Another thesis topic

Admittedly, my thesis has been pressing upon my conscious. I spoke briefly to Rick Watts about a thesis centered around Gentile inclusion as a Messianic sign within the first century. He said that it was a brilliant idea, but really had to start with the Kingdom of God as presented within the Old Testament, the degridation through the Inter-testament, and fulfilled within the New Testament. Pretty much what I figured, but even he saw how difficult it would be start with an arguement that is pretty much circular. Paul argues for inclusion of the Gentiles, so showing how inclusion of the Gentiles was a Messianic sign will of course back this up. It would be a difficult topic, but brilliant if I could pull it off. Of course I would have to bring up the entire Hillel/Shammai debate... I'm not looking forward to that.

Another topic I began pondering was if I could write something on the current trend in New Testament scholarship. Currently there are two trends. One is the Third Quest in the search for the historical Jesus. The other is the New Perspective on Paul. Although there are many differences between the two areas, one similarity is that both take seriously the Jewish background of Jesus and Paul within their first century contexts. Now the New Perspective began in the 1970's with Ed Sanders, and the Third Quest began a few years later (1978 Ben Meyer The Aims of Jesus), and was first called such by Tom Wright. And so it would be interesting to trace the history of the development of New Testament studies based upon this commonality. I would backtrack a general history of Jewish understands within New Testament studies, but mainly concern with post-WWII Jewish-Christian dialogue and how this impacted New Testament studies, being fulfilled within the Jewish emphasis. And then of course see if the difference between the New Quest and Third Quest is justified.

The first topic means a lot of reading of ancient texts and what these texts said, and the latter a lot of newer texts and understanding what these texts have done. Gentile inclusion or Jewish emphasis. Any input would be helpful, so feel free to give some.