[NB: Sometimes I think about writing short epistolary-style letters but then never do it. Well, I did it this time. I've thought very little about the content of this letter. I won't edit it apart from fixing typos. It was tough to write. -- RWB]

Rick, who is far removed from current events;

To those in Virginia who are far closer;

Greetings, and peace.

I feel compelled to write this letter, but I have no idea what to say. Anything remotely comforting sounds too trite to be worth saying at all. I could speak of the greatness of God (and He is great) but this is not what your soul longs to hear in your confusion and grief. I could speak of the compassion of God (for He is compassionate) but you likely feel as if He is the least compassionate one at this present time of loss.

Words fall short. Grief and longing for the lost cannot be soothed with well-polished words; it is your soul that cries out for comfort, understanding and recompense.

But there is no recompense, there is only loss.

I find comfort in knowing that it is not ours to avenge, and that healing comes not from avenging but from forgiving. If you seek recompense, you will never be healed. You will only grow bitter, hard and gnarled.

We are all properly deserving of vengeance. Somewhere, somehow, we have wronged others and there may be those that desire to mete their vengeance out upon us. Most of all, we have wronged our God. He is holiness embodied; we (each and every one of us) have bent His image, the image we were created in, beyond all recognition. It is scarcely possible to see His image in anyone.

But there was one who walked the earth long ago -- nearly 2000 years ago -- who exuded holiness from his very being. The image could be seen clearly in him because He was God, and he was man. He lived perfectly and died unjustly.

If any death was ever worthy of vengeance, it was his. Yet it was the path he chose so that through his death he would take upon himself our sin and corruption -- the bent-ness of our very being -- to rid us of that burden. And he died, burying that bent-ness in death that we might be reclaimed to live freely, passionately and uprightly in his name.

God still metes out His vengeance, though the vengeance we so rightly deserve has been heaped upon that one, 2000 years ago, who stood in our stead.

I know this likely does not offer you comfort in your grief. But know that your bent-ness, the corruption of your very being, was borne by that same one, 2000 years ago.

Perhaps those whom you're missing today knew this and lived their reclaimed lives in the name of the one who bore the bent-ness and corruption. Perhaps the one you are missing is truly free today, with him in Glory. Still missed by loved ones, yes. But with him in Glory.

Then again, perhaps the one whom you're missing today did not know or profess this truth. Mourn your loved one, but consider him who bore our corruption and bent-ness before the one worthy of meting out vengeance. Consider his death and his resurrection and victory over that death. And consider if you will live a reclaimed life, upright in his name.

These may not be comforting thoughts, but these are not comforting times.

May the God of comfort give you peace in your mourning.

Grace be with you all.

I realize what I am about to write may be considered heresy by some. These are just thoughts rolling around in my head; I've come to no conclusions yet. When I think, I write. And I'm thinking. So I'm writing.

I'm re-reading the first few chapters of Aland & Aland's The Text of the New Testament (amazon.com). I didn't notice it last time I read this -- back when I was first imbibing in things text-critical -- but doggone this thing has an attitude, and the best word I can come up with to describe it is arrogance.

What Eberhard Nestle did was actually quite simple (a radical breakthrough is always simple in retrospect); he compare the texts of Tischedorf and of Westcott-Hort. Where the two differed, he consulted a third edition for a deciding vote. (Aland and Aland, 19)

It's the little parenthetical that doesn't need to be there but is. This sort of thing happens frequently (go ahead, give it a read). The only purpose this parenthetical serves is to puff up the first edition of Nestle as something special when it was just a majority-rules approach resting on the text-critical work that had gone before it. Nothing wrong with that, but here they make it sound like the practice was hugely radical. This is all the more strange for a comment 20 pages later:

Much in Tischendorf's apparatus may simply be ignored. For example, he regularly cites printed editions in support of variants, e.g., in verse 27 (third from last line) for the reading αυτου: ς^e Gb Sz Ln Ti. This means that the Textus Receptus in Elzevir's edition (ς^e) John Jakob Griesbach's editon of 1827 (Gb), Johannes Martin Augustinus Scholz in his edition of 1830-1836 (Sz), Karl Lachmann's edition of 1842-1850 (Ln) and Tischendorf in his edition of 1859 (Ti) read αυτου; such information is quite dated today and of no value. (Aland & Aland, 39)

