NT Gateway Weblog

Thanks to Stephen Carlson for pointing this out to me:

Matthew C. Baldwin, Whose Acts of Peter? Text and Historical Context of the Actus Vercellenses (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2002)

Full text of this successful PhD Dissertation is available in PDF. Would that more people would do this, not least because it would save me or our library from forking out to UMI to purchase theses! Seriously, it is a great way of getting your work known, especially since recent PhDs are inevitably at the beginning of their careers. I'd think there'd be no doubt at all that you can get your work much more widely read by doing this. You have to be very keen to read something before you purchase from UMI.

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I've made some further adjustments to the new main page:

New Testament Gateway New Main Page: Trial Run

I've tried to unclutter the top part a little more and to give it room to breathe; I've brought the search box back up and I've tidied the bottom part of the page up. The challenge is to get something that looks OK in both Explorer & Navigator and in both 800x600 and 1024x768 and I think I'm getting there. The latter is particularly important to me since I gave a paper at the SBL Computer Assisted Research Section (CARG) on the NT Gateway and saw how the old pages looked in 1024x768 -- I'd never thought to check.

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I'm trying out a new look for the front page of the NT Gateway. It's uploaded already but I've not yet made it the main page. I'd be really grateful if anyone reading can have a look and let me have any thoughts. Does it get the thumbs up? Or are there problems with it? I've gone for a site-map style of page, the idea being that users will be able to click through to their desired page now much more quickly:

New Testament Gateway New Main Page: Trial Run

Many thanks for any feedback. The side menu will stay the same on all the other pages.

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I'd wondered why no-one ever seemed to sign my guestbook any more and I've just realised, in my revamping of the front page of the NT Gateway, that I've had the wrong URL for goodness knows how long. It's hosted by Bravenet and I should probably have paid more attention to their email circulars. Anyway, if anyone wants to cheer it up a bit by adding an entry, here's the new URL:

Mark Goodacre's Guestbook

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Alan Sereboff writes an open letter to Mel Gibson in NewsMax.com. It's quite a powerful read; he's a Jewish screenwriter; he's seen the film and he loved it:

A Letter to Mel Gibson
Excerpt:

My feelings on the film, as a filmmaker, are clear. As a Jew, I left the movie feeling a greater sense of kinship and closeness to my Christian brothers and sisters than I ever thought imaginable. I see “The Passion” as one of the most powerful uniting tools to ever take advantage of the single medium capable of such a task, namely, film.

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Earlier today I mentioned James Naughton's excellent Unicode Greek Inputter. Let me now mention a couple of other resources he has put together. Go to the following page:

Unicode Classical Greek

and you will find a nice unicode Greek New Testament which you can save to your own PC in one file either as an "HTML help" file or as a PDF. Also available is a Septuagint text in the HTML help format. He does say what the editions of either the LXX or the Greek NT are, though, I am afraid.

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Reported in Bible and Interpretation, an interesting article from the JTA News ("Global News Service of the Jewish People"):

Gibson's movie about Jesus sparks internal Jewish debate

There's a more sophisticated perspective here than is evident in most of the news coverage on this issue.

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I've updated the NT Gateway Journals page with the new URLs for the Journal of Biblical Literature. If the free on-line back issues remain for a period of time, I'll begin indexing the individual articles on the NT Gateway in keeping with my policy to try to index publicly available (free) peer-reviewed journal articles. But I'll hold on for a little first -- there's nothing worse than indexing everything only subsequently for it to disappear or, in this case, for it to return to SBL members-only.

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Very useful resource for those, like me, who are just coming to terms with unicode for typing Greek:

Unicode Greek Inputter

It's devised by James Naughton from Oxford. This is how he describes it:

The Unicode Greek Inputter is a small utility for producing polytonic Greek text with an ordinary English keyboard, using a betacode-like input method. Paste your resulting text into Unicode programs such as OpenOffice, Word 97 or 2000. Save the utility as an html file for use offline.

I've tried it out and it is an excellent resource. The hint at the end is very useful -- plan ahead now for when it vanishes from the web!

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Pete Philips on the Johannine Literature e-list mentions this fine web site:

Vindolanda Tablets On-line

Fascinating information, beautifully presented, on the Vindolanda writing tablets, written in ink on post-card sized sheets of wood, excavated at the fort of Vindolanda, immediately south of Hadrian's Wall in the north of England and dating to the late first and early second centuries AD. Not strictly a New Testament related link, I know, but indirectly of interest.

