Archaic Christianity

This post is for all of you who have not actually seen a physical copy of Migne's Latin and Greek works. It is a sight to see.

Thanks to all of you who dropped by to help me figure out what to read and review next. I'll be moving on to read Ehrman's Lost Christianities. Hopefully it will be good.

So I am not sure what book I want to read next. I've got several of them picked out that I want to read soon. Instead of deciding for myself, I think I'll let my faithful readers decide. Whatever I end up reading I will summarize and review for you when I'm finished. So if you're curious about any of these books, please leave a comment.

If you have one of those blog plugins that shows snapshots when someone hovers over links, do what Nick did. Satan invented those plugins.

If they want to get up to speed technologically when it comes to annual meetings, they should definitely organize their meetings like this group. The only downside would be the lack of centralized book displays and bargains...

I ran across an interesting passage in Irenaeus' Against Heresies today. First, he argues that Jesus died when he was almost fifty. Strange. Second, in his discussion of how Jesus sanctified aging, he mentions the sanctification of infants. The hardbound copy I use of this says that this is a reference to infant baptism. I'm not sure; that doesn't seem to be a necessary conclusion, or am I missing something? If you know, do leave a note. Third, he recalls a tradition that John lived until the time of Trajan. Could be useful to know where that is.

I have not kept up with my Greek reading goals over the last couple of months, though many of my distractions have been worthy enough. I have to finish the last two verses of chapter four of Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheka tonight so I can start on my new schedule tomorrow.

John Hobbins is winning, both in rhetoric and argument. I'm interested to see where this goes.

I am still somewhat perturbed about Huizinga's biography of Erasmus and its lack of information on Erasmus' intellectual and study habits. Truth be told, that is why I read the book (though secondarily to get more information on his editions of his Greek New Testament).

It's really nice to come home from work and to have your son state rather strongly that he wants to go to the bookstore later that night. It was a real sacrifice for me, but we took the grueling two-or-so-mile trip to Half Price Books.

I mentioned recently that I had been reading a biography of Erasmus. I finished it just now. The printing I have is not available at Amazon proper, though you can get it through their resellers fairly cheaply. A more recent and much more expensive copy is available on Amazon, however.

Biographies of great men are very important. They can inspire us lesser mortals to do greater things; in the very least, if done well, they can inform us historically and we can be less ignorant of the history we have inherited.

Continuing on in our discussion of a uncatalogued lectionary fragment (which I am calling ULF, though not to be confused with the friendly alien), today we'll chat about the lection covering John 6:48-54. There are several noteworthy things with this one.

Every time I drop by DTS I have to stop by the new books shelf in the library. They had one up today that I thought was an interesting volume, The Gospel According to John in the Byzantine Tradition . That link is to Eisenbrauns, who has it on sale for $11 cheaper than Amazon ($54 currently).

...and it was no disappointment. The special effects were good, the plot was good and didn't have horribly bad sections in it like the last(like the fight with dad...so bad), the acting was good, the action sequences were fun. All was good in the world of Hulk!

Ben Byerly pointed out an interesting resource. It is the Moule Memorial Lecture given just the other day by Wright about the interaction of scholarship and Christian discipleship. Here is the full transcript. It is most definitely worth your time.

So I was poking around on Google books today and found two gems that might be of interest to those of you out there who are text-critically minded.

Continuing on the perpetual series on Greek Handwriting, where I chat about scribal practices and whatnot (I need to rename the series to that, I think), let's look at another portion of ULF (see the links to the previous posts on this manuscript below). Today we will limit ourselves to the Lection covering John 6:40-44.

I've been out of town on vacation for the last few days, but I'm back again. I got a lot of reading done in my biography of Erasmus, so that should be finished soon. I got a good deal of sleep, so that was nice. I feel almost recharged.

Today I finished a very useful book entitled Greek Papyri: An Introduction by E. G. Turner. I do not have the background to review its contents, but I found the book pretty enjoyable and informative. To read it you should know Greek (though you often don't need it to know what is going on) and it would be beneficial to you if you are familiar at all with classical studies (I am not very familiar myself though that is changing) or textual criticism, but it is not necessary. You should have a good grasp of the basic time-line of history of the Hellenistic period.

Sure they're a day late, but since the notes pertain to yesterday's study we'll have to call this this May 30th Greek notes. First, I received Athenaze Book I, 2nd edition in the mail yesterday. I already had the first edition of book I, but my pastor and I were about to work through it (and book II) in parallel so I decided it would be worth going ahead and getting the updated edition. It comes with a workbook this time, which is nice (and by "comes with" I don't mean you get it for free, of course). It is slightly thicker, possibly because it contains more readings than before. This time they also included readings from the New Testament as well. Maybe this will make it a more attractive textbook for first year Greek students.