So I'm confused. Nestle was a genius because he took as standard text where Tischendorf and W&H agreed (he used edition info to establish his text); but the editional information in Tischedorf's apparatus, which was published 20 years before Nestle's first edition, is useless? A&A go on to speak highly of other aspects of T's edition, but why heap scorn on this one? Especially when appendix 3 of NA27 shows differences of editions [including T!] for NA variants? Are they saying their own edition's appendix 3 is useless too, and may summarily be ignored? I just don't get it.

I won't even go into the disdain for the TR and anything associated with it; the examples are numerous and need not be recounted here. OK, one example will suffice:

... while one should beware of The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text by Arthur L. Farstad and Zane C. Hodges (1982) as an anachronism in every respect (A&A, 25).

Now I'm not a fan of Hodges & Farstad's work in that volume (punctuating, formatting and typesetting the Greek as if it was English?), but c'mon. It seems as if it has somehow been tainted by the shadow of the TR and therefore isn't even worth consideration.

One more thing that confuses me is that these first chapters are spent building up to the UBS/NA (but particularly the NA) as being the glory of glories of all Greek editions. They heap some elitist scorn on W&H for their edition, primarily because W&H didn't examine actual manuscripts but relied on critical editions to inform their work (A&A 18). The "non-Western interpolations" are mentioned in derision at least three times, if I recall correctly. Yet the all-glorious Nestle text (the 25th edition), by the counts in this very book, differs from W&H in only 558 places outside of orthorgraphical differences. (NB: just about 8000 verses in the NT, NA27 has 138,020 words. You do the math and figure the percentages). I'm unsure of the differences between NA25 and NA27.

So, NA is the bees-knees. W&H were hacks who could only use critical editions of texts and manuscripts as they stumbled to put together their text. Yet NA is built on top of that foundation and shares it to a very large portion. And NA are the geniuses? Sure, there is a lot of work they've done in the apparatus, and that's groovy. And they do give W&H credit to some (small) degree. But can't they admit that all they've done is re-examine the evidence (comprehensively, systematically) and then ended up changing W&H in a few places?

It's that attitude I can't get past as I read the book this time. Although in a mostly polite way, they treat older pre-WH editions lightly because they largely follow the TR. But NA follows W&H with slight modifications and it's oh-so-better? And NA/UBS *isn't* similar to the TR even though many non-Nestle editions of the past, say, 75 years (Souter, Tasker, Zondervan's Reader's GNT to name a few) are at least as WH-like as NA/UBS? (at least in the Pastorals which, yes, I have examined and compared).

I don't mean to slight the technical achievement behind the NA27 and UBS4 editions. It's awesome. And the work going on with the Editio Critica Maior is mind-boggling. I'm thrilled they're doing the work. But I don't want to slight W&H either. It was -- and still is, to large degree, as the work of NA has proved -- a useful edition. So drop the arrogance and get with it.

Oh, and lastly -- are we really at the point where the status of the Greek of the NT is really only in tweak mode without new major MS discoveries? If so, then I say it is time to begin re-questioning methodology. We can't be that good. Or is 'reasoned eclecticism' really that perfect?

OK, I'm off my soap box. But I might come back, you never know.

Update (2007-04-17): (Responding particularly to Tom Reynolds in the comments). Perhaps I should clarify; I'm not interested in promoting a TR position. I think Maurice Robinson is doing interesting things and that he isn't starting with a KJV-only presupposition (though I could be wrong) but I think the NA/UBS text should be the first consulted (and I'd pick NA if I had to choose between NA and UBS). If you've listened to any of Klaus Wachtel's papers at the SBL the past few years, you've heard him bring up some isolated Byzantine readings as serious possibilities. Not the majority theories per se; just a few readings. But NA/UBS is where we start. It is the best available text.

