The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts has digitized 10 new gospel manuscripts, with dates ranging from the 10th to the 14th centuries. For additional details, see CSNTM’s announcement or view the manuscripts in their online library.
In his 1963 essay on the “Phenomenological Movement.” H.-G. Gadamer discusses at length Edmund Husserl’s influence in founding the school. In so doing, he recounts an interesting habit of Husserl’s that
In his teaching, whenever he encountered the grand assertions and arguments typical of beginning philosophers, he used to say, “Not always the big bills, gentlemen; small change, small change!” (133)
Gadamer does not wholly underwrite Husserl’s program, but he does helpfully observe that—perhaps as much for theology as for philosophy:
...Last month, Faithlife released a substantial web app for free to all Logos 7 users at https://app.logos.com/. But, users are advised that
at this point notes and highlights from the web app will not show up in the desktop app and vice versa. We’re working on creating this cross-platform syncing, but meanwhile you’re data, notes, and highlights are completely safe. Just keep in mind that as we make the transition to a new note system, you won’t be able to access your notes across all platforms.
...
It takes some digging, but Internet Archive appears to have the entire edition of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns, Oats, and Washbourne, 1913–1929). Links to the individual volumes are below. Comments are certainly welcome if anyone notices a volume(s) that I’ve missed out.
The post has been up for some time, but Charles Sullivan’s site has a list of links to where full texts of several several older Greek lexica can be found online.
HT: Rick Brannan, SCS.
The latest issue of the Tyndale Bulletin carries Kim Phillips’s essay, “A New Codex from the Scribe behind the Leningrad Codex: L17.” According to the abstract,
Samuel b. Jacob was the scribe responsible for the production of the so-called Leningrad Codex (Firkowich B19a), currently our earliest complete Masoretic Bible codex. This article demonstrates that another codex from the Firkowich Collection, containing the Former Prophets only, is also the work of Samuel b. Jacob, despite the lack of a colophon to this effect. The argument is based on a combination of eleven textual and para-textual features shared between these two manuscripts, and other manuscripts known to have been produced by the same scribe.
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John Calvin’s commentaries have been brought into varying English versions. The version published in Edinburgh by Calvin Translation Society, 1844–1856, is the version that has been reprinted by Baker Academic and Logos Bible Software ( affiliate disclosure).
Many of these volumes are openly available online. Below is a list with links to those that I’ve located thus far. Volumes not yet found are:
Interested readers who may find these volumes are specially welcome to post links below to help complete the list.
...Forthcoming this fall in P&R’s “Great Thinkers” series is Christopher Watkin’s volume on Jacques Derrida. According to the book’s blurb,
Christian thinkers and writers who address Jacques Derrida’s philosophy face two potential pitfalls. One is to recast Christianity in an ill-fitting Derridean mold; the other is to ascribe to Derrida objectionable positions that bear little relation to his writing.
To avoid these hazards, Christopher Watkin, a scholar of French literature and philosophy, walks in Derrida’s shoes through the landscape of recent thought and culture, seeking to understand the rationale for Derrida’s philosophical moves in light of his assumptions and commitments in philosophy, literature, ethics, and politics. He then sets these assumptions in the wider context of God’s nature and purposes in history, providing biblical critique.
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In Dan Gookin’s Word 2016 for Dummies ( affiliate disclosure; Wiley, 2016), he provides a good deal of helpful guidance for beginning Word users. One particularly helpful resource that may be of interest more broadly is his nicely condensed presentation of prefix keys for producing diacritical marks (pg. 256, reproduced below).
Table of prefix keys for Word 2016
As the name suggests, the prefix key combination gets typed first, then the letter to which the diacritic should attach, and voila—the appropriate combined character is produced.
...At the Logos Academic Blog, Charles Helmer offers five areas of suggestions to help ease readers’ paths into Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. As an overarching suggestion, Helmer recommends,
Armed with the following tips and a healthy dose of Spirit-inspired courage, the theologian can do no better than to sit down with one of Barth’s volumes, crack it open, and get to the hard yet rewarding work of reading.
For Helmer’s full discussion, see his original post at theLAB.
