Koinonia

"The Codex Sinaiticus: Pages from the World's Oldest Bible Reunited" by Karen H. Jobes

The ancient codex meets modern technology with the Codex Sinaiticus project that went online this month. Because Sinaiticus, the world’s oldest Bible, was originally acquired in parts during the 19th-century, for more than a century it pages have been secured away from easy access in four institutions: the British Library, the University Library in Leipzig, the National Library of Russia, and St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt.

On July 6, 2009, a partnership agreement by these four institutions culminated in the reunion of the entire Bible in digital form online. All known leaves of Codex Sinaiticus have been digitally photographed and assembled at http://www.codexsinaiticus.org, where the manuscript can be viewed, along with a transcription of its Greek text and translations into English, modern Greek, German, and Russian. Never before have scholars and the general public alike had such close and sustained access to this ancient manuscript. The BBC announced the project at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8135415.stm.

To see features of the website showing the manuscript, its transcription, and English translation go to http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=9.

Karen H. Jobes is the Gerald F. Hawthorne Professor of New Testament Greek and Exegesis at Wheaton College. She is the author of The Alpha-Text of Esther: Its Character and Relationship to the Masoretic Text, Esther in the NIV Application Commentary series and Invitation to the Septuagint with Moises Silva. Karen also translated Esther for the Codex Sinaiticus project.

Daniel B. Wallace in the Wall Street Journal

Noted textual critic and executive director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, Daniel B. Wallace (Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, Basics of New Testament Syntax), is quoted in a current Wall Street Journal article entitled "The Next Age of Discovery".

The article begins:

In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures.

In the process, they're uncovering unexpected troves of new finds, including never-before-seen versions of the Christian Gospels, fragments of Greek poetry and commentaries on Aristotle.

Among these "unexpected troves" are 75 New Testament manuscripts discovered by Wallace and his team, many with attached commentaries previously unknown to scholars.  

Click here to read the full article.

Digitally Preserving the Word of God by Daniel B. Wallace

My sabbatical from teaching duties at Dallas Seminary began officially on July 1, 2008, but it actually got started on May 23. I’ve had the privilege of traveling all over the globe in search of Greek New Testament manuscripts. And I’ve been digitally photographing them as well.

Under the auspices of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), an institute I founded in 2002, we have been digitally preserving ancient handwritten copies of the New Testament. To date, we have photographed more than 100,000 unique pages. In 2008, we went to Tirana, Albania; Patmos, Kozani, Athens, and Mytilene, Greece; Muenster, Germany; Cambridge, Leicester, Arundel, and Oxford, England; Glasgow, St Andrews, and Edinburgh, Scotland; Dublin, Ireland; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Orlando, Florida.

  In January 2009, we sent a team to Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Australia; and Auckland, New Zealand. We are right now gearing up for the rest of 2009. On the docket are Athens, Andros, Kozani, and Meteora, Greece; Muenster and Munich, Germany; Bucharest, Romania; Milan, Italy; Patmos, Greece; and Tbilisi, Georgia. We are also hoping to go to Cairo and St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt.

We are extremely grateful to these monasteries and museums, universities and public libraries, for allowing us to shoot their manuscripts and preserve them digitally for generations to come. In 2008 alone, we discovered more than a dozen manuscripts—about equal to what the rest of the world has discovered in the last six years. Among the manuscripts photographed are two papyri, both from the third century, a purple codex from the sixth century, and scores of later manuscripts, some of which are far more significant than their medieval date would suggest.

It’s imperative that scholars examine these manuscripts in detail to help determine the exact wording of the original New Testament. This is why CSNTM exists: to give scholars access to these images so that they can continue their work of establishing, word by word, the text of the New Testament.

We covet your prayers as we continue in this exciting (and exhausting!) field. And we would appreciate your support, since CSNTM is funded entirely by donation. You can see tens of thousands of images of manuscripts at www.csntm.org.

   Daniel B. Wallace (PhD, Dallas Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a noted textual critic, serving as head of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and is author of Greek Grammar beyond the Basics, Basics of New Testament Syntax, and (with Grant Edwards) of A Workbook for New Testament Syntax. Read more of Daniel Wallace at www.bible.org and www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/

The Pool of Siloam and the Gospel of John by Gary Burge

Frequent visitors to Jerusalem know well the Pool of Siloam located at the south end of the city of David. However the pool so often viewed at the far end of Hezekiah’s tunnel is something rebuilt entirely in the 5th century by Byzantine architects eager to reshape Jerusalem into a city welcoming Christian pilgrims. In the 19th century it was given another facelift and this has been a traditional spot for Christian visitors to retell the story of John 9.

However in the fall of 2004, Israeli excavators working on a sewer line began hitting cut stone a bit further south from the traditional pool. Archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron were brought in and since then digging has been ongoing. A remarkable picture of the pool has emerged (see Todd Bolen’s excellent collection of photos) and this has begun a discussion concerning the real nature of the pool itself. Was it used for water collection? Was it a ritual bath before entry to the Temple? We can expect the scholarly interpretations to be vigorous for some years to come.

The interesting exegetical feature of this subject connects with John 9, the only NT passage to refer to the pool (but see Lk 13:4; cf. Neh. 3:15).

"A Dead Sea Scroll in Stone" by Walter C. Kaiser Jr.

Quite a stir has been fomented in recent weeks over what is being nick-named "A Dead Sea Scroll in Stone." This three-foot-tall tablet of 87 lines in Hebrew has raised more than eyebrows because it appears to speak of a Messiah who will suffer and rise from the dead after three days. Even more startling is the fact that it purports to come the decades just before Jesus' time on earth.

According to press reports, it is written in ink (not engraved) in two neat columns, but the stone is broken and a portion of the text has faded, leaving a good deal of what it contains open to debate. Moreover, though this stone apparently had been around for 60 years since the Scrolls were uncovered, the authenticity of this stone has not faced the stiff challenges it can probably expect both with regard to its authenticity and interpretation.

But there is no doubt that one of the key debates in the days ahead will be the concept of a Suffering Messiah. Was this a real part of the TENAK (=Old Testament), or is this concept of a Suffering Anointed One and his Resurrection a Christian imposition or is it a reinterpretation of the TENAK?

Both in my The Messiah in the Old Testament and in the most recent The Promise-Plan of God (Zondervan), I have argued that both Messiah's suffering and his resurrection are an endemic part of the earlier writings of the TENAK.