After much build-up and much writing/revising on my part, it's over. I gave my paper on biblioblogging this morning and I think it went well.

It was really cool to meet other bloggers, hear some voices, shake some hands, and interact in real time and space. What a treat.

Thanks to all the folks who participated: Mark (fearless leader and moderator), Jim (probably the only academic context I'll be able to present a paper alongside Jim Davila), the balance of the panel and the folks in the audience. And to folks at home who helped with the paper, encouraged, and prayed (Mom, Dad and Amy and her family, particularly). And thanks everyone for the kind words of feedback.

To those who were at the session -- don't worry, I'll change that 'i' to a 'cite' when I get back.

I'd write more, link some more, and review some things, but others have done that and I have to get back to my room, drop some stuff off, and then make it to dinner tonight.

Oh, and watch out -- Brandon Wason (Novum Testamentum) has a digital camera with him; who knows where those photos will show up.

So, I probbly won't be making daily posts, but I figured since I was sitting on the floor outside of the exhibit hall mooching off of convention center wireless that I should at least write something.

I was able to attend papers from the New Testament textual criticism seminar this morning, and that was very cool. Good stuff, for the most part.

Bought another book -- this one from Peter Lang, "The Use of PAS in the New Testament." Has some stuff specifically on 2Ti 3.16 as well as other areas of the Pastorals. Should be helpful in the Pastoral Epistles project.

Meetings filled the afternoon, as well as booth duty. And there's dinner on the schedule tonight and hopefully sleep after that (after reviewing the paper for tomorrow morning's session, of course).

Gotta go -- if you're in Philly, drop by the Logos booth (in the 900 aisle, across from Eerdmans) and say "hi".

So, I had every intention of making Donald Hagner's paper on interpretation in the Apostolic Fathers, but by the time I found the room where the paper was being read, it was too crowded to get into. I hoofed it back to the convention center and sat in a few papers. One was Donald Fairbarin on Patristic Soteriology. Interesting stuff. The other was John Hutchison on Martyrdom and Suffering in the early church. He had some interesting stuff to say about Ignatius, and some thought-provoking comments on suffering as fellowship with Christ.

After that was a bunch of meetings -- impromptu and otherwise -- with all sorts of people.

In between all of that, however, I found time for a quick browse of the book aisles. I had promised myself I wasn't going to buy anything today, but then I found myself at Wipf & Stock. There were two slim volumes that jumped out at me. Together I spent less than 20 bucks on 'em, so I figure I did OK:

Francis Xavier J. Exler, A Study in Greek Epistolography: The Form of the Ancient Letter. I justified this one because, well, the Pastorals are letter, so looking into form is something that is important.

H.B. Swete, The Gospel of St. Peter: The Text in Greek and English with Introduction, Notes, and Indices. This was partly due to Stephen C. Carlson's clarion call to pursue critical editions of things, and partly due to some other factors I won't discuss here.

Anyway, a good day. But a tiring day. Hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight. 

After dodging a thunderstorm in Houston and arriving a little late to Philadelphia; I'm in Valley Forge.

On schedule for tomorrow: A paper on the Apostolic Fathers from Donald Hagner; and we'll see what happens after that. Morning will be early. Of course there are meetings, etc.

If you're at ETS in Valley Forge, feel free to stop by the booth looking for me. We're on the immediate left when you walk in, booths 2 & 3, as I recall.

Oh, BTW -- Mount Rainer was beautiful. We flew so close to the snow-packed peak that I thought I could touch it.

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.