No, what I was responding to here was the tone in A&A's first few chapters. For all their hullabaloo about the poorness of the TR and the slips of W&H, their text isn't that different from either. They've just spear-headed the detail-work of looking everything up and providing first-hand-accounted evidence (so it's second-hand for you & me) for the readings. They haven't come up with a stupendously fabulous text -- in the vast majority it is the same text everyone else comes up with when they attack the problem (the Byzantine priorists being at greatest variance). Simply examining other Greek NT editions published in the 20th century (like Tasker, Souter, RGNT and some others) shows that everyone is dipping in the same pool; they're simply justifying their readings differently. NA/UBS definitely do the best job of justifying their readings (though I think the data presented in Reuben Swanson's volumes easier to understand and more handy to reference and get an idea of MSS trends and content, not individual variance).

While reading those few chapters, one thing in my head was John Lee's book A History of New Testament Lexicography (amazon.com). Lee conclusively demonstrates that most NT lexicons today (including the hallowed BDAG and BAAR) are essentially translations of translations of translations of 16th century work. Expanded with evidence, yes, but the important parts folks look at -- the glosses and basic definitions -- can be traced directly back in most cases. Are we really that good at lexicography too? Or is it time for another approach to the problem building on what we've learned?

That's what I couldn't help pondering as I read A&A, knowing I'd done collations of the Pastorals against W&H for several 20th century Greek NT editions. And they're all basically the same, apart from Byzantine/TR stuff and what would likely be J.K. Elliott's text based on his Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. The stuff folks actually use is the same, basically, from edition to edition. (I think that's just fine, BTW) And I can't reconcile that knowledge against the arrogance teeming through A&A's intro chapters. Why is their text so much better if it is the same?

I've surely beat this into the ground now. I do think there is room for growth in methodology, though; and I think that growth can come from places other than Muenster.

So I'm reading along in my Metzger's Text of the New Testament (amazon.com) (I have the non-Ehrmanized 3rd edition), minding my own business (I have a growing interest in the development of printed editions of the GNT), and there it is. Page 96, footnote 1.

For a list of many of the ligatures used in incunabula, see the Style Manual of the United States Government Printing Office (Washington, 1945), pp. 316-18, or Georg F. von Ostermann, Manual of Foreign Languages (New York, 1952), pp. 105-8

I'm curious, but not curious enough to buy an edition. You can buy a copy of the 1945 edition of the Style Manual for $15 from some place called Oak Knoll Books. The USGPO web site does have the 2000 edition, but alas, it appears no ligatures are therein. I searched Google Books and found a 1973 copy, but this isn't (strangely) a full-view book.

I'm really curious to see what those ligatures look like, so if you can't help yourself and drop the $15+S&H, let me know. Heck, I'll even host images (3 pages, 3 images, right?) if you scan 'em. I'd think the book is in the public domain because it's published by the gummint, so that shouldn't be a big deal.

On other sources for ligature documentation, see previous posts here and here. I still highly recommend the book by Oikonomides, which appears to include the portion of Ostermann's 1952 work on the topic (which also appears to be a USGPO publication).

In the past 24 hours, I've been made aware of two (yes two!) groups on Yahoo! that may be of interest to readers of ye olde ricoblog.

Greek Geeks

The first is "Greek Geeks", set up by Bryan Cox who used to blog at the now apparently defunct Biblaridion. Check out a few of his older posts on minuscule handwriting (here and here). Here is Bryan's description of the Greek Geeks group:

Greek Geeks is a discussions group for those who have learned or are in the process of learning ancient Greek, classical and/or Koine, and would like a place to discuss various aspects of the language. Discussions of any type of ancient Greek works are welcomed and encouraged.

Greek Geeks will be a moderated forum in order to create as fun and educational an atmosphere as possible. Certain tangents will be allowed while others will not be allowed. Allowable tangents currently include textual criticism and palaeography (other applicable tangents will be taken into consideration).

Please have fun, but make every effort to be courteous and respectful toward other posters. If a certain topic or a certain poster frustrate you, please think twice (or more) before posting a reply. Be aware that any controversial topics will be closely watched and moderated. For everyone's sake, refrain from making repetitive posts that belabor a particular point that has already been made.

