I mentioned back at the end of November that I was "Going Analog" in my morning devotions and would be using Martin Culy's I, II, III John: A Handbook on the Greek Text as my primary reading/study. I had two other posts on the book:

• A few updates
• Mood in First John

Yesterday morning, I worked through the last paragraph of 3 John, so that means I'm done with the book. My schedule to work through was 2-4 verses every weekday morning, and it took just over two months to get through.

I'm a fan of this book, it has helped me in understanding some things about Greek. If you are in the situation where you had Greek a few years back and are still semi-functional — meaning you know the alphabet and can deduce lexical forms of words from their inflected forms, thus look them up in a lexicon — then Culy's book might be a good thing to pick up and start to get back into it.

I will be starting to use Culy & Parsons on Acts tomorrow.

Highly recommended. And it's only $14.00 at Amazon right now.

Hey — thanks for reading ricoblog!

I wanted to make a quick announcement for regular ricoblog readers:

With the advent of PastoralEpistles.com I'll probably be spending more of my energies over there than over here. So posting to this blog will slow down a bit, especially since a fair portion of what I posted on in the past involved the Pastoral Epistles in some way. But I do want to keep ricoblog going too, I just don't think I'll be able to keep the pace up on two blogs and keep my employer happy (not to mention my own sanity, though some would say that's long gone).

Unless I can tie it into the Pastoral Epistles somehow, blogging on the Apostolic Fathers at sporadic intervals will continue happening here (yes, I know, it's been awhile since I posted on The Epistle to Diognetus ... ). As will blogging about whatever else strikes my fancy. Heck, this might even end up making ricoblog even more eclectic ...

Hi folks.

I think I've got the RSS Feed at PastoralEpistles.com up and running.

Please let me know if you run into any problems.

I'd like to thank folks for mentioning and publicizing PastoralEpistles.com on their blogs and on email lists. It's always neat when an idea of your own gets an entusiastic reception. So, thanks to those who posted links for me. I do appreciate it.

Regarding an RSS feed: That's next on the to-do list. I'd thought I might get to it next weekend, but based on the response received today, I may end up trying to whip one up on Monday night. I'll post information here if I'm able to get that done.

Thanks again to Hypotyposeis, the NT Gateway Weblog, the Biblical Theology weblog, a few email lists and whomever else posted announcements and links.

Over the past few weekends, I've been spending my time working on yet another little side project: PastoralEpistles.com.

The site is a bit of a mutt. It is part blog, part wiki, and part something else that I'm not sure how to describe. What it allows me to do is to post information about the Pastoral Epistles in a few different formats:

• Blog-style: So, the posts I've been making here that touch on the Pastorals will probably move over to the Pastoral Epistles.com blog.
• Bibliography-style: One thing I really want to do is develop an annotated bibliography for the Pastoral Epistles. And not just books, but journal articles and web sites too. This will probably be the primary type of content, at least in the short term, for the site.
• Articles: I may write longer articles, or post sample PDF files of the stuff I'm writing as I work my way through the Pastorals.
• Site Documents: There's a certain amount of site overhead and communication that needs to go on.

The setup is extensible so I can create new "post types" by popping a new XML file in the right spot on the server. Rather than typing in HTML, the syntax is based on some very simple wiki-style codes. I can add different codes and such fairly easily. (I do still need to support dumping in raw HTML and ignoring it, though ... )

I'm sure James Tauber is thinking right now, "Gee, sounds like Leonardo." It may be. But writing the code is the fun part, isn't it? And why should someone else have all the fun?

The site still has a decent amount of work left to be done. Consider the current incarnation a beta. I haven't written the component that generates an RSS file yet, and there are some management tools I've yet to write, plus a few other things. I hope to get to the RSS file bit next weekend. I also don't have any support for comments (I still haven't decided if I want to support comments). But the mechanics of posting and browsing are supported, so I figured I'd make it live and get some folks banging on it so I can see what I haven't anticipated and what I need to fix.

Please check it out. Poke around. Click on stuff. I'm interested to know what you think about it. I've viewed the site in FireFox, IE 6.0, and Opera (all on WinXP) and it looks fine, so it should fly just about anywhere, I'd think. It looks the worst in IE (the login and password boxes not lining up is the problem; they do in other browsers. I'll have to work on that).

