Thoughts on Antiquity

There’s been a little discussion going on about what nomenclature to give what is commonly referred to as the “Old Testament”. Claude Mariottini started the conversation with an article, and like the author of that article, decides on Old Testament as best, partly for theological reasons. Richie at Ecclesiastical Mutt responded with the general advice […]

While reading awilum.com, I discovered that the Oriental Institute in Chicago has decided that it ”is committed to digitizing all of its publications and making them available online, without charge.”  This electronic publication programme makes material available in PDF.  A full list is available at the above link.  This is marvellous news — well done the OI! 

I suspect that I am not the only person who has found the old version 2 layout of the 38-volume Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers collection at CCEL rather easier to use than the new, improved, but very much more awkward version 3?
I today found that the v2 version has vanished from CCEL.  Fortunately I […]

Since 1998 Dr. Armenuhi Drost-Abgarjan has been working on a new edition of the Armenian text of Eusebius Chronicle, with German translation *. She kindly sent me an off-print of an article about this. It looks as if the prefaces of both the Latin edition of Petermann (1875-6) and the German one of […]

I have now entered both Petermann’s Latin and Karst’s German translation into a database, split into sentences and lined up the two in parallel columns.  It looks as if a copy of Aucher will be with me in a week or so, but I see no way to make much use of it.
I need to revise […]

Miser homost1 qui ipsus2 sibi quod edit3 quaerit et id aegre invenit;
sed illest miserior qui et aegre quaerit et nil invenit;
ille miserrumust qui, quom4 esse cupit, tum quod edit non habet.
Plautus Captivi 461-463.
1. homost = homo est; likewise, illest = ille est, and miserrumust = miserrumus (miserrimus) est. The ‘e’ in “est” drops in elision.
2. […]

From here:
CAIRO (Reuters) - Belgian archaeologists have discovered the intact tomb of an Egyptian courtier who lived about 4,000 years ago, Egypt’s culture ministry said on Sunday.
The team from Leuven Catholic University accidentally found the tomb, one of the best preserved of its time, while excavating a later burial site at the Deir al-Barsha necropolis […]

I’ve splurged on a book. I’ve been trying to be more reserved in spending on books, but this is a must. Edited by Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees is exactly what I need in life right now.
Hat tip to Jim West, who has some nice photos. Here’s the Table […]

We all owe a great debt to Poggio Bracciolini, who in the early 15th century hunted down and recovered so many classical texts. His letters have never been published in English, aside from an unsatisfactory collection to his friend Niccolo Niccoli, whose massive collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts forms the kernel of the […]

One of the more frustrating things in New Testament scholarship is the inconsistency of methods across scholars who are otherwise in agreement. One particular example would be the use of Kloppenborg’s compositional history of Q by historical Jesus scholars; there is no consensus on how to treat the Q1 material in relation to the […]