AJR on Working with Manuscripts

Ancient Jew Review has a two-part review series on Liv Ingeborg Lied and Brent Nongbri's new book on Working with Manuscripts. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like exactly the kind of practical advice I would have liked to have had when I first started working with manuscripts. If you're interested in learning more about working with actual manuscripts, check it out!

Scriptural Vitality Book Panel

The Oxford Interfaith Forum has posted a video recording of a book panel reviewing Hindy Najman's new book on Scriptural Vitality.

Scribes and Language Use in the Graeco-Roman World

Michael Freeman presents a helpful review of a recent volume:

Sonja Dahlgren, Martti Leiwo, Marja Vierros, Scribes and language use in the Graeco-Roman world. Commentationes humanarum litterarum, 147. Helsinki: The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2024. Pp. 285. ISBN 9789516535206.

The book has an interesting assortment of test cases regarding language interference, the relationship between author and scribe, and quantitative approaches to stylistic analysis.

Contents

Introduction (Martti Leiwo)

1. The language use of the Narmouthis scribes: Foreign language perception and native language transfers. A case study (Sonja Dahlgren)
2. Scribal Revision in the Process of Text Production. A Linguistic Typology of Scribal Corrections in Four Genres of Greek Documentary Papyri (Joanne Vera Stolk)
3. Whose words? Identifying authors in Greek papyrus texts using machine learning (Marja Vierros & Erik Henriksson)
4. Infinitives at Work. Competing Patterns in Early Ptolemaic Papyrus Letters (Carla Bruno)
5. A Bilingual Scribe in Early Roman Tax Receipts from Elephantine (Ruth Duttenhöffer)
6. Documentary papyri as ‘multimodal’ texts. Aspects of variation in the Nepheros archive (IV CE) (Klaas Bentein)
7. Spoken Greek and the Work of Notaries in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Tommaso Mari)
8. Bilingual Letter Writers: The Verbs γράφω, οἶδα and θαυμάζω in Formulae, Idioms and Collocations (Victoria Beatrix Fendel)
9. ‘You Know Justice and Law and the Kind of Writing of the Notaries’ (Rhet)or(ic)al skills and scribal act in P.Col. inv. 600 (a.k.a. P.Budge), Coptic transcript of a hearing in front of an arbitration council (Tonio Sebastian Richter)
10. Early Medieval Scribes’ Command of Latin Spelling and Grammar: A Quantitative Approach (Timo Korkiakangas)

The Origins of the Greek Alphabet

A. Sebastian Anderson has published an interesting review of Robert Parker, Philippa M. Steele, The early Greek alphabets: origin, diffusion, uses. Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Jensen's Review of Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life

Minna Skafte Jensen writes a helpful and positive review of Anne Kolb (ed.), Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2018). The volume contributes to ongoing discussions on the rates and nuances of literacy in antiquity (especially in the Roman Empire), breaking down how exactly reading and writing may have functioned in different contexts.

Van der Horst Review of Snapshots of Evolving Traditions

Pieter van der Horst has a sympathetic but critical review of Liv Ingeborg Lied, Hugo Lundhaug (ed.), Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. I think he does a fair job appreciating the value of the material turn in philology, but also pushing back against the reductionistic idea that we should abandon all attempts at critical text reconstruction (as does Davila in the same volume). I would agree completely that Material Philology is an opportunity to expand the horizons of our scholarship, not an excuse to narrow them.

Emanuel Tov Reviews Hendel's Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible

Emanuel Tov reviews Ron Hendel's Steps to a New Edition of the Hebrew Bible in RBL. I have often felt that Tov was more focused and reliable on the nitty-gritty philological details, and Hendel moreso on the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of the discipline, and this review confirmed that to me clearly! The relationship and relative emphasis between theory and praxis remains a major dividing line in the field of OTTC, but I sincerely hope that HBCE will be able to balance both well. Maybe it will be possible to have both sound methodology and philological reasoning in the same volumes after all. <cue cheeky grin> :)

Hindy Najman on Sommer's Revelation and Authority

Hindy Najman has a glowing and interesting review of Benjamin D. Sommer's Revelation and Authority in Marginalia.

HT Agade

RBL Reviews

The most recent volume of the Review of Biblical Literature has the following reviews of interest:

James H. Charlesworth, Lee Martin McDonald, and Blake A. Jurgens, eds.
Sacra Scriptura: How “Non-canonical” Texts Functioned in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=9720
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

Eric J. Tully
The Translation and Translator of the Peshitta of Hosea
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=10382
Reviewed by Jerome A. Lund

Glenny Reviews Kreuzer's "The Bible in Greek"

In the most recent RBL Ed Glenny reviews Sigmund Kreuzer's The Bible in Greek: Translation, Transmission, and Theology of the Septuagint. It sounds like an apology for the Antiochene/Lucianic text in Septuagint research and a good read for anyone interested in Septuagint studies.

TC Reviews from RBL

The most recent RBL has three reviews relevant to OTTC:


Guide to Hebrew Manuscript CollectionsRichler, Benjamin
Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2014 pp. x + 409.2nd Edition. $60.00


La Biblia griega Septuaginta 3: Libros poéticos y sapiencialesMarcos, Natalio Fernandez, Jose Manuel Canas Reillo, Mercedes Lopez Salva, Inmaculada Delgado Jara, Antonio Pinero Saenz, Lorena Miralles Macia and M. Victoria Spottorno Diaz-Caro, translatorsSalamanaca: Ediciones Sigueme, 2013 pp. 670. $55.77


Reconsidering Nehemiah's Judah: The Case of MT and LXX Nehemia 11–12
Fulton, Deirdre N.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015 pp. xv + 258. €79.00










       

Hugh Houghton Reviews "The Erotic Life of Manuscripts"

Hugh Houghton recently published a review of Yii-Jan Lin's The Erotic Life of Manuscripts: New Testament Textual Criticism and the Biological Sciences. He is generally appreciative of her attempt to prompt conversations on important issues about how textual critics describe and conduct their work, but also worries she overplays her hand at points.

HT Eibert Tigchelaar

review of Hugh Houton's The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts

Andrew Dunnin writes a critical, but appreciative review of Hugh Houton's The Latin New Testament: A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts. Hugh's book focuses on the NT manuscript tradition, but it is also valuable for studying Latin OT manuscripts.