One nation yet many nations: Trying to keep from swinging the pendulum too far via Epistle to Diognetus

In the midst of some very good discussions on patriotism, nationhood, and Christian nationalism (including a helpful distinction by Carl Trueman, here), I'd like to focus briefly on some popular statements by the 2nd century Epistle to Diognetus, often used to emphasize a biblical "one-race" theology.

The (anonymous) Epistle to Diognetus in many ways provides us with a beautiful ecclesiology, Christology, and even soteriology (the significance of ch. 9's statement ὢν τῆς γλυκείας ἀνταλλαγῆς ["Oh, the sweet exchange!", Ehrman's translation], as a possible early expression of the imputation of righteousness has, I believe, been overlooked). I have come to the realization, though, that it is possible to take EpD's "new race" philosophy too far, in an unbiblical direction, and that EpD's unbalanced trajectory on this may have lent itself to its own unhealthy anti-semitism.

To be clear, much of what EpD says regarding the Christian church as a "new race" is good; I'm just arguing that it was unbalanced. Here is what EpD says (I am using Ehrman's relatively recent Loeb translation):

Chapter 1--"Since I see, most excellent Diognetus, that you are extremely eager to learn about the religion of the Christians, . . ., and what deep affection they have for one another, and just why this new race [καινὸν τοῦτο γένος] or way of life came into being now and not before, I welcome this eagerness of yours . . ."

Chapter 5

1–2. "For Christians are no different from other people in terms of their country, language, or customs. Nowhere do they inhabit cities of their own, use a strange dialect, or live life out of the ordinary."

5. "They live in their respective countries but only as resident aliens [πάροικοι]; they participate in all things as citizens, and they endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign territory is a homeland for them, every homeland foreign territory."

9–11. "They live on earth but participate in the life of heaven. They are obedient to the laws that have been made, and by their own lives they supersede the laws. They love everyone and are persecuted by all."

17. "They are attacked by Jews as foreigners and persecuted by Greeks. And those who hate them cannot explain the cause of their enmity."

Naturally we can recognize here a reflection of key biblical motifs, especially as expressed in First Peter 2:9–11; Hebrew 11:10, 13–16; and Philippians 3:20. In a sense, Christians are a "new race," all brothers and sisters united together by the blood of Jesus Christ, a bond which supersedes ethnicity, skin color, DNA, etc. An American Christian, for example, must always be a Christian first and an American only as a distant second.

What I have come to realize more clearly, however, is that Jesus does not abolish national or ethnic distinctions per se [I do not use the term "racial" since arguably "race" as we know if it today is a modern construct, not the same the ethnos or genos of the 1st and 2nd centuries. But that's a different discussion for a different time]. Even eternity does not abolish national distinctions. Revelation 2:24 and 26, when describing the New Jerusalem, clearly indicates that nations will benefit from its glory (v. 24: KJV: "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it . . ."; ESV, "By its light will the nations walk"; v. 26: KJV, "And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into it"). In other words, the fact that we are all part of a new era does not mean that all national distinctions disappear, nor does it justify pitting the "one nation" of the Christian church against nationalities in general, and the Jewish people in particular, which EpD seems to do.

Chapters 3 and 4 in EpD essentially constitute one long diatribe against the Jewish race (e.g., 4.6, "I suppose you have learned enough about how the Christians are right to abstain from the vulgar silliness, deceit, and meddling ways of the Jews, along with their arrogance"), a diatribe all the more ugly because other parts of EpD are so pretty. Significantly, EpD essentially throws the entire sacrificial system of the OT under the bus, comparing it to pagan rituals (3.2–3), seemingly forgetting that God wrote the OT. (Do we see, in EpD, the beginning of an unhealthy Marcionite stream of thought even amongst the orthodox??) Indeed, in 11.3b the author makes a distinction between the Jewish people as a whole and the nations in general: "This word was dishonored by the people [i.e., the Jewish people] but proclaimed by the apostles and believed by the nations," seemingly forgetting that the entire first half of the book of Acts exists only because thousands of Jewish people did hearken to the [Jewish] apostles' message.

In this way, by contrasting the Christian "one race" with the Jewish race, EpD becomes guilty of what may be the earliest expressions of supersessionist theology. I firmly believe that the Apostle Paul had a better perspective: God still loves the Jewish people and will somebody rescue them as Jews (Romans 11).

Random note #1: Many believe that chs. 10–11 of EpD were written by a different person, though in my opinion 11.3 shows a very similar theme to the earlier chapters regarding the Jewish people.

