While we're on the topic of morphological editions of non-canonical Greek texts (see below post), check this out:

• The Apostolic Fathers in Greek and English (3 Editions, with Morphology)

I'm so excited about this one! I've been lobbying internally for a morph edition of the Apostolic Fathers in Greek for awhile, and I just couldn't keep quiet any longer. We'll do it if we get the interest, so tell your friends & neighbors!

Update (2005-07-09): The illustrious James Tauber posts a comment asking about the source of the morphological analysis for both Philo and the Apostolic Fathers -- wondering if we're using existing analyses or doing our own. The short answer is "yes". The long answer is below.

For the Philo project, we contacted the Norwegian Philo Concordance Project.* We've entered into an agreement to use their database (thanks, guys!) as a basis for this resource. Their database is morphologically analyzed and lemmatized. It also has casing information, punctuation, citation milestones and some text-critical markers (similar to brackets/double-brackets in NA27/UBS4), among other things. We're converting the database into a running text (that's my job, you can see some advance pics  in the screen shots on the bottom of Logos' Philo Page) so that it will be readable, searchable and usable within the LDLS.

The primary contributors to the Philo Concordance Project -- Peder Borgen, Roald Skartsen and Kåre Fuglseth (and perhaps others of whom I am unaware; no slight is intended) -- have done a tremendous amount of work on this project for several years, and should be thanked for their effort and contribution. We're happy to be working with them.

The Apostolic Fathers project is a bit different. We are starting fresh. The Greek text(s) will be mechanically analyzed. This analysis will then be revised/corrected by scholars with whom Logos has established working relationships** to do this sort of work.

That's about all the detail I can give, but it should be sufficient to answer the question.

Update II (2005-07-10): Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) blogs about the Apostolic Fathers and mentions this post as well as a previous blog entry of his that I commented on. For the record: My copy of Loeb Apostolic Fathers vol I by Ehrman bit the dust as well. That is, about 9 months ago, it slipped off of my book-laden kitchen table, and when it hit the floor (less than a 3 foot drop) the binding promptly split from the book cover. I've been handling vol II with kid gloves ever since, like it's incunabula or something, to ensure it stays intact. Hopefully the quality control folk at Harvard University Press have already addressed this issue -- I'm leery of purchasing any more Loeb vols (and there are a few I have my eyes on; I'll likely blog about that later) because I don't want them to fall apart on me.

Update III (2005-07-12): Hoo-yah! The Logos pre-publication page says that the Apostolic Fathers project is "Under Development". That means we've received enough initial interest to begin the project! Thanks, folks. This one's gonna be fun to do. And make sure to spread the word to folks that you think might be interested.

* If you've been working on morphologically analyzed original language corpora in the area of Biblical studies; or early versions; or church fathers; or inscriptions; or material in cognate languages; or heretofore unavailable manuscript transcriptions; or other stuff dealing with languages important to Biblical studies such as Syriac, Aramaic, Akkadian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin or whatever and have thought, "Gee, this stuff would be way cool if it was available in Logos Bible Software" ... well, we want to talk with you. I can't promise anything, but it's always good to dialog about this stuff and then see what happens. If you want some further information, send me an email (address is in the sidebar) with details about your project (or database, or whatever) and I'll direct it to the folks you need to deal with.

** If you're a well-qualified scholar, have never met a verb you couldn't parse and are interested in this sort of work -- we also want to talk with you. Again, I can't promise anything at all. But if you have interest, send me an email (again, the address is on the sidebar) with your qualifications and language education/skills, and I'll forward it along to the folks at Logos who need to be made aware of your interest.

Over the past few days I spent some time looking at 2Co 10.1-6. The ESV is below; note the bold portions:

I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!—I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2Co 10.1-6, ESV)

There's a lot going on here, and I won't mention everything I looked into when I reviewed the passage. But one interesting aspect was Paul's use of the phrase “to destroy strongholds”. The “strongholds” Paul is speaking of are in the realm of ideas — arguments and philosophies that war against the “knowledge of God”. Any of these sorts of arguments or opinions that are contrary to the “knowledge of God” will, Paul says, be destroyed.

Anyway, the Greek phrase translated “to destroy strongholds” is πρὸς καθαίρεσιν ὀχυρωμάτων. Apart from the preposition, these are uncommon words in the NT. ὀχύρωμα (“stronghold”) only occurs here in the NT. καθαίρεσις (“destroy/destruction”) occurs three times in the NT, and all three of these are in 2 Corinthians (here, 2Co 10.8 and 2Co 13.10). The translation “to destroy” is the similar verb καθαιρέω (occurs 9x in NT, only here in 2Cor)

Got it?

