Now on my books-to-buy-at-SBL list:

The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers 2 volume set (amazon.com) (Paperback). Edited by Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett. Oxford, 2005.

Amazon Book Description: The two-volume set The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers offers a comparative study of two collections of early Christian texts: the New Testament; and the texts, from immediately after the New Testament period, which are conventionally referred to as the Apostolic Fathers. The first volume, The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, presents a comprehensive and rigorous discussion of the extent to which the writings later included in the New Testament were known to and used by each of the Apostolic Fathers. Contemporary research on the textual traditions of both collections is used to address the questions of textual transmission and reception. The second volume, Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, discusses broad theological, literary, and historical issues that arise in the comparative study of these texts, and which are of importance to the study of early Christianity. It deals with the most important current debates concerning both the Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament, such as baptism, Pauline theology, the function of apocalyptic elements, Church order, and Jewish and Christian identity.

The paperback 2-volume is 80 bucks and has a release date of Nov. 14, 2007. The currently-available hardback (amazon.com) is 164 bucks from Amazon, 180 retail. From all I can gather, this one is the "bee's knees" when it comes to use of the NT in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, something which I'm very interested in. I knew of the hardcover but had written it off due to expense. But if I can get the $80 paperback set at a discount at SBL ... well, that would be mighty groovy now, wouldn't it?

Update (2007-07-10): Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) tantalizes me with the following comment: "They were giving them away for free at the Oxford reception at SBL."

Yikes! If anyone made it to that reception, has the book(s), and knows they'll never use 'em ... well ... I'm interested. So zap me an email to let me know how I can take 'em off your hands. Gracias!

Mark Goodacre pops up a thought-provoking post over at the NT Gateway Weblog about how internet access can interfere with scholarly writing. Jim West disagrees and states his reasons.

I have sympathies with Mark on this one, but I'd rather proffer a mediating position. It's not a dichotomy; it's a both-and situation. The extremes (tracking down every weblog discussion vs. throwing out the internet) aren't good at all. There must be balance. In my mind, there are times to research, and times to write like the dickens (or, better, to write like Dickens -- he was one wordy man!). But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is paying at least some attention to the various discussions going on in biblioblogdom that makes us all more well-rounded, and that ends up making our writing -- whatever the venue, be it web or print -- all the more better.

I understand Jim West's point completely. I know that the words I write on this blog will reach more folks than anything I ever might publish (and me publishing something is a big stretch, I think).

Some days, I think bloggers are more like the pamphleteers of days gone by -- writing short missives that get printed and distributed and printed and distributed with or without the author's knowledge. And there is value in that. But there is also value in the writing of longer, more comprehensively worked tomes; those are the ones that will provide the foundation for the future discussion.

So I say it's about balance. And that means shifting sometimes. And I think that's more what I hear from Mark -- Take some time to focus on larger projects, not forsaking blogging but simply not focusing on it to the detriment of other writing projects destined for distribution outside of the web.

My friend and colleague Sean Boisen, who blogs at the aptly-named Blogos, has called me out.

Sean is thinking about (and doing -- trust me!) all sorts of cool stuff, but one that he's working on that you can read about has to do with the way that Bible references are indexed on the web. The idea is to use a "microformat" to, in a semi-consistent manner, note where Bible references are cited so that web crawlers can parse the references in a somewhat standard way.

If this sounds groovy to you, then check out Sean's initial post. If you're really interested, you can see an overview and a more formal spec he's been working on as well.

My own initial response: Sure, mostly. My primary sticking point (which is now null and void, see 'update' below) is/will be with a canonical list of supported names. I'd recommend preferred names but include a list of aliases (alternates) for all abbreviations. I think this is necessary for ease of adoption. Instead of forcing the tagger/blogger/whatever to use the proper abbreviation, the app/crawler that is processing Bible refs in the citation standard should deal with that conversion.

To illustrate my point, let me show you how I make Bible refs hot (like this one, 1Ti 2.3-6) here at ricoblog.

The blog software I use (dasBlog) supports a concept of text macros that are essentially regular expressions. This allows me to change something like this: $esv[1Ti 2.3-6] (only I use parens instead of brackets) into something that jumps to the ref: 1Ti 2.3-6. The software itself expands the macro as it processes the page display (or the RSS feed, or whatever). Now, if I was on top of my game, I could write a component for dasBlog in C# that would isolate references in context, or that would 'canonicalize' tagged references in post text. But that's something I don't want to do. Why? Because it is hard, not easy, and I have other hard things I'd rather do.

Now, I jump to the ESV and I rely on the ESV web service to know that "1Ti" means First Timothy. The ESV web service (as well as the Bible Gateway) support a number of abbreviations for each book of the Bible. I think it is important to make the tagging of references on the web pages easy; there is a relatively small universe of known abbreviations for each language, let the processors that process the Bible refs build those tables and deal with the issue.

