A Newer Jerusalem

A lot has been happening with the Revelation Reception Network and Seminar of late!  Season 4 in Planning: A few months ago, we posted the call for papers for Season Four of The Revelation Reception Network Seminar. The call closed July 31, and we received a wonderful set of proposals covering everything from the earliest reception of the book in the second century to apocalyptic themes in twentieth-century cinema. Unfortunately, there's not going to be room in our season for all them, so some difficult choices lie ahead for the leadership team. Thanks to everyone who sent us proposals.  New Collaboration: Through a Glass Darkly Symposium (Colorado Springs).  This year, for the first time ever, the Revelation Reception Network is partnering with the Through a Glass Darkly, which will be hosting it's 11th annual annual symposium. This year it will be in Colorado Springs, scheduled for Feb. 24-25, 2027. The call for papers went out out not long ago, and the topic thi...

Last week, I got an excited WhatsApp message from a friend and colleague of mine in Durham, England, where the latest edition of the SNTS annual meeting was taking place. He was bearing good news. After two years of planning and a famously involved and secretive international nomination process, my membership had been confirmed by vote. The Society for New Testament Studies (or as it's officially called in Latin, Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas)--is an academic Society founded in 1938 for the furtherance of New Testament studies internationally. Membership is legendarily difficult to attain, as it requires not only a strong publication record, but also both a formal double nomination by two members (who may not nominate more than two new members per year) and an ensuing vote by existing society members at the Annual Meeting. This sets SNTS apart from other similar scholarly societies, such as the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the E...

It's been a very full research, travel, and media schedule of late! A few highlights from May and June here; because July has already been busy in and of itself, that will need to be another blog post at some point in the future. As always, this post is written in a white hot stream of consciousness with very little editing! Lund: Patristic Day 2026 Invited Paper The first stop was in Lund, Sweden, at the Collegium Patristicum Lundense, Patristic Day 2026 , at the Centre of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Lund, Sweden (s ee photo of me presenting with all to many microphones hooked up: photo by Tobias Hägerland) . It was a great chance to develop a core idea of my next book, funded by the DFG.  My paper was called “What’s the Point of Late Antique Apocalyptic Literature? Toward a More Coherent Theory of Early Christian Communication.” My main argument is that late antique apocalyptic literature didn't have a communication purpose that was appreciably different tha...

And what a brilliant season it was! Here's a rundown of the year, most sessions of which can be watched on our YouTube channel : October 2, 2025 (Thursday) John Lamoreaux (SMU Dallas)
 "Apocalypse & the Doctrine of the Antichrist in the Greek Church (ca. 200–1100)" November 6, 2025 (Thursday) Laurentiu Mot (Adventus University)
 "Armageddon — The Mountain Meeting Its Megiddo" December 4, 2025 (Thursday) Giovanni DiRusso (Harvard)
 "The Earliest Translation of Revelation into Arabic? Examining the Book of Revelation in the Arabic Apocalypse of Peter" December 11, 2025 (Thursday) Book Review Session  Nathan Betz reviewed Martina Vercesi's  Revelation 19-21 in the Exegesis of Early Christian Roman Africa (Mohr Siebeck 2024) Ian Boxall reviewed Nathan Betz's City of Gods: The New Jerusalem of John's Revelation in Early Christianity (Brill 2025) February 2, 2026 (Monday) Lynn Huber (Elon) "Light Space, Good Space? Revelation's Thro...

A short note that I've had three papers accepted to upcoming conferences. Two of them I can talk about already; one of them I can't (yet)! Both that I can talk about are for the SBL annual meeting, which will take place just before American Thanksgiving in Nov. The first is this: "‘City’ as Telos—Monks, Mosaics, and Pilgrims in the Intermedial Construction of Revelation’s New Jerusalem."  This is central to my DFG project, and will make public my new research in connection with the next book I'm writing. This will be presented in the "Apocalypse Now: Apocalyptic Reception and Impact throughout History Seminar." Abstract and description here:  From the 4th-6th century, the notion of Revelation’s heavenly Jerusalem undergoes an immense transformation in the way in which the materiality of the heavenly Jerusalem was both denied and developed. I show this by comparing parallel instances of theological literature (Origen, Princ. 2.11 and Cels. 8.74), eccles...

It was an honor give a guest lecture in a graduate level class on Revelation that my former KU Leuven colleague Danny Daley is currently offering at Calvin Theological Seminary, where he's professor of New Testament. He'd asked me a few months ago to present on chapters 21-22 of Revelation and its New Jerusalem from a reception perspective. Since I wrote a big fat book on exactly that , I guess makes me qualified to talk about such things...  So I took the opportunity to take on them on guided tour of the first 1000 years of reception of the biblical image. The tour started with the text of Revelation itself, and then moved to the two main streams of reception: the literalist understanding of the New Jerusalem (present in Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Lactantius, the early Augustine, etc.) and the spiritulist interpretation (present in all of the same authors, but also the likes of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Cappadocians, some of the medieval expositors of Revelation,...

Last Friday, a carload of biblical studies people (and me, a church historian smuggled in amongst them!) took a train and a car up to Göttingen for a wonderful conference hosted by the Evangelisch Theological faculty at Göttingen. The conveners were Professors Susanne Luther (Göttingen) and Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg), though Prof. David Cielonthko (Charles University, Prague) was also present. Unfortunately, Judith König (Regensburg), another organizer, was unable to join at the last minute. Aside from David, all the presenters were post-docs and doctoral students. We were also joined by Dr. Scott Robertson, a fellow DFG PI and my officemate at the Beyond Canon Centre in Regensburg. We covered a lot of ground:  A "figure analysis" of God's calling of Moses by Stephanie Ortmann (Regensburg) The story of Enoch in the Book of Parables developing the early Jewish development of narrated Messianology by David Cielontko (Prague). A brilliant presentation that developed materia...