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One link from the latest Tyndale Tech (see previous blog entry) is:

AHRB Greek Bible Project

From their site:

This project, directed by Dr Tessa Rajak and Dr Sarah Pearce, with Dr James Aitken as Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and Dr Jenny Dines as Research Associate, will provide a re-evaluation of the Greek Bible as a source for Jews' interpretation of the political, social and intellectual culture of their hellenistic world (defined as continuing into the period of the early Roman Empire).

It's based at Reading University. There is some material of interest (but no link to the NT Gateway -- what?!) and a trial run for the following:

The Database of Septuagint Greek

This looks like it will be a really valuable resource in time. It's described as "A database of political legal and administrative words in the LXX and contemporary literature". I am particularly encouraged to see major projects like this having a strong web presence -- it would be excellent if the results are all disseminated via the web. At the moment the web design of the database wants a bit of work -- you have to go to 1024x768 to view it properly, a bit like the old SBL site prior to the revamp. And there is a lot of scrolling down to do in Netscape 7. And they need to switch their spellchecker on. But these are minor gripes -- I look forward to seeing this develop.

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The latest Tyndale Tech newsletter has just appeared from David Instone-Brewer. The theme for this one is Lexicons for Biblical Languages. The emailed version has gone out but it's not yet on the web (check Tyndale Tech Emails for older ones). There are some interesting links in the new one that require some exploration.

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My copy of !Hero finally arrived yesterday. Haven't listened to it all yet, but it's pretty enjoyable so far, but with some qualms (see below). It reminds me a lot of Jesus Christ Superstar. There is a character called Maggie who at first I'd thought was bound to be the Mary Magdalene figure but it seems that she is the Samaritan woman from John 4. Mary the mother of Jesus is fairly prominent too, and as usual there's a Peter (Petrov) and Judas (Jude). It's in the tradition of harmonising the Gospels, with the Wedding at Cana quite early on, then to Rejection at Nazareth (Brooklyn Synagogue) then the Samaritan woman; later the beatitudes (influenced from both Matthew and Luke -- "Blessed are the poor -- blessed are the poor in spirit") and Jairus' Daughter. Musically it's kind of rock / hip hop with elements of the big musical, reasonably varied in styles, sometimes a bit predictable but often quite powerful. I'm a bit concerned at this stage about the character KAI, the "chief rabbi" and clearly a baddy and a composite of Caiaphas and Pharisees & scribes from the Gospels. He is in collusion with Devlin, the police chief, who corruptly allows KAI to run his "tiny neighbourhood". Looks like it could be perceived as being as anti-Jewish as Jesus Christ Superstar. More when I've finished listening.

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The Theology Website's Electronic Text Index has recently added some new texts including Irenaeus's Against Heresies. Somewhat annoyingly, though, there is no indication of where this text is derived from. The page has some other texts of interest including some Nag Hammadi material, but it is not clear to me whether or not copyright clearance has been obtained on these (and judging from the annotation under the Gilgamesh epic, one might guess that it hasn't).

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I'm a bit late latching on to this. I read AKMA's blog and had seen that he was enjoying being in the Boston area but hadn't realised that he was there for the BloggerCon, a conference at Harvard on October 4-5 "celebrating the art and science of weblogs". There are some interesting bits and bobs at that link, e.g. lots of essays.

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This press release just out from Fortress [Let me add that the reason I mention Fortress books here is that they are good enough to send me their press releases; if any other publishers wish do the same, I'm happy to include their announcements here too.]

MAGIC AND PAGANISM IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY Makes Fascinating Account of the Book of Acts

MINNEAPOLIS (October 7, 2003)— Many forms of magic and paganism were practiced at the time of Jesus. What were these practices, and how did the earliest followers of Jesus react to them?

Hans-Josef Klauck, an expert in Greco-Roman religious practices, describes this world in which the early churches were founded in his new book, Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity, and he relates to it the many experiences recorded in the Book of Acts.

Klauck describes the religious world into which Christianity was born, by looking at it from the many experiences of the first Christians as recorded in Acts. For example: Peter encounters Simon the magician, the people of Lystra want to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas, and a soothsaying slave-girl is the occasion for conflict in Philippi.

We come to Athens where Paul finds the city full of idols but also discovers an altar “to an unknown god” and delivers the famous Areopagus speech, and to Ephesus, where some burn their books of magic formulae, while others provoke a riot in the name of Artemis.

Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity makes for a fascinating account of these phenomena and their significance for Christianity historically and today.

“Professor Klauck, writing briskly, but with respect for the complexity of the matters he takes up, demonstrates clearly the tension that remained between inculturation and evangelization. A stimulating book indeed.”

