Charles Halton over at Awilum is hosting BSC:XV, which he he has already posted. So go check it out and see what's been going on in the biblioblogosphere this past month.

And give Awilum a look-see too while you're there!

Here's my translation for James 3.1-12, which we're going over on Friday in our home group Bible study. It reads rough in some spots but that is because I largely keep the phrase and clause order from the Greek intact.

¹ Not many of you should become teachers my brothers, knowing that we who teach will receive a greater judgment. ² For greatly we all stumble. If anyone does not stumble in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle even the whole of his body. ³ But if horses' bits of bridle we put into their mouths, for them to obey us, we steer even the whole of their bodies. ⁴ And behold, great ships being driven by strong winds are steered by a very small rudder wherever the impulse of the steersman guides. ⁵ In the same way the tongue is a small part, but it boasts greatly.

Behold, how a small fire ignites such a large forest! ⁶ The tongue is a fire: the world of the unjust. The tongue is put in charge of our parts, defiling the whole body; setting ablaze the wheel of being* and set ablaze by Gehenna. ⁷ For every kind—beast and bird, snake and sea creature—is tameable and has been tamed by human-kind. ⁸ But the tongue no human can possibly tame; (the tongue is) a restless evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹ With it we bless the Lord and Father and with it we curse humans—the same humans made in the image of God. ¹⁰ Out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing. Not ever, my brothers, are these things to be! ¹¹ Does a spring from the same source pour forth both fresh (water) and salt (water)? ¹² Is it possible, my brothers, for a fig tree to produce olives? Or a grapevine (to produce) figs? Neither can salt produce fresh water.

* "wheel of being" ==> idiom for "course of life" or "way of life".

The NW Regional ETS meeting this past weekend was in Salem, OR. That means that we had to drive through Portland, OR. You may or may not know, but Portland is home to Powell's Books. Their main store is one city block, and it is all books, new and used. You've gotta stop by if you're in town.

So we stopped, but only for about half an hour since we were hungry. The trip was focused, but I found two books that piqued my interest, and I only spent 20 bucks!

• Cyril C. Richardson, ed. Early Christian Fathers.
• Benjamin Wilson, The Emphatic Diaglott. This is an interlinear from the mid 1800's, but it is one easy place you can get the Greek text of J.J. Griesbach. So I got it. (Note: I blogged about an online version of the Diaglott awhile back)

It was a great time just poking through some books in the religion section.

Then, at the regional meeting, they had a book giveaway. I was the lucky bibliophile who walked away with the following five books:

• Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek (amazon.com). No, I didn't have a copy (learned with ATHENAZE back in the day) so it's nice to have as a reference.
• UBS 4th Edition Greek New Testament. I actually only have a 3rd edition and the NA27, so this was a nice one to grab as well.
• Frank Thielman's Theology of the New Testament (amazon.com), more on this book from Matthew Montonini.  
• Carson & Moo's Introduction to the New Testament (amazon.com)
• Aland's Gospel Synopsis in English (amazon.com)

All in all, a great day!

(If you're reading this with a feed reader, you may be missing out on relevant images. Check out the actual post on my main blog site. — RWB)

A friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Michael S. Heiser, presented a paper on the "Jesus Ossuary" at the 2003 meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society. This is the ossuary behind the "Jesus Family Tomb" sensationalism that the biblioblogosphere is abuzz over (see Ben Witherington for a good overview).

In his paper, titled "The Jesus Ossuary: A Critical Examination", Dr. Heiser works through the inscriptions on the relevant ossuaries using L.Y. Rahmani's A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel. In case you're wondering about Dr. Heiser's skills and training to do such work, here's his CV.

Mike posted the paper on his website this afternoon. So grab it and check it out, and see reproductions of the relevant inscriptions for yourself.

Update (2007-02-26): Just received word from Mike that he and Darrell Bock will be on Coast to Coast AM tonight talking about the Jesus Family Tomb thing. I won't be able to listen, but if you are you can find a local station on the Coast to Coast AM site.

