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.

I noticed an unread comment in an earlier post of mine on Galaxie's Theological Journals (post dated 2004-11-28). The post noted how helpful the journals are in searching for recently written material having to do with a particular verse or issue. In the comment, John Kendall helpfully notes:

You might also find Al Wolters' paper helpful.

He then provides an URL to a PDF file that is, unfortunately, no longer valid. In poking around, the paper Mr. Kendall referred me to is an article in the 2000 edition of the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism titled “A Semantic Study of αὐθέντης and its Derivatives”. I was previously unaware of this resource (I'm sure Marc Goodacre / et. al. have mentioned it, but I missed it anyway). It looks like my slackitude in checking for unread comments (I don't have any comment notification set up at present) strikes big-time. The 2000 edition of this journal is now in print (hardcover) at Sheffield Phoenix, but it is $70 for “Scholars Price” and $140 “List Price”. The PDF is no longer on the web site.

Blast. But the current volume (three articles thus far) does have PDF files online, so y'all might want to check it out.

Mr. Kendall — thanks for the recommendation anyway. I'll keep the bibliographic info and maybe I'll be able to consult it at some point in the future.

Update: Marc Goodacre did mention the journal, and not even a month ago (Dec. 14, 2004). Don't mind me folks, just keep movin' along.

As I've mentioned before, I'm working my way through Martin Culy's I, II, III John: A Handbook on the Greek Text.

One thing that has been brought out in Culy's text that I'd never really noticed is the dearth of imperatives (ten) in 1 John and the wealth of subjunctives (54). I thought: “Gee, what a groovy thing to run a verb river on!” So I did:

Here we see a picture of the use of moods in 1 John. A few imperatives toward the middle/end of chapter 2, and a few more sprinkled throughout chapter three. The predominant mood (of course) is the indicative, and subjunctives are used throughout the book as well.

What was interesting to me was to see how some (e.g. Longacre, according to Culy) see the imperative occurrences as showing high-points in the text.* The first imperative occurs in 1Jn 2.15** which states “Do not love the world ... ”. Longacre (as I recall, from Culy's text) sees this as the start of the second section (of four) sections that make up 1 John. The sections coincide with use of the imperative.

Many of the subjunctives in 1 John, then, are “hortatory” subjunctives. These are (in 1Jn, from what I gather — I'm still picking this stuff up as I go) almost back-handed commands. 1Jn 1.8-10 is a good example (I think). Subjunctives are in bold.

(Greek text is UBS4, English text is ESV)

I'd never really noticed this stuff before, but what is going on is that instead of using an outright command like “You must confess your sin”, John goes about it from the other direction. “If you say you don't have any sin, you're lying and you're making Jesus Christ into a liar. But if you confess your sins, you'll be forgiven”. Same effect — the reader knows he must confess — but the instruction is more gentle and more effective.

Fun stuff. Makes me want to read Longacre's work on 1 John to see what else he sees going on in there at the discourse level. I'm a very long way from being able to notice things like this in my own reading/study.

* Also interesting are the vocative nouns.

** I think — my LDLS search results are busted with the current code base on the machine I'm working on here at the office.

I was in a used bookstore here in Bellingham over the weekend. A title in the religion section caught my eye while browsing: The Politically Correct Guide to the Bible by Edward P. Moser. I decided to liberate the title from the prison of musty used bookstore shelves. Oh, and it was cheap.

Here's a snippet:

Eve and Adam's Patriarchal Oppressor

And lo, it was a sexist thing to make a man before a womyn. But God fancied making man after his own image. Perhaps he wanted company, having pretty much been on his own for five billion years. The deity breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, pushed hard upon his chest, applied the electric shock-paddles of life, and man became a living being. God placed his creation in a garden lush with fruit, which raised moral dilemmas about eating fruit. For mangoes and figs have feelings too, as evidenced by their strong response to stimuli like sunlight and recorded music.

