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Zotero 3.0.11 and 3.0.11.1 have just been released with some additional bug fixes. For change logs, see here, and for basic introductory material to the platform, see here.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Giovanni Garbini, Letteratura e politica nell’Israele antico, reviewed by Dempsey Rosales Acosta
• Benno Jacob, The First Book of the Bible: Genesis (augmented edition), edited by Ernest Jacob and Walter Jacob, reviewed by Joel S. Baden
• Dale Launderville, Celibacy in the Ancient World: Its Ideal and Practice in Pre-Hellenistic Israel, Mesopotamia, and Greece, reviewed by Pancratius C. Beentjes
• Erle Leichty, The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 BC), reviewed by Paul Sanders
• Lauren A. S. Monroe, Josiah’s Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement: Israelite Rites of Violence and the Making of a Biblical Text, reviewed by Ovidiu Creanga
• Randall Heskett and Brian P. Irwin, eds., The Bible as a Human Witness to Divine Revelation: Hearing the Word of God through Historically Dissimilar Traditions, reviewed by S. D. Giere

New Testament and Cognate Studies

Zotero 3.0.9 and 3.0.10 have recently been released with a number of bug fixes. For change logs, see here, and for basic introductory material to the platform, see here.

Today, the Pope’s new book on the Gospels’ infancy narratives goes on sale. The volume is the third of a three-part series. The two earlier volumes have respectively discussed the narratives from Jesus’ baptism to his transfiguration (2007) and the final entrance into Jerusalem to the resurrection (2011). The present volume:

focuses exclusively on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life as a child. The root of these stories is the experience of hope found in the birth of Jesus and the affirmations of surrender and service embodied in his parents, Joseph and Mary. This is a story of longing and seeking, as demonstrated by the Magi searching for the redemption offered by the birth of a new king. It is a story of sacrifice and trusting completely in the wisdom of God as seen in the faith of Simeon, the just and devout man of Jerusalem, when he is in the presence of the Christ child. Ultimately, Jesus’ life and message is a story for today, one that speaks to the restlessness of the human heart searching for the sole truth which alone leads to profound joy. ( Amazon)

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The folks at Zondervan sponsored this year’s Institute for Biblical Research meeting reception. In addition to the deserts there, they very kindly provided attending members with a copy of the recent (2012) Counterpoints volume on Paul, edited by Michael Bird. According to the publisher’s description:

The apostle Paul was a vital force in the development of Christianity. Paul’s historical and religious context affects the theological interpretation of Paul’s writings, no small issue in the whole of Christian theology.

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The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Ancient Near East and Second Temple Judaism

• Phillip R. Callaway, The Dead Sea Scrolls for a New Millennium, reviewed by Stephen Reed
• Benedikt Eckhardt, ed., Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba: Groups, Normativity, and Rituals, reviewed by Joshua Schwartz
• Oded Lipschits and David S. Vanderhooft, The Yehud Stamp Impressions: A Corpus of Inscribed Impressions from the Persian and Hellenistic Periods in Judah, reviewed by Aren Maeir
• Annick Payne, Hieroglyphic Luwian: An Introduction with Original Texts, reviewed by Robert Holmstedt

New Testament and Cognate Studies

Ah, so much the better:

Bekker’s Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of the complete works of Aristotle at Archive.org: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, volume 5

Oxford Translation of The Works of Aristotle at Archive.org ( contents by volume): vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6, vol. 7, vol. 8, vol. 9, vol. 10, vol. 11, vol. 12 ( Wikipedia)

Using Owen’s translation, LibriVox recordings have also been made available for Categories, Interpretation, Prior Analytics, and Posterior Analytics.

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary, reviewed by Brian D. Russell
• Matthias Henze, ed., A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, reviewed by Lester Grabbe
• Sara M. Koenig, Isn’t This Bathsheba? A Study in Characterization, reviewed by Rachelle Gilmour
• Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler, The Jewish Annotated New Testament, reviewed by Zev Garber

New Testament and Cognate Studies

It’s still on the pricey side, but CBD currently has the Hendrickson facsimile of Codex Sinaiticus on sale for $499, $300 off the normal retail price. According to CBD’s product page,

Hendrickson Publishers, in conjunction with the British Library, is now releasing a limited number of full color facsimiles of the entire Codex Sinaiticus. This edition includes both the Old and New Testaments, represented by “life size” pages (13.5” x 16.5”).

