Web-Based Footnote and Other Annotation Techniques
Rubén Gómez of Bible Software Review Weblog interacts with my bit on using HTML/CSS to provide glosses for Greek word, as follows:
Now, regarding the technique he introduces to 'mark up Greek words for glossing', it just dawn on me that it could be equally used as a means to replace footnotes, and most certainly to present brief definitions for some of those cryptic words scholars are so fond of using every now and again ;-). I don't have the time to test it right now, but maybe others have used this method and could enlighten us a bit...
Yes, I was thinking of a similar technique for footnotes, and I've been wondering about how to render footnotes on the Web on-and-off for quite some time. Two good sites that address the issue are:
In print, many readers prefer footnotes to endnotes because endnotes require flipping pages, while footnotes do not, but publishers prefer endnotes as more economical. On the web, without some kind of framing technique, footnotes and endnotes are pretty much the same thing: annotations collected at the foot / end of the web page.
Some people have suggested from time to time the use of sidenotes rather than footnotes for annotating texts on web pages. To me, it makes theoretical sense because, unlike book pages, which are taller than they are wide, browsers tend to show web pages with a greater horizontal width than its vertical height. Thus, the sides, not the foot, constitute the area of the web page with potentially the most space for notes while still being in view. However, in typography, the "proof of the pudding" is in the reading, and to this end, I have prepared two reprints of my NTS article with lots of long notes, and you can see for yourself which version is more readable: the one with footnotes or the one with sidenotes.
Souter's Pocket Lexicon
Jeffrey Gibson has announced the following on B-Greek:
List members may like to know that Alexander Souter's Pocket Lexicon to the GNT is now available online from Textkit as a download at:There's a lot of interesting stuff at that site. I like the fact that it has Smyth's Grammar when I'm not a home to use my "dead tree" copy. Also, there is Goodwin's Grammar, which I have fond memories for since it was the one we used in class when I studied Greek. Goodwin's is a little easier than Smyth's and, if you have both, still useful in comparing with Smyth's.
http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/155/author_id/73/
There are some other materials that List members will also want to see at the Textkit site.
Go to: http://www.textkit.com/
More on Shanks and the James Ossuary.
In response to my comment that "it is not entirely clear to me that Meyer and Shanks are talking about the same incident," Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica.com has this to say:
I think this is pretty unlikely. For it to be true we would have to assume that either Hedding or an employee forgot and kept no record of the meeting with a Golan representative about which Meyers's source knew, but Hedding remembered and did keep a record of a different but very similar meeting about which Meyers's source didn't know. Got all that? Anything is possible, but this reconstruction is too complicated to be a good working hypothesis.For the two incidents to be the same, one would have to assume that Meyer's source garbled the information and that Hedding's having "checked his records" was thorough enough to include all contacts, formal and informal, between Golan and International Christian Embassy. Shanks did not give any indication how thorough Hedding's checking of his records was, how much time Hedding needed (was Shanks on hold, or did Hedding call back?), or whether Hedding checked anybody else's records. Furthermore, sales attempts often involve multiple contacts, so it is not a priori unreasonable that there could have been two separate contacts, an informal one from Golan's lawyer followed up by one with Mr. Ovnat. The point of all this, however, is not so much as to argue that there were actually two separate meetings or that there was only meeting and Meyer's source was confused on the few details that were related, but more to point out that the information being presented by hearsay is too insubstantial to work with.
However, the significance of the timing of the meeting may be a red herring. Davila also quoted a very interesting email from Paul Flesher stating:
Meyers simply put the story forward as a comment about an attempted sale of the ossuary. It was Shanks, not Meyers, who made the observation that if it was 2001 rather than 2002, then Golan's claim about not knowing the significance of the inscription would be false. . . . Meyers and Shanks may differ on the details, but not on the SUBSTANCE of the story.