Update II (2007-02-27): The Discovery Channel website has a PDF file with material from Rahmani's book as well. The PDF also has Amos Kloner's 1996 article on the tomb and inscriptions, which include maps of the tomb.

Update III (2007-02-27): Duane Smith over at Abnormal Interests has a post dealing with the inscriptions as well. It is worth reading.

Update IV (2007-03-01): Richard Bauckham (yes, that Richard Bauckham) guest-posts on the names and the inscriptions over at Chris Tilling's Chrisendom blog. You need to read this, Bauckham is the go-to guy in onomastics.

If you've not yet caught the sure-to-envelop-us-come-easter sensationalistic rah-rah about something folks are now calling "the Jesus tomb", you do need to check out Ben Witherington's post on the matter.

It is notable to check Witherington because he provides statistics on the relevant names that he received from Richard Bauckham. Bauckham is, from all I have read, one of the go-to guys in the realm of Palestinian names in the first century. That, tied with other stats Bauckham provides on the frequency of names found on ossuaries provides some good data by which to refute the sensationalistic claims made by the filmmakers of "The Jesus Tomb". So do check it out.

My take? I think the data on names, combined with the known sensationalism-mongering of the filmmakers (thoroughly documented and debunked by Chris Heard, check it out) combined with the fact that the tomb's original finders and excavators reached entirely opposite conclusions (the tomb was found in 1980, findings released in 1996) speaks volumes against what the filmmakers are proposing.

All of this sounds like you've stepped in on the middle of a conversation? Then you probably have. So check out Witherington's post for the background and some further information on how to handle the assertion when you hear it come easter.

I mentioned awhile back that I was presenting a paper at the 2007 NW Regional ETS Meeting on the "plural to singular narrative device" as described by Richard Bauckham in his recent book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (amazon.com).

Well, the paper is done (enough). I'm not completely satisfied with it, but I'm cuttin' the cord. If you'd like to give it a look-see, it is on my Academic Papers page. Or just download the PDF directly. I'm presenting the paper on Saturday; I'll likely post an update here to let y'all know how it goes.

Update (2007-02-26): The conference was good (Darrell Bock had the keynote) and the paper went well. I received good feedback from those who heard it and was generally encouraged.

I mentioned yesterday that I'd post my translation of James 2.14-26, so here it is.

I typically translate clause-by-clause and my translations try to convey Greek word order where doing so isn't overly unweildy. And I haven't thought much about paragraph boundaries either. Anyway, here it is:

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Is it possible for that faith to save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacking in food for the day, 16 and if one from out of your number says, "Go away in peace, keep warm and stay filled with food", and does not give them their bodily needs, what good is it? 17 Faith is like this, if it does not have works it is dead by itself.

18 But someone will say: "You have faith, and I have works". Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith from works. 19 You believe that God is one and you do well. Even the demons believe this and tremble. 20 But do you desire to know, you empty-headed human, that faith without works is useless?

21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works in offering up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was a co-laborer with his works and by his works faith was proven 23 and the scripture was fulfilled which says: "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness", and he became a friend of God.

24 You see that from works a person is justified and not from faith alone.

25 And was not Rahab the whore in the same way justified by receiving the messengers and sending them out another way?

26 For just as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

In the past few weeks, my employer (Logos Bible Software) released an application that is basically designed to help one keep track of those blasted post-it notes that end up stuck to your monitor frame. It's called NoteScraps. Why did we do it? Well, that's laid out in a post on the Logos Blog, but the answer is that it was a small, tightly spec'd application that allowed our programmers to play with new WPF goodies and learn more before doing so inside of Logos Bible Software itself.

Why do I mention it now? Well, I've found it to be daggum handy for keeping track of those little inspirations I have for blog posts an any of the three blogs I participate in. Here's a screen capture:

See? All those post-it notes that used to adorn my monitor are now easily skimmed and managed. The app is fairly single-purpose, and the trial version allows you to keep up to 10 notes. No formatting, URLs automatically located and made active. If unlimited notes are desired, then the full version is 20 bucks. More on the NoteScraps web site.