identity because it would have been misunderstood by those around him? Turned out that Dunn had already written an article like that.

But it would have been a weak play. It wasn't a distinctive hypothesis. It wouldn't have been a unique contribution. And I would have been a nobody in a glut of Gospel scholars.

Hebrews it was.

NAW Durham 4 -- Teaching Christology in Cranmer

Continued from last week
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I remembered that the first year of my doctoral program I also waded through L.K.K. Dey's Intermediate Patterns of Perfection in Philo and Hebrews (1975). I didn't feel like I learned much of anything about Hebrews, but it was a baptism by fire into Philo. 

25. I've mentioned that Cranmer Hall in the 1990s was an Anglican training school in partnership with the Wesley Study Centre. I'm having trouble ironing out all the details. John Pritchard had just come as the Warden of Cranmer Hall, and a man by the name of Philip was over the Wesley Study Centre.

On faculty was Bruce Longenecker in New Testament, Robert Fyall for Old. I attended his United Reformed Church while I lived in Durham, and he performed a ceremony for Angie and me in 1998 there. The church was evangelical in the British sense.

Michael Vasey taught liturgy. He published a book called Strangers and Friends during my time there. I believe Robert Song came during my second year as an ethics professor. In 1999 he would join the main Department of Theology. A woman named Liz taught theology. I haven't been able to pull up her last name yet.

I was privileged to be in England when the Anglican Church first ordained women (1994). I don't think Liz was in the first group, but I suspect she was ordained in York in May of that year. I seem to remember us sending her off as she got on the bus to leave. I jokingly made some stupid remark about not being sure that ordination was actually in the New Testament. She said, "Maybe, but I don't want to think about it since I've waited so long for this to happen."

I feel confident that the elements of the previous paragraph are true. I'm just not entirely sure about the combination. The first woman to be a bishop in the Church of England (Libby Lane) graduated from Cranmer the spring before I arrived. [1]

26. It seems to me that, in the fall of 1993, Cranmer was lacking someone to teach theology. So it became a team effort. I was privileged to be asked to cover Christology. There is something implicit about the thinking of the leaders to ask a Biblehead to teach the theology of Christ. It seems to assume that theology is more or less what the Bible says--or should be--which is far from how theology is often approached.

I was mindful of this distinction, although I also indulged myself. I believe there is a gap between the Bible and Chalcedon. My recent reading of Jesus Wars by Philip Jenkens has overwhelmingly confirmed that, unless one has a very strong sense of Providence, the path from the Bible to Nicaea and Chalcedon will seem little more than petty humans fighting each other--often literally.

I believe I gave three lectures. The first was on the quest for the historical Jesus. The second dealt with Pauline and early New Testament Christology. I believe the third focused more on John. Philip and Fiona Richardson were students then. We have kept in contact over the years. They have faithfully served as OMS missionaries over the years.

27. I spent a fair amount of time researching for this teaching. Apart from the New Testament Survey teaching I did for Midway College, it was really my first time teaching Bible. And I was privileged to do it on a high level. Don't get me wrong. I loved teaching Bible at IWU. But this was more like teaching for Notre Dame. 

I used N. T. Wright's sense of the "third quest" for the historical Jesus to frame that lecture. The first quest ended with Albert Schweitzer. Many of the portraits of Jesus in the 1800s were some mixture of antisupernaturalist and romantic. David Strauss threw down the gauntlet of myth. Source criticism whittled Jesus down to Mark and then Wrede took that away. 

Meanwhile, Schweitzer dubbed Jesus an apocalyptic stranger, a foreigner to what we want in a Jesus. Then comes Barth and Bultmann. Stop the quest! It's the Christ of faith that is important, not the Jesus of history. The quest seems to stop for a few decades.

Then comes the New Quest, launched by Ernst Kasemann. Maybe we can know a few things about the historical Jesus. Maybe he is relevant. The criteria come into play: dissimilarity, multiple attestation, coherence. Edward Schillebeeckx writes a 700 page book on Jesus with only a handful of certain sayings from Jesus. The Jesus Seminar perhaps culminates this era with its red letter Bible -- sayings of Jesus in red that came from him, pink if quite possibly, gray if probably not, and black if certainly not.

