Meeting up with a Variety of Biblical Scholars in Cheltenham

This is the eighth installment about my speaking in the UK.














3 thoughts on “Meeting up with a Variety of Biblical Scholars in Cheltenham

  1. Matt is a friend of mine and a colleague at Regent. We got to visit Matt & Abi last summer, and am pleased you got there. Well done, and I look forward to the podcast.

  2. Could you go into a bit more detail on your disagreements with Lincoln’s book on the virgin birth? I found Hurtado’s review interesting but brief, and I couldn’t quite pin down his stance on the matter. It’s a topic that interests me, as I’ve found the two birth narratives some of the more difficult parts of the NT to handle. Thanks!

  3. I’m not sure if I have a specific disagreement or if it is just that I need to think more about his full argument and its implications. I first read Lincoln’s short piece on the virgin birth in Biblical Archeology Review, which was fascinating; and I have only skimmed the longer book on the subject. His point in the article is that first-century ideas of how conception took place explains the logic of the virgin birth very well, but we don’t have that same conception. So the theological implications for us may be different (and problematic).

    I also affirm his point that the virgin birth is mentioned in only Matthew and Luke, and never in Paul, so it can’t be as important as we sometimes think. I myself have often said that I don’t think that someone who has problems with the virgin birth is a heretic, though I am quite willing to affirm it as part of the Christian tradition.

    Parenthetically, as an OT scholar, I am fully aware that the term “virgin” is not the standard translation of “almah” in Isaiah 7:14 (it typically means a young woman). Even the Greek translation of “almah” with “parthenos” in the Septuagint/LXX does not necessarily mean “virgin” when the LXX was written; it only came to mean that by the first century when Matthew was writing. So the issue is complicated.

Comments are closed.