Here it is, Ignatius to the Magnesians 11:

11.1 Ταῦτα δέ, ἀγαπητοί μου, οὐκ ἐπεὶ ἔγνων τινὰς ἐξ ὑμῶν οὕτως ἔχοντας, ἀλλʼ ὡς μικρότερος ὑμῶν θέλω προφυλάσσεσθαι ὑμᾶς μὴ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς τὰ ἄγκιστρα τῆς κενοδοξίας, ἀλλὰ πεπληροφορῆσθαι71 ἐν τῇ γεννήσει καὶ τῷ πάθει καὶ τῇ ἀναστάσει τῇ γενομένῃ ἐν καιρῷ τῆς ἡγεμονίας Ποντίου Πιλάτου· πραχθέντα ἀληθῶς καὶ βεβαίως ὑπὸ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, τῆς ἐλπίδος ἡμῶν, ἧς ἐκτραπῆναι μηδενὶ ὑμῶν γένοιτο. (IgnMag 11)

Holmes, M. W. (1999). The Apostolic Fathers : Greek texts and English translations (Updated ed.) (156). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

Here's Ehrman's translation:

I am not writing you these things, my beloved, because I have learned that some of you are behaving like this. But as one who is less important than you I want to protect you from being snagged by the fish hooks of worthless ideas. You should be fully convinced of the birth and suffering and resurrection that occurred in the time of the governor Pontius Pilate. These things were truly and certainly done by Jesus Christ, our hope. From this hope may none of you turn away. (IgnMag 11)

Here Ignatius is responding to a danger that the Magnesians may fall prey to: that of Judaizing and perhaps even elevating Judaism above Christianity. Ignatius reminds them to focus on Christ: "You should be fully convinced ..."

The other picture in here that draws my attention is that of the "fish hooks of worthless ideas". Others (Holmes, Lake, Lightfoot) translate this as "hooks", but "fish hooks" seems more appropriate (cf. BDAG). Have you ever been fishing and snagged the fish instead of hooking it in the mouth? I have. Ignatius is saying, "don't let the false ideas draw you in—don't be caught up in them." On the metaphor, Schoedel includes a helpful footnote in his commentary on Ignatius' letters (helpfully copied/pasted from the Logos version!):

For the metaphorical use of the word “hooks” (fishhooks) see Diogenes Laertius 4.47; Plutarch De virt. moral. 6, 446a; Aristaenetus Ep. 1.17; cf. Lucian Pisc. 47. From the same circle of metaphors comes the word “lure” used in Jas 1:14 (cf. Plutarch De ser. num. vind. 10, 554f). For the full development of the imagery in connection with heresy see Theodoret Hist. eccl. 5.13.6.

Schoedel, W. R., Ignatius, S., Bishop of Antioch, & Koester, H. (1985). Ignatius of Antioch : A commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch. Includes indexes. (129) Hermeneia—a critical and historical commentary on the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

One of the advantages of working at Logos and sitting next to very smart, very cool people like my friend Steve is that I get to soak up his knowledge as he works on cool projects.

One thing Steve has imparted to me is the importance of conjunctions and particles at the discourse level.

With this in mind, there I was in church on Sunday. We've been going through the gospel of Mark for maybe two years now, getting close to the end. Sunday's lesson was on Mark 16.1-8. Mark 16.5-7 jumped out at me:

5 Καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν, καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν.

6 ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς·
     μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε·
               Ἰησοῦν
          ζητεῖτε
               τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν
               τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον·
          ἠγέρθη,
               οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε·
               ἴδε ὁ τόπος ὅπου ἔθηκαν αὐτόν.
     7 ἀλλὰ ὑπάγετε
          εἴπατε τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ τῷ Πέτρῳ
               ὅτι προάγει ὑμᾶς
                    εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν·
               ἐκεῖ αὐτὸν ὄψεσθε,
                    καθὼς εἶπεν ὑμῖν.

A few things to notice.

First, the bold text shows some lexical cohesion between the two units. Mark is the only NT author that uses this particular word (cf. Mk 9.15; Mk 14.33). This connects the surprise the ladies had upon entering the tomb with the instructions from the angel to the women.

Second, note vv 6-7 as the quotative frame with the angel speaking. Note the use of μη .. αλλα (in red). One thing Steve has impressed upon me in the past few months is that when one sees an αλλα, one should always look up the context to see if there is a μη. And it happens here. Consider an English translation:

And he said to them:
     Don't be overwhelmed;
          the one you seek—
               Jesus,
               the Nazarene,
               the crucified one—
          he is risen
               he is not here—
               look at the place where they laid him!
     Instead, go
          tell his disciples and Peter
               that he is going before you
                    into Galilee
               just as he told you.

Do you see the contrast? Instead of being overwhelmed/freaked out; the women are instructed to calm down, to go find the disciples (including Peter!) and remind them of what Jesus had already instructed them.

