SBL Supersale on Jude

Greetings from the SBL Annual Meeting in Chicago! I just delivered my presentation on the Coherence Based Genealogical Method as a tool for explaining textual changes.

For those of our readers who are present, my monograph, The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission, is available from Eisenbrauns at the SBL booth for $25 (listprice $63). I am not sure whether it is on display, but Jim Spinti has about a dozen available copies (on or under a table).

Extracts from reviews are available on the book homepage here.

Update:The book is on display at the Eisenbrauns booth and there were some copies left this morning

Panel Review of SBLGNT Published

A new article has just been published in the current issue if the TC Journal:

 

Michael Holmes, David Parker, Harold Attridge, and Klaus Wachtel, The SBL Greek New Testament: Papers from the 2011 SBL Panel Review Session with a comparison of SBLGNT vs. NA²⁷/UBSGNT⁴ by Klaus Wachtel.

Abstract: The 2011 SBL meeting in San Francisco included a panel review session on The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (ed. Michael W. Holmes; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010). The reviews are presented here along with Holmes’ introductory comments and response. The papers retain their nature as oral presentations and are as originally delivered apart from minor corrections.

 

There is more to come very soon in this issue of TC . . .

SBL ETC Dinner

I am finalizing plans for a dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Chicago for Monday at 8pm.  I recommend that we congregate at the end of the Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds session (W181a - McCormick Place), and take the elevated train into the city center together at about 7pm.  I should note that this session includes two papers on the 2nd century Green papyri.  Alternatively, you can meet the group at the restaurant at 8pm (map).  In either case, please post in the comments below to indicate your attendance, so we can reserve enough places.  Attendance is open to all who love textual criticism!

Day Conference in Papyrology and Early Christianity/Biblical Studies

Day Conference in Papyrology and Early Christianity/Biblical Studies

Wednesday 7^th November 2012

Tyndale House is pleased to host a day conference featuring research papers on a variety of topics connecting papyrology and Biblical studies and reading seminars for those who want to learn more about reading Greek texts on papyrus. All are welcome (some knowledge of Greek is recommended!), for the whole day or particular sessions.

Programme:

9:00 Arrive and Coffee

9:25 -10:15: Jim Aitken (Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge), ‘Septuagint Vocabulary and the Zenon Papyri’

           

10:20-11:10: Michael Theophilos (Australian Catholic University & St Edmund’s College, Cambridge), ‘The Birth of the Papyrologist and the Editio Princeps: Why Do My Eyes Hurt?’

 Coffee

11:40-12:30: Peter M. Head (Tyndale House & St Edmund’s College, Cambridge), ‘Letter Writing and Letter Delivery in the Archive of Claudius Tiberianus (P. Mich. 467-480) and the New Testament’

LUNCH (provided – free if RSVP)

2:00-3:20: Reading seminar in documentary texts (Michael Theophilos and others)

Coffee

3:40 – 5:00: Reading seminar in literary texts (Michael Theophilos and others)

If you want lunch please RSVP to pmh15@cam.ac.uk

Location link here: http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/index.php?page=travel

Tyndale House, 36 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge, CB3 9BA

NA28 teacher outsmarted by NA27 student

This morning I was teaching through the Greek text of James 1 and thinking about the relation of 1:8 to 1:7.

μὴ γὰρ οἰέσθω ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖνος ὅτι λήμψεταί τι παρὰ τοῦ κυρίου,
ἀνὴρ δίψυχος, ἀκατάστατος ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ὁδοῖς αὐτοῦ. (Jam 1:7-8, punctuation as in NA27/28)

Working from NA28, I commented that one almost would expect γάρ in the second line, ἀνὴρ γὰρ δίψυχος ... or at least, the second line expects to be read as such. My student told me immediately that this is what some manuscripts actually had done, only to confirm my impression that I had a smart student in front of me. In my NA28 the variant is not noted, but it turned out to be in her edition, which is NA27. Still, impressive reading of the apparatus.

Lessons:
1) I could have prepared for this eventuality by working from the ECM.

2) When teaching grammar and syntax I would like a selection of textual variants based on different criteria than when teaching textual criticism or when studying the history of the text.

3) I can see a whole new cottage industry for specialized Greek New Testaments, a little bit along lines of the targeted versions of any English translation ('The Devotional Bible', 'The Bible for Couples', 'The Bikers' Bible', 'The Teenage Bible', etc.). What about 'The GNT for Teachers', 'The GNT for Exegetes', 'The GNT for Students of the Old Testament', 'The GNT for Syriac Scholars', 'The GNT for those with Byzantine Leanings', 'The GNT for Discourse Grammarians'. The possibilities are endless: each group is served with a different selection of variants, a different introduction, different pictures in the text. We get targeted marketing, different study groups at SBL, boring text-critics bending over backwards to find new audiences to be served with the labour of their hands, increased profit, economic recovery, financial wealth. What are we waiting for?

4) I'll have to keep NA27 on my desk.

4QSama on David and Goliath

Benjamin J.M. Johnson has an article entitled 'Reconsidering 4QSam^a and the Textual Support for the Long and Short Versions of the David and Goliath Story' in Vetus Testamentum 62 (2012) 534-549.

Abstract:
The story of David and Goliath contains one of the classical textual problems. It exists in two versions: a short version in LXX^B and a longer version in the MT. The question of priority has divided scholars and much scholarly ink has been spilt attempting to resolve the issue. In the discussion about the short and long versions of the David and Goliath story the witness of 4QSam^a has largely been ignored. The present study surveys all of the extant portions of 1 Samuel 17-18 in 4QSam^a where there is a variant between LXX^B and MT. This survey shows that 4QSam^a most likely contained the long version of the story.

He cannot bring conclusive evidence as to whether 4QSam^a, the most significant Samuel scroll from Qumran, had the longer or shorter version of the David and Goliath story, but does show that at this point there are more agreements with MT, and that one cannot use the existence of 4QSam^a to insist that there's always a Hebrew text underlying variant Greek.