The deity told Adam, “Behold, I have given you herb-bearing seed, and its grass is upon the face of all the earth,” and Adam experienced temporary memory loss, and fashioned the Middle East's first hookah. (Moser, 19-20)

It goes on. Some parts are hilarious, others are trying too hard. It is broken into short chapters so reading can be stretched out; there is also no need to read it consecutively.

James Tauber writes in a recent blog entry:

I've just started reading John Lee's A History of New Testament Lexicography (which, for all you New Testament Greek scholars out there, is a must read).

This is so weird. The day before he wrote this post, even though I wouldn't consider myself a “New Testament Greek scholar”, I received my own copy of John Lee's A History of New Testament Lexicography and am itching to read it. I was able to purchase it from the publisher on an SBL discount after picking up an order form at their booth during the conference. I've been watching the mail for the past week just hoping it would arrive. I really want to read this book.

Problem: I have too many other things to read and work through right now.

So I made a decision: I'd wait until March to get into the John Lee book. I scanned the preface, and boy does it look good. Of course, as one who is intimately familiar with the structure and innards of Greek lexica and electronic editions of the Greek New Testament, the real question is — how come didn't I break down and buy this book sooner? I mean, I actually enjoyed the essay in TDNT volume 10 about the history and development of Greek dictionaries/lexicons (LDLS link). The preface to BDAG (LDLS link) was exciting reading to me. But here's a whole book on the subject, and I haven't read it yet?!

(Yes, Eli, I know the neighbors think I'm weird).

Anyway, no sooner than I'd made my decision to postpone my read of the book, here comes James “is a must read” Tauber saying (essentially) “Read it! Read it NOW!”

If this were “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, and I was James T. Kirk, and James Tauber was a certain evil dude named in the title, I'd be screaming “KHAN!!!!” at the top of my lungs right now.

It's like I've got an open, bleeding wound and someone is treating it by pouring salt and lemon juice into the gash. I don't know if I'll be able to wait until March to read the book. I mean, I've left it at the office so I don't sneak reads surreptitiously at the house when I should be doing other things.

TAUBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Side Note: Has anyone read James Chadwick's Lexicographica Graeca: Contributions to the Lexicography of Ancient Greek? This is another title that's been on my to-read list for awhile, but it's $140.00, even from Amazon. I haven't bothered with trying inter-library loan; I have a horrible case of bibliomania regarding books like this and would most likely have problems returning it on time. If you are familiar with the title and can let me know if it is worth pursuing or not, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

(take that, James Tauber!)

So, I followed Stephen C. Carlson's advice and checked out TextKit. I was planning on doing that anyway, but knowing that whatever they had was OK was a good thing and it prompted me to do it sooner rather than later.

I'm poking through the first bits of Latin for Beginners by Benjamin L. D'Ooge, at least for now.

I'm realizing is that there are a lot of rules having to do with pronunciation. Penults, antepenults, dipthongs, short vowels, long vowels, vowel 'quantity' and syllable 'quantity', etc. Then I realized: Greek has a lot of this same stuff, and I don't consciously think of it when I'm reading Greek ... I just read it. So that's encouraging.

One disadvantage is that I don't get to actually hear anyone pronounce Latin. So I poked around the internet a bit. I found GreekLatinAudio.com, which has some MP3 files of various books of the NT, read from the Greek NT and the Vulgate NT. But the volume was very low and almost inaudible, and the enunciation didn't seem to be that great (but the sound was pretty faint ... ). But it's better than nothin'. Maybe I'll burn some tracks on a CD so I can crank it on my stereo. Then the neighbors will really think I'm weird.

Question: Are there pronunciation debates amongst Latinists similar to the pronunciation debates one finds regarding NT Greek? (e.g. Erasmian vs. Modern vs. ... )

Update: Regarding the Latin at GreekLatinAudio.com, Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) writes in the comments:

I just listened to the first part of Mark 1 at GreekLatinAudio.com. It does not conform to any of the three systems I outlined above, and the speaker's knowledge of Spanish (as a second language?) is constantly interfering with his pronunciation. I don't recommend this AT ALL.

