I've happened across a PDF facsimile (one file per NT book) of Benjamin Wilson's Emphatic Diaglott, published originally in 1864. It is an interlinear Greek New Testament.

Normally I wouldn't note this, but — if I understand the title correctly — this is the only online source I know of representing Griesbach's edition of the Greek New Testament.

Here's the full title:

The Emphatic Diaglott: Containing the Original Greek Text of what is commonly styled the New Testament, (According to the Recension of Dr. J.J. Griesbach,) with an Interlineary Word for Word English Translation; A New Emphatic Version, Based on the Interlineary Translation, on the Renderings of Eminent Critics, and on the Various Readings of The Vatican Manuscript, No. 1209 in the Vatican Library. Together with Illustrative and Explanatory Foot Notes, and a Copious Selection of References, to the whole of which is added, A Valuable Alphabetical Appendix.

Phew. That's a title. So the Greek text on the page is Griesbach's, but the Greek text of the running translation in the outside margin is based on Wilson's own textual work? Seems weird to not have the two aligned to the same vorlage. Anyway, here's a capture of a portion representing 1Ti 2.3-6:

If you're interested in downloading it, you can do that from here.

Q: What do the Aerobie Flying Disc and coffee have in common?

A: Why, the AeroPress Coffee Machine, of course.

Coffee lovers, this looks very cool. Check the bottom of the article for links to reviews, discussions, etc. A better article/explanation is here.

Too bad my birthday is in October.

(thanks to Jacob for the pointer)

Loren has posted a summation of his "dangerous ideas" meme applied to Biblical Studies. Check it out.

Some more links:

• Loren's original post. There are several updates and links to other folks' submissions of "dangerous ideas"
• A fairly weak effort of mine in response.

Though I still am convinced that the two things I listed are true and could be seen as relatively "dangerous", I understand they're not top-of-the-crop sorts of ideas and would've been surprised to see them on Loren's final list. But still, the idea that many NT authorship and style studies that rely only on similar word usage are overreaching is important to me and one I hope to be looking into in the future.

And the second idea I posted (here restated) that it is wrong to only pursue naturalistic or text-critical explanations for hard-to-reconcile events recorded in the Bible (particularly in the Gospels and Acts) is, I think, still something that requires dialogue and discussion.

If I read the Hebrew Bible and don't see YHWH acting powerfully to preserve his people, the ones he covenanted with, then I'm missing the whole story. I'm not saying everything has a supernatural explanation — I am saying, however, that we can't rule out, for example, that God really could have parted the Red Sea, or the Jordan, for the Israelites to cross.

And if I read the New Testament, and don't see that Jesus is God (read the first three or four chapters of Mark, and then dig into some of Hebrews — Jesus was making implicit and explicit claims to be God incarnate) then I'm really missing what is going on.

To examine the text of the Bible with the assumption that recorded supernatural events, prophecies and miracles need some sort of naturalistic explanation and perhaps even scientific-method-style reproducible proof of hypothesis in order to be satisfied — well, if that's the case, why bother? Then it's all an academic exercise.

I'll probably catch flack for this radical idea (that's sarcasm), but if one does not approach exegesis and interpretation of the Bible with the understanding that God is God, and He can and does act within history, outside of history, and through history in all sorts of ways; then we've missed the boat.

That's the gist of my point, really: Our default position can't be to say "well, no, [some event] seems impossible as recorded, there must be some other explanation". Maybe God really did stop the sun from moving in the sky while Moses' hands were raised, allowing the Israelites victory. Maybe Jesus really did feed 5000 people with a few loaves and some fish, and maybe he really did have 12 baskets of goodies left over for later. I'm saying we can't automatically rule these sorts of things out as the first step of evaluating a passage. Can we pursue the alternatives? Sure. We'd be foolish not to do so. But we'd be equally foolish to think that science and the wisdom of our own brains and intellect can figure it all out.* As I read some critical commentaries and other surveys and studies produced by academics and scholars, the underlying message seems to be: "Well, no, the text can't really be saying [some event] happened because that's unreasonable; something else must've been going on". Skepticism is healthy. But when the practice of the skeptics is the norm, it ceases to be skepticism and it is time for the pendulum to swing back the other way.

