Kushana's Bible Question Page
A religion scholar muses on her field and recent discoveries
Questions welcome
A religion scholar muses on her field and recent discoveries
Questions welcome
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Kushana's Bible Question Page
Oldest Complete Bible Online
http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/
This means that the oldest complete Bible dates from the 300's C.E. There are individual books of the Bible (and fragments of books that are older) but none dates to the lifetime of Jesus or his immediate followers. It contains both the now-familiar contents of the Bible and the Letter of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. (You can read nice modern translations in Bart Ehrman's vol. 2 of the Apostolic Fathers, (ISBN 978-0674996083) a little green book from the Loeb Classical Library. Loeb translations usually aim for solid competence rather than literary excellence (their main value is the original language on each left-hand page), but Ehrman's translations are a pleasant exception.) Both translations also appear in his Lost Scriptures (ISBN 978-0195141825), the companion volume to Lost Christianities (ISBN 978-0195182491.)
In other words, both 'additional' books were viewed as part of the Bible by the scribes who copied Codex Sinaiticus: the idea that there should be one uniform collection of holy books (the Bible is a library of short books) took centuries to form in both Christianity and Judaism.
This is not the first time scholars have had access to Sinaiticus. The edition of the Greek New Testament that historians use is The Greek New Testament edited by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Bruce M. Metzger, C. M. Martini (ISBN 978-1598561715.) The bottom of each page contains running footnotes (see the image here). The image shows that the quoting of Psalm 41:9 in the Gospel of John 13:18 has a small variation: certain manuscripts and Church Fathers have "my" in the quotation, others (including Sinaiticus) have "with me".
If you look under the line at the bottom of the page you'll see:
____________________________________________________________
4 18 {D} greek (abbreviations of Biblical manuscripts and Biblical quotes from Church Fathers)
Cyril // greek P66
and something that looks like a curved X. That's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the abbreviation for Codex Sinaiticus. The text of the New Testament in Greek is a patchwork of different manuscripts: our complete manuscripts are centuries newer than Christianity's first generations, our oldest manuscripts are never the complete ones. As you can imagine, Sinaiticus is one of our best resources for reconstructing the New Testament and anyone who works with the Christian Bible in its original Greek becomes very familiar with that Hebrew letter.*
(The problem of how quotes from the Hebrew Bible look in the New Testament requires two further books: the standard scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in Hebrew, and the standard scholarly edition of the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint, abbreviated as the LXX.)* Early Christians — and many Second Temple Jews — read and discussed the Hebrew Bible in Greek (even the Dead Sea Scrolls show Biblical Hebrew was not a living language). There was no one, standard, official translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (and anyone quoting from memory can make a mistake, even an Evangelist or Church Father) so each New Testament quote tells historians which ancient translation a scribe or Church Father had (or at least how they remembered it), and what they thought it meant.)
The important thing to remember if you browse Codex Sinaiticus is that every ancient book was copied by hand (often by more than one person: try copying an entire book — or even a long poem or short story — neatly and uniformly by hand and you'll discover why) and no two ancient books were alike.
-Kushana
* Yes, scholars have funny abbreviations for things. The 'why' is usually an anecdote that's a good way to sidetrack a lecture. Graceful recoveries from anecdotes is a skill — although there are masters who teach solely in anecdotes.
A
“unique treasure” of Biblical history is to be made available online
for the first time .... The
Codex Sinaiticus, considered to be the world’s most important Biblical
manuscript, dates from the fourth century and is thought to be the
earliest, most complete Christian bible. The manuscript is, however, split up and housed in four different
locations - London, Sinai, St Petersburg and Leipzig. This means that
pages from one book of the bible manuscript might be housed in two or
more different repositories. http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART59557.html
This means that the oldest complete Bible dates from the 300's C.E. There are individual books of the Bible (and fragments of books that are older) but none dates to the lifetime of Jesus or his immediate followers. It contains both the now-familiar contents of the Bible and the Letter of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. (You can read nice modern translations in Bart Ehrman's vol. 2 of the Apostolic Fathers, (ISBN 978-0674996083) a little green book from the Loeb Classical Library. Loeb translations usually aim for solid competence rather than literary excellence (their main value is the original language on each left-hand page), but Ehrman's translations are a pleasant exception.) Both translations also appear in his Lost Scriptures (ISBN 978-0195141825), the companion volume to Lost Christianities (ISBN 978-0195182491.)
