Kirby's blog and sundry essays about early Christianity.
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What's Istanbul was Constantinople, and in the year A.D. 1204 the city was plundered by Crusaders. Now, eight hundred years later, the bones of John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen are being returned to the Orthodox patriarchate, as a stimulus to ecumenical efforts. See this article.
At this web page, part of the Gutenberg project, you can find a collection of books by Alexander Maclaren interpreting the Bible, titled "Expositions of Holy Scripture."
Between school and buying a new truck, I haven't been able to blog lately. But yesterday and today I decided to put together a bibliography of (mostly inexpensive) English translations of texts relevant to understanding the Bible, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity. You can see my current versions at the Hebrew Bible and New Testament sections of the Ebla Forum. There is already a NT Reading List in Ebla's library that focuses on secondary sources.
I am getting way too much spam (several hundred a day) at my kirby@earthlink.net address. So I have decided to use a new address and to be careful not to post it to the web, usenet, or other place for harvesting by spammers. You can send me an e-mail through my website (PeterKirby.com), and I will respond from my new mail account. Or you can see my new e-mail address here (read the first letters): Papa Echo Tango Echo Romeo -AT- Papa Echo Tango Echo Romeo Kilo India Romeo Bravo Yankee -DOT- Charlie Oscar Mike. After a few weeks I will no longer check the Earthlink account.
Israel Abrahams wrote Chapters on Jewish Literature in 1899. It is now available as an online book as part of the Gutenberg Project. The book contains twenty-five chapters on various writers from the time of the Jewish Revolt in 70 CE down to Moses Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century.
As reported by the BBC, the famous and influential philosopher Jacques Derrida has passed away at the age of 74. He has affected all fields of study where the interpretation of literature takes place, including study of the Bible. His visage would aptly feature in any entry on Post-Modernism or Deconstruction in an encyclopedia, and his writings were voluminous. Yet as great as his intellectual products are, as Derrida said in 1994, "A man's life, as unique as his death, will always be more than a paradigm and something other than a symbol." He has some cause for spinning in the grave already, given the great amount of criticism and misunderstanding of Derrida's work that has been made and the even greater amount that will be made. But please, whatever your philosophical ideas, join me in wishing Derrida to rest in peace.
As noted at deinde.org by Danny Zacharias, a new project sponsored by King's University College has begun, with the aim of providing critical texts for the extant ancient versions and original language edition of pseudepigraphical writings: The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha. This is an excellent idea and will bring additional light on these texts to the Internet, along with existing websites such as Early Jewish Writings.
From October 1 to October 31 there will be a presentation at The Concord Mall in Indiana with many manuscripts of the Bible and its translations, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to microfilm that has gone to the moon. For information and tickets, see The Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America, the official website.
An article in Reuters says, "Readers seek more religion amid uncertain times." From 2002 to 2003, the purchase of religious books rose by 50% so that the spirituality category now has 17% of the market, with about half of the sales coming from general interest stores (and the other half from Christian bookstores). And, apparently, almost half of this reading public is under 35. So where are these people? Maybe you can post a comment if you are a reader under 35 and especially if you live in Southern California, where I live and attend college.
Jun Sook Suh has written a book on The Gospel of Paul, and Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte has written a review. There is also a new book on Revelation that is reviewed. The most interesting of books recently reviewed is Magic in History: Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (see review). The book features contributions from Jonathan Z. Smith, Marvin Meyer, and other leading scholars.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (which contains English translation and original language transcription for the non-biblical scrolls) is available in Libronix form at the Logos website, and it almost makes me wish I didn't already buy it in paperback. An old standby, Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, is also now in digital form, and this would be a handy reference for those who study the Bible often through the Logos software (though, again, I already own the book). Logos has been offering BDAG for a while now, but the similarly priced Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon may be new to the Libronix format. Finally, both the Old Testament set and the New Testament set of the Interpretation commentary series are for sale.
Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway Weblog asks, "But this makes me wonder something out loud. Is there anyone apart from Biblical scholars / theologians using BCE / CE? It's been out there a long time now. Is it ever going to catch on more broadly?" I wonder what the state of the case is with those in other branches of the humanities and those in the natural sciences. Just picking up a couple books at hand, Documents in World History and A History of World Societies use the B.C.E./C.E. nomenclature. Another book, The Unfinished Nation uses BC for in discussion of pre-Columbian America and simply omits any letters by most dates (neither A.D. nor C.E.). The book Ancient Mystery Cults by Walter Burkert uses A.D. and B.C. The late Raymond Brown made use of A.D. and B.C. with a brief note indicating that these are widely understood notations. One of my teachers at college made a comment which I thought objectionable, which was to the effect that Christians should use A.D. and that atheists should use C.E. The very idea behind the C.E. thing was, I would hope, not to alienate the reader of different religious background. I would suggest that writers use whichever inititials come comfortably—without others trying to read a lot into that (this suggestion is a generic one, though with my teacher in mind more than anyone else).
The Word Biblical Commentary (WBC 58 Volume) has just been completed by the people at Logos Bible Software and can be ordered today. The entire set of fifty-eight high quality volumes can be ordered on a single DVD-ROM, which means it takes up no shelf space and even can be taken on trips. At $499.95, it's also less expensive than print. I'd recommend buying now because the price is still at the pre-order rate and can only go up.
It is a delight to see this achievement in polished form (Theological Markup Language, ThML) on the Internet: the full text of Calvin's commentaries are now available at CCEL. At a total of 150 MB, I can only say, "Wow!" and "Thanks!"
Richard Carrier has a series of articles on the web that are now in their fifth edition, titled Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story. Carrier has updated his previous materials here. Notably, a DVD of a debate between Mike Licona and Richard Carrier is now available. Carrier alludes to three essays that will be published in an anthology on the resurrection, which is edited by Robert Price and to which I have contributed an essay myself. One of these three essays expands on material found in his Jewish Law, the Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day (and another is based on a 2001 essay published in The Journal of Higher Criticism). Carrier's "Why I Don't Buy" site, the adjunct essays, and his recorded debate with Licona provide some substance for those who missed the recent exchange between Bill Craig and Carrier or, as can only be expected, felt that it didn't go into enough detail.
An article in Haaretz by Hananel Mack brings attention to the Ashkenaz Hasidim writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, particularly as revealed in the writings of Ta-Shema. The jounalist writes that these rabbis "were firm believers in the Torah, and very pious, devoted and observant Jews. But in chapters 19 and 20 of Ta-Shema's book, we discover that this solid faith did not keep them from reaching some bold conclusions on such matters as the writing style and authorship of Judaism's holiest texts. Ta-Shema offers, for example, much evidence of the doubt in their mind about the uniformity of the Book of Psalms and its wholesale attribution to King David. . . . Based on their careful study of the text and familiarity with rabbinic literature, they suggest that certain words, verses or passages were not written by Moses, but by someone who lived in much later times." Apparently some Orthodox were upset at the publication, under the assumption that the Hasid could not have questioned the tradition about the Torah's composition.
But this should not come as a great surprise. Writers have doubted the authorship of these five books by Moses for a long time. For example, Ibn Ezra (who died in 1167) realized that Genesis 36 couldn't have been written any earlier than the rule of Jehoshaphat because it mentions Hadad (cf. Gn 36:35; 1 Ki 11:14). The Reformation writer A. B. Carlstadt (1480–1541) said that the Torah wasn't written by Moses on the basis that the part after his death is written in the same style as what comes before. Spinoza (1670) saw several doublets and contradictions in the Torah, and he concluded that Ezra pieced together several sources, along with writing Deuteronomy, to produce it. The Roman Catholic author Richard Simon (1685) also developed a view that the Torah consisted of multiple sources, and Jean LeClerc (an Armenian) drew the conclusion that they were put together between 722 BCE and the time of Ezra by a Jew residing in Babylon. German scholarship continued to develop these ideas, which came to be known as the "documentary hypothesis," as most famously laid out by Wellhausen. (This information can be found in the New Bible Dictionary, art. "Pentateuch," p. 894.) Despite all this, there is a large swath of the general public that either is not aware of scholarly opinion or who dismiss it off-handedly as being illegitimately skeptical. The same situation exists on a range of New Testament issues, from the authorship of the Pastorals to the presence of legendary material in the Gospels. (On the flip side, there actually are skeptical ideas that won't die in the minds of some even if they've long been left by the way side in scholarship.)