—Abraham J. Malherbe, Yale Divinity School

“In his reading of the Book of Acts against the background of the various religious views and practices prevailing in the Roman-Hellenistic world, Professor Klauck is drawing upon his astounding expertise in the field of ancient religion and philosophy. . . . This is thought-provoking and exciting reading.”

—Jürgen Roloff, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg

Features

* A fresh treatment of the Book of Acts in light of Greco-Roman religions

* Extensive bibliography

* Multiple indexes

Author: Hans-Josef Klauck is Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. His most recent book with Fortress Press is The Religious Context of Early Christianity (2003). He has also published commentaries and monographs on 1 Corinthians, the Johannine epistles, and New Testament theology. He is also a member of the Hermeneia editorial board.

Translator: Brian McNeil is a native of the U.K. who now lives in Germany. He also translated Klauck’s The Religious Context of Early Christianity.

###

Format 144pp. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2” paperback 4-color cover perfect

ISBN: 0-8006-3635-X

Price: $15.00

To order Magic and Paganism in Early Christianity please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the web site at www.fortresspress.com. To request review copies or exam copies please visit the website at www.fortresspress.com or call 1-800-426-0115 ext. 234.

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In spare moments I'm working on changing the main page of the NT Gateway. Now that I'm blogging regularly, I don't need to use the main page to communicate the latest updates; and I've abandoned the Logbook too, so I have decided to make the main page more useful for browsing, to set out clearly all the different sections. I am encouraged to do this further because I think many people never find certain parts of the New Testament Gateway -- they've never realised they exist. But it's a heck of a job; I find I can't get it to look just right. I want to keep the basic look and style of the NT Gateway as far as possible but I'd like something resembling iTanakh's front page, which I think pretty useful for browsing. I hope to get there in the end.

At the same time, I've made the decision to abandon the monthly Featured Links. Frankly, this has become one of the least enjoyable parts of doing the NT Gateway and in general my philosophy of the site is that I need to be enjoying it to carry on doing it. There's something about the pressure of deciding on each month's featured links, and trying as carefully as I can to write a good review of each of the links. And I've always found that there'll be a month when I have loads of possibilities and then a month where there is nothing. Further, with blogging I'm able to flag things up properly as and when they come up and the more informal way of doing this feels un-pressurised. I'll keep the archive of Featured Links there, but from now on the formal side of that will be dropped. I've been poor at keeping them updated over the last year anyway -- it's become very patchy -- and it makes the site look like it's not regularly updated, which I don't like. So I'm afraid it's going, at least for the time being. You can come to the blog instead!

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From Paleojudaica an enjoyable couple of links to Why are there so many of the leading bloggers academics? and How do you get an academic to blog? -- from The Volokh Conspiracy, which I hadn't seen before. The latter certainly applies to me. I enjoyed reading Paleojudaica.com and the idea had never even formed in my head to have a go myself until a remark from Jim Davila to the effect that it would be good to see more blogs in related areas. As for why blogging is popular among academics, I'd guess that it's as much as anything to do with the very simple fact that we are used to writing a lot; it's one of our most basic ways of communicating.

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Latest reviews from the SBL's Review of Biblical Literature announced this evening:

Hatina, Thomas R.
In Search of a Context: The Function of Scripture in Mark's Narrative
Reviewed by Kenneth D. Litwak

Merenlahti, Petri
Poetics for the Gospels?: Rethinking Narrative Criticism
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Nickle, Keith F.
The Synoptic Gospels: An Introduction
Reviewed by Ian Scott

Stirewalt, M. Luther
Paul: The Letter Writer
Reviewed by Gerald L Stevens

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An enjoyable read in Haaretz by Ben Zion Fischler on the origin of the expression "while standing on one foot":

Why was Shammai so angry?

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There was a fine piece from Christopher Rowland (Dean Ireland professor of exegesis of holy Scripture at the University of Oxford) in the "Face to Faith" column in Saturday's Guardian:

Paul's Letters of Tolerance

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Rodney Decker has a fine page on the Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Danker Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (now since the 3rd edition BDAG rather than BAGD, Danker getting promoted in the order!). There's a nice powerpoint presentation on the history of this lexicon with pictures; there are links to reviews of the new edition and more:

Review: Bauer/Danker 3rd ed. Greek-English Lexicion (BDAG)

Update: link added to the Greek NT Gateway: lexica page

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Today's Sunday programme had a feature on and interview with Tom Wright, specifically picking up the Times article Durham's new Bishop abolishes heaven and the soul which I mentioned the other day. Listen on-line:

The New Bishop of Durham

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Jim Davila reports on this piece from the MSNBC News site:

Who'll Buy Mel's Movie?

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Latest Explorator:

Explorator 6.23 (October 5 2003)

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