Jim West has posted this month's Biblical Studies Carnival (number 36, for those counting).

Jim's first item has to do with N.T. Wrong's Biblioblog Top 50 November 2008. Somehow, yours truly made the list this time, breaking through at #24. I suppose that's cool. Interesting to me was the degree of change of several web sites. Makes the whole endeavor seem a little suspect to me.

Also, I bought some books last night, using up some birthday money that needed some spendin'. Finally got Hays' book on Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (amazon.com). That's been on the to-read list for too long, so I finally got a copy. I also finally got a copy of Andrew Berhard's Other Early Christian Gospels: A Critical Edition of the Surviving Greek Manuscripts (amazon.com). Critical editions of things like this are an important part of building any library. This one has been on the wishlist awhile too, so it was time to get it.

Most believe that First Clement was written from the church of Rome to the church in Corinth.

Keeping that in mind, go and scan 1Cor 13 quickly. Got it? Good.

Then read First Clement 49:

49. Let the one who has love in Christ fulfill the commandments of Christ.
(2) Who can describe the bond of God’s love?
(3) Who is able to explain the majesty of its beauty?
(4) The height to which love leads is indescribable.
(5) Love unites us with God; “love covers a multitude of sins”; love endures all things, is patient in all things. There is nothing coarse, nothing arrogant in love. Love knows nothing of schisms, love leads no rebellions, love does everything in harmony. In love all the elect of God were made perfect; without love nothing is pleasing to God.
(6) In love the master received us. Because of the love he had for us, Jesus Christ our Lord, in accordance with God’s will, gave his blood for us, and his flesh for our flesh, and his life for our lives.
Holmes, M. W. (1999). The Apostolic Fathers : Greek texts and English translations (amazon.com) (Updated ed.) (83). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

49.1 Ὁ ἔχων ἀγάπην ἐν Χριστῷ ποιησάτω τὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ παραγγέλματα.
(2) τὸν δεσμὸν τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ θεοῦ τίς δύναται ἐξηγήσασθαι;
(3) τὸ μεγαλεῖον τῆς καλλονῆς αὐτοῦ τίς ἀρκετὸς ἐξειπεῖν;
(4) τὸ ὕψος εἰς ὃ ἀνάγει ἡ ἀγάπη ἀνεκδιήγητόν ἐστιν.
(5) ἀγάπη κολλᾷ ἡμᾶς τῷ θεῷ, ἀγάπη καλύπτει πλῆθος ἁμαρτιῶν, ἀγάπη πάντα ἀνέχεται, πάντα μακροθυμεῖ· οὐδὲν βάναυσον ἐν ἀγάπῃ, οὐδὲν ὑπερήφανον· ἀγάπη σχίσμα οὐκ ἔχει, ἀγάπη οὐ στασιάζει, ἀγάπη πάντα ποιεῖ ἐν ὁμονοίᾳ· ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ ἐτελειώθησαν πάντες οἱ ἐκλεκτοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ· δίχα ἀγάπης οὐδὲν εὐάρεστόν ἐστιν τῷ θεῷ.
(6) ἐν ἀγάπῃ προσελάβετο ἡμᾶς ὁ δεσπότης· διὰ τὴν ἀγάπην, ἣν ἔσχεν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἔδωκεν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν ἐν θελήματι θεοῦ, καὶ τὴν σάρκα ὑπὲρ τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.
Holmes, M. W. (1999). The Apostolic Fathers : Greek texts and English translations (amazon.com) (Updated ed.) (82). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

How cool is that?

I've been able to read another large chunk of Klauck's Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (amazon.com), and I have to say it's quite good. (See Part I)

Klauck does a great job of filling in the holes and gaps, discussing each major pericope/section, and providing background information. While I can't always agree with all of the points made therein, I can recommend it highly as a well-written and very competent introduction to the apocryphal acts.

In short, particularly if you're just delving into this material, you'll be better off for reading Klauck along with reputable translations of the Apocryphal Acts. If you're a student, think of Klauck as "Cliff Notes". I know professors will hate me for saying that, but it's true. The raw material is somewhat obtuse and assumes background and other knowledge in order to understand it. Klauck gives you that in his walkthru.

Bottom line: Get this book (amazon.com). If you're at SBL right now, hit the Baylor booth before leaving to get it at (likely) a very good discount.