This has a few benefits. First, it makes tagging easy. I don't have to remember that "1Tim" means First Timothy; I can use my own preferred abbreviation (assuming it is logical, descriptive, and human-readable) and the processing app can take care of it -- or throw an error when it can't figure something out.

Second, it means that multiple languages can be supported. It means that if I'm Swedish, I can type "1Mo 1.1" for Genesis 1:1. I don't have to think, "yeah, 'Gen' is the abbreviation for what I call '1Mo'".

Third ... I hate to break it to y'all, but even the most conscientious taggers make mistakes. The data will not be pure. So I say embrace the messiness of alternate booknames and even alternate languages from the get-go, it'll make life easier down the road. And it'll make life easier for those who do use the bibleref proposal. Heck, I'll begin by altering my macro to insert the proper <cite> tags around the reference ... though I'll be using my own booknames.

Update (2007-07-06): Two things. First, I really need to read the whole paragraph of the proper section of Sean's spec; an appendix recommends that alternate booknames are to be supported by the processor:

Bibleref processors MUST recognize the book designators specified in Appendix C of the OSIS specification (the current version is 2.1.1: note this is a large PDF file).
Bibleref processors for English or other languages MAY recognize additional book identifiers, provided there is an unambiguous mapping to canonical book names.

So, as usual, Sean was ahead of me and most of my blathering up there is needless. Once again, Sean proves his awesome-ness.

Second, I've updated my ref macro to incorporate bibleref tagging. So now there are <cite class="bibleref" title="ref"> elements around all hot Bible references.

Various books of the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) have been available in preliminary form for a few years. However, in the past few months, the NETS crew have finished their work and placed PDFs of everything online. So check it out. Oxford University Press will publish the print edition ... I'd guess in time for SBL.

(hat tip: Epistles of Thomas)

More Ella pictures. They speak for themselves.

I'd like to see John Hobbins (Ancient Hebrew Poetry), Tyler Williams (Codex), and Chris Heard (Higgaion) blog about what "Selah" means in the Psalms and how it should affect our reading of the Psalms.

But please, nothing over-long or in multiple parts.

Where does this come from? Sometime over the summer I'll be speaking on Psalm 20 at an evening church service, and I'm just curious about how Selah is used there. Sure, I'll read up on it, but I'd be interested to read what these gents might have to say.

Update (2007-06-27): Chris Heard obliges and posts on "Oh! Oh, Selah!". You're awesome, Chris. Thanks. Also note Bob MacDonald in the comments who mentions that selah is sometimes thought to be equivalent to a pause. Bob also points us to his own diagramming of Psalm 20.

Update II (2007-06-27): Though somewhat unrelated, note that Kevin P. Edgecomb (biblicalia) has begun a series to provide 'formal' and 'informal' translations of the Psalms. He's got Psalm 1 & 2 up.

Update III (2007-07-07): John Hobbins obliges as well and posts on "Selah in the Psalms". Thanks, John. Is it just me, or is it refreshing to others when scholars can survey evidence and say, "we really don't know" like John and Chris have. We have clues, certainly (some sort of musical interlude?) but nothing hard-and-fast. And don't worry, John, I'm nowhere near done with the Ella pictures.

Donald Alfred Hagner, The Use of the Old and New Testaments in Clement of Rome. (Series: Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 34). Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1973.

The possible allusions to 1 Timothy in Clement's epistle are numerous. Individually they are not very convincing; taken together, however, they establish a probability that Clement knew and was influenced by 1 Timothy. (Hagner, 232)

This is followed later by:

... A common ethical catechesis may well account for a number of the parallels. However, even when allowance is made for such agreement, it seems improbable that all the allusions are to be explained in this way. Thus on the basis of the evidence cited, our conclusion is that Clement probably knew and made use of 1 Timothy and Titus; for Clement's knowledge of 2 Timothy, however, the evidence is less convincing and justifies not more than a conclusion of possible dependence. (Hagner, 236)

I deal with a limited set of possible allusions to the Pastorals in First Clement over on PastoralEpistles.com; though I should obviously sift through Hagner's work (and Lightfoot, of course, though I'm guessing Hagner has already mined that work) and supplement that list.

Over the past few years, I've been impressed with at least a few titles in Baylor University Press' seasonal catalogues. I've blogged about a number of them:

• Klauck's Ancient Letters and the New Testament
• McKnight's Jesus and His Death
• Longenecker's Rhetoric at the Boundaries
• Carlson's The Gospel Hoax
• Culy's I, II II John: A Handbook on the Greek Text
• Culy and Parsons, Acts: A Handbook on the Greek Text

I visited Baylor University Press' Fall 2007 catalog the other day. I found nothing that I wanted to read. Nothing. I was hoping for at least one more volume in the Handbook on the Greek Text series (where did that thing go?). I've heard rumors of a volumes on James and 1 Peter in various states, but nothing else for awhile.

Oh well. I guess my reading list is too packed anyway. But usually I can count on Baylor for at least one title to grab my attention.