Looks like I got tagged in what James Tauber calls "the blogospherical equivalent of a chain letter". This "Five Things" meme has been wending its way about the web for awhile; I suppose it was only a matter of time before it hit me.

James is the one who tagged me, so ... blame him for this post. Watch out, I get to pass the meme to five others. The lucky winners are named at the bottom.

Ten Years Ago
Let's see, 1995 ... that means I was living in Oak Harbor, WA and working at Logos Research Systems in the enduser sales department, and we had just released the Logos Library System v2.0. I had spent the previous months doing proofing electronic editions of lexicons like BAGD, TDNT (Abridged) and the middle Liddell to make sure the Greek was acceptable before we shipped. I was also starting to dig into HTML and making my own static web pages.

Five Years Ago
Where was I in 2000? Logos, of course. Still in Oak Harbor. I was in the Text Development department, managing the day-to-day process of creation of books for the Logos Library System. But early betas of the next generation of Logos (Logos Bible Software, the Libronix Digital Library System or LDLS) were available internally, and behind the scenes I was working on getting resources converted from the old format to the new format. One particularly fun task was working with early prototypes of our localisation process, which (completely re-written and re-implemented by someone else, of course) now does wonders to provide the LDLS interface in several localised flavors.

One Year Ago
2004. Now living in Bellingham, I was getting ready to go to the ETS and SBL conferences. I'd done a lot of work on morphologically tagged Greek things and laying some groundwork for future projects for Logos. And I'd been writing a lot about the Pastoral Epistles. I'd just blogged An Ode to BDAG, which I'm sure you all will enjoy.

Five yummy things
Curry, fresh sushi, anything my neighbor George cooks on his asado grill, deep-fried turkey, and freshly caught salmon grilled to perfection.

Five songs I know by heart
Too many, really. But here's a random and eclectic smattering:

• The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes -- 77s
• The Devil went down to Georgia -- Charlie Daniels Band
• Theme to Gilligan's Island -- ?? yes, I'm ashamed to admit this. But you know it too.
• Old Brown's Daughter -- Great Big Sea
• Psalm 23 (may require a short review) -- David.

Five things I would do with a lot of money
Hopefully nothing stupid (x5)

Five places I would escape to
Stellenbosch (in the Western Cape, South Africa), Greek islands, Phoenix AZ, Friday Harbor WA, and Stellenbosch. (why can't I go there twice?)

Five things I would never wear
I defer to Amy's fashion sensibilities on this one.

Five favorite TV shows
TV? What's TV? I don't have one, so this requires me to think a bit. Simpsons and Hogan's Heroes for sure. Dick Van Dyke show? Dunno what else.

Five things I enjoy doing
Working for Logos (really!), studying NT Greek, writing, blogging (yes, there's a difference), and spending time with Amy. (yeah, say what you want, guys, it's true).

Five favorite toys
My hand made strip-built cedar kayak, motorcycle, digital camera, laptop, and whatever book I happen to be reading.

Five people who get this 'meme'
Bob Pritchett, Loren Rosson, Brandon Wason, Zack Hubert and Stephen C. Carlson

No, not from me, of course. Check out this link from Marginal Revolution.

The article contains a link to a paper by John Cochrane (link is to PDF). It is relatively short (13 pages).

If I'd only read this before I wrote the paper for SBL ... speaking of which, I'll likely post the entire draft of the Biblioblog paper at the end of the week.

Be sure to note his section on seminar presentations, beginning on page 11 of the paper.

I know nothing of the book Greek Popular Religion by Martin P. Nilsson (published in 1940) apart from its having been made available at sacred-texts.com.

The blurb on the site states:

This is a short survey of Greek religious practice and beliefs from ground level. The texts of Homer, Hesiod, and the Greek dramatists and philosophers, who defined Greek beliefs, have long been known and understood. There is a conventional view of Greek mythology which is taught by rote to school children (at least until recently), which relies on a neat set of 'myths and legends.' It was not until the pioneering efforts of Jane Harrison and other scholars in the 19th century that a picture emerged of what actually constituted Greek religion, and how it evolved. This monograph covers what was known by the middle of the 20th century. It gives a fascinating look at the very earthy popular side of Greek religion, with its noisy (and often messy) festivals, initiations, secret societies, oracles, and a practical but very superstitious belief system. He also discusses how some of these beliefs and festivals, under the guise of Christianity, have persisted to this day.

I figure it may be of interest to some, hence the post.

Yes, I'm a little late to the game here, but I thought I'd blog regarding Michael F. Bird's post on Euangelion about commentaries based on particular NT manuscripts.

For background, here are a few posts:

• Euangelion: Writing a NT Commentary
• Evangelical Textual Criticism: TC Heresy?
• Stuff of Earth: bird's text critical insanity
• Euangelion: More on Textual Criticism

I read Michael's first post on the day it was written and even commented on it, but it's been mulling in my mind ever since (BTW, kudos to Stephen C. Carlson [Hypotyposeis] for pointing out that I was wrong in my comment on Euangelion and that Reuben Swanson's stuff uses Vaticanus, not Alexandrinus -- Can't believe I messed that up).

