I think I want to teach here. Shame it doesn’t exist.

Yet.

According to this horrifying article from today’s Telegraph, three babies are being killed every day in the UK because they have been diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome.

Horrid.

But perhaps the most shocking statement in the whole article was this:

However, doctors say that women must make the decision according to their circumstances, and that some may be better placed financially to deal with it than others.

Because it’s always been acceptable to kill the children you can’t afford to keep.

There’s one going at HTC. Mike Bird has the gen. I’ll add my two penn’orth and say that I agree wholeheartedly that HTC would be a great place to teach. Though you should bear in mind that Dingwall is a very long way from anywhere. Make sure you look at a decent map!

I’ve finally found a chance to go through the programme for SBL and I’m encouraged to see that there are a number of papers on the Song:

Saturday, 9.00-11.30 am: F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, The Ekphrastic Image in Song 5:9-16
Saturday, 1.00-3.30 pm: Me, Poetic Structure of Song 7:12-14
Saturday, 4.00-7.00 pm: Al Wolters, Ann Francis (1738-1800) on the Song of Songs
Sunday, 9.00-11.30 am: Janet A. Timble, The interpretation of the Song of Songs in the Pachomian Koinonia: “Reading” Community
Monday, 1.00-3.30pm: Sarah Zhang, The fine line between One and the Other in Song 5:2-9

Okay, so we won’t be calling for our own section any time soon, but at least I’m not the only one. And, pleasingly, they are all on at different times, so I think I will try and get to all of them. I’m afraid I have just had to Google ‘Pachomian Koinonia’ to find out what that’s about, and I’ve never heard of Ann Francis either (looking forward to that paper a lot, though).

If I’ve missed any, do let me know.

There are still spaces available for the study day on the Song of Songs, hosted by Emmanuel Evangelical Church on October 24th. More info is here. The day will be useful for anyone interested in learning more about this part of God’s word, whether pastor, student, or ordinary Christian. Everyone is welcome.

When I was at Oak Hill, it was the custom of the then Principal, David Peterson, and his wife, Lesley, to invite all the students and their wives in small groups for a social evening before they left. We had drinks, and Lesley’s fabulous passionfruit slices, David gave some encouraging words and then there were questions. Someone at the evening I attended asked David how he managed to get the balance between work commitments, family commitments and time for himself. He responded, with a completely straight face, ‘I think it’s very important to have a hobby. Mine is writing a commentary on Acts.’

I imagine he must have taken up a new hobby now, though I don’t know what it is. The commentary has been published and a review copy is sitting on my desk. It is dedicated to ‘the faculty, support staff, and students [of Oak Hill] who played such a formative role in its production.’ Thanks, David!

While I was at HTC last week, I heard the sad news that Mike Bird will be leaving in January to take up a post in Brisbane. Australia is a long way away and I’m sure that Mike and the family will be glad to be back home, but it’s a sad loss for HTC.

At the end of last week, I made the long trek up to Dingwall for the HTC postgraduate conference. This was a small gathering (even more so than usual, for various reasons) but nevertheless a useful and encouraging time. There was one prospective and four current PhD students present which gave lots of opportunity to discuss issues related to being a research student, publishing, networking and getting jobs, as well as our own research. I was the only biblical scholar in a room of systematic and historical theologians, so I had a good workout for my memory as I tried to listen and make sensible comments on such matters as the will of God, Calvin’s view of body and soul, and the incarnation.

I also had chance to meet up with my supervisor and talk about progress thus far. He’s happy with where things are at the moment and is pleased with the work I’ve produced. Among other things we outlined a provisional schedule for work to be done. I’m encouraged that, despite the difficulties of the past year, it looks like things are still on track to be completed in a reasonable time frame.

The chapter that I’m working on at the moment is one of three that will look at the effect of reading the Song of Songs in different canonical contexts: wisdom literature; writings/megilloth; Christian bible. It’s a fun exercise in intertextuality which is already producing some interesting results. For instance, it’s relatively easy to read the bride in the Song as Lady Wisdom, but it’s almost as easy to read her as the Foreign Woman/Adulteress. It’s almost as if the Song is a test of the wisdom learned in Proverbs – can you distinguish what sort of woman this is? Or is the reality that It’s Always More Complicated and that wisdom and folly are not so easily separated as Proverbs would have us believe? The plan is to do a close intertextual reading of three pairs of texts: Proverbs 5 and Song 4; Proverbs 7 and Song 2; and Sirach 24 and Song 7; and use this to build up a picture of the woman in the Song, then to turn my attention to the male figure(s) -Solomon, shepherd, king – and do similar intertextual work, before putting it all together. Something like that, anyway. The idea is to repeat the exercise in each of the three contexts, identifying different significant intertexts which will lead to differences in the interpretation of the Song.

But right now, I’m busy writing three talks for this and producing a final draft of my paper for SBL.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

The autumn issue of Ecclesia Reformanda is almost ready to print. Abstracts of the articles are available on the website, where you can also subscribe.

The articles include: ‘And Their Children After Them’: A Response to Reformed Baptist Readings of Jeremiah’s New Covenant Promises by Neil Jeffers; An Intertextual Analysis of Romans 2:1-16 by Paul White; What the Bible Says, God Says: B. B. Warfield’s Doctrine of Scripture by Marc Lloyd; and Trinitarian Telos: Tracing Some Theological Links from God’s Triunity to Christian Eschatology by David Batchelor.

There are also some book reviews, including one by me on Beale and Carson’s Commentary on the NT use of the OT.

At £15 for a year’s subscription it’s a bargain you can’t afford to miss out on! Would also make an ideal Christmas present for any Reformed pastors or theologians in your life.