Baker Academic

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Improper Temple Offering of Ananias and Sapphira - Le Donne

As promised, I have posted the pdf of my New Testament Studies essay on my personal webpage:

http://www.anthonyledonne.com/Essays.html

I first started thinking about this text (or at least seriously so) about four years ago. I was living in the Sacramento area at the time when I got a call from Dr. Chris Keith. Chris and I had met once before but I didn't like him very much. You really can't trust an American who doesn't follow baseball. After all, besides baseball, there is really no good reason to be an American.

Chris asked me if I could take his place at the annual Pepperdine Bible Lectures. His paper "Sinners in the Hands of a Deadly God" had been accepted for that conference, but he couldn't attend.  Chris had recently been invited to Heidelberg to accept the Templeton Award for Theological Promise for his monograph: The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus. When 10K of award money is on the line with another 10K in travel and honoraria cash, one tends to be motivated to change one's schedule (or so I am told).  Now that knew that Chris didn't follow baseball and that he was rich, I really didn't like him at all.

But I am generous beyond measure - really, a pushover. So I agreed to take on his paper topic, complete with his proposed title. It might have helped if he had started writing the thing so I didn't have to start from scratch. Fortuitously, I found my own reading of the text.

-anthony

No comments:

Post a Comment