28. N. T. Wright spoke the third quest into existence. The "Jesus the Jew" quest. He pinned its beginnings to Geza Vermes' Jesus the Jew, The Aims of Jesus by Ben Meyer, Jesus and the Constraints of History by A. E. Harvey, and E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism.

What Wright said distinguished it was the attempt to show the continuity between Judaism-Jesus-and Christianity rather than the dissimilarity. Going for dissimilarity gives you a small subset of what Jesus likely said and did. Wright aimed to find "double similarity."

I was quite enamored with Wright in those days. I couldn't wait for his Jesus and the Victory of God to come out. By the time it finally came out in 1996 I had moved on. But I did find the notion of the contraints of history and E. P. Sanders' approach to Jesus quite helpful. I met Wright in Durham at a conference in 1995. More on that later.

Over the years, I have given a paper for the Historical Jesus (1999) and Q Sections (2000) at SBL. Both had to do with Jewish afterlife traditions. Tom Wright came up after the historical Jesus paper and asked me for a copy. I like to think that it helped inspire some of his thoughts for the early sections of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Son of God. I never finished the work that all that afterlife research was headed toward. More on that later.

There have been some notable points over the years. John Meier's Marginal Jesus series was spectacular, I thought. Dale Allison's Constructing Jesus was a fine volume in its approach that asked more about the kinds of things Jesus certainly said and did rather than specific things. Dunn's Jesus Remembered I also found quite helpful, building off of some of the insights of Kenneth Bailey on oral tradition. 

I managed to drive over to United Theological Seminary when Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne blew up the quest. The conference volume was published as Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (2012). Now there's a volume out called The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus also edited by Chris Keith with James Crossley joining in.

29. I'm sure that my next two lectures in Cranmer were thoroughly influenced by Dunn's Christology in the Making. The standard model for approaching New Testament Christology in those days focused on Christological titles. I spent a fair amount of time researching the title Son of Man. Maurice Casey's book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God had come out in 1992.

There is currently a Waterstone's on Saddler Street that was a prize during my time in Durham. I believe it was a Dillon's back then, but it had a superb used theological section. I bought many biblical studies classics there during my time at Durham.

It's hard to remember where I took my thoughts on the Son of Man. Casey had written a book on the title in 1979. Barnabas Lindars came out with one in 1985. I have Douglas Hare's 1990 volume in my library to this day, but I don't remember being particularly impressed with it. Nor was I impressed with Casey's "I'm just a guy" conclusion.

Somewhere, I synthesized three main uses in the Gospels: 1) self-referential, 2) in relation to Jesus' sufering, and 3) in relation to a Daniel 7 apocalyptic figure. The fact that only Jesus uses the title in the Gospels seems to be strong evidence that he did in fact use the title.

So I played a little hooky from my own dissertation in order to fill in gaps in my knowledge of New Testament Christology. It probably wasn't entirely as much learning as a US doctoral seminar would have given me, but I enjoyed it very much.

[1] I should note that there is some resemblance of Bishop Libby Lane to the Liz of my memory, and Bishop Lane's first name is Elizabeth. But the only way that could have worked was if she commuted back from Blackburn to teach, which seems very unlikely.

100 Core Biblical Values

I asked myself, what are the top 100 biblical values. Here's a shot.

The Pentateuch
1. In the beginning, God (Gen. 1:1).

2. The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in faithfulness, changes his mind about judgment (Exod. 34:6-7; Ps. 86:15; Jon. 4:2).

3. Love for God is a total demand (Deut. 6:4). 

4. All humans bear God's image and so intrinsically valuable (Gen. 1:26-27).

5. God charged humanity with care for his creation (Gen. 1:28; 2:15).

6. God has a threshold for human wickedness -- particularly when it comes to violence, injustice, and the blood of the vulnerable. He saves what good remains (Noah, Lot) and abandons the rest to destruction (Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah). 