He also provided a helpful synopsis of Latin pronunciation — more than I'd anticipated. Thanks, Stephen, for the helpful comments.

[notes on EpDiog §5]

The primary thesis of EpDiog 6 is the first verse:

To put the matter simply, what the soul is in the body, this is what Christians are in the world. (EpDiog 6.1).

The rest of the chapter provides illustrations to back up the author's argument. He writes things such as:

The soul lives in the body, but it does not belong to the body; Christians live in the world but do not belong to the world. (EpDiog 5.3)

and

The soul, which is immortal, dwells in a mortal tent; Christians temporarily dwell in perishable surroundings but await that which is imperishable in the heavens. (EpDiog 5.8)

I'm not sure that I entirely agree with the author's point here. Some of his examples sound good but they seem to assume their corollary, and the parallelism makes for good copy. Rhetorically it's excellent, but more importantly: is it right? The author seems to espouse an almost gnostic seperation of body and soul (or spirit). In this chapter it seems as if he's arguing that the soul will only be free when it breaks from the bondage of the body. It is true that our sin-corrupted flesh needs to be shed, but it is also true that the sin-corrupted flesh is a perversion of the original bodies created by God. It is also true that we can expect new resurrection bodies.* So the emphasis on the soul/body dichotomy seems ill-conceived to me. The problem isn't our bodies, the problem is sin. Now if the author is using “flesh” as a synonym for “sin”, then I suppose that's fine, but I don't think he is. He seems to be using “flesh” (σὰρξ) and “body” (σῶμα) interchangeably in this section, both in opposition to “soul” (ψυχή).

Now, with that said, it is true that Christians are to be light and salt (Mt 5.13-14) working to spread the message of salvation to a world that desperately needs it. We are different than the world, and the world does look upon us differently. So I do buy the gist of what the author is writing here; it just seems that he flirts with (and even may go over) a line that he shouldn't be getting near.

Next up: EpDiog 7. As usual, I'm not sure when.

* My eschatology is the weakest point of my theology (typical Calvinist, huh?). I like to call myself “pro-millenial”. That is, I'm not sure when that glorious day will come, or when the millenium will start, or if we're in it already, or if it is pre-trib/post-trib/no-trib/whatever; I simply say “bring it on!” Yeah, it's a bit of a cop-out. One thing I am sure of, though, is that — whenever whatever is going to happen happens — a new “body”, free from the corruption of sin, is part of it. And I hope it happens soon. Come, Lord Jesus!

In typical scatter-brained fashion, I've been thinking the past week or so about Latin and my own ignorance of the language.

I'm looking for recommendations of primer/introduction types of resources. But I need to make my purposes clear.

I'm not interested in Latin for classics. I'm interested specifically in Ecclesiastical Latin of three sorts:

• The “Old Latin” found in pre-vulgate NT Latin MSS/editions.
• The Vulgate (of course)
• Writings of the Latin Fathers

The “scholarly” Latin found through the 19th century (e.g., Tischendorf's apparatus) is of secondary interest to me. My primary interest is textual criticism. In the long run, I hope to have some sort of familiarity with the languages of the primary early editions: Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, etc.

I have absolutely no Latin training, so I need something to inform my pronounciation. But I am familiar with Koine Greek, so anything that points out similarities (and differences) between the two would be nice. A sort of “Latin for Koine Greek Students” would be cool. I'd think that something along the lines of Lambdin's Sahidic Coptic Intro, which specifically notes loanwords from Greek, would be helpful.

I can't help but think with a decent pronounciation guide, some decently annotated paradigms, and some short vocabulary building exercises I could get a decent grasp of the language fairly quickly.

If you have any recommendations for me to check out, I'd appreciate it. If you just say “Get Wheelock”, you'll be summarily ignored unless you explain why Wheelock is appropriate to my situation.

Thanks!