Random note #2: The author of EpD is capable of punning: "They [Christians] encourage a common table [τράπεζαν κοινὴν], but not a common bed [κοίτην]" (my own translation, not Ehrman's).

Cited: "The Epistle to Diognetus," pages 121–159 in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, edited and translated by Bart D. Ehrman, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: MS: Harvard University Press, 2003).

Recommended reading:

Florenc Mene, "Diognetus and the Parting of the Ways," Themelios 46, no. 2 (August 2021): 354–364 (open access).

Chapter 11 of Judith M. Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek? Construction Early Christianity, Studies of the New Testament and Its World (London: T&T Clar, 2002), pages 179–183.

Horacio E. Lona, "Diognetus," pages 197–213 in The Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction, ed. Wilhelm Pratscher (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010).

"Sweat, Suffering, and Triumph (Luke 22,43–44)" (my article in the latest issue of Biblische Notizen)

 I am grateful that some time ago Dr. Timothy Yap invited me to contribute to a special issue of the German journal Biblische Notizen, a themed issue focusing on "The Body, Sickness, and the Bible." This was just published last month. My contribution is entitled "Sweat, Suffering, and Triumph (Luke 22,43–44): Jesus' Body in the Garden and Luke's Emphasis on Physicality." I am privileged to be in the same issue with Gregory Goswell, Esther Yue L. Ng, Ched Spellman, and Timothy Yap, the other contributors. Here is my abstract (those wishing to read the entire article may email me at phimes@gmail.com):

"Luke 22,43-44 remains a controversial text in terms of its inclusion or exclusion as authentic Lukan material, the nature of the phrase ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ, and the odd description

of the sweat. This article argues for the authenticity of these verses and attempts to demonstrate how they fit within a Lukan emphasis on physicality and the body of

Jesus. This passage ultimately depicts Jesus suffering internal distress that manifests itself on his body yet, rising triumphantly from the ordeal, prepared to face the

upcoming physical agony."

The Greek New Testament: Textus Receptus, Reader's Edition (Grange Press)

 We live in an era that boasts of an embarrassment of riches for serious students of Greek, including a plethora of Greek New Testaments of all stripes. Yet for somebody like me (and most of my students) that favors traditional text-based Greek NTs over critical text/eclectic Greek NTs  (I especially favor the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine, but also the various TRs and the Hodges-Farstad Majority Text), it is unfortunate that almost all of the various tools (e.g., reader's lexicons, textual commentaries) are geared towards critical text GNTs.

I was ecstatic, then, to recently discover The Greek New Testament: Textus Receptus, Reader's Edition, published in 2024 by Grange Press (Taylors, SC). This solves a specific need that I have had in my Greek classes here at BCM: a TR-based tool that provides almost all of the vocabulary that my students have not learned (given in side margins, see below), so that in theory a Bible student can, with three semesters' worth of Greek vocabulary, read through the entire Greek New Testament on their own without any additional helps.

The GNT:TR,RE, by official decree (specifically mine, but with my boss' blessing) now becomes the Greek New Testament of the Greek classes of our college, and will be used in translation projects, quizzes, tests, personal reading, etc. It replaces both the TBS TR that we had been using, as well as Burer and Miller's Reader's Lexicon which, though valuable, was critical-text based, gave away too many words, and is so radically free in some of its glosses it makes the NLT look like Young's Literal! (E.g., Colossians 2:24, klēronomia as "transcendent salvation." Seriously??!??!?! That's so loose of a translation that it virtually confuses sense with reference!).

Now, I do have one quibble with the GNT:TR,RE. Whereas Burer and Miller's Reader's Lexicon gave too many definitions, the GNT:TR,RE gives too few, at least for our Greek program. Basically, it provides words that occur 30 times or less, whereas my students after three semesters are supposed to know all words that occur 34x or more. To fix the gap, I basically created a handout of 38 words that they can stick in their New Testament, drawn from Metzger's Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek, with my slight modification on a few words.

I should note that the GNT:TR,RE (which is Scrivner's TR) also incudes a brief "Publisher's Introduction" that contains a defense of the TR and a criticism of eclectic methodology; I agree with much of what is written there, though naturally I would often phrase things a bit differently and would suggest that it may, perhaps, be a bit too polemic for an academic defense per se (to be fair, I write in my role as an ivory-tower academic, not a pastor). The GNT:TR,RE also includes F. H. A. Scrivner's Preface to the 1633 Novum Testamentum Graece). Significantly, the GNT:TR,RE claims a "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License," which means that "You re free to copy or redistribute this material in any medium or format with attribution and for non-commercial purposes only." I will also note that, as a hardcover book, at $37.50 plus S&H, this is a pretty good deal!