7. God is faithful to those who trust in him like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (Gen. 12-50).

8. God hears the cry of the oppressed, the slave, and the stranger. He acts to liberate (Exod 2:23-25).

9. God cannot be contained (Exod. 3:14).

10. Care for the poor, the immigrant, and the servant is non-negotiable (Lev. 19:9-10; Deut. 10:18; Ruth; Ps. 10, 72, 82; Prov. 14:31; Isa. 1:17).

Joshua-2 Chronicles

11. God goes with his people wherever they are (Josh. 1:9).

12. Humanity's natural tendency is to deteriorate into idolatry, self-destruction, and chaos (Judg. 2:16-19).

13. We look on the outward appearance; God looks on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7).

14. No one, not even a king, is beyond moral consequences (2 Sam. 11-12).

15. God will let a people self-destruct into ruin if they insist (2 Kings 17, 25).

16. Prophets speak truth to power regardless of the cost (1 Kings 18, 22).

17. Humility leads to restoration; pride to destruction (2 Chron. 7:14).

Psalms-Song of Songs
18. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord (Ps. 150:6). 

19. God welcomes us to share laments, complaints, and sorrows (Ps. 88).

20. God wants to hear our anger and frustrations -- especially at injustice -- but he commands us not to sin in our anger (Ps. 137; Eph. 4:26).

21. The LORD is our shepherd (Ps. 23).

22. We should long for God to create a clean heart and renew a right spirit in us (Ps. 51).

23. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7).

24. Pride stands at the root of most human folly (Prov. 11:2).

25. Without God, life is empty (Eccl. 2:11).

26. Physical love is a blessing from God (Song of Songs 8:6-7).

Isaiah-Daniel
27. God is utterly holy (Isaiah 6:1-8).

28. God delights in restoring his people (Isa. 40:1-5).

29. God can bring redemption through suffering (Isa. 53). 

30. Outward forms of religion are detestable to God when they mask injustice and exploitation (Jer. 7:1-11).

31. Great is God's faithfulness (Lam. 3:23).

32. Everyone bears responsibility for their choices as an individual (Ezek. 18:20).

33. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:23; 33:11).

34. Human kingdoms are temporary (Dan. 2, 7).

Hosea-Malachi
35. God relentlessly pursues the lost and wayward (Hos. 1-3).

36. God wants genuine repentance, not fake performances (Joel 2:12-13).

37. Let justice roll down like waters. God indicts those who sell the righteous for silver and trample the poor (Amos 2:6-7; 4:1; 5:24; 8:4-6). 

38. God's love knows no ethnic or national boundaries (Jon. 3-4).

39. What the LORD requires of us is to do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Mic. 6:8).

40. Those who are righteous live in faithfulness, regardless of the wickedness and destruction around us (Hab. 2:4).

41. God's purposes are accomplished not by might nor by power but by God's Holy Spirit (Zech. 4:6).

Matthew
42. Jesus did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17).

43. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt. 5:44).

44. You cannot serve God and money (Matt. 6:24).

45. Pray in submission to the Father, recognizing his holiness, inviting his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:9-13).

46. Not everyone who says they follow God actually do follow God (Matt. 7:21-23; 13:24-30; 25:45-46).

47. The one who does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. The one who finds their life will lose it, but the one who loses their life for my sake will find it (Matt. 10:38-39).

48. Love God and love neighbor -- all the commandments depend on these two (Matt. 22:36-40).

Mark 
49. The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

Luke
50. God scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He puts down the mighty from their thrones. He exalts those of low degree. He fills the hungry with good things, but the rich he sends empty away (Luke 1:51-53).

51. The Spirit of the Lord is on me to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:18-19).

52. Whoever the Samaritan is in your life, that is the neighbor that you must love (Luke 10:25-37).

53. No matter how far you stray from God, he will take you back with open arms. And those who have remained in his house must not begrudge his grace to sinners (Luke 15:11-32).

John
54. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever trusts in him will not perish but have everlasting life. He didn't send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world, through him, might be saved (John 3:16-17).

55. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6).

56. God has sent us the Spirit of truth, who leads us into all truth and convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 14:16-17; 16:7-13).

Acts
57. God raised Jesus from the dead... and has made him Lord and Christ (Acts 2:32, 36).

58. The appropriate response is to repent of our sins, to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and to receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38).

