I just read an interview Dan Wallace gave over on the Broadcast Depth blog.

Wallace has his fingers in everything, but what I didn’t expect were his multiple mentions of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.

[Disclaimer: Yes, I hope to publish an interlinear of the Apostolic Fathers (pre-order here, more info here), but I think I would’ve linked and excerpted this stuff anyway, though perhaps not as quickly or as pointedly. RWB]

Here are some excerpts from the interview. “BD” means “Broadcast Depth”, “DW” means “Dan Wallace”. Emphasis is mine. Again, note these are excerpts; there is much more at the interview proper, so do check it out!

BD: Can you divulge any information on any new publication or project on which you are working?

DW: I’m under contract for half a dozen books right now. ... But I can tell you that they involve textual criticism, canonicity, Apostolic Fathers, and the historical Jesus. …

…

BD: What about your Exegetical Syntax? I’ve heard rumors of a new edition. Is there any credibility to that? If so, what should we expect in the new edition?

DW: It’s still a ways off. But the new edition will have a comprehensive syntax of the Apostolic Fathers with hundreds of references to the AF, and will bring up to speed what has happened in Greek grammatical studies in the last fifteen years. …

…

BD: What areas do you think New Testament Greek scholars will have to focus on in the next ten years?

DW: … There are also key areas in NT study that are heating up, issues that need to be honestly examined in the next couple of decades by all sides. Among these are the relation of the Apostolic Fathers to the NT (in terms of quotations from the NT, emerging canon consciousness, ecclesiological developments, the Fathers’ view of grace, and whether the AF and the NT reflect the earliest form of Christianity or just that form that became the dominant one). …

Excellent stuff, and great to see the emphasis on the importance of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. All the more reason for more resources to help folks as they read and familiarize themselves with these writings!

First, if you’re into Twitter, you can find me there now. Just search for “Rick Brannan” or go here: http://twitter.com/RickBrannan. If you know of anyone I should be “following” (sounds so Jim-Jones-cultish that way, doesn’t it?) let me know here in the comments. Tell your friends.

Why did I take the Twitter plunge? It is primarily because I’d like to experiment with Twitter while I’m at BibleTech:2010 and see what others are doing in that area. Seems like I should try to have some sort of audience before the conference.

Speaking of BibleTech, did you know there is now a BibleTech blog? check it out: http://www.bibletechconference.com/blog/

On my recent relative blog silence, it is mostly due to working on project that requires me to go through the Greek NT at a relatively quick pace. That means less time for blogging. But know that lots of good stuff is cooking; hope to have some announcements here over the next few months.

Last question/note: Should I submit a proposal to SBL’s Greek Language and Linguistics section? I’m thinking a revised and cleaned version of the αλλα paper I did for ETS in 2008 would be suitable; it would also be the impetus necessary to prepare a version for submission for publication. Let me know what you think in the comments if you have an opinion on this.

That’s “government” for those not in the know.

I dug around ERIC (the “Educational Resources Information Center”) and found four older papers by Stephen H. Levinsohn, at least one of which sounds particularly interesting. Most of them appear to be from older SIL “work papers” volumes. Here they are:

• The Definite Article with Proper Names for Referring to People in the Greek of Acts. (paper here) A study examined the presence or absence of the article with proper names for people in the Bible's book of Acts, using four categories of description, including: (1) the unmarked patterns involving the first mention of a participant and further references to the participant in the same incident; (2) the reintroduction of participants after an absence; (3) further references to a participant in the same incident that are anarthrous as contrasted with arthrous; and (4) the use of the article with names in reported speeches. It is proposed that, in different contexts, the four situations illustrate the principle that anarthrous references to particular, known participants either mark the participant as locally salient or highlight the speech that he or she utters. A list of twelve references is included.

For the others, I’ll just list the title:

• Preposed and Postposed Adverbials in English
• Unmarked and Marked Instances of Topicalization in Hebrew
• The Interrogative in Inga (Quechuan)

Just type “Stephen Levinsohn” into the search box, and you’ll find ‘em.

It’s up, and it is excellent. Check out Doug Chaplin’s blog Clayboy for the details. Thanks for putting it together, Doug, and thanks for the links (to some Logos4 posts [here and here] , a post on the NIV, and a link to my new Didache translation).

In other news, in “The Biblioblog Top 50” for November 2009, ricoblog zooms up the charts from 128 to squeak just inside the top 50 at 43. That’s 85 spots. I guess I got some traffic from that Logos4 post. I’m sure I’ll be out of the top 50 next month.

Current Epigraphy reports a new blog started up at Oxford’s Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents (CSAD).

The CSAD blog reports “First Texts from MAMA XI Available”:

The first sample texts from the MAMA (Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua) XI project have been posted online. The project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), will publish approximately 600 new inscriptions recorded by Sir William Calder and Dr Michael Ballance in Phrygia, Lycaonia and Cappadocia. The first two inscriptions come from Akmoneia in central Phrygia and Brouzos in the Phrygian Pentapolis.

Monuments, epigraphs, etc. are a very important source for understanding ancient cultures, particularly Asia minor (aka the Mediterranean). This was driven home to me when reading Peter Lampe’s From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries. There’s not much on the MAMA XI site yet (two texts, complete with Epidoc source) but any contributions in this area are very welcome.

Internally, as Logos Bible Software 4 neared time to ship, a group of us in the Design & Editorial department were commissioned to make some videos for Logos 4. These aren’t meant to be completely instructional how-to videos, just walk-thru and demonstration of some features. You know, to get you comfy with the feature.

Now you can hear the smooth, dulcet tone of my voice, coaxing you gently through the peculiarities of each feature. [yeah right]. Anyway, here are the ones I did:

• Sympathetic Highlighting
• Stereoscopic Images
• Bible Word Study Guide
• Command Bar
• Bible Explorer
• Cited By
• Timelines
• New Tab
• Ratings

The links are to YouTube; they were functional as of the time of writing this post.

Mike Aubrey at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ tagged me in the “Honest Scrap” meme.

Don’t really know where it started, but I’ll play along. The rules apparently involve me telling you “10 HONEST things about myself and then nominate 7 other blogs that I think deserve to receive the Honest Scrap Award”.

I won’t nominate anyone else; if you want to do it and haven’t been tagged, well … consider yourself tagged.

These are in no specific precedence or order.

1. I love my sweet wife Amy like crazy, and am blessed beyond belief that she loves me like crazy too.
2. Our little girl Ella (now 2 years old!) is the cutest thing. Ever. And yes, I’m being honest here.
3. I graduated high school when I was 17. Didn’t skip a grade or anything, just had an early birthday so I started early.
4. While in college, I had the most awesome summer job for two summers doing — get this — counting power poles. OK, it was a little more than that, it involved isolating where telephone and cable companies tacked their lines on power poles so the power company could charge them rent; and to estimate age, height and condition of poles so they knew when to replace them. But it was a well-paying, slack, four 10-hour days per week summer job that ruled!
5. My undergrad degree is in Economics. I’d considered going to grad school, but then scored a job at Logos, where I am still employed today.
6. Speaking of which, in the past week I celebrated my Logos anniversary; I’ve worked there 16 years and am now into my 17th. Woo hoo!
7. I applied and was accepted to Regent College in Vancouver back in 1994 to pursue a Masters degree (was looking at an M.Div) but never went because I couldn’t round up the cash. God had other plans for me.
8. I’m not that interested in graduate school any more; being surrounded by and working with guys like Mike Heiser, Steve Runge, Sean Boisen, Eli Evans (also here) and Vincent Setterholm (not to mention Bob Pritchett) is so challenging and so much fun I can’t imagine anything else coming close to giving me a better education.
9. I built my own 18-foot cedar strip kayak from scratch. More info and pictures are available.
10. The only ‘current’ TV show I am aware of is Monk, and that is largely because some people recommended it to me & Amy, there are episodes online (try Fancast), and the Whatcom County Library system has most of the older seasons available on DVD. Otherwise, we don’t really watch TV. Too much junk that shouldn’t fill anyone’s brain, let alone mine. Monk is an exception. I mean, c’mon, it’s basically Sherlock Holmes, and it’s hilarious to boot.

That’s it.

If for any reason you’re bored and have nothing better to do, the Logos Bible Software blog is running a video interview with me in their “People Behind the Product” series.

[Click for video if the player doesn't show up]

If you're wondering about the kayak I mentioned, you can check out my photos and documentation. The before and after pictures are below:

Before (the boards on the right side of the truck)

After

Somehow I’ve managed to have two blogs in the April Biblioblog Top 50 at the same time. ricoblog is at #39 (a 21-place drop from March, but hey … only had three posts this month). But the real surprise is the group blog I administer and write for, PastoralEpistles.com at #37.

The real star, however, must be Brian Fulthorp at συνεσταυρομαι, who at #38 is sandwiched between ricoblog and PastoralEpistles.com. Talk about a place of prominence!

Thanks to all who read and link to the blogs, I do appreciate it.

We’ve been working on Books.Logos.com for a long time, and a beta form of the site has finally been made live. Here’s the text from the site:

We have more than 8,000 classic works from seminary libraries, and we're still scanning more. During the beta period you can search and view all of the books for free.

Use the search box in the upper left to search the entire library. When you've selected a book, you can use the search box on the right side to search within just that book.

Use author:Wilkinson to find all the books by Wilkinson, or title:canon to find books with "canon" in the title. You can even search for Bible references!

Books are still being uploaded to the server; there’s a whole lot of data and it takes awhile. One of the best features of the site is the ability to search by Bible reference (try that, Google). Just type your ref in the search box and hit enter. No special code, it’ll figure out if it is a Bible reference.

The default display is black and white images (they’re smaller and faster), but you may need to view color images for some books or scripts. There’s a little icon by the page indicator to switch to color.

One particular favorite that I’ve run across is Edward William Grinfield’s Scholia Hellenistica in Novum Testamentum: Philone ed Josepho Patribus Apostolicis allisq. Ecclesiae Antiquae Scriptoribus Necnon Libris Apocryphis Maxime Depromta. Huh? It indexes cross references between the NT and several non-NT books (Philo, Josephus, Fathers). Pretty cool.

Check it out, remember it is still in development, and make sure to leave some feedback at the specified email address (books@logos.com).

In the “what have I been doing lately” column:

First, I’ve been doing a lot of blogging at PastoralEpistles.com. I’ve done a lot of work translating and evaluating 2Ti 1.1-2.7 (at present) and will continue to work on it until I’ve worked through the whole letter. You may want to check out the posts.

Second, I’ve been doing a lot of reading in Peter Lampe’s From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (amazon.com). This is an awesome book, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve learned more about the cultural milieu of early Christians, and more about Christians in early Rome, than I knew was possible. Just the few pages on Priscilla and Aquila are worth it.

Third, my friend Bobby Koduvalil at Hendrickson Academic set me up with a few books. First is J. Harold Greenlee’s The Text of the New Testament: From Manuscript to Modern Edition. This is a thin volume and from what I can tell is geared toward the guy who realizes that his NASB New Testament is inexplicably different from his KJV New Testament and wants to figure out why. It is most certainly not an academic introduction to textual criticism, it is an introduction geared toward the laity. As such, it will make most text-critics cringe. But that’s good. From what I’ve read so far, Greenlee hits his audience, and most of what he says is defensible in that context. Introduction, TOC and Sample Chapter are all online at Hendrickson’s web site, hit the book page and scroll to the bottom for links to those bad boys. Second is Steve Mason’s Josephus, Judea, and Christian Origins: Methods and Categories, which is a compilation of several other articles Mason has written over the years, organized and somewhat edited into a new volume. Mason is a top-notch scholar and a nice guy to boot, and I’m really looking forward to reading this one — though it’ll be after Lampe (amazon.com) & Greenlee. I’ll blog about both of these books as I read more.

Fourth, in the past month I’ve installed the following Logos Bible Software and have already received benefit from most of it:

• Lexham Greek-English Interlinear Septuagint
• Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament
• Theological Lexicon of the New Testament
• Lexham Analytical Lexicon of the New Testament
• Socio-Rhetorical Commentary Series (7 vols from Witherington, one from deSilva)
• Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology
• Ellicot’s commentaries on:
• Pastoral Epistles
• Galatians
• Ephesians
• 1&2 Thessalonians
• 1 Corinthians

Fifth, since it has been lighter later, I’ve been able to take a few walks with our nearly-two-year-old daughter Ella after getting home from work. It’s still cold, but we brave it for a little while. She like to pick up a rock right when we start, and hold onto it the whole way. She also likes to keep me informed of when she sees birds, dogs, cats, dirt, trucks, cars, and busses. All in all, a hoot of a time.

Here’s a groovy interactive map. And here’s some background:

In the Jan–Feb 2009 issue of Bible Study Magazine, Dr. Craig C. Broyles discussed the Greek Historian Herodotus’ account of Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah and the prophetic perspectives of Isaiah and Micah. This built upon his discussion in the Nov–Dec 2008 issue of the record of the events in 2 Kgs 18–19 and Sennacherib’s own account in a prism discovered in his palace. In this issue, Dr. Broyles tells us how we should respond to these diverse, discrepant accounts, and reflects on what these events tell us about the prophetic word of God.

The case of Assyrian King Sennacherib’s invasion into Hezekiah’s Judah in 701 BC is one of the best-documented and most controversial events in the Bible and in archaeology.

Before I start this, I should say that I greatly appreciate Bill Mounce and all of the work he's done. It's not easy to write a first-year grammar that anyone besides yourself can productively use. And have you ever really dug into his Morphology of Biblical Greek book? While not my cup of tea, there's an astounding amount of work and understanding distilled in there. So Bill, if you ever read this, know I greatly appreciate your efforts.

But did anyone else skim the Koinonia blog "Mondays with Mounce" this week and find themselves saying "huh?" after the first few paragraphs? Here's the text I'm talking about:

In Mark 5:7 the demon says to Jesus, "I adjure you by God (horkizo se ton theon), do not torment me" (ESV). The TNIV says, "In God’s name don’t torture me!" There are two issues here. The accusative ton theon is an accusative of oath, the name by which the oath is taken. That is why you can translate an accusative with "by," an idea normally connected with the dative.

The other issue is horkizo. BDAG lists its meaning as, "to give a command to someone under oath, adjure, implore." It is more than just a command or a strong request from the demon. The demon wants Jesus to take an oath not to torment him. This explains the "adjure" and "In God’s name." Pretty bold of the demon—asking the Son of God to swear an oath in the name of God.

The bold part is the part that threw me. An "accusative of oath"? Now, I have to admit, I don't have Wallace's grammar handy, so I don't know if he actually lists that one in his accusative categories. But the translation logic, at least as written and briefly argued here, astounds me: We are permitted to translate the accusative with "by" in this instance because τον θεον is an "accusative of oath"? Actually, I guess we're permitted to translate the accusative article τον with "by" because of this label?

Funny, I thought the verb ορκιζω had something to do with that. There's nothing about τον θεον in and of itself here that would cause one to label it as "accusative of oath". We know oaths are involved here because ... well ... the verb ορκιζω is put in the mouth of the demon. In other words, it's the context, not just the accusative.

While we typically wouldn't use "by" to put a Greek accusative structure to English, for some reason the Greeks did use accusatives in such contexts. The Greeks used one particular structure to accomplish this; in English we use a different structure. It doesn't mean we need to give it a fancy label to clue us in to "English" it as if we are translating a standard Greek dative into English; like we need to appeal somewhere for permission or something. We just need to understand the whole structure.

True, BDF §149 describes "Accusative with verbs of fearing, etc., and of swearing", including Mk 5.7 as an example (though in a section on "The Simple Accusative of the Object", not as double accusative, which is discussed in §§155-158). Robertson (p. 483, XI.VII(i)), at least at the point cited by BDAG, takes the causative route here and notes the double accusative in that context.

But all of that stymies me. I'm really supposed to know (and recall?) all that hooey before I can translate ὁρκίζω σε τὸν θεόν as "I implore you by God"? The label doesn't help me understand the Greek any better, it gives one shorthand to English it (lemma + parsing/declension + force labels == English translation). Actually, I may even be understanding the Greek less because I'm relying on the label to tell me how to English something instead of actually understanding the Greek itself. Doesn't the occurrence of ορκιζω along with the double accusative (σε + τον θεον) clue me in to something different going on without having to label the blasted thing "accusative of oath"?

You know, I'm liking some aspects of Robertson's grammar more and more each time I pull it off of my Logos Bible Software bookshelf.

But I don't begrudge BDF for including §149; it is very useful for the information it provides. I do, however, begrudge the notion that I need to have a label in order to justify a translation, because the labels quickly move from explanation of translation to prescription for translation. It's not, "Oh, oaths and stuff, particularly ορκιζω, are "causative" verbs, and they typically take double accusatives — so they get translated like so-and-so" (and yes, I'm not even really a fan of calling the verb "causative"); it is "well this is an accusative of oath, so we translate it using 'by'". Assigning the label becomes the task, with understanding (and translation) following; when the reverse of that process should really be what's going on.

So, in closing, I'll again say I appreciate Bill Mounce's work. And I'll end the post with some words from (near) the end of his post:

The point is this: languages are not codes. You can’t go neatly from one into the other. Words don’t have exactly the same meanings, and neither do grammatical constructions. All translation is both science and art.

Nijay points to a forthcoming book called Paul's Parallels: An Echoes Synopsis, to be published by Continuum (T&T Clark). Amazon lists it under a slightly different title (Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline Parallels, Echoes, and Musings (amazon.com)), the Continuum site says April 2009. It sounds awesome:

Paul's Parallels is the first and only New Testament resource text in tables format presenting Paul's verses in column one, next to a row of parallels, echoes, or like-minded quotes from Old and New Testament resources as well as other extant biblical materials. The passages are cited in full.

This master of the epistolary writings, gives a verse by verse demonstration of Paul's thoughts, his ethic, and his actions that were picked-up by later Christian writers, copied by pseudo-Pauline admirers. It delineates some as distinctively Christian while others remained only in Paul's writing.

In addition, Luke's history about Paul in Acts is presented using the same format so the reader can easily cross-reference each epistle to its chronological setting. Documenting the history of Paul’s ministry in the same text allows the reader to instantly turn to the time and place in which Paul wrote that particular message. While investigating serious textual, literary, genre, and other theological characteristics, the reader has the opportunity of simultaneously locating Acts in its historical context.

But there's a catch: It is priced at $225.00! (No, the '2' on my keyboard didn't stick, that $225.00 is correct; Amazon provides some savings with a price-as-of-this-post of $163.87). I can safely say that I will never get this book, unless someone with unlimited income and kindness sends it my way, or I happen upon a really cheap used copy somewhere. I realize these are basically books targeted to libraries with budgets (though that customer base is surely shrinking) and not single-person users, for the most part. I also realize these things can be spendy to produce, but also have limited audiences. But cryin' in the night, that's spendy! Of course, if someone at Continuum/T&T Clark would like to send a review copy my way, I'd be interested. (Hey, had to try!)

Update (2009-03-01): I saw a comment from Michael Bird on Nijay's post referring to a similar book by Walter Wilson to be released soon. A search on Amazon informs me the title is Pauline Parallels: A Comprehensive Guide (amazon.com), published by Westminster/John Knox. This sounds relatively similar to the above book, but is priced at $32.97! And Amazon has a release of Jan 27, 2009, so that means it is available for purchase. I'd love to see a smackdown between the two titles, particularly to see if the one book is really $200 better than the other. Again, I'd consider doing the smack-down if the publishers can get copies of the books my way.

Also, please don't confuse either of these books with the similarly-named Pauline Parallels (amazon.com) by Fred O. Francis and J. Paul Sampley. That book is published by Fortress Press and puts the Pauline epistles (sans the Pastorals, sadly) in topical synopsis. It's a handy book, and it is also affordable: the new book price is $21.78; used copies from about $13 (as of this posting, anyway)! I've found Francis & Sampley's work useful. It's a great place to turn when examining one Pauline passage to see if there may be other similar Pauline passages worthy of examination.

Darrell Pursiful has posted BSC:XXXIX at his blog, Dr. Platypus.

Check it out. Darrell was kind enough to link to several posts on both ricoblog (here and here) and PastoralEpistles.com (here and here). In spite of that, the carnival is wonderful. Do give it a read, and do check out the items that sound interesting to you!

New books are always a joyous thing; new books given to you by friends are even more joyous.

There are two books I've recently received that qualify as "even more joyous".

The first is a gift from a ricoblog and PastoralEpistles.com reader whom I won't name. Out of the kindness of his heart he sent along a copy of Perry L. Stepp and W. Hullitt Gloer's Reading Paul's Letters to Individuals: A Literary and Theological Commentary on Paul's Letters to Philemon, Titus and Timothy (amazon.com). This is awesome because I'm lucky enough to count Perry as a friend (though I've only met him in passing once, he does blog occasionally at PastoralEpistles.com) and Perry was kind enough to send along a few extended portions of the commentary while he was writing it for feedback. It's nice to see it in print. Perry has done an excellent job with the book, and I can highly recommend it as a readable yet substantive and stimulating commentary on the Pastorals. To the gentleman who sent this my way: Thank you, I really appreciate it!

The second was a gift from Michael Aubrey, who was cleaning off his bookshelf and ran across a volume that he knew I'd be interested in: George Weiland's The Significance of Salvation: A Study of Salvation Language in the Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com), part of Paternoster's Biblical Monographs series. Mike thinks he got the book just over two years ago when James Spinti (Eisenbrauns) had a book giveaway via RSS feed. I received a copy of John Eifion Morgan-Wynne's superb book Holy Spirit and Religious Experience in Christian Literature ca. AD 90-200 (amazon.com) during the same promo/giveaway. I can highly recommend Morgan-Wynne's book as excellent, and I have similar hope for Wieland's tome.

[NB: cross-posted from PastoralEpistles.com since I thought folks here might be interested too. I've written two posts already, Second Timothy 1.1-5 and Second Timothy 1.6-7. I will not update this thread, but will update the index post on PastoralEpistles.com as the work progresses. RB]

I think I'm going to begin something that I may or may not finish. I always hesitate announcing a new "series" because I may never finish the series. But, I find myself thinking about Second Timothy now, and thinking about an analysis and discussion of the text.

One initial step I take in thinking about a text is to translate it. But I don't just translate, I also think about the structure of the text. When I did this for the Didache awhile back, I ended up with what I called a "Phrasal Interlinear". I'm starting the same thing with Second Timothy. I may or may not finish. The good news is that I already translated Second Timothy five or six years ago, though it needs some work.

Consulted Resources

I'd be stupid not to consult existing resources for this sort of thing. And there are many. Here are a few of the best. Thankfully, I have all of these (except for Comfort's new textual commentary) in Logos Bible Software.

Texts

Runge, Steven. The Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. Logos Bible Software. (Uses UBS4 text as primary, includes in-context glosses from the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament)

Porter, O'Donnell, Reed, Tan. The OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament: Clause Analysis. Logos Bible Software.

Commentaries

Knight, George. Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com) (NIGTC). Eerdmans.

Marshall, I. Howard. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com). T&T Clark.

Mounce, William. Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com) (Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 46). Thomas Nelson

Towner, Philip. The Letters to Timothy and Titus (amazon.com) (NICNT). Eerdmans

Lexicons

BDAG, LSJ, Louw Nida.

Monographs

Van Neste, Ray. Structure and Cohesion in the Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com). Sheffield Academic.

Text-Critical Material

NA27 apparatus

Comfort, Philip W. New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (amazon.com). Tyndale.

Metzger, Bruce W. Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (amazon.com). United Bible Societies

Do check out the new NT Gateway!. I know that Mark has been planning it for a long time, and it's finally up! Hopefully he'll find it easier to maintain.

Do note that Mark's academic blogging is now taking place at Mark Goodacre's NT Blog, so to keep up with the changes you'll need to do the following:

0: Unsubscribe your current subscription to the NT Gateway Weblog.

1: Subscribe to the new NT Gateway Blog, which (I'm guessing) will be centered around the content of the NT Gateway itself.

2: Subscribe to Mark's academic blog.

You should be ready to go!