[NB: I'll be blogging random things about my upcoming BibleTech:2009 paper; these posts will all be available in the "bibletech" category. If you're presenting a paper at the conference, might I suggest the same practice? That way they'll all be available by a search for 'bibletech' on Technorati or some other such service. —RB]

In his book A Stylometric Study of the New Testament (amazon.com), Anthony Kenny lists 99 features that he tracked across the corpus, using them as a guide to his analysis. His feature list is based on categorization of the Friberg morphology circa 1986. I believe the Friberg has undergone significant revision since then and is considered to be in at least its second edition; perhaps even the third edition. Kenny also includes some stock lexical items such as conjunction instances, preposition instances, and some specific words (e.g. θεος, λεγω). Note that Kenny did all of his counts by hand, from "the microfiche concordance ot the machine-readable version of the Analytical Greek New Testament"! (Kenny, "Note on Sources") He used a TI 58 statistical calculator for his numbers, also "the ICL 2988 machine in the Oxford University Computer Services". (Kenny, "Note on Sources").

Right now, I'm thankful for fast computers, XML and for Perl and/or C# (haven't figured out which language I'll use for the code yet).

In my paper for BibleTech:2009, I'm proposing to carry out a similar analysis, only of the LXX, using the Logos Morphology. There are several of the 99 categories that can be re-used (81, to be exact). Friberg has much more going on in adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions than the Logos LXX Morphology; this accounts for much of the difference.

However, I think I'll be able to track up to 106 features, and perhaps more. How? Kenny did very little with participles, and even less with pronouns. I have no idea why he did little with participles because the Friberg morphology is rich in this area (even differentiating, at the 'mood' slot, between 'participle' and 'participle (imperative sense)', Kenny pp. 10-11, figure 2.1). It may have been because it would be too tedious (recall he counted by hand). But pronouns are simply a type of noun in this edition of Friberg, so Kenny's hands were tied (he tracked third-person pronouns in sum and also by case, but that's it).

Kenny also didn't track instances of the vocative case (for articles, nouns, and adjectives). But he did track optatives and pluperfects (indeed rare cases in the NT). Thus, to the 81 shared criteria, I'm considering adding 25 more for a total of 106.

If you're interested, the list of 25 additional features is below.

Because of differences in classification of voice
82. Number of occurrences of third-person singular indicative verbs in the either-middle-or-passive voice

Participles
83. Number of occurrences of verbs in the participle mood
84. Number of occurrences of participles in the nominative
85. Number of occurrences of participles in the dative
86. Number of occurrences of participles in the genitive
87. Number of occurrences of participles in the accusative
88. Number of occurrences of participles in the masculine
89. Number of occurrences of participles in the feminine
90. Number of occurrences of participles in the neuter
91. Number of occurrences of participles in the singular
92. Number of occurrences of participles in the plural
93. Number of occurrences of Proper Nouns

Interjections
94. Number of occurrences of Interjections (I)

Vocatives
95. Number of occurrences of vocative articles
96. Number of occurrences of vocative nouns
97. Number of occurrences of vocative adjectives

Other Pronoun Information
98. Number of occurrences of Relative Pronouns
99. Number of occurrences of Reciprocal Pronouns
100. Number of occurrences of Demonstrative Pronouns
101. Number of occurrences of Correlative Pronouns
102. Number of occurrences of Interrogative Pronouns
103. Number of occurrences of Indefinite Pronouns
104. Number of occurrences of Reflexive Pronouns
105. Number of occurrences of Possessive Pronouns
106. Number of occurrences of Personal Pronouns

There may be more, I just have to think about it a bit more. For instance, I could add case-specific instances of each pronoun type (so, relative pronouns in the nominative, in the genitive, etc.) but at present I'm thinking that's overkill. Of course, I may change my mind. I also need to consider if there are particular word instances to include in the feature list; I may have to do some word frequency analysis in order to determine candidates. I will also have to review LXX-specific conjunctions and prepositions to determine how those portions of the list might be expanded.

You've heard about it for months, now you can read it too. I've posted my ETS 2008 paper on my conference papers web site.

If you're interested in the background posts I've made regarding the paper over the past nine months or so, see the ETS 2008 category. I've also written a lot that didn't make it in the paper due to length considerations; perhaps I'll consider posting that information in blog-post-sized chunks over the next while if there is interest. This extra material contains primarily review of lexicons, grammars and monographs as well as brief examination of particular instances. If you'd like to see that kind of stuff, please let me know by commenting on this post.

Finally, thanks to all who offered comments and feedback along the way. Particular thanks to Steve Runge for pushing, prodding, and encouraging me through the whole thing. I bit off much more than I could chew, but Steve's help and encouragement along the way saw me to the end. I understand much more now about conjunctions than I ever thought I would. Thanks, Steve.