I'm still intruiged by this idea of doing exegesis/commentary on particular manuscripts. I don't know how much value it would have directly for exegetical or homiletical purposes, but I think rigorous work on individual manuscripts (particularly larger manuscripts) could be quite useful in other contexts.

I'm thinking particularly of the areas of MS provenance and history. The NA27/UBS4 MS table in the back (or in the tri-fold insert) may tell me wher an MS is housed today, but that's not much. Because an MS was found or is housed at a particular location doesn't mean it has always been at that location (e.g. monastry or library or museum). The MS history could be (was, in most cases) quite different. Doing detailed studies and even exegesis of MS as written could help in establishing provenance, couldn't it? To develop theories about unique aspects of particular MS and align those with other data that helps us understand the distinctives of what was being taught in a particular area at a particular time?

Ever since reading an article by Eldon Jay Epp in the Spring 2004 JBL, “The Oxyrhynchus New Testament Papryi: 'Not Without Honor Except in Their Hometown'?” (watch out, link is to a PDF file) I've thought it would be cool to have access to these sorts of systematic MS studies, all done with a particular goal: To establish the provenance of a particular MS, to determine what elements of the MS lead one toward particular conclusions regarding provenance. To be useful as a group, the same basic template and/or methodology would have to be followed. But I can see something like:

• Transcription of the papyrus, or rights to use existing transcription (e.g. Comfort & Douglas')
• Critical apparatus listing variants in NA/UBS, Byz, and perhaps major uncials or other MS (e.g. Sinaticus, A, B, D, etc.)
• Translation of the MS itself.
• If there could be an evaluation of the MS against quotations in the church fathers, that would be most excellent -- particularly for readings unique to the MS or minority readings the MS contains.
• Same thing, only comparing against early versions. Does the Latin, Syriac, Coptic or Ethiopic seem to prefer a reading espoused by this particular MS?
• Exegetical commentary of the MS itself focusing on the unique spots (as compared to NA/UBS) and on how exegesis based on these areas leads to conclusions that might be different from exegesis based on the critical text.

Can you imagine a series that would focus on this sort of thing? It would need to focus on some of the larger MSS. Perhaps focus on MSS that cover a given proportion (let's say more than half?) of a single book of the Bible. These 'commentaries' would therefore cover the length of the MS, not necessarily single books (though perhaps they could?)

Anyway, I think it would need to be clear that such volumes would not be written with the intent of providing source material for homiletical purposes, or for foundation of doctrine (particularly the variants that are way out there). But from a text-critical perspective, wouldn't it be valuable to have access to studies on provenance, text history, textual distinctives and resulting effect on exegesis, as well as areas where minority variants have been potentially cited? Couldn't that, in turn, have a beneficial effect on textual criticism as practiced today, particularly as applied in the continued development of the eclectic critical text?

Update (2005-11-08): Michael Pahl has a response and further discusssion. I say: bring it on! I'd hate to think I could define a whole series in five minutes of banging out a bulleted list in a blog post.

Also, in the comments below Michael Bird (Euangelion) wonders aloud if publishers would be willing to print such a beast. Of that, I have no idea whatsoever. But some academic publishers (e.g. Brill, Eisenbrauns, etc.) publish some narrowly focused material.

Update II (2005-11-08): Danny Zacharias (Deinde) adds his views to the conversation. He's right too; "commentaries" along the lines discussed in all of these posts would have limited appeal and those using them would need to realize they are commenting on a particular manuscript (and therefore on a particular era or community of believers) and not necessarily advocating new practice or doctrine when dealing with theologically significant variants.

About a month ago, I blogged about LibraryThing. Several other bibliobloggers have mentioned the service as well.

For the unaware, LibraryThing is this cool service you can use to catalog your books fairly easily. For example, here's my profile.

The service has grown by leaps and bounds, and the guy who runs (Timothy Spalding) it has added some nifty stuff in the past month. I'd highly recommend it.

One of my early hesitations with LibraryThing was that I couldn't add my own stuff en masse. See, I have wanted (and wanted) to write my own book database thingie that would catalog both print and electronic resources (i.e., books for Logos Bible Software / Libronix Digital Library System). I've bugged Bob Pritchett about it for around three years now.

Then LibraryThing went and did it. Tim added a "universal import" that simply takes a list of ISBN numbers and then does the rest.

"Whoa ... I can make that work!" was my first thought.

I've hacked together a small HTA ("Hyper-Text Application") that (slowly) accesses the LDLS via the LDLS Object Model, builds a list of books, and allows you to export a list of ISBN numbers. Then ... if you sign up for LibraryThing (first 200 books are free!) you can import the list and use LibraryThing to start to catalog your print and electronic resources.

Realize that not all LDLS resources have ISBN data, but several do. So this is one way to get a large chunk-o-resources from LDLS into LibraryThing.