The release of articles for volume 6 (2009) has commenced. The first article is:

Jintae Kim, "The Concept of Atonement in the Gospel of John"

This journal publishes online first. The PDFs are available throughout the volume year; once the year is over the PDFs are removed and the journal is published in print (by Sheffield Phoenix).

So grab the articles while you can. The volume 5 (2008) PDFs are still up, so grab them while you can; who knows when they'll be taken down.

Also, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you don't read Mike Aubrey's blog, ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ, then you should. His post of this morning "Challenges for Literal Translation: Lessons from 4 Maccabees" is excellent. He's thinking through translation issues, but using a non-canonical text (4 Maccabees) as his springboard.

Even though quoting one's self can be self-serving (hey, it's a blog ... it's supposed to be self-serving!), here's what I wrote as a comment to his post:

I think working through these issues in non-canonical text from roughly the same era is a valuable thing. It causes us to start focusing on the text itself and what it communicates, not on what our presuppositions and heritage have already determined it should say.

I’ve found similar exercises with the writings of the Apostolic Fathers extremely valuable.

And I have. The most recent example is the post previous to this, on EpDiog 5.7.

Sound interesting? Then you should come to BibleTech:2009, which is to be held in Seattle on March 27 and 28. Logos just pushed a press release with more info.

If you're in the Seattle area or the Northwest, then you should register for BibleTech:2009, come on down and hang out with us. Note that registration includes sessions and catered meals. The meals were one of the best parts of last year's conference. Too often at conferences there is too much hustle-and-bustle and not enough time actually interacting with the interesting and smart folks there. The meal times allow for that, and it's pretty cool.

Here's the text of the press release, for more information.

BELLINGHAM, WA–January 2, 2009–Scholars, publishers and technologists will be in attendance at the second-annual BibleTech conference in Seattle, WA on March 27 and 28.

BibleTech:2009 will feature more than twenty-five presentations from leading publishers, software developers, and web developers. Topics include data standards, the semantic web, mobile computing, ancient languages, and integrating technology into the Bible classroom.

“BibleTech is a place for everyone interested in the Bible and technology. There is no other conference where publishers, academics, ministry leaders, and technologists can find so much common ground,” said Bob Pritchett, President of Logos Bible Software.

BibleTech:2009 will feature two tracks. The first will address the technical aspects of programming, designing, and publishing software for Bible study and ministerial applications. The second track will focus on the application and implementation of Bible-based technologies including sermon preparation and advanced computer-based research strategies.

Featured presenters include: Mark Stephenson, Director of Web-Empowered Church; Lance Ford, Co-founder of Shapevine.com and WebChurchMedia; and Ellen Frankel, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Publication Society. A complete list of 2009 conference speakers is available at www.bibletechconference.com/speakers.htm.

More information is available at www.bibletechconference.com

What are you waiting for? Sign up, and come see us!

Just received an email from Review of Biblical Literature (RBL), among other things it mentions the joyous news:

RBL now has its own blog, where the reviews published each month will be listed for easy reference: http://rblnewsletter.blogspot.com/. Following the pattern of Bryn Mawr Classical Review (http://www.bmcreview.org/), each book reviewed will be listed in a separate blog entry. Note also that the comments function is currently enabled. We invite authors, reviewers, and RBL readers to comment on reviews, understanding that we will adhere strictly to the following guidelines: (a) all comments will be moderated by the RBL managing editor; (b) anonymous comments will not be allowed; anyone submitting a comment must provide his or her full name; (c) only comments that advance discussion of a book or review will be posted; (d) comments that contain personal or ad hominem attacks of any kind, that disparage any individual or group, or that do not relate directly to the book or its review will be declined. We trust that the RBL blog will enable readers to engage in positive interaction concerning the books we review or the reviews we publish. However, the comments function may be disabled at any time, should experience teach us that it is not achieving its purpose.

Very cool; and the comment feature sounds great. Make sure to subscribe and get reviews piped down your feed reader!

Steve Runge of NTDiscourse.org is Biblioblogs.com's Blogger of the Month for January 2009.

Learn about Steve's background and influences, and get to know more about him. He is a genuinely great guy that I'm happy and privileged to call my friend.

Also check out Steve's post about his blogging plans for 2009.

This may cause you to ask — what might Rick's 2009 blogging plans be? I'll be honest and say I don't really know. Perhaps something about my 2009 BibleTech paper once I dig back into it. I have a few non-blogging projects I need to wrap up; after that we'll see what sort of opportunities come about; particularly once I formalize any proposals for this year's academic conferences (ETS and SBL).

It's Christmas Eve. I don't know about you, but here in Bellingham we have at least 2 feet of snow on the ground, which is very unusual for this time of year. And it's still snowing; we got 4-6" more overnight—with more on the way, according to the weather-dude. I get to shovel my driveway for the fourth time in a week! The Christmas Eve service at our church has been canceled. Mail delivery is off-and-on (so much for that "neither snow nor sleet nor hail" bit). We're hoping the garbage truck makes it to pick up our garbage today. And I've been working from home (thanks, Logos!) since last week Friday. This will be the first real white Christmas, with lots of snow, that I can ever recall experiencing.

I wanted to wish a Merry Christmas to all who read ricoblog, and express my gratitude as well. I know my posting has been sporadic this year; hopefully the posts that I've made have been interesting and thought-provoking in some way.

I've come across a few unique tools and charts that I wanted to make sure all you folks out there in TV-land knew about. I find them incredibly interesting and think that you might too.

So enjoy these goodies, and Merry Christmas!

Christmas Goodie #1: What's in Your Bible? An interactive Canon Comparison Chart.  This is from Bible Study Magazine (which is published by Logos), put together my my friend and colleague (in that order), Vincent Setterholm. You're likely aware that most protestant bodies accept 66 books in the Biblical canon, and that there are "apocryphal" or "deuterocanonical" books that are accepted into other traditions' canons. But did you know that the Ethiopian canon (the widest canon) has both a "broad" and "narrow" canon, and that the broad canon includes stuff like purported letters of Peter to Clement? Check the chart out to get a glimpse of the sorts of things going on in the canons of other traditions.

Christmas Goodie #2: Biblindex: Index of Biblical Quotations and Allusions in Early Christian Literature. This as well is very awesome, hat-tip to Kevin P. Edgecomb at Biblicalia. I've mentioned Biblia Patrisica on this blog before; it is a 7 volume (plus one supplement) set that somewhat exhaustively sets out references among the writings of the Fathers to the Bible. Biblindex makes this information available for query:

This site already allows simple interrogation in a corpus of about 400,000 biblical references, from the volumes of Biblia Patristica, CNRS Editions, 1975-2000, and unpublished archives of the Center for Patristics Analysis and Documentation (CADP).

As Kevin notes, the search function is somewhat byzantine. Read the instructions to figure out how things work, it doesn't work like you might think. But it makes a wealth of hard-to-find material available, with a little work. You should bookmark this site.

Christmas Goodie #3: Collation and Evaluation of OT Apocrypha Translations. The hat-tip goes to Mark Hoffman of Biblical Studies and Technological Tools for this one. This originated in a posting to the Biblicalist yahoo group. There is a cool chart, some XML, and a spreadsheet. Check it out, there is some cool and useful information here.

At least, that's the book I'd like to see someone write. Mike Aubrey wrote a post called "On the Use of Linguistics In New Testament Studies". It's worth reading, so hop on over and give it a read.

I wrote in the comments:

In my background reading for the paper on αλλα, I found time and again that the dead grammarians had more insight to offer than a lot of the new stuff. Blass-Thackeray was more helpful to me than BDF. Funk’s BIGHG gave the stuff and had no fluff getting in the way. Robertson, when you could find the twelve places he mentioned something, was good. But most newer (published in the last 20 years, let’s say) had survey-itis and classification-itis. It was like listening to a player piano. All the notes were right, but the tune had no soul. The dead grammarians, for all their warts, have soul.

My undergrad degree is in economics. One book I had to read for a senior seminar had the best title ever: “New Ideas from Dead Economists”. I’ve been hoping against hope that someone would write a similar book for Hellenistic Greek, something like “New Ideas from Dead Greek Grammarians” or something like that.

Additionally, though, I have to say that some of the best stuff as an overview on discourse function of conjunctions was in Porter & O'Donnell's 1996 2006 LIABG paper. If you haven't read that, you should.

It's real. And it's here.

(in case you were wondering)

I don't normally do link posts, but today there are some good things to point out, so here is the link dump, with brief commentary.

First, check out NTDiscourse.org. My friend and colleague, Steve Runge, (editor of the popular and helpful Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament and the upcoming Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction to Discourse Features for Teaching and Exegesis) has started blogging. His focus is on Discourse Grammar and in demystifying an approach to discourse. The blog will variously examine different discourse structures and also work through passages from a discourse level. Steve's heart is in making this stuff approachable for pastors and teachers, so that sermons, lessons and Bible studies can benefit. Get this one on your feed reader.

Second, head to Roger Pearse's eponymous blog and see if you can help him with his bleg concerning "A difficult piece of Greek in Eusebius".

Third, RBL released its latest round of book reviews. One looks particularly interesting, to me anyway: Watching a Biblical Narrative: Point of View in Biblical Exegesis. (No, I haven't read it yet) I'm wondering how the information in this book jives with what Bauckham did in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (amazon.com) (which is now in paperback), or how it treats the "we" passages in Acts. The book is a T&T Clark title and retails at $130, though. Hopefully it'll be in paperback soon; until then check your library.

That's it for now.

Note that Mike Aubrey, of the blog εν Εφεσω, has been doing some blogging on the use of the conjunction δε in the book of Ephesians.

• The Function of δε in Ephesians — Introduction
• The Function of δε in Ephesians — Part I
• The Function of δε in Ephesians — Part II

Do check Mike's stuff out! Conjunctions (function words is the better label, I think, so particles/interjections/etc. are included too) are such a large part of any language and are so blithely treated in many grammatical and lexical works. They seem to be more focused on cataloguing and sorting them than understanding the function they play.

If the depth of your understanding of any conjunction is just to substitute out one or two English glosses when you read the conjunction in Greek ... well ... expand thy vision and understanding, and thine exegesis will surely benefit.

I'm so excited I've got another post on αλλα cookin'!

Just installed the following Logos Bible Software packages to my home computer:

Sheffield/T&T Clark Bible Guides Collection (44 Vols.). This much sought-after and highly esteemed Bible study guide series is concise, comprehensive, manageable and affordable. The Sheffield/T & T Clark Bible Guides Collection (44 volumes) serves as an invaluable resource for students, preachers and Bible study leaders. Each of these books delivers to the reader a thorough and insightful introduction to a particular book of the Bible or the Apocrypha. All the books in the series were written by leading biblical scholars and the authors have drawn on their scholarly expertise as well as their experience as teachers of university and college students.

Writings from the Ancient World (16 vols.) The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) publishes books intended to convey the finest biblical scholarship to students in college, university, and seminary courses, leaders in church and synagogue settings, and members of the general public interested in biblical study. The SBL offers these 16 volumes of Writings from the Ancient World to provide teachers, literary critics, historians, general readers, and students direct access to key ancient Near Eastern writings that date from the beginning of the Sumerian civilization to the age of Alexander the Great. The volumes typically offer historical and literary background to the writings, the original text and English translation, explanatory or textual notes, and a bibliography. These ancient writings—letters, laws, government documents, poems, prayers and rituals—provide a glimpse into the social, economic and religious context of other civilizations before and during early biblical times.

From Richard Young's Intermediate New Testament Greek: A Linguistic and Exegetical Approach (amazon.com), available in print (amazon.com) and also in Logos format.

Do not insist on classical distinctions—As noted above, Hellenistic Greek is not characterized by the strict usage of classical Greek. The preposition ἐν, for example, displays a wide variety of meanings beyond its root idea, much of which comes from Semitic influence. One of the major shortcomings of Lenski’s commentaries is his tendency to insist on the classical meaning of ἐν. Moule (1968:49) states, “It is a mistake to build exegetical conclusions on the notion that Classical accuracy in the use of prepositions was maintained in the κοινή period.” In connection with this, it might be misleading to say any preposition (especially ἐν) has a literal or proper meaning. Rather prepositions have a range of possible meanings with some more common than others.
Young, R. A. (1994). Intermediate New Testament Greek : A linguistic and exegetical approach (amazon.com) (86). Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman.

Ran across some references to the Glagolitic script, so I have to post them, plus some others I knew of to round out the collection.

For those unaware, Glagolitic is the script developed by Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century so that they could translate stuff (i.e. the Bible) into Slavic languages. And it is a very cool script. If you're deep into textual criticism, it could pay off to have some familiarity with it.

If you're really interested, perhaps Horace Lunt's Old Church Slavonic grammar (amazon.com) might be a place to start. Note I've not seen this, it is just the most accessible/affordable English language OCS grammar I've seen to date.

So here are some links.

• Cyrillic and Glagolitic Alphabet Day (too bad I missed it)
• The Living Glagolitic
• Ministry of Type: Glagolitic
• Typonine: Glagolitic
• Wikipedia: Glagolitic alphabet
• Wikipedia: Old Church Slavonic
• AncientScripts.com: Glagolitic

Enjoy!

The ETS 2008 tentative program is out, earlier than I ever recall. That's awesome. I finally get to see when my paper is scheduled to be given.

Rhode Island Convention Center
Room 551B

Discourse Grammar and Biblical Exegesis
11:00am-11:40am
Rick Brannan (Logos Bible Software)
The Discourse Function of αλλα in Non-negative Contexts

Looks like a good session; my friend Steve Runge presents before my paper, and Randall Buth presents before him. If you find yourself at ETS on Thursday morning, you might want to drop in for the whole session.

Oh, yeah.

If I had a quarter for every time someone asked me about Logos doing Migne's Patrologia Graeca over the years ... well, I guess I'd have about five bucks. But still, that's a lot! Maybe I'll get to cash in on it some day.

Why? Because Migne's Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, Part 1 (Vols 1-18) is on prepub at Logos Bible Software.

This is big, and we want to do it—the whole blasted PG, all 161 numbered volumes (166 volumes in print). All of the text, not just the Greek parts. I spent the last week living in the first 18 numbered (20 in print) volumes to evaluate them and let me tell you there is some real cool stuff in there.

We can only do it if enough people are interested, though. So get thee to the prepub page, and sign up!

Update (2008-07-10): Rod Decker (NT Resources Blog) responds in the comments asking about the usability of "untagged" versions of the text. My basic response is that if one approaches a text primarily as a database, then this is a valid question. But overall, I'd say the texts themselves are valuable. The ability to look up citations of these fathers in lexica, commentaries and other studies (e.g. Drobner's Fathers of the Church (amazon.com)) is valuable. I can't tell you the times I've seen a citation in a footnote, sitting as a lonely, orphaned reference with no other content, that I've wanted to look up but can't (try reading Luke Timothy Johnson's Anchor Bible commentary on 1&2 Timothy without wanting to look one of these up). Reading the text is valuable too. I'd say that the Latin materials (dissertations, translations, etc.) are valuable even though they are largely inaccessible to many. But this is one of those big tasks of Biblical Studies* that just needs to get done, somehow, in some way. And this is the best way we can come up with to try to start that task. Maybe it'll work; maybe it won't. But we've got to try.

Tagging the PG Greek texts morphologically would be a large task. I won't say we (Logos) haven't thought about it, because we have. But since we're unsure how/if a task of that magnitude would work in a timely fashion in concert with the production of the first 20 volumes, we chose not to address the subject of "tagging" in the prepub description. We're more interested in first making the content available as text instead of as facscimile scans (which you can find in Google Books and perhaps other sources, though note these are not Logos' sources for the material). If there is support for that (already large) task then there may be support for further enhancement of the texts as well.

* Reminds me of a quote of Fred Danker in John Lee's book on the History of NT Lexicography. Danker is quoted as saying, "Scholar's tasks are not for sissies". I love that quote.

Some may have been following this meme. I've been tagged three times now. So here are the meme rules:

a. Tag five Biblical studies bloggers.
b. Invent fictional posts that they might have written over the last month.
c. Link to this post.

Here's are the fictional posts that people tagged me with:

James Spinti, Idle Musings of a Bookseller: "Greek accents don't really matter, one αλλα is as good as another!"

Nick Norelli, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: "Idolatrous Grammar: αλλα and Islamic Word Worship"

Chuck Grantham, A 'Goula Blogger: "John Lightfoot says it's time for more adorable pictures of my little gal holding my favorite textual criticism book—all twenty-seven of them, all on the Pastoral Epistles"

Thanks, guys.

So I figure I should probably respond, but honestly I can't come up with five blogs that haven't already been tagged that I'd like to tag.

So I guess Todd Bentley (whoever he is) will show up some day to read the complete works of Zwingli to me. That's a risk I'm willing to take.

As I mentioned earlier, a blog post I wrote a few years back was footnoted on p. 151 in the proceedings from the 2006 LIABG symposium.

The article is titled "Conjunctions and Levels of Discourse", by Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook O'Donnell, running from p. 145 to p. 156 and is basically the same paper that was presented to the European Associate of Biblical Studies Annual meeting in Budapest, Hungary, from Aug. 6-9, 2006.

I never thought I'd be footnoted in a serious grammatical discussion; I suppose this is proof that the blogosphere can have some sort of influence/impact on current discussions in all areas of Biblical studies. Even blog posts by a motivated autodidact (read: no graduate degree held) such as myself.

The context is in the section of the article titled "3. The Greek Conjunction System", speaking of "Vertical Axis of Levels of Discourse". This has to do with the level of discourse on which the conjunction may function. Is it just a joiner of words or word groups, or is the joining further up (vertically) the ladder of discourse (join words, join word groups, join clauses, join clause complexes, paragraphs, discourses or whatever).

The post that Porter & O'Donnell refer to is about 1Th 5.15. In that post, I don't really make any statements, I just ask a lot of questions about how αλλα functions based on what happens with constituent order before and after αλλα. I was asking if αλλα might be doing something more in that context.

Porter & O'Donnell's point on p. 151 is that αλλα functions "only at the lower levels (but perhaps not the lowest level of the word). This conjunction joins word groups in Mt 9.13 ... clauses in Mk 4.17 ... and clause complexes in 1Th 5.15." (Porter & O'Donnell, Proceedings, 151).

Now, I would say that what I suggested in 2006 concerning αλλα in that instance was wrong (specifically the section breakdown near the top of the post); v. 15 is a standard μη .. αλλα instance, where v. 15a is a foil that serves to make 15b more prominent in the discourse. On the segmentation of units, I think Porter & O'Donnell's suggestion in the footnote (vv. 14-15a, 15b-18a, 18b-21ff) is fine. I have no problem using the term "clause complex" instead of "subparagraph" or "paragraph"; those are all strange terms that mean what one wants them to mean anyway. The idea that αλλα is somehow indicating a relationship between two separate clause complexes (vv. 14-15a & 15b-18) is the important bit for my concerns with αλλα at present.

My confusion today stems in the sentence that runs from p. 151 through 152. In the above-quoted portion of p. 151, they limit αλλα to word group, clause, and clause complex connections. But on the sentence running from pp. 151-152, they note:

An initial analysis indicates that there are a limited number of conjunctions that function at all of the levels of discourse. These include only και, δε, αλλα, and some of the negative conjunctions, such as ουδε and  μηδε. All of the rest of the conjunctions are more circumscribed in the linguistic levels at which they may be used (Porter & O'Donnell, Proceedings, 151-152)

Porter & O'Donnell's only level above clause complex is paragraph (I think, they don't seem to explicitly list them but they mention paragraph above clause on p. 151); and the only level below word group is word.

[Corrected, 2008-06-04] Porter & O'Donnell list the following discourse levels along the vertical axis: word, word group, clause, clause complex, paragraph and discourse (p. 151)

I would say that there are instances of αλλα that join paragraphs, and Porter & O'Donnell seem to acknowledge this as well (based on p. 152). That's good, because I plan to have examples of αλλα functioning at the paragraph level in my ETS paper (unless my preliminary analysis changes between now and then, which it may). But this discussion gives me some more support in positing αλλα as a paragraph conjoiner in certain contexts.

My friend and colleague Steve Runge has recently had a few things published that you may find helpful.

In April, RBL published a review of Ivan Shing Chung Kwong's The Word Order of the Gospel of Luke: Its Foregrounded Messages (amazon.com). This sort of stuff (word order studies) is right up Steve's alley and I was looking forward to see Steve's take on Kwong's approach.* The review is thorough, even if it is only 8 pages. If you have even the slightest interest in Greek word order, you need to read this review.

The Journal of the Linguistics Institute of Ancient and Biblical Greek (JLIABG) has commenced publishing its inaugural issue online. Steve's article, "Relative Saliency and Information Structure in Mark's Parable of the Sower", is the first article in the inaugural issue. How cool is that? The PDF is available online, so do check it out. Here's the abstract:

Levinsohn claims that the near and far demonstratives (οὗτος and ἐκεῖνος respectively) can be used non-deictically to encode relative thematic saliency of discourse referents, with οὗτος being used to mark the more salient constituent. In applying this concept to the Markan explanation of the Parable of the Sower, Levinsohn’s claim would indicate that the descriptions of the three unfruitful scatterings of seed are more salient to the writer than the productive scattering that bears fruit. The other synoptic accounts do not seem to make such a distinction in salience, using the near demonstrative οὗτος for both the unfruitful and fruitful plantings alike. Are there other means of analysis to either corroborate or overturn the view that the unfruitful plantings are more thematically salient in Mark’s account?

This study applies the cognitive model of Chafe and Givón, and the information- structure model of Lambrecht as applied by Levinsohn to the Markan explanation of the Parable of the Sower (4:14-20). The primary objective is to identify and analyze other linguistic devices, besides demonstratives, which might clarify the apparent prominence given to the unfruitful scatterings in Mark’s account. This study provides the necessary framework for comparing Mark’s pragmatic weighting of salience to that found in the other synoptic accounts in order to determine whether Mark’s version is consistent or divergent with the other traditions.

Also note that the JLIABG has an RSS feed to notify of new article postings: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jliabg.

* Disclaimer: I actually badgered Steve into doing the review when I saw the title was available for review from RBL. He's repaid the favor by suggesting I look into the use of αλλα in non-negative contexts. I'd say we're about even.

Nick Norelli, in a post titled "Drivel: The Secret to Success" responds to Josh McManaway's statement about blogging being daunting. Josh writes:

I'll be getting back into more New Testament blogging shortly. I will say that I find as an undergraduate, blogging is daunting. When you're competing (if I can use that word) for readers' attention with people like Pat Mccullough, Chris Tilling, Jim West, Mark Goodacre, James Crossley, etc, it's difficult to have something intelligent and interesting to say on a regular basis when you're not as well-trained as them.

And Nick responds:

But the secret to blogging success is not to do what the next man does; that, my friend, is how you compete for readership.  It is for that reason that I stick to posting mostly drivel, because let’s face it, no one else does it on a consistent basis, yet surprisingly, people love to read it.  And the best part is that doing what I do requires no training!  In fact, training would probably just muck it all up.

Now I know Nick's response is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. My response is a little more serious, but no more complex. Simply blog what you want to. Blog what is interesting to you. Don't write posts to impress people, write posts that reflect what you're thinking and learning. For me, that's the best reason to blog. Not to sound erudite, or to compete with other bloggers for attention share. If you're genuine in your writing, then the folks that you really want to read your stuff will find it, and bookmark you, and aggregate you, and link to  you.

Since Nick really is genuinely interested in drivel, it works for him (yes, that's a joke). But it works for me. I mean, who really is interested in αλλα? Like that would be a topic I'd pick if I was interested in readership.

Why, oh why couldn't this have happened on I5 in the vicinity of Bellingham?

Location? Morris, Illinois.

The lede: "Got Milk? Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway."

I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Nijay Gupta, of his eponymously-named blog, put out a list of 20 scholars who have influenced him most.

I don't have a list quite like Nijay's, likely because I haven't pursued formal graduate studies. My list is less centered around scholars and influence from the books they've written and more centered around scholars (and others who some may not qualify as 'scholars' because they have no post-grad/terminal degree) and the conversation(s) and relationship I've had with them. While ideas presented in books are important, relationships are much more shaping—at least for me. That said, here we go. This is in no particular order.

