Over the weekend, I stopped at Costco to do some shopping. Whenever I stop at Costco, I like to pick up a few bottles of wine. I typically purchase something I know (this time it was a Ravenswood Zinfindel — yummy) and something I don't know about. My wildcard purchase this time was a 2000 vintage Merlot from Colvin Vineyards.

I decided to open a bottle for Sunday dinner, and I went with the Colvin Merlot. I knew something was wrong off the bat, it didn't smell right; it had the smell of wet leather. It tasted horrible. The wine had gone bad somewhere along the line and it was simply undrinkable.

After tasting it, I decided to contact the vintner. So I hopped on the web and popped to their home page. It seems the 2000 Merlot actually won some awards. Bummer the bottle I got went bad. I went to their contact form, retrieved the contact email address, and wrote an email letting him know of my experience, that I figured it was a bad bottle, and sent the message. Then I dumped the bottle down the drain.

This morning, I had an email from Mark Colvin, the owner, proprietor and head wine-dude-ologist (I think that's the term) with the following message:

Sorry to hear of your flawed bottle experience.  That vintage of Merlot is sold out and was well received, but does not guarantee that an occasional bottle will be out of whack.  It happens to all wine, even the most expensive and highly regarded.

If you send your address I will be happy to send a 2001 Walla Walla Merlot.  While I am dismayed when one of these bottles pop up, I have to remember it is a part of the business and do whatever it takes to make it right.

I was down on the winery. I figured they had decent wine, but I didn't want to risk buying another bum bottle. Mr. Colvin's email and offer wasn't entirely expected, but boy was it appreciated. Depending on how the next round goes, his winery could be on my list of wineries to look for when I'm looking for a bottle of wine. 

In the past, I blogged on the use of a particular idiom that occurs in 1Ti 4.16:

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

I blogged about this in three previous posts (that I can find) where I'd noticed the same idiom appearing in some of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers:

• The Responsibility of the Teacher (cf. 2Cl 10.5)
• 2 Clement and "double" (cf. 2Cl 15.1; 2Cl 19.1)
• Ignatius to the Ephesians and "double" (cf. IgEph 16.1-2)

Well, I've been poking through my latest acquisition, and I came across a document entitled The Life of Polycarp. I've heard of this but never had the opportunity to read it. Lightfoot doesn't consider it genuine by any stretch. He thinks it was written in the middle of the fourth century and as such is a witness to ecclesiastical stuff a-goin' on back then. He included a transcription of the Greek, with apparatus and notes and also an English translation.*

And there it was. §XXV.

The Greek and the translation are from Lightfoot (Part II, Vol. II, §2, pp. 1038 [Greek] and 1080 [English]), any typos are mine.

* It's almost superfluous to mention, but Lightfoot was a stud.

Sometimes, I just can't help myself.

For the past year or so, I've been looking off and on for a set of Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers volumes. No, not the one-volume Lightfoot/Harmer edition that was published after Lightfoot's death. I'm talking about the five volume set:

• Apostolic Fathers Part I: Clement of Rome (vol. I): 496 pages, including a complete 'autotype' (facsimile) of the "Constantinopolitan MS', the only complete witness to both letters of Clement in the Greek. It's a 50 pages of miniscule and it is awesome. It makes me want to take a course in paleography.
• Apostolic Fathers Part I: Clement of Rome (vol. II): 532 pages, with the Greek text, apparatus, notes, and translations of the letters. Several extended citations from parallels found in other MSS or mentions of Clement as well.
• Apostolic Fathers Part II: Ignatius and Polycarp (vol. I): 739 pages, with background information, quotations, parallels, info on MSS of Ignatius and Polycarp.
• Apostolic Fathers Part II: Ignatius and Polycarp (vol. II, §1): 584 pages. Greek texts, notes, apparatus, translations and introductions to the Ignatian epistles. 
• Apostolic Fathers Part II: Ignatius and Polycarp (vol. II, §2): 530 pages. An appendix to the Ignatian letters, with fragments and alternate recension in Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Arabic. A beautiful book. Also the Greek text, notes, apparatus, etc. for the Polycarp material.

Well, I spotted vol II §§1&2 of part II listed by a bookseller in London. I sent an inquiry asking if they had the other volumes available as I was interested in the set. They were able to cobble together a set of the five volumes, and next thing I know they were winging their way to me across the Atlantic. I wasn't expecting them for about another week, so when they arrived today it was a complete (and welcomed) surprise.

These books are just plain cool. I'm looking forward to being able to consult them and also working through the material. Polycarp first, at some point, and I'll figure out the rest after that.

I had an appointment in Oak Harbor (WA) on Monday morning. On my way, the sun was rising as I was driving through Dugualla Bay, so I took a detour down the Dugualla Dike Road and took a few pictures. Unfortunately, it was raining and I was running a little late, so I didn't have much time for the pictures. One ended up blurry, and the other two (of the sunrise) aren't great, but here's the best of the lot:

I also took some pictures while driving, just to see how they'd turn out. Don't worry, I wasn't actually paying attention to the camera; I was just pointing and clicking while my eyes were on the road. Here's the best one:

As always, low-res copies of the photos are online at Photos del Rico

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.

I don't use the Graphical Query capability in the LDLS often. But I was looking at 1Ti 3.7 tonight. The last part of the verse goes like this:

ἵνα μὴ εἰς ὀνειδισμὸν ἐμπέσῃ καὶ παγίδα τοῦ διαβόλου.

The English (from the ESV) is “... so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.” Now, my question in looking at this has to do with the the second half. Is παγίδα τοῦ διαβόλου epexegetical? That is, does “into a snare of the devil” explain the disgrace being fallen into, or are these two seperate things? Or something else altogether? As the ESV repeats “into”, it's a safe bet that they see these as two seperate things. But I want to understand it, not just take someone else's word for it. 

