Brandon Wason at Novum Testamentum has posted BSC:XVI. Do check it out. Excellent job, Brandon!

I just received a reminder about the SBL / Logos Technology Paper Awards. I'm anxious to see what folks are working on!

The dealine for papers is May 1, 2007 with winners announced at International SBL in Vienna. Here's a blurb for the uninformed:

Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature announce two sets of awards for papers that creatively use technology in exploring questions of grammar and syntax in biblical studies: one focusing on the Hebrew Bible, the other on the Greek New Testament. The contests are open to all those engaged in the study of those disciplines, and prizes will be awarded in both areas for student and faculty/professional categories. A total of twelve awards will be given.

There's some decent winnings ($1000 cash, $1000 Logos software credit, and $200 SBL book credit for first place entries (4 available) for winning papers, and lots of chance to win with both student and professional entries for the areas of Hebrew Bible and also Greek New Testament. I'd enter, but Logos employees are not eligible.

Get thee to thine syntax annotations!

Update (2007-03-31): ricoblog reader Tom notes that syntax searching can be difficult to get a grasp on. I agree; the multi-dimensionality of the data alone is a new sort of concept to master in thinking about the Greek New Testament. For me, I've found a deductive method to work. If you are somewhat familiar with NT Greek, begin with a passage you know cold. Compare the syntax graph to what you know of and see mentally when  you examine the text itself. See how the syntax maps the structures you're thinking of. Then, using the graph as a guide, try to reproduce some structures. Start small and general, like a clause component that has the same wordgroup->head term->word (insert the proper lemma) as what you're looking at. Search and tweak until you get your template passage as a hit. Then add new components and tweak to get an idea of how to map the basic structure you already know. "Lather, rinse, repeat" is how I end up describing it. Also, beginning with a passage you know, you could do a Bible Word Study on a word and examine the sorts of things the Grammatical Relationships section returns. Under the hood, that's doing a lot of template-based syntax searching. So that's another way to start to play with syntax data without having to master the search dialog.

As most regular ricoblog readers know, I have recently completed a series on the Didache. The series included a phrasal breakdown of the text with interlinear translation.

I've compiled all of those individual sections of interlinear translation into one PDF file with an introduction. I have not edited the translation at all, so all errors and oversights still remain. But if you're interested, you can download it for your own use and perusal.

If for some reason you want to use it in a larger context (group context or distribution of some sort), please do check with me first. Thanks!

Update (2007-03-30): I noticed a slight indentation problem in Did 10.6, so I adjusted it and reuploaded the PDF.

I've been wanting to post this one for awhile. Amy is at a ladies' meeting at church, so I have a little time to do it now. This was taken at the Royal London Wax Museum in Victoria, BC. We went to Victoria for an overnight stay as part of our honeymoon trip.

Montgomery is over my right shoulder; Eisenhower is far too far in the background for my liking. If you like to read about WWII, I can highly recommend Rick Atkinson's Pulitzer-prize-winning book, An Army At Dawn (amazon.com). It is the first volume in a planned trilogy and focuses on the allied effort in northern Africa.

Also: Had some site difficulties this morning and ended up losing a comment to this post. Apologies for that. Feel free to re-comment if you'd like (because I agree with you!)

In the "best sentences I've read tonight" department, from J.B. Lightfoot's The Apostolic Fathers Part I: S. Clement of Rome. A Revised Text with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations and Translations (Volume I). Macmillan: London 1890.

On the whole this MS appears to give a good text. The shortcomings of the scribe are generally such that they can be easily corrected; for they arise from petty carelessness and ignorance, and not from perverse ingenuity. (p. 120)

Follow-up (2007-03-29): After discussing Alexandrinus' version of First Clement, Lightfoot moves on to the version recorded in the Constantinopolitan MS. On p. 123-124, he writes:

[Constantinopolitanus] is written with a fair amount of care throughout, so far as regards errors of transcription. In this respect it compares favourably with A, which constantly betrays evidence of great negligence on the part of the scribe. But, though far more free from mere clerical errors, yet in all points which vitally affect the trustworthiness of a MS, it must certainly yield the palm to the Alexandrian. The scribe of A may be careless, but he is guileless also. On the other hand the text of C shows manifest traces of critical revision, as will appear in the sequel.

Some of you have no doubt noticed the Amazon.com links on the sidebar and the occasional links to books on Amazon.com in my blog posts over the past few months.

Thanks to those of y'all who have clicked and eventually purchased things from those links, I was able to do a little shopping on Amazon.com today.