Randall Tan — Randall has been nothing short of an encouragement to me; he has always been generous and charitable in any interaction we've had. He is a gentleman, a scholar, and someone I am lucky enough to call a friend. I'd venture to say his functional recall of things having to do with Greek grammar is the highest of almost anyone I know, and he's always willing to help when I have a question. Anyway, Randall has encouraged and taught me to not be afraid when approaching things I don't fully understand; chances are I have a better understanding than I give myself credit for — and I'll usually be able to work it out while pursuing the problem.

Matthew Brook O'Donnell — While working on the Logos Bible Software implementation of OpenText.org's syntactic analysis of the Greek New Testament, I was able to interact with Matt a lot. In working through the OpenText.org data, and with his help (and, for that matter, Randall's help too) my brain made the shift from thinking about Greek at the word level to thinking about Greek at the level of the phrase/clause. Additionally, his Corpus Linguistics and the Greek of the New Testament (amazon.com) is thought provoking and (along with Jeffrey T. Reed's A Discourse Analysis of Philippians (amazon.com)) go a long way to providing documentation and background to the details of the OpenText.org analysis. All great stuff.

Albert Lukaszewski — I've had the privilege of working with Dr. Lukaszewski (whom many of you know from Zondervan's Reader's Greek New Testament (amazon.com) fame) on the conception and production of the Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament for Logos Bible Software. The primary work was done roughly in the same period as work on the OpenText.org SAGNT (mentioned above), though the project is an ongoing one. In working through this information with Al, I was able to first of all come to an understanding of sentence diagramming that I would've never been able to outside of his work, and secondly come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both the traditional approach to Greek grammar/syntax (which the Lexham SGNT largely represents) and the more linguistically oriented approach of the OpenText.org project.

Steven Runge — I've been working with Steve on the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament for well over a year now. In much the same way that my brain shifted from thinking about words to thinking about phrases/clauses; my brain has shifted further into the realm of discourse; particularly the area of "Discourse Grammar". I never would've been able to realize the importance, at the discourse level, of function words and other sorts of information structures without his work and encouragement. I still have oodles to learn in this particular area, but Steve has given me a foundation I can build on as I examine all sorts of things (like αλλα) to learn more. Conjunctions and other particles are now my friends.

Maurice Robinson — I've been privileged to have a few conversations with Dr. Robinson as we've met in passing at ETS over the past few years. What I've learned from him and his work is that if you have theories you're convinced of, you need to do due diligence and work them out to their logical extent. I'm not a Byzantine priorist; but I do appreciate and respect Dr. Robinson's work.

Charles E. Hill — Dr. Hill was my first-year Greek prof at Northwestern College back in 1992-93. Without the foundation he gave (yay ATHENAZE!  Go, Δικαιοπολις!) I wouldn't be where I am today.

Ray Van Neste — Ray's work on the Pastorals (Cohesion and Structure in the Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com)) is the best non-commentary resource you can get for the Pastorals (and better and more helpful than most commentaries, for that matter). The section on semantic chaining (much of the theory here taken from Guthrie's work on Hebrews (amazon.com)) alone is worth the price of admission (or, it used to be before the book went out of print and you could get it for under $100). Discussions of transitions, cohesion and the like are excellent. This volume has helped and shaped my thinking about the Pastorals more than any other single volume. Find it at a library or get it via interlibrary loan if you're working in the Pastorals. And his focus on pastoral ministry and family is heartening.

Vincent Setterholm — Vincent is a colleague at Logos whom I've known for what, five years now? Vincent taught me that, properly focused and adequately balanced, auto-didacticism is a good thing. He also taught me that building a library is important. Don't be afraid to buy the worthy books at any reasonable price. And read them once you've got them.

Eli Evans — Eli is another colleague at Logos (you can tell I'm heavily influenced by the guys I work with, huh?). I've worked with him for over 10 years. Eli has single-handedly shaped my writing skills with his incisive and functional criticism of the stuff I've passed off as writing in the past, oh, five years. He's also a valued friend and debating partner/adversary.

Run, don't walk, over to Dr. Jim West and check out the 29th Biblical Studies Carnival.

An excellent job, Jim. Thanks for putting it together!

From the What's New in Papyrology blog comes mention of a splendid sounding title, Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (amazon.com). The author is AnneMarie Luijendijk, the publisher is Harvard Divinity School. And the price for the 235 page book is $25. (Brill, Mohr-Siebeck, et. al., please take note of the price-per-page ratio).

It is apparently slated for release in August of 2008. I can't wait to read it once I scrape up the $25.

Here's the blurb from the publisher (text taken from Amazon's page):

This is the first book-length study on Christians in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the site where some of the most important and oldest fragments of early Christian books were unearthed.

Bringing the people in dry papyrus letters and documents back to life, the book reveals how Christians lived in this city in different contexts and situations. In the first part, the image of the city's marketplace functions to address questions of Christian identity in the public sphere. The second part features a man called Sotas, bishop of Oxyrhynchus in the third century, as he is busy networking with other Christian communities, involved in teaching, book production, and fund-raising. The third part, focusing on evidence of the persecution of Christians, reveals the far-reaching power and pervasiveness of Roman bureaucracy. We learn that Christians negotiated their identity through small acts of resistance against the imperial decrees.

The papyrus letters and documents discussed in this book offer sometimes surprising insights into the everyday lives of Christians in the third and early fourth century and nuance our understanding of Christianity in this period. It is the mundane aspects of everyday life that make these papyrus documents so fascinating.

My friend and colleague Steve Runge recently blogged about "Paying Attention to 'This' and 'That'" on the Logos Bible Software blog. He was showing how paying attention to ουτος and εκεινος can pay dividends in your study of the NT.

For a bonus on the difference between 'near' and 'far', check this Sesame Street clip from YouTube (thanks for the reference, Steve) where Grover makes sure we get the difference between the two.

Now that that's all cleared up, I ran into a stellar example of the difference between ουτος and εκιενος this weekend while reading Second Clement. Here's the text of 2Cl 6.3-5 from Holmes' second edition; pay particular attention to verse 4:

(3) ἔστιν δὲ οὗτος ὁ αἰὼν καὶ ὁ μέλλων δύο ἐχθροί.
(3) This age and the one that is coming are two enemies.

(4) οὗτος λέγει μοιχείαν καὶ φθορὰν καὶ φιλαργυρίαν καὶ ἀπάτην, ἐκεῖνος δὲ τούτοις ἀποτάσσεται.
(4) This one talks about adultery and corruption and greed and deceit, but that one renounces these things.

(5) οὐ δυνάμεθα οὖν τῶν δύο φίλοι εἶναι· δεῖ δὲ ἡμᾶς τούτῳ ἀποταξαμένους ἐκείνῳ χρᾶσθαι.
(5) We cannot, therefore, be friends of both; we must renounce this one in order to experience that one.

Holmes, M. W. (1999). The Apostolic Fathers : Greek texts and English translations (Updated ed.) (110-111). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

Also interesting is the use of δε in v. 4. This implies development of a point, whereas use of αλλα would likely heighten the contrast.

I'm looking at the instances of αλλα in the Apostolic Fathers. One very peculiar set of instances (seven instances in two verses) occurs in Hermas, Visions I.iii.1-2. (watch out, I may blog about it later to work though some thoughts)

Of course, I'm using the Logos version of Holmes (2nd edition). So, while in Vis. I.iii.1, I right-click and do a "Search for References to Herm., Vis I, iii, 1". One tiny little right-click.

Across my library, 148 instances of references to the verse (including ranges that include the verse) in 15 books. Books like:

• TDNT
• Nag Hammadi Library in English
• BDAG (very handy; this gives me links to all the articles that cite the verse, sort of like a reader's edition!)
• ICC vols
• NIGTC vols
• A Semeia volume
• Some Hermeneia volumes, including several in the volume on the Shepherd of Hermas.

How cool is that?

Muchas gracias por Hendrickson for sending along the following:

David M. Scholer, editor. Social Distinctives of the Christians in the First Century: Pivotal Essays by E.A. Judge (amazon.com).

This title sounds wonderful; I'm really looking forward to delving into it and blogging about it as I work through essays.

Jerry L. Sumney. Philippians: A Greek Student's Intermediate Reader (amazon.com).

I've blogged about some recently-released Greek readers in the past (here, here, here, here, here and here) so it only makes sense to give this one a look-see as well. I'll let you know what I find.

I know, I wrote about Logos yesterday too.

But really, this is a big thing for us here at Logos Bible Software. Go to the Logos Mac page for more information and a download of Alpha 1.

This is an alpha. It is not a tested, tried and polished shipping version (or even a feature-complete beta version). That means don't do mission-critical stuff with it; be ready for crashes, halts, and incomplete feature implementation. If you don't want to install it (and please don't think you have to install it), check the most recent video of the application in action.

(Be sure to read the FAQ and the known issues list; also be sure to monitor the Logos Macintosh Newsgroup)

And keep your eyes on the Logos Bible Software blog; I'm sure there will be a formal announcement there sometime soon.

From What's New in Papyrology, mention of a Web Exhibition at the University of Michigan: Diversity in the Desert.

Check it out!

This morning, minding my own business, I was surfin' the internet. On abcnews.com, I saw an interesting story: Story of Jesus Through Iranian Eyes. Here's the lede:

A new movie in Iran depicts the life of Jesus from an Islamic perspective. "The Messiah," which some consider as Iran's answer to Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," won an award at Rome's Religion Today Film Festival, for generating interfaith dialogue.

The article is an interview with the filmmaker. In the interview, the filmmaker mentions the Gospel of Barnabas several times as source material, as containing information that is confirmed in the Koran. Here's a quote from the filmmaker about the ending of the movie:

I thought, the Christians, when they see it, it'll be important for them. [In the Koran] God says, emphatically, he was not crucified. Somebody was crucified in his stead. In the Gospel of Barnabas, there are explications of this. The majority of [Muslims] say the one who betrayed Jesus [was crucified]. (abcnews.com)

I knew of the Gospel of Barnabas but have not read it, so I headed to Schneemelcher's NT Apocrypha. I've read the first volume, but Barnabas didn't ring a bell. And I couldn't find it in the table of contents. After searching the index in vol 2, I found this on vol 1 p. 85:

The Gospel of Barnabas, handed down in Italian and Spanish. It was already known in the 18th century (Tolland), but has received more detailed attention only in recent times. This gospel is a work of the 16th century, and evidently belongs in the area of the history of the Moriscoes. It is very doubtful that older material (of Jewish Christian origin) is included in it.
...
These two texts [the other text is the Arabic Gospel of John] are examples of the production of works which are indeed escribed as gospels and which are also interesting sources for the period of their origin, but do not belong in a collection of early Church apocrypha. (Schneemelcher, trans. R.Mcl.Wilson, vol 1 p. 85)

This is very interesting, because the filmmaker relied on the Gospel of Barnabas heavily. What the filmmaker says almost has an Ehrmanian vibe to it (but I won't go there ... ):

If you listen to what Jesus said, Jesus talked about the Prophet Mohammad, many, many times. And it was eliminated in the Gospels and the Bibles that [made it through] history. In 325, the Council of Nice was out to destroy all the other Gospels. One of those Gospels was the Gospel of Barnabas, which I used in great detail. (abcnews.com)

This charge (that Nicea eliminated a Gospel of Barnabas from the canon) is dealt with nicely in an article, from Vox Evangelica, by F.P. Cotterell, on the contents of the Gospel of Barnabas (with thanks to Rob Bradshaw for putting this stuff online so it's available at times like these).

What I do next will most likely turn Jim West's insides green. I'm linking to the Wikipedia article on the Gospel of Barnabas because it's actually good. If you want to be familiar with the issues, you should at least skim it -- particularly if you're a pastor and want to be prepared for when this question comes up. (Hey, it's getting close to easter, all of the whacko stories will be in the news shortly). If you're only going to read one of those links, read Cotterell's article. It's worth it, particularly if you think folks will ask you questions about this sort of thing over the next week.

Bottom line: It appears as if the filmmaker got it backwards. Read the F.P. Cotterell article for the details.

If you study the corpus of letters attributed to Paul, then you need to read Nijay K. Gupta's recent post, How we analyze ancient texts - are we letting the cart pull the horse?

Nijay is looking specifically at 2Co 6.14-7.1; but his comments apply to various portions of the Pauline corpus. Of course, I see immediate application in the Pastoral Epistles, going back at least to P.N. Harrison's 1921 volume The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles. Nijay goes on to suggest a three-pronged approach when dealing with texts that seem difficult in their current context:

(1) Analyze the text as is and try to come up with a rhetorical scenario that can account for the flow of the text

(2) If this seems impossible (as in the transition to chapter 10 of 2 COrinthians), consider historical scenarios that can account for this without assuming redaction: So, Paul may have heard some distressing news between finishing chapter 9 and beginning chapter 10).

(3) Consider, but only tentatively, other options that involve later and non-Pauline redaction.

You really should read Nijay's entire post. I heartily agree with Nijay's suggestion that the text as received be analyzed first.

Kevin P. Edgecomb (whose blog biblicalia should be more widely read than it is) is the host and proprietor of BSC:XXVI. Step right up and check out the fantabulous job he did in assembling this month's montage of Biblical Studies monotony ... er ... uh ... well, I need something to alliterate with the 'm' vibe there ... read on and you will surely see that the Biblical Studies blogosphere is definitely not monotonous.

Hi folks.

I'm playing around with using Windows Live Writer to edit and post weblog entries. So ... this is just a test.

(Thanks, Bob, for the pointer!)

I know it's hard to believe, but I think I found Jim West's favorite web site. Click the link, then wait a second for it to unveil in its full glory!

On the flip side, this is probably Chris Tilling's favorite web site!

(h/t: MarginalRevolution)

BibleTech08 was two days chock-full-o' Bible-geeky goodness.

The highlight for me was time spent between sessions and at meals talking with folks. Prime among those was time spent with James Tauber. I've emailed with James back and forth for at least five years now; it was great to spend time with him in person, reflecting on sessions, talking about the doctroal work he's doing, and all sorts of other stuff. Here's the not-so-great picture I took with my cell phone to prove it:

Others have summarized sessions (Check the tag bibletech08 on Technorati for a listing) so I won't do that here. I will say that some of the stuff James Tauber talked about work with Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen at MorphGNT.org regarding lemma alignments was thought-provoking; Andi Wu's presentation on treebanks caused me to covet my neighbor's syntax data; Sean Boisen's Zoomable Bible presentation made me think about interface in ways I hadn't before; Kurt Fuqua's stuff made my head hurt (though not necessarily in a bad way), Zack Hubert's zhubert.com retrospective was awesome; and Bob MacDonald's talk on structures in Psalms was much appreciated both for the visualizations and also for the esteem in which he presented it -- unlike so many presentations at places like SBL, you could tell that for Bob, this was not simply an academic exercise, the text has profoundly influenced him.

My profuse thanks to everyone who came to Seattle for two days of Bible-geeky goodness. Hopefully we'll do it again next year!

My colleague Sean Boisen reminds us all that BibleTech:2008 is coming.

I have one talk/paper at the conference, the overly-generically-named Locating New Testament Cross-References: Some Strategies. My abstract isn't much help either:

This talk examines the feasibility of locating related passages in the New Testament using various measures. The focus will be on strategy and results, not on the nitty-gritty details of the code.

Well, I've actually written the paper now so I have a better idea of what I'm going to say. I still need to make the powerpoint slides and such. But here's the introduction to give you a better flavor of what's what:

Marginal cross-references have long been a feature of several Bibles in print. Each of the myriad versions has some edition with “marginal cross-references” or “center-column cross-references”. Yet electronic editions, apart from those reproducing data available in printed editions, have not done a good job of complementing the text with relevant cross-references. Most electronic editions of Bibles are centered on the words of the text and not its presentation or on supplying ancillary data to help in the study of the text.

This paper largely restricts itself to discussing New Testament cross-references to the New Testament. Different approaches, from “no-tech” to “low-tech” to (keeping the rhythm) “mo’-tech”, will be examined (each in differing degrees). Discussion of necessary data and even ideas about sources are provided at relevant points.

But first, it is necessary to note that there are several different types of cross-references, and perhaps even several different “levels” of cross-referencing. Cross-referencing can be between key words in a text (perhaps even down to key words in a book/author); it can be between similar phrases; it can be topically oriented. But even tables of Gospel parallels are cross-references of a sort.

This paper takes a sort of “shotgun” approach, mentioning several ideas on different styles or sources of cross-references and even providing worked examples of many. But we will move quickly from idea to idea. In other words, the presentation will be wide, not deep.

Since Chris Brady (Targuman) proposed the idea of International Biblical Studies Writing Month (IBSWM), all the cool kids have been posting their projects.

I have at least one that qualifies. My paper for BibleTech:2008 is on locating cross-references in the New Testament; that is my IBSWM project. It is now mostly done (but mostly written in January!). I'll be sure to post a copy after BibleTech:2008 (so, after Jan 26)

I have another writing (blogging) project bubbling in my head, but hesitate to mention it here for fear that I might not get started on it during IBSWM (if ever).

Back in October, I mentioned a book on WWII in Sicily and Italy, Rick Atkinson's The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (amazon.com). I've been reading it off and on, mainly when I can have large chunks of time to focus on it — books like these aren't books you can spend 15 minutes on at a chunk.

If you have any historical interest in WWII, then you need to read this book. It is focused on the Sicilian and Italian campaigns, primarily from an Allied perspective but Atkinson routinely brings in data from German sources as well. I learned oh-so-much about the war on those fronts; a war that lurks in the shadows of the annals of history due to the prominence of the Normandy landings (which began two days after Rome fell) and the grind through France and Germany.

There were portions that weren't easy to read. It was a bloody, bloody war of attrition. But you don't read books like this because they make you feel chipper; you read books like this to understand the sorts of things that WWII was about, and how nasty it was (for both sides), and how necessary it was. And to hope that it never happens again.

Atkinson is an incredible researcher, and his synthesis of literally thousands of sources into an overarching, flowing, well-written historical narrative is amazing. He won the Pulitzer prize for the first volume in his Liberation Trilogy series, An Army at Dawn (amazon.com), which focused on the beginning of American involvement in the WWII European theater, and thus the war in Northern Africa. That book was amazing. Day of Battle (amazon.com) is better. Atkinson's projected third volume, if I understand it correctly, will focus on D-Day preparations and the liberation of France and war in Germany. How he'll pack that into one volume I have no idea — but I'll be queued up to buy it when it's published.

Bonus: Here's a picture of me with Ike, Monty and other WWII luminaries:

Chris Brady, who writes the blog Targuman, has posted BSC:XXV. Do rush and take a look at it, he's done a fine job stitching together the carnival tent this month. Chris is also the Biblioblogger of the Month for January 2008; so head to Biblioblogs.com to learn more about the "fine Jewish boy" behind Targuman.

Also note that Kevin P. Edgecomb of the blog biblicalia will be doing BSC:XXVI; keep your eyes peeled for carnival-worthy posts to nominate for that carnival. Why? Well, Kevin writes:

Okay, so, get busy writing good stuff and start sending me nominations for the next carnival, or, by the showering stars of the Geminids, I swear I’ll make stuff up. I have a vivid imagination, too.

Looks like the 2008 carnivals are off to a roaring start!

Folks --

I finally posted my 2007 ETS paper, Richard Bauckham and Eyewitness Testimony: Does His Narrative Device Occur Outside of the Synoptics?, has been posted to my personal web site in the academic papers section.

The primary difference between this and my 2007 Regional ETS paper is the inclusion of a 9 page appendix that details the structure of the Marcan instances of the plural-to-singular narrative device and the searches used to locate other potential instances of the device.

[NB: It's high time for a new "about ricoblog" entry. The old one will remain, but I'll now be linking to this one under my picture to the right.]

“rico” is Rick Brannan. Somehow, folks at the office started calling me “Rico”, and it stuck. So there you have it. You can check out my personal web site for more info.

I work for Logos Bible Software as an Information Architect. Yeah, we made up that title. I'm what I like to call a text geek; I write programs to munge text from one format into another or even create alternate views of data or even completely different data sets. It is a hoot; it's a job I love, and I'm very lucky to be able to do it, get paid for it, and work with the great folks at Logos Bible Software.

I'm also a bibliophile. I love books and I love to read them — particularly books that have to do with the Pastoral Epistles, Apostolic Fathers, Greek of the New Testament, Corpus Linguistics and Styleometry; as well as Syntax and Grammar of Hellenistic (Koine/NT) Greek. My academic interests lie in the realm of the intersection of time, culture and development of the church between the Pauline corpus (so, let's say between 51-64 CE/AD) and the post-apostolic literature (so, let's say 80 CE/AD). If this is your interest, or if you have references/books/articles etc. to point me toward in this area, I'd love to hear from you.

To learn more about me, you can read (or listen to!) the following:

• I was Blogger of the Month for June 2007, according to biblioblogs.com. They even interviewed me; you can read the interview if you dare.
• In August of 2007, for reasons I still have yet to fathom, Chris Brady, of perhaps the coolest-named biblioblog Targuman, did a podcast interview with me. It runs for over 30 minutes, so go ahead and give it a listen.

In addition to ricoblog, I also blog at:

• PastoralEpistles.com
• The Logos Bible Software Blog

Lastly, I have posted some papers that I've presented at various academic conferences on my personal web site.

John Hobbins has a trifecta of posts representing the 23rd Biblical Studies Carnival (23 already?) that is worthy of examining:

• Biblical Studies Carnival XXIII
• Biblical Studies Carnival XXIII: What I Left out the First Time
• A Map of the World of Bible Bloggers. I'm listed as a "Scholar who is otherwise gainfully employed". Wow, Mom, I'm a scholar!

Also see Mark Goodacre's supplementary post on BSC:XXIII.

And, since I need to mention it somewhere and this is as good a place as any, it looks like SAGE Journals have once again made their somewhat regular offer for complete journal access — this time for the month of November. I believe this is the link you are looking for. If you're like me and not in a setting where you can get this stuff regularly, then sign up and get access. Sean the Baptist has the details.

I, for one, will be downloading some articles on Apostolic Fathers and NT Apocrypha from the Expository Times, among other things. Yee Haw!

Life is busy and therefore I haven't been blogging much. Apologies for that. I have some random things I've been accumulating for your perusal. I know I ran across most of these on other blogs but I forgot to record my source when I made a note of the item. If you know (or are) the source, let me know so I can add further links to this post.

You get 'em shotgun-style:

• earlychurchtexts.com. Check it out. I run FireFox and had some random problems with the navigation over an extended browsing session.
• Rodney Decker (yes, he blogs now!) on Rodney Whitacre's A Patristic Greek Reader (amazon.com). This is an interesting perspective because Decker is publishing his own Koine Greek Reader (amazon.com) shortly.
• Craig Evans on Jewish Scripture and the Literacy of Jesus. It's a PDF file, get it while it's hot. It is an essay in a book titled From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith: Essays in Honor of Lee Martin McDonald (amazon.com), of which Dr. Evans is an editor and contributor.

I have one more, but that'll be a post of its own.

Chris Brady, of the excellently-named blog Targuman, wanted to do a podcast with me for some reason.

So today we did it. It's 30+ minutes of podcasty-goodness, if you're interested. Check it out here. It was a pleasure talking with Chris, he is a gentleman and a scholar. If you're not familiar with his blog, do check it out—and enjoy the cartoons!

I'm frustrated.

A few years back I noticed that Eerdmans was going to publish James Royse's monumental dissertation, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri — consistentely and frequently cited in footnotes in just about every NT text-critical tome I've read or looked at in the past three years. "Woo Hoo!", I thought. It would be available and might even be less that $100, which means I could buy it at SBL at a reasonable price!

Yesterday, I read the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog post on Brill's NTTSD series, which notes:

For those of you who have waited on James R. Royse's study of Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri finally to be published (the orginal dissertation on which it is based dates from 1981) will be pleased to hear that it is due this autumn (according to Brill's representative whom I met in Vienna). According to the gossip at the SBL in Vienna the delay of Royse's book on the part of the former publisher Eerdman's caused frustration for both the author Royse and the SD editor Epp and led the latter to turn to Brill which has now resulted in this permanent solution.

