Author: Beka Johnson

Update

I have been very quiet on the PE front as I am now working on a project on the Bible and Spirituality.  However, I’d just like to mention a couple of news items.  First, my article “Women as Gossips and Busybodies? Another Look at 1 Timothy 5:13” will be published shortly in the Lexington Theological Quarterly.  Second, I shall shortly be returning to the PE as I shall be working on the notion of ‘the good life’ in the PE for the project.

Congratulations to my fellow contributors for news on projects they are engaged in.

Lloyd Pietersen

The manuscript . . .

The manuscript for my commentary, Reading Paul’s Letters to Individuals: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Letters to Philemon, Titus, and Timothy, is officially in the mail to Smyth and Helwys.

S&H expects the commentary to be available in October, just in time for SBL. Maybe I’ll need to go to Boston after all.

This is the commentary that Glenn Hinson was supposed to write, then Marty Soards. Both ended up not filling the contract. Then Hulitt Gloer wrote a manuscript, but was not able to finish it for health reasons.

So in January–you may recall–the editor of the series, Charles Talbert (who was my doctorfather at Baylor) asked if I could finish Gloer’s manuscript.  And I’ve spent the last few months doing so.

I’d originally hoped to have 300 – 325 double spaced pages, and ended up with 425: OUCH! Did I type all that stuff?

What’s innovative or fresh about the commentary? Two things, off the top of my head:

First, it is a scholarly commentary, interacting extensively with primary sources (Philo and Josephus, especially) and cutting-edge secondary sources (e.g., Bruce Winter’s work on the new Roman woman), BUT the exposition is aimed at preachers and teachers. This would be the first commentary I would recommend for people who want to preach these letters.

Second, this is the first commentary on the Pastorals to take into account the role that succession plays in these letters.

Progress

We’ve been on Winter Break (Thursday and Friday off, no school), so I’ve been able to do some writing. 

When I started on the project in January, I tried to work my way through Philemon.  I thought I could get that letter finished and then move on to the PE.  I rewrote / restructured / supplemented all the materials on slavery in the NT world, but got really bogged down when I reached the materials dealing with classical rhetoric–NOT my area.

So I’ve set Philemon aside, and now I’m writing the introduction to the PE.  Yesterday, I outlined about 35 pages (double-spaced) of material.  About 40% of that material needs to be written from scratch.  Well, I got TEN PAGES of the “from scratch” part written today.  I’m feeling pretty good about the project right now.

Of course, there are midterms and pregistration and prof reviews and taxes to do and a fuel filter to change and . . .

“Women as Gossips and Busybodies: Another Look at 1 Timothy 5:13”

This is the title of my paper which has just been accepted for the Disputed Paulines Consultation at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2007.  The abstract of the paper is below and no doubt I shall be musing on this here as my thoughts develop.

Nearly all English translations translate the
phrase
flu&aroi kai\
peri/ergoi
in 1 Tim 5:13 as “gossips and
busybodies” (ESV, GNT, NAB, NIV, NKJV and NRSV, for example), and the
concluding phrase
lalou~sai
ta_ mh_ de/onta
as some variation of “saying what they should not
say”.  This paper revisits the suggestion
by Spicq, Hanson, Kelly and others in their commentaries on this passage that the
former phrase has to do with working magic and the latter with the actual
formulae used.  I argue that the phrase
“gossips and busybodies” has, therefore, been consistently mistranslated and
that the apparent misogyny of this passage has to be seen in the context of
very real opposition arising from what the writer views as false teaching and
magical practices within the community.

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