In other words, both 'additional' books were viewed as part of the Bible by the scribes who copied Codex Sinaiticus: the idea that there should be one uniform collection of holy books (the Bible is a library of short books) took centuries to form in both Christianity and Judaism.
This is not the first time scholars have had access to Sinaiticus. The edition of the Greek New Testament that historians use is The Greek New Testament edited by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Bruce M. Metzger, C. M. Martini (ISBN 978-1598561715.) The bottom of each page contains running footnotes (see the image here). The image shows that the quoting of Psalm 41:9 in the Gospel of John 13:18 has a small variation: certain manuscripts and Church Fathers have "my" in the quotation, others (including Sinaiticus) have "with me".
If you look under the line at the bottom of the page you'll see:
____________________________________________________________
4 18 {D} greek (abbreviations of Biblical manuscripts and Biblical quotes from Church Fathers)
Cyril // greek P66
and something that looks like a curved X. That's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the abbreviation for Codex Sinaiticus. The text of the New Testament in Greek is a patchwork of different manuscripts: our complete manuscripts are centuries newer than Christianity's first generations, our oldest manuscripts are never the complete ones. As you can imagine, Sinaiticus is one of our best resources for reconstructing the New Testament and anyone who works with the Christian Bible in its original Greek becomes very familiar with that Hebrew letter.*
(The problem of how quotes from the Hebrew Bible look in the New Testament requires two further books: the standard scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in Hebrew, and the standard scholarly edition of the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint, abbreviated as the LXX.)* Early Christians — and many Second Temple Jews — read and discussed the Hebrew Bible in Greek (even the Dead Sea Scrolls show Biblical Hebrew was not a living language). There was no one, standard, official translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (and anyone quoting from memory can make a mistake, even an Evangelist or Church Father) so each New Testament quote tells historians which ancient translation a scribe or Church Father had (or at least how they remembered it), and what they thought it meant.)
The important thing to remember if you browse Codex Sinaiticus is that every ancient book was copied by hand (often by more than one person: try copying an entire book — or even a long poem or short story — neatly and uniformly by hand and you'll discover why) and no two ancient books were alike.
-Kushana
* Yes, scholars have funny abbreviations for things. The 'why' is usually an anecdote that's a good way to sidetrack a lecture. Graceful recoveries from anecdotes is a skill — although there are masters who teach solely in anecdotes.
Gabriel's Revelation Addendum
Coast to Coast AM did a program on Gabriel's Revelation last night with Dr. Kenneth Hanson, a professor at the University of Central Florida. The school's webpage does not say where he earned his degree (a strange omission). There are at least three Kenneth Hansons in the profession: this Dr. Hanson has published either one (or no) articles in the field of Religion and the books Amazon lists under ...<< MORE >>
Gabriel's Revelation
A colleague in Hebrew Bible Studies just forwarded this to me:
http://tinyurl.com/5gmdll
I don't know any more than I have read, here:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999719.html
I would like to look at a larger photograph of the stone before commenting.
-Kushana
...<< MORE >>
http://tinyurl.com/5gmdll
I don't know any more than I have read, here:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999719.html
I would like to look at a larger photograph of the stone before commenting.
-Kushana
...<< MORE >>
Gnosticism and Nihilism
I always perk up when I see a reference to what I study in something in the news. I just came across this in the New York Times Book Review section:
Mr. Guterson’s hero is a decidedly more troubled character. He’s a proselytizer who is obsessed with Gnosticism and the evils of the material world, an outsider who talks about suicide and chants: “No escape from the unhappiness machine ... No escape from the unhappiness machine. ...”
