More on the Vaticanus Bar-Umlaut
Phil Payne wrote me to clarify his position on the annotations in the famous Codex Vaticanus that I discussed in my recent review of Miller, "Some Observations," JSNT 26 (2003): 217-236. Specifically, Payne writes:
The summary below gives the false impression that I was unaware of the function of bars to indicate section divisions. E.g. "Payne ... originally attributed a text-critical function to the bar-umlaut combination. ... What Miller does in the article, however, is to argue that the bar performs a function independent of the umlaut". Paragraph 2 page 255 of my article discusses the function of bars and states, "These small lines when they occur without an umlaut in general do reflect paragraph divisions. Only ten of these 27 bar-umlaut lines, however, overlap the beginning of paragraphs in the NA26 and only eight of them with the UBS 3corr paragraphs.... [the paragraph interpretation of all bars in bar umlauts] would require, for instance, in Jas 4.4 that 'Adulterous people' would have to be in a prior paragraph from the rest of the line, 'Adulterous people, don't you know that...'"Thanks Phil for your comments. To simply a rather involved discussion, I was only talking about the argument over the bar in the bar-umlaut combination. As one can check in the link I had provided to a reprint of Payne's article, Payne did recognize, as did many other critics before him, that the lone bar (or paragraphus) is a symbol used to indicate a textual division, often a paragraph, but felt that the bar has a different function when used in conjunction with the umlaut because some places where the bar-umlaut is used do not seem to correspond to paragraph breaks.
Where Payne and Miller differ, however, is that Miller thinks that the bar can be used for a wider range of textual divisions than strict paragraphing (he places the Jas 4:4 bar in the category of "division for announcement"). As for Payne's idea that a separated bar-umlaut can indicate an interpolation of a texual block, Miller responded that, the umlauts at 1 Cor. 14:33 and John 7:52 indicate on the other hand two variants listed in Tischendorf but not in Nestle-Aland.
In my view, the so-called umlauts in Vaticanus are fascinating as text-critical symbols with their implications for early Christian textual criticism (of which we know almost nothing) but of limited utility because the symbols only indicate the presence of a variant, not what the variant actually is.
In-line Glossary Techinque
One of my interests for Hypotyposeis is the use of web technology to promote scholarship for Biblical Studies. This involves the development of resources that allows people more ably to interact with the primary source materials, especially Greek texts. Sometimes, it's good to annotate primary texts, and one form of annotation is a "gloss" or short definition of a word. Here's an HTML/CSS technique I develped from Eric Meyer's Pure CSS Popups that one could use to present in-line glosses for Greek text. No javascript is necessary. To see how it works in the following example from Mark 1:1, place your cursor over a Greek word and see an English-language gloss of the word:
Mark 1:1 Ἀρχὴ "beginning" τοῦ "the" εὐαγγελίου "gospel" Ἰησοῦ "Jesus" Χριστοῦ "Christ" [υἱοῦ "son" θεοῦ "God"].
This technique relies on the fact that stylesheets (CSS) provide dynamic styling behavior for links, particularly when the cursor is hovering over a link anchor, and the dynamic styling behavior can include displaying or hiding text. Therefore, the way to mark up Greek words for glossing is to wrap each word in a link and, within the anchor for the link, insert some markup to designate its definition or gloss. For this example, the HTML <dfn> tag is used. Here's an example:
<a href=#>Ἀρχὴ<dfn> "beginning"</dfn></a>
The link destination could be anything: I have it pointing to the current page for this demo, but conceivably it could point to the lexicon entry at Perseus or to a page or place of one's one notes on the term. Now that the text has been marked up, it is necessary to set up the appropriate styles:
.gloss a {text-decoration: none; color:#000040 }
.gloss dfn { font-style: normal; color:#404040 }
.gloss a dfn {display: none}
.gloss a:hover dfn { display: inline; }
.gloss a:hover { text-decoration: none; border: 0 }
In this example, the styling to implement this feature are put into a "gloss" class so they only affect specific links instead of every link in the page (you have to add a class="gloss" either to the link tag or to an enclosing element). Some of the styling infrmation is to turn off the default styling of definitions, but the key are in the two lines with the display: attribute. This example puts the gloss inline, but it can be placed somewhere else less intrusive by doing a display: block instead of display: inline. Also, to avoid a bug in IE 6.0, a border: 0 has to be added to the a:hover selector.
