OnScript

Carmen Imes - Being God’s Image

Episode: Matt speaks with Carmen about her latest book Being God's Image, why "being" (not necessarily "bearing") matters to this subject, what we often misunderstand about the Image of God, and what the Image of God means for today.

Guest: Dr. Carmen Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University. She received her Ph.D. at Wheaton College, after serving on the mission field in the Philippines. She’s the author of Bearing YHWH’s Name at Sinai: A Re-Examination of the Name Command of the Decalogue (Eisenbrauns) and a more popular level version of that book in Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (IVP). Most recently, she's written Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters (IVP), which we're discussing today. She also creates Torah Tuesday videos, so check those out on YouTube.

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Kristine Garroway - Growing Up in Ancient Israel

Episode: What do we know about children in ancient Israel, about who they were, the lives they led, and the people in their lives? Kristine Garroway is at the forefront of a new interest in the lives of children, and she draws on insights from comparative Ancient Near Eastern literature, archaeology, and the biblical text to help us get to know them better.

Guest:  Dr. Kristine Garroway is Professor of Bible at Hebrew Union College, at the LA campus. She's excavated at Ashkelon, Tel Dor, and Tel Dan, and is the author of Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household (Eisenbrauns 2014) and Growing up in Ancient Israel (SBL 2018), and has another book forthcoming, The Cult of the Child: The Death and Burial of Children in Ancient Israel (OUP). We'll be discussing Growing Up in Ancient Israel, which won the BAR 2019 Publication Award for Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible.

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Jenny Matheny - The Violence of Judges and Ruth’s Response

Episode: What happens if you read Ruth and Judges together? What might Ruth say to the violence against women in Judges? Jenny Matheny discusses these questions and more (like how not to go hiking in Waco).

Guest: Dr. Jenny Matheny is Associate Professor of Christian Studies at Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. Jenny has wide-ranging interests in gender studies, trauma studies, and areas like dress hermeneutics. She's the author of Joshua, in the Illustrated Hebrew-English Old Testament Series (GlossaHouse, 2019), Judges 19–21 and Ruth: Canon as a Voice of Answerability (Brill, 2022), and has two forthcoming books, Ḥesed and the Core of Old Testament Theology (Baker Academic, forthcoming) and Clothing, Dress, and Nudity in the Five Scrolls (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

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Live Event! If you’d like to attend our live event in San Antonio on Nov 19, click HERE.

Lisa Powell - The Disabled God

Episode: Lisa Powell discusses the Trinity and eschatological body through the lens of disability. The episode discusses insights from her book The Disabled God Revisited (T&T Clark). 

Guest: Lisa Powell is Professor of Theology at St. Ambrose University, and is the author of The Disabled God Revisited: Trinity, Christology, and Liberation (T&T Clark, 2023) and Inconclusive Theologies: Sor Juana, Kierkegaard, and Theological Discourse (Mercer: Mercer University Press, 2013). 

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Live Event! If you'd like to attend our live event in San Antonio on Nov 19, click HERE.

Erin Raffety - From Inclusion to Justice

Episode: In this episode, co-host Amy Hughes speaks with Erin Raffety about her ethnographic and practical theological research into what it looks like for congregations to move away from an "inclusion" model for people with disabilities to a "justice" model with people with disabilities. 

Guest: Dr. Erin Raffety is a cultural anthropologist, a Presbyterian pastor, and an ethnographic researcher who has studied foster families in China, Christian congregations in the United States, and people with disabilities around the world. Raffety teaches and researches at Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University. Her most recent book, discussed in this episode, is  From Inclusion to Justice: Disability, Ministry, and Congregational Leadership (Baylor), explores the importance of nurturing and receiving the ministry of people with disabilities in the church. Erin is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Princeton University, and is a proud parent of a daughter with multiple disabilities. (adapted from Erin's website).

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Matthew Novenson – Paul, Then and Now

Episode: Erin sits down with Matthew Novenson for a lively conversation on the weirdness of Paul, theological and historical approaches, first-century Judaism, and a range of other topics covered in Matt's new book of collected essays, Paul, Then and Now (Eerdmans, 2022). This is Matt's second appearance on OnScript. You can also tune-in to an earlier OnScript conversation  on The Grammar of Messianism (Oxford, 2017).

Guest: Matthew V. Novenson holds a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, and is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively on Messianism, first-century Judaism, and has emerged as a leading scholar in Pauline studies. Matt's other books include Christ Among the Messiahs, and The Grammar of Messianism. and he has also recently edited the very fine Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies (OUP, 2022), which is an essential resource for students.

Book: (from the publisher's website: Reckoning with the hermeneutical struggle to make sense of Paul as both a historical figure and a canonical muse. Matthew Novenson has become a leading advocate for the continuing relevance of historical-critical readings of Paul even as some New Testament scholars have turned to purely theological or political approaches. In this collection of a decade’s worth of essays, Novenson puts contextual understandings of Paul’s letters into conversation with their Christian reception history.