Now, check out Philo,* Conf. Ling. §§129-130:

¹²⁹ And the name is, as the Hebrews say, Phanuel, which translated into our language means, “turning away from God.” For any strong building which is erected by means of plausible arguments is not built for the sake of any other object except that of averting and alienating the mind from the honour due to God, than which object what can be more iniquitous? ¹³⁰ But for the destruction of this strong fortification a ravager and an enemy of iniquity is prepared who is always full of hostility towards it; whom the Hebrews call Gideon: which name being interpreted means, “a retreat for robbers.” “For,” says Moses, “Gideon swore to the men of Phanuel, saying, On the day when I return victorious in peace, I will overthrow this tower.”

Paul and Philo are using the same language. The “strong building/fortification” are both ὀχύρωμα. The word translated “destruction” is καθαίρεσις. In both passages, the “strong building/fortification/stronghold” refers not to a physical building, but instead to ideas that war against God. These strongholds will be destroyed.

Now, for the question: How did I find this? Simple. Conf. Ling. §§129-130 is listed as a citation in the BDAG article for ὀχύρωμα. I just hovered over the reference in the LDLS edition and the English of Yonge's edition popped up (you may need to adjust your keylink preferences for Philo). I guessed on the English based on what BDAG implied the Greek would be. Then, when I got to the office, I looked it up in the Greek edition that we're working on and confirmed the presence of the words in question and their translations in Yonge.

* Remember, The Works of Philo: Greek Text with Morphology is under production as a Logos Bible Software resource ... don't be the last one on your block to get a copy!

While surfing the web last night looking for information on the "Bulletin of the Bezan Club" (from a citation in a footnote in Vööbus' Early Versions), I stumbled across Cambridge's web site for the SNTS.

Cambridge have long published the Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series (SNTS). This page has a complete list of the series along with information on each of the titles. Several of the books have extended excerpts as well.

I was unaware that there was a complete listing, sortable by title, author or volume number. Additionally, several of the book have extended sample excerpts. For example, Maurice Casey's book, Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel (a subject of discussion on Ralph the Sacred River as of late) has an 82 page PDF (the front matter plus the first 72 pages). Not all excerpts are as extensive, but the feature is a good one. Check it all out. 

I still don't know anything about the Bulletin of the Bezan Club; maybe I'll find out about that later.

Update (2005-07-09): Thanks to Pete for his comment with further info on the Bulletin. He informs us that Bulletin of the Bezan Club was 12 volumes, published in Leiden from 1926-37. Now I know.

So, one of the newer features in the Libronix Digital Library System (the platform that runs Logos Bible Software) is the "Find" feature. It works pretty much like CTRL+F in either IE or FireFox. You hit CTRL+F, you type in your word or substring, you hit enter. Then you find it.

This is different than doing a concordance-style search. The "find" just starts at the current point in the resource and searches forward, looking for the next string match.

Just used it for the first time ever. Found exactly what I was looking for. Very cool.

Update (2005-07-07): Checked the beta release notes, this feature was added in March with the release of 2.2 Alpha 19. The release note says:

• Added Incremental Find feature (Find-As-You-Type) to the Edit > Find dialog. This feature works in LLS Resources, OEB Resources, and Reports.

Mark Goodacre (NT Gateway Weblog) responds to a question on deinde from Danny Zacharias regarding Scripture indexing of books.

Danny, if you're using Word (or some other word processor) to edit the sorted data exported from Excel, you can try your hand at MSWord's "wildcard" matching to turn "Ge{tab}1{tab}1-3" into "Ge 1.1-3". You can use metacharacters like '^t' to match invisible stuff like tabs, and replace everything at once instead of the tedious hand-hacking of the lines. I just played around with this and forgot how much I dislike Word's "Wildcard" or "Pattern Matching" capability. Anyway, if you search the help for "wildcard" you'll find some scant documentation, but assuming input like:

Ge{tab}1{tab}1-3
Ge{tab}2{tab}3

Where {tab} is an actual tab character. Assuming that, you can get text like:

Ge 1:1-3
Ge 2:3

With "wildcards" like this and the "Use Wildcards" box checked:

Find What: (<[a-zA-Z0-9 ]@>)^t([0-9]@)^t([0-9-]@)^13
Replace With: \1 \2:\3^p

This assumes that the second field only ever contains numbers, and the third field is only ever numbers and the '-' character. You may need to modify if your data has other requirements.

With all of that said time for the tangent/self-promotion:

Over on my single-topic blog PastoralEpistles.com, I just wrote some code that evaluates posts for cited references (hyperlink text to an online edition of the ESV at ESV.org) and generated a sorted reference index. Reference indexes are handy things, to be able to jump into blog posts (and other things like bibliography entries) based on a Scripture reference can, at times, be even handier.

On the post entry side of things, I've made it very easy to "tag" these sorts of references (i.e. {esv|1Ti 3.1-7} does this: 1Ti 3.1-7). The indexing code searches through posts, looks for particular sorts of tags that indicate a tagged reference of some sort, and compiles a list. There's more to it — one has to account for alternate forms of canonical book names in some manner. Once the list is generated, it is sorted according to a sort key (numeric string generated for sorting purposes based on the reference itself) and saved as an XML file on the server. When the index is displayed, the XML is converted into HTML and dumped to the screen in the site template. 