In Flesher's analysis, Shanks had actually proved Meyers' story to the extent that Golan had offered the James Ossuary for sale. How is this relevant on the issue of forgery? It may be helpful to review the legal elements of forgery, which basically is the creation or material alteration of an artifact with intent to deceive.* Although, the Meyers' postscript might not be good for showing that Golan faked the James Ossurary (if Shanks's refutation is good), the fact of an offer to sell the ossuary is relevant for establishing an intent to defraud. After all, attempting to sell a bogus artifact as though genuine is good evidence of the fraudulent intent.
* Jurisdictions do differ on defining forgery, and many restrict the crime of forgery to official documents. Thus, the fraudulent creation of art and artifacts, commonly called "forgery," would fall more generally under the laws against fraud, for example.
New Weblog: Bible Software Review Weblog
Rubén Gómez has started a new weblog for reviewing Bible software: Bible Software Review Weblog
Shanks on the James Ossuary
Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica calls attention to Hershel Shanks' response "Internet Rumor Proves Groundless" to Eric Meyer over Meyer's piece on Bible and Interpretation News arguing that the Ossuary is a recent forgery.
Most of Meyer's article involves an allegation that a prominent but anonymous Israeli archeology saw the James Ossuary without the "brother of Jesus" bit. I have already addressed Meyer's piece and the use of anonymous sources earlier. Also in the article, Meyer gave a brief "postscript" that:
My anonymous source has also provided one other interesting datum that is pertinent to this discussion. Sometime in 2001 my source alleges that Golan through his lawyers offered for sale to The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, the so-called James Ossuary, now in its revised and expanded form, for a sum of $2 million."
Disappointingly, Shanks did not address the main bulk of Meyer's essay, promising only that his March/April edition of Bible Review will name names and contain a "fuller account" of the sighting. So, to a great extent, the headline "Internet Rumor Proves Groundless" must be considered to be premature.
Shanks did address the postscript and castigated Meyers for not following up on the information:
Since Meyers did not think to do this, I placed the call myself. Malcolm Hedding, the executive director of the International Christian Embassy, checked his records and found that he had been visited at 11:00 in the morning on November 28, 2002 [not 2001] by a man named Uri Ovnat, whose business card identified him, not as a lawyer, but as director of the International Marketing Development Enterprises, Ltd. in Ramat haSharon, Israel. The remainder of Hedding’s file consisted only of Lemaire’s article in BAR.
Given the huge differences between what Meyer related and what Shanks presented, it is not entirely clear to me that Meyer and Shanks are talking about the same incident. Although both agreed on the details of the International Christian Embassy and possibly the $2M price tag, the year is different and the visitor is different. Meyer did not identify the person who was contacted, so it may not even be the case that Meyer's source was describing a meeting with Hedding at all, which means that Shanks's source, Hedding, may not have been in a position to verify or refute the claim.
I have already stated that Meyer's source has to step forward in order to begin to evaluate the allegations. Shanks' attempted debunking falls short in my opinion precisely because there are not enough specific details in the claim to check in the first place.
A side note: Jim Davila, who is as appropriately cautious as I am, remarks on the importance of the information in the "postscript":
In this connection, I would like to recall Chadwick's article on the James Ossuary, also at Bible and Interpretation News:This second item is important because, if true, it would show that Golan knew the significance of the inscription even before epigrapher André Lemaire read it for him in 2002.
Chadwick goes on to draw the inference from the fact that Oded Golan, the owner/dealer of the James Ossuary, had prior knowledge of the evidence that was to provide the "ultimate breakthrough" (Chadwick's words) in authenticating the ossuary in Shanks' mind.As a postscript to this report I mention something I noticed in the Forward to Hershel Shanks' book The Brother of Jesus. The Forward was written by Andre Lemaire. On its first page, Lemaire writes about meeting the ossuary's present "owner," who is not named in the book, but whose identity we now know. Lemaire reports that on the day he saw a photo of the inscription for the first time, "the owner said he thought the inscription was especially interesting because there was only one other inscription in Rahmani's Catalogue (the standard catalog of Jewish ossuaries) mentioning a brother in a similar way."15 This statement can only refer to the "ahui Hanin" reading from ossuary 570 of Rahmani's Catalogue. But this is quite astounding.
15 Shanks, The Brother of Jesus, xi (Forward by Andre Lemaire).