It is a good question when, if ever, this gap will be bridged and a variety of arguments will be considered by the casually interested. In particular, I am interested in what role the Internet will play in bringing the ideas of academia within the grasp of the non-specialist (as well as, perhaps, the concerns of the public to the ears of academics).
My own view is that, while the Internet is surely no panacea, and while printed books and journals are essential for anyone studying the subjects, what the Internet will excel in doing is to expose various viewpoints to many people who might otherwise be unaware of them. For example, I have presented information on discussion boards to a woman who had heard nothing of the denial of authorship of the Torah and to a man whose religious courses had never disclosed doubts about Paul writing the letters to Timothy and Titus. Likewise, I have benefited from feedback to my arguments in discussion, and I have made some use of the research sources that are available on the Internet, particularly the primary material in electronic form.
The failing of the Internet, as I see it now, is the problem of balance and goodwill. Excepting those print materials that have passed out of copyright or were made freely available by the copyright holder, most of the information on the web is produced on a volunteer basis, and most often by amateurs (and I qualify as one as I am still working on my bachelor's). This means that the scope of topics is limited to those ones that a person wishes to spend the time to argue for, without enlarging a C.V. or getting paid. What I am getting at is that there is plenty of polemical debate, religious and anti-religious, apologetics and anapologetics (and, again, I have on occasion contributed to this myself). The atmosphere is nothing like what would find in a university seminar in religious studies, and the tenor of the publications on the web are not usually like what one would find in the Journal of Biblical Literature or Harvard Theological Review. Not that I expect the caliber of the writers who publish on the Internet to go up dramatically, but I do wonder, what can be done or will happen with respect to the atmosphere? I am trying to get some kind of non-confrontational dialogue going with my Gospel of John study, and we will see how that goes. What do the readers of this blog think?
Finally you can read online the one and only Authorized Version, published in 1611, with the spelling and font that God chose in order to establish His Word forever in the Elizabethan English tongue. (Or you might want to take a look at the preface.) See The Holy Bible.
Guides for Students: Literature, Classics, and History
The account of The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ by Anne Catherine Emmerich has achieved notoriety through the film The Passion of the Christ, directed by Mel Gibson, who drew upon the text to some degree. Now anyone can read the book online at sacred-texts.com and judge for herself what has been said about the book and the film.
There are also two recent entries in the Review of Biblical Literature of books on John that I do possess: The Gospel of John: A Commentary by Craig S. Keener and Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community by Craig R. Koester. The two Craigs represent practically opposite poles of hermeneutical praxis: Keener searches far and wide for any literary allusions or socio-historical background that can illumine the text of John, while Koester plumbs the depths of Johannine thought in consideration of what special meaning symbols take in the Fourth Gospel. Both of them will be useful to me in my Gospel of John study.
The Review of Biblical Literature has a review of a new commentary on John by Mark Edwards (see review). This commentary, part of the Blackwell series, focuses on interpretations of John down the centuries: by the church fathers, medieval writers, and modern exegetes. I already have a ton of books on the Gospel of John, so perhaps someone else will buy this book and kindly present information from it to the Group Discussion of John at Ebla.
