The Ending of Acts
The ending of Acts may seem fairly abrupt to a lot readers. Daniel Marguerat, "The Enigma of the Silent Closing of Acts (28.16-31)" [pdf] in D. P. Moessner, ed., Jesus and the Heritage of Israel (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press, 1999): 284-304, has a decent treatment that cleared up many of the enigmas for me. Here's the introductory paragraph:
The way the Book of Acts ends is surprising, its enigmatic conclusion having resisted centuries of interrogation. At the end of his monumental work (Luke-Acts), the evangelist Luke presents the activity of Paul, a prisoner, in the capital of the empire. After the troubled voyage from Caesarea, Paul settles into the company of a guard (28.16), and debates the Jewish delegation from Rome (28.17-28); the book closes with the apostle evangelizing in the imperial city (28.30-31). Considering the importance of the end of a literary work – the force the last image may have on the reader or listener – Luke's choice is perplexing.
Hanukkah in the Bible
Tonight begins Hanukkah. Jim Davila's PaleoJudaica quotes portions of the Deuterocanon relating to Hanukkah (1 Macc 4:52-59, 2 Macc 10:1-8). The New Testament also refers to Hanukkah under the name the "Feast of the Dedication" at John 10:22-23. Here it is:
| 22 ἐγένετο τότε τὰ ἐγκαίνια ἐν τοῖς ἱεροσολύμοις: χειμὼν ἦν, 23 καὶ περιεπάτει ὁ ἰησοῦς ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ ἐν τῇ στοᾷ τοῦ σολομῶνος. (NA26) |
22 Then came the Feast of Dedicationa at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. (NIV) a That is, Hanukkah |
An English Reader's Synopsis
Zeba Crook, who studied under Q-meister John S. Kloppenborg and is now teaching at Carleton University, has uploaded some of his thoughts and samples for An English Reader's Synopsis (pdf). Here's how he introduces his project:
For several years now I have been developing a new Synopsis. Synopses were originally designed (mid-19th century) to allow one to "see" the gospels "together," thus making it easier to see where and how the gospels agree, and, unlike older gospel harmonies, also to see where they disagree. Synopses are used mostly for studying the synoptic problem (which of Matthew, Mark, and Luke came first, and who used whom in the composition of their own gospel), though they are helpful for redaction criticism (analysing and understanding the changes that each author has made to his source).
Crook rightly criticizes the popular and serviceable Throckmorton's Gospel Parallels (one of my favorite English-language synopses) for using the NRSV as the textual base, which is not sufficiently literal to do what a synopsis is supposed to: eludicate the literary interrelations of the gospels. Therefore, Crook proposes ideas for rendering the Greek text into English to preserve this important information and they seem to be good ones (e.g. hyphens to link English phrases corresponding to a single Greek word). Other useful innovations include the surprising clear convention of marking an "out of sequence" parallel with a broken line on the left.
Obviously, a synopsis for serious research into the synoptic source relations must be in Greek, raising the question of who is the appropriate audience for an English-language synopsis. Perhaps it is for students to give them enough of a taste of the synoptic problem without turning them off while they are still gaining proficiency in Greek, or it can a useful subsidiary tool for a researcher to determine quickly whether to break out the Aland or the Huck-Greeven Greek synopsis for the real work. Nevertheless, if Crook can bring his ideas for An English Reader's Synopsis to fruition, I think it could well replace my use of Throckmorton's, provided that Crook's coverage of the non-canonical parallels is as extensive as Throckmorton's.
My own attempt to work through some ideas on synopsis construction is found in my Four-Color Synopsis. I designed my coloring scheme as a compact way to represent eight possible relationships with only four colors (it was based on my use of a four-color pen), but the scheme turned out to be less intuitive for other readers than I hoped.
Bart Ehrman on Fresh Air
Prof. Bart D. Ehrman, who recently came out with two books, Lost Christianities and Lost Scriptures (an approach I call "texts and sects"), was a guest on NPR's Fresh Air program on Dec. 17, 2003. In the interview with Terry Gross, Ehrman discusses such topics as the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Gnostics, and the proto-Orthodox; the Gospel of Thomas, in which he read and interpreted saying 2; the differing Christologies of these sects (Ebionites: Jesus Christ is all human; Marcionites: Jesus Christ is all divine; proto-Orthodox: Jesus Christ is both human and divine; and Gnostics: Jesus is human, Christ is divine); other theological issues such as the Virgin Birth; the process of Canonization; the role of church hierarchy among the proto-Orthodox; and a bit on Ehrman's own faith journey in which he seemed a bit uncomfortable and perhaps a little surprised on where the discussion led.
Naturally, a radio interview can only touch on a few topics very lightly, but I've read his book, Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and it is a thorough yet accessible overview of what a lot of historical critics are now thinking about Christian origins and the emergence of the New Testament canon. Ehrman's writing style is enjoyable to read and he avoids the iconoclasm of other groups like the Jesus Seminar while still trying to challenge the reader's preconceptions.
