The PTS Department of Biblical Studies is pleased to announce several recent honors

received by its faculty, alumni/ae, and students: 

 

FACULTY NEWS

Professor Chip Dobbs-Allsopp is currently serving as the President of the Mid-Atlantic Region chapter of the Society of Biblical Literature. He delivered his presidential address, entitled "The Way of Poetry in Psalm 133," on March 28, 2008. His essay "(More) On Performatives in Semitic," ZAH 17-20 (2204-2007): 36-81 has just appeared.

Professor Beverly Gaventa gave a plenary lecture at the International Meeting of the SBL in Vienna ("What is Romans Good For? A Reconsideration of Paul's Apocalyptic Theology") during the summer of 2007, and read a paper (" 'To Preach the Gospel': Romans 1:15 and the Purpose of Romans") at the Louvain Biblical Colloquium during the same summer. She currently serves on the editorial board of the New Testament Library series and is currently co-editing the New Interpreter's One Volume Commentary (Abingdon Press).

Professor Jeremy Hutton was named the Regional Scholar for the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society of Biblical Literature for his paper, "A North African Parallel of the 'Levitical Diaspora'." The paper serves as a prospectus for Hutton's sabbatical project, a book to be titled The Levitical Diaspora: The Levitical Cities in Sociological Perspective.

Professor Jacqueline Lapsley recently published an essay on emotions and moral formation in a volume she co-edited with M. Daniel Carroll R., Character Ethics and the Old Testament: Moral Dimensions of Scripture (Westminster John Knox, 2007), and is serving as an editor on two other projects: A Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics to be published by Baker Academic and A Handbook of Feminist Biblical Theology for Westminster John Knox. Her essay on biblical authority will appear in 2007 in Engaging Biblical Authority: Perspectives on the Bible as Scripture (ed. William P. Brown, Westminster John Knox).

Professor Eunny Lee was honored last summer along with eleven other recipients of the competitive John Temple Award for Theological Promise. The award was given to Lee in recognition of the promise displayed in her first book, The Vitality of Joy in Qohelet's Theological Rhetoric (BZAW 353; Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2005). Professor Lee was a recent recipient of a Lilly Grant for her sabbatical project, "Otherness, Kinship, and Hermeneutics: The Case of Ruth." She delivered a lecture at the Yale University Divinity School this year. Professor Lee is currently writing a commentary on the Book of Ruth to be published in the Eerdman Critical Commentary series.

Professor Katharine Sakenfeld is the current President of the Society of Biblical Literature, and delivered her presidential address in November, recently published as "Whose Text Is It?" JBL 127 (2008): 5-18. She is the General Editor of the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, a five-volume work intended for students, pastors, and scholars. The first two volumes were published recently (Abingdon Press, 2007), and the third is expected shortly.

Professor Leong Seow recently gave lectures on various topics in the book of Job at universities in Göttingen, Tuebingen, Berlin, Munich, Heidelberg, and Zurich. Seow received an NEH Fellowship this year for his sabbatical project, "Job at the Crossroads: The Impact of the Joban Tale among Jews, Christians, and Muslims from Antiquity to the Sixteenth Century," and delivered the plenary address at the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Society of Biblical Literature convention on March 27, 2008, entitled "Job's Wife in the History of Consequences." Seow, who is currently finishing the first volume of his commentary on Job, serves as Co-General Editor of the newly-launched Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, a 30-volume reference being published by Walter de Gruyter Press.

 

 

ALUMNI/AE NEWS

Melody Knowles, Associate Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at McCormick Theological Seminary, has published Centrally Practiced: Jerusalem in the Religious Practice of Yehud and the Diaspora in Persian Period, a volume in the Society of Biblical Literature's Archaeology and Biblical Studies series.

David Janzen's second book, The Social Meaning of Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: A Study of Four Writings has been published in the BZAW series.

Nyasha Junior has accepted a tenure-track appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Dayton.

James Mead's new book, Biblical Theology: Issues, Methods and Themes has just been released by Westminster/John Knox Press.

Kenneth Ngwa, who just completed a two-year teaching stint at Wabash College, will be joining the faculty of the Drew University in a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Old Testament. Ngwa is the author of Hermeneutics of the "Happy Ending" in Job 42:7-12 (BZAW 354; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), which has been favorably reviewed by Claude Cox in CBQ.

Jeremy Schipper's dissertation, Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible: Figuring Mephibosheth in the David Story is published in the Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies by T & T Clark (2006). Jeremy recently won the MAR-SBL Regional Scholars award for the year 2007, and has been hired on a tenure-track position at Temple University, where he had already been teaching on a year-long stint.

Christine Roy Yoder, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, was member of the Center of Theological Inquiry during the 2006-2007 school year, with grants from CTI, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Griffith's Foundation. She is finishing her commentary on Proverbs for the Abingdon Old Testament Commentary series, while also working on her project on "the Reception of Gomer." Christine, who just completed a term as JBL Book Review editor, has joined the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception editorial board as area editor for Wisdom, Psalms, and Prayers.

Several graduates of the Biblical Studies Department now have books appearing in the WUNT series published by Mohr Siebeck:

M. Daise, Feasts in John
C. D. Elledge, Life After Death in Early Judaism
L. L. Johns, The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John
L. Novakovic, Messiah, the Healer of the Sick
L. T. Stuckenbruck, Angel Veneration and Christology

STUDENT NEWS

J. Blake Couey won the MAR-SBL region's Howard Clark Kee Award for the best student paper at the regional SBL meeting in March, 2007.

Matthew Novenson won the MAR-SBL region's Howard Clark Kee Award for the best student paper at the regional SBL meeting in March, 2008.