Well, I'm glad the book is getting published. But Brill wants $369.00 for it! (amazon.com) That means it is destined to only be purchased by university libraries; that it will suck hard-to-come-by money from other book purchases at said libraries, and it will be destined to sit in the office of some NT prof (or a departmental library) away from the main stacks where folks could actually use the durn thing.

What to do?

Don't buy the book. Go to the UMI dissertation express. Search for "Royse, James". It looks like you can get a copy of the dissertation for under 50 bucks, at least in the US. The 751 page dissertation was submitted in 1981, and the text has surely been sharpened in the past 26 years ... but hey, you'll actually be able to read and refer to it on your terms.

Even if Brill releases a paperback, who knows what the price will be. If you've considered the book before because, like me, you've seen it cited in footnotes and have drooled over it, then consider getting the dissertation via UMI instead of spending upwards of $400 with Brill.

Update (2007-08-09): Responding to the comments, particularly to Mike. I know the book would be expensive, but $370 is crazy. Are libraries really going to drop $370 on one title, and that not a substantive reference title? I am very glad Brill is publishing the title. My hope is that a few years down the road, after the libraries pay off the book's cost, it'll be put out in paperback, perhaps even by the SBL, and it will be do-able price-wise. I understand the economics of publishing and know there are costs for publishers to account for -- they don't grow money on trees. My post was a bit of a rant (hence the "rant" category), but also to point out that the primary substance of Royse's book, his dissertation, is available at a much more reasonable price for those who are really interested in the work but don't have a good library close (or who, like me, might be able to get it at a library but are such zealous bibliophiles they don't like to let go of books they've read, particularly if they could be useful in future studies). Anyway, c'est la vie, Scribal Habits. If I deem my text-critical reading needs to require Royse before a paperback is available, I'll head to UMI to get the dissertation.

Rob Bradshaw of the ever-helpful biblicalstudies.org.uk posts the following that may be of interest:

F.P. Cotterell, "The Gospel of Barnabas," Vox Evangelica 10 (1977): 43-47.

Here's the first paragraph:

The Gospel of Barnabas is one of three, or more precisely four, writings associated with the name of Paul’s companion in the first part of his mission to the gentiles. The earliest of these writings is the Epistle of Barnabas, dating from the first half of the second century. The Acts of Barnabas, a more convenient appellation than the formal Greek title, The journeys and the testimony of St. Barnabas the apostle, dates from the fifth century. Then there is the Gospel of Barnabas, a title which is confusingly applied to two works. The first of these is known to us only by name. It is referred to in the Latin Decretum Gelasianum, associated with pope Gelasius (492-496). Of the text of this Gospel we have no knowledge whatever. The second Gospel of Barnabas made its appearance in the sixteenth century and has re-surfaced at intervals ever since, most recently through a series of publications originating in Karachi, edited by Begum Aisha Bawany Wakf. This brief note is intended simply to draw attention to the character of the ‘Gospel’, to record what is known of its antecedents and the claims made for it by some Muslim apologists.

So if you have interest in such things, read the whole article.

Just received from Hendrickson Publishers:

Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik, Editors: The Early Centuries: Jewish Believers in Jesus (amazon.com).

Here's the blurb from Amazon:

Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (amazon.com) examines the formative first five centuries of Christian history as experienced by individuals who were ethnically Jewish, but who professed faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Offering the work of an impressive international team of scholars, this unique study examines the first five centuries of texts thought to have been authored or edited by Jewish Christians, including the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament Apocrypha, and some patristic works. Also considered are statements within patristic literature about Jewish believers and uses of oral traditions from Jewish Christians. Furthermore, the evidence in Jewish, mainly rabbinic, literature is examined, and room is made for a judicious sifting of the archaeological evidence. The final two chapters are devoted to an enlightening synthesis of the material with subsequent conclusions regarding Jewish believers in antiquity.

As I get into the book, I'll surely blog more about it.

Update (2007-08-06): Oh, yes — I was also told that there will be a session at the SBL meeting in San Diego on this very book (amazon.com). So if the topic (Jewish Believers in Jesus in the early centuries of Christianity) interests you, then you might want to check out the book and consider attending the session in November.

Update II (2007-08-16): Mentioned a bit more about the book in response to a post by Michael Bird. Check it out.

Update III (2007-08-22): Blogged the TOC of the book, which is extensive and gives a much better picture of the book's coverage.

Update IV (2007-09-16): Danny Zacharias of Deinde blogs about Jewish Believers as well. Danny's reaction? Pretty straightforward: "Earlier this year I made an authoritative declaration that every NT scholar ought to read Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (amazon.com). This is now my second binding authoritative declaration: Every NT scholar needs to have this book on his or her shelf." I agree. So heed Danny and get your copy now (amazon.com).

I've had reason to consult the printed edition of SBL Seminar Papers in the past, though I wasn't aware that the printing of the papers had been discontinued.

The SBL web site does make available seminar papers from 2002-2006. I was unaware of this until I stumbled across the page while looking to see if any version of the program guide for San Diego had been released yet. Here's the description paragraph from the page:

In years past, a print edition of the SBL Seminar Papers was made available in advance of the Annual Meeting each year in order to stimulate discussion of these works in progress during the meeting itself. Beginning in 2004, however, the print edition was discontinued, with a selection of papers presented at the meeting being made available online. In addition, a number of papers from previous years have been archived on the SBL Web site. Because these papers represent works in progress, they should not be quoted or otherwise cited without permission from the author.

(No, there is no release of a program guide yet. But console yourself with some of last year's seminar papers if you'd like.)

(NB: Actually, the archive goes back to 2002, though I have not changed the post title as it would change the link, and I don't want to do that.)

From time to time I make mention of job openings at Logos Bible Software (yes, my employer). Many times they're for programmers and such, but this one isn't—it is for a "Marketing Genius: Press Relations and Customer Evangelism".

Read the whole description. Does it sound like you? Then we want to talk with you. So stop reading this blog post and go apply (though be sure to look at the full description!)

Update (2007-07-27): Note that I'm just pointing people to the job posting; please don't send your resumes/etc. to me.

This morning the Logos Bible Software blog announced the BibleTech 2008 conference. It'll take place January 25-26 in Seattle, WA.

While Logos is the primary conference sponsor (disclaimer: I work for Logos), the conference is not about Logos Bible Software. It is designed for those who are interested in the intersection of the Bible and technology. So this could be professionals, hobbyists, publishers, bloggers, webmasters, educators or just about anyone else. If you're interested in the Bible and technology, no matter where you are, what you do, or who you work for, we'd love to see you in Seattle.

Several folks have already agreed to present. I'm most interested to hear from James Tauber (general XML/Python stud and co-creator of MorphGNT.org) and Zack Hubert (creator of zhubert.com).

The call for participation is open. Have an itch you'd like to scratch, or a cool side project you'd like to present? Then submit your ideas. I know I've got a few different ideas a-brewin'.

I just came across this most interesting resource: Treasury of the New Testament.

Though in reality, it is only on John 1-15 (and doesn't look like it will grow fast at all, at least based on the "what's new" page).

If you're familiar with the concept behind IVP's Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Series (ACCS) then this will be interesting to you. It looks like someone has interspersed (and footnoted) patristic commentary — in Greek — inside of the Gospel of John. The gospel text is that of the Orthodox Church, I'm guessing.

This is very cool, at least to me. It means I can feel good about reading the John portions but can stretch myself on the patristic portions.

So check it out. Here's John 3 for starters.

Enjoy!

Mark Goodacre pops up a thought-provoking post over at the NT Gateway Weblog about how internet access can interfere with scholarly writing. Jim West disagrees and states his reasons.

I have sympathies with Mark on this one, but I'd rather proffer a mediating position. It's not a dichotomy; it's a both-and situation. The extremes (tracking down every weblog discussion vs. throwing out the internet) aren't good at all. There must be balance. In my mind, there are times to research, and times to write like the dickens (or, better, to write like Dickens -- he was one wordy man!). But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is paying at least some attention to the various discussions going on in biblioblogdom that makes us all more well-rounded, and that ends up making our writing -- whatever the venue, be it web or print -- all the more better.

I understand Jim West's point completely. I know that the words I write on this blog will reach more folks than anything I ever might publish (and me publishing something is a big stretch, I think).

Some days, I think bloggers are more like the pamphleteers of days gone by -- writing short missives that get printed and distributed and printed and distributed with or without the author's knowledge. And there is value in that. But there is also value in the writing of longer, more comprehensively worked tomes; those are the ones that will provide the foundation for the future discussion.

So I say it's about balance. And that means shifting sometimes. And I think that's more what I hear from Mark -- Take some time to focus on larger projects, not forsaking blogging but simply not focusing on it to the detriment of other writing projects destined for distribution outside of the web.

This has been a busy month and I can't believe I forgot to mention this. But it seems that I am Biblioblogs.com's "Biblioblogger of the Month" for June 2007.

They've got an interview with me and everything, so do check it out.

Mark Goodacre (NT Gateway Weblog) was in town for the Logos Lecture Series. We'd met a few years back at SBL in Philly, where he chaired a session on biblioblogging for CARG in which I presented a paper.

It was good to spend some time with him while he was in Bellingham on Monday. I broke away from Amy and Ella for a few hours (thanks, Mom T for coming by and spending time with Amy and Ella while I was out!) and was able to hang out with Mark and a few other folks from Logos for the afternoon. It was a hoot of a time. Mark talks about it some more on his blog.

I wasn't able to attend the lecture, but from what I heard it went very well. Note that Mark mentions he will post the text of the lecture on his blog, so keep an eye out there if you're interested in his topic, "Did the Jews of Jesus' Day Expect the Messiah?"

Next up on the lecture series: Dan Wallace (yes, that Dan Wallace) talks about the work of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. Note that if you've been to a lecture event before, the venue is changing. We'll be at the American Museum of Radio and Electricity instead of the Mount Baker Theatre.

I came across a mention of The Dangerous Book for Boys (amazon.com) somewhere, thought I don't quite recall where. If the Lord chooses to bless us with a son,* then you can rest assured I'll be getting a copy of it. Here's the description:

The bestselling book for every boy from eight to eighty, covering essential boyhood skills such as building tree houses, learning how to fish, finding true north, and even answering the age old question of what the big deal with girls is.

In this digital age there is still a place for knots, skimming stones and stories of incredible courage. This book recaptures Sunday afternoons, stimulates curiosity, and makes for great father-son activities. The brothers Conn and Hal have put together a wonderful collection of all things that make being young or young at heart fun—building go-carts and electromagnets, identifying insects and spiders, and flying the world's best paper airplanes.

The link is to the US edition (amazon.com), which was just released. The UK edition was apparently a big-time best seller last year.

* For those wondering, Amy is about a week overdue; we're hoping and praying the baby comes quickly! We don't know the sex of the baby either, so my musing here may be fulfilled very, very soon. Of course if it's a girl, then point me to the requisite book(s) about tea parties, dollhouses, and all that other jazz!

Are you familiar with the "Best Blogs about Biblical Studies" community ranking/list thing going on at Amazon's UnSpun?

Somehow, ricoblog is placed barely in the top 10 at #9 (and that has been fairly steady since late last week). There are, at present, over 100 blogs listed. I am amazed, humbled and flattered all at the same time.

I'm unsure how to receive this. Part of me thinks "what are people thinking?!"; the other part thinks "my, there are a bunch of smart, well-informed and intellectually curious folks ranking those blogs".

I think I'll choose the second part.

Side note, though. Have you checked the individual rankings of folks in the "Most recently ranked by" list on the right margin of the page? Many folks have only voted for one or two blogs, and most of those seem to be associated with the voter. (Hey, I'm guilty of this too, see?) So it looks like the people who take the time to rank are more interested in making sure their own stuff is near the top; they're not necessarily interested in ranking blogs. That said, however, the ones rising to the top seem to be those that are ranked well by non-blog-authors.

In the "Why aren't they ranked higher?" department, here are the blogs that have low rankings that I just don't get. You should read these (at least have 'em on your feed) if you don't already:

• Biblicalia
• Thoughts on Antiquity

Here's the list at present:

Update (2007-04-24): Link changed from "Top 50 ... " to "Best Blogs about Biblical Studies". Apologies to Airton for getting it wrong the first time.

Brandon Wason at Novum Testamentum has posted BSC:XVI. Do check it out. Excellent job, Brandon!

I just received a reminder about the SBL / Logos Technology Paper Awards. I'm anxious to see what folks are working on!

The dealine for papers is May 1, 2007 with winners announced at International SBL in Vienna. Here's a blurb for the uninformed:

Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature announce two sets of awards for papers that creatively use technology in exploring questions of grammar and syntax in biblical studies: one focusing on the Hebrew Bible, the other on the Greek New Testament. The contests are open to all those engaged in the study of those disciplines, and prizes will be awarded in both areas for student and faculty/professional categories. A total of twelve awards will be given.

There's some decent winnings ($1000 cash, $1000 Logos software credit, and $200 SBL book credit for first place entries (4 available) for winning papers, and lots of chance to win with both student and professional entries for the areas of Hebrew Bible and also Greek New Testament. I'd enter, but Logos employees are not eligible.

Get thee to thine syntax annotations!

Update (2007-03-31): ricoblog reader Tom notes that syntax searching can be difficult to get a grasp on. I agree; the multi-dimensionality of the data alone is a new sort of concept to master in thinking about the Greek New Testament. For me, I've found a deductive method to work. If you are somewhat familiar with NT Greek, begin with a passage you know cold. Compare the syntax graph to what you know of and see mentally when  you examine the text itself. See how the syntax maps the structures you're thinking of. Then, using the graph as a guide, try to reproduce some structures. Start small and general, like a clause component that has the same wordgroup->head term->word (insert the proper lemma) as what you're looking at. Search and tweak until you get your template passage as a hit. Then add new components and tweak to get an idea of how to map the basic structure you already know. "Lather, rinse, repeat" is how I end up describing it. Also, beginning with a passage you know, you could do a Bible Word Study on a word and examine the sorts of things the Grammatical Relationships section returns. Under the hood, that's doing a lot of template-based syntax searching. So that's another way to start to play with syntax data without having to master the search dialog.

From Tim Bulkeley (SansBlogue) comes news of a new blogging engine called Tumblr. Check out their blog. Tumblr (finally!) recognizes that there are different types of blog posts, and that those posts each have a common sort of form. They focus on some unique thing, but also have a lot of the same overhead. Tim quotes another source that describes Tumblr as:

The neatest thing about tumblelogs is that unlike regular blogging - which confronts you with a large, empty textarea to type your thoughts into - there are 6 distinct types of posts that have their own visual format: a "traditional" blog post, a photo, a quote, a single link, a conversational transcript, and a video.

In my 2005 SBL paper on biblioblogging, one of the things I stressed was that different "types" of posts should have different entry forms with different features that the form supported. So, one post type for 'normal' blog posts, another for bibliography entries, another for link entries ... and so forth. While I won't be using Tumblr because I just don't blog that way, it's great to see a blogging engine start to support different post types.

Yes, I'm still Jesus-tombed-out, but I have to pass this along.

I just received the following email from my friend and colleague Michael S. Heiser in regards to the so-called "Jesus Family Tomb". This is a direct response to the assertion that the statistical grouping of the names found on ossuaries in the Talpiot tomb is very significant and indeed likely wholly unique.

One standard response to Jacobovici/Pellegrino/et. al. has been that the names are common, and the grouping likely isn't therefore unique. What would happen to Jacobovici & Pellegrino's allegation if another tomb with that grouping of names was found?

Read on:

Dear Professors and other Bloggers

I’d like to report something of potentially great interest with respect to assessing the Jesus tomb theory offered by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino (and, by extension, James Tabor).

Many scholars have demonstrated the glaring weaknesses of this theory with respect to the inscriptions, the names themselves, the shaky logic, etc.  And despite the clear, coherent response to the statistical framework and analysis offered by my friend Randy Ingermanson, the public continues to be bludgeoned with the “improbability” of it all. Well, it appears that having the names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Matthew, and Martha (“Mara”) on ossuaries at one location isn’t as improbable as Jacobovici, Pellegrino, and Tabor would have the world believe.

I want to draw your attention—and the attention of scholars and interested parties who read your blog — to a SECOND site that has all those names. In 1953-1955, Bellarmino Bagatti excavated the site of Dominus Flevit (“The Lord wept”) on the Mount of Olives. The excavation uncovered a necropolis and over 40 inscribed ossuaries — including the names of Mary, Martha, Matthew, Joseph, Jesus. These ossuaries are not, as far as I can tell, in Rahmani’s catalogue. I’m guessing the reason is that they are not the property of the Israel Antiquities Authority (see Rahmani’s Preface). The necropolis was apparently used ca. 136 BC to 300 AD. Here is a link that discusses the site. A few scanned pages of Bagatti’s excavation report (written in Italian) can be found here as well.

I’ll be tracking down this report (and perhaps buying an Italian dictionary). I found this information last night (actually 2:00am) while working on my portion of a lengthy response to the Jesus tomb theory (to be co-authored with Randy Ingermanson). I didn’t want to wait until that was done to alert scholars to this so we can collectively look at this data. It appears that the statistical odds touted in such assured terms have taken a sound beating — fifty years ago.

One more really intriguing thing about the Dominus Flevit site is that it is referenced by Jacobovici with respect to his argument about the cross symbol’s antiquity, and Bagatti’s book is in his bibliography. And yet he and Charlie Pellegrino somehow overlooked the fact that ossuaries were found at that site with all the names accounted for. One can only guess whether the omission was due to careless scholarship or an effort to deceive the public.

Mike Heiser, PhD
Academic Editor, Logos Bible Software

Mike's web page is MichaelSHeiser.com; he has some further links on the Talpiot tomb hullabaloo as well.

If you've been following the Jesus Tomb saga, then you may want to read an alternate take on the statistics (and interpretation thereof) by Randy Ingermanson, who has his Ph.D. in Physics from UC Berkeley. Here's a snip from the intro of the rather long article:

In this article, I'll focus on the statistical analysis described in the book The Jesus Family Tomb. There, the authors explain why they believe that the odds are 600 to 1 that the tomb they found contained the bone-boxes of Jesus of Nazareth, his mother Mary, his "wife" Mary Magdalene, his "son" Judah, his brother Joseph, and one other person named Matthew who might be either a disciple or a family member. The book describes a "Jesus Equation" that defines this probability.

I believe that the statistical calculations need to be done differently. I am not here to cast aspersions on Mr. Jacobovici or Mr. Pellegrino or the statistician they asked to do their calculations, Dr. Andrey Feuerverger. Name-calling solves nothing. What I want to do is to redo the calculation in a way that I believe answers the fundamental question more accurately.

And what is the fundamental question? That's very important. In science, getting the right answer is a whole lot easier when you start with the right question. Years ago, when I wrote my book on the alleged Bible code, I found time after time in which the Bible coders had asked the wrong question and then answered it correctly. They concluded that they had found powerful evidence that God encoded secret messages in the Bible. But I believe they were wrong, because they asked the wrong question.

Me? I'm Jesus-Tombed-out.

Here's some of the happenings in the Design & Editorial department at Logos. This is the department I work in, and Sean & Steve are great additions. We're all having fun working on getting more tools in y'all's hands!

Charles Halton over at Awilum is hosting BSC:XV, which he he has already posted. So go check it out and see what's been going on in the biblioblogosphere this past month.

And give Awilum a look-see too while you're there!

(If you're reading this with a feed reader, you may be missing out on relevant images. Check out the actual post on my main blog site. — RWB)

A friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Michael S. Heiser, presented a paper on the "Jesus Ossuary" at the 2003 meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society. This is the ossuary behind the "Jesus Family Tomb" sensationalism that the biblioblogosphere is abuzz over (see Ben Witherington for a good overview).

In his paper, titled "The Jesus Ossuary: A Critical Examination", Dr. Heiser works through the inscriptions on the relevant ossuaries using L.Y. Rahmani's A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel. In case you're wondering about Dr. Heiser's skills and training to do such work, here's his CV.

Mike posted the paper on his website this afternoon. So grab it and check it out, and see reproductions of the relevant inscriptions for yourself.

Update (2007-02-26): Just received word from Mike that he and Darrell Bock will be on Coast to Coast AM tonight talking about the Jesus Family Tomb thing. I won't be able to listen, but if you are you can find a local station on the Coast to Coast AM site.

Update II (2007-02-27): The Discovery Channel website has a PDF file with material from Rahmani's book as well. The PDF also has Amos Kloner's 1996 article on the tomb and inscriptions, which include maps of the tomb.

Update III (2007-02-27): Duane Smith over at Abnormal Interests has a post dealing with the inscriptions as well. It is worth reading.

Update IV (2007-03-01): Richard Bauckham (yes, that Richard Bauckham) guest-posts on the names and the inscriptions over at Chris Tilling's Chrisendom blog. You need to read this, Bauckham is the go-to guy in onomastics.

If you've not yet caught the sure-to-envelop-us-come-easter sensationalistic rah-rah about something folks are now calling "the Jesus tomb", you do need to check out Ben Witherington's post on the matter.

It is notable to check Witherington because he provides statistics on the relevant names that he received from Richard Bauckham. Bauckham is, from all I have read, one of the go-to guys in the realm of Palestinian names in the first century. That, tied with other stats Bauckham provides on the frequency of names found on ossuaries provides some good data by which to refute the sensationalistic claims made by the filmmakers of "The Jesus Tomb". So do check it out.

My take? I think the data on names, combined with the known sensationalism-mongering of the filmmakers (thoroughly documented and debunked by Chris Heard, check it out) combined with the fact that the tomb's original finders and excavators reached entirely opposite conclusions (the tomb was found in 1980, findings released in 1996) speaks volumes against what the filmmakers are proposing.

All of this sounds like you've stepped in on the middle of a conversation? Then you probably have. So check out Witherington's post for the background and some further information on how to handle the assertion when you hear it come easter.

In the past few weeks, my employer (Logos Bible Software) released an application that is basically designed to help one keep track of those blasted post-it notes that end up stuck to your monitor frame. It's called NoteScraps. Why did we do it? Well, that's laid out in a post on the Logos Blog, but the answer is that it was a small, tightly spec'd application that allowed our programmers to play with new WPF goodies and learn more before doing so inside of Logos Bible Software itself.

Why do I mention it now? Well, I've found it to be daggum handy for keeping track of those little inspirations I have for blog posts an any of the three blogs I participate in. Here's a screen capture:

See? All those post-it notes that used to adorn my monitor are now easily skimmed and managed. The app is fairly single-purpose, and the trial version allows you to keep up to 10 notes. No formatting, URLs automatically located and made active. If unlimited notes are desired, then the full version is 20 bucks. More on the NoteScraps web site.

Chris Brady (Targuman) notes an article in Christianity Today regarding a C.S. Lewis story called The Dark Tower (amazon.com). The authorship of this story has been disputed, but the CT article has the skinny on whether or not the work is authentic Lewis.

Why mention it? Because stylometric analysis plays a role in the story -- but perhaps not the role you think.

I discuss this in more detail over on PastoralEpistles.com. Do check it out!

A lot of little miscellaneous things to note:

First, check out Biblical Studies Carnival XIV at Chris Weimer's blog, Thoughts on Antiquity. Go ahead, do it now. He even links to a few different articles here at ricoblog.

Second, over at Hypotyposeis, Andrew Criddle blogs on the last two chapters of Diognetus. The Epistle to Diognetus is a neat (and late) addition to the corpus known as the Apostolic Fathers. Check it out. I've blogged on Diognetus before; you can get more info here and an index to the first 10 posts in the series in the middle of this post.  If you're generally interested in the Apostolic Fathers, and specifically interested in Polycarp and the Epistle to Diognetus, they you might want to look at a post where I blog about Charles Hill's book, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp.

Third, Chris Tilling (Chrisendom) posts a short (500 word) review of Larry Hurtado's How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? (amazon.com) Do check it out.

Update (2007-02-04): I forgot to point to Michael Bird's post on finding time to write. The lesson: you won't do it if you don't make the time for it. So if it is important, make the time for it. 