On-line Modern Greek-English Dictionary
There are several on-line Modern Greek-English dictionaries out there, but I've found this one at http://www.in.gr/dictionary/lookup.asp to be the most useful.
Three More Articles on Forgery and the James Ossuary
I'd like to point out three more articles on the issue of the James Ossuary and forgery. Two of them are new, and one is older but still informative.
The older one is Joe Nickell, Special Report, "Bone (box) of contention: the James Ossuary," Skeptical Inquirer (March-April 2003). Nickell, an expert on detecting forgers, especially in autographs, has this to say about the importance of provenance:
Provenance matters more with a sensational artifact, and the refusal or inability of an owner to explain how he or she acquired an item is, prima facie, suspicious--a possible indicator of forgery or theft. One of my cases, for instance, concerned a purported manuscript of Lincoln's celebrated Gettysburg Address (actually the second sheet of what was ostensibly a two-page draft, signed by Lincoln). Suspicions were raised when it was reported that the dealer who sold the item wanted to remain anonymous, and my subsequent ultraviolet and stereomicroscopic examination revealed it was a forgery (Nickell 1996).Why should provenance matter more for a sensational artifact? The answer lies in the relative probabilities: sensational artifacts are rare and people are more likely to forge sensational artifacts that can attract attention and/or money than boring, low-value objects. Given the hype generated by the James Ossuary, the lack of provenance is a first cause for suspicion.
The Bible and Interpretation portal has an article by Paul V. Flesher, of the University of Wyoming, entitled "The Story Thus Far." (There's also a link to a local newspaper article on Flesher's story.) Flesher's wide-ranging review discusses many different aspects of the James Ossuary affair. I was intrigued by a brief comment in one of his footnotes:
[26] Interestingly, in her report to the IAA, Orna Cohen admits that, as a professional courtesy, she gave Oded Golan articles about faking patina. At the time, he claimed he was interested in the process for an architectural project he was working on.Specifically, this is what Cohen said in the IAA report:
Not only is it suspicious when a sensational find lacks a solid provenance, it is doubly suspicious when the earliest provenance that can be established for it places the artifact in the possession of someone who has the know-how to forge it. But there's more.Oded Golan contacted me over ten years ago, introduced himself as an engineer representing a group of investors who renovate historic buildings. He spoke of the Khan at Sha`ar Hagai as a one of the sites they are preparing to renovate. He said he had studied the subject of creating old patina on new stone to set into the building. I showed him a number of related articles and we discussed the subject.
Patina is composed mainly of oxylates formed as a result of organic activity on the stone surface. The production of this material can be accelerated in a laboratory by creating suitable conditions. In view of the doubts that have arisen regarding the authenticity of the antiquities in his possession, I think it important to know that Oded Golan possesses such information.
Another article at Bible and Interpretation, Yuval Goren, "The Jerusalem Syndrome in Archaeology: Jehoash to James" observed that the James Ossuary came to light with the same modus operandi as a series of recent fakes: the Moussaieff Ostraca, a Jerusalem lamp, and the Jehoash Inscription. In all of these cases, these artifacts all came through the same dealer, Oded Golan, they all are tied to important Biblical events for which archeological evidence has been sparse, they all were initially authenticated on the basis of patina (the last three by the same agency, the Israeli Geological Survey), and submitted to Biblical Archaeological Review for publication. For some reason, Golan or his source has been at the center of a suite of forgeries.
Goren also responds with Ayalon, both of the IAA commission that pronounced the James Ossuary a forgery, to the comments of Harrell published in BAR. Even if you were to accept Harrell's argument that there could be an innocent explanation for the modern grey patina-like coating on the ossuary, you have to balance the relative probabilities. Given the rarity of a sensational find (the only hard, archeological evidence of a relative of Jesus), it is much more likely that forgery is the reason for the ossuary's lack of provenance earlier than a dealer who: (a) admitted that the ossuary was cleaned in his possession (he blames his mother), (b) was in possession of the know-how and implements to fake artifacts, and (c) was already associated with a series of forgeries that came to light in similar circumstances.
For some useful background reading on the issues of authenticity and forgery, see, e.g.: Denis Dutton, "Forgery and Plagiarism" in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (ed. Ruth Chadwick; 4 vols.; San Diego: Academic Press, 1988); David Lowenthal, "Authenticity: Rock of Faith or Quicksand Quagmire?", The Getty Conservation Institute Newsletter 14, no. 3 (Fall 1999); and Kenneth Polk, "Unveiling Secrets and Lies: Examining Threats to Collections of Art" (Keynote Address presented at the Australian Registrars Committee Conference, 9 October 2001).