59. Believers come together in unity. They share their possessions with those in need. They fellowship and break bread together. They praise God together. Signs and wonders follow, along with evangelism (Acts 2:43-47).

60. We must obey God rather than earthly authorities when the two conflict (Acts 5:29).

Romans
61. All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God. The wages of sin are death. All humanity is accountable before God (Rom. 1:18-20; 3:23; 6:23).

62. The good news of Jesus the Messiah is the power of God that leads to salvation for everyone who has faith. This trust in what God has done in Christ is the basis for our right standing with God (Rom. 1:16-17; 4:5; 10:9).

63. We are baptized into the death of Jesus so that we can be raised to newness of life (Rom. 6:4).

64. Thanks be to God! Through Jesus Christ our Lord we can fulfill the righteous expectation of the Law (Rom. 7:25; 8:1-4).

65. In eternity, all things will end well for those who love God and who have responded to his call (Rom. 8:29).

66. Present your entire bodies as living sacrifices to God. Meanwhile, don't let your mind be conformed to worldly thinking but let it be transformed by God's renewing (Rom. 12:1-2).

1 and 2 Corinthians
67. The center of Paul's preaching was the cross -- Christ defeated death and Sin not through strength but through weakness (1 Cor. 1:23-25).

68. What we do with our bodies matters. Our bodies collectively and individually constitute the body of Christ (1 Cor. 6:19-20).

69. God can give you the strength to bear temptation (1 Cor. 10:13).

70. Do everything to the glory of God. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 10:31; Col. 3:17).

71. Love is the greatest of virtues (1 Cor. 13).

72. Without the resurrection, Christian faith collapses (1 Cor. 15:14-19).

73. The Holy Spirit is the downpayment that guarantees our future inheritance. He is God's seal of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5).

74. God made the one who knew no sin to become sin so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

Galatians
75. In Christ there are no racial, ethnic, social, or sexual boundaries -- we are all of the same value and status to God (Gal. 3:28; cf. Acts 8, 10, 13; Rev. 7:9).

76. Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of your flesh (Gal. 5:16).

Prison Epistles
77. By God's grace we have been rescued, on the basis of our faith. It is a gift of God. We do good works in thanks (Eph. 2:8-10).

78. There is one God, one Lord, one Spirit. There is one body, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:4-6).

79. Speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

80. Submit to one another (Eph. 5:21).

81. Have the same attitude as Jesus, who took the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6-7).

82. Strive to make your way toward salvation -- the Spirit is working inside us. Press on toward the goal of that upward calling in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:12; 3:14).

83. Our citizenship is in heaven, not on earth (Phil. 3:20; cf. Heb. 11:10, 16; 13:14; 1 Pet. 2:11).

84. Do not pursue superficial religion that focuses on the earthly while boasting falsely of the heavenly (Col. 2:8, 16-19).

85. Put to death the ungodly aspects of the earth and put on the new clothes of the heavenly (Col. 3:5-17).

1 and 2 Thessalonians
86. The dead in Christ will rise first. We will assemble with them in the air with Christ, and we will be with the Lord forever (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

87. Those who can work for the mutual benefit of the church should do so if they expect to participate in the fruits (2 Thess. 3:10).

The Pastoral Epistles
88. God would love for everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4).

89. Church leaders need to be individuals of character (1 Tim. 3).

90. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10).

91. All Scripture is life-giving and is beneficial for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16).

Hebrews and the General Epistles
92. Jesus sympathizes with our weaknesses as a great high priest (Heb. 4:15; 10:14).

93. There is no longer any need for an earthly priest, sanctuary, or sacrifice, for Christ has accomplished all atonement for all time (Heb. 10:14).

94. You can genuinely begin the Christian journey and yet not make it to the Promised Land because of unbelief or falling away (Heb. 3, 6).

