Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Helen-Ann Hartley links to a report from the BBC about a Dutchman who is building a replica of Noah's Ark.

Cool!

The BBC story has a link to a website for the project, ArkVanNoach.com. It consists of a video in Dutch (which appears to be what most of the article is based on). I don't understand Dutch (though I understood when the reporter asked, "What does your wife think of all this?") but the video was cool. That is one massive vessel.

Speaking as a fellow boatbuilder (yes, I've built my own wooden boat, from scratch) I can only say that the ark project is massive. It took me a few years in my spare time to build my 18 foot sea kayak. I can't even begin to imagine the issues one would have to deal with to build a replica of Noah's ark.

Post Author: rico
Tuesday, March 28, 2006 8:47:09 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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 Friday, March 24, 2006

Jim Davila's blog PaleoJudaica turns three today.

Congratulations, Jim! Thanks for the work that keeps PaleoJudaica interesting, informative and witty. Of course, in my limited experience with Jim, he's been interesting, informative and witty too.

Stop by his roundup of PaleoJudaica's previous year and check out a few of the posts he highlights. Then get it in your aggregator if for some reason you haven't done that yet.

Post Author: rico
Friday, March 24, 2006 4:51:11 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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 Wednesday, March 22, 2006

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.

Post Author: rico
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 11:46:17 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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 Tuesday, March 21, 2006

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?

Post Author: rico
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 1:28:21 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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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 051s. 2030. (2050). 2377 MA; 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?

Post Author: rico
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 5:22:53 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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 Saturday, March 18, 2006

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.

Post Author: rico
Saturday, March 18, 2006 9:41:41 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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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.

Thanks in advance to those who read and offer feedback!

Post Author: rico
Saturday, March 18, 2006 6:02:49 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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 Wednesday, March 15, 2006

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.

Post Author: rico
Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:25:30 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) 

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