Blogging Etiquette: Should you cite where you found the link?
There's a discussion going on about the propriety of citing your link sources (saying where you found a link) in addition to the link itself. See, e.g., Many-to-Many: Link propagation and "discovery credit":
A few questions spring out from this. It is generally accepted that giving credit for creation is important; is it the same for "link discovery credit?" Will (should) the practice of linking to sources of links come to be taken very seriously by bloggers, out of a shared concern to keep things fair and transparent, in a similar manner to standards of citation in academia? Should one link to the immediate source or make an effort to trace links back to the original source? (Is it always clear which is "the" original source?)This page also has a lot of good comments and track backs. (I think I found the link from Seb.)
Perhaps the right answer is: it depends. Certainly, content creators (and this includes people who comment on links) should get cited. In addition, there is value in blogger's ability to spot and select good links, and I think it is appropriate to credit a site or person that has lead me to a particularly interesting link, especially to places I don't normally visit. However, that does not always happen:
- For example, if I find something through a search engine, there's no point in citing Google.
- Sometimes the issue is technological: I collect lots of bookmarks for possible later blogging and my browser does not easily enable preservation of the referral link. In that case, those blogs that I have found particularly helpful generally for pointing out good links are credited by being on my blogroll in the menu panel. They include the NT Gateway Weblog, PaleoJudaica, etc.
- Also, I tend not cite people who point to sources I already regularly visit, such as the Bible and Interpretation portal, unless they make a comment about an article worth citing on its own.
Catching up on Various Announcements
- I have added an Atom site feed that is available from Blogger (untested, let me know if it works for you).
-
Roger Pearse has announced another text added to his already good supplement to the Early Christian Fathers:
I have placed online the John Parker (1897) English translation of all the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite:
Thanks, Roger. Pseudo-Dionysius was very influential in the Middle Ages until it was realized that it was not actually written by the first century Dionysius mentioned in Acts 17:34, but by someone in the 5th or 6th centuries.
<http://www.tertullian.org/fathers#Dionysius_the_Areopagite>
Various of these have appeared online in various places, but as far as I know not all, or in one place.
The translation is out of copyright, and all the files (including any by me) are placed in the public domain. I would be honoured if people can take copies, circulate them, place them online, etc.
-
Rod Decker has updated his quick-reference chart for textual criticism:
1/30/04: NT Textual Criticism Reference Chart, 3d ed. (Note: this is a revised, 3d ed. which includes a half dozen corrections [thanks to Wieland Willker for catching these] and expands the listings. If you downloaded an earlier edition, please replace it with this update.) (194K .pdf file; Acrobat v. 5 required) This is a 4-page reference chart designed to insert inside the cover of an NA27 Greek NT. It includes a variety of info, including MS groupings by both the more traditional text types and Aland's alternate categorization. The print is small, but that's necessary to squeeze in all the information. With some "tweaks" it will also fit a UBS Greek testament (easiest: photocopy or print at 93% and trim margins close).
In fact, if you haven't done so already, please check out his site, Resources for New Testament Studies. It's very good with lots to explore, including fresh content written by Rod himself, who currently is Assoc. Professor of New Testament at Baptist Bible Seminary.
Willker's Clarification of Miller
Wieland Willker wrote me to clarify his own position quoted in my review of Miller's text-critical article in the recent JSNT:
Thanks for your note on the article in Hypotyposeis. Miller writes: "This demonstrates the likelihood that the umlaut was employed by the original hand, and not by a later reinforcer."Thanks for the clarification, Wieland. I have made a brief, visible edit to my review to indicate the change.
No. It only shows what I write on my webpage: "The umlauts are older than the reinforcement (10th or 11th CE acc. to Tischendorf). And, as a known skeptic, I think even this is not completely certain. It is possible that the small Sigma is small because the scribe did not want to disturb the shape of the column.
I think I have shown in my description that it is extremely improbable that the umlauts are by the original hand. Have a look at:
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Vaticanus/umlauts.html#chr
I am still undecided as to the date of the umlauts. Note also the umlauts and other symbols in the OT part:
http://www.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Vaticanus/observations-OT.html#uml
It's a real mystery.
