Weblog

I’ve been grateful to be able to materially update two prior posts with additional content: Publication Year Ranges in Zotero: Previously, this post described how to get Zotero to produce the proper output when citing a series or multivolume work as a whole that was published over a range of years. The prior post version, however, was only able to address this for ranges of years that already had an end date. But with thanks to Brenton Wiernik on the Zotero forums, I’ve been able to update the post to describe how to get the output required if the year range doesn’t yet have an end. This is useful when citing series that are still being published (e.g., the Göttingen Septuagint). Get Strack and Billerbeck via Internet Archive: Previously, this post identified how to access on Internet Archive volumes 1–3 of Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck’s Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch. But these volumes represent only half of Strack and Billerbeck’s commentary. Happily, Ronald van der Bergh mentioned that he had found another page on Internet Archive that provides a combined file of volumes 1–4. I’ve now included a link in the post to this additional file. If anyone comes across volume 5 or 6, do please leave a comment with where you found them, and I’ll be happy to update the post further.

After a house style, SBL Press itself provides the next two highest-level authorities for SBL style—namely, the SBLHS blog and the SBLHS itself.

Daily Gleanings from Larry Hurtado about early Christian investment in manuscripts and “extant” evidence.

Daily Gleanings with Craig Keener on Acts and Romans from the 2019 Stone-Campbell Journal conference.

Daily Gleanings from Roger Pearse about the translation of the King James Version and AWOL about Brill’s “Digital Biblical Studies” series.

Daily Gleanings from Freedom about the new Pause extension for Chrome and from Michael Kruger about contemporary cultural influences on the New Perspective.

Daily Gleanings on “Paul, a New Covenant Jew” and from J. T. Ellison on productivity as a writer.

The SBL Handbook of Style doesn’t include everything. There are seven main SBL style authorities, including your school’s house style.

University College London has posted on YouTube their 1971 documentary Greek Papyri: The Rediscovery of the Ancient World. HT: Tommy Wasserman Sean Hadley, one of our current PhD students in Humanities, positively reviews Robbie Castleman, Darian Lockett, and Stephen Presley’s edited volume Explorations in Interdisciplinary Reading: Theological, Exegetical, and Reception Historical Perspectives (Pickwick, 2017). Along the way, Sean provides some kind comments about my contribution in the volume. ...

On theLAB, Dougald Mclaurin discusses how faculty can “work with librarians to help students write better papers.” Similarly, see also these prior discussions about how to use your school’s library or other libraries near you. From Brill: With the publication of Keeping Watch in Babylon, Brill is happy to have published the 100th volume of the series Culture and History of the Ancient Near East. ...

Freedom discusses how to use their “block all except” whitelisting feature to block out distractions and interruptions. For more discussion of Freedom, see these prior posts. John Meade surveys ch. 4 of Ronald Hendel and Jan Joosten’s How Old Is the Hebrew Bible?(YUP, 2018) and promises a follow-up post “attempting to engage the authors on one of their examples from chapter 4 with a view to showing how they think diachony and TC work together.” ...

IBR has a new research group on “Linguistics and the Biblical Text.” HT: William Ross, Mike Aubrey The University of London’s Department of History provides an open list of “justifications. addenda, and corrigenda” for A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (Harrassowitz, 1999). ...

Mike Aubrey points to a full set of video recordings of lectures from the recent SEBTS conference on linguistics and NT Greek. I’ve included this playlist below as well. The “hamburger” button in the upper left-hand corner will expand the playlist contents with a list of speakers and their topics. Larry Hurtado reviews Michael Dormandy’s recent TC essay, “How the Books Became the Bible: The Evidence for Canon Formation From Work-Combination in Manuscripts.” ...

The 𝘚𝘉𝘓 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘦 doesn’t include everything. There are seven main SBL style authorities, starting with a publisher’s house style.

Daily Gleanings about the “Text and Canon Institute” and improving performance by minimizing distractions.

Daily Gleanings about digitizing medieval manuscripts and plans for the NA29 and UBS6.

Daily Gleanings about perfectionism, to-do lists, and the “spirits in prison” in 1 Peter.

Daily Gleanings about Codex Robertsonianus and the application of “YHWH texts” to Jesus.

Daily Gleanings about Hume’s critique of miracles and the downsides of email.

I had two main takeaways from “Free to Focus” that I’ve already started implementing: megabatching and using technology to avoid distracting technology.

Michael Hyatt offers practical advice for staying on top of email. In contrast with the commonly touted practice of “Inbox Zero,” Taylor Lorenz describes “Inbox Infinity” in the Atlantic. HT: Doist Part of what can help prevent the extremely large inboxes that give rise to Lorenz’s counsel of despair is to unsubscribe from messages you shouldn’t get in the first place. If you can’t unsubscribe, email clients and services often have good filtering abilities. A few minutes spent learning and setting up some key filters can drastically reduce the amount of email that appears in your inbox in the first place. ...

Andreas Köstenberger offers reflections and advice on writing ( 1: Why, 2: How). Peter Gurry extracts some preview examples of translation revisions in the NASB 2020 by comparison to the NASB 1995. HT: Fred Sanders on Twitter ...

De Gruyter Open has a number of volumes in classical and Ancient Near Eastern studies via open access. HT: AWOL Freedom continues the dialog over Apple’s added rules that effectively removed much of Freedom’s functionality for new iOS users. ...

Doist provides a “complete guide to deep work.” The essay is mainly geared toward summarizing the advice of Cal Newport’s Deep Work with some additional insertions from Digital Minimalism. Both books are definitely worth reading. But Doist’s essay is a thorough crash course on the basics. ...

Gleanings on perfectionism and recent articles in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism.

Now that we’ve surveyed Michael Hyatt’s “Free to Focus,” we can to offer an assessment of its proposal. In a phrase, it’s “GTD for Essentialists.”

Gleanings about Greek, linguistics, and saint cults in late antiquity and the early middle ages.

Gleanings about expanding your research materials with “Library Extension” and the possibility of 1 Timothy’s quoting Luke.

Gleanings about Logos Bible Software, focus, and distraction.

Gleanings about focus, distraction, social media, and essentialism.