I am very pleased to announce something that I have been wanting to do for a long time, which is start a podcast. Last night we recorded our first podcast and today went live. Woohoo!

Our first episode does a little intro but is mainly on wisdom Christology. We will also discuss an ancient document each week (this week was the Didache) for everyone's basic familiarity and also comment on something interesting on the web. You can see more in our shownotes on the podcast page. We do, of course, have a syndication feed just in case you have a program like iTunes that will help you download the episodes. If not you can always just download the mp3 directly, the link for which is at the top of the show notes.

I would love to hear any feedback that you have. If you send us audio feedback (and it is appropriate) we'll play it on the podcast before we answer. More details on that on the podcast page.

A friend of mine is an avid fan of The Teaching Company and recently sent me a link to one of their current free lectures: The Search for What Killed The Dinosaurs. Thanks Edward!

The name of the lecturer (Peter Ward) sounded familiar so I checked my shelf and, sure enough, I have a book of his on this topic called "Gorgon". The book and the lecture are both great, so I recommend them.

Well, I needed to get off my piece of anatomy named the same as the title of this work by Pseudo-Lucian and start digitizing texts again. So, here you go, the first four chapters of Pseudo-Lucian's "The Ass". You can find an html version here and a pdf version here. I'm not sure if the fonts are embedded in the pdf for your system, but they look fine for me. Let me know if you have any problems.

I had trouble locating tonight the exact title, editor, and date of the document from which I digitized this as I only have a partial printout at work. I have the full thing at work, however, so I'll be sure to write that down so I can change the page this weekend.

Hope you find it useful.

It has been a little quiet around here lately, but it's not been because of inactivity. I've been working on several projects lately, and one of them I was hoping to finish in time to end this month with a bang, but work, sunday school prep and an almost complete inability to keep myself focused on one thing has gotten in the way. So instead of something profound or academic, I offer you something humorous. But don't worry, it is old humor, so it at least fits the theme of the blog a bit.

I've seen a couple of instances of "graffiti" or doodling in manuscripts before in presentations by Dan Wallace. I was poking around lectionary 170 (of Acts, the Pauline epistles including Hebrews and James, though since James is in there more epistles can probably be found as well) tonight and noticed a few, so I thought I would show you. Since they just photographed the images a few months ago, these must not be ones I've seen before. I don't recognize them but I have a horrible memory, so I'll use logic instead :)

Graffiti 1

Who is this guy? I'm guessing this is a child's drawing, so maybe it is his dad. Regardless, he's happy but bald. Anyone care to guess who this is? You can see the full leaf here.

Graffiti 2

This one is on the facing page, and the sloppiness of the handwriting also lends itself to the idea of a child's writing. Was this the scribe's kiddo practicing his father's trade? You can see that he duplicated the first few words of the lection beside it there in the margin. I will be, though, that his dad didn't want him practicing there! You can see the full leaf here.

Well, I hope you got a chuckle. I did. And you know, you would never know about this if someone like CSNTM wasn't traveling the globe taking these pictures!

Chat with you again in October.

Over at the website for the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts we've opened up a new section for notes on individual manuscripts. If you are interested, go read the announcement on the homepage, linked to above.

The first TC Note can be found here, and is about GA 1281.

Enjoy.

While I was in hurricane land, I did take some time to read. After all, you have to put down the chainsaw every once in a while. I finished Whose Bible Is It? by Jaroslav Pelikan. At first I was a little disappointed, but then I realized that it was aimed more at the beginner, so I settled in and enjoyed the book. I did learn some things, so it was worth reading. This is also the first book by Pelikan that I have read, and I may just have to read another one some day. If you are interested in how the Old Testament/Tanakh and the New Testament were formed, including how both were read and used, you may find it interesting.

I also picked up a copy of the ESV for about $6 at Half Price Books. I've read snippets out of the translation before, but needed a physical copy for longer reading stints.

The first book I jumped into after Pelikan's was Christianity and Paganism, 350-750: The Conversion of Western Europe. The copy I picked up for only $4.98 at Half Price Books is in horrible condition, but the reading itself has been pleasurable. It is, however, too early to tell if the book will end up being worth my time.

As a general rule, Christian bookstores only depress me because they have really crappy selections. But I did have a little free time before I left Beaumont, so the mum and I dropped in to the local LifeWay. Surprisingly, not everything there was complete rubbish. My mom agreed to buy me How We Got the Bible if I promised to let her read it when I was done. So far the book is really very basic and I've got the feeling that it has a really conservative bone to pick. But time will tell on that one as well.

I don't know if you, dear reader, like to read beginner books, but I do. I think it is for the same reason that I took first year Greek for a second time; I wanted to see how somebody else did it. Writing for a lay audience without losing the facts is a difficult thing to do, and I like seeing it done well. Pelikan did it well. We'll see if Lightfoot does.

While I was gone I received two books in the mail. One was Presentation Zen, a book with "Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery". Since I do presentations, I figured it might be worth my time as it comes recommended highly. I have recently been reading the author's blog by the same title, and it seems worthwhile.

The other book that I received was Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark. I read about a third of it a few months ago, and since I just began co-teaching a series on Mark at church I figured I would go ahead and get a copy.

And, though it isn't actually a book but I'll tell you about it anyway because it cost way too much money, I purchased my very own copy of Photoshop CS3. I've been using the trial for a month and got the cash to pay for the real thing. Though the lingo and tools are hard to get used to at first, you can really do some amazing stuff with it. It will definitely be very handy in my web development work.

Well, that's it for tonight! Need to get some reading done before I get some z's...

I've spent the last few days in hurricane-ravished Southeast Texas. I visited family and friends in the Beaumont area to help out. I ended up helping my Dad and Granny out with fallen trees and limbs, which is always fun (okay...not really). I also visited a friend whose house was hit by storm surge. Right outside of Bridge City everything looked fine, but once you got in every yard you looked at had a large pile of sheet-rock, insulation, furniture and various belongings in the front yard. My friend's house had water in it at least four foot high. With the exception of the top four inches, his truck was completely submerged. What a mess.

Two things, completely polar-opposite of each other, struck me during my visit. The first was the resilience of the people whose homes had been destroyed. They obviously weren't happy about it, but the few I actually talked to didn't seem too down.

On the other hand, I heard a number of negative things about the work that FEMA was doing. My guess is that FEMA is probably trying but they are limited by the fact that a very large area has just been wiped out. But I really don't want to defend FEMA because I don't know enough to say "yay" or "nay" on the job they're doing. I just want to say this, that all the talk about FEMA tells me one thing very clearly: people depend too much on the government. It should be obvious by now that the government is not good at much of anything except blowing up stuff. That they have proven they are quite adept at. How long will people depend on the government to protect them from natural disaster? For their education? Shall they depend on them for their health care and their financial well-being? Nothing I have seen gives me any confidence that they will do a good job at any of these things, so why do people put up with parties that are clearly okay with large, sprawling, behemoth governments? We are in a sad state.

Today I was searching for the text of the anti-Marcionite prologues for books of the New Testament (surprisingly hard to find) and came upon some interesting things. In my never-ceasing quest to not be completely useless, here are the three things I found:

First, here is where I found the text of the anti-Marcionite prologues. I was specifically looking for the prologue to Mark, but this site has more. It even has Latin and Greek texts available. Awesome. I am so a fan of this guy now.

Second, a page devoted to the Old (older than the Vulgate) Latin manuscripts of the New Testament. This could come in useful.

Third, a really nice site about Codex Gigas. Everything about this is great except that it doesn't give you links to decent resolution images of the manuscript. You have to use their viewer, which is mediocre. So, nice material, but they're not as cool as CSNTM :)

Two sessions ago I started taking my little Greek reading group through the Protoevangelion of James. So how has it turned out?

It is turning out very well! I think there are several reasons for this:

• It is easy Greek. It makes for a good beginner/early intermediate reading exercise.
• Neither of the students had read it before in English. We had finished working through the first chapter of the gospel of Mark just previous. I think they are enjoying this more because of the fun of the discovery process.
• Seeing them working through idioms in their head that they have no English background for the text has seemed particularly fun for them. For example, Rubel tells Joachim that he can't offer his gift first because σπέρμα οὐκ ἐποίησας ἐν τῷ Ἰσραήλ. Both figuring out what this meant and the slight shock of it for someone who does not live in a culture that treats barrenness as a curse from God made for a fun ten minute discussion.

In two sessions I think we've made it through about four chapters and 100 hot wings.

If you live in the Dallas area and would like to participate, let me know and we can chat about it.

The title of the post was taken from this post over at godfearin.blogspot.com. It and its comment thread are definitely worth reading.

I do not myself submit to Rome so I can't say that I agree with the post. However, if you read it and the comments you get a good dose of some of the Catholic mindset, which is good to understand. You also have a few protestants and orthodox jump in during the commenting and get some good discussion going. Despite my disagreement, it is well said and thoughtful (not in a sentimental kind of way) and even thought-provoking.