(h/t Brandon Wason, Sitz im Leben)

Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd edition (amazon.com).   Grand Rapids:  Baker Academic, 2007.  Pp. xxv, 806.  ISBN 9780801034688.  $42.99. BMCR review

Timothy B. Sailors provides a 4200+ word review of Michael Holmes’ edition of the Apostolic Fathers. Sailors is top-notch and well-respected, and his review carries some weight.

Before I dig in, I’ll note that I have several Greek and English editions of the Apostolic Fathers in print (Holmes’ 2nd edition, Kirsopp Lake’s Loeb edition, Bart Ehrman’s Loeb edition, C.C. Richardson’s edition, Lightfoot’s one-volume and his five volume Clement/Ignatius/Polycarp editions). My go-to volume at this point is Holmes’ third edition (the edition reviewed by BMCR). It is well-produced, well-researched, and I’m even mentioned in the introduction — so you know it’s gotta be good.

And while Sailors’ review is informative and generally positive, I can’t help but feel that he’s strung together a bunch of nitpicky quibbles that top-notch scholars of the early church (and specifically the writings of the Apostolic Fathers) would have, but real people using the book wouldn’t notice or care about.

Here’s an example that typifies the nitpicky quibbly-ness, in my eyes:

Though this remains a "Select Bibliography", it greatly expands those in the previous editions and far surpasses the "Select Bibliography" in the Loeb edition. There are nevertheless some works one would expect to see which are surprisingly absent. And, though an English edition was given in the list of abbreviations in earlier versions of this book, Holmes has removed the potentially helpful reference to W. Bauer's Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, despite the publication of an English translation of the most recent edition.

Where to begin? Yes, it is a select bibliography. And there are no lexica cited anywhere that I see, either in the abbreviation list or the bibliography. And if Sailors is bemoaning the lack of reference to BDAG, why in the world does he go about citing it as “an English translation of the most recent edition” of the German edition of BAAR? (note: That description actually may not be quite accurate. If I recall my John A.L. Lee correctly, BDAG is essentially a 3rd edition of the English stream of this text, and while the German may be consulted for articles, Danker’s work is definitely not a translation of BAAR).

Would anyone amongst the primary audience for Holmes’ work refer to BDAG that way and implicitly understand what is being referred to?

Another example: Approximately 800 of the 4200 words of the review (do the math, it’s just under 20%) are devoted to Fragments of Papias, and most of those on the Arabic, Syriac and Armenian fragments Holmes includes. Yes, this is a distinctive of Holmes’ edition, but is it worth spending 20% of your words on when the review is already lengthy?

Anyway, while Sailors’ review is helpful and informative, and while he does end up giving a positive review, I can’t help but wish he’d reviewed the book for the target audience instead of for a select group of scholars who already likely know the sorts of quibbles he brings up.

J. Harold Greenlee, The Text of the New Testament (amazon.com). Hendrickson 2008. 130pp. ISBN 1598562401.

Thanks to Hendrickson Academic for sending along the review copy (amazon.com).

This is a slim volume (130 pp.) that gives a very basic, very general background to the practice of textual criticism as applied to the Greek New Testament.

First off, it is probably best to say what this book is not: It is not, from all I can tell, intended to compete with the similarly-named volumes from Metzger (now Ehrman/Holmes) or Aland & Aland (tr. Erroll Rhodes). Those are both more academic and comprehensive introductions to textual criticism. Greenlee is geared toward a completely different audience. In this, I think Greenlee’s book is unfortunately named because it will, I believe, be misjudged by textual critics. Actually, it already has been. It was reviewed by the Review of Biblical Literature by none other than Keith Elliott, and was not reviewed positively. After this, it was discussed on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog (here for a comment by Greenlee on Elliott’s review, also here and here for Elliott’s response to Greenlee; check the comments of all posts too).

Despite all of that, to understand Greenlee’s book, one must understand the audience he intends to hit. He is not aiming at an academic audience. This much is obvious in the second paragraph of the book blurb (from Amazon.com, emphasis is mine):

Geared to the lay person who is uninformed or confused about textual criticism, Greenlee begins this volume by explaining the production of ancient manuscripts. He then traces the history of the development of the New Testament text. Readers are next introduced to the basic principles of textual criticism, the concept of variant readings, and how to determine which variant has the greatest likelihood of being the original reading. To illustrate the basic principles, several sample New Testament texts are examined. The book concludes by putting textual criticism in perspective as involving only a minute portion of the entire New Testament text, the bulk of which is indisputably attested by the manuscripts.