The Review of Biblical Literature published two reviews of the book An Introduction to the New Testament Apocrypha a short time ago (reviews here). I would purchase the book if I hadn't made a promise not to get more books until I've read more of the ones I have. When I eventually do read the book, however, it would be a good source for improving Early Christian Writings. Readers of this blog may want to get the volume themselves.
William W. Goodwin's Greek Grammar is now online at CCEL. This work can stand beside the Beginner's Grammar of the Greek New Testament by William H. Davis, which I have made available on my Early Christian Writings web site, in the Online Books section. Machen's introductory Greek grammar (published in 1923) used to be on CCEL (at this URL), but I can no longer find it. What all these efforts have in common is that they are presented in images. The advantage to this is that errors are reduced and that the time necessary for preparation is a fraction of what would be required for a true transcription of the text, with the polytonic Greek. The scanning job for Goodwin's book was done by TextKit, which also offers A Brief Introduction to New Testament Greek by Samuel G. Green, NT Greek in a Nutshell by James Strong, and many other grammars. Links to other online sites concerning Greek have been compiled by Michael D. Marlowe and Mark Goodacre. Of course, there are abundant print resources, and a select few are given in my NT Reading List that will help a person teach herself Koine Greek.
The idea that Luke the evangelist made use of the Wars or the Antiquities of Josephus is over a hundred years old. I have in my hands right now Max Krenkel's 1894 book Josephus und Lucas. Bernard Muller argues on his web page that Luke made use of the Wars but likely not the Antiquities. More well-known of recent work is that of Steve Mason, author of Josephus and the New Testament (amazon.com - logos.com). Richard Carrier has brought Mason's work to the attention of the Internet in his essay Luke and Josephus. Recently, J. P. Holding has reviewed the arguments of both Mason and Carrier (Did Josephus Influence Luke?).
Personally, I lament the fact that there are precious few resources on the history of first century Palestine. Without other writers of the time and place (such as Justin of Tiberias) now extant, it is difficult to determine whether a coincidence of names in Luke and in Josephus reflect literary dependence or rather separate knowledge of the underlying history. In any case, I am in my first year of learning German in college, and I hope to be able (eventually) to read the German scholarship here.
This is the official description: "Dr. William Lane Craig, author of 'The Son Rises' and one of the foremost authorities on the evidence for the resurrection, will go head to head against a debunker of the resurrection, ancient history scholar Richard Carrier. Carrier is the author of 'Sense and Goodness Without God' (soon to be released by AuthorHouse)." The name of the show is Faith Under Fire, hosted by Lee Strobel. The segment on the resurrection will last only about eighteen minutes. The episode will be on PAX today, Saturday, October 2 at 10 PM (9 PM central and mountain time). The website indicates that transcripts will be available for purchase after the show airs.
Michael Turton has written a book review of Donald H. Akenson's St. Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus. Among other things, Turton observes that there is not enough focus on Paul himself (or on Paul in relation to the historical Jesus), and the book is not recommended. Read it now.
Hello! I am Peter Kirby, the author of various sites such as Early Christian Writings. When I realized that I would like to present more secondary material to the web (both that which is already published and that which is written for online reading), I created the Christian Origins website to present such essays (and thus to preserve the focus of my first site on the primary sources). For about eight months I operated an announcement-only mailing list titled "Kirby News" for those who wanted to learn more about developments concerning my websites. The list acquired over one hundred subscribers, but unfortunately Yahoo! nixed it because of a period of inactivity. Recently I have noticed the phenomenon of blogging related to biblical and classical studies. Mark Goodacre's website is an excellent example. Stephen Carlson has recently brought together blog and site in his Hypotyposeis and Synoptic Problem pages. Realizing that my homepage for Christian Origins has been in virtual blog form anyway—brief statements with a date stamp, listed with the most recent at the top—I decided to turn this website into a blog. Or, more accurately, a hybrid of blog and periodical, as I will continue to create blog-independent web pages for substantial papers, as these are received and reviewed. Thanks for stopping by, and please let me know what you think of the site or how it could be improved.