My "dangerous idea" in this area, then, is that we should catch the pendulum and start the swing in the other direction.

Update (2006-01-18): Loren Rosson offers a comment and some encouragement, which I greatly appreciate. And I greatly appreciate this whole "dangerous idea" meme; it does provoke some thought.

Don't mind me, I'll just keep beating the supernatural straw man into submission with scads of red herring. (heh ... sarcasm). I'll admit that there is plenty of work that accepts supernatural acts of God as possible and even as occurring within history. I guess I've been reading some stuff lately that, between the lines, seems to scoff at such things as preposterous. (no titles, no authors, I'll just leave this thread here and move on).

* cf. Ge 11.1-9.

I think reading Pauline literature is having an effect on me. I just wrote the following sentence in a rough draft of stuff working through 1Ti 5.17:

The elders who exert themselves in speaking and teaching, working hard to properly proclaim the gospel and to teach and edify believers under their care, are deserving of honor.

Look at how many times "and" occurs in that sentence, and then track the function of each "and":

• Speaking and teaching:
• properly proclaim the gospel and to teach ...
• to teach and to edify believers

The last two are the ones that caught my attention. Look at that part of the sentence again:

working hard to properly proclaim the gospel and to teach and edify believers under their care

The same exact word -- and -- occurs, here within a few words of each other, but they're functioning just a little differently. The first functions to join the two dependent clauses.** The first "and" joins clauses at a different level than the second "and" even though their functions are incredibly similar. The first one joins larger clausal units, both of which happen to have infinitive verbs. Like this:

working hard
     to properly proclaim the gospel
     and
     to teach and edify believers under their care.

The second "and", instead of joining clauses, joins two infinitive verbs, "to teach" and "(to) edify"; with "believers" as object of the verb and the prepositional phrase "under their care" providing further specificity:

working hard
     to properly proclaim the gospel
     and
     [to teach {and} (to) edify] believers under their care.

The two clauses joined by the first "and" each describe different aspects of the justification for honoring elders -- they work hard in preaching/speaking and also in teaching (as 1Ti 5.17 states). The second "and", however, is a little different even though it joins two infinitive verbs; the verbs are apposition and the function is essentially epexegetical with "edify" further explaining the teaching, at least as I saw it when I wrote the sentence.

I thought, upon noticing how I'd used "and" differently in such short space, that the same thing happens frequently in NT Greek with the word καὶ and its various usages. I don't have an instance of this sort of occurrence close to hand and need to take off (Amy's birthday is coming up; we're going browsing/shopping so I can at least have a clue as to what to get her). If you have a passage that, in the Greek, would function as a good example (NT or Apostolic Fathers or Josephus or Philo or Pseudepigraphal or whatever) send an email or leave a comment; I'll update the article at some future point. Or I'll dig around and find something.

** Don't assume too much linguistic preciseness in my use of terms like 'clause' and 'phrase' and even my categorisation of things like 'infinitive clauses'. Think of them as generally descriptive instead of technically precise, and you'll sleep easier.

The good folks at the CCEL have provided an edition of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite in English. I know little about Dionysius, and even less about the available editions. The edition at CCEL is the 1897 edition of John Parker. As usual, several formats are available.

Searching for images of Dionysius led me to the new-to-me Orthodox Wiki. You can read the Orthodox take on Dionysius, complete with an image of him (the check pattern on his garment is interesting to me) in teaching position (note right hand). 

Just read my morning dose of Marginal Revolution. They've got a link to a site called MyHeritage.com that has a 'beta' face recognition tool. Basically, after a "free" registration, they let you upload a photo. Then they analyze it and spit back folks that they say you resemble.

