Brandon Wason (Novum Testamentum) has posted some photos from SBL. He's even got one of him with me.

But the all-time best photo from the SBL conference is below. Walking back from Monday night dinner in Chinatown (Mmmmmmm ... crispy duck!), I noticed a particular store. I knew I needed to have a photo taken in front of it the next morning. I borrowed Bob's camera, and Eli obliged in snapping the classic pic:

How can this not be the best picture from the recent conference?

I happened acorss the Posner Memorial Library collection at Carnegie Mellon University. They've digitised (photographed) a bunch of stuff.

One of the items is Quinque libri legis Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri, Deuteronomium with a date of 1539-1544. My Latin ... well, I don't really have any Latin, but I seem to be able to make out something about five books of the law (the book names gave it away, I know).

The text is in Hebrew. Here's the title page, where you can see the standard "Ex officina Roberti Stephani, typographi Regii." ("from the office of Robertus Stephanus, typographer to the king"?) which is the same line that appears on the title page of the 1550 edition of the so-called "Textus Receptus".

Here's the first page of Genesis. Now my Hebrew is only marginally better than my Latin (which isn't saying much) but one interesting item to note is that the first word of the book is printed as the title, the balance of the book takes off from there. From what I understand, this is standard for Hebrew editions (to use the first word as the title).

Typographically, the text is cool because you can see use of wide letters to justify the left margin.

So, my questions (if anyone happens to know):

1. The Posner Library only has the Torah. Did Bobby-Steve publish the whole Hebrew Bible?

2. Anyone know the basis of this edition? Surely it isn't L. Is it the same basis as the Ben Chayyim 1524-25 edition?

3. Does this edition contain anything textually significant?

4. What is the relation of this edition to the King James Version Old Testament?

This week's Religion Bookline (from Publishers Weekly) has a short article about the launching of IVP Academic.

It's about time for IVP to make this sort of stuff a formal division with a focus. I've enjoyed several academically-geared titles from IVP in the past and am looking forward to more good stuff from them in the years to come.

I picked up a flyer from IVP on this at the ETS conference, though I can't find the content of that flyer on their web site.

Today is Ralph the Sacred River's one-year birthday.

If you don't read Ed Cook's stuff, you should. Even though I'm not in the realm of Aramaic studies, I learn from reading Ralph.

One of my favorite Ralph posts to date: Some Lines from Milosz.

The NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) provisional translation page has been updated again.

Note that 1-4 Kingdoms are now available, and a few others have been updated (e.g., Esther, I think).

Grab the PDF while you can.

I've added a few new blogs to the blogroll over the past few days.

First is Yasmin Finch's blog, yasminfinch. This has been discussed a bit in the biblioblogosphere, so it seems appropriate to add it and make mention. Be sure to check it out.

Second, I've received email from Dr. Claude Mariottini (as has Christopher Heard) announcing his blog on topics related to the Hebrew Bible. I've added his blog to my blogroll. Dr. Mariottini appears to write longer entries every few days. He is also working on a commentary of 1 & 2 Chronicles to be published in Hendrickson's NIBC series.

As for me: Time to dig back into the Pastorals. SBL is over. The Thanksgiving holiday has passed. And I've got a decent amount of work to do still.

First, it's back to business. Enough biblioblog navel-gazing; let's do some work! In an effort to move the conversation from existential queries and criticisms, I point you to PastoralEpistles.com and some non-canonical citations relevant to 1Ti 4.16 that I've compiled since the conference. There's a seven page PDF file. The phrase "you will save both yourself and your hearers" is the subject. Similar phrasing/concepts occur in other early documents. So what does it mean? What does it point to? How should this be exegeted? That's what I'm looking into. Check out the citations; if you have further items to add please send along the citations.

How's that for "open scholarship"?

Now, since I was at the biblioblogger session at SBL, I feel I need to weigh in on the latest conversation regarding male and female in the biblioblogosphere. I'm not planning to say more on this, so here it goes:

I think I'm proof that what has been called "biblioblogdom" isn't an exclusive club of some sort. I'm not a professor or instructor at a university, college or seminary. I hold no graduate degrees. I am not currently purusing a graduate degree.

I'm just a guy interested in this stuff who likes to write, who finds value in blogging as a method to work out thoughts. The "biblioblogosphere" is a bonus for me in that folks who have degrees, and who teach, and who know much more than I do actually read what I write, offer feedback, and gently guide me along if I'm off the track -- or that I can interact with if I think I'm right and they're wrong.

I think that to "make it" in the biblioblogosphere, one has to have some shameless self-promotion going. I really don't think it is a male/female thing.

When ricoblog had just started, nobody but friends of mine read it. Every now and then, however, I'd write something that I thought would fit in the discussion on other blogs. So, I'd (hesitantly) send an email to that blog's author pointing them to what I'd written. If they linked, great. If not, that was fine too. At least they'd check it out.

Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) linked to some early stuff of mine on the Apostolic Fathers after I sent him an email. I notified Mark Goodacre of some later posts, and then later Jim Davila found me from there, I think. It wasn't anything magical, it was just making folks aware of work I'd done that I thought was relevant to what they were doing.

