Folks --

I'll be on the road all day Tuesday. I hope to blog from the conferences, but I don't plan to have much structure. That is, I won't be giving daily wrap-ups. I believe I'll have internet access at my hotel(s); it all depends how bushed I am from the day's duties.

Big days for me: Thursday I present a paper on Greek Syntactic databases at ETS. Sunday I present the biblioblogging paper at SBL.

If you're at either (or both) conferences, make sure to stop by the Logos booth and say "hi". I may or may not be there, my schedule is filling up fast.

Sacred-texts.com has editions of both of these authors up.

Herodotus: The History of Herodotus, tr. by G.C. Macaulay. Parallel English and Greek (unicode) text. (FYI, Perseus version here)

Tacitus: The Works of Tacitus, tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. Parallel English and Latin text. (FYI, Perseus version here)

Check 'em out. If you know your citation, it may be faster to access the sacred-texts.com static copy than Perseus.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but it's finally here.

Comfort & Barrett's The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts is available for Logos Bible Software. It's not a pre-pub, it is a bona-fide product. I think it will be back from replication shortly; I know I'll have it installed soon and that we'll be able to demonstrate it at the ETS and SBL conferences.

How cool is that? I mean, check this out. P46 and NA27 scrolling side by side?

I was at Amy's last night, talking with her and her parents. Amy's mom has been reading up on early church history and had run into the prayer of Clement that starts in 1Cl 59.3. We read through it and talked about it a bit. I've been champing at the bit to look at the Greek ever since.

So I looked at the Greek of 1Cl 59.3-4 tonight. I like stuff like this for a few reasons. First off, it reminds me that I need to exercise my prayer muscle. Second, there are some repeated structures in here that drill grammar/syntax patterns into my head.

I decided to work through the text, looking at the patterns, and play around with translating it. With much help from my good friend BDAG and Ehrman's Apostolic Fathers edition, here's my stab:

That's a lot of translation for me, for one night, even if it is heavily reliant on lexical sources such as BDAG. Maybe I'll do 1Cl 60 later.

That said, there are a couple of structures that are repeated and a couple of grammatical concepts that are driven home, at least for me. These include:

The second line of verse 3: ἀνοίξας τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς καρδίας ἡμῶν εἰς τὸ γινώσκειν σε τὸν μόνον ὕψιστον ἐν ὑψίστοις,. I've recently looked into James 1.19 which has this same structure twice -- infintive clause with article as object of a prepositional phrase -- so it was neat to spot it here too and think, "oh, yeah, like in James".

Verse 3 also has several instances where participles have articles. They match in case, number (singular) and gender. So, they're substantive; more like nouns than verbs (right?). Thus translations like "[the one] who humbles", "[the one] who destroys", "[the one] who lifts", etc.

Verse 4 has several instances of an accusative plural article followed by either an adjective or participle (that match the article in case, number and gender) followed by an imperative. Woodenly literal, then, something like "those infirm, restore". But just because this is in the imperative doesn't mean that it is a command. Could Clement be commanding God to do something in his prayer? Of course not. Just because commands are typically imperative (but let's not forget the hortatory subjunctive in 1 John!) doesn't mean that imperatives are typically commands. These are requests. Clement is praying for the needs of others, bringing them to God as requests or entreaties. He is passionate about them, but he is not "commanding". 

I love stuff like this because it bangs these sorts of concepts home for me. And it is encouraging to read to boot.

Hi folks.

I've posted a copy of the paper I'll present on Sunday, Nov. 20 at the CARG session during the SBL meeting.

See PastoralEpistles.com for more information and the download link. Since the paper deals with that site specifically, it makes sense to post the information there.

My presentation will not be simply reading the paper; I'll instead use the paper as a rough outline and work through some screen captures illustrating major points of the paper, and have a short Q&A at the end. Unless I go long (Mark, please stop me if I do!)

Update (2005-11-12): Thanks to all who have emailed, linked to this post or otherwise mentioned the paper.* I've been a bit apprehensive as this is my first bit of (somewhat) formal writing for an academic audience. The welcome and encouragement I've received from y'all is, hopefully, reflective of the arena of Biblical Scholarship as a whole.

Update (2005-11-13): Ed Cook (Ralph the Sacred River), leaves an encouraging comment that also notes I should abridge the paper in order to fit my 20 minutes. True, true. I have already prepared a one-page handout for the session. That, plus the screen shots I took that I'll project via PowerPoint should be enough to guide me through my 20 alloted minutes. I plan on reviewing the slides one more time prior to the presentation to pull a few, just to be sure.

* Jim Davila (PaleoJudaica.com), Jim West (Biblical Theology), Rubén Gómez (Bible Software Review Weblog), Mark Goodacre (NT Gateway Weblog), Loren Rosson (in the comments below); at least that I've seen. Let me know if you've mentioned it and I'll add a link here.

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.