This is in Gregory & Tuckett's The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers: The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (amazon.com), p. 130, note 5:

Hagner's monograph contains an extended methodological discussion of how scholars should evaluate what he refers to as 'variant [i.e. inexact] quotations' (in which he argues that these are usually best explained as memoriter quotations form known texts rather than as accurate quotations from unknown texts or oral traditions; see Hagner, Use [of the Old and New Testaments in Clement of Rome], 80-108, on the use of the OT; 287-312, on the use of the NT) and also a helpful survey of how the pattern of 1 Clement's apparent use of the writings later canonized as the NT compares with that of the use of the same writings in other Apostolic Fathers (ibid. 272-87).

So, Hagner's distinction and methodology is helpful. Basically, unattested quotations/allusions are better treated as inexact quotations of known readings than as exact quotations of unknown readings.

I suppose this appeals to the lowest-common-denominator and is right more often than not, but of course it also means that in practice, all quotations/allusions are always accounted for among the known readings, so, for text-critical purposes, the Apostolic Fathers are ultimately useless as regards attestation of heretofore unknown readings.

In practice, however, this also means that where there is similarity between a quotation/allusion in the Apostolic Fathers, it can be used to help understand how the writer understood the NT text without falling into a text-critical black hole. And, at least for my purposes at present, this is helpful.

Jim asked, you all get to see. Here's my current desktop on my home machine:

What, you thought it would be something different?

Baylor Press recently provided a review copy of Hans-Josef Klauck's new book, The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction (amazon.com). For blurbs and the TOC, see my previous post. I hope to blog some thoughts as I have time to read through the book.

But, my first impressions: As an introduction, this book is marvelous. Note that the actual text (translated or otherwise) is not contained in this book. But if you have never read or worked with this material before, I'd recommend using Klauck's book along with an edition of the text (I'd recommend Schneemelcher's second volume (amazon.com)) in order to familiarize yourself with what's going on.

If you're teaching this material, this is a great introduction and you'll probably want to use it. Make sure to stop by the Baylor Press booth at SBL and check out a copy of the book.

In this post, I'll briefly review Klauck's section on the Acts of John. Here is a detailed TOC of the whole section:

The Acts of John (pp. 15-45)
     Bibliographical material: Editions, Translations, Secondary literature (p. 15)
     A. Context (pp. 16-18)
     B. Contents (pp. 19-40)
          1. The First Period in Ephesus (ActJoh 18–55) (p. 19-24)
               Cleopatra and Lycomedes (p. 20)
               The Apostle and his Portrait (pp. 20-21)
               The Old Women (pp. 21-22)
               The Destruction of Artemis (pp. 22-23)
               Fornication with Dramatic Consequences (pp. 23-24, includes bibliography)
          2. Intermezzos (ActJoh 56-61) (pp. 24-26)
               A Partridge or the Sons of Antipatros? (pp. 24-25)
               The Obedient Bugs (pp. 25-26, includes bibliography)
          3. The Second Period in Ephesus (ActJoh 62-86) (pp. 26-30)
               The Death of Drusiana (p. 27)
               In the Tomb (pp. 27-28)
               The Raising Up of Callimachus and Drusiana (pp. 28-29)
               The "Unsuccessful" Raising of Fortunatus (pp. 29-30)
          4. The "Polymorphous" Earthly Lord (ActJoh 87-93, 103-5) (pp. 30-33, includes bibliography)
          5. The True "Passion" of the Lord (ActJoh 94-102) (pp. 33-36)
               The Dance Hymn (pp. 33-35, includes bibliography)
               The "Passion" Narrative (pp. 35-36, includes bibliography)
          6. The Death of the Apostle (ActJoh 106-115) (pp. 36-38, includes bibliography)
          7. Fragments that Cannot Be Localized (pp. 39-40)
     C. Evaluation (pp. 40-42, includes bibliography)
     D. Later Narratives (pp. 42-45)
          1. The Syriac History of John (pp. 42-43, includes bibliography)
          2. The Acts of John by Pseudo-Prochorus (pp. 43-44, includes bibliography)
          3. Virtues Johannes, Passio Johannes (p. 44, includes bibliography)
          4. The Acts of John in Rome (p. 45, includes bibliography)

One of the many strengths, as you can see, is the inclusion of bibliographic material at various levels. If there are articles or whatnot that pertain specifically to a given section, they are listed with that section. Also, the organization (at least of this portion) outlines the text itself under discussion. The text itself serves not only as introduction, but also as a short commentary and discussion of the text. All of this, particularly when combined with a reputable edition of the text (amazon.com), gives the reader good apprehension of what is going on in this somewhat neglected and sometimes weird literature.