My favorite 2022 book purchase

The March 2022 release of Luke Timothy Johnson's memoir, The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar, was reason for excitement - even before we could read what an excellent work Johnson has given us.

After all, one's memory gets taxed attempting to recall all of his great contributions to New Testament scholarship. Among his 35 books are: The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation (now in its third edition); The New Testament: A Very Short Introduction; several NT commentaries, as well as, monographs on the lives of Jesus and Paul.

Johnson is in the upper tier of NT scholars of this era, and also receives notice on this blog because of his involvement in the Roman Catholic Charismatic movement ("... my stress on the personal experience of God undoubtedly owes a great deal to my participation in the Catholic charismatic movement between 1970 and 1973...." he wrote in the memoir).

The book is deserving of high praise because Johnson takes readers behind the scenes into the world of NT scholarship - and does so expertly. Not only is he eminently qualified to talk about that world, but the communication skills that he is well known for are once again on display to make what could be a dry account read rivetingly.

[Click here to see a brief summary of his career and a list of courses he has recorded for The Great Courses (aka, Wondrium).]

Here's a video of Dr. Johnson talking about theological education:

On the passing of Gordon D. Fee (1934 - 2022)

Regent College photo (taken in 2010)

New Testament scholar Gordon D. Fee went to be with the Lord on Monday, October 25, 2022.

Since his passing, a flood of tributes has appeared online. Here are links to some of the significant ones (plus, the video of his memorial service can be viewed below):

Honoring the Life of Theologian Dr. Gordon Fee — Charisma News

Remembering Dr. Gordon D. Fee | About Us | Regent College (regent-college.edu)

Died: Gordon Fee, Who Taught Evangelicals to Read the Bibl...... | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

Gordon Conwell (written by his colleague, Douglas Stuart)

In Memoriam: Gordon D. Fee - EerdWord

Remembering Gordon Fee - by Michael F. Bird (substack.com)

Evangelical Textual Criticism: R.I.P. Gordon D. Fee

A Tribute to Gordon D. Fee by Stan Gundry | Zondervan Academic

Michael Brown on Gordon Fee, Pioneer and Scholarly Role Model : The Pneuma Review

Renowned Pentecostal New Testament Scholar Gordon Fee Dead at 88 — Charisma News

Biblical Interpretation (Gordon Fee) from Regent Audio on Vimeo.

How Ben Witherington III came to be charismatic

I've lost count of how many books Ben Witherington III has written. Let's just say that the high-profile New Testament scholar has written lots.

Witherington, the Jean R. Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Seminary, has written commentaries, a book about New Testament history, books about Jesus, and even novels. All of that and depth of his scholarship have resulted in him being recognized as one of the leading NT academics of our time.

Add to that - he's charismatic.

He told the backstory on his blog 13 years ago:

Though I have been a life long Methodist, for most of my adult life I have also been very involved in the life of the Spirit. This goes back to attending Gordon Fee's Bible study in his home with my wife to be in 1975 where I first heard speaking in tongues. Then there was the day I was at a healing and exorcism service in Tremont Temple in Boston and the next thing I knew, I was speaking in tongues. I need to tell you while of course there are always counterfeits when it comes to spiritual gifts, the genuine experience is simply one that comes unbidden and sweeps over you. Like grits on a southern breakfast plate, it just comes. And while you can stop it, its a pretty overwhelming experience. You don't have to be in an emotional state for it to happen. You don't have to be revved up by the praise band. You don't have to be praying for it--- it just comes. And why should this surprise us. The Holy Spirit is so much more powerful than we are and our little wills, and the Spirit does not want to be quenched by us as Paul reminds the Thessalonians in 1 Thess. 5.

You can read the entire blog post entitled, "Here Come the Pentecostals" at this link: http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/01/here-come-pentecostals.html

When you love your work ...

"... Book by Book ..."

I can't imagine that there is someone interested in Gordon Fee's scholarship that does not know about the book he co-authored with Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (if you are that rare person you can read more about that book in my blog posts of September 5 and September 19).

Today, I am featuring Fee and Stuart's similarly titled book, How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour, because if I could somehow mandate that all Christians read one book - besides the Bible - it would be "... Book by Book ...."

I've spent a lot of time - and money - in Christian bookstores and I have not seen a better book for explaining how the Bible should be read. Just as the title indicates, it's like having an expert take you on a tour(s) of the Bible.

Each tour for the Bible's 66 books is preceded by Orienting Data (info such as author, date, recipients, and so on), An Overview of the book, and Specific Advice for reading the book. The authors recommend that those three sections be read prior to actually reading the Biblical book being studied. Then, the section entitled, A Walk Through, is meant to be read alongside your reading of the Biblical text.

Here are four pages to whet your appetite (click on the images to enlarge them):

Three audio lectures by Gordon Fee

Not very many authors every sell one million books, and the number of Christian scholars that do is very, very small.

If Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth has not reached one million in sales yet, it is very close (by 2014, when the fourth edition was published, 900,000 copies had been sold).

The authors' sound hermeneutical advice not only touched a general readership of multiplied thousands, but it also helped set many budding scholars down the road toward fruitful careers with a sound foundation. 

New Testament scholar Mark Strauss testifies to that at this video link, and in an interview with Nijay Gupta, published just two days ago, Old Testament scholar Sandra Richter (written about previously on this blog) and Gupta had this exchange:

NG: What books were formative for you when you were a student? Why were they so important and shaping?

SR:  Books that I found formative include Baruch Halpern’s The First Historians, Roland deVaux’s Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, and Fee and Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. Each of these books directed me back to the original contexts of the biblical authors via historiography, archaeology, and genre-study. In the spirit of Jeannine Brown’s Scripture as Communication, each of these books challenged me to read the Bible as a communicative act from an ancient community, who had witnessed the mighty acts of God, to me. Each helped me, in the words of John Walton to recognize that although the Bible was written for me, it wasn’t written to me. And until I was able to engage the world of the original authors and audiences, I was not able to truly engage the Bible.

Gordon Fee, who has been featured on this blog the past two weeks (9/5 post ... 9/12 post), gave three lectures related to the theme of he and Stuart's book at Union University back in 2005. The conference the lectures were given at was called the, For All It's Worth Conference. The audio recordings can be heard here:

• "Why Christians Read Their Bibles Poorly"
• "Some Helps Toward Good Reading"
• "Why Read the Bible Well?"

Those who would like to hear all of the lectures at that conference can do so at this link (the other speakers at the conference included: Grant Osborne, Daniel Block, George Guthrie, Michael Card, Gary Smith, Kelvin Moore, Mark Dubis, Brad Green, Paul Jackson, David Gushee, and Todd Brady).

Gordon Fee's life story - where to read about it

If we were having coffee today and the conversation turned to your life story, I would be interested, especially if we have not been friends long. Among several benefits, knowing your life story would help me understand other things that you say.

Now, if someone is one of the premier New Testament scholars alive today and is also a Pentecostal - that is a story I am intensely interested in.

Gordon Fee is such a person. Raised in the home of Assemblies of God pastor Donald Fee, Gordon soared past the limiting anti-intellectualism that prevaded Pentecostalism in the 1960s and earned a Ph.D., focusing on textual criticism (Fee's 1966 dissertation can be read at this link).

There are two resources that supply a complete summary of Fee's life (his upbringing, marriage, education, career, and spirituality), especially if read together. 

One is a chapter in Bible Interpreters of the 20th Century: A Selection of Evangelical Voices (it is now out-of-print, but it can be obtained by those using Logos software). Besides Fee, the 35 scholars profiled include, for example, F. F. Bruce, Bruce Metzger, N. T. Wright, and the lone female, Joyce Baldwin.

The other is a chapter that Fee wrote in I (Still) Believe: Leading Bible Scholars Share Their Stories of Faith and Scholarship. In this work, Richard Bauckham, James D. G. Dunn, Scot McKnight, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Morna Hooker, and Bruce Waltke are among the 18 scholars contributing.

In Bible Interpreters, Patrick H. Alexander, a former teaching assistant of Fee's who went on to have a distinguished career in academic publishing, concludes his chapter about Fee with this important observation, 

Fee's work as a scholar who happens to be Pentecostal - and vice versa - has not only opened the door for an entire generation of Pentecostal and charismatic scholars who want to take scholarship and their spirituality seriously. It has also opened the eyes of those not within a Pentecostal tradition to see that a faith that embraces the experiential dimension can also take seriously the role of scholarship.

Fee, in his chapter in I (Still) Believe, gives this important background concerning his youth.

The passion that marked the Assemblies movement in those early years often overshadowed textual accuracy, but this was not true of my father. He was passionate and accurate. I remember often sleeping in my father's study (which from time to time doubled as my bedroom during father's house remodeling or while entertaining guests). His study was filled with books pertaining to Scripture and the Christian walk. It never occurred to me that this was unusual for Assembly pastors until later on as I grew older it became evident to me that most pastors' studies paled in size compared to my father's. My father was the first scholar I had ever met, even though in those early years I didn't recognize it. Still his passion for truth and determination to dig down deep into the Scriptures to find the meaning of the text and apply it to believers rubbed off on me.

NEXT WEEK:  An audio teaching series by Fee based on the best-selling book he co-authored with Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

This newspaper ad, featuring Fee's father, ran when Gordon was 10 years old:

Donald H. Fee (Feb 1944) Wed, Feb 9, 1944 – Page 10 · The Chilliwack Progress (Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com

THE FEE FAMILY - from left to right, Gordon's older sister, Donna; Gordon; his mother, Grace, and his father, Donald. Donna was three years older than Gordon.