<< MORE >>
Mr. Guterson’s hero is a decidedly more troubled character. He’s a proselytizer who is obsessed with Gnosticism and the evils of the material world, an outsider who talks about suicide and chants: “No escape from the unhappiness machine ... No escape from the unhappiness machine. ...”
<< MORE >>
In Memory of George Carlin
And now, the seven famous words:
stercus, urina, concubitus, pudenda, mammae.
Or rather, five of them – I only have a student dictionary with me, designed to make looking up naughty words difficult. I’d consider the Oxford Latin Dictionary (ISBN 978-0198642244) the last word and Adams' ...<< MORE >>
stercus, urina, concubitus, pudenda, mammae.
Or rather, five of them – I only have a student dictionary with me, designed to make looking up naughty words difficult. I’d consider the Oxford Latin Dictionary (ISBN 978-0198642244) the last word and Adams' ...<< MORE >>
Gas Prices
I am sorry for the recent hiatus: I abruptly found myself in the market for a new car. Since the average
price of gas in Los Angeles is $4.62 per gallon I first looked a a hydrogen fuel cell car (but I live just outside the current test market) and most of the electric cars fit for
urban and freeway driving were either expensive or ...<< MORE >>
Mailbag: Ghosts and the Bible
Now that the semester is over my helper has been back, intermittently. Recently they rolled out from under the blog's workings to comment that some readers had been lead to the webpage by queries phrased as, "What about ____ and the Bible?"
If you're curious about what topics are mentioned in the Bible, I can recommend two good sources:
1) a print concordance to a particular translation of the Bible (it is best if the translation the concordance matches the Bible you are looking ate, but since once of my fascinations is translation differences I am always interested to see how different translations phrase things.)
Some samples:
The Concise Concordance to the New Revised Standard Version by John R. Kohlenberger (ISBN 978-0195284102)
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible by James Strong (ISBN 978-0195282764)
The New American Bible Concise Concordance by John R. Kohlenberger III (ISBN 978-0195282764)
Or, online (this is no endorsement: none of these pages replicate good Bible research software for the range of translations, ease of searching, and working with the original languages):
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/
http://www.blueletterbible.org/
http://bibleresources.bible.com/bible_read.php
http://www.biblestudytools.net/
(Bear in mind that sites put interpretive resources and helps close at hand because that's what they want you to read (or the resource is out-of-print and thus postable.)) I am warmly in favor of reading broadly and making up one's own mind: there is a far broader world to how the Bible is (and has) been read than any of these sites suggest.
I know of only one ghost story in the Bible, a nice old-fashioned séance (in this case very old, and less a Victorian séance than necromancy (magic for summoning (or conversing with) the dead), RSV 1 Samuel 28:7-21:
Then Saul said to his servants, "Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her." And his servants said to him, "Behold, there is a medium at Endor." So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments, and went, he and two men with him; and they came to the woman by night.
And he said, "Divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you."
The woman said to him, "Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?"
But Saul swore to her by the LORD, "As the LORD lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing."
Then the woman said, "Whom shall I bring up for you?"
He said, "Bring up Samuel for me."
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul."
The king said to her, "Have no fear; what do you see?"
And the woman said to Saul, "I see a god coming up out of the earth."
He said to her, "What is his appearance?"
And she said, "An old man is coming up; and he is wrapped in a robe."
And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.
Then Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Saul answered, "I am in great distress .... therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do."
And Samuel said, "Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has turned from you and become your enemy? ...."
Then Saul fell at once full length upon the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night. And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified ....
Note: many cultures, including the Ancient Near East and the Classical era, though the opinions and comfort of the dead were tremendously important. It's only human to worry about the welfare of those for whom nothing more can be done and part of what makes a culture is how they treat and relate to their departed.