Before I provide a link, a few warnings:

1. It requires you to have IE on your machine (if you have Logos, you have IE).
2. It runs locally on your own box.
3. Your virus software will pitch a fit when it runs. It's OK. If you don't trust me, just disconnect from the internet when you run it.
4. Oh, you may have to adjust your IE security settings. I dunno. It worked on my box, though.
5. It is S-L-O-W.
6. The interface is horrid. Interruptive dialogs with no ability to cancel out? Oh yeah! Now you know why I munge text & data, and why I don't write interface stuff for Logos.
7. On reflection, "horrid" is being too kind. The interface absolutely stinks.
8. Have I mentioned that it is slow?
9. It works on my laptop at home. It may not work on any other machine in the known world at this time. As they say, your mileage may vary.
10. I wrote the guts of this years ago when I was cutting my javascript teeth. I've learned much in the intervening years. It could be oh-so-much better. I mean, it's pretty bad. Keep a bucket handy if you happen to look at the code.
11. I specifically disclaim any responsibility for anything that happens to your machine as a result of running this thingie. That means success or failure. If you run it, you're responsible.

Now, instructions.

1. Download the zip archive.
2. Unzip it all into its own folder.
3. Double-click MetadataExplorer.hta.
4. Chide me for stupid interruptive dialogs and bad interface design.
5. Wait awhile. Hey, I said it was slow!
6. Click the button that says Export ISBNs
7. Chide me again for dumb interruptive dialogs.
8. Find your ISBNs in LDLS-ISBNs.txt in the same folder as the HTA file.

Next, you probably want to de-dupe the list. Most text editors will have some sort of sort/de-dupe functionality. Yes, the script should do this. But it doesn't. Have I mentioned I'm a cheesebag and should be held in contempt for writing this little thing? If you don't de-dupe, LibraryThing may import multiple instances of a given book, and then you'll have to flip through your scads of books and remove dupes in LibraryThing. That's really not that bad since Timothy Spalding is a big-time stud and has made this pretty easy to do. But if you can do it before you submit ... well, you should.

Note that the HTA was actually written for a different purpose -- to browse the raw "dublin core" metadata in LDLS books. Click on a book in the list, hit the "Display Metadata" button. I added the ISBN export because it was easier to add it here than whip something new up.

What's that? You still want to run this blasted nausea-inducing thing on your box? Well ... you've been warned.

Here's the link to the zip file: MetadataExplorer.zip (4.05 KB)

At least, that's what I thought. Didn't that whole thing get settled in the fourth century?

Apparently I'm wrong. World Magazine has an article by Gene Veith that mentions a Bible version called The Inclusive Bible. Veith (who seems rightly horrified by the Inclusive Bible) writes:

The Inclusive Bible follows the higher critics in leaving out the Pastoral Epistles and Revelation, and it follows The Da Vinci Code in including instead the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. This translation is endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the evangelical leader Tony Campolo.

I guess the editors still view the canon debate as open. So why not drop out Hebrews too? I mean, we don't really know who wrote it. And while we're at it, let's drop Jude out too. I mean, c'mon, it quotes Enoch and it is really kind of weird to boot. Can't we just get rid of 'em?

Yes, folks, that is sarcasm. I guess it was just too hard to make the Pastoral Epistles "inclusive" so they figured they'd drop the whole lot. You can argue all you want about Pauline authorship; I'd contend that matter is certainly not at the point where removal from the canon should be considered. In the area of canon, with established books, doubt on the part of some should not lead to outright dismissal of the book. (This is inclusivity?)

Makes me wonder what they did with the shorter & longer endings of Mark. Or John 7.58-8.11. Or 1Jn 5.7-8. I mean, you know, stuff that is really uncertain from a bona-fide text-critical point of view. Did they drop those passages too? Or are they OK because they don't have any "inclusivity" issues?

How is it "inclusive" for this edition to remove books from the canon like this?

Update (2005-11-03): Thanks to prodding from a ricoblog reader and some curiosity of my own, I did a little searching for more information on this. I can't find any listing for something called The Inclusive Bible that fits Veith's description. The closest I can find (thanks for the pointer, John) is a listing at AltaMira Press. This seems to be equivalent with a translation by "Priests for Equality" mentioned earlier (and uncited by me) in Veith's article.

Is there such a translation as the one Veith describes? If so, and if you know the publisher and can point me to a page that describes the contents and philosophy of the translation, I'd be appreciative. Until then, I apologize for the noise. Thanks!

If you're curious about the busy-ness at the office that's kept me from blogging much, you should check out today's post on the Logos Bible Software Blog. Especially if your eyes light up when you think of things Greek, things having to do with syntax, or with exegesis.

This is the sort of thing I'll be talking about in my paper for the ETS meeting (I'll probably even use the example from the Logos blog) so if you're going to be at ETS make sure to hit the Bible Software presentation on Thursday November 17. The whole session runs from 2:10 to 4:30, all the presentations should be worth catching.

Two items. First, Jim West has already referred to his favorite of Martin Luther's 95 Theses. If you'd like, I've placed a PDF online of all of the theses for you to download. Read them all and see what was going on in Luther's head and heart on that day almost 500 years ago.

Second, check out this post that I wrote last year on what to read on All Hallow's Eve. I'll probably do the same this year.