1. I can type at a rate of 94 words per minute (with one error), according to this test (and no, I didn't cheat).

2. If you need a diaper pail recommendation, I highly recommend the Diaper Genie II (amazon.com). Be sure to get plenty of refills (amazon.com), too.

3. Pampers vs. Huggies — It's close, but I'd pick Pampers over Huggies for Ella; at least at her current size.

4. I'm really enjoying Skarsaune & Hvalvik's Jewish Believers in the Time of Jesus (amazon.com). Two essays in particular; that of Donald Hagner on "Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to his Letters" and that of Reidar Hvalvik on "Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to the Book of Acts". Here's an earlier post (with full TOC).

That's it for now.

Time flies. Our daughter Ella is three months old today! What better excuse to post pictures of the cutest little girl you've ever seen?

I've enjoyed reading the portions of Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament (amazon.com). Again, I should stress I haven't read the whole thing. I have read the first two essays, the essays on Pauline literature, and part of Köstenberger's closing essay.

Of the essays I read, I most appreciated Köstenberger's essay which treated the Pastorals, the general epistles, and Revelation. Why? Because it seemed the most practical of them all. It actually treated the subject looking at the general question of usage of the OT in the NT book. Most of the other essays that I read were good, but they were very narrowly focused—on a particular way that OT passages were used in the NT book. That's all well and good, but I was really looking for something a bit more general. And I guess that's why Köstenberger's article stood out to me. I don't think it was just because that was the essay that discussed the Pastoral Epistles.

While examining Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament (amazon.com), a ricoblog reader pointed me to another essay of Stanley Porter's, published in JSNTSup 148, Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel (amazon.com): "The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament: A Brief comment on Method and Terminology". This essay was helpful in providing some background on method and terminology and also because I culled a few references from footnotes on stuff I'd like to follow up on (the book also mentioned many of these titles in its footnotes):

• C.D. Stanley, "Paul and Homer: Greco-Roman Citation Practice in the First Century C.E." NovT 32 (1990), pp. 48-78.
• C.D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture: Citation Technique in the Pauline Epistles and Contemporary Literature (amazon.com) (SNTSMS 74; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
• E.E. Ellis, Paul's Use of the Old Testament (amazon.com) (repr. Wipf & Stock, 2003[1957]).
• Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (amazon.com) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
• Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (amazon.com) (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999).

There are more, but that seems to be a good start.

I've poked around Stanley E. Porter's Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament (amazon.com) a bit. I haven't read everything, but have read some things. This post will just be a listing of the Table of Contents; I'll write a subsequent post (hopefully in the next few days) with some thoughts on the book itself.

Preface
Contributors
Abbreviations

Introduction: The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament
     Stanley E. Porter

The Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament as a Rhetorical Device: A Methodological Proposal
     Dennis L. Stamps

Biblical Texts and the Scriptures for the New Testament Church
     R. Timothy McLay

Scripture, History, Messiah: Scriptural Fulfillment and the Fulness of Time in Matthew's Gospel
     Michael P. Knowles

The Beginning of the Good News and the Fulfillment of Scripture in the Gospel of Mark
     Craig A. Evans

Scripture Justifies Mission: The Use of the Old Testament in Luke-Acts
     Stanley E. Porter

"They Saw His Glory and Spoke of Him": The Gospel of John and the Old Testament
     Paul Miller

Written Also for Our Sake: Paul's Use of Scripture in the Four Major Epistles, with a Study of 1 Corinthians 10
     James W. Aageson

In the Face of the Empire: Paul's Use of Scripture in the Shorter Epistles
     Sylvia C. Keesmaat

Job as Exemplar in the Epistle of James
     Kurt Anders Richardson

The Use of Scripture in the Pastoral and General Epistles and the Book of Revelation
     Andreas J. Köstenberger

Hearing the Old Testament in the New: A Response
     Andreas J. Köstenberger

Index of Modern Authors
Index of Ancient Sources

I realized I hadn't posted a table of contents for this book when I blogged about it earlier. The TOC is extensive and runs for six of the book's 900+ pages. I've only listed parts, chapters and contributors below so you can get an idea of the scope of this book. The full TOC is available as a PDF on Hendrickson's site. I'm enjoying reading it thus far and am interested to read many of the essays.

Part One: Introduction
1 Jewish Believers in Jesus in Antiquity—Problems of Definition, Method, and Sources
     Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway
2 The Definition of the Terms Jewish Christian and Jewish Christianity in the History of Research
     James Carleton Paget, Cambridge, England

Part Two: Jewish Believers in Jesus in The New Testament and Related Material
3 James and the Jerusalem Community
     Richard Bauckham, St. Andrews, Scotland
4 Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to His Letters
     Donald A. Hagner, Pasadena, California, United States
5 Paul as a Jewish Believer—According to the Book of Acts
     Reidar Hvalvik, Oslo, Norway
6 Named Jewish Believers Connected with the Pauline Mission
     Reidar Hvalvik, Oslo, Norway
7 Jewish Believers and Jewish Influence in the Roman Church until the Early Second Century
     Reidar Hvalvik, Oslo, Norway
8 Jewish Believers in Asia Minor according to the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John
     Peter Hirschberg, Bayreuth, Germany