-Kushana
If you're curious about what topics are mentioned in the Bible, I can recommend two good sources:
1) a print concordance to a particular translation of the Bible (it is best if the translation the concordance matches the Bible you are looking ate, but since once of my fascinations is translation differences I am always interested to see how different translations phrase things.)
Some samples:
The Concise Concordance to the New Revised Standard Version by John R. Kohlenberger (ISBN 978-0195284102)
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible by James Strong (ISBN 978-0195282764)
The New American Bible Concise Concordance by John R. Kohlenberger III (ISBN 978-0195282764)
Or, online (this is no endorsement: none of these pages replicate good Bible research software for the range of translations, ease of searching, and working with the original languages):
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/
http://www.blueletterbible.org/
http://bibleresources.bible.com/bible_read.php
http://www.biblestudytools.net/
(Bear in mind that sites put interpretive resources and helps close at hand because that's what they want you to read (or the resource is out-of-print and thus postable.)) I am warmly in favor of reading broadly and making up one's own mind: there is a far broader world to how the Bible is (and has) been read than any of these sites suggest.
I know of only one ghost story in the Bible, a nice old-fashioned séance (in this case very old, and less a Victorian séance than necromancy (magic for summoning (or conversing with) the dead), RSV 1 Samuel 28:7-21:
Then Saul said to his servants, "Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her." And his servants said to him, "Behold, there is a medium at Endor." So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments, and went, he and two men with him; and they came to the woman by night.
And he said, "Divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you."
The woman said to him, "Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?"
But Saul swore to her by the LORD, "As the LORD lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing."
Then the woman said, "Whom shall I bring up for you?"
He said, "Bring up Samuel for me."
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul."
The king said to her, "Have no fear; what do you see?"
And the woman said to Saul, "I see a god coming up out of the earth."
He said to her, "What is his appearance?"
And she said, "An old man is coming up; and he is wrapped in a robe."
And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.
Then Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Saul answered, "I am in great distress .... therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do."
And Samuel said, "Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has turned from you and become your enemy? ...."
Then Saul fell at once full length upon the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night. And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified ....
Note: many cultures, including the Ancient Near East and the Classical era, though the opinions and comfort of the dead were tremendously important. It's only human to worry about the welfare of those for whom nothing more can be done and part of what makes a culture is how they treat and relate to their departed.
-Kushana
Cats and Dogs Living Together
The Book of Revelation is an apocalypse . This does not necessarily mean ‘a book that describes the end of the world’ but rather ‘a revelation’, an opening of the divine scope of history to one prophetic human being. It belongs in a category with other books like the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, some of the literature attributed to Enoch, the
<< MORE >>Tuning in the Past
I have a radio on my desk. It has a wooden cabinet, on its face are four things: a dial, a speaker, and two knobs. It was made by one of the older radio makers that is
still in business. It is one of those radios with no digital readouts: turn the backlit dial, move the needle, drift through an ocean of soft hisses to a station.
There is an entire hobby of doing this (at least on the AM band.) One would listen for distant stations (especially at night), drop them a line that you heard their signal, ...<< MORE >>
There is an entire hobby of doing this (at least on the AM band.) One would listen for distant stations (especially at night), drop them a line that you heard their signal, ...<< MORE >>
In a Classical Mood, Part IV
Some of the grand anthologies on the history of Fantasy do go back to the Classical era. So this article struck me as highly nifty:
Dr Ni-Mheallaigh is looking at the work of 2nd century AD writer, Lucian of Samosata, who wrote True Histories, a travel narrative that includes an account of a trip to the moon and interstellar warfare.
Read the rest at:
Research To Investigate Links Between Ancient
Greeks And Modern Science Fiction
...<< MORE >>
Dr Ni-Mheallaigh is looking at the work of 2nd century AD writer, Lucian of Samosata, who wrote True Histories, a travel narrative that includes an account of a trip to the moon and interstellar warfare.
Read the rest at: