Thoughts on Antiquity

By chance I came across an interesting blog, Collectanea, devoted to discussion of the absurdities of the over-extensive copyright law in the digital age.  There any many interesting snippets in this.  Most interesting is the rise in sales of books indexed by Google books, leading to the probable consequence of a settlement of lawsuits against Google by […]

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I needed to get reproductions of a few pages from some manuscripts which Georg Graf in Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur mentions.  These were in Beirut; i.e. at the Université Saint-Joseph, in the Bibliothèque Orientale.  So I emailed them on bo@usj.edu.lb in English, apologised for my inability to write French and […]

I’m back from the SBL conference in San Diego. I actually landed here in Memphis a while ago, but I’ve been too exhausted to blog until now.
Since it was my first time at the SBL, I often got remarks such as “was it overwhelming” or “were you too star-struck to talk to so-and-so”. I must […]

Here are some recent finds while I was away in San Diego:
Archaeology student finds Roman remains in garden

AN ARCHAEOLOGY student struck lucky when he began digging the garden of his new home - and discovered ancient Roman remains.
Chris Bevan had no idea that a historic find was lurking inches beneath his feet when he moved […]

A couple of interesting pages which I stumbled across while looking for material about the engineer Philo of Byzantium (ca. 250 BC).  The first points to a lot of Greek texts online:
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/en/linksen.html
The second is a French site with a vast collection of PDF’s of medical writers, such as Galen:
http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/histmed/medica.htm

Today, November 18th, 2007, sees the opening of the extraordinary exhibition Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, TX. Among the pieces of art are some of the earliest Christian and “magical” gems depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus, which are of particular interest to me, and for […]

I’m off to the SBL annual conference in San Diego. I know many of you are already there, and I’m hoping to meet the whole lot of you. I’ll be flying in tomorrow evening, and I’ll be leaving Monday afternoon. You’ll probably catch me at either Classics sessions or Matthew sessions. I really cannot wait!
If […]

The BBC reports on a sudden change in policy:
Libya changes tourist entry rules
Hundreds of European tourists have been refused entry to Libya after an unannounced change to passport rules. From the evening of 11 November, visitors without an Arabic translation of their passports have been denied entry, even if they have valid visas. […]

Well, I’ve just learned that the critical edition of the Coptic ‘Gospel of Judas’ has finally appeared.  It came out very quietly over the summer, and it seems that hardly anyone noticed. If you want a copy, it’s very cheap indeed. It’s on Amazon here.
The volume also contains the other texts from Codex Tchacos. Long-term […]

I feel like a challenge.  So I’ve just emailed the Biblioteca Apostolica (or Vatican Library to you and me) and asked how I can get a print-off of some pages from one of their Arabic mss — Vat. ar. 158 (1357 AD), ff. 148r-157v. – containing the unpublished Explanation of the Nicene Creed by Abu […]