Codex Sinaiticus

Well it is finally coming on-line. Codex Sinaiticus, a very early copy of the New Testament, will release Psalms (It has some OT books too) and the book of Mark this Thursday. The rest of the books will follow. Conspicuously absent in this codex is the last chapter of Mark I believe. I want to check it out.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/07/21/online.bible.ap/index.html

Here is a short reflection paper I wrote on the subject.

Mark

Paper for possible publication

I just submitted my first article for publication in an academic journal. I have spent a lot of time lately turning chapter 4 of my M.A. thesis in a single coherent article. I had my wife, and then a professional proofreader (one of the advantages of working for a publishing company) read it over. It's called "The Economic Significance of the Temple Incident for Mark’s First-Century
Community: Mark 11:11,15-19."

I'm pretty nervous. I just sent to to James Vanderkam today. He is the editor of Journal of Biblical Literature. JBL is a big time journal and I'm not sure if this will be good enough but i have 2 friends published in JBL so why not. I'm submitting to JBL because i wrote it using the SBL style guide and it would be a pain to change it into the format for Biblica. I guess if they reject it, I'll try Biblica next.

Text and Canon

I have an interview at Tyndale House tomorrow regarding issues of "text and canon." I've found it difficult to read older authors discussing canon issues, because their terminology seems to be different from mine (and I think others). Zahn believed the NT was canonical by the end of the first century because it was used in the worship and church fathers quoted it; Harnack believed the NT was canonical by the end of the second century because church fathers were now using the quotation formula: "it is written" (gegraptai); Sundberg aptly distinguished between Scripture and canon by describing Scripture as the authoritative text of a community while canon was an exclusive list of these texts. Therefore, he considers the NT canonical in the 4th century, based on Athanasius' Easter letter, the Muratorian canon, and the councils.