95. God does not tempt anyone to do evil. We are responsible for our evil choices, not God (Jas. 1:13-15).

96. Faith without works is useless (Jas 2:14-17).

97. Live such good lives in the world that they may see your good deeds and glorify God (1 Pet. 2:12).

98. Always be ready to witness to the hope that you have (1 Pet. 3:15-16).

99. God is love (1 John 4:7-8).

100. God wins (Revelation).

Notes Along the Way Durham 3 -- Digging into Hebrews

Continued from previous post
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18. I've always felt like I cheated a little by doing my doctorate in the British system. In the US, you do two years of course work and then take comps before you really are set loose on your dissertation. In Britain, you come in as an MLitt student working on your dissertation from Day 1. If you demonstrate sufficient progress that first semester, your work is retroactively deemed the first semester of your doctorate and away you go.

I think most people who are accepted are upgraded. I did have a friend, however, who tried to jump into a PhD program in philosophy without really having the undergraduate or master's background for it. I think he ended up with two master's degrees in the end. Ouch.

You were supposed to fill in gaps as you worked on your dissertation. However, thankfully, between Asbury and UK, I was in good stead. I knew biblical and classical Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and had passed competencies in both reading German and French.

My weakest area was the history of Old Testament interpretation, and no doubt I had some gaps in the history of New Testament interpretation. At some point in the next few years, I would read Stephen Neill's The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861-1986, helpfully supplemented with a robust final chapter by Tom Wright. I think I could do much better by now. :-) In fact, you're picking up pieces if you're reading this series.

19. I hit the ground running teaching Greek. There was a charming old fellow named William Maurice who had taught Greek for years for the Department of Theology. The year I arrived he did what every Greek teacher wants to do at some point -- he wrote his own Greek textbook for a captive audience. I have one sitting around I wrote too.

If I remember correctly, he would give a grammar lecture on Fridays. Then on Monday and Tuesday a cohort would meet with me and we read through Mark 1-8. In three months, we read through all of Mark 1-8. I did that for three years, if I remember correctly.

By then of course I had all sorts of gimmicks, songs, and mnemonics. I remember a Greek Orthodox priest being rather disgusted by my Erasmian pronounciation. I totally agree that modern Greek sounds much more elegant than Machen. I did enjoy doing that trodden path through the first half of Mark.

I seem to remember Maurice presenting a paper. I dare not throw stones for I have given some wild papers no doubt (and plan to give one or two this year). But he argued that since Tatian's Diatesseron meant "through four," there must have been a fifth gospel in the mix. If you have four openings, you have to have five pillars. He suggested that the fifth was the Gospel of Thomas, if I remember correctly.

It was preposterous of course, but every proposal was given respect.

20. A highlight of my time at Durham was the New Testament Seminar. When Dunn was working on a book or commentary, we would work through the material with him. Some terms we would do background literature. For example, an edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls came out in 1994 and we worked through it together. Other semesters were filled with guest speakers.

If I remember correctly, my first semester was a guest speaker semester. Carl Holliday spoke. I think Ralph Martin spoke. I remember thinking that Martin did not have all his thoughts together for the book he was writing. It gave me hope. I mean no disrespect, but I thought, I can have my thoughts better organized than that presentation. But everyone can have an off day too.

It was an intimidating crowd. Jimmy Dunn led the seminar, of course. Sandy Wedderburn was starting his last year there, although we didn't know it yet. Stephen Barton was a regular feature -- also a local pastor.  Walter Moberley was Old Testament but he would join. He was particularly interested in theological interpretation, so just sticking to the Old Testament wouldn't do.

21. While I'm on the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), 1994 was a special moment in the history of New Testament scholarship. When the DSS were discovered in 1947, scholars divided the fragments between them. Some of the big fragments came out fairly quickly. The Habakkuk commentary, for example. The Community Rule.

But there were lots and lots of fragments. Piecing them together was a huge task. And it's perhaps understandable that those scholars who were working on them kept them largely to themselves... for 50 years. At retirement, some of them passed fragments onto their students.

It wasn't a conspiracy. It was perfectionism. It was scholars hoarding fragments to themselves. It was a log jam.

Then a couple scholars from Biblical Archaeology Review took pictures of all the scrolls (Hershell Shanks, Robert Eisenman, with the help of Emmanuel Tov) and a copy of them all was published. The gig was up. The next ten years would be a cornucopia of Dead Sea Scrolls studies and dissertations. And I lived through it.

