The NA27 apparatus lists the following contents for P99 (dated as “ca. 400”, currently held in the Chester Beatty Library). I’ve given the references in an English-based system (though I still use “.” for a chapter/verse separator, instead of “:”, because I’m lazy and don’t like to hit the shift key unless I really have to), translated from the German system in the printed NA27 apparatus appendix.

Ro 1.1; 2Co 1.3-6; 1.6-17; 1.20-24; 2.1-9; 2.9-5.13; 5.13-6.3; 6.3-8.13; 8.14-22; 9.2-11.8; 11.9-23; 11.26-13.11; Gal 1.4-11; 1.18-6.15; 1.14-2.4; 2.5-3.19; 3.19-4.9; Eph 1.4-2.21; 1.22(?); 3.8-6.24

I have two questions, actually.

First, what’s up with Galatians? Why the large range covering most of the book (1.18-6.15) followed by subranges amounting to 1.14-4.9? Is this content duplicated in the papyrus? I’ve searched online for other contents listings of P99 only to see the same exact list duplicated in numerous locations. I’m confused as to what the duplication might be indicating—or if it is a typo of some sort (it feels like a book name is missing, but Galatians and Ephesians are in canonical order, so it can’t be that … I don’t think).

Second, what’s up with Ephesians? Why is “1.22(?)” appended? Is it that it occurs out of order after 2.21?

Just trying to get a handle on what’s listed in this particular entry and why. P99 is not in Comfort & Barrett (too late for them, apparently) so I can’t check there; it is also not in Tischendorf because, well, Tischendorf is just far too early. Other ranges in the NA27 appendix do not have overlapping ranges (well, not up through P99 nor through the uncials). Poking through the site for the Chester Beatty Library was a dead end as well (though I’d love to be proved wrong).

If you have any help for me, I’m all ears.

I've mentioned the upcoming Bible Technologies Conference and the paper I plan on presenting there (also info here). I've recently realized that I've got a little more than two months to get the durn thing written.

I also realized that Kenny spent 124 pages talking about Stylometry in the New Testament; I'm giving a paper that is allotted perhaps 30 minutes (some portion of which is intended for questions) for a corpus that is roughly four times the size of the New Testament.

In other words, I'm realizing that I'll have to give a very high level overview with perhaps some glimpses at deeper-level data. Chances are I'll follow most of Kenny's lead, which means:

• Rough overview of distribution of major parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, etc.)
• Rough overview of most common words and their distribution/frequency
• Perhaps some further look at things like conjunctions and articles

Kenny then used portions of his data in the evaluation of certain textual issues, mostly geared toward authorship (Luke/Acts, John/epistles/Revelation, Paulines). I'll have to determine an issue to examine further using the data pulled together, but I have some constraints:

• No examination of JEDP, whatsoever.
• No examination of authorship, whatsoever.
• No examination of translational theory, whatsoever.

Given these constraints, are there stylistic issues in the LXX that you would suggest I use for my example case study?

My own thoughts have to do with genre (say, look at stuff having to do with narrative versus stuff having to do with poetry to see if there are any sorts of things that seem to be indicative of one or the other). But I'm interested in what you might think or suggest. For an idea of the criteria/features I'm tracking, see this post.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your suggestion(s), or drop me an email (textgeek at gmail dot com). Thanks!

Long-time ricoblog readers know that I have a more-than-passing interest in stylometry and stylistic studies, particularly in the realm of authorship attribution.

I'm also reading a lot about the Fathers of the Church (via Drobner). And for the Church Fathers for whom we have much information and transmitted writings, there always seems to be mention of documents that had been attributed to a Father at one point in time that have since been proven/posited to not be from that Father.

So, the question: Does anyone have any references to stylometric studies of particular Greek church fathers?

There has been much ink spilt on the question of authorship attribution of New Testament epistles; but has anyone ever taken those same theories and applied them to the much larger corpora of some of the Greek fathers? My primary contention is that the NT is too small for the sorts of authorship studies folks do (vocabulary? bah, gimme a million word corpus from an author and maybe we can do something). In other words, I'd be interested in reading through if anyone has ever done for Chrysostom what P.N. Harrison did to the Pastorals in his 1922 tome The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, and what sorts of results they came up with.

Any help?

This morning, Current Epigraphy posted a bleg asking for help with a particular Christian inscription spotted in Imma (which is near Antioch).

Check it out, and if you have the eyes to see, perhaps you can help them out!

Here's a photograph of the inscription, and here's a preliminary text of the inscription. But be sure to check out the comments as well.

I'm curious what you think, so I'm asking. Is "they" == "Jesus and the 12" or is "they" == "the 12"?

Here's the Greek text of Mk 14.17-18 and the ESV text of same.

Καὶ ὀψίας γενομένης ἔρχεται μετὰ τῶν δώδεκα. καὶ ἀνακειμένων αὐτῶν καὶ ἐσθιόντων ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν παραδώσει με ὁ ἐσθίων μετʼ ἐμοῦ. (Mk 14:17-18, NA27)

And when it was evening, he came with the twelve. And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” (Mk 14:17-18)

Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. If you'd rather not comment publicly but want to let me know what you think, try textgeek at gmail dot com.