Andrew Guffey

Got this in an email from my sister-in-law (that still sounds weird in my ear). Fascinating. Both the animation and the talk.

"The spirits of the living world were never meant to be so neighbourly with the spirits of that other. "Grant to them eternal rest, O Lord. And let light eternal shine upon them." Let them rest in their own places of light; far, far from us be their discipline and their endeavour. The phrases of the prayers of intercession throb with something other than charity for the departed; there is a fear for the living. Grant them, grant them rest; compel them to their rest. Enlighten them, perpetually enlighten them. And let us still enjoy our refuge from their intolerable knowledge. "As if in a last communion with the natural terrors of man, Margaret Anstruther endured a recurrent shock of fear. She recalled herself. To tolerate such knowledge with a joyous welcome was meant, as the holy Doctors had taught her, to be the best privilege of man, and so remained. The best maxim towards that knowledge was yet not the Know thyself of the Greek so much as the Know love of the ...

Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images (London: Dacre, 1949). No one has applied himself to the question of the literary art of the Apocalypse with more relentlessness than Austin Farrer. The book is a masterpiece and a puzzle, at once impressive and bemusing. The entire book is dominated by the conclusion (or shall we say, conviction) that the Apocalypse “is the one great poem which the first Christian age produced” (6). Accordingly, in this study of the book of Revelation, Farrer claims “to introduce into the field of scriptural divinity a known method of poetical analysis” (20). The origins of Christianity were, in fact, a “rebirth” of the imagery of the Jewish Scriptures. The most complete rebirth was accomplished in Revelation; in John’s poetical labor, the images of the Old Testament were reborn completely with Christ as the new center. Farrer saw, more than many, the sophistication of the book. He approaches the book as a work of genius, not that of a madman, though the dif...

Christopher Rowland, “Things into Which Angels Long to Look: Approaching Mysticism from the Perspective of the New Testament and the Jewish Apocalypses,” in Christopher Rowland and Christopher R. A. Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament (CRINT, vol. 12; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), pp. 1-216. In this study Christopher Rowland provides an outstanding survey of apocalypticism in the New Testament (NT). Rowland is to be commended for presenting a thorough argument in favor of the permeation of apocalypticism in New Testament theology. Instead of a limited focus on apocalyptic eschatology, Rowland capitalizes on the theme of the volume by analyzing apocalypticism in its “mystical” aspects. Following Hengel’s definition of apocalypticism as the search for “higher wisdom through revelation,” Rowland is keen to highlight visionary experience(s) and developed angelological and merkavah themes. Thus Rowland seeks to establish the apocaly...

Ordinarily I find these 'four views' or 'five views' kind of books a little contrived. Usually published by evangelical publishers and edited by evangelical editors, I think they are intended to show the superiority of the evangelical position. But this volume comprises a nice cross-section of current historical Jesus research. The introduction to the volume is judicious and offers the basic background to historical Jesus research. The chapters that follow are essays by five scholars (Robert M. Price, John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson, James D. G. Dunn and Darrell Bock) who represent points along the spectrum of scholarly positions on the historical Jesus and the enterprise of studying the historical figure of Jesus. The volume does not disappoint expectations since the arrangement of the essays suggests a graded progression from the most radically revisionist to the most traditional portrait of Jesus. In spite of the clearly chosen arrangement, the essay...

In Cities of God (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), popular sociologist Rodney Stark attempts to bring quantitative, statistical analysis to bear on the study of the history of early Christian expansion. The description of the 'triumph' of Christianity, Stark argues, is incomplete, indeed unscientific, without the utilization of quantitative methods. "A major purpose of this book," writes Stark, "is to demonstrate that quantitative methods can help to resolve many debates about early church history" (22). He explains the book attempts "to identify adequate, quantifiable indicators of key concepts and then to properly test important hypotheses " (22, emphasis original). In so doing, the chapters of the book "will attempt to place the rise of Christianity within the appropriate social and cultural contexts, but they will do so in a more fully social scientific way than as ever been attempted" (22). Although the book is a provocative pr...

This post is very good. April DeConick famously protested against the characterization, translation, and publicization of the Gospel of Judas a couple of years back. Now she's concerned about their take on the Apocalypse of Gabriel. I'll try to add background links when I have some more time.