I think it must have been the spring of 1994 that Helen Fox had a visitor. Or perhaps it was a friend of Eleanor Rance (an Anglican ministry student). She was Catholic and was insistent that the Roman Catholic Church had suppressed the DSS because they showed that Jesus was not actually the Messiah.

I lose my cool much more often these last years than I used to, but it was very unusual in those days for me to lose my cool. But this person was so whack that I lost it. She was so absolutely sure that the church was hiding the scrolls and that it was a papal conspiracy. There were some conspiracy books out -- one in 1991 called The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception and another by Barbara Thiering in 1992.

The scrolls were all public within a year. Guess what? No deep dark conspiracy in them. Sheez.

22. The place to start my work with Hebrews was catching up with the literature. At that time, Hebrews was truly a road less traveled. Today, we have a wealth of monographs. I know because I wrote a chapter on Contested Issues in Hebrews for the Oxford Handbook of Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles a couple years ago. It was an overwhelming task.

Two works in particular seemed like the best place to begin: Lincoln Hurst's vaguely named, The Epistle of Hebrews (1990) and James Thompson's The Beginnings of Christian Philosophy (1982).

Hurst would be important for me. There had been a time in the mid-1900s when most scholars thought that Philo stood fairly significantly in the background of Hebrews. Ceslas Spicq's two volume French commentary on Hebrews was probably the peak. Then Ronald Williamson wrote a book in 1970 that most felt debunked the Philo background. In 2000 I gave a paper at SBL reviewing his work. 

He made the basic point, but thought he significantly overstated his conclusions. But these sorts of works are like inoculations. You don't have to make the argument. You just say, "Williamson" and can leave it at that.

Hurst stood in that stream. He made some good points. For example, events can't happen in a Platonic archetype. His greatest contribution, in my opinion, was his recognition that "copy" is not a good translation for hypodeigma in Hebrews 8:5 and 9:23. "Example" is better. "Illustration." "Sketch."

However, the Platonism that may have influenced Hebrews was not straight Platonism but Middle Platonism. It makes a difference.

23. Thompson's book was probably a little dated but he represented the Philo position in an updated form. His monograph was a collection of essays. He was my only source for the idea that the removal of the created realm in 12:27 was a literal removal, giving a citation from 2 Enoch. I would hold that position until 2011 when I gave a paper in James Thompson's honor at Pepperdine.

It had come home to me over the years that Hebrews would truly be unprecedented to see the created realm completely removed. It just wasn't a concept that existed and I later concluded that 2 Enoch probably doesn't hold that either. Language of creation out of nothing didn't literally mean absolutely nothing. It was about the formation of unseen hyle. 

So why would the removal not be the same -- removal of the world as it appears rather than absolute removal. Think 2 Peter 3:10 where the cosmos is reconstituted. I'm not sure if I've said this in publication anywhere.

24. I believe I gave Dunn two or three papers that fall. One was on the literary structure of Hebrews. Then the second was a review of Hurst. I can't remember if I gave him one on Thompson.

Notes Along the Way Durham 2 -- Settling into St. Johns

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8. St. John's was a delightful place, the kind of place where you want to stay forever. There were three of us Residential Tutors. Neil Evans, who was the Welsh chaplain I mentioned earlier, and Helen Fox of the Isle of Wight, who had just finished her undergraduate work. Her flat was up the Bailey a smidge.

The John's property was really a delightful Frankenstein. There was the principal property. Then there was this random slice of flats a little further down. You had to go out on the Bailey and up to get to them.

Helen only stayed a year, maybe because she was working on a one year master's. Then I believe Neil moved into her flat for the next two years. More on Helen later. She was the one who really set me on to Wittgenstein.

9. These were residences first built in the early 1700s in the Baroque style. The University of Durham itself wasn't founded until 1832 -- a bit of a late comer when you think that Cambridge goes back to the 1200s and Oxford even to the 1000s. Still, Durham is the third oldest university in England. Then again, when you consider that St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Dublin were all founded in the 1400s and 1500s, Durham was quite a bit down the line.