Third, note how Jesus is specified in the text. There is no question as to whom the angel is referring to. Jesus is further qualified as "the Nazarene", and then further qualified as "the crucified one". Then the women are pointed to where they expected him to be, and noting that he is not there. Jesus, who was crucified and dead, whom they expected to be in the tomb, was not where he was supposed to be.

I think the text is focusing on Jesus not being in the tomb, and then further on directing the women to get the message (he is risen!) to the disciples so they can get to Galilee, back to Jesus.

Kevin P. Edgecomb (whose blog biblicalia should be more widely read than it is) is the host and proprietor of BSC:XXVI. Step right up and check out the fantabulous job he did in assembling this month's montage of Biblical Studies monotony ... er ... uh ... well, I need something to alliterate with the 'm' vibe there ... read on and you will surely see that the Biblical Studies blogosphere is definitely not monotonous.

Hi folks.

I'm playing around with using Windows Live Writer to edit and post weblog entries. So ... this is just a test.

(Thanks, Bob, for the pointer!)

I know it's hard to believe, but I think I found Jim West's favorite web site. Click the link, then wait a second for it to unveil in its full glory!

On the flip side, this is probably Chris Tilling's favorite web site!

(h/t: MarginalRevolution)

BibleTech08 was two days chock-full-o' Bible-geeky goodness.

The highlight for me was time spent between sessions and at meals talking with folks. Prime among those was time spent with James Tauber. I've emailed with James back and forth for at least five years now; it was great to spend time with him in person, reflecting on sessions, talking about the doctroal work he's doing, and all sorts of other stuff. Here's the not-so-great picture I took with my cell phone to prove it:

Others have summarized sessions (Check the tag bibletech08 on Technorati for a listing) so I won't do that here. I will say that some of the stuff James Tauber talked about work with Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen at MorphGNT.org regarding lemma alignments was thought-provoking; Andi Wu's presentation on treebanks caused me to covet my neighbor's syntax data; Sean Boisen's Zoomable Bible presentation made me think about interface in ways I hadn't before; Kurt Fuqua's stuff made my head hurt (though not necessarily in a bad way), Zack Hubert's zhubert.com retrospective was awesome; and Bob MacDonald's talk on structures in Psalms was much appreciated both for the visualizations and also for the esteem in which he presented it -- unlike so many presentations at places like SBL, you could tell that for Bob, this was not simply an academic exercise, the text has profoundly influenced him.

My profuse thanks to everyone who came to Seattle for two days of Bible-geeky goodness. Hopefully we'll do it again next year!

I had an insanely great time at BibleTech:2008 and will blog about that in a bit; though I wanted to get links up to my paper.My paper on cross-references went well, I thought, though my presentation itself was somewhat scattered. Here are the goods:

• BibleTech2008Paper.pdf (531.26 KB)
• BibleTech2008Handout.pdf (64.45 KB)
• Rick Brannan BibleTech2008.ppt (1.54 MB)

I'll be posting these on my personal web site on Monday; I also believe the BibleTech website will hold copies of the paper, handout and powerpoint. And maybe even audio!

Note that my colleague Sean Boisen (who blogs at Blogos) has blogged on a number of the papers presented. Here's his primary post; hopefully he'll add some tags to link them together over the next few days.

My colleague Sean Boisen reminds us all that BibleTech:2008 is coming.

I have one talk/paper at the conference, the overly-generically-named Locating New Testament Cross-References: Some Strategies. My abstract isn't much help either:

This talk examines the feasibility of locating related passages in the New Testament using various measures. The focus will be on strategy and results, not on the nitty-gritty details of the code.

Well, I've actually written the paper now so I have a better idea of what I'm going to say. I still need to make the powerpoint slides and such. But here's the introduction to give you a better flavor of what's what:

Marginal cross-references have long been a feature of several Bibles in print. Each of the myriad versions has some edition with “marginal cross-references” or “center-column cross-references”. Yet electronic editions, apart from those reproducing data available in printed editions, have not done a good job of complementing the text with relevant cross-references. Most electronic editions of Bibles are centered on the words of the text and not its presentation or on supplying ancillary data to help in the study of the text.

This paper largely restricts itself to discussing New Testament cross-references to the New Testament. Different approaches, from “no-tech” to “low-tech” to (keeping the rhythm) “mo’-tech”, will be examined (each in differing degrees). Discussion of necessary data and even ideas about sources are provided at relevant points.

But first, it is necessary to note that there are several different types of cross-references, and perhaps even several different “levels” of cross-referencing. Cross-referencing can be between key words in a text (perhaps even down to key words in a book/author); it can be between similar phrases; it can be topically oriented. But even tables of Gospel parallels are cross-references of a sort.

This paper takes a sort of “shotgun” approach, mentioning several ideas on different styles or sources of cross-references and even providing worked examples of many. But we will move quickly from idea to idea. In other words, the presentation will be wide, not deep.