Yes, I've been quiet for the past week or so. Here's what I've been reading in that time:

• Clayton N. Jefford's The Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament. I blogged about this previously. I finished it up. I had a slight criticism of the first few chapters: Jefford seemed apologetic in making his views known as opinions. I'm pleased to say that the balance of the book didn't exhibit that same degree of apology. Overall the book was good and it provides decent introduction and discussion particularly on the issues of "Christians as Jews" (chapter 5) and "Christians as Citizens" (chapter 6).
• Larry Hurtado, The Origin of the Nomina Sacra: A Proposal (JBL 117:4, Winter 1998, pp. 655-673). If you're an SBL member, you can get this article through JSTOR. I read this as follow-up to a few footnotes in Hurtado's recent book The Earliest Christian Artifacts (which I've blogged about). Note another JBL article by George Howard: "The Tetragram and the NT" (JBL 96:1 (1977), pp. 63-68) which I have a note to read but haven't read yet. Maybe this afternoon. Again, I'll note: If you are into Biblical studies but not at or near an institution with easy journal access, an SBL membership and its included access to JBL back issues via JSTOR is a wonderful thing. If used frequently, it is worth the annual membership price alone. Same goes for the ETS and its JETS back-issues and annual subscription for members.
• E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition and Collection. This was a Christmas gift from my lovely wife (yay!). I've only read the first 100 pages or so, but I've already taken down at least four notes of books or articles to read in follow-up. For me, that's the sign of a good book — I'm stimulated to the degree of interacting with sources. I'll blog about this one more I'm sure.
• Didache 11 because I'm working on translating it. (See main post on my Didache series) This is a longer chapter than most in the Didache, so it's taking longer than usual.
• The Epistle of James because I'm in a home-group Bible study on this epistle. We'll be spending the next 11 weeks looking at it.

That's it for now.

Though others have mentioned it, I need to note that Tyler has posted the "Best of 2006" Carnival. Do go check it out.

In reading Jefford's The Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament, I noticed a citation that sounded interesting:

Finally, this volume is not designed to be a methodical, text-critical comparison of the New Testament texts with parallels from the apostolic fathers, focusing upon the variations in manuscripts and sources. In that vein, several worthy efforts have already been made to cover the entire corpus of the apostolic fathers in the past, including the early work of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology in 1905 ... (Jefford 3)

A footnote goes on to descibe this volume:

A Committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1905).

On a whim, hoping to find more information about this title, I googled for it. And I was amazed when I saw an archive.org link in the results, because that usually means that an edition of the work is available. And it is! PDF (10 megs) is sitting on a server waiting for you to grab it and devour it.

I'd recommend clicking on the "Keyword" links to search for other available items.

Update (2007-01-08): The folks here at Logos figured this would be a good "Community Pricing" title. See the product page for more info.

Also, for those longsuffering ones out there who have been waiting for the Logos editions of the Apostolic Fathers in Greek and English, please know that I'm working on it right now (sorting out some issues with morphological annotations of each edition) and hope to make good progess on it in the near-term. It's probably 2/3 of the way there, though sometimes the last bit can be a bit of a push.

So head on over to Codex and check it out. Tyler, as would be expected, did an excellent job. He even managed to include a few ricoblog posts!

Note also that Phil at hyperekperissou has posted the "Patristic Roundup" for Dec. 28 2006-Jan 3, 2007. He even includes a post from yours truly on the Didache.

Edward Cook (Ralph the Sacred River) posts a rant about atheists, liberals and "orthodox folks". He catches sentiment that I feel from time to time too. The upshot seems to be about defending orthodoxy and Christian faith, and how some quarters seem to do a lot of defending, and others do a lot of permitting.

I'm reminded of a recent review (h/t: Bob and Eli) of Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion, posted by the London Review of Books. The author of the review is Terry Eagleton. And if you wanted to read someone's literary smack-down of Dawkins' tripe, then you should read the review. Here's the opening sentence — and it gets better from there:

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

As you read, you'll realize Eagleton likely lies on the 'liberal' side of Cook's dichotomy.

Yes, I realize I'm a bit late here (the conferences were a month ago!) but I said I'd do it, so here's the list.

• Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham. What a book! Lots to interact with in this one, and I'm thoroughly enjoying reading it. Also note Chris Tilling's series on the book with interaction from the Bauck-meister himself.
• Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition by Wayne Kannaday. I'm looking forward to this one.
• The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins by Larry Hurtado. I've read the preface and the premise sounds interesting. And, it's Hurtado so it's gotta be good.
• Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians: Volume I by Ben Witherington III. The essay on pseudepigrapha has been worth the price of admission.
• The Letters to Timothy and Titus (NICNT) by Philip Towner
• A Textual Guide to the New Testament by Roger L. Omanson

A few others are on order (one on Paul and First Century Letter Writing from IVP, and Chrys Caragounis on the Development of NT Greek from Baker). Look for me to write more about Bauckham's book in the future (though not likely right away ... ).

My old laptop is in the process of giving up the ghost (monitor freakiness) so it was time to take the plunge and buy a new laptop.

It was also time to get some serious hard drive space. With Brannan child #1 on the way in May, Daddy will need some serious drive space to archive every waking moment of the surely-to-be-beautiful child and its antics.

So I purchased a Western Digital 250GB My Book Essential Edition external hard drive. This thing is beautiful and I'm looking forward to setting it up. I plan on reformatting it (it comes formatted for FAT32; I want to make it NTFS) but that shouldn't be an issue. Apart from that (which is completely optional) it's just plugging into the computer's USB port. How cool is that?

If you're interested in more info or reviews, click the below link to hit Amazon's page with descriptions and reviews. It could make an excellent Christmas present for just about anyone who needs some serious drive space relief but doesn't want to mess with swapping out internal drives and all that jazz.

It's that time of year.

The Economist released their list of "Books of the year 2006". Not much sounds interesting to me, save the de Tocqueville biography, and that won't even be published in the US until March 2007 ... though you can buy it from Amazon today. If you're really interested, get it from Amazon.co.uk and have it shipped to the states.

But hey, I've got an armload of books (and then some) that I bought at ETS and SBL. I'll probably blog that list later since I've yet to do that.

Jim West did it, so did Stephen Carlson. Loren Rosson did it too. I figured I had to do it as well. So I took the quiz.

Turns out that I'm an "Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm". I'm described as:

You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.

Fairly accurate, apart from the bit about being in the final stages of a Ph.D., though I suppose I have found a way to make a living from my tastes in reading.

The blog hyperekperisou has published the first Patristics Carnival. It is patterned after the Biblical Studies Carnival (on which see Dr. Jim West's installment for December ... excellent job, Jim; apologies for not mentioning it sooner).

I was actually mentioned on the Patristics Carnival, for my current look at the Didache. This was a mixed blessing, however, because it painfully reminded me about the languishing of that particular series. Yes, I do need pick that one up again. December is always a busy month, but I'll see what I can do.

Michael Pahl of the stuff of earth blog has posted BSC:XI. Do check it out, he's done a stellar job of rounding up and aggregating the month's biblioblog discussion topics. There were even a few ricoblog posts represented. Thanks, Michael!

BSC:XII (for November, 2006) will be hosted by Jim West of the eponymous Dr. Jim West blog.

Looks like Volume 3 of the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism has been posted. There are 10 PDF articles, some of which look very interesting to me.

Remember, these articles won't be online forever. The Sheffield Phoenix Press will publish them as a print volume, and when they do that, the PDF goes offline. So download now, while you can.

(Thanks to Matt O'Donnell for the note)

Also: The JGRChJ now has an RSS feed. Pop it in your aggregators so you never miss an update.

Update (2006-10-30): Note that the tenth article, Robert Stephen Reid's Ad Herennium Argument Strategies in 1 Corinthians, has an invalid link. I'll update this post when I'm aware that this has been fixed.

Update (2006-10-31): The link to Reid's article has been fixed.

Stephen C. Carlson informs us that Hypotyposeis is three years old on Monday.

Congratulations!

I recall when I started ricoblog just over two years ago, Stephen was one of the first to link to me and has been an honest, encouraging, and critical (when he needs to be) supporter.

Please do head over and check out his blog, Hypotyposeis. And if you haven't read his book on Secret Mark yet ... well, you need to.

Via Marginal Revolution, please take note of AcademicBlogs.org, a wiki listing academic blogs by discipline and other sorts of criteria. The site describes itself as "The Academic Blog Portal".

The biblioblogosphere is woefully under-represented in the Religion/Theology section. If anyone has some spare time, perhaps at least the list from Bibloblogs.com could be added?

Update (2006-10-05): Danny Zacharias over at Deinde did his good deed for the day and added a list of biblioblogs. Thanks, Danny! Do hop over to AcademicBlogs.org and fill out what you can, even if it is adding a blurb for a non-blurbed biblioblog.

Ben Witherington has a post called Thoroughly Post-Modern Biblical Interpretation that is well worth reading. Go ahead, do it now.

I say: Preach it, Ben!

Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) has posted Biblical Studies Carnival IX.

It is a stellar example of typical Carlsonian excellence. Do check it out!

And thanks, Stephen, for linking to the recent Didache posts (here and here, series intro here). And he even hit my post on Sisyphean Tasks in Biblical Studies.

Loren Rosson's blog The Busybody has its one-year blog-iversary today.

Last week, Loren posted a retrospective. Be sure to check it out and read a few of the posts. My favorite posts of his to date had to do with his reading through C.S. Lewis' Perelandra.

So visit The Busybody, and check out some of the posts he highlights. And add him to your blogroll, feed reader or whatever if you haven't already done so.

You've read about it. You've waited five whole days for it. Now "Opposite Day" here.

Here's what we've got. This post will be updated over the next few days. If you opposite blog something, drop me a line (or a comment on this post) and I'll add your link here too.

• Rick Brannan (ricoblog, and your opposite-day host) introduces us to his friend Roberto, who writes about why Paul couldn't have written the Pastoral Epistles.
• Loren Rosson (The Busybody) introduces us to Leonard Ridge, who "will tell us why the social science models used by the Context Group are misguided, tools of hypertolerance, and intolerably racist".
• Jim West (Dr. Jim West) introduces us to an upcoming Czech scholar, Mij Tiew, who "will describe the necessity of adhering quite strictly to the exact text of the Hebrew Bible".
• Richard Anderson (dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos theolphilos) takes part in our fun little exercise as well.
• Danny Zacharias (deinde) introduces us to his friend, Hermann Acharias, who explains his "understanding of christian ethics and creation care".
• Rick Sumner (The Dilettante Exegete) introduces us to his friend Ryan Saunders, who offers "a criticism of [Rick's] approach to Jesus' eschatology".
• Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) introduces us to Carl Stephenson, who tells us about the trustworthiness of Morton Smith and does some mental gymnastics in other areas pertaining to Secret Mark.
• Chris Tilling (Chrisendom) takes a little different tack and introduces us to his most insightful friend, Cardinal Spin, who shares "his considered thoughts concerning that most sensitive of subjects: ‘Christian counselling’ "
• Chris Weimer (Thoughts on Antiquity) introduces us to Brooks Vermuli, who "holds that the Gospel of Matthew was written by a self-identifying Jew".

Thanks to Loren, Jim and Richard for their support and opposite-day contributions. I'll update the above as I see the links come available. And if you opposite blog this week, please let me know so I can keep the list complete!

Update: Danny Zacharias joins the fun; I've added his opposite-day link above.

Update II: Rick Sumner (whose blog I am unfamiliar with) joins in as well. Who's next?

Update III: Stephen C. Carlson jumps in the fray and has some fun with Opposite Day. Anyone else?

Update IV: Chris Tilling provides us with a Tillingesque peek at ... well, you've just got to read it. Any other takers?

Update V: Chris Weimer is part of the act as well. Check out what he's got going. Note I'll keep updating this post as I'm made aware of opposite blog entries over the next few days, so keep 'em comin'!

Thanks!

You should probably check out Steven Harris' (Theology and Biblical Studies) recent post, On finishing my studies. Some quotes:

"Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of studying theology is the questions that we begin to ask. Questions are the means by which we open up doors to exciting and challenging new adventures, but they are often also the means by which that which is familiar and comfortable can quickly unravel and fall apart."

...

"Theology was not, I quickly discovered, a matter of simply assembling proof-texts, baking them with my own presuppositions, and then voila! - producing doctrines by the dozen. Early on I learned that the most important lesson that I think anyone can ever learn in studying theology is to understand the mystery of God. For every question you answer as a theologian, you raise twenty more. We can never apprehend God or exhaust the depths of his being, we can only truly know him in wonder and in reverent awe."

It's a good post. Read it. Of course, I don't agree with everything he writes, but it will cause you to think — and that's good. So go check it out.

So head on over to Daily Hebrew and check out BSC:VII. H.H. Hardy has done a great job. Heck, ricoblog is even mentioned, so it's gotta be good!

Apparently they do. I stumbled across it searching around for other things today.

• OUPBlog

Even better, because I'm really not interested in most of the stuff on there, is their weekly etymology post (on Wednesdays) by Anatoly Liberman.

[non sequitur]

That reminds me, while we're on the subject of etymology, earlier today a colleague happened upon Ac 16.35-38 and noted that the word the ESV translates "police" might come from something originally meaning "guys with sticks". Of course I reminded him that this makes perfect sense because our English word "police" is really just a compound of "pole" and "ice" that hearkens back to the time when ice chunks were a valuable commodity. These "pole-icers" would use their poles to chunk the ice for sale. Because the ice was so valuable, they also started chasing away ice bandits with their poles ... effectively "policing" the area and securing the ice from ne'er-do-wells. We see the heritage today in the clubs that most policemen carry.

(Yes, that is sarcasm, not a bit of it meant to be serious. Please laugh along with me. Next we'll discuss the etymologies of "butterfly" and "cupboard" ... )

The June edition of the Biblical Studies Carnival, deftly wordsmithed by Benjamin Myers of the Faith and Theology blog, is available for the world to see. And ricoblog even got in there a few times!

If you don't regularly read Ben's stuff, you should. Read some more of his posts, like just about anything in his "popular posts" list.

Thanks, Ben!

Since I presented papers at both the ETS and SBL national conferences last year, and since I have had papers accepted for presentation at the same national conferences this year, it seems like it is time for a page on my personal web site that serves as the index to "academic" (whatever that means) papers and such that I write.

Here it is: Papers Presented at Academic Conferences

Check it out, this one isn't even for a programmer! It is for an Assistant Marketing Manager. This is on top of our standard jobs that we just keep descriptions up for.

So ... if Logos sounds cool but you're not a programmer type ... well, this one may be for you!

Also: I know blogging has been light lately. Hopefully I'll get a serious post or two up in the next few days (I've been working through Didache 4 ... )

I've been blogging about the Didache (off and on) for the past month or so. So imagine my surprise when I saw that Christianity Today has an article on the Didache titled "What the Teaching Can Teach Us". "Teaching" is, of course, the translation of Didache.

So if you're searching around for info on the Didache or just want to see what it says. I'm working through the text, making my own provisional translation, and writing a series of notes reflective of my thoughts as I work through the text. See ricoblog's Didache category for more info and all relevant posts.

(h/t: Michael Bird's blog Euangelion for the link to CT)

My favorite book cataloguing site and my favorite used book site form a partnership. Check out the press release from Abebooks.

Let's just hope there isn't an 'AbeThing' in the offing. But all in all, it sounds awesome. Congrats, Tim!

Related News: Check out LibraryThing's new Thing-ology blog if you're at all into book cataloguing or social aspects of networks.

If you're a reader, you'll appreciate one of Scot McKnight's latest posts (how does the man write so much?!), On Marking Books. Here's a heavily ellipsed quote:

Eighth, if you don’t like a book don’t read it. ... If you find a book boring, find one that isn’t boring. And that will limit the writers you read, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, it will lead you to cut back on some influential biblical scholars who have the capacity to write mind-numbing prose backed up with buckets of references and footnotes that show off everything they’ve read and don’t advance the argument — except to show that they’ve read the stuff.

Some ricoblog readers may be interested in this post I wrote for the Logos Bible Software Blog.

It is a decent example of some of the benefits of searching the Greek New Testament by taking syntactic criteria (clauses, phrases, and relationships between words, phrases and clause components; along with morphological criteria, proximity and agreement) into account in comparison with similar searching that only takes morphological criteria (parsing/declension and lexical forms) along with proximity and agreement into account.

Phew. That's a lot of fancy words. Just read the post and you'll see what I mean.

[disclaimer: I do work for Logos Bible Software, but the below post is from me, not from Logos.]

If you're in Biblical Studies at all, working with the text of the Hebrew Bible or the Greek New Testament, you've heard of the Hermeneia Commentary series.

All 40 published volumes will be published as a CD-ROM product in the Libronix Digital Library System (LDLS), fully compatible and complementary to Logos Bible Software.

You can pre-order Hermeneia now via the Logos Pre-Publication system. The price is currently $500 (do the math: $12.50 per volume!), the pre-pub system only charges you upon release and shipment of the software.

You don't have to like the conclusions of the Hermeneia commentaries, but if you're doing anything serious, you have to deal with them. The series is unique in that it includes volumes of extra-biblical material too (e.g., 1 Enoch, Didache, Ignatian Epistles, 4 Ezra, etc.).

More info is on the pre-pub page. Do check it out.

It's up at Blue Cord. Check it out!

Thanks, Kevin, for your work in putting it together and hosting BSC:V.

BSC:VI is scheduled for Benjamin Myers' Faith and Theology blog next month, so keep your eyes peeled for potential submissions. 

As many readers know, I work for Logos Bible Software. We've been working on a substantial upgrade for two years now. The upgrade is substantial in both application capability and in data sets.

Well, today is the day. It's finally here. And it's shipping. We have stock in-house and it is leaving the building starting today. I'm sooooooo stoked!

First, check out the post to the Logos Bible Software blog about Logos 3.

Next, check out the message that was just sent to our newsgroups:

---

Logos Bible Software 3 is here!

Visit our online upgrade tool http://www.logos.com/upgrade to get a personalized discount and a chart showing all the new books and Addins you'll get when you upgrade.

More details are coming online as we make the pages live; here are a few that are up now:

• http://www.logos.com/newproducts - links to the new products
• http://www.logos.com/logos3/100 - 100 new features in Logos 3
• http://www.logos.com/products/info/comparison - comparison chart for the new collections

---

My role has been specifically in New Testament Greek stuff — reverse interlinears, syntax databases, new morphological databases and a few other things. I'll just say: I think the Bible Word Study report is awesome!

Also note that H.H. Hardy at the Daily Hebrew blog has been blogging a bit about Logos Bible Software 3. See his software category for several posts that have to do with the new version. (note: Direct links to posts removed due to problems linking to URLs with spaces in them).

Michael Bird, blogging at Euangelion, has two excellent Easter-related posts that you should really go read.

• Good Friday Thought: Penal Substitution. This makes me realize I need to re-read Carson's essay in Hill & James' The Glory of the Atonement.
• What Does the Resurrection Mean? Another thought-provoker. What does the resurrection really mean, and does it have consequence in my life?

Thanks, Michael.

Update (2006-04-15): Here's a quote from Carson's essay:

Forgiveness, restoration, salvation, reconciliation -- all are possible, not because sins have somehow been cancelled as if they never were, but because another bore them unjustly. But by this adverb "unjustly" I mean that the person who bore them was just and did not deserve the punishment, not that some moral "system" that God was administering was thereby distorted. Rather, the God against whom the offenses were done pronounced sentence and sent his Son to bear the sentence (Ro 5.8); he made him who had no sin to be sin for us (2Co 5.21). And the purpose of this substitution was that "in him we might become the righteousness of God." (Carson, 134)

Note that two articles for Volume 3 (2006 edition) of the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism have been posted.

• Craig Evans: Messianic Hopes and Messianic Figures in Late Antiquity
• Richard Van Egmond: The Messianic 'Son of David' in Matthew

The full PDF of the articles are available until the volume is complete. Once the volume is complete, if past practice is an indicator for future expectation, the PDFs will be taken offline and the complete volume published by Sheffield-Phoenix Press. See JGRChJ's about page for more information.

Now, if JGRChJ would just have an RSS feed so I don't have to continually remember to check the site for updates ...

Since everyone else is blogging about the Gospel of Judas, I figure I will too. But briefly.

Best Post about Gospel of Judas: Ben Witherington III. Awesome. And I've really got to get my hands on his Pastorals/Johannines commentary when it comes out. I'll offer again: Need any advance readers, Dr. Witherington? I'm available! And I'm into the Pastorals!

Best Aggregation of Links: Mark Goodacre's Gospel of Judas megapost. Though note that Mark links to Roger Pearse as the go-to spot for ongoing internet coverage/references.

Best Live-Blogging of National Geographic Special: Jim West. I don't have a TV, and I spent the day with Amy anyway. (My thought process: Spend the day with my beloved, or wait around to watch some seemingly-authoritative sensationalisation of a 4th century gnostic MS likely derived from 2nd century source. Now that's an easy choice, no?) I read the English translation when it came out on Friday (or whenever that was). As many others (including Jim) said: Standard gnostic fare, nothing really new to see here.

Now, if you'll indulge me, here's a tale of what I thought when reading the English translation:

What came to mind when I read the English translation of this heretical and false "gospel", you know, where Judas recieves the oh-so-typical gnostic secret knowledge, and then he betrays Jesus and therefore ushers in Jesus' death?

All I could think of was the original Star Wars movie ("Episode IV" to you young'uns). You know, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader duking it out? Obi-Wan stops and says something like, "if you strike me down, you will make me more powerful than you could ever imagine", and then Vader cuts him in half?

Yeah, that's what I thought of.

Loren Rosson (The Busybody) has posted the Biblical Studies Carnival IV, his leisurely jaunt through biblioblogdom's March posts. Loren even saw fit to mention a few of my own posts amongst the scads of bibliobloggin' he was able to summarise so nicely.

Excellent, Loren. Thanks for keeping us all informed and pointing out a few new blogs too!

Helen-Ann Hartley links to a report from the BBC about a Dutchman who is building a replica of Noah's Ark.

Cool!

The BBC story has a link to a website for the project, ArkVanNoach.com. It consists of a video in Dutch (which appears to be what most of the article is based on). I don't understand Dutch (though I understood when the reporter asked, "What does your wife think of all this?") but the video was cool. That is one massive vessel.

Speaking as a fellow boatbuilder (yes, I've built my own wooden boat, from scratch) I can only say that the ark project is massive. It took me a few years in my spare time to build my 18 foot sea kayak. I can't even begin to imagine the issues one would have to deal with to build a replica of Noah's ark.

Jim Davila's blog PaleoJudaica turns three today.

Congratulations, Jim! Thanks for the work that keeps PaleoJudaica interesting, informative and witty. Of course, in my limited experience with Jim, he's been interesting, informative and witty too.

Stop by his roundup of PaleoJudaica's previous year and check out a few of the posts he highlights. Then get it in your aggregator if for some reason you haven't done that yet.

Stop what you're doing and head to the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog and read the interview with Dan Wallace. And read the comments too.

There's even a section in there on the faith/scholarship issue.

A few things I've wanted to note but haven't done so yet. It makes sense to put them all in one post instead of string them out. So ... here goes.

• Biblical Studies Carnival IV Call for Submissions: Loren Rosson III (The Busybody) has put out the call for BSC:IV. Gather your links and send them off to him. Be sure to send links both from your own blog and from other blogs you read that you think would be good to post. See Loren's post for submission how-to info.
• Power Law in Biblical Citations: Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) has another typically thought-provoking post. Cool stuff. The Logos Bible Software Blog followed up on Stephen's post with some discussion of a prototype report we were working on awhile back that searches Logos Bible Software for similar information.
• Biblioblogs.com Interviews Chris Heard: The biblioblogger du jour ... er, du month (sorry, I don't know French) is Chris Heard (Higgaion). Check out the interview and give his blog a look-see if you don't already read his stuff daily.

Enjoy! And make sure to send some submissions for BSC:IV Loren's way, too.

Welcome to Biblical Studies Carnival III. It's been a month since Tyler Williams' most excellent Biblical Studies Carnival redivivus post that brought us up to date and walked us through the biblioblogosphere happenings for the month of January.

