BNTC CONTINUED: Here are a few photos of the event.


Thursday evening. L to R: Mark Goodacre and his two postgraduates, Catherine Smith and Helen Ingram. Catherine and Helen were relieved not to be running the program this year, but, alas, Catherine was suffering from a miserable cold this time around.

By the way, Catherine tells me that the Open Text Project is alive and well and tagged Greek texts are steadily being produced and will be placed on the Web in due course. Excellent news.

I'm sure Mark will have lots to say about the Seminar on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I was chairing the Second Temple Judaism & NT Seminar at the time, so I'm looking forward to his report.


Bart Ehrman gives his plenary address. John Barclay of Durham University chairs.

The other plenary addresses were by Bishop Tom Wright and Professor Judith Lieu. Wright spoke in defense of the "new perspective" on Paul (i.e., based on the work of E. P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism) and, intriguingly, if I understood him correctly, called for a reconsideration of the genuiness of the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. Lieu's paper is hard to summarize, but she spoke on the importance of both ancient literacy and ancient orality for understanding ancient literature such as the New Testament.


Professor Jimmy Dunn reminisces at the New College banquet on Friday evening. (Sorry this is so grainy: the room wasn't brightly lit.)


Dr. Helen K. Bond has been extremely productive this year: she has produced a book on Caiaphas and a daughter, Katriona Sophia, pictured with Helen here. I got to hold Katriona too!

Many thanks to Helen and to Professor Larry Hurtado, who together organized the conference, and to New College postgraduate Paul Middleton (and to a number of other NC pgs whose name I didn't catch), who kept things running smoothly. The BNTC is to be held in Liverpool next year on 1-3 September.