I thought it might be enlightening to search for patterns based on morphology instead of patterns based on words. So I whipped out my Grapical Query Editor in the LDLS and pointed and clicked my way to:

A preposition, followed by a noun in the accusative case, followed by a verb in the subjunctive mood, followed by a conjunction, followed by a noun in the accusative case — the whole thing occurring, in that order, in the space of nine words or less.

I didn't find much. So I went back to the drawing board:

Here I used the super-groovy agreement operator to specify that I wanted my nouns to agree in case and number. I also got rid of the preposition part and changed the conjunction reference to an explicit καὶ. I ran the search again, and still didn't find much. What I did find wasn't applicable as there were articles and such before the second noun. I could've tweaked it further to account for that, but I was returning under 10 hits and none of them were helping me; tweaking wouldn't accomplish anything. Blast. So I don't have any more results to evaluate. Widening the field didn't help either.

Thankfully, I still have commentaries to look at. Knight (NIGTC on Pastorals) mentions:

The first aspect of this concern is that he will fall into “reproach” (ὀνειδισμός). From whom will the reproach come? That is to say, is ὀνειδισμός qualified by the genitive τοῦ διαβόλου or is it used absolutely? For the former, it is argued that the preposition εἰς is not repeated before παγίδα. For the latter, it is argued that the reproach follows from the potential bishop not having a good testimony from those outside and so is not restricted exclusively to the διάβολος. That consideration is more in line with the context. (Knight, 165)

Compare that to Ellicott, writing in the 1860's:

... the absence of the article before παγίδα being perhaps due to the preposition; comp. Winer, Gr. 19.2, p. 114. The exact connexion is somewhat doubtful, as the gen. may depend (a) on both, or (b) only on the last of the two substantives. The omission of the prep. before παγίδα (De W.) is an argument in favour of (a); the isolated position however of ὀνειδισμός and the connexion of thought in ch. 5.14, 15, seem to preponderate in favour of (b), ὀνειδισμός being thus absolute, and referring to 'the reproachful comments and judgment,' whether of those without (Chrys.) or within the Church. ... The expression παγίδα τοῦ διαβόλου ('snare laid by the devil;' apparently gen. originis, contrast ver. 6), occurs again in 2Ti 2.26; so similarly in 1Ti 6.9. It is here added to ὀνειδισμός, not epexegetically ... but rather as marking the temptations that will be sure to follow the loss of character; 'quid spei restat ubi nullus est peccandi pudor?' Calv. (Ellicott, 45).

If I knew half of what either of these two dudes have (had) forgotten, I'd be in incredible shape. However ... I do feel kind of good that it seems I actually asked the right question. That's a step up for me.

Conclusion: not epexegetical. Further question, though — does the “fronting” (hope I'm using that term correctly) of εἰς ὀνειδισμὸν before the verb have anything to do with the conclusion? In other words, could the position of these words before the verb provide any indication that the “trap of the devil” is not the same thing as the “disgrace”, but that it is (if I've understood all of this correctly) subsequent to the disgrace?

I'm sure there's an easy explanation to this.

Uncial 05 (Codex Bezae) and Uncial 06 (Codex Claromontanus) both have the letter 'D' assigned to them in the NA27 MS listing (pp. 691).

The texts are similar in that they are both Greek/Latin diglots, though Bezae is dated in the fifth century and Claromontanus in the sixth. (Metzger, Text of the New Testament 49-51) They do not have overlapping content; Bezae with Gospels/Acts (and a snippet of 3Jn) and Claromontanus with content from the Paulines.

Were these at one point considered to be the same MS? If not, why the same letter designator?

Quick checks of both Metzger and Aland didn't help with answering this question, apart from mentioning in passing that both MSS were in possession of Theodore Beza (though not stating if both texts were possessed by Beza at the same time).

Update: Thanks to James Tauber for the comment. It got me thinking — didn't the numbers come about with Caspar Rene Gregory's re-working of the whole system in the early 1900's, after his work on updating/completing Tischendorf's Edito Octava Maior? If so, the answer may be in Gregory's book (if it's in English ... ). Or is the uncial numbering an innovation of the Alands'?

Update II: And thanks as well to Stephen C. Carlson of Hypotyposeis for further clarification. I never realized that they re-used the uncial letters if there was no overlap between MS content.

I use the blog engine dasBlog for this site. In browsing their wiki page, it appears that version 1.7 of the dasBlog engine has been released.

I'll be in the process of updating; if things go wonky that is most likely the cause.

Update: Blog engine updating completed. Not much will be visible on the outside, most of the updates are in handling site logs and such, along with some solutions to handle the ever-growing problem of referral spam. You will see a groovy little RSS logo/graphic in your feed readers now. I've wanted this for a long time. Here's the picture:

This is from a small lit sign at a Mexican restaurant in Port Angeles, WA.

Also, there is some very groovy comment spam prevention going on. It uses MTBlacklist and also allows me to specify keywords and such to block. But coolest is the confirmation code. You really need to click the "comment" link below and check it out, even if you don't leave a comment. An image with a code is generated; the value entered in the confirmation box must match the code, otherwise the comment won't be accepted. Very cool.

Another enhancement is the Archive view. I'll be adding a link on the sidebar for this soon. There's also a larger month calendar view, but it looks pretty dumpy so I won't be highlighting it.

All in all, it seems all right, though the updating process was a bit tedious. If you have problems and think it might be due to the updating, please, by all means, drop me an email to let me know (address in bar to right).

Thanks!