I've slipped my feet into his gigantic shoes and walked around a bit. It may not be as pretty as Tyler's prosaic post-smithing and it may not be as smooth, but it is Biblical Studies Carnival III! Take off your coat and your shoes; make yourself at home. February is a short month but there is still much to review.

The posts highlighted in this Carnival are but a small sampling of the sheer chunky goodness that comprises February's Biblical Studies bloggin' fare. Please feel free to click the sidebar links to explore other Biblical Studies Blogs. Or head to the motherlode, biblioblogs.com for a more comprehensive listing.

Enough with the preliminaries, on with the show!

[Update I: If you've already read BSC:III, please note the addendum section on the bottom. This will be updated as necessary. Thanks!]

Podcasts!

Let's start with the completely new. February brought podcasts upon us. Ben Myers of Faith and Theology got the ball rolling with a podcast titled What is the Gospel? and followed it up with The Bible and theology. The biblioblogosphere's own worship chorus lyricist of power, Chris Tilling of Chrisendom, followed up Ben's original podcast with Gospel in Paul. On the last day of the month, Steven Harris of Theology and Biblical Studies adds a podcast (with transcript!) with Jesus and Guantanamo Bay.

Faith and Scholarship

It seems just about everyone is interacting with Michael Fox's SBL Forum Essay, Bible Scholarship and Faith-Based Study. I've stayed out of the way because I'm on the fringes of the academic realm due to my interests and occupation. I'm not a direct player. But this has been bouncing about the blogosphere so it is well worth mentioning here. At this point, though, rather than retrace the history of the interaction is it probably best to simply point to Danny Zacharias (deinde) who has tracked the discussion and indicated he'll be updating his blogger-cooler discussion on the topic as the discussion continues.

Archaeology

A common area of posting in the Biblical Studies realm has to do with archaeology of the ancient near east. February was no exception. Joe Cathey (Dr. Cathey's Blog) started us out with his Top Five Archaeological Finds for Hebrew Bible. He followed it shortly with his Research Bibliography - Tel Dan Stele. Then Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica.com got in the act providing us with a glimpse at how he would modify Joe's list.

This was only the beginning. Little did we know that Chris Heard of Higgaion was making lists, checking them twice, and listing all sorts of info about cool archaeological stuff. When the dust settled there were five Heardian lists of archaeological power: Of the making of lists there is no end, Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5.

While we're talking about lists, it seems proper to mention (even though it isn't properly under this topic) Ben Myers' (Faith and Theology) final list for theologians: A list of his lists for Essential Theologians.

Back to Archaeology: There's Daily Hebrew with a post regarding the Gezer calendar, complete with photographs, transcription and translation.

Hebrew Bible

While we're in the area, a few posts in the realm of Hebrew Bible are worth mentioning. Tim Bulkeley of SansBlogue posted asking all sorts of questions regarding an article on Abraham for a "coffee table book on the Bible". There's so much to say, how to shove it all in to 3500 words? This was shortly after Claude Mariottini posted on The City of Abraham. Claude posted a follow-up to Tim's post that addressed some things Tim was pondering regarding historicity and how to approach this problem for the presentation in a coffee-table book. Interesting stuff. Tim provided a response concluding, essentially, that writing from a strict approach (e.g. maximalist or minimalist) would be relatively easy; but writing something that walks the fence for popular presentation is more difficult.

Next, Daily Hebrew blogs about Gomorrah. Now, this NT Greek student (i.e. Rico) doesn't follow much of this, but he follows enough to know whenever cognate languages are responsibly invoked, one should listen carefully. 

Elsewhere in Hebrew Bible, Tyler Williams of Codex Blogspot did his Valentine's Day duty with The Most Excellent of Songs (The Challenge of Translating Metaphors). Makes me wax poetic ... and no, I'm not saying that with a fake Scottish or Irish accent!

New Testament

Speaking of Valentine's Day, on the New Testament side Brandon Wason of Novum Testamentum filled the void and blogged some mighty fine bloggin' 'bout Love in the New Testament.

Even though love is the greatest (cf. 1Co 13.13), and even though (as John, Paul, George and Ringo would have us think) "All you need is love", there's more than that going on in the NT, and we need to be reminded of it. Mark Goodacre of NT Gateway Weblog brings us back with two posts on Historical Jesus studies: Forgotten Criteria, Post I, Post II.

Then we have Darrell Pursiful in the new-to-me blog Disert Paths blogging on The Nazoreans. He's got a six-post series on the topic (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) that you may want to check out.

Next is Richard H. Anderson of dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos theophilos, writing about The Fruits Theology of Matthew, considering use of the word "fruits" (6x in Mt) and its implications.

Propitiation is an important concept, so it is valuable to discuss. Suzanne McCarthy does just that in her post for the Better Bibles Blog on Propitiation. Loren Rosson (The Busybody) follows up and interacts with The Mercy Seat of Rom 3.25.

And let's not forget about AKMA and his Random Thoughts. His post Derogating the Divine discusses the issue of blasphemy. It's worth reading.

Pastoral Epistles

There was a decent amount of action in the area of the Pastoral Epistles, so much so that it warrants splitting it out from the section on the New Testament.

First, Ben Witherington treats us to an excerpt from his upcoming commentary on the Pastorals on 2Ti 3.16: On the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture.

But the big action was on that always controversial portion of First Timothy, 1Ti 2.15. It started with a post by Aaron O'Kelly of Aaron's Corner called Once More: Saved Through Childbearing. This was followed by David Ritsema on 1Ti 2.15. Rick Brannan of PastoralEpistles.com followed this up with some musings of his own, Saved by Childbirth in 1Ti 2.15 and a Follow-up. Somewhere between those two posts, Wayne Leman of Better Bibles Blog posted on the topic, and David Ritsema offered some more thoughts (here and here).

Ben Witherington adds his own thoughts on the topic in his post Literal Renderings of Texts of Contention.

Read them all, and especially the comments (especially on Ben Witherington's posts).  

Textual Criticism

The folks at the group blog Evangelical Textual Criticism have a few goodies for us this month as well. Peter M. Head posts about 0220 at Romans 5.1, complete with a cropped photo of the variant in question. It is a good reminder that getting a gander at the MS is always a good thing to try to do. One of the comments on that post led to another interesting post, with Peter M. Head posting for Ulrich Schmid, on Two Early Editions of the Pauline Corpus.

Just beating the end-of-February deadline, P. J. Williams of Evanagelical Textual Criticism posts on Inerrancy and Textual Criticism. Some interesting thoughts to consider. 

While the MSS that the gents at Evangelical Textual Criticism discuss are hundreds of years old, examiniation of MSS of a different origin has begun. Rick Brannan of ricoblog has posted samples of handwritten manuscripts that folks have submitted to him. His project is to acquire 8-10 copies of Second Timothy from volunteer scribes, collate the variants, and see what happens. 

Stephen C. Carlson of Hypotyposeis is also dealing with manuscripts again; this time with an SBL paper proposal about Archaic Mark. Carlson has suspicions about the manuscript. And you can check the manuscript yourself; P. J. Williams of Evangelical Textual Criticism posted a link to an article announcing the availability of digital images of Archaic Mark. You can see the images of Archaic Mark for yourself. (How cool is that?!)

Books and Book Reviews

It isn't a biblioblog review if we don't talk about books, right?

What better place to start than with Biblioblogdom's own Tim Bulkeley (SansBlogue) and the publication of his Hypertext Commentary on Amos? Congratulations, Tim!

Ben Witherington offers us a peek at what he's got in the hopper with A Preview of What's Next. I'm anxious for his work on the Pastorals (any chance of an advance copy to review? Please?) though the rest sounds pretty fab-o-riffic.

But we haven't talked about real books yet. You know, that are already published in print and available today. But Loren Rosson (The Busybody) has. He blogged about April DeConick's Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas in his post The Rolling Gospel of Thomas. Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) provides his own thoughts and interacts with Loren's review.

Loren is a busy reader. He's also posted a review of Social Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul. Make sure to check it out.

Humor and Other Things

There are just too many posts to categorize, so I decided to use a catch-all heading. We'll start out with one of the funnier posts of the month, from Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) with his February 21 list of On This Day in Biblical Studies.

Moving from the humorous to the serious, Jim West (Petros Baptist Church) blogs about Why Biblical Scholars and Theologians Must Self-Publish.

From the serious to the mythic, Kevin P. Edgecomb (biblicalia) offers thoughts on Myth, Legend, Folklore.

From the mythic to the new, please take note of the new blog from David Croteau, Slave of the Word. David is a recent Ph.D. in New Testament from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and, from the looks of his blog has done some serious research in the realm of tithing. Be sure to give David's blog a look-see.

Addendum (2006-03-01)

With apologies to Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica.com, I've inadvertently left out a post of his that really should've been included: His notice of Professor Emeritus Robert Wilson's 90th birthday. Professor Wilson's work is all over — I happen to be reading through the New Testament Apocrypha volumes he edited and translated from Schneemelcher. Happiest birthday wishes and many happy returns, Professor Wilson!

Upcoming Biblical Studies Carnivals

Bibilical Studies Carnival IV (BSC:IV) will be hosted by Loren Rosson III at The Busybody in the first week of April, 2006. Look for a call for submissions on his blog soon.

Submissions (which should be blog entries posted in March 2006) for the next Biblical Studies Carnival may be emailed to biblical_studies_carnival [AT] hotmail.com or entered via the submission form provided by Blog Carnival here.

For information about the Biblical Studies Carnival please consult the Biblical Studies Carnival Homepage.

Cheers, all, and happy browsing!

My good friend (and my boss, but that has nothing to do with this) Bob Pritchett has written a book called Fire Someone Today. It hits the streets in April, published by Nelson Business. Don't worry, the book isn't all about firing people — though that chapter does deal with a lesson that can be tough to learn in any environment.

Business books aren't normally my cup of tea. Bob's book, however, is not a mushed pablum of "you can do it!" positive expectation management crud; and it is not simply a list of maxims with some expanded and vapid thoughts. Instead, Bob writes about experiences he's had and what he's learned in the context of running a small business (Logos Bible Software). This is take-home stuff that can be applied.

While the chapters are geared toward entrepreneurs, there are some that are generally applicable outside of that environment. The chapter that simply recommends that you take people to lunch — frequently — is a good one that can be applied just about anywhere. If you have a colleague whom you respect or want to know more about, invite him to lunch. If you have students, or a pastor, or a parishioner you'd like to become more familiar with, lunch is a great option.

Anyway, check out the preview info on Bob's book on his web site, FireSomeoneToday.com.

And Stephen C. Carlson of Hypotyposeis tells us why.

So head on over to Tyler Williams' Codex Blogspot and check it out.

Biblical Studies Carnival III will be hosted right here on ricoblog; an announcement and post submission information is forthcoming. Until then, head to the carnival and check out the links. You might even find a few links to ye olde ricoblog ...

OK, not so many notes but I did want to combine two things in this post.

First, Loren Rosson's The Busybody blog hit 10000 visits. Excellent. You should contribute to that number and visit the site; particularly his posts about the C.S. Lewis book Perelandra and his post on Dangerous Ideas.

Second, Happy Birthday Joe Cathey! If you haven't read Joe's blog before, you should. It is a mix of interesting stuff (particularly material dealing with Hebrew Bible, archaeology, etc.) that you're not likely to find elsewhere.

No, really, it's cool. Here's a site where you can create your own graph paper as PDF files. All sorts of styles. Spec your stuff, save to PDF, use over and over and over and over again.

(Thanks, Bob, for the pointer!)

For those interested, Publishers Weekly is running an interview with Bart Ehrman on his recent book Misquoting Jesus.

The interview is really short, so don't get your hopes up. FWIW, I blogged briefly on the book back in July when PW had a preview of the book.

Several others have mentioned this, but it bears mentioning. The Call for Submissions to the next Biblical Studies Carnival has been made by Tyler Williams of Codex Blogspot.

For the uninitiated, the idea of a 'Carnival' style post is to grab a bunch of good/quality/representative/whatever posts for a given time frame (usually a month or bi-weekly) and post links and a short narrative describing them. It is a pretty neat way to highlight good posts and — for bloggers — to do a little shameless self promotion (one of the secrets to any successful blog!).

So please check out Tyler's post, and please take a few minutes to nominate a few of the better posts you've read recently. It just takes sending an email to the carnival address. And, of course, feel free to nominate anything I've written recently. (See how easy shameless self promotion is? Go ahead, try it yourself!)

Any other children of the 80's out there have an insatiable urge to call it "Biblical Studies Carnival II: Electric Boogaloo"?

Update (2006-01-24): It's official. ricoblog will be hosting Biblical Studies Carnival III. So after you're done feeding Tyler all of your awesome-wicked-cool Biblical Studies blog permalinks (you can even use a groovy submission form!) keep an eye out in February for cool stuff to send my way for the March carnival. FWIW, the list of forthcoming carnival hosts is up at the Biblical Studies Carnival page. [Blogging newbies note: This is an excellent opportunity for more shameless self promotion! See, you get a link out of the deal from the carnival page (which Tyler has done an excellent job setting up); and even better you'll get a bunch of links and traffic when the carnival you host runs, introducing all sorts of folks to your corner of biblical-studies-blogdom. All for the price of a little blog-trawling (which you're likely doing anyway) and some clever prose to wrap it all up in one post. How cool is that?]

It's true, Logos Bible Software (my employer) has placed three new titles into its "pre-publication" system. These are things that we'll work on given enough interest to cover costs. These titles are:

• Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (very nearly over the top ... rush and reserve it at what will likely be its lowest price — $69.95 as I type this, it will change!)
• G.C. Berkhouwer's 14 volume Studies in Dogmatics. Hoo-baby that's awesome! And, I mean, Berkhouwer is Dutch, so you know it's gotta be good!
• The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday's Texts (3 vols). I know little about this because I don't come from a tradition that uses the lectionary. But it is still worth checking out, particularly if you use the lectionary in your worship and teaching.

If you're unfamiliar with the Logos Prepublication System, there is more info on the Logos web site.

A few random things, none of which seems worthy of a whole post.

First, fans and friends of Coptic -- Logos Bible Software want to publish Crum's Coptic Dictionary as well as Smith's Concise Coptic-English Lexicon (which serves as a supplement of sorts to Crum, accounting for Nag Hammadi material). Oh, these would be so cool! So get off yer duff, and get these wonderful references out of the pre-pub system and into production! I've only studied Coptic a little, but boy-howdy would these be cool to be able to utilize. For more Coptic goodness, see my Coptic books at LibraryThing.

Second, an update on MS copying -- I've had two brave souls offer to be guinea pigs ... er, uh, manuscript copyists. So I'm starting the project. Anyone else want to help?

Third, Joe and Jim -- you guys crack me up. Hey, maybe in 2006 y'all can post on a topic that you both can agree on? (Just a joke; couldn't help it.) On tea, I say loose may be better but bags are easier, so it depends on mood for me. On coffee ... well, I've posted on coffee before (a long time ago).

That's it. Enjoy the weekend, y'all.

Here's a post on the blog Campus Mawrtius offering hints and clues on remembering your Greek numerals.

And this one isn't for a programmer. It is for Project Manager, Electronic Text Development. Check it out if it sounds interesting to you.

Awhile back, Bob and I were doing a lot of reading about the founding fathers. Guys like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Gouverner Morris. But our favorite was John Adams. If you're into history and biography, you should get a copy of David McCollough's John Adams. This is what historical biography should be like.

Adams was a prolific letter writer. And just yesterday, I noticed that the Massachusetts Historical Society's Adams Family Papers site has made the correspondence between John Adams and his wife Abigail public.

There are images of the letters as well as transcriptions. Letters from John to Abigail and from Abigail to John are there.

One letter (from Oct. 4 1762, during the Adams' courtship, apparently) gives some insight into the sort of guy that Adams could be.

Lots of little things, nothing worthy of a well thought out extended post (or even a poorly thought out extended post, as is normal here) but all sorts of stuff to mention.

First, Happy Blog-Day to Joe Cathey. He's been going strong at Dr. Cathey's Blog for a year now. I had the opportunity to meet Joe at SBL, and the pleasure was all mine, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to more.

Second, check out the post How Google Changes Information Markets at Marginal Revolution. It is about Google and negative externalities. Some good thoughts there. Check it out even if you don't know what "negative externalities" are.

Third, I note that Ed Cook (Ralph the Sacred River) has listed his second annual Ralphies. He then asks other bloggers for their own lists. I have to be honest and say that I really don't recall seeing any movies released this year. Also, I listen to a very eclectic set of music I cobble together using RealRhapsody. And I haven't read any fiction released this year. With that caveat ...

Best NONFICTION BOOK I read this year: Rhetoric at the Boundaries by Bruce Longenecker. I've blogged on this already. I think this was a favorite read of mine because I got to see how the study of rhetoric could be usefully and somewhat pragmatically applied to the text. And that is huge. Read it if you haven't.

Best FICTION BOOK I read this year: I count the Chronicles of Narnia as one book. I read them earlier this year, and they were (as always) awesome. And no, I don't plan on seeing the movie — I have too many pictures of Narnia and such formed in my imagination to pollute it with someone else's movie version. Lord of the Rings, while I immensely enjoyed the movies, will be different for me the next time I read it; I'll see the movie instead of my own imagined Middle Earth (except for Ghan Buri Ghan and the tree people ... ). I don't want that to happen to Narnia.

And thanks, Ed, for the reference to Millar's The Roman Near East, 31 BC-AD 337. I'll have to add it to the list. Thankfully, there are versions available at under 20 bucks! (13 bucks for a used paperback copy, 20 bucks for used hardcovers)

Fourth, speaking of cool books ... anyone wanna buy Rico a Christmas present? (Hey, it's worth a shot!)

M.R. James' Old Testament Legends: Being Stories Out of Some of the Less-Known Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament has been keyed and is now available via Project Gutenberg.

Here's the TOC:

ADAM
THE DEATH OF ADAM AND EVE
ABRAHAM
THE STORY OF ASENETH, JOSEPH'S WIFE
JOB
SOLOMON AND THE DEMONS
THE STORY OF EBEDMELECH THE ETHIOPIAN, AND OF THE  DEATH OF JEREMIAH
AHIKAR

What I'm not aware of is whether or not these are translations or retellings. They are not versified; so I'm inclined to think they may be retellings instead of formal translations. The preface does list the source(s) used for each document.

There's also a zip file with some of the page images (illustrations).

Update (2005-12-13): Jim Davila (Paleojudaica.com) links and adds comments and more links about M.R. James, his writings, his contributions and further discussion. All worth the read. Go check it out.

This week's Religion Bookline (from Publishers Weekly) has a short article about the launching of IVP Academic.

It's about time for IVP to make this sort of stuff a formal division with a focus. I've enjoyed several academically-geared titles from IVP in the past and am looking forward to more good stuff from them in the years to come.

I picked up a flyer from IVP on this at the ETS conference, though I can't find the content of that flyer on their web site.

Today is Ralph the Sacred River's one-year birthday.

If you don't read Ed Cook's stuff, you should. Even though I'm not in the realm of Aramaic studies, I learn from reading Ralph.

One of my favorite Ralph posts to date: Some Lines from Milosz.

I've added a few new blogs to the blogroll over the past few days.

First is Yasmin Finch's blog, yasminfinch. This has been discussed a bit in the biblioblogosphere, so it seems appropriate to add it and make mention. Be sure to check it out.

Second, I've received email from Dr. Claude Mariottini (as has Christopher Heard) announcing his blog on topics related to the Hebrew Bible. I've added his blog to my blogroll. Dr. Mariottini appears to write longer entries every few days. He is also working on a commentary of 1 & 2 Chronicles to be published in Hendrickson's NIBC series.

As for me: Time to dig back into the Pastorals. SBL is over. The Thanksgiving holiday has passed. And I've got a decent amount of work to do still.

No, not from me, of course. Check out this link from Marginal Revolution.

The article contains a link to a paper by John Cochrane (link is to PDF). It is relatively short (13 pages).

If I'd only read this before I wrote the paper for SBL ... speaking of which, I'll likely post the entire draft of the Biblioblog paper at the end of the week.

Be sure to note his section on seminar presentations, beginning on page 11 of the paper.

At least, that's what I thought. Didn't that whole thing get settled in the fourth century?

Apparently I'm wrong. World Magazine has an article by Gene Veith that mentions a Bible version called The Inclusive Bible. Veith (who seems rightly horrified by the Inclusive Bible) writes:

The Inclusive Bible follows the higher critics in leaving out the Pastoral Epistles and Revelation, and it follows The Da Vinci Code in including instead the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. This translation is endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the evangelical leader Tony Campolo.

I guess the editors still view the canon debate as open. So why not drop out Hebrews too? I mean, we don't really know who wrote it. And while we're at it, let's drop Jude out too. I mean, c'mon, it quotes Enoch and it is really kind of weird to boot. Can't we just get rid of 'em?

Yes, folks, that is sarcasm. I guess it was just too hard to make the Pastoral Epistles "inclusive" so they figured they'd drop the whole lot. You can argue all you want about Pauline authorship; I'd contend that matter is certainly not at the point where removal from the canon should be considered. In the area of canon, with established books, doubt on the part of some should not lead to outright dismissal of the book. (This is inclusivity?)

Makes me wonder what they did with the shorter & longer endings of Mark. Or John 7.58-8.11. Or 1Jn 5.7-8. I mean, you know, stuff that is really uncertain from a bona-fide text-critical point of view. Did they drop those passages too? Or are they OK because they don't have any "inclusivity" issues?

How is it "inclusive" for this edition to remove books from the canon like this?

Update (2005-11-03): Thanks to prodding from a ricoblog reader and some curiosity of my own, I did a little searching for more information on this. I can't find any listing for something called The Inclusive Bible that fits Veith's description. The closest I can find (thanks for the pointer, John) is a listing at AltaMira Press. This seems to be equivalent with a translation by "Priests for Equality" mentioned earlier (and uncited by me) in Veith's article.

Is there such a translation as the one Veith describes? If so, and if you know the publisher and can point me to a page that describes the contents and philosophy of the translation, I'd be appreciative. Until then, I apologize for the noise. Thanks!

Two items. First, Jim West has already referred to his favorite of Martin Luther's 95 Theses. If you'd like, I've placed a PDF online of all of the theses for you to download. Read them all and see what was going on in Luther's head and heart on that day almost 500 years ago.

Second, check out this post that I wrote last year on what to read on All Hallow's Eve. I'll probably do the same this year.

Hi folks.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I've finally installed comments and trackbacks over at PastoralEpistles.com. You can read this post for more info.

If you haven't checked out the site in awhile, head on over. Particularly fun are the subject indexes and the reference indexes.

If you're new to PastoralEpistles.com, you may want to check out some of the Site Documents, particularly Introducing PastoralEpistles.com.

PW have a short article online on what is apparently called "God-Blogging".

There's even a conference called "GodBlog" coming up shortly. Of the five paragraphs that make up the article, the following paragraph was most interesting to me:

While the conference does not explicitly focus on helping bloggers parlay their work into books, one of the conference's sponsors is Multnomah Books, an evangelical Christian publishing house that publishes titles on current events and Christian living, as well adult fiction.

I won't be there (nor do I really want to be) but if anyone at Multnomah (or anywhere else, for that matter) wants to talk to me about books based on blog content ... well, the email address is (and has always been) available via link on the sidebar.

Hey, it's worth a shot, isn't it?

I'm going through some articles I've frittered away in hopes of using them in the paper I'm working on for the session.

However, they're just not going to really fit. I'm going to keep them in the bibliography and may even allude to them, but I won't be able to discuss them.

So, since they are (as far as I'm concerned) relevant to the discussion, I thought I'd post citations and links here. That way folks could start to poke through them and they might even prod some discussion during the panel session.

Here they are:

• Carter, Joe. Notes on Blogging: The 5/150 Principle. No pages. Cited September 8, 2005. Online: http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001584.html.
• Mazzocchi, Stefano. Data First vs. Structure First. No pages. Cited July 29, 2005. Online: http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/93/.
• Sifry, Dave. State of the Blogosphere, August 2005, Part 3: Tags. No pages. Cited August 6, 2005. Online: http://www.technorati.com/weblog/2005/08/37.html.
• Tauber, James K. The World Wide Web as an Academic Forum: A Case Study of the Hellenistic Greek Linguistics Pages. No pages. Cited August 11, 2005. Online: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw95/education4/tauber/.