Part Three: The Literary Heritage of Jewish Believers
9 The Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition
     Craig A. Evans, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
10 Jewish Christian Editing of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
     Torleif Elgvin, Oslo, Norway
11 Jewish Christian Elements in the Pseudo-Clementine Writings
     Graham Stanton, Cambridge, England
12 Fragments of Jewish Christian Literature Quoted in Some Greek and Latin Fathers
     Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway
13 Jewish Christian Sources Used by Justin Martyr and Some Other Greek and Latin Fathers
     Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway

Part Four: Jewish Christian Groups according to the Greek and Latin Fathers
14 The Ebionites
     Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway
15 The Nazoraeans
     Wolfram Kinzig, Bonn, Germany
16 Cerinthus, Elxai, and Other Alleged Jewish Christian Teachers or Groups
     Gunnar af Hällström, Joensuu, Finland, and Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway

Part Five: Other Literary and Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Believers
17 Evidence for Jewish Believers in Greek and Latin Patristic Literature
     Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway
18 Evidence for Jewish Believers in the Syriac Fathers
     Sten Hidal, Lund, Sweden
19 Evidence for Jewish Believers in Christian-Jewish Dialogues through the Sixth Century (excluding Justin)
     Lawrence Lahey, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
20 Evidence for Jewish Believers in “Church Orders” and Liturgical Texts
     Anders Ekenberg, Uppsala, Sweden
21 Jewish Believers in Early Rabbinic Literature (2d to 5th Centuries)
     Philip S. Alexander, Manchester, England
22 Archaeological Evidence of Jewish Believers?
     James F. Strange, Tampa, Florida, United States

Part Six: Conclusion and Outlook
23 The History of Jewish Believers in the Early Centuries—Perspectives and Framework
     Oskar Skarsaune, Oslo, Norway

Bibliography Index of Modern Authors
Index of Subjects
Index of Ancient Sources (selective)

A few weeks back, I blogged on Greek Readers. I blogged about A Patristic Greek Reader (amazon.com), Wikgren's Hellenistic Greek Texts (amazon.com), and Goodspeed & Colwell's Greek Papyrus Reader.

Today I noticed a few more Greek readers that will apparently be released by the end of the year, meaning that they might be previewable at the ETS and SBL conferences in November.

1. Koine Greek Reader: Selections from the New Testament, Septuagint, and Early Christian Writers (amazon.com). This one was put together by Rodney Decker; it'll be published by Kregel in November 2007 (so I'd guess you'd be able to get one at ETS or SBL). The Amazon.com description follows:

Providing graded readings in Koine Greek from the New Testament, Septuagint, Apostolic Fathers, and early creeds, this unique text integrates the full range of materials needed by intermediate Greek students. Its many features include four helpful vocabulary lists, numerous references to other resources, assorted translation helps, a review of basic grammar and syntax, and an introduction to BDAG-the standard Greek lexicon.

2. A Historical Greek Reader: Mycenaean to the Koine (amazon.com) by Stephen Colvin. Published by Oxford with a release date of December 6, 2007. I'd love to be able to page through it at SBL as it sounds very interesting. Here's the Amazon.com blurb:

A Historical Greek Reader (amazon.com) provides an introduction to the history of the ancient Greek language by means of a series of texts with linguistic commentary, cross-referenced to each other and to a reference grammar at the front. It offers a selection of epigraphic and literary texts from the Mycenaean period (roughly the fourteenth century BC) to the koine (the latest text dates to the second century AD), and includes a wide range of Greek dialect texts. The epigraphic section balances a number of well-known inscriptions with recent discoveries that may not be easily available elsewhere; a selection of literary texts traces major developments in the language of Greek poetry and literary prose. The book finishes with an account of the linguistic and sociolinguistic background of koine Greek. The commentary assumes no prior knowledge of Greek historical linguistics, but provides a basic amount of up-to-date bibliography so that advanced students and others can pursue linguistic issues at greater depth where necessary.

Chris Brady, of the excellently-named blog Targuman, wanted to do a podcast with me for some reason.

So today we did it. It's 30+ minutes of podcasty-goodness, if you're interested. Check it out here. It was a pleasure talking with Chris, he is a gentleman and a scholar. If you're not familiar with his blog, do check it out—and enjoy the cartoons!

Or so is the title of the interesting post by Mike Bird over on Euangelion.

Reading his post, I thought of a book I've recently been reading, The Early Centuries: Jewish Believers in Jesus (amazon.com) by Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik. I've only read the introductory essay, but it's really prompted me to think about the spectrum between Jews and Christians in the early Christian Era.

The most intriguing insight, for me, was that there weren't just two flavors, "Christian" and "Jew". There definitely were "Christians" and "Jews", but there were also Jews moving toward Christianity (what the book calls "Jewish Believers") and Christians being influenced by and moving toward Judaism (what are typically called "judaizers"). Sort of like this quick diagram I made up:

Of course, there are other influences—don't even get me started on gnosticism—but the idea of thinking about the movement between these two poles and thinking about where, on this particular spectrum, different examples from different early writings could be plotted, causes me to think now when I read or notice Jewish-sounding influence in Christian writings.

Skarsaune & Hvalvik's book (amazon.com) should be interesting the more I get into it.