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In yesterday’s mail arrived Daniel Driver’s Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church’s One Bible (Baker). The volume is a corrected, North American edition of Driver’s previous volume under the same title from Mohr Siebeck (2010; ix), which was itself a “thorough revision and updating” of Driver’s PhD thesis ( Brevard Childs: The Logic of Scripture’s Textual Authority in the Mystery of Christ, St. Andrews, 2008; xi). This North American edition was just released in August, and Baker’s description of it is as follows:

The volume has been available for quite some time, but in yesterday’s mail arrived Jeffrey Tigay’s Deutronomy (The JPS Torah Commentary, 1996). According to the publisher,

The JPS Torah Commentary series guides readers through the words and ideas of the Torah. Each volume is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field.

Every page contains the complete traditional Hebrew text, with cantillation notes, the JPS translation of the Holy Scriptures, aliyot breaks, Masoretic notes, and commentary by a distinguished Hebrew Bible scholar, integrating classical and modern sources.

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Ben Dunson and I were at Westminster together for a bit before his Durham days, and it’s wonderful to see that this volume is now available. For those who want to take a look at the original thesis, Durham has it archived here.

I hadn’t noticed until today, but among the volumes available at Loebolus is Aristotle’s Rhetoric (vol. 193; ed. J. H. Freese, 1926).

Similar to rollApp, which debuted earlier this year, InstallFree is offering a no-cost web-based version of LibreOffice that can be run inside a browser and that integrate with various online storage platforms like Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. For free, users can also use InstallFree’s Microsoft Office application to view Microsoft Office file formats with full fidelity. Native editing privileges for Microsoft Office formats are available in InstallFree, after the initial 60-day trial, starting at $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year for academic users. For more information about InstallFree, please see the videos below or visit the website.

Stanley Porter has the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, “Early Apocryphal Non-Gospel Literature and the New Testament Text.” Porter concludes:

There are several observations to make regarding the text of the Greek New Testament in the apocryphal non-Gospel literature. (1) The evidence for the Greek New Testament in the apocryphal non-Gospel literature is not as great as one might expect, and this includes the apocryphal Acts, Epistles (for which there is no text early enough or in Greek for consideration) and Apocalypses. . . . (2) The Acts and apocalyptic apocryphal literature is relatively sparse in its use of the Greek New Testament, and is virtually nothing compared to that of the apocryphal Gospels. . . . (3) The evidence from the apocryphal non-Gospel literature is the same as that for the apocryphal Gospels—in other words, that the text of the Greek New Testament was relatively well established and fixed by the time of the second and third centuries. (197–98)

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Earlier today, the program director, Robert Woods, announced that the Christian Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts would begin offering a SACS-accredited, fully distance-based PhD program:

This PhD is literally one-of-a-kind in that it is fully accredited (SACS), offered fully distance with the dissertation being defended via conference call with a designated Research Fellow, and the student’s full committee having guided the research. This PhD is uniquely interdisciplinary in structure and practice. A number of the highly qualified faculty are generalists and encourage the kind of readings, research, and writing that reflects an interdisciplinary drive.

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From the latest Zondervan academic update:

If you can’t make it to ETS, however, there is now a next-best option. We are sponsoring live webcasts of all plenary speakers, including E. Calvin Beisner, Russell Moore, Richard Bauckham, and Douglas Moo. Visit www.LiveStream.com/ZondervanAcademic to RSVP and get reminders.

Particulars about the plenary sessions, including scheduling, can be found by searching for “plenary session” in the “session information and indexes” program section PDF available via the ETS website.

