David Evans, a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, has written another summary of the ANZATS conference here and here.

I am going to post about my own presentation over the next few posts, but I wanted to mention some of the highlights from the Australian and New Zealand Association of Theological Schools conference in Brisbane. Andrew McGowan was one of the keynote speakers and over three sessions gave an impressive survey about how sacrifices were understood in the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, select Greek textual or archaeological artifacts, Pauline Epistles, Christian theologians (particularly on the Eucharist), and modern theorists of religion. What stuck with me was his call to move beyond a singular, essentialist definition of “sacrifice” (e.g. sacrifice is about altruistic self-abnegation or about sacred violence) and explore the range of ritual practices by which a devotee offered a gift to establish or maintain a relationship with a deity and how certain sacrifices strengthened communal bonds when they were eaten together. I enjoyed listening to the rest of the papers and visiting with other scholars and graduate students. I had the opportunity to meet Robert K. McIver and hear more about his work in the Synoptic Problem and memory studies. I also got to have a great conversation with Sally Douglas and learn more about her work on 1 Clement and Wisdom Christology.

Although I noted Jim West’s carnival in a previous post, I see now that Phillip Long has posted the official biblioblogging carnival for the month of June 2018 (though it turns out there was a scandal about the number of carnivals in the history of biblioblogs lol). I am grateful to Phil for including much of my series on the book of Acts.

I am re-posting what I will be presenting in the “Lukan Scholarship section” at the 2018 ANZATS [Australian and New Zealand Association of Theological Schools] Conference in Brisbane on Monday, July 2. My paper will be entitled “A Source and Redaction Critical Analysis of Luke 7:36-50” and I submitted the following abstract:

The Markan pericope about a woman pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’s head to anoint him for burial at the home of Simon the leper (Mark 14:3-9; cf. Matthew 26:6-13) was relocated and heavily edited in Luke 7:36-50. In Luke’s narrative, a “woman of the city” poured perfume on Jesus’s feet and wiped his feet with her hair (cf. John 12:3), much to the chagrin of Simon the Pharisee who despised her as a “sinner.” However, the Lukan version of the anointing may be equally indebted to another pronouncement story where Jesus pardoned a woman accused of undefined sins and issued a witty retort to her accusers. This latter report appears to have been orally transmitted in Asia Minor and the bishop Papias of Hierapolis had independent knowledge of it (in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.17), along with other multiply attested traditions about Judas (Acts 1:18; Apollinarius of Laodicea fragment on Matthew 27.5), James (Acts 12:2; Philip of Side, Codex Baroccianus 142), Peter (Acts 12:12; Eccl. Hist. 3.39.15), Justus Barsabbas (Acts 1:23; Eccl. Hist. 3.39.9), and Philip (Acts 21:8-9; Eccl. Hist. 3.39.9). This oral anecdote continued to be circulated for centuries and its details were embellished with each retelling, eventually evolving into the treasured account of Jesus rescuing a woman from a public stoning and getting preserved in both John’s Gospel and the Gospel according to the Hebrews (cf. Didascalia Apostolorum 7; Didymus, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 222.6-13; Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 3.39.17; John 7:53-8:11). This is the tradition history of the pericope adulterae before it was interpolated into Codex Bezae and other manuscripts of John’s Gospel.

In the next few posts, we will take a closer look comparing this account to the story of the woman who anointed Jesus in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John (she is named Mary in John 12:3) and to the Patristic traditions about Jesus pardoning a woman accused of unspecified sins.

I am not sure if anyone signed on to do the biblioblog carnival for the month of June 2018 (see here), but Jim West has posted his own annual carnival with a fitting tribute to the late Philip Davies here. Finally, the Biblioblog Top 50 has returned to post a new list for June 2018 and I managed to just make it on there at #50. It is nice to know that I have some readers at this blog, but I still like the idea of having a giant list that is continually updated to add all of the women and men around the world who blog on the Bible and their academic backgrounds or areas of interest for readers to check out.