Baker Academic

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Brant Pitre Joins the Jesus Blog

The Jesus Blog just got 20% more Catholic. This is a bit more Catholic than Bono but not quite as Catholic as Nightcrawler of the X-Men. It is my great pleasure to introduce Brant Pitre, Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Dr. Pitre is our newest contributor (only one week newer than Christine Jacobi) and brings serious papal gravitas with him. How Catholic is Brant? Well, if the rumors are true, he drives behind a modified Toyota Land Cruiser with a bumper sticker that reads Ab Apostolis Approbata.

Dr. Pitre studied under Amy-Jill Levine during his time at Vanderbilt and John Meier as he completed his doctorate at the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation (directed by David Aune) is published as Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile. If you'd prefer a shorter read, he's the author of the article on "Apocalypticism and Apocalyptic Teaching of Jesus" in Joel Green, Jeannine Brown, and Nicholas Perrin's Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (2014). He writes of himself:
  • I am a Cajun boy from south Louisiana.
  • I bring a Catholic perspective to the Jesus Blog. 
  • My teachers Amy-Jill Levine and John P. Meier remain two of my favorite Jesus scholars.
  • I studied archaeology through a joint venture between Vanderbilt and Tel Aviv University under Israel Finkelstein and Baruch Halpern at Tel-Megiddo back in the late 1990s.
  • My newest book, Jesus and the Last Supper (Eerdmans, 2015), took about 4 extra years to write because Dale Allison's work, followed by Anthony and Chris's book Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (2012) blew my previous methodological assumptions to pieces and forced me to rethink how Jesus research should proceed.
  • This SBL 2015, I'll be presenting a paper for the Historical Jesus section entitled: "Beyond the Criteria of Authenticity: Where Do We Go From Here?"
I'm thrilled that Dr. Pitre has agreed to be our fifth voice. Next week we will announce our sixth.

-anthony

4 comments:

  1. Dr. Pitre,

    Welcome; glad to have your voice here.

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  2. Brant, welcome! It's so good to have you on the Jesus Blog. I absolutely can't wait to read your new book.

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  3. Brant, very excited to hear what you have to say.

    So, let's take roll. On the Breakfast Club roster, so far, I count one Andrew, 2-1/2 Brians, half a Claire, and a cameo by Jake from "Sixteen Candles." I'm looking forward to next week's John/Allison hybrid.

    Actually, I'm scared to death to meet next week's John/Allison hybrid.

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  4. What a fantastic intro! Thanks Anthony and Chris for such a warm welcome. I'm really looking forward to our future conversations.

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