As a sidenote, I didn't really go in understanding all the distinctions of territory. England is the heart of Great Britain, but Great Britain also includes Scotland and Wales -- both of which were forced to join the merry band somewhat against their wills. And you have to add in Northern Ireland to get the United Kingdom. Ireland proper to the south gained its independence in the 20s. 

These distinctions are bloody obvious to anyone who lives there. But they weren't to me as an American. And I expect James Petticrew to have an Angus for saying England is the heart of Great Britain.

10. Because the innards of John's were repurposed residences, they seemed to be constantly trying to figure out how to maximize the space. There was a lovely set of stairs that ended in a wall. Sometimes it felt a bit like a maze.

We three Residential Tutors were also Fire Marshalls of a sort. If the fire alarm went off, we would spring to action, running to the front office to see where the alarm had gone off. Then we would run to the appropriate location to see if it was a real fire or not.

It almost never was. I can only remember one time in my three years there when it was a real fire. Third year. Someone cooking on the top floor of Cruddas. At least one fire truck always had to come and double check, but if we could ascertain that it wasn't a real fire, we would call and tell them that they didn't have to send multiple trucks.

11. My sense is that most alarms had to do with alcohol. The drinking age is 18 in England, so pretty much all students drank. In fact, John's has a very quaint bar in its basement -- not for the claustrophobic. You went down a very narrow set of winding stairs to get down to it. A student was chosen each year to be head barman.

I was impressed with how many things like this were student led. They really entrusted the students with significant leadership. In fact, as students they didn't think of themselves as pre-engineers or pre-geographers. They called themselves what they were going to become. "I'm an engineer."

A note on drinking. I of course had grown up with a sense that you might become an alcoholic if you had one drink. Certainly, there was plenty of drunkenness among the student body, as is the case among American colleges. I used to marvel at a rugby lad named Hamish who had juvenile diabetes. Yet he would take a shot of insulin and then go on a pub crawl in which he would down a "yard" in one.

But the staff at John's modeled responsible drinking. Every Sunday involved a high meal, a little like you see in the Harry Potter movies. The leaders would sit at the "high table" -- with everyone in a simple black academic gown -- and the students filling the rest of the room. 

The leaders were part of what was called the "Senior Common Room" (SCR). It referred both literally to a room upstairs and figuratively to those who made it up. We would meet before these special meals and those who wished would have a class of sherry. Then after the meal there would be glasses of port available.

Yet I never saw any of those leaders drunk. It really made some of the rhetoric I grew up with seem rather foolish. This august group was far from some collection of out of control Bacchanalian figures, spilling all their secrets and giving into their hidden desires. Nothing of the sort!

It would seem to me that it would be more mature for us to teach young people to drink responsibly than to set up an all-or-nothing proposition where many would fail and then be out of control.

12. The entrance to John's, as I mentioned, had been constructed in the early 1700s and had been Baroque. A few anecdotes. Principal David Day enjoyed telling of how he had recently visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Apparently, on the tour, the guide had boasted that the stairs there dated from the 1700s. His remark? "The stairs outside my office are older."

This expanding sense of time was a key feature of my travels. In America, I had been impressed with something from the 1800s being old. The 1700s seemed a very long time ago. I didn't know any buildings in Florida or Indiana that went back to the 1700s.

Now in England, we had Durham Cathedral that dated to the 1000s and 1100s. Absolutely blowing my mind, Hadrian's Wall was about an hour away from me, and it dated to 122 and Roman times. (They said you could tell a road that was built on a Roman road by its straightness for miles and miles.) 

Then you go to Jerusalem and Greece and you're looking at things that are 2000 to 3000 years old -- maybe older. I've never been to Egypt or Iraq, but the scale just gets higher and higher.

I also remember Principal Day saying how overwhelmed they were by choices on their trip to America. In England you ask for an English breakfast and it's going to be much the same anywhere. But in America you have to decide how you want your eggs cooked and whether you want bacon or sausage. My daughters have to text me their Starbucks orders because of how complicated (and counter-intuitive) some of them are.

A fun memory is the brief moment when Principal Day had the opening hall repainted in its original Baroque colors (puke green). It was so awful that he immediately had it repainted back. At least that's how I remember it.