...On Academia.edu, Dan Batovici has posted an uncorrected proof of his essay “Two B Scribes in Codex Sinaiticus?” BASP 54 (2017). According to the abstract,
The history of scribal hand identification in Codex Sinaiticus is a fairly complicated one. The most recent identification, splitting the work of Tischendorf’s scribe B in B1 and B2, was attempted by Amy Myshrall in a 2015 contribution, as a result of the work on the Codex Sinaiticus digitizing project completed in 2009. This article will assess the argument proposed by Amy Myshrall for distinguishing the two new scribes, and it argues that there is not enough reason to adopt the newly proposed distinction.
...
The next major release of the Zotero bibliographic management system is now available. Zotero should update automatically for most users, but anyone wanting to go ahead and get the latest version can download it from Zotero’s site to install over a prior version. For discussion of what’s new in this version, see:
For other discussion of Zotero, see these posts.
...One of our current PhD students in Humanities, Rob Sorensen, has been featured on Baylor’s “Research on Religion” podcast. The discussion mostly revolves around Rob’s reflections on and in his Martin Luther and the German Reformation (Anthem Perspectives in History, Anthem Press, 2016).
For more about Rob, see his faculty page at the Bear Creek School. For more about Faulkner University’s PhD in Humanities, see the university website.
The “for dummies” series has a couple good introductions to Microsoft Word ( for all and specifically “for professionals”). But, these texts seem to concentrate on Word as it appears in Windows, which is sometimes surprisingly inconsistent with how ostensibly the same version of Word appears in Mac OS.
The similarly themed “idiot’s guides” series also doesn’t appear to have a text that addresses the current version for Mac users. The Shelly Cashman series text also seems to leave Mac users with less helpful guidance than those running Windows.
...As I mentioned earlier, the current issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (60.2) contains Henry Kelly’s essay on “Love of Neighbor as Great Commandment in the Time of Jesus: Grasping at Straws in the Hebrew Scriptures” (265–81). According to the abstract,
One’s “neighbor,” generously interpreted to include everyone else in the world, even personal and impersonal enemies, looms large in the NT, especially in the form of the second great commandment, and in various expressions of the Golden Rule. The NT also contains expansive claims that neighbors have a similar importance in the OT. The main basis that commentators cite for these claims is a half-verse in the middle of Leviticus (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” 19:18b), as fully justifying these claims, supported by other isolated verses, notably, Exod 23:45, on rescuing the ass of one’s enemy. Relying on these verses has the appearance of grasping at straws in order to justify the words of Jesus, but it seems clear that in the time of Jesus they had indeed been searched out and elevated to new significance. John Meier has recently argued that it was Jesus himself who gave the Levitical neighbor his high standing, but because the Gospels present the notion as already known, this article suggests that it had achieved a consensus status by this time.
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The most recent issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature carries Matthew Goldstone’s essay “Rebuke, Lending, and Love: An Early Exegetical Tradition on Leviticus 19:17–18” (307–21). According to the abstract,
In this article I posit the presence of an early Jewish exegesis of Lev 19:17–18 preserved in the Tannaitic midrash known as Sifra, which is inverted and amplified in Did. 1:3–5, Q 6:27–35, Luke 6:27–35, and Matt 5:38–44. Identifying shared terminology and a sequence of themes in these passages, I argue that these commonalities testify to the existence of a shared exegetical tradition. By analyzing the later rabbinic material I delineate the contours of this Second Temple period interpretation and augment our understanding of the construction of these early Christian pericopae. In commenting on Lev 19:17, Sifra articulates three permissible modes of rebuke: cursing, hitting, and slapping. In its gloss on the subsequent verse, Sifra exemplifies the biblical injunction against vengeance and bearing a grudge through the case of lending and borrowing from one’s neighbor. The Didache, Matthew, and Luke invert the first interpretation by presenting Jesus as recommending a passive response to being cursed or slapped, and they amplify the second interpretation by commanding one to give and lend freely to all who ask. The similar juxtaposition of these two ideas and the shared terminology between Sifra and these New Testament period texts suggest a common source. By reading these early Christian sources in light of this later rabbinic work I advance our understanding of the formation of these well-known passages and illustrate the advantages of cautiously employing rabbinic material for reading earlier Christian works.