Also, if you read biblioblogs and have a blog -- don't be afraid to comment and leave a link to your own blog in the comment. If someone likes your comment, they'll check out your stuff. If I think a commenter adds something to the conversation, I like to update the post to point folks to the comments, when I do this I typically link directly to the person's blog in question.

Additionally, keep a blogroll. Use a service like Bloglines (or whatever) to manage it. List the blogs you like to read. Many bloggers also list blogs that they know have linked to them. That's what I try to do. If you've linked to me or would like to have your blog listed in my generic blog roll, please send an email. I zap through the list a few times a week to see what's going on and to see if blogs I don't regularly read have any interesting posts. Getting in these blogrolls increases your chance of traffic stumbling upon your site (not to mention higher Technorati rankings ... )

In short, there's a lot of information and links floating around out there. If you're blogging and lamenting the fact that your posts aren't magically picked up by other blogs, try either emailing the blog author or commenting or trackbacking. Announce your blog via email to bloggers you like to read and ask to be placed on their blogrolls if they see fit. They may ignore you, but most (that I know) will check out the link and see what's up.

A final caveat: when commenting on a blog post, be sure to add something to the discussion. If you just say, "yeah, and see my blog too, it's really good!" you will probably not be mentioned further or highlighted for further linking.

Ok, that's it. Now, let's get to work. Who's doing what? And when do we have to have abstracts submitted for SBL International and for the 2006 meeting in DC?

Update (2005-11-28): Rick Mansfield (This Lamp) adds a comment on the 1Ti 4.16 bit above. Additionally, Eric Sowell (The Coding Humanist) blogs some thoughts. Thanks for the input, guys. I should say, however, that I'm less interested in the Greek grammar/syntax and more interested in the phrase itself as similar phrases are found in other writings, both before and after the Pastorals. I'm curious as to use of the "both to yourself and to your hearers/readers" and similar sorts of things. Was this common? Was Paul using a catch-phrase of some sort to score rhetorical points? Or did later writers (e.g. homilist of 2Clement) pick up on Paul and use similar phrasing for similar reasons? (Don't mind me, just thinking aloud ... )

It's Thanksgiving day here in the states, which means I have a nice, lazy morning. I'm sipping coffee and will shortly dig into some background work on a study I'm working on before heading to Amy's for a massive dinner.

In the meantime, though, I realized I haven't listed the books I bought at the conferences. I mentioned some of them in days past, but haven't listed them in aggregate. Here's the list, in no particular order:

• H.B. Swete, The Gospel of St. Peter: The Text in Greek and English with Introduction
• Francis Xavier J. Exler, A Study in Greek Epistolography: The Form of the Ancient Letter
• Craig A. Evans, Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature
• Claudio Moreschini and Enrico Norelli (tr. Matthew J. O'Connell), Early Christian Greek and Latin Literature: A Literary History (2 vols)
• Bruce W. Longenecker, Rhetoric at the Boundaries: The Art and Theology of New Testament Chain-Link Transitions
• R. Alastair Campbell, The Elders: Seniority within Earliest Christianity
• Andreas J. Kostenberger and Thomas R. Schreiner, Women in the Church: An Analysis and Application of 1 Timothy 2.9-15
• J. William Johnston, The Use of Πᾶς in the New Testament

I have a few order forms. There's a Mohr-Siebeck title I want (no, not Treblico, but one by Charles Hill on Polycarp and Diognetus) and I want to pick up Schneemelcher's NT Apocrypha volumes from Westminster/John Knox.

A side note: Kostenberger's book is the recently published second edition, the first edition was published in 1995. While at SBL, I went to a session of the Disputed Paulines section and heard papers by a few folks. Linda Belleville presented a paper there dealing specifically with the difficult word αὐθενέω in 1Ti 2.12 and did not mention or reference Kostenberger's work on the syntax of that clause or Baldwin's work looking into classical citations of the word. As Belleville was doing essentially the same thing that Baldwin did (Baldwin's is seemingly more comprehensive, yet Belleville arrives at the opposite conclusion) it seemed weird not to even mention the work. Yes, I should've piped up and asked the question, but things were running late and I'm still rather squeamish when it comes to asking questions of presenters, especially when I haven't read their papers at all. I'm sure she cites relevant things there and will interact with Kostenberger/Baldwin (and others who have written in this area) in the article she apparently plans to publish based on her work.

Ok, enough from me. Gotta go. Enjoy your day, and if you're celebrating Thanksgiving -- remember it is a day of thanks, not gluttony. (I will do well to remember that myself ... )

Update (2005-11-28): Tim (SansBlogue) writes to remind me to notify Dr. Belleville of what I mention above. Duly noted. I've actually already emailed her; apologies to all parties invovled if I've somehow trampled upon the normal process for this stuff.

And James writes to remind me that gluttony would be Thanksgiving-sized meals all the time. Well ... he's correct, of course. Though I did eat a whole lot (the turkey was awesome, Emily's potatoes were incredibly yummy, and it was hard to say 'no' to Amy's delectable pumpkin pies! [yes, pies]) I don't do that every day. But I don't need to do it on Thanksgiving, either. I can enjoy and give thanks without stuffing myself into discomfort.