The book discusses four non-canonical texts, the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Secret Gospel of Mark (I had previously blogged about Ehrman's take on Secret Mark). Then, Ehrman discusses the interactions between the proto-Orthodox, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, and the Gnostics. Ehrman made a very intriguing point, which I especially liked, that if the proto-Orthodox did not succeed in their struggles with other Christian sects, Constantine would never have become a Christian and Western history would have been completely different. Only the proto-Orthodox approach had the right combination of ideas and avoidance of the extremes (the Ebionites were too Jewish / ethnic; the Marcionites were too new-fangled; the Gnostics were too bizarre) to have appealed to a Roman emperor.
The Manuscripts Found at Sinai in 1975
In 1975, a cache of manuscripts, mostly fragments in varying states of preservation, was discovered at St. Catherine's Monastery (the home of the famous Codex Sinaiticus discovered by Tischendorf) when a chapel was being repaired after a fire. Even after 28 years not much has been published on it, but here's what I've been able to glean from on-line sources:
- Steven Ring (Hugoye-List, no. 957; Nov. 23, 2003) gave a brief report on what he learned at a symposium held by the St. Catherine's Foundation, including details about the preservation and digitalization work there.
- Wieland Willker has scanned and uploaded some pictures of the monks working on the manuscripts.
- Prof. David Aune of the University of Notre Dame has some very lovely photos from his May 2003 visit to St. Catherine's. However, I believe that the 12 pages of Codex Sinaiticus shown in one of the photos may have been misidentified as coming from Barnabas and Hermas; other information indicates that they are part of the Old Testament.
- One of the manuscripts discovered there has been digitized and is now being studied in a project by the K. Kekelidze Institute of Manuscripts of the Georgian Academy of Science. This manuscript (M13) is a palimpsest whose underwriting is a lectionary with 2 Cor 11:25-27 and is one of the few texts in the Caucasian Aluan language, which is related to Georgian.
- Additional background and pictures of this manuscript is found in this article: Zaza Alexidze and Betty Blair, "Caucasian Albanian Alphabet: Ancient Script Discovered in the Ashes," Azerbaijan International (Autumn 2003).
Ancient Greek Voice
On the b-greek mailing list, Carl Conrad announced a new paper on grammatical voice in ancient Greek as follows:
I have just posted to both of my web-sites a new pedagogical introduction to ancient Greek voice entitled, "Active, Middle, and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice." It is an 8 pp. brief introduction intended (a) as an introduction to ancient Greek voice for students, (b) as a demonstration of how I would go about teaching voice to English-speaking students if I were still in the active teaching profession. I would welcome feedback on the document off-list; it may be downloaded or read on-line atOn the b-greek list, Carl has suggested at least once that many instances of the Greek middle voice can be rendered into idiomatic English using the auxilliary verb get. I've been thinking a lot about that, and I think that there is much merit in in the idea. Thus, instead of "the boy will undergo baptism tomorrow" or "the boy will have himself baptized tomorrow," one could translate βαπτισθήσεται αὔριον ὁ παῖς as "the boy will get baptized tomorrow."
http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf
or at
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf
Talmud and Matthew's Gospel
Jim Davila's PaleoJudaica blog has an entry mentioning an opinion piece in the Toronto Star about a story in the Talmud about Rabbi Gamaliel apparently quoting from the Gospel of Matthew (c. 72) and what this means for the existence of an early publication of the Gospel of Matthew, usually thought to have been written in the 80s. Davila notes how the newspaper piece did not even cite the appropriate part of the Talmud and properly brings up several points to be cautious about, particularly in how to date traditions in the Talmud.
This story has made its rounds a few months ago, when the TC-list briefly discussed a similar story in the Kansas City Star on June 7, 2003 (sorry but my link to that story has already rotted). Stephen Goranson gave the following references behind the information on July 2, from which I briefly quote:
The text Israel J. Yuval refers to is Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 116 a- b. Yuval's footnote refers to Burton Visotzky, "Overturning the Lamp," JJS 38 (1987) 72-80. Visotsky's article is more nuanced than the newspaper article.
Nicene Creed in Greek
AKMA's Random Thoughts recently posted an entry for the Nicene Creed in Greek. Unfortunately, technical difficulties with his software configuration in posting the Unicode left a pile of question marks in place of the creed (one comment noted its appropriateness for non-creedal traditions). However, AKMA helpfully provided a link to an RTF file with the correct Unicode Greek text, from which I have obtained the text and hacked into something displayable:
Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεόν, Πατέρα,
παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς,
ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων.
Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν,
τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, τὸν μονογενῆ,
τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων,
φῶς ἐκ φωτός, Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ,
γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί,
διʼ οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο.
τὸν διʼ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους
καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν
κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν
καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου
καὶ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου
καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.
σταυροθέντα τε ὑπερ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου
καὶ παθόντα καὶ ταφέντα.
Καὶ ἀναστάντα οὐρανούς,
καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Πατρός.
Καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετὰ δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς,
οὗ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔσται τέλος.
Καὶ εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, τὸ Κύριον, τὸ Ζωοποιόν,
τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός ἐκπορευόμενον
τὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον,
τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν.
Εἰς μίαν, ἁγίαν, καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν.
Ὁμολογῶ ἕν βαπτίσμα εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν.
Προσδοκῶ ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν, καὶ ζωὴν τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος.
