Foundations for Syriac Lexicography II

I'm pleased to announce that Foundations for Syriac Lexicography II has appeared.

Here's the blurb:

"This volume is the second in a series that addresses issues related to a contemporary approach to Classical Syriac lexicography. The international team of authors invited to participate in this volume represents a wide range of disciplines and opens new horizons in lexical thinking. The essays of Dean Forbes and Janet Dyk break new ground in discussions of taxonomy and are of relevance to lexicographers of any language: Forbes applies computational methods of pattern recognition to word distribution in the Hebrew Bible and discusses its application to grammatical classification, and Dyk examines the form and functions of the Syriac passive participle. Peter Williams examines matters involved in translating Greek words with alpha privatives into Syriac. In a joint article Terry Falla and Wido van Peursen discuss the syntax and translation of two Syriac particles, gyr and dyn. Andreas Juckel provides scholars for the first time with the text of the Harklean margin to the Corpus Paulinum along with a detailed analysis. George Kiraz and Bishop Polycarpus Augin Aydin provide important information on Syriac lexica from the East that deserve to be more widely known in the West: Kiraz examines the lexical and grammatical works of Audo, Manna, and David, and Aydin provides an English translation of the methodology that Manna used in compiling his lexicon."

As far as relevance for textual criticism is concerned, Juckel's article on the Harclean is very important. Falla's and van Peursen's article on the significance of two frequent Syriac particles is also very relevant for text-critical study of γαρ and δε in the NT. My own article documents what might appear to some rather surprising forms of translation caused by difficulty rendering alpha privatives into Syriac. Here is yet another case where failure to understand the target language might lead the unwary to suppose that the version has been produced from a variant Vorlage.

SBL International Meeting in Rome: Preparation

I have arrived in Rome for the SBL International Meeting. I am staying at the very nice Swedish Institute in the vicinity of Villa Borghese – this is a fantastic area. During this conference we will have three sessions in the unit Working with Biblical Manuscripts with 13 papers. I hope to be able to report more on that. However, this time I am presiding the sessions so I probably cannot make as extensive notes as from the SBL in Boston last year.

The SBL Int. Meeting begins tomorrow with an opening session at 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM followed by a reception. In the opening session Maurice Gilbert of the Pontifical Biblical Institute will give a talk on "The Pontifical Biblical Institute: A Century of History." Gilbert, a Belgian Jesuit, has been associated with the Pontifical Biblical Institute since 1967; first as a student, then professor of exegesis of the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Subsequently, he was in charge of both the Institute's Roman centre as well as the one in Jerusalem. Now he is emeritus. He has also published a book with the same title. Kent Richards of the SBL presides the session. Paul Achtemeier, Union Theological Seminary, and Lawrence Boadt, Washington Theological Union, and James Kugel, Harvard University are respondents.

See also the videoclip, "A Century of Studying the Bible" with the Vice Rector of the Pontificial Biblical Institute at Bibbiablog. Now I am off to the town to take something to eat (probably a pizza or spaghetti), and maybe check out the Pontificial Biblical Institute at Piazza della Pillotta.

New Greek New Testament Manuscripts On-line

Daniel Wallace, director of the Centre for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts announces on Wieland Willker's Textual Criticism discussion list that 36 MSS from Athens have recently been uploaded to the CSNTM website including 30 MSS from the Benaki Museum and six from the National Historical Museum.

See also our previous report on the new MSS found in Athens here.

Moreover (also via Willker), three more MSS now have Gregory-Aland numbers. They belong to the Van Kampen collection and are located at the Scriptorium in Orlando, Florida:

Scriptorium, VK 272 is GA 2895
Scriptorium, VK 862 is GA 2896
Scriptorium, VK 906 is GA 2897

See our previous reports on the Van Kampen collection here and here.

The Christianization of Egypt

Roger Bagnall evaluated name occurrences in documentary texts to tentatively estimate the rate of Christianization of Egypt. His results challenged the notion that Egyptian Christianization was a gradual process (per Roger Rémondon, 1952).

Roger S. Bagnall, 'Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change' BASP 19 (1982): 105–124.

274___2.4%
275__13.5%
278__10.5%
310__18.0%
313__18.0%
318__50.0%
353__78.0%

Bagnall's data have come under fire for various reasons, but are still very much defensible. Two matters bear consideration with regard to the low 3rd century numbers. First, Earlier Christianity was probably centered in the metropolitan areas. Second, Christian names may have been avoided during and after the persecutions affecting the data.

Ewa Wipszycka, 'La valeur de l'onomastique pour l'histoire de la christianisation de l'Egypte' ZPE 62 (1986): 173–181.
Roger Bagnall, ‘Conversion and Onomastics: a Reply’ ZPE 69 (1987): 243–250 (reprinted in Later Roman Egypt, 2003).
Ewa Wipszycka, 'La christianisation de l'Egypte aux IVe–VIe siecles: Aspects sociaux et ethniques' Aegyptus 68 (1988): 117–165.

Research Group: Mark Depauw (Coordinator), "Names and Identities in Christian Egypt" (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) funded for 2009–2012.

Eisenbrauns 10-Day Sale (40% Discount)

We are in the middle of a 10-Day Sale at Eisenbrauns, June 18-28, offering 40% off selected volumes in the Coniectanea Biblica Old/New Testament Series (CBOTS/CBNTS).

My monograph, The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission is among the discounted books. You find it here with description and extracts from several reviews.

A mathematical conundrum

According to Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus, p. 84), John Mill (1707) examined readings in 100 Greek mss, and concluded there were 30,000 variants. Ehrman notes that we now have 57 times (his figures) the number of witnesses available to Mill (p. 88) and that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 variants (p. 89), which, incidentally, is more variants than there are words in the NT (p. 90).

Why should there be approximately 57 times more witnesses and only (very) approximately 10 times more variants? Were Mill's figures bloated? Or do subsequently discovered mss reveal ever lower proportions of previously unknown variants? What role do different estimates of the versions play in this?