I think I need to declare a book-buying moratorium for the month of February, at least for me. But sometimes you run across a unique title that you know you'll use, so you just have to get it.

I was reading Donald Hagner's New Testament Exegesis and Research and hit the bibliography section where he mentioned the title Hellenistic Commentary on the New Testament, edited by M. Eugene Boring and a few other folks. The title sounded intriguing, so I checked it out at Amazon.com. They want $70.00 for it — too rich for my blood.

So, I checked AbeBooks for a used copy. Bingo. There was a bookseller in Portland, OR selling a copy in great shape for under $30.00. That bookseller has at least two more copies available (at the time of this posting) at $27.00, check it out if you're interested.

The book is arranged canonically. There are 976 units on which "commentary" is provided. The commentary is an excerpt from a classic document of some sort — in my short perusal I've seen Philo, Josephus, Qumran stuff, Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha/Deuterocanon and a whole lot of other classical sources cited. After each citation is a short explanation of how the citation applies to the verse at hand, sometimes with references to other textual units. It is fully indexed, so you can hop to the index in the back and see, for example, where Seneca has been quoted (26 times).

Here is unit 828 on 1Ti 1.9 “understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers,” (ESV).

828. 1 Timothy 1:9

Sentence of Antiphanes

The one who does no wrong is in no need of law. (MEB/from Stobaeus, Anthologium vol. 3).

Cf. Similarly no. 540; Menander of Carchedon, “Wherever good is found, it is better than the law” (MEB/from Stobaeus, Anthologium vol. 3); and Philo , “Allegorical Interpretation” 1.94: “There is no need, then, to give injunctions or prohibitions or exhortations to the perfect man formed after the [Divine] image, for none of these does the perfect man require” (LCL).

Most of the quotes are longer; I picked this one because it was short to type. The book is 633pp, published in 1995 by Abingdon.

Folks —

I noticed some trackback spam starting to crop up in some older posts on ricoblog. Therefore I've disabled the trackback features.

Not that big of a deal; nobody was using them anyway. But I thought I'd mention it in case somebody actually noticed and was wondering why.

About a month ago, I blogged about the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) Provisional Edition, which is slowly making its way online.

More has been posted. If you haven't been able to check it out for the past few weeks, you should. There are provisional editions of 11 books, plus a provisional edition on the twelve minor prophets, making for 23 books in total. The Pentateuch is now represented in its entirety. The complete list (and links to the PDF files) is on the page, give 'er a look-see.

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.