In an earlier post, I mentioned The Fathers of the Church: A Comprehensive Introduction (amazon.com) by Hubertus Drobner, translated by Siegfried Schatzmann.

Like Mike Aquilina, a copy arrived for me today! Many thanks to Hendrickson for sending it along. And it looks wonderful. The bibliographies look great (full, and sectioned into sections like 'Editions', 'Bibliographies', 'Dictionaries' and stuff like that). So you get an idea of what the book is about, here's the last paragraph of the Preface to the English Edition:

It [the book] is not a "manual" that intends to cover the entire field in all its details. It is a textbook that presents an overview of the most important authors, works and themes, imbedded in their historical, political, and ecclesiastical background. For everything beyond this basic aim, the numerous bibliographical data given serve to point the way to further and more specialized studies. (Drobner xvi)

Here's a link to the Table of Contents. Here's a link to the Introduction. Here's a link to a sample chapter. And here's the blurb from Hendrickson:

Good, solid, contemporary introductions to patristic authors and writings are difficult to find in the English-speaking world, and European volumes are expensive. This volume, which is Siegfried Schatzmann’s translation of Lehrbuch der Patrologie, offers English-speaking readers easy access to Hubertus R. Drobner’s traditional introduction to early Christian thought.

Hubertus R. Drobner brings patristics scholarship up to date in this traditional introduction. His work is sufficiently broad to be a useful summary of early Christian history and the expansive strokes of doctrinal debate and development and provides a clear presentation of early Christian thought.

Drobner introduces new materials throughout this recently updated edition of his handbook. A general map and several timetables add to the clarity of the volume.

The Fathers of the Church is valuable in its presentation of contemporary studies and views. Patristics students will benefit from this dependable overview of early Christian texts, and scholars and libraries will appreciate the extensive bibliography, indexes, and other resources.

Here's a somewhat abbreviated Table of Contents:

Introduction: Patrology as Subject

Part One: Apostolic and Postapostolic Literature
   Introduction: The Rise of Christian Literature
   Chapter One: Biblical Apocrypha
   Chapter Two: Postapostolic Literature

Part Two: Literature of the Period of Persecution (Mid-Second to Early Fourth Centuries)
   Introduction: The Impact of Persecution
   Chapter Three: Greek Literature
   Chapter Four: Beginnings of Latin Literature

Part Three: Literature of the Ascending Imperial Church (Early Fourth Century to ca. 430)
   Introduction: Essential Features of the History of the Fourth Century
   Chapter Five: First Phase of Arianism
   Chapter Six: Apollinarianism and the Second Phase of Arianism
   Chapter Seven: Pastors, Exegetes and Ascetics
   Chapter Eight: Monastic and Hagiographic Literature
   Chapter Nine: Augustine of Hippo

Part Four: Literature of the Transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (ca. 430 to the Mid-Eighth Century)
   Introduction: Retrospective Collections and Progressive Works
   Chapter Ten: Theological Controversies of the Fifth Century
   Chapter Eleven: Literature of the Latin West
   Chapter Twelve: Literature of the Greek East

Part Five: Literature of the Christian East
   Chapter Thirteen: Independent Bodies of Literature
   Supplementary Bibliography

All in all, it looks wonderful and also looks to be a great counterpart to Moreschini and Norelli's Early Greek and Latin Literature: A Literary History (amazon.com); though Drobner looks to have more information on area it treats (Patristic Literature) and the bibliographies look more complete and, at least in the English translation, more geared toward English readers.

Updated: I've begun a series as I read the book.

• 2007-11-05: Part I

I'm stoked.

Poking around the newly-redesigned Amazon.com front page, I noted that volume 2 in Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy is out. If you have done any reading on WWII, you owe it to yourself to read Atkinson's first volume, An Army at Dawn (amazon.com), which is all about the war in Northern Africa from 1942-1943. It seems most WWII stuff is either on the war in Germany or else it is personality-focused (e.g. Patton, Eisenhower, Rommel, etc.). Atkinson is writing a history of the liberation of Europe, and the first volume was awesome. I've been waiting for the second volume for five years, and it's here now. Here's the book's LibraryThing page.

Bonus: I used an Amazon.com gift certificate to pay for the book. Thanks to those who click on links & sidebars to purchase stuff via ricoblog, I do appreciate it (and I will enjoy The Day of Battle (amazon.com) immensely)!

I'm curious what you think, so I'm asking. Is "they" == "Jesus and the 12" or is "they" == "the 12"?

Here's the Greek text of Mk 14.17-18 and the ESV text of same.

Καὶ ὀψίας γενομένης ἔρχεται μετὰ τῶν δώδεκα. καὶ ἀνακειμένων αὐτῶν καὶ ἐσθιόντων ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἷς ἐξ ὑμῶν παραδώσει με ὁ ἐσθίων μετʼ ἐμοῦ. (Mk 14:17-18, NA27)

And when it was evening, he came with the twelve. And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” (Mk 14:17-18)

Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. If you'd rather not comment publicly but want to let me know what you think, try textgeek at gmail dot com.

From Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution; see item 3 which points to two posts. The first by Felix Salmon (Blogonomics 301 with Tyler Cowen), the second over at The Economist's blog, Free exchange (How to sell books). From Felix Salmon's post, you can download Cowen's talk (the talk is over an hour long, the linked *.m4u file is 250 megs, so watch out).

Lots of interesting stuff in Cowen's talk. I'm wondering, though, how what Cowen says applies to the biblioblogosphere.