Of particular interest to me are the articles by Mazzocchi and Carter. I still may fit Mazzocchi in somehow, but not to the degree I'd like.

Not much time to blog, but I did want to make a few notes:

First, Biblioblogs.com interviews Stephen C. Carlson. Read the interview. It's quick and good — good questions, good answers. Especially the one about which biblioblogs Stephen finds most interesting.*

Second, if you're into Greek and syntax, you've got to see this. If you're wondering why I'm not blogging much, that's one of the things taking up my time.

Third, worry not Hebrew syntax dudes (and dudettes). Check this out.

Fourth, if you've read ricoblog for awhile, you may recall some of my episodes in the realm of plumbing. Well ... more plumbing. Had a leak in a pipe in my front yard. Well beyond my skill, so I had to call in the plumbing ninja. I went with Favinger Plumbing in Bellingham, though Sullivan Plumbing seemed nice/capable, they were too busy (a not altogether bad sign). But kudos to Sullivan's for great customer service -- they directed me to Favinger knowing that I probably couldn't wait for them to get a plumbing ninja available. Plumber dude from Favinger did the trick quickly, professionally and with a smile on his face. All systems are go!

* And thanks for the mention, Stephen! Looks like I'll have to get busy and start back in with more interesting questions. I'm brewin' a few, hopefully I'll get one of 'em posted in the next week or so.

Cruising the Logos Bible Software newsgroups this morning (news://news.logos.com) I noticed that a user posted a link to a review of a museum exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibit (reviewed by the New York Times) is called Prague: The Crown of Bohemia: 1347-1437.

Diarmaid MacCullough's book The Reformation: A History (listed at Amazon for only $13.98, which is an incredible price for a hardcover book of this nature. I'd highly recommend purchasing if you have any interest in the history of the Reformation!) traces some of the history of Bohemia, so historical names, places and events mentioned in the review are familar to me.

The NYT review is great (though some portions are a bit much) and makes me wish I was there so I could go. Please check it out, and make sure to hit the slideshow for a few images — the badge from the Order of the Dragon is really cool!

Update (2005-09-27): Bob Pritchett, spending some time on holiday on the east coast, just called me to rub it in. He was in New York, wondering what to do for the day, so he decided to take the family to see the exhibit. He said it was pretty cool. But he didn't even get me any gift shop swag as thanks for pointing him there ...

Just checked the referrer logs and noticed that I've been linked to from daveblackonline. Dave has written a lot of cool stuff (check his book list), so I'm happy to find that he's linked here. I'd link back to the exact article, but it has no link anchor. So find the section for September 17, 2005, then find the paragraph that was entered at 7:53 AM. 

Thanks, Dave!

He linked to this entry I wrote about Erasmus' edition of the NT. If you're visiting from Dave's blog (or elsewhere!) and dig that sort of stuff, check out what I've written on Textual Criticism and Greek stuff in general. And be sure to pop ricoblog into your feed reader (use the RSS/ATOM links on the right).

Rather than nickel & dime y'all, I'll just throw out a few more links of stuff I've run across recently:

• Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies. Chances are you may know about this. You don't need to have deep knowledge of the Syriac language for the material to be valuable. For instance, this article is kind of cool. Browse around and see if you can find something.
• Bellingham Trail Guide. I know, many of you aren't in Bellingham, WA (Why not? Logos is hiring!). But if you are, then check out this map of trails in Bellingham Parks.

Lastly, I thought I'd mention some recently released Logos products. These are books (resources) that will work in your existing LDLS installation or by themselves if you don't have the LDLS installed:

• Nag Hammadi Library in English: Fourth Revised Edition. How can you not want this? Translations of all your favorite Coptic codices. This is the fourth edition of Robinson's edition.
• Eerdmans' Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. This one is cited in BDAG with some frequency. Look for 'EDNT' at the end of articles; that's when you're being referred to this resource. If you don't have BDAG, buy it first. But if you do have BDAG ... EDNT is an excellent supplement.
• Pillar New Testament Commentary (8 vols). Eerdmans is the publisher, D.A. Carson is the General Editor. It's not a technical commentary (a la WBC, ICC or NIGTC) but strives to convey the information needed for accurate exegesis. If you like WBC's "Comment" sections, but could do without the "Form/Structure/Setting" or "Notes" sections ... this one may be more your speed. Only eight volumes are presently in print: Matthew, Mark, John, Romans, Ephesians, Thessalonians, James, Johannine Epistles.

Ok, I'm going to get out of "corporate shill" mode now ... but I thought y'all really might be interested in those titles.

Update (2005-06-23): My Mom asks me about the trails. I've been on a few. Amy and I have been through a decent portion of Whatcom Falls park, as well as around Lake Padden a number of times. And Boulevard Park too. But I haven't been on the trails in Cornwall Park ... maybe we'll head there sometime in the next few weeks.

As the topic of Google Scholar has been broached in the biblioblogosphere before, I thought I'd post a link to this review of Google Scholar that was forwarded to me by a friend.

Maybe I'll have an entry later with some of my thoughts on the matter; maybe not.

I get a weekly "Religion BookLine" email from Publishers Weekly. I can't tell you how to sign up for it or even how to access the newsletter content on the web because, frankly, I can't remember how I did it and I can't find details on their web site.

This week's email has the following paragraph regarding Stephen C. Carlson's (Hypotyposeis) upcoming book on Secret Mark to be published by Baylor University Press:

A third debut exhibitor was Baylor University Press, there to hawk academic titles with trade appeal. The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith 's Invention of Secret Mark (Nov.) by Stephen C. Carlson is a real-life Da Vinci Code detective story set in academia. The mysterious gospel fragment purportedly found by American academic Smith has been fiercely debated since 1958, with academic dog-fighting over its authenticity and its homosexual innuendo. "This one is hot," said press director Carey C. Newman. "I get an e-mail a day about that book."

That prompted me to check out Baylor University Press' web site to see if they had further info. And they do. Check it out.

Looks like the PR machine is engaged. Enjoy the ride, Stephen!

Update (2005-06-09): Mark Goodacre (NTGateway Weblog) links to this post. Thanks, Mark!

Update II (2005-06-09): Wieland Willker posts a comment asking about email volume and wondering if "an e-mail a day" is a big deal. My guess is that the publisher isn't talking about simple inquiries as to book content, but instead is talking about distribution inquiries from booksellers or distribution agents, or reviewer requests — stuff like that. But that's just a guess on my part. Note also that Wieland has his own Secret Mark web page.

Hi folks.

I'm back. I was going to wait to post until tomorrow (Tuesday). But then I got up to date on Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway Weblog ... and notice that he announced that he's coming to America! I'm sure those in the blogosphere are already aware of this, but I just had to express my congratulations here. Apparently Duke is lucky in more than basketball.

Congratulations, Mark!

As for me, it was a good time away with family, friends and (of course) books. I was able to read a chunk of stuff, including:

• Chrisoph Unger. An Introduction to Relevance Theory. Available from: Bible translation files. Scroll to the bottom of the page, available in PDF, HTML or RTF.
• Kevin Gary Smith. Bible Translation and Relevance Theory: The Translation of Titus. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa). 2000. 260pp. I was able to read the first 100 pages of the dissertation, which works through relevance theory as applied to translation, to be applied to the book of Titus. I have not read the actual translation/notes on Titus. But I know a whole lot more about relevance theory now, and it seems to make sense. The application, however, is a different question. I'll need to work through some areas of Titus to grok that part.
• Stanley E. Porter and Matthew Brook O'Donnell. The Greek Verbal Network Viewed from a Probabilistic Standpoint: An Exercise in Hallidayan Linguistics, in Filologia Neotestamentaria vol XIV, pp. 3-41. 2001. Finished this one up. I'll need to read it again, though.
• Stanley E. Porter. Studies in the Greek New Testament: Theory and Practice. (New York: Peter Lang). 1996. 290pp. I read the first two essays: Greek Language and Linguistics and In Defense of Verbal Aspect. I'm itchin' to get to the lexicography article, but all good things will come in time.
• Stanley E. Porter (ed). The Pauline Canon. (Leiden: Brill). 2005. 254pp. I read a few articles in this one, including:
  • James W. Aageson. The Pastoral Epistles, Apostolic Authority, and the Development of the Pauline Scriptures.
  • Robert W. Wall. The Function of the Pastoral Letters within the Pauline Canon of the New Testament: A Canonical Approach.
  • Detlev Dormeyer. The Hellenistic Letter-formula and the Pauline Letter-scheme.
  • Mark Harding. Disputed and Undisputed Letters of Paul.

In Porter's Pauline Canon, nobody argued for Pauline authorship of the Pastorals (the seven genuine / six disputed perspective seemed dominant in what I read). I can't say that I'm surprised. But Wall's article was notable in that he specifically mentioned that one cannot simply brush aside the Pastoral Epistles when they are tough to interpret/exegete. Actually, his exact words are:

Sharply put with the particular interest of the present essay in view, the interpreter must steadfastly avoid the current practice of setting aside the three-letter collection of Pauline Pastorals as 'inauthentic' and accept their teaching as complimentary for a holist Pauline theology that is, in fact, authorized by the church's Scriptures. (Wall, in Porter, Pauline Canon, 37).

Harding's article takes a similar line, noting that even if the six disputed Paulines are not "genuine", they should stay in the canon and continue to be authoritative. Harding writes:

It would be fruitless, I believe, for the church to re-draw its canon today on the basis that had the early church known it was dealing with documents many scholars today regard as pseudepigrapha it would have rejected them. Pseudepigrapha were accepted because they bore a confirmin testimony to the significance of the Christ-event as that was interpreted, and as such were believed to be authentic. Anonymous books were erroneously attributed lest thier witness be lost to the church. These books enhanced the apostolic witness to the tradition articulated in the church form early times. That tradition had been accepted unquestionably as apostolic and was now inscripturated and in the process of being canonized. (Harding in Porter, Pauline Canon, 167)

Anyway, as I have time over the next few days (heh ... if I have time, that is ... things are going to be busy this week) I'll probably blog about some of these articles both here and on PastoralEpistles.com as I mull over them and think about them some more.

First, a little background for newer ricoblog readers.

I also run/post to a blog called PastoralEpistles.com. I'll let you guess the subject. Yesterday, on PastoralEpistles.com, I posted a link to a dissertation that discusses issues in Bible translation and applies principles discussed in the dissertation to the epistle of Titus.

In my email this evening, I received an email from Wayne Leman, who also happens to run the Better Bibles Blog (which you should check out if you haven't already). Wayne thanked me for posting the link and also provided a link to a general repository of papers and articles dealing with the issue of Bible Translation: Bible translation files available for downloading

I can immediately recommend Dooley & Levinsohn's Analyzing Discourse: A Manual of Basic Concepts; the PDF is available on the above site. I actually have the print for that title, it is available from SIL if you'd rather have bound paper. I'm also interested to read Christoph Unger's Introduction to Relevance Theory, provided I can understand it.

While I'm on the subject of SIL, I need to plug their helpful (though incomplete) series of Exegetical Summaries. These books are awesome, if you're working through a serious exegetical study of an NT epistle or other book, you probably want an Exegetical Summary if one is available. The volumes on Second Timothy and Titus have been helpful to me in my work on the Pastorals.

Update (2005-05-16): Regarding Wilson's question on SIL's Exegetical Summaries in LDLS format, one of them has been available for awhile: An Exegetical Summary of Philippians by J. Harold Greenlee. I can't speak as to the balance of them.

I forget when I ran across this, but it is helpful to me in remembering prepositions and what different combinations of preposition + case indicate.

(Thanks to John Schwandt and his site BiblicalGreek.org for the link.)

The site in question is called New Testament Greek: Prepositions. It is one of a number of lessons. After you go to the page, scroll down to section 2, "Examples" until you see the cartoon. Yes, it's a cartoon. But boy-howdy does it work!

Enjoy!

I don't want to bring politics into the ricoblog arena, but every now and then something just hits me. This is one of those times.

Despite your politics, despite whatever your stance on the situation in Iraq is, you need to go see a photo taken by Michael Yon in Mosul, and you need to read his description of the circumstances of the photo.

It made me cry, and I don't know that I'll get over it any time soon.

Check this out (hat tip: NRO's The Corner) from The Telegraph (UK).

Five men, ranging from an atheist in the pornography trade to a former Protestant paramilitary, have found their lives unexpectedly transformed in the latest incarnation of reality television - the monastery.

I'm not one for the "reality" TV schmaltz (or TV, for that matter) but I might be able to watch this. Too bad the story in the Telegraph spills the beans on the outcome. I won't divulge it all, but check this out:

Although participants were not required to vote each other out, they faced the challenge of living together in a community and following a disciplined regime of work and prayer. By the end, the atheist, Tony Burke, 29, became a believer and gave up his job producing trailers for a sex chat line after having what he described as a "religious experience".

...

At the end of one of these sessions, Mr Burke, his voicing breaking with emotion, confessed his feelings in a video-diary entry. "I didn't want this to happen," he said.

"But something touched me, something spoke to me very deeply. It was a religious experience.

"When I woke up this morning, I didn't believe in this but, as I speak to you now, I do. Whatever it is, I believe in it."

The participants, none of whom was a Roman Catholic, shared meals with the monks, worked in the grounds and joined in the daily office, from early morning Matins to Compline. They were also obliged to follow the monks' rules of silence, obedience and humility.

I can only hope that Mr Burke is plugged into a local church fellowship, and that he's able (and motivated) to put words and a framework around "it". He's got a tough row to hoe, I'd imagine. But if he is sincere and truly believes that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior, he is forgiven. And he's a brother. Say a prayer for Mr Burke this morning. 

Update (2005-05-04): I received an email message from Mr Burke. He'd like to send his thanks to those who have been praying for him.

Illuminated Manuscripts are cool.

I was searching around for some (I like to use stuff like this as the background on my portrait-oriented monitor) and happened across the British Library's Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

For instance, they've got some cool images from the Lindisfarne Gospels, like this image of St. John.

The easiest way I've found to browse the collections is to just go to the Manuscript Search page and use the drop-down to select a collection ("Cotton MS" for Lindisfarne) and leave the "MS Number" field blank. Then hit "Search".

Enjoy!

It's true. You can catch me in one o' them new-fangled movin' pictures over on Bob Pritchett's blog. Bob's Video Tour of Logos covers Logos Bible Software's Design & Editorial department. That's the department I'm in. It's where all of the cool people hang out, playing around with new data sets and figuring out how to implement them in the Libronix Digital Library System.

Update: My D&E colleague Eli chimes in on Bob's video.

My good friend Bob Pritchett* is back to blogging on a more regular basis. Bob doesn't necessarily blog about Logos Bible Software, but he does occassionally.

Of interest today: He's posted portions of a video tour of Logos. Check it out if you are curious about where the company is located, or what the building looks like on the inside. I think Bob plans to post other portions of the video tour in the future. Who knows ... you might even see some moving pictures of me there sometime!**

* President and CEO of Logos Bible Software; he's also my boss and a ricoblog reader so I have to say nice things about him. But that's easy to do as Bob is a great guy and a good friend. And his teriyaki grilled salmon is most excellent.

** I promise, no more pictures of my toe, and especially no moving pictures of the toe!

The "open access journal" meme has trotted about the biblioblogosphere recently (sorry, no links handy, but you know it has). In reading an economics blog (Truck & Barter), I came across a post linking to the Directory of Open Access Journals or DOAJ.

The listing of religion journals (26 of 'em) is available: DOAJ Religion Journal Listing. 

There is also a listing of Languages and Literatures Journals.

FWIW, the post and lone comment on the Truck & Barter site about sum up my thoughts from an economic point of view. But have fun with the journals -- there are a few in there that look like they may be worth checking out.

I was just made aware of an article on the Logos web site detailing the available RSS feeds and some options on how to set up feeds.

If you don't use an RSS aggregator (like my personal preference, SharpReader) the article gives some detail on how to use online aggregators like Bloglines and Pluck to subscribe to and read RSS feeds.

Give 'er a look.

Amy and I had dinner with my brother and his fiancée on Friday. It was the first time Amy and anyone in her family met a member of my family. All in all, it was a pretty cool night.

During the dinner conversation, talk turned to blogging and ricoblog in particular. I found out that my brother now checks ricoblog with regularity and that his fiancée plans to as well. So that means that ricoblog readership has officially doubled!

Ok, there are more readers than that (currently at around 100 unique hits a day mostly from searches for balsamic vinaigrette; with aggregator hits on top of that) but you get the picture. So I figured it was time for a welcome message for the new ricoblog readers.

If you're new to ricoblog, you probably want to read the about ricoblog article. That should cover most of the bases. If you're interested in the Apostolic Fathers, check out my Apostolic Fathers Lookup Tool. Or do a blog search for "Diognetus" or "Polycarp" or perhaps "Ignatius" for bloggin' on those sort of dudes using the search box in the sidebar. Or check out the different topic listings in the sidebar. Or the comprehensive site Table of Contents, organized by subject. Lots of fun stuff, just a click away.

All in all, welcome to the party. If you have questions, feel free to comment on articles or drop email to me at the address listed in the sidebar.

Thanks for readin'!

I'd heard rumors that one could use an RSS reader to check a Gmail inbox, but didn't know how to do it.

I stumbled across the secret sauce last night: How do I view Gmail messages with my aggregator? 

My morning blog reading brought me to Rubén Gómez' Bible Software Review and an announcement of a Mac version of the LDLS. I normally don't blog directly about Logos or the LDLS, but this seems like it can be an exception.

As Rubén says, this is not an April Fool's joke. I can confirm the rumors. Here are a few sources you can go to for more information:

• The Logos Bible Software for the Macintosh Q&A Page. Note that at the bottom of this page there is an email signup form. You can sign up to be updated of progress and announcements regarding Logos for the Mac.
• The Official Logos Press Release
• The Logos for the Mac Newsgroup at news://news.logos.com/macintosh
• Mark Kellner, computer columnist for the Washington Times, announces the Mac version in his weekly column.

There's a lot of work to do. Keep watching the Logos Macintosh newsgroups and make sure you subscribe to the email list to stay apprised of the latest developments for the Mac platform.

The Rhapsody Radish had a link to an artist I'd never heard of before — Justin Rosolino.

I've been listening to his album Wonderlust since I read about it. The description at the Radish is pretty much spot-on. Also, check out lyrics like these (complete album lyrics available online), from a song titled "Oprah" (audio sample available here):

VERSE I
Me and Oprah Winfrey met for coffee with St. Augustine in Amsterdam last Thursday afternoon
She made conversation with such perfect calculation while quietly I scribbled down this tune

PreChorus:
She tried her best to have the best intentions,
In as much as intentions can be
she asked us, “why do bad things have to happen
to good people like Stedman and me?”

CHORUS:
It’s the same conversation we’ve had so long
But I’m still waiting, and I’m still waiting
the radio stations play the same old song
But I’m still waiting I’m still waiting

Verse II
we began to psychoanalyze our opinions as they came to mind,
and she said she’d like to hear our point of view
She said “I just do what my heart tells me to, cause if it feels right, then it must be true. But wicked things are what wicked people do.”

PreChorus II
Now Augustine grew visibly uncomfortable
So she asked him if he disagreed
He said that no one ever thinks that they’re the wicked ones,
so just how honest do you think we can be?

CHORUS

BRIDGE:
I can tell myself it’s alright, it’s OK
And imagine some self-centered secrets away,
“It’s a cruel, cruel world”, I hear everyone say
But ain’t you and I who made it that way?

CHORUS

(Words and music by Justin Rosolino)

And if that isn't enough, the last track (an instrumental simply titled "29") is incredible. Check this guy out, even if it is just listening to the samples on the artist's web page.

I'll get back to bibliobloggin' at some point soon, but when I run across stuff like this I just have to mention it.

Update: Searching around for more info brought me to Paste Music's site, where two full tracks are available for download. I'd recommend "Legacy" above "Again", personally.

Checking the ricoblog referrer logs, I noted a search for the unicode string "γινώσκω". I was curious to see what else might come up. The top hit was:

A Discourse Analysis of I Corinthians

This is a doctoral dissertation (supervised by Richard Longacre) from Ralph Bruce Terry (whom I am not familiar with). But it sounds like it could be fun to peruse.

For those who are unaware or new to ricoblog, I also occassionally post information that has to do specifically with the Pastoral Epistles over at a different site: PastoralEpistles.com.

On that site, I've just posted a link to an article titled Distribution of Semantic Domain by Section in the Pastoral Epistles. This is a table of information that shows the frequency of occurrence of each semantic domain in each section (sections are based on the NA27 section boundaries) of the Pastoral Epistles.

I thought some folks might be interested in this, hence the cross-post. That, and I think the data is just plain cool, but my opinion may be biased.

My friend and co-worker Jacob Carpenter just zapped me a link to Jack Johnson's new album, now on Rhapsody: In Between Dreams.

Sounds like typical Jack Johnson — which is awesome. Too often artists seem to get restless with their style and try all sorts of different things when they should stick with their bread and butter. With Jack Johnson, the style is easy, effortless acoustic groove with a laid-back surfer style. Anything by Jack is highly recommended.

If you're interested and don't have Rhapsody, here's Jack Johnson's web site.

On the recommendation of a friend, I've been listening to music by an artist named Madeleine Peyroux.

It is bluesy/jazzy with a little bit of country tinge. However, the most remarkable thing is that Ms. Peyroux's voice reminds me of Billie Holiday and, to a degree, Ella Fitzgerald every time I hear it.

I couldn't listen to this all of the time, but it is a refreshing listen on occasion. If you have Real Rhapsody, there are links below to playlists for each of her available albums.

• Madeleine Peyroux: Dreamland
• Madeleine Peyroux: Careless Love

Awhile back I happened upon the blog Giornale Nuovo. It is not a biblioblog. I suppose it's an art blog. The posts are not frequent (once a week?) and there are always superb images included. Today's post is about István Orosz, who is apparently a Hungarian graphic artist. The pictures displayed on the blog have an Escher-like quality.

I've found that when posts from Giornale Nuovo appear they are a pleasant distraction to my morning blog reading.

Also served at the site is Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, which may be of interest to some. More info on that:

An incrementally-published online presentation of Isaac D’Israeli’s book Curiosities of Literature, a compendium of book-lore originally published in six volumes between 1791 and 1834. The present text is reproduced from an undated (but probably 1870s or ’80s) single-volume edition published by Routledge. I have also reproduced the book’s Dedication, its Introduction (a Memoir of D’Israeli), and its ‘Advertisement’. Corrections and glosses are welcomed: comments will be moderated.

Some may have noticed my "furled" links in the sidebar in the past.

I've decided to move them out of the sidebar and into an RSS feed. There is also a link to my Furl page where I've entered link descriptions.

Not familiar with Furl? Think "Filed-away URL". If you're browsing the web, and you run into something you'd normally bookmark. Instead of bookmarking it, Furl it. You submit the URL using the Furl Toolbar. You categorize it, rank it, and enter comments. Furl takes a snapshot of the page and stores it for you and also stores the URL. That way, if the page moves later on, you've still got the cached page in your Furl list and can always go back to it. And (assuming you're dilligent in entering comments) you'll also remember why you bookmarked it.

I don't furl links frequently; sometimes it goes in spurts. I don't have an established metric for when I'll furl something as opposed to blog about it. Sometimes I'll both blog and furl.

Don't know about Furl? Check it out and see if it's for you.

Over at Ralph the Sacred River, Dr. Edward Cook posted Some Lines from Milosz in which he reproduced a poem from Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz.

I was unfamiliar with Milosz, and don't know anything of the man besides this poem. But the poem hit me like poetry seldom does. I'd highly recommend that you read it. Then read it again.

Thank you, Dr. Cook.

(also note: Ralph the Sacred River is now on the blogroll to the right) 

About a year ago, I ran across Mark Shea's The Lord of the Rings: A Source-Criticism Analysis. A friend reminded me of this by asking me if I still had the URL.