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This month, the Logos Bible Software site is highlighting Mark Noll’s The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity (Eerdmans, 2002), which is on sale for free. Similarly, the Verbum site is highlighting John Donahue and Daniel Harrington’s Mark volume in the Sacra Pagina series (Liturgical, 2002), which is available for free.
Shawn Wilhite discusses the primary literature reading schedule he’s been maintaining.
One of the less-than-ideal features of using an iOS device for editing or producing documents in Biblical Studies has been the difficulty of getting standard biblical language fonts (e.g., SBL BibLit) to work on the device. There are now, however, at least a couple solutions:
Example of Fonteer working with SBL BibLit
...At the Logos Academic Blog, Tavis Bohlinger has part 4 in his interview series with Matthew Bates about Bates’s recently released Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Baker, 2017). Bates comments, in part,
My preference for “allegiance” springs from the conviction that the proclaimed gospel centered on Jesus the royal messiah, and this suggests that the “allegiance” portion of the range of meaning of pistis is in play in some crucial New Testament texts pertaining to salvation…. It is extremely unlikely that Paul felt that pistis was something that was ultimately in tension with or contradictory to embodied activity (i.e., good works as a general category). Paul’s complaint with works (of Law) lies elsewhere, as I explain in Ch. 5.
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William Ross has an interesting interview with Robert Kraft that focuses on Kraft’s path toward and work in the field of Septuagint Studies, in addition to his hopes for its future.
Earlier this month, Rick Brannan posted an analysis of the most frequently cited in a selection of systematic theologies. Rick has since made available on his blog the bibliography of systematic theologies that fed this analysis.
Meanwhile, Christianity Today picked up the post for further discussion. According to CT,
Perhaps most interesting—and potentially disturbing—is the dearth of Old Testament references among the 100 most-cited verses. This raises the question of whether the Old Testament is necessary for Christian theology, and whether it should be included in systematic theology more often.
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Since the last time I mentioned the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, several new articles have been posted to the 2016 volume. These are:
For context, the latter three essays are introduced by the additional entry “The Languages Of First-Century Palestine: An Introduction To Three Papers.”
...Choosing a platform for Biblical Studies software can be tricky, inasmuch as trying things out for yourself is probably the best mechanism for finding what will work for you. But, obviously, you want to do that trying out before you commit to one of the options. This process is now a bit simpler with Logos 7 Basic, which is available for free.
HT: Tyler Smith. For available trial versions of other Biblical Studies software, including Logos, see Trial versions of Biblical Studies software.
...Peter Head has helpfully spotted what seems to be an erratum in NA28’s text of Phil 1:23. There is perhaps some room for debate on the matter (e.g., Maurice Robinson’s initial reply). But, Klaus Wachtel has taken “a note for a correction in the next printing of NA28” in the direction of Head’s observation.
In addition to special offers around John Frame’s Salvation belongs to the Lord, Faithlife has some other noteworthy deals this month:
New this year from Baker is Hans Boersma’s Scripture as Real Presence:
Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church. According to the
book’s blurb,
This work argues that the heart of patristic exegesis is the attempt to find the sacramental reality (real presence) of Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures. Leading theologian Hans Boersma discusses numerous sermons and commentaries of the church fathers to show how they regarded Christ as the treasure hidden in the field of the Old Testament and explains that the church today can and should retrieve the sacramental reading of the early church. Combining detailed scholarly insight with clear, compelling prose, this book makes a unique contribution to contemporary interest in theological interpretation.
...
For the moment, visitors
to the Logos Academic Blog
site are being invited to subscribe via email. Email subscription
unlocks a coupon code for a free copy of Mark Bowald’s Rendering
the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human
Agency (Lexham, 2015). According to the book’s blurb,
What is the relationship between divine and human agency in the interpretation of Scripture? Differing schools of thought often fail to address this key question, overemphasizing or ignoring one or the other. When the divine inspiration of Scripture is overemphasized, the varied roles of human authors tend to become muted in our approach the text. Conversely, when we think of the Bible almost entirely in terms of its human authorship, Scripture’s character as the word of God tends to play little role in our theological reasoning. The tendency is to choose either an academic or a spiritual approach to interpretation.
...
I recently mentioned the first part of David Allen’s “getting things done” keynote in Milan. The second part of the lecture is now available as well.’
See also the prior posts on GTD matters.