Paul D. Wheatley, Ph.D.

@jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social delivers his A.R. Pete Diamond award-winning paper “Synoptic Work: Compositional Practices, Invisible Labor, and the Synoptic Problem”. Brent Nongbri responds. Follow QR code for Jeremiah’s notes. #aarsbl25 #sblaar25

Sarah Emanuel responds. Fascinating and illuminating panel! Does reading “Paul within Judaism” mute Paul’s more anti-Jewish texts, even if Paul may be ethnocentrically Jewish in his perspective?

Nice turnout for the Book Review: Sarah Emanuel's Wresting with Paul: The Apostle, His Readers, and the Fate of the Jews (Fortress Press 2025). Are we starting a new sect?

Yes, pretty sure that’s a stretched out upsilon with a rough breather

By situating Mark 7.4 within Jewish ritual purity traditions and the developing baptismal tradition of Jesus’s followers, this article contributes to discussions of Jesus’s and Mark’s location within Judaism.

This article argues that the narrative introduction in Mark 7.1–4 presents the discourses of 7.5–23 in reference to Jesus’s ability to purify people bodily from the inside out, a theme correlated in Mark to his identity as one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

Following recent studies on Mark 7.1–23 w/in Second-Temple & Tannaitic concerns with ritual purity (Furstenberg, Williams, cf. Lev 11.43; Lev 17.15–16), this article considers Mark 7.4 in the context of Levitical purity regulations and early Jewish practices, with other refs to bapt in the Gospel.

Except for Mark 7.4, all other Markan references to baptism refer to the Spirit (1.8, 10–11), sharing in Jesus’s death (10.38–39), or the origin of John’s baptism in relation to Jesus’s authority (11.30).

nevertheless makes no direct judgment on the ritually purifying force of John’s baptism, or of the coming baptism Jesus inaugurates at the descent of the Spirit in Mark 1.10–11, cf. 1.8.

Abstract:Josephus interprets John the Baptist’s act of baptizing people at the Jordan river as a washing for purification of the body. The Gospel of Mark, contrasting John’s baptism in water with Jesus’s ability to baptize with the Spirit (Mark 1.8),

New Article Dropping Soon

I’m happy to report that my article “The Spirit Purifies All Foods: Baptism as Bodily Purification in the Jewish Matrix of Mark 7.1-23” has been accepted for publication with New Testament Studies (NTS) @cambridgeuniversitypress with minor revisions. Abstract below.

Home - Accessible German New Testament Scholarship

We just launched the first volume of AGNTS today with excellent contributions from Matthias Konradt, Peter Stuhlmacher, Oda Wischmeyer, @christophheilig.bsky.social , and Christine Jacobi, as well as a few historical pieces by William Wrede.

agntsjournal.com

June 12–15, 2025, I co-organized the Anima Theologiae conference w/ Charles Hughes-Huff and Gary Klump made possible by a grant from the @CatholicBiblica, integrating hist. and theological exegesis. Gary Anderson, Ephraim Radner, Edith Humphrey, Gregory Vall, and Aaron Pidel SJ.
More to come!

Consider me here, munching popcorn, blasting “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton”, which also happens to be my home town.

I’ve always loved @themountaingoats.bsky.social ‘s music, but now I love their cultural analysis.

Oh so there you are just posting pics of old Mercedes too?

Yeo

Feel free to judge my browser tabs, btw.

Oh, just submitting my book manuscript the day before I head to Rome for some manuscript research on a new project kinda vibes this frigid Tuesday.

Truth! Honestly, sorry I didn’t think of this one.

Sunny Day Real Estate is a great choice!

I love this one!

Oh that’s a good one!

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn’t Nirvana or Pearl Jam

I’m reading King’s /On Writing/ right now. I love it.

But also there’s this really big one in the background called “My Book”

It’s me.

Talking Mark and Judaism over Greek food with @paultsloan.bsky.social Logan Williams, John van Maaren, Jacob Mortensen, and Kasper Bro Larsen #sblaar24

See you at 4pm?