Enjoy the group! If you're new to Greek, ask questions and don't be intimidated. If you've been around Greek forever, share a bit of your knowledge and experience by helping to answer some questions. Have an idea for a topic, project, trivia, game, or whatever, then speak up and let us all hear about it!

Check the Greek Geeks page for subscription info.

Apostolic Fathers

I was made aware of the Apostolic Fathers group by a post on Dr. Jim West's (usually) eponymous blog. Here are the details:

This group is for people who would like to expand their facility in reading New Testament Greek by reading through The Apostolic Fathers, whose writings appeared a little after the completion of the New Testament.

The moderator, David McKay, is most definitely a learner, not an expert, and has only just begun to read these texts himself. He hopes that we can learn from each other.

Subscription info is here. The group is beginning with the Didache, which I've recently worked through.

The good folks at Eisenbrauns had a little book-giveaway via RSS feed a few weeks back. I was one of the 30 lucky book-winners. James Spinti (Idle musings of a bookseller) kindly sent me a copy of:

Holy Spirit and Religious Experience in Christian Literature ca. AD 90-200
with a foreword by James D.G. Dunn
Studies in Christian History and Thought - SCHT
by John Eifion Morgan-Wynne
Paternoster Press, 2006
xxi + 381 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 1842273191
List Price: $39.99
Your Price: $35.19
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~MORHOLYSP

This is pretty cool because I figured the book I'd end up with would be some sort of deeply technical tome on things Hebrew and semitic. But this one is up my alley. Thanks, James! And Thanks, Eisenbrauns!

Gastro-intestinal discomfort I've experienced over the past few months turned out to be gallstones passing. So last Tuesday I went under the knife for laproscopic cholesystectomy and am now a gallbladder-free individual. Amy says I'm cuter now than I've ever been. It must be love!

Anyway, I've been doing a bit of reading over the past few days while I get back up to speed. (Really, I'm doing fine!) Here's the list:

• J.B. Lightfoot. Apostolic Fathers Part I: Clement of Rome, Volumes I & II. I finished up vol 1 and began vol 2 which begins to deal with the writing we know as "Second Clement".
• Jerome D. Quinn. The Letter to Titus (amazon.com) (Anchor Bible). I read the introduction which is good. Quinn goes for pseudepigraphy and a suite of three epistles composed at once. At least, that's what I think he's saying. He reviews a lot of data but doesn't really come down to an "Here's what I think is going on" style conclusion.
• Luke Timothy Johnson. The First and Second Letters to Timothy (amazon.com) (Anchor Bible). Again, I've just read the introduction. It is excellent; everyone looking into the Pastorals should read it. Johnson interacts with the past century's criticisms of the Pastorals and concludes that while neither side (Pauline vs. non-Pauline) can prove claims, taking Paul as the author makes most sense of the available data. Preach it. Johnson also has a great section on patristic and medieval commentaries on the PE that is complete with volume/page number references to Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina. Some of his descriptions of the material make me want to look up the commentaries and fight through the Greek, at least for select passages.
• Richard N. Longenecker, "Ancient Amanuenses in the Pauline Epistles", in Longenecker & Tenney, New Dimensions in New Testament Study (amazon.com). Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974, pp. 281-297. I was spurred to re-read this by a footnote in L.T. Johnson's intro. Good stuff overall, but read E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing (amazon.com) for a more comprehensive picture. However, this essay does have a quotable on stylometry/authorship studies from none other than W.F. Albright, responding to computer analysis of text by A.Q. Morton:

Since St. Paul's Greek was dictated to different amanuenses at different times and in different places, we could not possibly expect uniform quasi-literary style or vocabulary in his letters. For this reason attempts to determine the authorship of the Pauline Epistles by statistical data obtained with the use of computing machines prove little except the kind of literary Greek preferred by different amanuenses. (Longenecker quotes from W.F. Albright, "Retrospect and Prospect in New Testament Archaeology," The Teacher's Yoke, ed. E.J. Vardeman and J.L. Garrett (Waco, TX: 1964), pp. 28f.)