Kinda fun. I ran a hi-res copy of the picture I have posted on this blog (to the right, up top) and came up with the following results, in order of likeness:

• William McKinley
• Ilan Ramon
• Richard Avedon
• Donald Rumsfeld
• B.F. Skinner
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Vidkun Quisling (this is not complementary)
• Peter Greenaway
• Donald Sutherland
• Richard Dedekind

Looks like I've got presidential potential ... from either party! Though both McKinley and Roosevelt died in office (McKinley assassinated; Roosevelt of natural causes). Maybe I should postpone my run for office?

Update (2006-01-12): Jim West plays along and informs us of those who resemble him. Anyone else?

Loren Rosson asks:

"The history of biblical studies is replete with scholars who were considered dangerous in their time; Reimarus, Strauss, and Schweitzer, etc. What is your dangerous idea? Any idea you think is dangerous, not because you think it's false, but because many others want it to be false and you think it's true?"

Here are a few suggestions from the brain of Rico. #1 has been percolating for awhile; #2 is a far more recent thought for me:

1. The New Testament isn't big enough and the corpus isn't secure enough* to support style theories for authorship determination when the theory is based on counting criteria like hapax legomenon, common words or conjunction use. This basically means that all stylometric studies, while useful and while providing some insight, can confirm or deny nothing regarding authorship of a particular NT document. Therefore, several of the classic studies used as basis for authorship determination (e.g. P.N. Harrison's Problem of the Pastoral Epistles), while perhaps offering some insight, are inconclusive and do not prove a thing. As my Psych prof used to say, "correlation does not prove causation". [N.B.: I'm indebted to Matthew Brook O'Donnell for the idea that corpus sizes are too small; the application I've made here is my own thought — likely unoriginal.]

2. God is supernatural. To approach Biblical Studies from a viewpoint that does not allow the supernatural to be possible is an invalid approach. I'm not quite sure how to word this thought/idea or how to really describe it. My basic thought is that when I read something dealing with Biblical Studies (particularly commentaries) and it rules out something the Biblical text directly testifies to on the basis that the testified action could not be physically possible ... well, that's a specious argument. The modernist approach of removing the supernatural to a separate sphere and empirically testing a hypothesis to determine physical possibility as the metric of truth is not the only approach. I can't rule out Jesus' raising of Lazarus because, well, raising someone dead for days isn't possible in my thinking. I can't rule out the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana because I've never seen water turn into wine. I can't explain away the massive feedings of people because, well, 5000 people just can't be fed from a few loaves of bread and a couple of fishes (let alone have 12 baskets left over). We are dealing with God; therefore supernatural action must be possible and even expected in some instances. It cannot be ruled out or explained away. He can raise one dead for days; He can make wine from water; and He can feed and satisfy the hunger of massive crowds with relative morsels of food. He is God. I realize many will say this is inappropriate and even inaccurate; that a more "scientific" approach must be taken in these instances. I say that's as biased as any approach and we're fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. [N.B.: The basic idea here is not my own, but one I've picked up through other reading and conversation with friends and colleagues.]

* by "secure enough" I mean that most scholars/academics wouldn't consider enough material by any author "genuine" to be of any value for such counting/stylometry sorts of arguments to matter.

A few random things, none of which seems worthy of a whole post.

First, fans and friends of Coptic -- Logos Bible Software want to publish Crum's Coptic Dictionary as well as Smith's Concise Coptic-English Lexicon (which serves as a supplement of sorts to Crum, accounting for Nag Hammadi material). Oh, these would be so cool! So get off yer duff, and get these wonderful references out of the pre-pub system and into production! I've only studied Coptic a little, but boy-howdy would these be cool to be able to utilize. For more Coptic goodness, see my Coptic books at LibraryThing.

Second, an update on MS copying -- I've had two brave souls offer to be guinea pigs ... er, uh, manuscript copyists. So I'm starting the project. Anyone else want to help?

Third, Joe and Jim -- you guys crack me up. Hey, maybe in 2006 y'all can post on a topic that you both can agree on? (Just a joke; couldn't help it.) On tea, I say loose may be better but bags are easier, so it depends on mood for me. On coffee ... well, I've posted on coffee before (a long time ago).

That's it. Enjoy the weekend, y'all.