Loren T Stuckenbruck

This is an attempt to reconsider some issues that challenge the reconstruction of the Dead Sea Scrolls Aramaic fragments of "the Book of Giants", while drawing on codicological considerations to locate the main cluster of reconstructed fragments of 4Q530 within that manuscript.

While many scholars of the Bible and Second Temple Judaism have an at least passing acquaintance with 1 (Ethiopic) Enoch, few recognize the developments that led to and undergird the editions and translations upon which they rely. This article attempts to rectify this in part via a brief historical survey of the growth of the Ethiopian manuscript tradition of the book as it has become available to Western scholars. The first half focuses on manuscripts previously studied in the context of Enochic scholarship, primarily with respect to the acquisition of these exemplars and the various means by which they made their way into libraries and collections in the West since the eighteenth century. The second part offers descriptions of more than twenty further copies of Ethiopic Enoch, most of which are located in Ethiopia today and which represent the rich living heritage of the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwaḥǝdo Church. Given the large number of manuscript holdings in Ethiopia’s monasteries and churches yet to be examined, this discussion underscores the need for further efforts towards the digitization of additional important witnesses of Ethiopic Enoch for the study of the text.

This is a pre-publication draft of a piece that has now appeared in a volume edited by Thomas Oden with Curt Niccum entitled "Songs of Africa" - the link: https://www.iccspress.com/the-songs-of-africa.html. The volume is as a whole worth a read for its insights into traditional Ethiopic Orthodox culture.

The title is self-explanatory. The paper here is a draft that was, with only small changes and the addition of photographs from 4Q530, published as follows:
“The Book of Giants among the Dead Sea Scrolls: Considerations of Method and a New Proposal on the Reconstruction of 4Q530”. In eds. Matthew Goff, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Enrico Morano, Ancient Tales of Giants from Qumran and Turfan (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), pp. 129-141.

A report in German about the discovery and recovery of the undertext in a Ge'ez / Ethiopic palimpsest (Petermann II Nachtrag 24) at the Staatsbibliothek of Berlin - with several photos! Published June 2018 in the Bibliothekmagazin Issue 2 (2018), pp. 72-76.

Building on a few previous studies, this article focuses on four examples of how Jewish authors dealt with circumstances that posed challenges for continuing faithfulness to God's covenant with Israel. There are, of course, many further examples in Second Temple literature. I will be interested to explore whether such texts inspired strategies adopted by authors behind some of the writings in the New Testament.

This is a brief discussion that, drawing on insights of J.-B. Rey and B. G. Wold, reflects on the significance of 4QInstruction in the Dead Sea Scrolls on the interpretation of the Haustafeln in Colossians 3:18-21 and especially Ephesians 5:21-6:4. 4QInstruction opens "a window into a complex world in which regulatory and normativizing ideas "travelled" through a process of dissemination that could not only reflect Greek-speaking Mediterranean culture but also pick up and draw on distinctive elements known only through Hebrew tradition outside the Hebrew Bible" (p. 365). One-sided appeals to the one or other ideological background are overly reductionistic.

This sermon (in German), based on 2 Corinthians 3:4-18, was preached on Pentecost Sunday (4 June 2017) at St. Markuskirche, Munich, framed by readings from John 14:24-27 and Acts 2:1-18 and the five-movement "Pentecost Mass" by Olivier Messiaen, performed by organist Danijel Drilo. The sermon is the third of a six-part series organized around the theme "Der Ruf der Freiheit" (Call to Freedom) in the context of the Munich Protestant Faculty's University Church services

This piece explores varying notions of time in several of the complex collection of writings assembled in 1 Enoch, with special attention given to the Astronomical Book (72:1), Book of Watchers, Apocalypse of Weeks, Animal Vision, and Epistle of Enoch. The 1 Enoch writings, taken as a whole, combine an interest in reinterpreting the past and in anticipating a just future that help to explain and contextualize eschatology as found in the New Testament.

This is simply a work in progress, at the moment in skeletal form. It serves as the basis for a much longer work that will take into account not only the Second Temple Jewish context of the book but also its reception history, extending to the present.

The identification of the Son of Man-like figure with the Ancient of Days in the Old Greek recension to Daniel 7:13 is sometimes deemed to have been the result of a copyist's error. Whether or not this was the case, the text also makes sense as theological interpretation; it is possible that this recension influenced several later epiphanic texts.

This article is an attempt to read some aspects of Jesus' prayer in John chapter 17 as a petition that can be taken seriously in its own right. John's Gospel does not simply communicate an airtight world view rooted in Christology, but also reflects an awareness that the world believers inhabit must still be overcome.

