Archaic Christianity

I love reader's versions of ancient texts. I think they are a great thing for learning. So in my continual attempt at not being completely useless, I present to you a gallery of readers for ancient Greek, with a few Latin sprinkled in for good measure (all pulled from my library save one). I'm doing this for a few reasons. First, some of you may not be familiar with these resources though you should be. Second, though some of these are out of print and/or not directly relevant to my perceived audience, I want to give you some samples to spark your thinking. I'll be following up with a post tomorrow, based on this one, with some of my musings on what makes a good reader and where that can fit into one's education.

Decoding Early Christianity: Truth and Legend in the Early Church is a book I was able to pick up off of the new books shelf at DTS. It looked interesting enough, had a cool cover (even if a bit odd for the subject matter), a great title, was short, and fell within my reading interests, so I decided to check it out. In summary, it is a book of inconsistent quality, and will not be the book I end up recommending for a good introduction to early Christianity (despite its cool name).

This weeks has been rather unpleasant. Working 14 hours on Wed, 12 on Thurs, and spending last night (mostly awake throughout) and today dealing with a tooth infection. But now I have drugs, so the pain should be manageable until the infection heals. However, other than the post the other day about the CSNTM press release, there has been one more bright spot on this otherwise dismal and boring week.

So I took a break today (though technically I guess that was yesterday...it is just past midnight) from reading the Protoevangelium of James to read some in the Reading Greek books (by the JACT) for learning Classical Greek. I've owned them for a while so I thought I would give them a spin.

The text is reading intensive, and I like that. However, I find its explanation a little terse and I found myself thinking that there needed to be more.

I just wanted to point out a few resources that I have found useful for study of lectionary Greek manuscripts. One of them I have not yet read since reading German texts is still a little slow for me, but it looks useful.

I just finished reading this today:

I got something in the mail this week. I'm calling it "my precious". I was as happy when I got it as this guy was when he got his precious:

I finished reading a short book this morning called Calvin and the Biblical Languages by John D. Currid. The book is an enjoyable read if you are into either Calvin or biblical language study. It is only about a hundred pages, so it can be read in a very short time.

I am sorry, but I have to set Jim straight. If he needs proof that I have read some Zwingli, I'll give it to him. Of course, these pictures were in no way staged. My wife likes to randomly take pictures of me in my natural habitat (my study). I am, after all, very studly. And look, I have different shirts on when I read Wright and Zwingli. I'll even prove I have read some Wright. Clearly this is indisputable proof that these pictures were taking at two distinct periods! Here's me reading the latter...

I am a big believer in buying good books when you get the opportunity, even if you may not get around to reading them quickly. There are many reasons for this, like having them on your bookshelf makes you look smarter, greater book smell in your study, etc. The main reason is that there may come a time when you want to read that book, and waiting a few weeks for Amazon to get it to you (assuming you use the free shipping to save on cash) is just too slow.

I have sanctified this mostly paganized and commercialized holiday by expanding my book collection. Here's the books I bought with Christmas money in no particular order:

Libraries much have a special deal going with the Egypt Exploration Society. The newest volume of the Oxyrhynchus papyri (which has four new NT papyri) is available only for pre-order on both Amazon and...

Reicke begins his book The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels with a chapter which briefly details the history of the discussion of synoptic relations. It seemed to be just fine, but the meat of his argument did not begin until chapter two.

My birthday was about two weeks ago, Nov 20th to be exact. For my birthday I asked for money from the fam so I could buy books. Here's what I got...

I have commented on the book Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels here and here. This brief discussion will be my last on this book for a while, I imagine. My reading of the chapter on the Two-Gospel Hypothesis (2GH) is my last in the book as I have already skipped ahead and read the gospel Independence view and the Two-Source/Four-Source/Markan Hypothesis (MH) view.

I discussed before my opinions on the independent view of synoptic gospel composition a couple days ago. I have continued my reading in the book (Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels) and have moved on to the discussion of the Markan hypothesis, the two-source/four-source hypothesis.

Here are my next steps in solving the synoptic problem for myself:

1. Read Bo Reicke's The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels to get a better grasp of the Independent theory of solving the synoptic problem.
2. Next is Rethinking the Synoptic Problem ed. by Black and Beck. This book has defenses for both the two-document hypothesis (Markan priority) as well as the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthean priority).
3. Next I'll begin taking notes and applying principles to actual gospel pericopes. Eventually you have to move on from reading people's books to actually checking the data yourself...

As noted on the Bibleworks Blog, Oxford University Press is having a big sale on Amazon. You can get the Oxford Latin Dictionary or LSJ for as cheap...