I've got some further JBL articles to read from footnotes in L.T. Johnson's 1&2Tim as well as the intro to Schneemelcher's NT Apocrypha (amazon.com).

Luke Timothy Johnson's Anchor Bible volume on 1 & 2 Timothy. Why another commentary? The patristic citations alone make this one very interesting. Update: Also have added Jerome Quinn's Anchor Bible volume on Titus. The citations to patristic quotations are impressive in Quinn's volume as well. 

Awhile back, I posted some quotations from J.B. Lightfoot. The book is 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. I'm still reading the book, and there is a lot of quotable stuff in here. I stop almost nightly to tell Amy, "oh, you gotta hear this!" I'm sure she's sick of me doing that, but she always manages a laugh and a smile. So it's worth trying. :)

Anyway, here are some more quotations.

On responding to a Volkmar's (whoever he is) theory that the book of Judith is an allegory:

I shall not attempt to dissect this theory in detail, for it would be mere waste of time to do so. Those who wish to see it torn into shreds have only to consult the criticisms of Hilgenfeld and Lipsius, who have shown that neither the dates nor the localities nor the incidents will admit it. (p. 356)

On the genuineness of First Clement:

There is lastly the circumstance that its genuiness was never questioned by any individual critic of repute or by any Church for more than seventeen centuries, from the reign of Domitian or Nerva to the reign of Victoria. I pass by one or two writers of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th, whose method deprives them of any weight as authorities, and whose opinions it would be a waste of time to discuss or even record. [NB: he then gives a footnote with two citations, to Lipsius and Harnack, so one could follow up and find the worthless opinions]. (p. 362).

... As a matter of fact, [the passage concerning the phoenix] is one of the best authenticated passages in Clement; and indeeed we may well excuse a simple Christian for a credulity of which not a few among his higly educated heathen contemporaries were guilty (see the note on sect. 25). Again soon after, an Englishman, E. Bernard, suggested that some later impostor had foisted into the text of the Roman Clement some fragments of the Alexandrian who quoted him. This was hardly worth refutation, but it was refuted by Wotton. (p. 363).

That's it for now. More later if/when I come across it.

Update (2007-04-04): ricoblog reader Mike Aubrey (who has his own blog εν εφέσω, check it out) comments:

Rick, I'm trying to make a decision here...Is it worth it to pick up Lightfoot's five volume work on Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp? I know that most of his writings are still quite valuable, but I'm a little nervous about dropping that cash for these volumes.

So, yes its worth it or do you think there are other more recent works that should be invested instead?

Yeesh, I dunno. First off, it's not worth it if you're going into debt. If you're floating a book purchase on a credit card, you're spending money you shouldn't be. If you pay off your card at the end of each month, then go ahead. But don't borrow money to buy books.

Mike, if you're near a decent seminary library or university library with a seminary, then head to the library and check out the volumes and see if they're something you really want to drop the cash on. Alternately, you could try searching Google Books to find 'em. I just did that; here's Ignatius & Polycarp Part II Vol I ; Part II Vol II. I think; I can't guarantee the links will work. But I searched http://books.google.com for "Joseph Barber Lightfoot" clement volume. 

I'd say if you're deep into the Apostolic Fathers, or Clement/Ignatius/Polycarp in particular, then sure. Lightfoot discusses relevant sources and at times even provides them in the original language and translation. The only place I've really learned about the three primary sources of Clement (Alexandrinus, Constinopolitanus, and the Syriac) is via Lightfoot. Sure, other editions (e.g. Ehrman, Holmes, Lake) talk about them in introductions; but Lightfoot actually gives MSS history and does comparison of MS trends in his discussion of textual history of the Clementine epistles. But Lightfoot goes both ways -- I've skipped a massive essay (a book in itself) on Roman succession; in one of the Polycarp volumes there is a massive tome on calendars and dating that is beyond me. Stuff like that I skip over; maybe it'll come in handy some day. But in the five vols. Lightfoot does do a ton of work with citations of the writings in later literature and also with canonical citations in the writings that might be hard to find elsewhere. And he's got commentary on the Greek editions of each writing and then some.