The login, BTW, is for "authors" to post links. If you're interested in being an author for some reason, contact me at: articles | pastoralepistles | com. Point me to stuff you've written online and plead your case.

Also, if you know of sites that I should include in the URL Bibliography, please drop a line to me at: articles | pastoralepistles | com. I'm guessing you'll know how to munge that into an email address.

Update: James Tauber writes in the comments:

It's also made me wonder if you, me and Zach Hubert should put together some kind of hosted site where people get a blog and a bunch of collaborative tools suited specifically to serious biblical study.

As for me: It sounds interesting. I've already learned a few lessons in writing the code for PastoralEpistles.com, and I'm sure I'll learn many more before things in the weeks to come. I'll warn you all, though -- I'm more of a data hound than an actual, bona-fide programmer, but it could at least be fun to talk about. If Zach chimes in and thinks it's a good idea, perhaps James can drop us both an email with some more details of what he's thinking?

Tech Geeks: It's all server-side JScript that munges/writes XML for posts and views of posts. This is the thing that I wrote the Beta Code to Unicode converter for a few weeks back. It lets me key the Greek in according to Greek Beta Code in the wiki-syntax, but it munges it into normalized unicode for the display. For the record, I'm not interested in releasing the code to the public. It's a big byzantine ball o' spaghetti-fied crud that nobody but me should be penalized with having to grok.

First, Marc Goodacre has posted a copy of the Greek of the Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim Fragment) online. It's a word doc, and it's unicode. If you read my li'l backwoods of a blog, you surely read Dr. Goodacre's, so you probably already know about this. But I mention it just in case you don't. (In which case — add the NT Gateway Weblog to your aggregator now.)

So, I had to grab the transcription and give it a look-see. I can futz may way through the Greek, but I still have problems getting sentences together, so I did a search and (of course) ran into Early Christian Writings' English edition of the Apocalypse of Peter. So, I'm scanning down them both, trying to make sense of it all.

Then I come across the first part of § 24 (English from M.R. James edition):

I ran across κοσμηθεῖσαι and I thought to myself, “I know that word!”; as in, I've looked into it before. It's also found in 1Ti 2.9:

Knowing I'd written on this before, while at home for lunch I went back to my notes on 1Ti 2.9. Here are some other citations (English only):

• 1Pe 3.5-6: “For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.” (ESV)
• Re 21.2: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” (ESV)
• Testament of Judah 12.1: “And after these things, while Tamar was a widow, she heard after two years that I was going up to shear my sheep, and adorned herself in bridal array, and sat in the city Enaim by the gate.” (from R.H. Charles' edition. cf. Ge 38)
• Josephus, Wars 2.444: “ ... for he went up thither to worship in a pompous manner, and adorned with royal garments, and had his followers with him in their armor.” (Whiston translation)
• MPoly 13.2: “When the pyre was prepared, Polycarp laid aside all his garments and loosened his belt. He was also trying to undo his sandals, even though he was not accustomed to do so, since each of the faithful was always eager to do it, to see who could touch his skin most quickly. For he was adorned with every good thing because of his exemplary way of life, even before he bore his testimony unto death.” (Ehrman translation)
• 1Cl 33.7: “We should realize that all those who are upright have been adorned with good works, and even the Lord himself, when he adorned himself with good works, rejoiced.” (Ehrman translation)

All in all, κοσμέω is a fun little word. Notably, the passage in 1Ti 2.9-10 uses the word in both its literal and figurative senses at the same time. According to this passage, women are to “adorn themselves” with “respectable apparel” — things like modesty, self control, and good works. They are not to “adorn themselves” in an ostentatious show of wealth and pride by wearing gold, pearls, and super-fancy hairstyles.

Now I have another citation to add to my list: Apocalypse of Peter 24. Thanks, Dr. Goodacre.

Update: I knew I'd seen something else on this before. H.B. Swete published an edition on the Gospel of Peter from Ahkmim Fragment. The Life and Works of Henry Barclay Swete has Swete's translation of the Gospel of Peter fragment up, along with (somewhat smallish) graphics of the fragment itself. The site setup makes direct linking impossible, so from the front page click on the "Antique Texts" item in the sidebar. Then scroll down to the section "Editions of Antique Texts". You should see the link in that section.

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.