Archaic Christianity

Yesterday I had lunch with Bryan Cox, a new blogger over at Thoughts on Antiquity, though he's not new to blogging, as the post explains. Anyway, enjoyed the lunch Bryan. Thank you for joining me. Looking forward to seeing your posts!

The quixotic infidel had a very good visualization for describing the canonical status of various books by various entities in early Christianity.

Michael from Pisteuomen is in a discussion with the author of the blog on the authorship of Hebrews. I happen to agree with Quixie; Paul did not write Hebrews.

Wright recently made it onto Nightline to chat about the resurrection of the dead and heaven. It was interesting though nothing unexpected (from him) was said. Thanks for the heads up, Kris.

So my ex-coworker and friend David is coming over tonight. My son has met him before, and so I was trying to tell him that David was coming over. Here's how that conversation went. I was a little surprised.

This morning I was reading Mark 1 and was staring at verse 4 in a printout I had of the text based on Tauber's MorphGNT (which doesn't have any textual variants or punctuation), thinking "that is an unusual bit of syntax." Before our morning study class at church I was looking at it again, but this time in my NA27. I noticed that the first article in the verse was in brackets, showing that the reading was very debatable. So then I looked through the variants and realized that I wasn't the only one who found the wording to be a little unexpected. I figured this might be an interesting thing to ponder for some, because a) this is a good example of an intentional scribal change to the text, b) is one that affects how you translate this verse and, c) is one that involves both Textual Criticism and Greek syntax. Here are the readings:

Now that I can setup series properly on the blog, it is time to begin this series again in earnest. I have no intention of making this series last all year :)

So I noticed a link by Jim to Antonio's blog, which led me to an essay on Gnosticism by Gerd Lüdemann. I read it. Here are my thoughts, with snippets.

Ever been to ancientfaith.com? It is an interesting site. My friend Edward pointed it out to me a few weeks ago. Thanks Edward! It is Eastern Orthodox in content, so if you are curious about them, it is a good place to visit. I enjoy some of the podcasts, though I haven't read much on the site.

So I just updated the site. This site is run on custom code that I wrote in ASP.NET, C#, and Sql Server 2005. That way, if I want a feature, then I can add it and don't have to wait on someone else. This time comes one major feature.

So I downloaded Michael's free software bundle. I have only tried the Greek package, but here are my thoughts on that one.

I just finished reading this today:

So I was tagged for this meme several days ago. I'm just now getting around to doing it.

I decided a bit ago to go ahead and read Greek texts that people stick into their blog. Gegreptai sometimes does it. Nick posted a really interesting one yesterday. Others do it as well at times. I just wanted you guys to know that someone does actually read what you are posting. And I really appreciate it when you post text from outside the New Testament. That's when it gets much more challenging. So if you have some quoting of an ancient Greek dude to do, don't just post a translation! Be like Jim; post and spend time in the original. In his immortal words, "If you can’t read the originals and you call yourself a scholar you’re a poo head".

Now, this is not a call for you to start posting tons of Greek on your blog just to take up all my time. I have my own reading goals, you know!

For Michael's sake over at Pisteuomen, I am deleting the text of this post. It was fun while it lasted :)

If you are not my brother Kirk (and for most of you I am sure this is true), you may safely skip this post.

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:

In the context of a book review by Phil at Hyperekperissou wrote, he made a few comments on free church protestants that I thought were interesting and mostly right. They are worth a read. As a protestant free church guy, here is my experience.

I found Tauber's presentation on his approach to a graded reader very interesting. You can view a presentation like what he did at Bibletech 2008 here.

I finished listening to a podcast series yesterday on Byzantine history through a look at the lives of 12 of their rulers. You can find out more information on the podcast here, and can subscribe through iTunes.

We continue our discussion of Ignatius' epistle to the Ephesians with our fourth installment today. For a little context, see the last post, part 3 in the series.

I've been hoping to continue my series on Ignatius' epistle to the Ephesians, but a Greek construction has me me tripped up. What do you make of ως + infinitive in IgnEph 2:1? The translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series translates it "as...shall also refresh". More recently Holmes translated it "may the Father...refresh him..." and his last edition had the same. The first step to figuring out what is the best translation here is to figure out what all the options are. Here are the resources I used that I found useful on this:

I was thinking about Greek tense and mood stats yesterday evening. I've actually been thinking for some time that infinitives need to be moved up in the traditional Greek curriculum. Looking at the numbers, along with a few other factors, confirmed this. First, some numbers (based off of MorphGNT...hope I didn't parse your data wrong Tauber...):

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.

So I decided to put the dictionary and parsing software Kalos to the test. I've known about it for a while, but a recent posting by a blogger refreshed my memory. I am very sorry to say that I don't remember who mentioned it recently. If you speak up, I'll link to you :).

Some people see me as a programmer. Some people see me as a student of Scripture and Greek. But you will never really know the real Eric until to watch this video:

Well, I am glad an announcement has finally been made. I've mentioned a few times on this blog and my other blog that I have been spending time in some manuscripts that were discovered that could not net be announced. Well, that is no longer true...

A friend just pointed out an article on an altar that predates Zeus. It is irrelevant for the study of ancient Christianity, but you Greek geeks out there might find it interesting.

I know you have missed it. It has been a while since Greek Handwriting 3, so here is our next exciting installment!

Last Lord's day I filled in for the regular teacher for the adult Sunday school class. We are working our way through Exodus chapter-by-chapter, and this will be our third week on chapter 32. This chapter is on when Moses and Joshua came down from the mountain to see the people of God worshiping a golden calf. It is a very interesting chapter in a general sense, but it is especially important for us as a church right now. We are in the process of possibly ordaining someone to the ministry to serve in our church, so looking at the characteristics of Moses and Joshua as leaders can be very instructive. Since we were having this discussion, I spent some time talking about longevity of leadership at a church and how my denomination, that of the baptists, completely misses this and are the worse for it.

When you are collating (the process of comparing and annotating differences between a manuscript and a base text) handwritten manuscripts, one thing you have to have a plan for is how to deal with ligatures. In the world of Greek manuscripts this is especially true for minuscules, though even uncials like Sinaiticus can have ligatures.

I ran across a post at the Said at Southern Seminary blog today. It was about whether or not all seminary classes are worth someone's best attention. I decided to reproduce my comments here. After all, my comment is still pending moderation and they may erase it because I'm a DTS grad :). If you are in seminary, I encourage you to read this. I could say so much more and may at some point, but for now this is it.

This snippet from Solzhenitsyn's Harvard address strikes me as smart. I have never read any Solzhenitsyn. This is probably because my education was sub-standard. I guess I need to add something by him to my reading list...