Logos Bible Software is now shipping version 5. For an overview of the new version, see the playlist below:

The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

New Testament and Cognate Studies

• Jo-Ann A. Brant, John, reviewed by Matthew Gordley
• Bart B. Bruehler, A Public and Political Christ: The Social-Spatial Characteristics of Luke 18:35–19:43 and the Gospel as a Whole in Its Ancient Context, reviewed by John Cowan
• Jaime Clark-Soles, Engaging the Word: The New Testament and the Christian Believer, reviewed by Ronald Witherup
• Gerald J. Donker, The Text of the Apostolos in Athanasius of Alexandria, reviewed by Justin A. Mihoc
• Craig A. Evans, Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence, reviewed by Panayotis Coutsoumpos
• Charles W. Hedrick, Unlocking the Secrets of the Gospel according to Thomas: A Radical Faith for a New Age, reviewed by William Arnal
• Josep Rius-Camps and Jenny Read-Heimerdinger, The Message of Acts in Codex Bezae: A Comparison with the Alexandrian Tradition, Volume 4: Acts 18.24–28.31: Rome, reviewed by Vaughn CroweTipton
• Christopher D. Stanley, ed., The Colonized Apostle: Paul in Postcolonial Eyes, reviewed by Steed Davidson

Second Temple Judaism

One of our recent MLitt graduates through the Christian Institute for the Study of Liberal Arts, Joe Puckett, completed his thesis earlier this year, and it has now come to press with Wipf and Stock under the title, The Apologetics of Joy: A Case for the Existence of God from C. S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire. The title should soon also be available through other booksellers.

From the publisher:

On the web:

• David Pao’s Colossians and Philemon, latest volume in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, is now available at CBD (HT: Matthew Miller).
• ACU Press works toward releasing all its texts in various ebook formats.
• Lawrence Schiffman reproduces his recent Discovery Times Square interview.

Steven Runge has the latest article in Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics: “Relative Saliency and Information Structure in Mark’s Parable of the Sower.” According to the abstract:

This study applies the cognitive model of Chafe and Givón, and the information-structure model of Lambrecht as applied by Levinsohn and Runge to the Markan explanation of the Parable of the Sower (4:14–20). The primary objective is to identify and analyze other linguistic devices, besides demonstratives, which might clarify the apparent prominence given to the unfruitful scatterings in Mark’s account. This study provides the necessary framework for comparing Mark’s pragmatic weighting of saliency to that found in Matthew and Luke’s accounts in order to determine whether Mark’s version is consistent with or divergent from the other traditions.

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The Chrome Web Store now includes individual Chrome web apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides:

To make it even easier for you to create stuff quickly, Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations–now called Docs, Sheets, and Slides–are available as apps in the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, shortcuts to these apps will appear when you open a new tab in Chrome.

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The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 55, no. 3 includes several articles of interest.

If I had noticed it before, it had since slipped my mind. But, the PDF archive for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society is largely open-access. The open-access portion of the archive contains all the Journal’s volumes except those from the past two full years, which are accessible to subscribers. The archive also contains the first four volumes of the older Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society.

On the web:

• Jim Davila and Hershel Shanks, among others, pay tribute to the fallen titan, Frank Moore Cross.
• Michael Bird joins Joel Watts in reflecting on Justin Martyr, Xenophon, and the Gospels.
• The Cornell University Library has a collection of Eleusinian inscription images available (HT: Charles Jones).

The latest issue of Currents in Biblical Research includes:

• Kristin De Troyer, “The Seventy-two and their Many Grandchildren: A Review of Septuagint Studies from 1997 Onward”
• Nicholas Perrin and Christopher W. Skinner, “Recent Trends in Gospel of Thomas Research (1989–2011): Part II: Genre, Theology and Relationship to the Gospel of John”
• Timo S. Paananen, “From Stalemate to Deadlock: Clement’s Letter to Theodore in Recent Scholarship”
• Jonathan S. Milgram, “Then and Now: A Summary of Developments in the Field of Talmudic Literature through Contributions to the First and Second Editions of the Encyclopaedia Judaica”

On the web:

• Charles Jones notes the open-access availability of some of the Journal of Roman Studies.
• Brian LePort completes a two-part reflective digest of Amy-Jill Levine’s recent San Antonio lectures on Jewish-Christian relations ( part 1, part 2).

For today’s “Pastor Appreciation Month” sale, Logos Bible Software is offering volume 14 of their series of Richard Baxter’s practical works for free. The volume includes Baxter’s classic The Reformed Pastor (1655) and his Confirmation and Restauration (1658).