You can see it on the Bible Index page at PastoralEpistles.com. I see I have a small problem with the entry for 1Ti 3.1-7 duplicated; I'll have to look into that. Not quite sure what would cause that ...

About a year ago, I found myself in the library at Regent College in Vancouver B.C. While there, I happened across Arthur Vööbus' Early Versions of the New Testament: Manuscript Studies. I paged through it and knew that someday I'd like to have a copy of it.

So, I've been searching for it off and on. A few weeks back, I finally saw a copy listed by a used book seller in the states. I snapped up the copy. It arrived today.

This is, quite simply, a cool book. I'm looking forward to (slowly) working through it. And the book has a story: Vööbus fled Estonia after the Soviets took over the country. In the Preface, he writes:

In my refugee's bag I have carried this present work. In that moment when I could give one last look at my study and had to make the difficult decision of putting what I could into my bag and seeing what I had to leave, there was no question about this work. It had taken too much of my life and work.

But it was not in a complete form, and I could take nothing from the materials which were in the process of incorporation. It was very difficult to go on with this study when I had no access to my own library and collected materials. And so the work appears later than it was planned. Regardless of what theperiod of delay has meant to the author, this delay has been a gain for the study, for it has grown constantly in perspective.

As I send if forth from my hands, I think with deep gratitude of my teachers and colleagues and of all the rich spiritual atmosphere at the University of Tartu, to which I owe so much. That amosphere gave me the courage to lay plans for a long-range work and to tackle difficult tasks, including all the prepatory work and equipment required for the investigation of areas which seldom attract scholars. This inspiration has been so strong that this has remained with me in all kinds of experiences. All this I could receive before the destruction of the spiritual life in Estonia by the Soviets — for this spiritual floration is now replaced by idiocy, all cultural values trampled underfoot by the Russian boot, and a great number of the bearers of this spiritual atmosphere have perished along with a great part of the nation drowned in an ocean of blood. (Vööbus, p. vii).

Wow. Note also that this book, published in 1954 in Stockholm, is volume 6 in the series: Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile.

Also, if anyone can inform me how to phonetically pronounce "Vööbus", I'd appreciate it. Send me an email; I'll post here so others can know too.

Update (2005-07-07): Thanks to Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) for his note regarding the pronunciation of 'Vööbus'.

Update (2005-07-06): Comments are re-enabled. I've been able to configure dasBlog such that I am emailed when comments are made; this means I can check them more reliably and remove comments if trolls begin to ply their trade.

I've re-enabled trackbacks as well. Please use them as you're able!

Thanks for the patience while I worked this out.

[original post]

I just got back from watching Star Wars III; I hadn't seen it yet. Just when I thought Lucas' dialog writing couldn't get any crappier ... well, it did.

I wasn't really tired, so I turned on the computer. Checked referrer logs. There have been problems logged with comment posting; I'm not sure why -- it works just fine when I try posting comments using either IE or FireFox. I do have MT-Blacklist enabled; perhaps there are issues with this individual's domain and MT-Blacklist.

Suffice it to say, I'm going to turn off the comment feature for awhile. There have been some problems in the biblioblogosphere with a particular individual trolling comment feeds and making silly unsubstantiated accusations both by email (yes, to me too) and in comments on other biblioblogs. He's been making repeated attempts to comment on posts here (yes, your IP address was logged when you did the blog search, so I know it's you). For now, I'd rather not give the guy a free forum. Apologies to all who have responsibly used the comments here in the past.

As always, if you have an actual, bona-fide comment on a post, I do want to hear it. Send me an email, the address is in the sidebar (scroll down, look for the envelope icon). If you give me permission to post and I deem it appropriate, I'll pop your commment in the body of the blog post after the post. If you don't state permission, I'll assume that the email was meant to be private.

Sorry to have to handle it this way. Perhaps comments will be back in the future. Sheesh, just when I was considering re-enabling trackbacks ... but it's late. I'm gonna catch some Z's.

Through fortuitious happenstance, I was granted a peek at an advance manuscript copy of Stephen C. Carlson's upcoming book, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark, to be published by Baylor University Press.

Stephen C. Carlson mentions his work on his blog, Hypotyposeis. Mark Goodacre has mentioned the book here and here. Michael Turton mentions Stephen's upcoming SBL paper, which is primarily based on a chapter of the book. Heck, I even mentioned the book a few weeks back after reading a blurb about it in an email from Publisher's Weekly.

This is cool stuff. I haven't read too much about Secret Mark apart from knowing the basics of the scandalous content and a very little about the posited source (a heretofore unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria). I could barely put Carlson's MS down once I started reading.

It kept my interest from the foreword to the conclusion, so much so that I spent my Saturday evening sitting in a Starbucks reading the last half of the book (started it on Friday) when I should've been working on my own SBL paper.

Oh well. It was definitely worth it -- Carlson's book is good. Congratulations, Stephen. I'm looking forward to seeing it in print!