What did I get? Well, commissions from those sales helped me out in purchasing:

• Luke Timothy Johnson's Anchor Bible volume on First & Second Timothy (amazon.com)
• Jerome Quinn's Anchor Bible volume on Titus (amazon.com)

Thanks again! Amy and I appreciate your support of my bibliophilia!

[This is part of a series of posts looking at "thorough-going eclecticism" as practiced by J.K. Elliott in his book The Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. See the introductory post for more information. --RWB]

NB: In this post, I abbreviate "homoioteleuton" with "hom." (as Elliott does in his book). I've also posted on homoioteleuton before.

The first basic principle Elliott lists is that of hom. In his introduction, he uses 1Ti 5.16 as an example, where a shorter text (πιστος η πιστη) is explained by an instance of hom. from the longer text (ΠΙCΤοςηΠΙCΤη). Elliott writes:

... the scribes eye has passed from the first ΠΙCΤ to the second, and he has omitted the intervening letters. Hom. seems to have been a frequent cause of error in the Pastoral Epistles ...

Elliott provides several examples from the first chapter of First Timothy where hom. may be appealed to to explain a variant and, therefore, argue for the longer text. These instances include:

• 1Ti 1.9: MS 1874, 623, and 1836 omit καὶ μητρολῴαις from πατρολῴαις καὶ μητρολῴαις. This as well can be explained by hom.: παΤΡΟΛΩΑΙCιακμηΤΡΟΛΩΑΙC. After writing the first word, the scribe's eyes skipped to the same ending on the second word, and progressed from there.
• 1Ti 1.10: MS 915 and 917 omit πόρνοις. The word that ends v. 9 has the same ending (ἀνδροφόνοις πόρνοις) , so hom. can be used to explain the omission: ανδροφοΝΟΙCπορΝΟΙC
• 1Ti 1.14: MS 1908 and 489 have καὶ ἀγάπης ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ (omitting the article) while NA27 have καὶ ἀγάπης τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. Elliott notes that hom. may be a contributing factor to 1908 and 489 omitting τῆς: αγαΠΗCΤΗCεν
• 1Ti 1.17: Uncials S^c D^bc K L P H along with TR (hence KJV) and most minuscules have μονῳ σοφῳ θῳ (only wise God) while UBS/NA have μόνῳ θεῷ (only God). Hom. can explain the longer reading as being shortened; the scribe's eyes wandered from omega to omega: μονΩσοφΩΘΩ. The scribe, I'd guess, would be less likely to omit θῳ; perhaps he could've even missed σοφῳ in his anxiousness to not miss θῳ. Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament provides the flip side of the coin:

  After μόνῳ the Textus Receptus inserts σοφῷ, with אc Dc K L P most minuscules syrh goth. The word is no doubt a scribal gloss derived from Ro 16.27; the shorter reading is strongly supported by good representatives of both the Alexandrian and the Western types of text (א* A D* F G H* 33 1739 itd, g vg syrp copsa, bo arm eth arab).
  Metzger, B. M., & United Bible Societies. (1994). A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition a companion volume to the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.) (572). London; New York: United Bible Societies.

  I'd never really considered hom. as responsible for the omission of σοφῷ; I'll have to think about this a little more.

You'll note that one consequence of a thorough-going eclecticism is that of disregarding documentary evidence. Surely one can't tell everything from textual provenance and the general quality of readings in a MS. It is possible for the better MSS to be wrong, and the less trustworthy MSS to be correct. But I'd think the better road is in the middle, not on the edges. Even so, there are some decent real-world examples above where hom. may be at play in the readings. Seeing these examples and working through them helps me know what to look for in the future when considering variants listed in various apparatuses.

Next up: Line omission.

From Tim Bulkeley (SansBlogue) comes news of a new blogging engine called Tumblr. Check out their blog. Tumblr (finally!) recognizes that there are different types of blog posts, and that those posts each have a common sort of form. They focus on some unique thing, but also have a lot of the same overhead. Tim quotes another source that describes Tumblr as:

The neatest thing about tumblelogs is that unlike regular blogging - which confronts you with a large, empty textarea to type your thoughts into - there are 6 distinct types of posts that have their own visual format: a "traditional" blog post, a photo, a quote, a single link, a conversational transcript, and a video.

In my 2005 SBL paper on biblioblogging, one of the things I stressed was that different "types" of posts should have different entry forms with different features that the form supported. So, one post type for 'normal' blog posts, another for bibliography entries, another for link entries ... and so forth. While I won't be using Tumblr because I just don't blog that way, it's great to see a blogging engine start to support different post types.