Review of The Textual History of the Greek New Testament (eds. Wachtel & Holmes)

My review of Wachtel and Holmes’ The Textual History of the Greek New Testament has been published by RBL.

Leonard review of The Textual History of the Greek New Testament

Codex Claromontanus Online Images

In keeping with the current theme, images of Codex Claromontanus (D 06) (Paris, BN, Greek, 107AB) are also online courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library

<http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/about-the-project/the-digital-library>

A Note From the IAA Director

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) is very proud to present the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a free online digitized virtual library of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hundreds of manuscripts made up of thousands of fragments ­ discovered from 1947 and until the early 1960’s in the Judean Desert along the western shore of the Dead Sea ­ are now available to the public online. The high resolution images are extremely detailed and can be accessed through various search options on the site.

With the generous lead support of the Leon Levy Foundation and additional generous support of the Arcadia Fund, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google joined forces to develop the most advanced imaging and web technologies to bring to the web hundreds of Dead Sea Scrolls images as well as specially developed supporting resources in a user-friendly platform intended for the public, students and scholars alike.

The launch of the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library comes some 11 years after the completion of the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, initiated and sponsored by the IAA, and 65 years after the first scrolls were unearthed in the Caves of Qumran. This digital library is another example of the IAA's vision and mission, to make these ancient texts freely available and accessible to people around the world. The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library represents a new milestone in the annals of the story of one of the greatest manuscript finds of all times.

— Shuka Dorfman , IAA General Director

 

[from Jack Sasson]

Daniel Wallace reviews NA28

Daniel Wallace has written a generally positive review of NA28.

[thanks to Andy Naselli and Justin Taylor for the reference]

Ephraimi Rescriptus Online Images

Images of Codex Ephraimi Rescriptus (C 04) are also online courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

BL puts Alexandrinus NT online

[ht David Parker]

Christmas is here (with this and Bezae online it's almost like Christmas 1933)

The British Library announces here that it has put images of the NT of Codex Alexandrinus online here For some time the CSNTM has kindly had images from the facsimile available here, which have the advantage that they can be copied and edited. For most other purposes the BL ones are superior, for obvious reasons.

Elliott reviews Wallace on Ehrman

Keith Elliott has reviewed a collection of essays edited by Daniel Wallace entitled Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence here.

To give you a flavour of the review and of Elliott's tone (behind the American copy-editing), I paste below the beginning and end.

For some years many of those who present themselves as “evangelicals” have felt obliged to tackle several of Bart Ehrman’s publications, notably his The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (now about to reappear in an expanded form) and Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (inexplicably published in England under the bland title Whose Word Is It? The Story behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why). Some of his pronouncements about the reasons why certain changes found in manuscripts of the New Testament were made, and the seeming impossibility to restore the supposed original text, have ruffled fundamentalists’ and evangelicals’ feathers. His are books and conclusions that such apologists cannot neglect or ignore. Ehrman’s wellknown opinions, especially in the United States, have resulted in many attempted counterarguments. We have one such book here that has succumbed to the pervasive Ehrman influence.

[snip]


Ph.D. theses and students’ first publications, especially those by recent graduates in the United States, typically carry in a foreword overblown thanks especially to long-suffering family members and a justification of their own impeccable religious convictions. Such self-publicizing sanctimoniousness is usually cringe-making and toe-curling in its indulgence. Aficionados will find some plum examples of this risible genre here; almost all of the current essays include fulsome acknowledgements, and one (220) is ungrammatical. Perhaps the time is ripe to suggest a moratorium on such publicly paraded private sentiments. Mature scholarship and academic publications (especially those originating in Europe) tend to avoid such trivia and the wearing of a heart on the sleeve. To set an example, this review carries no dedications.
Update: The grammatical error Elliott refers to is on p. 229 ("continues" for "continue")

P46 Coming to the iPad!

I came across this notice from Brice Jones at the Quanternion:

The University of Michigan Papyrology Collection is soon to release an iPad (and presumably iPhone and iPod) app that features images and translations of and translation notes on P.Mich. inv. 6238—also known as P46 in NT text-critical circles. The U of M has put together an excellent two-minute introductory video:

New Image of Manuscript of Paul

Only today I became aware of this article in the Financial Times Magazine on work being done at St Catherine's at Mt Sinai. Not only is it worth the read, but it has a beautifully worked photo of a leaf of a palimpsest of Paul (1 Corinthians, to be exact). I had not seen this one before, and for the moment I assume it is 0289, which is listed as a palimpsest, is supposed to contain 1 Cor 3, and its overwriting agrees (I think) with the image of ΜΓ 99 I have in the New Findings catalogue.

This is the image as it appears on the FT website (© St Catherine's Monastery), rotated 90 degrees:

The date given in the Liste is VII/VIII and this is what made me doubt my identification. Given the closeness in lettering to say Codex Bezae or Alexandrinus, I would be comfortable with a fifth century date. OK, there is an enlarged initial, something (re)appearing in the fifth century, but the upsilon still looks earlier than some later versions of this Biblical Majuscule. The overall lettering is nice and square.
People wiser than me are welcome to correct both my identification of the image with 0289 and/or my feeble attempt at redating.

Codex Bezae Goes Digital

The digital Codex Bezae has been released today in Cambridge Digital Library along with transcriptions of the International Greek New Testament Project (IGNTP). There is also a description of the codex written by David Parker. Here is the first paragraph:

There are half-a-dozen ancient manuscripts which are the foundation of our understanding of the text of the New Testament writings. Among these stands the copy known since the sixteenth century as Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. Any manuscript which has survived from antiquity is a marvel for this reason alone, and as we explore its pages, we have a rare opportunity to explore a little of the written culture of late antique Christianity. Although in the past century some remarkable papyrus manuscripts have been recovered from the sands of Egypt, their discovery has in general served more to highlight the significance of the parchment manuscripts than to diminish it. 

Click this link to access high-resolution images and transcriptions of the IGNTP.