SBL Book Haul

I didn’t buy a lot of books this year.

I got Pongratz-Leisten’s edited volume the first day, even though I already have two of the articles and two others are early versions of books I own. The other articles looked interesting, and I’ve really enjoyed the volume so far. I hope to review it once I get on the other side of Christmas. Peppard’s book, The Son of God in the Roman World, is a great find, and I got it on the last day for 50% off. I bought the book primarily because I’m interested in the “Son of God” epithet in early Christianity, but it also has discussion in it that is helpful to my thesis, which is a bonus. Miller’s book, Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel, is one I picked up from Wipf & Stock. Having read Ong and a few other articles on orality and literacy, I was interested in seeing what contemporary scholarship had to say on the topic as it bore on early Israel. I haven’t cracked the book yet, but it looks promising. Lastly, I’ve always wanted a JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, and these were $15 at the little JPS booth.

Quotable: Michael Peppard in The Son of God in the Roman World

I’m going to review an Oxford University Press book I picked up at SBL called The Son of God in the Roman World, and the preface begins with an interesting invitation: Imagine yourself as a first century Jew living somewhere in the Mediterranean and seeking to spread the word of Jesus, the Son of God. How do you write his story? It concludes,

One main problem you have, as a Jew, with portraying God’s “son” is that God does not have a partner. For this reason, among others, your God is unusual in the Roman world. But if the paternal God does not procreate, how do you portray the divine sonship of Jesus? Again, where do you begin? Put yourself in Mark’s shoes—how do you narrate the life of God’s son?

A helpful exercise, but it seems to me to indicate the author imagines his audience to be a little leery of the notion that a Gospel author would appropriate Greco-Roman literary conventions and imagery.