I've already mentioned the chapel -- St. Mary the Less. There was also a magnificent library. These were small buildings with lots of character. St. Mary the Less dated to the 1100s.

13. The oldest colleges of Durham were on the peninsula where the castle and cathedral were. The Bishop of Durham had previously been a Prince Bishop -- half bishop, half soldier, cathedral on one side, castle on the other. That all ended during the time of Van Mildert in the early 1800s, whose support helped to found the university. University or "Castle College" is the most posh of the colleges -- students live in the castle and graduation ceremonies happen there. 

A fun anecdote about the Castle kitchen. When it was constructed around 1499, word has it that Prince Bishop Richard Fox got tired of having to bless all the food coming out of the kitchen. So he put a sign over the pass through with the words "est deo gratia" ("thanks are to God"). That way, the food was automatically blessed when it arrived to those serving it.

The Palace Green is the area between the Cathedral and Castle. The Department of Theology is right there on the Green as well. Dunn's office was the first on the right as you went in the door. It was like a library in itself. 

[I'll put a placeholder here for the second floor window.]

The Cathedral itself was quite inspiring. I much preferred it to the ostentatious Westminster Cathedral in London with all its gold. Durham Cathedral lost most of its gold in the 1500s during the time when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. It was quite disheartening to see the ruins of former monasteries or abbeys out in the countryside. And you could see stones from them in nearby houses

As you went down the Bailey, you saw Hatfield College, Chad's, John's, and St. Cuthbert's. At the end of the Bailey, the bridge that crosses the river is called Prebends. It has a famous quote by Sir Walter Scott engraved on it: "Grey towers of Durham, yet well I love thy mixed and massive pyles, half church of God, half castle 'gainst the Scots, and long to roam your venerable isles with memories stored of tales long since forgot." C. S. Lewis is said to have taken the idea of the lamp in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from here.

I guess Oliver Cromwell kept some 3000 Scottish soldiers from the Battle of Dunbar in the cathedral in 1650. The idiot Puritan had closed all the cathedrals and so used the empty building to keep those who survived the march down to Durham. Hundreds would die in there. They would burn anything wooden they could find for heat. 

The Chapel of Nine Altars commemorates them today. They were buried nearby, as was discovered during work on the Palace Green Library in 2013. Then they were reburied at a cemetery nearby.

16. The first trips to Durham involved lugging my books in huge boxes -- the biggest allowance possible. I had two huge suitcases and two huge boxes each trip. It was a lot. The first trip it was my desktop and books, books, books. 

I think I may have tried Heathrow once but quickly Gatwick became the way. Gatwick Express to Victoria. Victoria to Kings Cross on the Tube. Then a three hour train ride to Durham.

By the time the train was past York, I would be fighting sleep with all my might. I wasn't able to sleep on the plane. I was inevitably sucked into one or two movies. Darlington. Stay awake Ken. You have to stay awake. Durham. Then a taxi to John's.

I always would say, "Never call a nerd a weakling. We have to have muscles to carry all those books!"

17. I was on the bottom level of Cruddas. Cruddas was a four story building of student housing on the back of the John's property, situated on the incline leading down toward the river. Indeed, it was very easy to slip down to the river from where I was.

I think I mentioned that I did a little rowing that first year. Christoph Lorentz was a German exchange student that year, very tall. Juan was from Spain. Jonathan was English. Helen Fox served as the cox. We weren't very good (they called us the "crowd pleasers"), but we had a lot of fun.

Just about as soon as I was in my flat. Rachel Leonard and David Fox appeared at my door. Rachel's room was right next to mine. David was the Junior Common Room (JCR) president. Both of them sharp as a whip. Brilliant. Rachel was Psychology. David was Literature. I always felt like my brain was moving in slow motion when I was around them.

I came to consider them some of my closest friends. I still have a gord somewhere that David and I used to hide back and forth for some reason. I have failed to send it back to him now for about 25 years.

Although I was exhausted, they insisted I walk with them and some others to a pub that evening. I couldn't tell you where it was. I had my first Ribena, a non-alcoholic blackcurrent drink.

My impression of the night was that I was in a foreign country. I knew all the English words they were saying. I just didn't know what they meant.