A New Duke and Duchess in Cambridge

As a testimony to the worldwide reach of the royal wedding, we were able to watch the wedding from Israel on two local channels with live feed and Hebrew commentary.

Everything was stunningly impressive. It appears to be one of those occasions where people will say, 'you had to be there'.

The Bishop of London's sermon was profound and insightful for the coming generation.
The Lord's prayer, textually, preserved English 'trespasses' and kept to the short Matthean form.

One question of protocol as seen from "outside", I noticed that the couple went around to the right of the centerpiece in the aisle while leaving the church, but the carriage properly followed to the left of the traffic circles on the way to the palace.

May the blessings and vows spoken during the ceremonies be fulfilled, for the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and for all the witnesses.

News from Birmingham

Some very nice pictures from The Seventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament held in Birmingham in March 2011 has been placed on-line at the ITSEE website. You can judge from the third picture how much I enjoyed the atmosphere. One of the highlights was the skype session with Amy Donaldson who presented from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean (pictures in rows 13-14). Pictures from the excursion to Lichfield Cathedral and its treasures are found in rows 8-10 (including the Chad Gospels). Special thanks to photographer Edgar Ebojo.

I take the opportunity to mention that Birmingham professor David Parker will hold a lecture series (Lyell Lectures) entitled "Describing the New Testament."

All lectures at 5pm in the University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford:

Tuesday 3 May 2011, The general procedures


Thursday 5 May 2011, What is a New Testament Manuscript?

Tuesday 10 May 2011, Understanding how manuscripts are related

Thursday 12 May 2011, Editing the Greek New Testament

Tuesday 17 May 2011, The New Testament of the future

More information here.

Another Successful PhD Defense in Cambridge

Yesterday, following in the footsteps of co-blogger Christian Askeland, our guestblogger Myrto Theocharous successfully defended her University of Cambridge PhD dissertation entitled "Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion in the Septuagint of the Twelve Prophets: Studies in Hosea, Amos and Micah" (supervisor: Professor Robert Gordon).

CONGRATULATIONS DR. THEOCHAROUS!

During last year Myrto offered summaries and reflections on the eight essays in Internationale Fachtagung veranstaltet von Septuaginta Deutsch (LXX.D), Wuppertal 20.-23. Juli 2006 (WUNT 219; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).

Links:

Introduction to the volume/guest posts (Peter Head)

Karrer-Kraus (LXX 1)

Gruen (LXX 2)

Hauspie (LXX 3)

Kreuzer (LXX 4)

Muraoka (LXX 5)

Rosel (LXX 6)

Wright (LXX 7)

Joosten (LXX 8)

The King's Version: A Contemporary Translation of the New Testament

Apparently, N.T. Wright has prepared a new translation of the NT, "The King’s Version: A Contemporary Translation of the New Testament" to be released in September by HarperCollins (HT: Euagelion).

Clayboy assumes that Wright has simply extracted the working translation of the New Testament he developed in his “for everyone” commentary series. I do not know whether and to what extent Wright's translation work involves any text-critical decisions.

Excerpt from ECM Apparatus of Acts

Klaus Wachtel of the INTF notifies me that an excerpt of the ECM apparatus of Acts has been made available on the INTF website here

This preliminary apparatus is a companion to the recently published Novum Testamentum article by Georg Gäbel, "The Text of P.Oxy. 4968 and Its Relationship with the Text of Codex Bezae" (see further discussion and links here), showing the evidence from full collations of all manuscripts included in the ECM of Acts for the portion of text contained in Papyrus 127, i.e., Acts 10:32–12:9; 15:29–17:10.

There is more explanation to the apparatus here.

Picturing ETC

I came bottom in school in my Art examination. However, I thought a picture might help. I think that ETC is best represented by diagram 3. Thus one should not expect there to be anything unique about ETC. ETC seeks to align itself with what it believes best TC practice to be, thus to be at the centre of the discipline. By following best practice people who are not evangelical may also be at the centre of the discipline (I realise some people really won't like the way I put that, but everyone tends to believe that their ideology is normal/central, so no one should get too upset by my saying so.)