A New Theological Journal (Promissio), and how to analyze and rank it.

**Corrected "per page" to per paper" on 3/11/2026.** 

I was interested to discover a new online journal the other day, Promissio: A Journal of Confessing Theology (open access, click here), with Winter 2026 being the first issue. My initial impression of it is fairly positive. In the midst of my ongoing quest to become the most thorough and helpful chronicler of academic journals for biblical studies, however, this new journal raises two questions for me: (1) How do I know it's legit? and (2) Where do I rank it in my list?

The first question becomes all the more significant since there are "predatory journals" out there even in biblical studies (I have seen them) that are not qualified to publish articles, and there are also journals, such as Religions and HTS Theological Studies that I would not consider "predatory" but which nonetheless have dubious academic credentials because they charge authors exorbitant prices while mass-producing hundreds of articles a year. Let me illustrate that with Religions: in 2024, this journal published 12 online-only issues. The first issue (Jan 2024) contained 140 articles. The second issue contained 110 articles. The twelth issue contained 159 articles. Average that out over 12 issues = 136 articles per issue (even though a few of those would have been invited articles, free from the authorial charge). Now Religions, as of June 2025, charges $2,193.15 per paper converting from Swiss Francs). If we subtract 36 articles an issue, on average, as invited articles and thus free from charge, we end up with 1,200 articles a year, which comes out to more-or-less $219,300 a year from "Article Processing Charges." This is absurd, and most definitely the complete opposite of best practices for academic journals in biblical studies. In my opinion HTS Theological Studies is even less respectable than Religions these days, because in addition to their similarly-staggering author fees and mass-producing of articles, they have had to retract quite a few articles (e.g., vol. 79, no. 4; August 2023) and published (without retraction) an article that defended Haman and seemed to imply that the Jewish people were villains in the book of Esther (see my response in JSOT).

Now, I am pleased to report that Promissio passes that first test, evidencing no hint of profit-based mass-production. The journal does not, so far as I can tell, require that the author pays (and in my opinion no respectable journal in Biblical Studies, to my knowledge, does charges authors with the exception of OTE [at much lower rates than Religions]). In addition, the first issue has a very reasonable four main articles plus two review articles.

The second test is to check the editorial board. I sampled three, including Paul R. Hinlicky (general editor), who is quite well-published as a Lutheran theologian, clearly an excellent choice to add academic credibility to a journal. I had more difficulty analyzing the two others on the editorial board I randomly chose, however, in that they seemed to lack credentials in the area of peer-reviewed scholarship. Now, the journal does state that "All manuscripts for publication are reviewed by two scholarly peers in the area of the subject matter"; still, my main question for Promissio would be: "Are the peer-reviewers for the various articles themselves published specialists in regards to the content of the paper?" A fair analysis in this regard, however, would require a more thorough analysis of the editorial advisors and their CVs.

The third test would be to look at the journal's description of itself and its description of the article submission process. Both of them are generally solid, from an academic perspective, with one area of extra commendation. The journal's purpose can be summed up in this paragraph:

"The title of the journal, Promissio, points to the essential form of the word of God as the promise of forgiveness, life and salvation vouchsafed for us in the resurrection of Jesus the crucified Messiah. The subtitle of our journal points to the theological task as confessing concretely the liberating Lordship of Jesus with all that entails in the articles (articulations) of the faith in him for every new context as that has been heard afresh in the proclamation of the promising gospel. Promissio will be a journal that does confessing theology in continuity with the Lutheran Reformation by integrating the disciplines of theological exegesis of Scripture, church history, dogmatics and missiology that have been harmfully siloed in the modern period."

The area of extra commendation is that Promissio specifically mentions retractions and how it would handle them, not something I've seen too often in other journals.

One minor note regarding the design of the website (in case anybody from the editorial staff happens to read this): As of writing (2/27/26, 11:43 am Central US time) the page entitled "About the Journal" does not actually appear in the drop-down menu entitled "about." Consequently, it's a bit difficult to find the "About the Journal" page, which should ideally be in a prominent position.