This is important to understanding what Greenlee is up to in this book. I’d highly recommend that any pastor/teacher keep Greenlee’s Text of the New Testament (amazon.com) on his short list (near the top, if not at the top) of books to recommend to parishioners who ask questions like: “Why is the KJV New Testament different in spots, and does it matter?” or “Why are there all of these footnotes about ‘other manuscripts’, and what do they mean?” Greenlee’s book is short, to the point, and is pretty much the anti-Ehrman. It will build up, not destroy, the faith of the one asking the questions. (For the record, I’d also put Comfort’s New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (amazon.com) on that pastor/teacher’s short list of books to recommend).

If Greenlee intended to write a book to make textual critics happy, to compete with standards like Metzger and Aland & Aland, then he surely failed, and Elliott’s review is spot-on. But Greenlee didn’t do that. He wrote a book for the average person, sitting in the pew, with some basic questions about the text. Greenlee paints in broad strokes and gives general answers to the questions, which is what his desired audience needs.

Academics and textual critics can continue to nitpick Greenlee’s book, but don’t pay attention to them. If you need something on textual criticism for a basic layperson audience, Greenlee is your go-to book.

A side note: Greenlee is no slouch; check out the range of topics he has authored on over the years.

The good folks at Eisenbrauns had a little book-giveaway via RSS feed a few weeks back. I was one of the 30 lucky book-winners. James Spinti (Idle musings of a bookseller) kindly sent me a copy of:

Holy Spirit and Religious Experience in Christian Literature ca. AD 90-200
with a foreword by James D.G. Dunn
Studies in Christian History and Thought - SCHT
by John Eifion Morgan-Wynne
Paternoster Press, 2006
xxi + 381 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 1842273191
List Price: $39.99
Your Price: $35.19
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~MORHOLYSP

This is pretty cool because I figured the book I'd end up with would be some sort of deeply technical tome on things Hebrew and semitic. But this one is up my alley. Thanks, James! And Thanks, Eisenbrauns!

Just got the weekly email scoop from Publishers Weekly.

In the "Books Written by People Who Should Know" department, we have (I excerpt this directly from the web page):

Jesus for the Non-Religious
John Shelby Spong. Harper San Francisco, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-06-076207-0
In this impassioned work, Spong, the iconoclastic former Episcopal bishop of Newark, details in this impassioned work both his "deep commitment to Jesus of Nazareth" and his "deep alienation from the traditional symbols" that surround Jesus.

Ok ... don't they have an editor check these things? Or is there some dittography going on in the transcription here? (cf. repetition of "in this impassioned work")

About a month ago, I blogged about LibraryThing. Several other bibliobloggers have mentioned the service as well.

For the unaware, LibraryThing is this cool service you can use to catalog your books fairly easily. For example, here's my profile.

The service has grown by leaps and bounds, and the guy who runs (Timothy Spalding) it has added some nifty stuff in the past month. I'd highly recommend it.

One of my early hesitations with LibraryThing was that I couldn't add my own stuff en masse. See, I have wanted (and wanted) to write my own book database thingie that would catalog both print and electronic resources (i.e., books for Logos Bible Software / Libronix Digital Library System). I've bugged Bob Pritchett about it for around three years now.

Then LibraryThing went and did it. Tim added a "universal import" that simply takes a list of ISBN numbers and then does the rest.

"Whoa ... I can make that work!" was my first thought.

I've hacked together a small HTA ("Hyper-Text Application") that (slowly) accesses the LDLS via the LDLS Object Model, builds a list of books, and allows you to export a list of ISBN numbers. Then ... if you sign up for LibraryThing (first 200 books are free!) you can import the list and use LibraryThing to start to catalog your print and electronic resources.

Realize that not all LDLS resources have ISBN data, but several do. So this is one way to get a large chunk-o-resources from LDLS into LibraryThing.

Before I provide a link, a few warnings:

1. It requires you to have IE on your machine (if you have Logos, you have IE).
2. It runs locally on your own box.
3. Your virus software will pitch a fit when it runs. It's OK. If you don't trust me, just disconnect from the internet when you run it.
4. Oh, you may have to adjust your IE security settings. I dunno. It worked on my box, though.
5. It is S-L-O-W.
6. The interface is horrid. Interruptive dialogs with no ability to cancel out? Oh yeah! Now you know why I munge text & data, and why I don't write interface stuff for Logos.
7. On reflection, "horrid" is being too kind. The interface absolutely stinks.
8. Have I mentioned that it is slow?
9. It works on my laptop at home. It may not work on any other machine in the known world at this time. As they say, your mileage may vary.
10. I wrote the guts of this years ago when I was cutting my javascript teeth. I've learned much in the intervening years. It could be oh-so-much better. I mean, it's pretty bad. Keep a bucket handy if you happen to look at the code.
11. I specifically disclaim any responsibility for anything that happens to your machine as a result of running this thingie. That means success or failure. If you run it, you're responsible.

Now, instructions.

