Stop what you're doing and head to the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog and read the interview with Dan Wallace. And read the comments too.

There's even a section in there on the faith/scholarship issue.

Upon perusing upcoming releases noted in Publishers Weekly, I noticed a title that Thomas Nelson is set to release (Amazon says Aug. 8, 2006) by Darrell Bock: The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities.

There isn't much information on Thomas Nelson's web site. They simply say:

In an easy-to-understand writing style, best-selling author and New Testament expert Darrell Bock helps you examine the claims about missing "secret" gospels and other early forms of Christianity. Bock presents samples of extra-biblical materials and compares them to biblical texts, enabling you to make your own judgments.

Sounds like it could be a response to Bart Ehrman's Lost Scriptures and Lost Christianities volumes from Oxford.

Does anyone know anything else about this upcoming volume from Bock?

Chris Weimer of the Thoughts on Antiquity blog notes that a facsimile of A (02) is online. These are scans of the British Library edition from the late 1800's.

Cheers and kudos to the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts for hosting it.

The scans reflect Alexandrinus for the New Testament and also the Clementine epistles, which is awesome.

Now ... can someone come up with a reference-to-graphic index so it's easy to find passages? All I can tell at this point is that the Clementine epistles start with 137a since 136b looks to be the end of John's apocalypse.

On that last page of the Apocalypse (see it here) if you zoom and look at the text in the line beginning with ΜΑΡΤΥΡΩ, you'll see an example of a variant inserted interlinearly. Alexandrinus has ΟΘΣ (with lunate sigma and abbreviation overline on the last two letters, of course) and then has ἐπ’ αὐτὸν (at least that's how NA27 renders the hard-to-read minuscule addition, it looks like it might be in the dative in the MS?) above and to the right, an obvious later (much later) insertion.

The NA27 text has ὁ θεὸς ἐπ’ αὐτὸν with start and end variant markers around the whole phrase, indicating that different MSS have different things here. Since we can actually see Alexandrinus, that means we can now examine the apparatus and see how the apparatus works and renders the information that Alexandrinus conveys.

The NA27 apparatus has the following; note I'm using '01' for aleph/Sinaiticus:

3 4 1 2 01 051^s. 2030. (2050). 2377 M^A; Ambr Apr | 1 2 A*
Nestle, E., Nestle, E., Aland, K., Aland, B., & Universität Münster. Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung. (1993, c1979). Novum Testamentum Graece. At head of title: Nestle-Aland. (27. Aufl., rev.) (680). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung.

The apparatus is here communicating that uncials 01 and 051, along with some minuscules, the Byzantine 'A' tradition in Revelation, along with patristic evidence from Ambrose and Apringius Pacensis witness a reading of the same four words in a different order: ἐπ’ αὐτὸν ὁ θεὸς. Alternately, Alexandrinus is alone among MSS cited in Revelation in its reading of just the first two words, ὁ θεὸς. The asterisk after the A notes that the text does have an addition by a corrector, but the addition is not represented. Because we've seen the MS itself, we know the addition largely conforms to the text of NA27.

Fun stuff, no?

Sometime this weekend or perhaps very early Monday morning, ricoblog will log its 50,000th visitor.

Whoa. That's humbling.

Thanks to all who visit, whether it be from a simple Google search that led you here, but especially if you aggregate the RSS and read whatever I write. Y'all are awesome. I'm having a blast doing it, so I plan to keep it up for awhile.

Next stop: 100,000!

Also, it seems appropriate to mention Tyler Williams and his one year blogiversary and 40,000 visitor contest. I won't be doing any contest giveaways, so take all the effort you'd spend doing such a thing here and apply it to Tyler's contest!

Update (2006-03-20): 50,000 was hit on March 19 at 12:55 PM. A visitor from Port Moody in British Columbia searching for "balsamic vinaigrette" was the culprit. You'd be surprised how many google hits I get for that.

I'd like to invite readers of ricoblog to check out my other blog that specifically deals with the Pastoral Epistles, PastoralEpistles.com. I post there less frequently, but it does remain focused on the Pastoral Epistles.

I'm planning on a series of five posts (plus introductory post) on 1Ti 5. The five posts will each simply reference a PDF file that covers a portion of chapter 5. I'm specifically looking for feedback on what I've written.

I hope to post one PDF file every other week, so the five posts will take 10 weeks to get through. The introductory post and first sample post are up.

• Introductory Post
• First Sample: 1 Timothy 5.1-2

Thanks in advance to those who read and offer feedback!

Oh yeah. I can't not blog this. Even though this is my third post today, I need to mention it. It is too good not to pass along.

Logos Bible Software have placed Barth's Church Dogmatics (yes, 14 volumes of Barth-tastic goodness!) in its pre-publication system. Given enough interest it will be produced and made available electronically in Logos Bible Software.

Read more here. Now, tell your friends. Go.

A short series of lectures from the early 1900's by George Hodges, this book is online at something called "The Baldwin Project".

The Early Church, from Ignatius to Augustine

THESE chapters began as Lowell Lectures in 1908. The lectures were given without manuscript, and have been repeated in that form in Cambridge, in Salem, in Springfield, in Providence, Rhode Island, and in Brooklyn, New York. The first, second, third, and fourth were then written out and read at the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Connecticut, as the Mary H. Page Lectures for 1914. In like manner the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth were given at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, as the Bedell Lectures for 1913. The tenth was given in 1913, at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the Baldwin Foundation. Finally, the lectures, as they now appear, were repeated in 1914 at West Newport, California, at the Summer School conducted by the Commission on Christian Education of the Diocese of Los Angeles.

A few things I've wanted to note but haven't done so yet. It makes sense to put them all in one post instead of string them out. So ... here goes.

• Biblical Studies Carnival IV Call for Submissions: Loren Rosson III (The Busybody) has put out the call for BSC:IV. Gather your links and send them off to him. Be sure to send links both from your own blog and from other blogs you read that you think would be good to post. See Loren's post for submission how-to info.
• Power Law in Biblical Citations: Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) has another typically thought-provoking post. Cool stuff. The Logos Bible Software Blog followed up on Stephen's post with some discussion of a prototype report we were working on awhile back that searches Logos Bible Software for similar information.
• Biblioblogs.com Interviews Chris Heard: The biblioblogger du jour ... er, du month (sorry, I don't know French) is Chris Heard (Higgaion). Check out the interview and give his blog a look-see if you don't already read his stuff daily.

Enjoy! And make sure to send some submissions for BSC:IV Loren's way, too.