So where should we place Promissio in the rankings? Although I overall liked what I saw, and the articles in the first issue seem to be pretty solid, it initially goes at level 4, just because it is brand new, but as soon as it begins to be cited in scholarly literature (even if that is primarily Lutheran literature), I would probably bump it up to level 3. Hypothetically this could go up to level 2 if it turned into one of the main Lutheran journals and was noticed significantly by non-Lutherans. For that reason we might see Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly eventually bumped up to level 2, even though the SBL handbook does not list it. Denominationally oriented journals can indeed go fairly high, which is why at the suggestion of somebody in the comments section of my original post I bumped up Andrews University Seminary Studies to level 2.

A New Resource to Bring German Scholarship to English-Speaking Students

I was surprised the other day to find an article in a journal abbreviated "AGNTS." I was not familiar with that acronym, and as a self-styled "expert" on journals in biblical studies (trying to write a book on the topic; no luck yet finding a publisher!), I was puzzled that I had not yet encountered this journal, nor could I for the life of me figure out what the abbreviation would stand for! ("Anglican Greek New Testament Studies"?? "The Articulate Gazette for New Testament Scholars"?? "Articles for the Glorification of Neo-orthodox Trinitarian Studies"??)

As it turns out, AGNTS stands for a journal entitled Accessible German New Testament Scholarship, a one-of-a-kind publication which promises to be a very helpful resource. It is accessible here.

Now, I took two semesters in German for my PhD (basic German, and then the brutally difficult theological German), both classes under a native speaker (and major Johannine scholar), Dr. Andreas J. Köstenberger, and I was most definitely not his best student (theological German had three results: "pass, fail, or do remedial work"; I got the third option). I have nonetheless tried to quote directly from German sources in my academic work (I'm rather proud of my original translation of Julius Streicher's disturbing perspective on the book of Esther, published in my article in JSOT in 2024). Also, because the Lord is awesome and has a sense of irony, I married a wonderful German woman from Hamburg who can now provide me with even further help on my academic research in German! Nonetheless, I welcome all the help I can get with interacting with German sources.

In a nutshell, this journal, edited by Wayne Coppins and Jacob N. Cerone (a fellow SEBTS grad) provides you with "a curated collection of significant contributions to New Testament scholarship from the German-speaking world" (from the introduction by the editors). This includes both past German scholars (e.g., Peter Stuhlmacher, who passed away just last year) and current German-speaking scholars (Christoph Heilig, University of Zurich), translated from German into English. This volume consists solely of previously published material, and so far all of it was translated by Wayne Coppins (kudos! That's a lot of work).

The article most relevant to my own research is Stuhlmacher's "The Tübingen Biblical Theology of the New Testament--A Retrospective," originally published in 2017 in Theologische Beiträge. Having just finished teaching New Testament Introduction, however, I also noted with interest William Wrede, "Letter to Adolf von Harnack on Jesus as Messiah and Paul as New Beginning."

Although not your "normal" academic journal, AGNTS promises to provide some valuable material for students of the New Testament, and I am greatly looking forward to future volumes.

Esther 6:13 and a "Biblical Theology" of the Bible's Least Appreciated Book

I am grateful that the latest issue of JETS contains my second article on the book of Esther:

Paul A. Himes, "A Touch of Wisdom: The Literary Role of Esther 6:13 in Bridging to a Biblical Theology of Scripture's Least 'Theological' Book," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 68, no. 3 (2025): 495–507. 

Anybody wishing for a PDF copy may email me at phimes@gmail.com.

The paper originally received a split decision with an invitation to "revise-and-resubmit," but ironically a comment by the peer-reviewer who had not recommended publication spurred me on to what was almost a total rewrite (except for the first couple pages), which was then recommended for publication by the next two reviewers.

Here is the abstract: 

“The lack of constructive discussion in Old Testament theologies on the book of Esther is lamentable yet understandable, given its status as the only canonical book not to mention God. Those few scholars who discuss Esther theologically generally focus on the theme of hidden sovereignty or the virtues or vices of its characters, while a few also note the significance of the survival of the Jewish people. In support of that latter theme, this article proposes that the theological center of the book can be found in Esther 6:13b, a sentence that stands out both in its intense alliteration and in the odd relabeling of Haman’s “friends” as “wise men.” Esther 6:13 deliberately evokes echoes of sapiential material to put a theological spin on the story, namely, that those seeking to destroy the Jewish people will fall into the pit that they themselves have dug. This article focuses on how Esther 6:13 within its literary context can legitimately be said to fashion a biblical theology for the book with practical significance even today.”