In the biblioblogosphere, are blogs loss-leaders that basically promote a good of some sort (either a book or books by the blog author, or the author himself/herself)? Whether intentional or not, do they just serve to promote the author? (If so ... I guess I need to write a book soon)

On an unrelated side note, I'm more and more convinced that "blog reader" really isn't an appropriate term anymore. There may be people who actually read every word written on a particular blog (and therefore are blog readers; if you do that with my humble blog here, wow ... boy, do I appreciate you!) but I think the better label is probably "blog follower". That is, I think people follow blogs, they don't necessarily read blogs. They might read or skim an article that has a provocative title; but they certainly don't read everything. There's no way anyone can really read 200 blogs; but it is possible to follow 200 blogs.

... I'm still amazed at the differences between Greek editions of the NT in the areas of:

• paragraphing
• punctuation
• orthography (e.g. νγ vs γγ, moveable nu)

and that there is no standard tome on these items, apart from Westcott & Hort's Introduction [mentioned here], as far as I can tell. And you have to dig to find W&H's intro. Are they the only ones to even try to tackle this?

I mean, even if you just compare Westcott & Hort to NA27 — where the text is almost exactly the same — check to see where one uses emdashes and the other uses colons, or where one punctuates a list with commas and the other doesn't, or where sentence and paragraph breaks are entirely different.

Am I making a bigger deal of this than is necessary? Do folks just think this aspect of an edition is interpretive, so editors do what they do and we just gloss over it?

Maybe. But my guess is that most users of the Greek NT are just using it to zero in on a particular word for a study of a particular verse. Like: "Oh, [english word] is a translation of [greek word]; so I'll look that one up in BDAG." Does anyone who actually reads the Greek NT pay attention to paragraphing, punctuation, flow of argumentation? Or are we layering our own translation over things when we examine the Greek (OK, I admit I'm guilty of this).

And I'm also guessing that much of the paragraphing and punctuation in Greek NTs has to do with how the editors would translate the text themselves, thus I'm guessing it is influenced largely by the punctuation practices of their native language* — and not necessarily based on what the Greek is communicating.**

Of course, I know, the written Greek MSS don't have punctuation like modern languages (though there are some indicators). But it still seems like there should at least be some attempts at this area of study primarily because it is so important to understanding the text as a whole.

Is this area doomed to languish?

Update (2007-10-25): Tommy Wasserman over at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog links back here, noting what I said earlier about subparagraphs in the NA27. Thanks! I posted a comment on his post about subparagraphs in Westcott & Hort:

I subsequently 'discovered' that Westcott & Hort has subparagraph breaks too; but at least they tell you what they are in §419 of their introduction: "In the subdivision of sections we have found great convenience in adopting the French plan of breaking up the paragraphs into subparagraphs by means of a space of some length."

The same section goes on with some more information about W&H's edition that I didn't know either: "We have been glad at the same time to retain another grade of division in the familiar difference between capitals and small letters following a full stop. Groups of sentences introduced by a capital thus bear the same relation to subparagraphs as subparagraphs to paragraphs."

I'm beginning to wonder how much of this sort of stuff NA27 just carries over without disclosing.

* Pure speculation and likely irrelevant and misguided, but I'm wondering how the punctuation in NA27 compares with how one would punctuate a somewhat literal German translation — and how punctuation in UBS4 compares with how one would punctuate a somewhat literal English translation.

** You can really see this in Hodges & Farstad's The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text where they go so far as to use “quote marks” to denote spoken text and, as I recall, OT quotations. It's pretty irritating to see quotation marks in the midst of diacritics and some text-critical note indicators.

Yes, it has been fairly quiet in the corner of the blogosphere recently. Amy and I have been moving house; we're out of the old house (it sold quickly, thankfully) and into a new house (yay!). This past week was pack-n-move time; with the majority of actual moving happening this past weekend.

So, obviously, we're still settling in, but things are in good shape.

Also ... a little bird just told me that Siegfried Schatzmann's English translation of Hubertus Drobner's Lehrbuch der Patrologie (Fathers of the Church: A Comprehensive Introduction (amazon.com)), to be published by Hendrickson but long-delayed for many and sundry reasons, has actually hit the warehouse. That means ... well ... it is like, you know, done and stuff. And in paper. And ready to read. WOO HOO!!!!

When I get a copy (which should hopefully be soon; I've been waiting over two years!) I'll certainly mention it and blog about it somewhat.

Speaking of which, I'm about to wrap up Skarsaune & Hvalvik's Jewish Believers in Jesus (amazon.com). This is an awesome book; I can't recommend it highly enough. I was lucky enough to receive a gratis copy. I likely wouldn't have bought it, but I would've missed out greatly and kicked myself repeatedly had I found out what a treasure I missed. You should really check it out — when you're at SBL, cruise the Hendrickson booth and pick up a copy to browse (then buy!)

Found these mentioned in a footnote in Skarsaune & Hvalvik's Jewish Believers in Jesus (amazon.com); this is the proverbial "note to myself" so I can dig the references out again:

Kenneth Berding, Polycarp and Paul: An Analysis of Their Literary and Theological Relationship in Light of Polycarp's Use of Biblical and Extra-Biblical Literature (amazon.com) (VCSup 62; Leiden: Brill, 2002)

Paul Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament: The Occasion, Rhetoric, Theme and Unity of the Epistle to the Philippians and its Allusions to New Testament Literature (amazon.com) (WUNT 2.134; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 2002)

That is all.

It has been far, far too long since I have posted pictures of our sweet little daughter Ella. So we'll skip the fanfare and go straight to the pictures (because that's what you really want to see anyway, I know).

And, ever since I saw this sign at the hospital (a few months before Ella was born) I've wanted to post a picture of it. This is a real sign, no photoshopping or anything. The 'receiving' part I get ... I'm still trying to figure out how 'shipping' applies ...