I did an URL search of Google and didn't see that any bibliobloggers had linked to it, so I figured I had to do my duty and post a link. Here's an excerpt:

Because The Lord of the Rings is a composite of sources, we may be quite certain that "Tolkien" (if he ever existed) did not "write" this work in the conventional sense, but that it was assembled over a long period of time by someone else of the same name. We know this because a work of the range, depth, and detail of The Lord of the Rings is far beyond the capacity of any modern expert in source-criticism to ever imagine creating themselves.

It's a quick read — it'll take 5 minutes or so. Enjoy!

Update: Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica picks up the ball and runs with it.

Please bear with me. I think I'll return to normal after the Christmas holiday.

In poking around my referrer links, I found a link to a blog that had a Rhapsody playlist. So I thought I'd search for other sites linking to Rhapsody playlists. And I found a blog called Rhapsody Radish that does pretty much just this. Wow.

No, really, it's good. (Unlike the playlists I've posted). Lots of playlists posted apparently daily. As a test, I'm listenting to their “Instrumental Acoustic Christmas Music”. For what it is (er, instrumental acoustic Christmas music) it's good.

They've also got this weird playlist generator thing. Makes me wonder if the guy is scraping Rhapsody data, building his own database, and serving up playlists. Having friends over for dinner? What's that, you're making enchiladas? Well, just drop down the “dinner” box, select “Mexican”, and you're off an running with your soundtrack for the night.

Update: Responding to “matt” in the comments. Actually, it wasn't rhapsody rock school (though thanks for the pointer, BTW). It was a guy who had a blog entry that contained a Rhapsody playlist, and the playlist was actually removed from the page. I couldn't quite figure out how one got from there to ricoblog, which was one of the reasons why I was searching around.

You've suffered through the bad (here, and here). Now it's time for the popular. Here it is. ASCAP's 25 Most-Played Christmas songs. (Kudos to PunditGuy for the link.)

Note I said popular, not good. We may have another contest for Best Christmas music, though I sense folks are tired of the Christmas music topic. Louis Armstrong's spoken-word version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas ranks high on my list, though it isn't in Rhapsody. If you really want to do a Best Christmas music Rhapsody-fest, then use the comments system to let me know.

Not really; I don't have a sponsor. But I thought I'd mention the following RSS feeds hosted by logos.com, web site of my employer. I searched our web site for RSS and didn't find links. I searched Google (for 'logos pre-pub rss') and didn't find anything.  But we've announced these publicly in our newsgroups before. I figure some folks may be interested in them.

• Logos Pre-Publications RSS feed: http://www.logos.com/prepub/rss . I think the RSS feed is actually the first method we use to tell people about new stuff in the pre-pub hopper. Other methods are newsgroups, email, and announcements on the 'Home Page' in the software. But you can hear about stuff like Eerdmans' New International Greek Testament Commentary or Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (3 vols) first by aggregating the pre-pub RSS feed.
• Logos Press Releases RSS feed: http://www.logos.com/press/releases/rss . Less active, but by synching up with an aggregator you will get both the latest and be able to browse through press releases from earlier this year.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming ...

I was poking around the referrer logs for ricoblog, and I stumbled across the Hebrew Typography Blog by Ari Davidow. It doesn't look like it gets updated often, but there is some cool stuff on there.

One of the very cool items (to me, anyway) was a link to a Hebrew Type Database. Typophiles, beware, particularly if you're into Hebrew. I know the Hebrew alphabet and that's about it, but the Hebrew Type Database has sucked me in.

The primary presentation (available in German, English, Russian, and Hebrew, it appears) involves sample type from a number of different sources. These appear to have been scanned in. Based on the date range in the “selection criterion” box, I'd guess that one can select typefaces by date range and place of printing.

From each source, one can go to the “detail” page. For instance, here's the detail page for a sephardic font, Zierletter. From here, you can click on any character for a huge detail shot of the glyph. The tav (taw) is pretty cool. If you click on the book title (if it is active) you can get more information on the book the font occurs in. I clicked on  מסכת חולין (the 1579 title) and can see page images and all sorts of info about the book. Whether all books are documented this well, I don't know — but I could spend hours just surfing around looking at the books and images.

Warning: If you're more bibliophile than typophile (that's me) don't even click on the Bibliographie-synopsis link. Don't do it. Really. I warned you — you'll be lost for hours!

I'd seen the Digital South Asia Library perhaps a year ago (?) but it looks to have been updated since then. It is hosted by the University of Chicago.

I know very little about the languages represented by this page, but such things are always helpful to know about. They've got some dictionaries on the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia page, but an unfortunate design decision means that one needs to actually search a dictionary for something before one can simply browse pages. Unicode fonts are used, though they don't remember your preference and you have to continually state it when doing searches. My guess is that the primary user is the guy who coded the thing and perhaps one or two others involved in its production.

There's also a Books & Journals page that has some grammars and readers. Ever wanted to learn Bengali? Take an introductory look at Urdu? Then you've found your spot. Most of the stuff with complex scripts in this section are simple page scans, but at least they're legible and you don't have to worry about fonts. The navigation is page based from a TOC.

Enjoy!

With all the election hullaballo, I'd completely forgotten about the fact that it is Oktoberfest time.

Today's National Review Online (yes, this link is informative and not political!) has a review of the preferred brew of many of its contributors.

Insightful. Many of them simply say “Bud”. There are, of course, some Guinness fans. And Guinness is a good thing. I'm surprised, however, that nobody mentioned Widmer Hefeweizen, which (if I had to pick) is what I'd pick — though several of the brews at Boundary Bay (ahem: Scotch!) would rank up there as well.

Update: I forgot to mention my favorite answers from the NROniks.

Best Answer: The award goes to ... Ramesh Ponnuru, with his response of “You mean you have to choose?”

Most Disappointing Answer: The award goes to ... Rick Brookhiser, unfortunately. I was looking for insight and range of experience, but he prefers “Bud.” That boy needs to get out more (as do all of those who profess bud as their fave).

Ok, I'm done with the randomnity. Back to other things ...

Hypotyposes is on a roll.

Today they posted a link to photos of the Gospel of Peter in Greek.

Perhaps of more interest is the site itself, the Photographic Archive of Papyri in the Cairo Museum, though I'm having big-time navigation problems (both IE & FireFox) using the drop-down box. 

Interesting entry from the Technology Liberation Front. Bottom line: Intel isn't going to break 4GHz.

I'm not a hardware geek, but even to my un-hardware-geekiness outlook, this seems like a somewhat significant development.

A few weeks back I blathered on about “Argumentum ad Hitlerum” and other logical fallacies. Imagine my surprise when this morning I read about a new online reference called “The Book of the Fallacy” from the good folks at the Adam Smith Institute.

Looks like fun. If you're into this stuff, you should peruse it. However, they don't have a listing for “Hitler, Argumentum ad” yet ...

Awhile back, I was reading C.H. Dodd's The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (found an edition at a used bookstore in town, so I picked it up) and was ruing the fact that I didn't have an English translation of the Corpus Hermiticum handy so I could get familiar with it. Dodd frequently cites and incorporates material from this early gnostic source; though Dodd cites the Greek. It's all a bit over my head, but it is interesting to attempt to work through nonetheless.

Anyway, I just happened across an English translation of The Corpus Hermeticum at the Gnostic Society Library. Of course Dodd was working with the Greek (an edition he wasn't too fond of, but used nonetheless). So now, if I ever really want to, I can read Poimandres and see what's got Dodd all aflutter.

Finally, an economist who can put things in terms most folks understand. The blog Agoraphilia (kudos to Marginal Revolution for the pointer) uses real-life examples to explain economic analysis. You've gotta look for the gems — hey, it's a blog — but there are some insightful posts there. A few are mentioned below:

The post on Relationship Cycles is a good example. Economics is, when you break it down, the study of the allocation of resources. Economics, practiced properly, offers insight to the efficient allocation of resources. So it makes sense that one might gain some insight in social practices (note I said “insight” and nothing about rules or consistency across cultures/people) by applying economic analysis.

Another post on the Optimal Haircut was good, though it doesn't really apply to me. When it comes to hair, I value utility more than appearance, so I simply get out the clippers and chop 'er nice and short. No comb or brush necessary.

I have the same philosophy when it comes to lawn maintenence: Whatever grows, keep it short.

(That reminds me ... it's been raining, I need to mow the lawn ... )

I'm a bibliophile. I admit it. I love old used books — particularly NT commentaries and Greek New Testaments from the late 1800's/early 1900's.

So when I come across news stories about used book sales on the internet (thanks Marginal Revolution!) they are must-reads. The bottom line is, if you are into used books and you somehow don't know about AbeBooks.com, you need to learn about it.

When I'm looking for an older book, the first place I go is AbeBooks. And I go there a lot.

My favorite used book story (well, that happened to me) involves AbeBooks. I was looking for a copy of Meecham's Epistle to Diognetus, which is pretty much the critical edition. It was published in, I think, 1949 by Manchester University Press and was difficult to locate. But AbeBooks had it. The problem was, it was in Johannesburg, South Africa, and would cost a fortune to ship with any speed. Or it would take months to arrive on the slow-boat.

However, I had a second option. The company I work for (Logos) owns a small company in Johannesburg that does work for us. And, as it turns out, I was scheduled for a trip to Johannesburg within the month to consult in hiring a few new people, and do some staff training. So, through the magic of AbeBooks, I was able to confirm that the book I wanted was in Jo'burg, confirm the address, confirm store hours, and (with the graciousness of my host, Jannie) arrange a short excursion to the bookstore in Johannesburg to fetch the book.

Little did I know what I was asking. Apparently the bookstore — a massive multi-story edifice stuffed to the gills with books — was in downtown Jo'burg, just bordering the Central Business Distict (CBD). The CBD is the area that the local Afrikaaners tend to avoid for their own safety. It can be, apparently, a hostile place, especially when it is dark, if you don't look like you belong there.

But we were heading there on a Saturday morning (10:00 am), so Jannie thought it would be ok, as long as we weren't there for hours. So we hopped in his car and headed downtown. I was on edge, this was the very action — going to downtown Jo'burg — that everyone had warned me about since I'd arrived.

We made it to the shop and parked outside on the street. Everything was cool. The trip was uneventful. I got my book, plus another (Kirsopp Lake on the early Pauline Epistles!) and we were out of the store within 45 minutes. They had some tremendous rare stuff in a back room down in the basement, hundreds of years old, just sitting there for anyone to grab and examine. Stuff you couldn't think about touching in stateside bookstores.

It was cool. It would've been more cool if I'd felt secure about staying there for hours; but I did get the book I was looking for. Thanks AbeBooks!

Every now and then — I know it's hard to believe — but even folks at Logos have streaks of unproductivity; myself included.

My colleague Eli Evans and I had an ... er ... unproductive discussion via chat this morning. He was feeling rather un-funky, and I felt it was my duty to re-funkify him. Mr. Evans has done the world the favor of recording this discussion for posterity and publishing it to his blog.

If you happen to use RealRhapsody,** Eli has provided the extra bonus of links to various (and I mean various) tunes used in the re-funkification process — and his own attempts to de-funkify me! He has also included a playlist that you can use in your own re-funkification efforts. Please use this list responsibly; the funk you save may be your own.

We're not like this all the time. Really.

** Eli and I both subscribe to Real Rhapsody, as do a few other folks here at Logos. If you have broadband the library is adequate and the price reasonable.

Sorry, Eli, couldn't resist.

Caught an article on BBC Online: First Welsh Bible Goes Online. Now, I'm unsure how to parse the headline — is it just that this is the first Welsh Bible to ever be online, or that this is the first Welsh Bible ever published that's been photographed then put online? Or maybe both?

These are high-quality digital photographs of the 1588 Welsh Bible. Very cool indeed. Here's a short blurb:

The year 1588 saw the publication of the first Welsh translation of the complete Bible, including the Apocrypha. It was the work of William Morgan, 1545-1604, a native of Penmachno, Conwy and a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge. This folio volume was printed in black letter by the deputies of Christopher Barker, the Queen's Printer. It was intended for church rather than home use.

And here's the link to the Bible itself (the above link is to the BBC story, not the Bible).

Of course it's good. I read a short post on the subject at Truck & Barter this morning. It reminded me of something I wrote on March 3, 2004 on the same subject. Particularly the sidebar below.

Here's an older article at VentureBlog that I snaked from the ChicagoBoyz. This one is about the evil demon o' the day known as outsourcing. If you've got questions about trade restrictions, NAFTA, and the like, this little VentureBlog article does a good job of explaining the basics of why trade is good — and hence why trade barriers/protectionism are bad.

Now, I may be getting a little out of my depth here, after all — I studied econ in college 10 years ago (blast ... I'm gettin' old!) and have been fairly much focused on Logos stuff (writing code, converting books) ever since. Hopefully I haven't made any gross errors. Follow my logic here:

First: US Firms have an interest in minimizing all costs while keeping or increasing productivity. This only makes sense — less cost with the same output (and prices) means more profit for the producer. If prices drop then the producer is still ok. If he needs to drop prices to compete, he's even better off — he's got the flexibility to chase market share instead of just worrying about paying next month's bills.

Second: US consumers (yes, consumers) are fairly savvy. Price is an important factor. Who doesn't want lower prices? I mean, why else does Wal-Mart even exist? Who wouldn't buy the cheaper of two otherwise equivalent goods? Who wouldn't be tempted by the cheaper of two goods, even if the more expensive was obviously better, if the price was significatly lower on the lower-quality good?

Third: US Workers are expensive on a worldwide scale. That's ok — we're also the most productive and most versatile, so it all works out. We're worth what we cost. However, as US Firms tighten the belt, they're able to do more with less. Dropping dead wood employees is done, and firms end up healthier and stronger — and more productive and more profitable.

Fourth: With the improvements in global communication and travel of the past 50 years, some firms are able to seek lower cost labor outside of the country. This is good — it allows firms to be more profitable and efficient, and it allows price competition to continue. Logically, if US consumers didn't mind high prices, US producers wouldn't have to take this step. Right?

Sidebar: One thing I simply can't comprehend about opposition to free trade, outsourcing, etc. from those of the liberal persuasion is the incontrovertible fact that the countries that host such businesses (India, China, Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc.) end up with people in solid jobs, with marketable skills, and decent pay for the country. I mean, isn't the raison d'etre for such folks simply “helping people” and ensuring “justice” for those who unfortunately don't have it as good as us? Anyway, as these foriegn-based folks have (and spend) money in their own country, it stimulates growth! It's like one big fat infusion of capital into these economies, some of which may not be doing so well. Why bother with the IMF, with international loans, with the crapola of the UN, etc. when we can have a positive effect on a country in this way? How much more humanitarian can we get? This is, effectively, Ronald Reagan's “A rising tide lifts all boats” applied on a global scale. Wow. First he gets rid of communism, then he sets the policies for economic improvement on a worldwide scale. US consumers get cheap goods to boot. Dang, Ronnie was a stud.

Fifth: Now follow me here ... this is where it gets wacky. If US Firms are forced via protectionist measures (Smoot-Hawley, anybody? Do we not remember what sparked the Great Depression?) to quit outsourcing and are forced to only use domestic labor ... well, let's just say the unemployment rate ain't gonna go down. Remember point 3 above? We're expensive. More jobs will be shed, and the costs to produce will go up.

Sixth: The increase in cost due to removal of economic advantage from offshore labor could very easily spark inflation. Think about it: Fewer jobs and higher production costs. Higher production costs lead to more expensive goods — Wal-Mart's little pac-man-wannabe smiley face does less bouncin' 'round the store. Folks with less money (fewer jobs, more expensive goods) buy less. Discretionary spending goes down. Credit card interest rates go up and this effectively takes more money out of most Americans who carry an inordinate amount of credit-card debt ... let's not even talk about the interest rates on the national debt. Heck, it could be the spark to 70's era stagflation (when both unemployment and inflation are on a drastic rise), though that's a bit alarmist.

Now, there's a whole lot of “what if” in the above conjecture. But basically, if US firms are forced to increase their costs, along with a narrowing of the market by pursuing protectionist measures, it ain't gonna be good. (Remember, even if the “protectionist” measures are tariffs on imports or other import restrictions, that's bad because the affected countries retaliate by slapping tariffs and whatnot on our goods.)

So, all of essentially ends up increasing costs and decreasing the market for US producers of goods and services. And — even though I last studied this stuff 10 years or so ago — even I know that is not the way to stimulate the economy.

Again, my main point here (in reference to the T&B post) is the sidebar. Why is foreign aid (writing a blank check, essentially, to a government) good, but investement that directly affects the actual participants in a foreign economy bad?

The answer is: it isn't bad, it is good, and it is a very effective way to provide assistance to needy economies with cheap labor pools that provide decent quality work.

Rubén Gómez' post on NT Papyri reminded me of something I wrote almost a year ago on my internal-to-the-office blog (which preceded this public blog). So, without further adieu ...

Just got back from a Bible study. We're studying James. Tonight was on James 2.14-26, the passage dealing with faith and works.

One of the participants in the study is Dr. Cal Hansen who used to be the president of Trinity Western. He also taught Greek exegesis for a number of years. It's kind of cool that he's in the study. Anyway, he assigned me homework. He wants me to look into James 2.21. This says (ESV):

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

He asked the question, "what if that wasn't a question mark at the end of this verse? After all, the original Greek text(s) didn't have punctuation, that has only been inserted later."

Now, I say all of this under the guise of "the internet is cool" because I happen to know that many of the papyri are on the internet as images. So, I opened my trusty The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts (second edition, 2001) and learn more about P20 (P.Oxy 1171), which is the earliest witness (3rd century! That's in the 200's, folks!) for this portion of scripture. Then I went to the Oxyrhynchus site at Cambridge, but the don't have all of the images online. Drats.

So, Google to the rescue. I searched for 'Oxyrhynchus 1171' and ended up at Princeton, where the manuscript is housed (duh). From there, I could follow the link to NT Epistle of James (first one). Note they've got an error -- the manuscript fragment actually contains portions from James 2.19, not James 2.26 as the link states. So, anyway, I clicked on the link to get more info. Small pictures of recto & verso plus some bibliographic information. Cool. But they've got high-quality pics of each side of the manuscript! So ... I looked at the recto. As Tiny Elvis would say, "man .... that sucker's huuuuge!". If you look on the sixth line from the top, you'll see ]USIASTHRIONBLE[. James 2.21 ends after USIASTHRION (the full Greek word is QUSIASTHRION).

Thus, I've confirmed that (at least as of the 3rd century) there was no punctuation in the Greek text. All from the comfort of my kitchen table.

QED: The internet is cool. I mean, I knew that punctuation marks wouldn't be in the papyri, and that they were added by later editors of later MSS ... but, in a single night, to get to the actual papyrus? And the quality of the images? That is cool!

Part II of the assignment involves sifting through journal articles in Logos using Galaxie's Theological Journal Library. I found an article from January 2002 in BibSac that argues that while the same word is used in both instances (James 2 & Romans 4), each author was using a semantically different meaning of the verb. Paul was speaking of a formal act of justification, that of God declaring one righteous (as he did in the Abrahamic covenant in Ge 15). James was instead speaking of justification in the sense of "proving", that is, one proves he has faith through works — which is more along the lines of Ge 22, which is what James was citing.

This is a tough text, and while one may interpret the two passages differently, the difficulty of the same word meaning different things — and statements that indicate seemingly opposite ideas — makes it challenging. It seems the theory of semantic domains is one way to deal with difficulties of this particular sort, and the method is particularly attractive in this instance as we're dealing with two different authors.

No, I didn't arrive at any further conclusions than the one mentioned above. And I still think the internet is cool; the availability of papyri, if you do some diligent searching, is way cool. Check out the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri and, of course, Oxyrhynchus Online (watch out — the interface is horrid).

And ... curiously ... I've been reading the same book that Mr. Gómez mentions, McKnight & Osborne's The Face of New Testament Studies. If you're into that sort of stuff, I'd recommend it. I'd also recommend Eldon Jay Epp's article in the Spring 2004 JBL, “The Oxyrhynchus New Testament Papryi: 'Not Without Honor Except in Their Hometown'?” (watch out, link is to a PDF file).

Professor Bainbridge links to The Questioning Christian, which links to a longish Paul Graham essay entitled “The Age of the Essay”.

The essay is worth the read. One of the basic ideas is that the process of writing the essay formalizes thought. The essay isn't an argument, with a topic/thesis, support, and conclusion (sorry, Mrs. Adams,** I guess you got it wrong). The essay involves exploring a question or an idea, examining different aspects of it, and arriving at conclusions or clarification of ideas based on the process of writing. The essay isn't the destination, it's the journey.

I've always considered writing to be beneficial in the role of clarifying thought; Mr. Graham puts words on paper mostly reflective of my point of view. This is one of the reasons why I blog. I know most folks out there don't give a whit about the stuff I write; but it helps me immensely when thinking about issues, small or large. Consider this excerpt from Mr. Graham's essay:

If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I write them.

In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. You're thinking out loud.

But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience. The things I've written just for myself are no good. They tend to peter out. When I run into difficulties, I find I conclude with a few vague questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea.

Wow, he is so right on track here. I do exactly the same thing unless I know I have an audience. This is why I've invited some close friends to help me by commiting to read drafts of what I write for the Pastoral Epistles and then come over to my house to talk about what I've written. It helps the process immensely, and a better product is the result.

** Mrs. Adams was my 10th grade English/composition teacher.

Who is rico?

“rico” is Rick Brannan. Somehow, folks at the office started calling me “Rico”, and it stuck. So there you have it. You can check out my personal web site for more info.

I work for Logos Bible Software as an Information Architect. Yeah, we made up that title. I'm what I like to call a text geek; I write programs to munge text from one format into another or even create alternate views of data or even completely different data sets. It is a hoot; it's a job I love, and I'm very lucky to be able to do it, get paid for it, and work with the great folks at Logos Bible Software.

So, why a blog? And what can you expect to see here?

I have no hard and fast rules for this blog. I do have some ideas, though. Here they are in brief.

Content Blog vs. Link Blog

The answer is: Yes. Entries will sometimes be long, thoughtful posts. Sometimes they may even be long incoherent rants. Posts may be short pointers to other articles. Or they may be all of those rolled into one. Or something else. Maybe. I dunno. But I do know that I've been keeping an internal-to-the-office blog for almost a year now and it's time to split off the non-work-related stuff into the proper environment. And this is the proper environment.

Subject Matter

What sort of content will I post on? That's a good question. The answer: Whatever the heck interests me. The “categories” list on the side there will probably grow; and I won't make any effort to pre-fill it with things I think I'll write on. The taxonomy will be ad-hoc. That said, there are some topics you can count on coming up sooner or later:

• Christianity/Religion in general.
• Greek, primarily Koine/NT.
• NT Textual Criticism
• Pastoral Epistles (I've been studying them for awhile ... )
• Apostolic Fathers (the 'proto-orthodox' writings from, say, 80-200 AD)
• Politics (US Politics in general, election stuff, etc.)
• Economics (I have a BA in Economics from Northwestern College)
• My digital photographs when I happen to think they're especially cool.
• Reviews of books I read.
• Links to books I want to read.
• Whatever else I durn well feel like ranting on.

I'm sure you get the picture. While I do work for a prominent producer of Bible Software, I won't be posting directly on the topic of Bible Software as I just don'tthink it would be appropriate.

Inside Jokes

While I won't do such things on purpose, you may find you'll better understand cryptic references if you have some knowledge of the television show The Simpsons. I'm sure there are several other sources I draw on, but that seems to be the prominent one, even though I haven't seen a new episode for years.

Last but not Least ...

Before you read anything I write, there are two other sources you need to add to your daily/weekly reading diet:

• MarginalRevolution. This is the best blog you've never read. Set yourself up on the RSS feed. Do it now. Do not pass “Go”, do not collect $200.00.
• Victor Davis Hanson (weekly on National Review Online, typically on Friday)

That's it for now, though I'll surely be bloggin' over the weekend now that this dude is set up and ready to rock & roll. So watch out. You've been warned.