ETS Septuagint Studies: Last Call for San Diego Papers

This post is for all those out there writing last minute ETS paper proposals with hopes of submitting them before 5:00pm (Central) tomorrow afternoon.

I want to encourage you to submit a proposal to ETS’s Septuagint Studies section. You can read more about the steering committee here and begin to submit your proposals here.

You can learn much more about the history of the section over at William Ross’ blog here.

Will and I along with rest of the Septuagint Studies committee look forward to reviewing your proposals and hearing about your fascinating research in the grand field of Septuagint.

Example Passages from the NASB Update

Over at the Opened Heart blog, Rob Oberto has helpfully culled a list of verses that the Lockman Foundation has been sharing on their Facebook page of the forthcoming update to the NASB translation (mentioned here). They have been posted as “NASB 2020.” Whether that date will hold as the actual publication date isn’t clear yet. In any case, here are some samples of the work in progress:

1 Thessalonians 5:14:

We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. NASB 1995

We urge you, brothers and sisters, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. NASB 2020

Micah 6.8:

He has told you, O man, what is good… NASB 1995

He has told you, a human, what is good... NASB 2020

Joshua 1.9

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” NASB 1995

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not be terrified nor  dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” NASB 2020

Luke 1.38

And Mary said, “Behold, the Lord’s bondslave; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. NASB 1995

And Mary said, “Behold, the Lord’s slave; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. NASB 2020

John 1.18

No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. NASB 1995

No one has seen God at any time; God the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him. NASB 2020

Some of these are more noteworthy than others, of course. Some are quite odd, like Micah 6.8. 

A Non-Evangelical Reads Misquoting Jesus

Bart Ehrman has from time to time expressed surprise that Christians and particularly Evangelicals reacted so negatively to his book Misquoting Jesus. In his follow-up book Jesus, Interrupted he writes, for example, that

The conservative evangelical response to my book surprised me a bit. Some of these critics criticized Misquoting Jesus for “misleading” people—as if facts such as those I have just cited [about the originals being lost, there being hundreds of thousands of variants, that some of these mistakes matter a lot, etc.] could lead someone down a slippery slope toward perdition. A number of critics indicated that they didn’t much appreciate my tone. And a whole lot of them wanted to insist that the facts I laid out do not require anyone to lose their faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God. (pp. 184–185)

Ehrman then goes on to take issue with this last point since he thinks the facts are incompatible with belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God. Still, he clarifies that he had no intention of making people lose their Christian faith as a whole. From there he goes on to make a summary case for why he’s fine saying that the vast majority of variants don’t matter but that some still matter a lot. I don’t really have any complaint about that way of saying it, although I might demur on some of the particular ways Ehrman thinks they matter.

Be that as it may, the question I think is worth considering is the degree to which Misquoting Jesus does, in fact, mislead people. I have long felt that most of the book is quite good and makes for a nice, eminently readable introduction to textual criticism for those who know next to nothing about it. But I did close the book thinking—and I know others who did as well—that Ehrman had overcooked his goose, especially as regards inspiration. But, then, I’m an Evangelical and so, according to Ehrman, maybe that explains it.

What, then, do non-Evangelicals take away from the book? Asking that question recently reminded me of an early review of the book from an unlikely source: the creator of one of America’s most beloved cartoons and a man who is quite certainly not an Evangelical.

Fantastic Film: “Greek Papyri – The Rediscovery of the Ancient World”

In a comment to the previous post on Oxyrhynchus, an anonymous person drew the attention to a fascinating film that has just been uploaded to YouTube, “Greek Papyri—The Rediscovery of the Ancient World”:

Fascinating footage of work on the Oxyrhynchus papyri, including many names familiar to New Testament papyrologists (E. G. Turner, W. E. H. Cockle, J. D. Thomas) in a film about Greek Papyri from 1972, uploaded to YouTube today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xN-CijuABs .

I am not certain but I think the image I pasted above from the film is of Walter Cockle, who recently passed away.

Brent Nongbri announced the film today (on the Papy-L list):

This 44-minute movie was produced in 1971 by the Greek and Latin Departments and the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London in 1971. It was directed by Mirek Dohnal and features some fantastic archival footage of the British papyrologists of the day. The film is mentioned in an exhibition catalog by T. S. Pattie and E. G. Turner, The Written Word on Papyrus: An Exhibition Held in the British Museum 30 July - 27 October 1974 (British Library Board, 1974).

The quality of the production was said to be excellent. The obituary for Eric Turner in the Proceedings of the British Academy described the film as follows:  “. . . in May [1971] came the première of Mirek Dohnal’s film Greek Papyri (Turner had suggested the subject to the head of the Slade Film Unit; he and his pupils and colleagues starred, with Zauberflöte in the background, and many hours of patient labour; the film won a silver medal at the Venice Festival) . . .”

One notable feature in the film, at about 24.15-25.10, is the dissolvement of a mummy mask to recover papyri, as it was done in the early 70’s – a now very controversial practice since it inevitably involves the destruction of an ancient artifact. In our era there are projects to “make the mummies talk” with non-invasive imaging technology. See here and here.

New Biblical Papyri Coming from Oxyrhynchus

For those who don’t follow the blog on Twitter or Facebook, here’s some very big news coming from the Egypt Exploration Society:

In response to recent queries about results of the review initiated in 2016 to identify unpublished New Testament fragments in its collection of Oxyrhynchus papyri (https://www.ees.ac.uk/news/poxy-lxxxiii-5345), the EES reports as follows:

Some twenty New Testament inedita have been identified, none of them apparently earlier than the late 2nd to early 3rd century AD. They have all been assigned to editors, and will be published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series as the editors complete their work over the next few years. There may be more small fragments still unidentified because, like the Mark fragment recently published (LXXXIII 5345), their identity only emerges from much more detailed study than is feasible when cataloguing. We note that Grenfell and Hunt were particularly keen to find New Testament texts, and so sorted out possible cases as they processed their finds in Egypt and back at Oxford, and published many of them.

Some ten patristic texts have also been identified and assigned to editors, and over eighty Septuagint and related texts are currently known to us and will gradually be assigned and published (some in the forthcoming volume LXXXIV). In the volumes of the Oxyrhynchus series we normally aim to publish a variety of texts, including literary fragments and the far more numerous documentary texts which are the primary interest of many of our readers.

Published: 7th March, 2019

HT: Brent Nongbri 

Another Shorter Reading Preserved in the Byzantine Text

Here’s another interesting shorter reading preserved for us in the Byzantine text, this one from 1 Cor 9.20:

τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον ὡς ὑπὸ νόμον, μὴ ὢν αὐτὸς ὑπὸ νόμον, ἵνα τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον κερδήσω
To those under the law I became as one under the law (not that I was myself under the law) in order that I might gain those under the law.

Byz along with D2 (L) Ψ 1881 and the Peshitta (per NA27) don’t have the phrase μὴ ὢν αὐτὸς ὑπὸ νόμον. It’s a case of parablepsis and so another place where the Byzantine text unexpectedly preserves a shorter, secondary reading.