1. Download the zip archive.
2. Unzip it all into its own folder.
3. Double-click MetadataExplorer.hta.
4. Chide me for stupid interruptive dialogs and bad interface design.
5. Wait awhile. Hey, I said it was slow!
6. Click the button that says Export ISBNs
7. Chide me again for dumb interruptive dialogs.
8. Find your ISBNs in LDLS-ISBNs.txt in the same folder as the HTA file.

Next, you probably want to de-dupe the list. Most text editors will have some sort of sort/de-dupe functionality. Yes, the script should do this. But it doesn't. Have I mentioned I'm a cheesebag and should be held in contempt for writing this little thing? If you don't de-dupe, LibraryThing may import multiple instances of a given book, and then you'll have to flip through your scads of books and remove dupes in LibraryThing. That's really not that bad since Timothy Spalding is a big-time stud and has made this pretty easy to do. But if you can do it before you submit ... well, you should.

Note that the HTA was actually written for a different purpose -- to browse the raw "dublin core" metadata in LDLS books. Click on a book in the list, hit the "Display Metadata" button. I added the ISBN export because it was easier to add it here than whip something new up.

What's that? You still want to run this blasted nausea-inducing thing on your box? Well ... you've been warned.

Here's the link to the zip file: MetadataExplorer.zip (4.05 KB)

I haven't read this, and I don't want to. I consider it my bloggerly duty to at least post concerning it.

God's Blogs by Lanny Donoho. Published by Multnomah Press.

I did check out the sample chapter. Let me just say, if you look at it ... you were warned. Keep a bucket nearby in case you can't stand the nausea.

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review has posted a review of:

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Translated into Ancient Greek by Andrew Wilson.   London:  Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004.  Pp. 250.  ISBN 0-7475-6897-9.

Yes, that's right, the first Potter book translated into Ancient Greek. And it's been reviewed, so we know there is at least one person who has actually read it!

Now, I need to state for the record (and I'll probably get flamed for it): I haven't read any Harry Potter, nor do I plan to. I have nothing against the storyline or the books or the author, they just don't really interest me. No, I haven't seen the movies either.

The best way I can explain this is to relate/paraphrase a story I heard from a first-hand witness. Most names have been omitted to protect the innocent:

A friend of mine relates a story from his seminary days, when the Left Behind novels were really hot. One student asked the professor (whose name you'd recognize if I passed it along): "Professor [...] — have you read Tim LaHaye?" The professor responded, "Why would I do that when I haven't made it through Aquinas yet?!"

I'm about the same way with Potter, I think. If I ever make it through Aquinas (which I have to admit is low on the list) then perhaps I'll get to Potter. I'll certainly get to it before I get to the Left Behind books. But I've got too much other cool stuff to read in the meantime.

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review (anyone know why they don't have an RSS Feed yet? That would be so cool!) recently published a review of The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria. Here are the bibliographic details:

James D. Ernest, The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria. The Bible in Ancient Christianity 2. Leiden: Brill, 2004.  Pp. xiv, 482. ISBN 0-391-04176-2. €133.00.

More spendy books. The review by Hugh Houghton is well worth reading.

Unfortunately, this review also made me aware of Brill's series The Bible in Ancient Christianity series. This one is too spendy for me to pursue, even though the following title is tempting:

Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis. The Bible in Ancient Christianity 1. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 2 vols (approx. 1500 pp total).  ISBN 90 04 09815 1. €295.- / US$ 339.-

But WOW does it sound like a fun book:

Through this Handbook of Patristic Exegesis, the reader will obtain a balanced and cohesive picture of the Early Church. It gives an overall view of the reception, transmission, and interpretation of the Bible in the life and thought of the Church during the first five centuries of Christianity, the so-called patristic era. The handbook offers the context and presuppositions necessary for understanding the development of the interpretative traditions of the Early Church, in its catechesis, its liturgy and as a foundation of its systems of theology.

While surfing the web last night looking for information on the "Bulletin of the Bezan Club" (from a citation in a footnote in Vööbus' Early Versions), I stumbled across Cambridge's web site for the SNTS.

Cambridge have long published the Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series (SNTS). This page has a complete list of the series along with information on each of the titles. Several of the books have extended excerpts as well.

I was unaware that there was a complete listing, sortable by title, author or volume number. Additionally, several of the book have extended sample excerpts. For example, Maurice Casey's book, Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel (a subject of discussion on Ralph the Sacred River as of late) has an 82 page PDF (the front matter plus the first 72 pages). Not all excerpts are as extensive, but the feature is a good one. Check it all out. 

I still don't know anything about the Bulletin of the Bezan Club; maybe I'll find out about that later.

Update (2005-07-09): Thanks to Pete for his comment with further info on the Bulletin. He informs us that Bulletin of the Bezan Club was 12 volumes, published in Leiden from 1926-37. Now I know.

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.