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Wolf Gruner - Jewish Resistance in Hitler’s Germany

Episode: Gruner's work explores the lives of ordinary Jewish people who lived in Nazi Germany and resisted persecution. From defacing Nazi symbols to bold defiance Gruner explores the complex and fraught nature of Jewish opposition to Nazi policies, attacks, and hatred, and draws insights from the 12 years of archival research behind his book Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale University Press, 2023).

Guest: Wolf Gruner is the Shapell Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and professor of history at the University of Southern California. He is the founding director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, and the author of ten books on the Holocaust, including The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia,  Jewish Forced Labor Under the Nazis, and many others, including the book under discussion in this episode, Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale University Press, 2023). He lives in Los Angeles, CA. He's a member of the Academic Committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, and is co-founder of the Consortium of Higher Education Centers for Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Studies.

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Matt Lynch - Flood and Fury (on Old Testament Violence)

Episode: Chris Tilling talks with Matt Lynch about Old Testament violence. They take a deep dive into ... the flood story in Genesis then traverse the Promised Land to consider the plight of the Canaanites. Matt argues that the complex problem of violence needs to meet with a nuanced reading of the Old Testament, all while holding onto the Bible's central claims about divine mercy. The discussion relates to Matt's recent book Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God (IVP, 2023).

Guest: Matt Lynch is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Regent College, and a co-founder and host on OnScript! He's the author of First Isaiah and the Disappearance of the Gods (Eisenbrauns), Portraying Violence in the Hebrew Bible: A Literary and Cultural Study (Cambridge, 2020), and Monotheism and Institutions in the Book of Chronicles: Temple, Priesthood, and Kingship in Post-Exilic Perspective (Mohr Siebeck, 2014). His most recent book is Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God (IVP, 2023).

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Stanley Porter and Bryan Dyer - Origins of New Testament Christology

Episode: Who is this man? Questions about Jesus are fascinating and perennial. Stanley Porter and Bryan Dyer team up to explore how the New Testament deployed diverse traditions--Jesus as passover lamb, savior, prophet, last Adam, messiah, and many others--in order to answer foundational questions about Jesus. Discover how background studies can enhance Jesus and the New Testament rather than reduce them. Co-hosted by Matt Bates.

The Book: Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer, Origins of New Testament Christology: An Introduction to the Traditions and Titles Applied to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023). The early followers of Jesus drew from Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions and titles to help them understand and articulate who Jesus was. This book opens a window into the Christology of the first century by helping readers understand the eleven most significant titles for Jesus in the New Testament: Lord, Son of Man, Messiah, Prophet, Suffering Servant, Son of God, Last Adam, Passover Lamb, Savior, Word, and High Priest. The authors trace the history of each title in the Old Testament, Second Temple literature, and Greco-Roman literature and look at the context in which the New Testament writers retrieved these traditions to communicate their understanding of Christ. The result is a robust portrait that is closely tied to the sacred traditions of Israel and beyond that took on new significance in light of Jesus Christ. This accessible and up-to-date exegetical study defends an early "high" Christology and argues that the titles of Jesus invariably point to an understanding of Jesus as God. In the process, it will help readers appreciate the biblical witness to the person of Jesus. (Publisher's description).

Stanley Porter has a number of different titles at McMaster Divinity College (Hamilton, Ontario). Stan is the President and Dean, Professor of New Testament, and Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview. He has written and edited many books. Some of his most well-known work pertains to linguistics with respect to NT Greek.

Bryan Dyer holds a PhD from McMaster Divinity College in New Testament and is acquisitions editor at Baker Academic. Bryan is also a part-time faculty member of religion at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the co-editor of numerous volumes and the author of a monograph on Hebrews, Suffering in the Face of Death (T&T Clark).

OnScript's Review: The Christology of the New Testament relates to its Jewish and Greco-Roman environment in complex ways. Some studies reduce Jesus in light of his background. Porter and Dyer have done the opposite. As they uncover each facet, an ever richer portrait of Jesus emerges. Students and scholars alike will appreciate its clarity, organization, up-to-date scholarship, and wisdom. -- Matthew W. Bates, author of The Birth of the Trinity; Professor of Theology, Quincy University

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Ted Smith - The End of Theological Education

Episode: "We're in the midst of an unraveling". So argues Ted Smith about the shift in the ways that people relate and the end of theological education as it's typically conceived. Smith traces the historical roots of this social shift and the ways that education, institutions, and church ministry are changing. This is not a time for despair, however, because God longs to be known. The unraveling can be revelatory.

Guest: Ted A. Smith is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Divinity and Associate Dean of Faculty at Emory University. He's the author of three books: The End of Theological Education (Eerdmans, 2023), Weird John Brown (Stanford, 2015), and The New Measures (Cambridge, 2007). Together these books try to think theologically about core American Protestant institutions, practices, values, and rhetoric in a time when they are unraveling. Smith has also edited books on sexuality and ordination, contemporary issues in preaching, and economic inequality, along with a series of books on theological education.

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