This collection of essays originates from the 2014 Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity conference hosted by the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary's University, Twickenham. Featuring an international collection of senior and junior scholars, it represents the cutting edge of scholarship on portrayals of evil in the Second Temple period and the earliest centuries of Christianity. The individual essays consider the significance of “evil” as it relates to a diverse set of topics, including Qumran and its texts, images of disability in 2 Maccabees, dissociations of Jesus from evil in early Christian manuscripts, the “apocalyptic Paul,” Jesus' exorcisms, Gospel cosmologies, the epistle of James, 4 Ezra, the Ascension of Isaiah, Marcion, John Chrysostom, and the Acts of the Martyrs.

Contents

Christopher A. Rollston: An Ur-History of the New Testament Devil: The Celestial שׂטן (śāṭān) in Zechariah and Job – Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer: Evil at Qumran – Benjamin Wold: Demonizing Sin? The Evil Inclination in 4QInstruction – Louise J. Lawrence: Evil and the Body of Antiochus IV Epiphanes: Disability, Disgust and Tropes of Monstrosity in 2 Maccabees 9:1–12 – Tommy Wasserman: Variants of Evil: The Disassociation of Jesus from Evil in the Text of the New Testament – James G. Crossley: Jesus, Healings and Mark 2:1–12: Forgiveness, a Release, or Bound Again to the Great Satan? – Christopher W. Skinner: Overcoming Satan, Overcoming the World: Exploring the Cosmologies of Mark and John – Jonathan A. Draper: Darkness as Non-Being and the Origin of Evil in John's Gospel – Loren T. Stuckenbruck: How Much Evil Does the Christ Event Solve? Jesus and Paul in Relation to Jewish “Apocalyptic” Thought – James P. Davies: Evil's Aetiology and False Dichotomies in Jewish Apocalyptic and Paul – Chris Tilling: Paul, Evil, and Justification Debates – Steve Walton: Evil in Ephesus: Acts 19:8–40 – Lloyd K. Pietersen: Artemis, Demons, Mammon and Satan: The Construal of Evil in First Timothy – Susanne Luther: The Evil of the Tongue: Evil and the Ethics of Speech in the Letter of James – Nicholas J. Ellis: A Theology of Evil in the Epistle of James: Cosmic Trials and the Dramatis Personae of Evil – Robbie Griggs: Apocalyptic Experience in the Theodicy of 4 Ezra – Jonathan Knight: The Portrayal of Evil in the Ascension of Isaiah – Chris Keith: “The Scriptures are Divine Charms”: Evil, Books, and Textuality in Early Christianity – Dieter T. Roth: Evil in Marcion's Conception of the Old Testament God – Paul Middleton: Overcoming the Devil in the Acts of the Martyrs

The sermon was preached in the St. Markus Kirche, Maxvorstadt, Munich - Accompanying readings were taken from Psalm 102, Isaiah 61:1-5, and Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (selection from the conclusion of Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Present).

Draft (published with small tweaks!) of a brief Foreword to eds. Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, and Jaston Maston, Reading Revelation in Context: John's Apocalypse and Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids. Zondervan, 2019). In a few words, this attempts to chart why looking at the Apocalypse of John, for all its hermeneutical challenges (gender, socio-political context, character as "apocalypse") is worth close reading. NOTE: This is not an attempt to argue for or against the work's "canonicity".

A sermon I did not get to preach due to illness. It was formulated in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. The content, I think, remains relevant, and the question is raised whether one should distinguish between the privileged needing forgiveness (the figure of David in the psalm's heading) and those who are oppressed. Also, not everything in the content of Psalm 51 matches the narrative setting it is given. I also reflect on a childhood experience.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…" (Charles Dickens), but-really-it was the best of times. I had the honor of being a junior member of the three-member "New Testament" team with Jimmy Dunn and Stephen Barton in the then Department of Theology at Durham University. I say "team", because that really was the case. Jimmy, Stephen, and I would meet for a "sandwich" at lunch, often twice a term, to plan our individual and team-taught courses (which had just begun to be called "modules") and, ultimately also, to catch up with the ins and outs, ups and downs of our lives. These meetings were proactive models of collegiality that extended into other areas of our department, university, and personal lives. I first "knew" Jimmy from having read a number of his monographs, first as a teenager and then as a young adult: these included

Wer Michael Becker kannte wusste meistens nur um einen Teil der vielseitigen und diversen Arbeit, die er durch fünfunddreißig Jahre während des Studiums und wissenschaftlicher Tätigkeit kompetent und auf höchstem Niveau ausübte. Auf das letzte Jahrzehnt seines Lebens beschränkt: Er war durchgehend hochgeschätzter Studiengangskoordinator und Studienberater, und Lehrbeauftragter im Fachbereich Neues Testament (sowohl in der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultät München als auch zuweilen am Institut für Evangelische Theologie in Regensburg und an der Evangelisch-Theologischen Fakultät in Erlangen).