Tag: Scribal Activity

Daily Gleanings (10 June 2019)

Citing a typical description of early Christian scribal culture, Michael Kruger comments:

There are a lot of claims in this brief couple of sentences. Unfortunately, virtually every one of them is mistaken.

Kruger then proceeds to discuss three ways in which this early culture was comparatively more professional and competent than it is often described as being.

For the details of Kruger’s comments, see his original post.

On the eschatology of the Christian tradition’s major creeds, Jake Mailhot comments:

Though there are no charts or timelines in these creeds, they are profound. Christian hope is plain in Scripture, and it’s mirrored clearly in our creeds: Christ will come again to establish justice and peace forever.

For more, see LogosTalk.

Wallace, “Medieval manuscripts”

ETS logoIn its first 2017 issue (currently behind the society membership paywall), the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society has a version of Daniel Wallace’s presidential address from the 2016 annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting: “Medieval Manuscripts and Modern Evangelicals: Lessons from the Past, Guidance for the Future” (5–34). Per the abstract, the essay focuses on

paratextual and codicological material in medieval Greek NT manuscripts … that have been largely neglected by evangelicals. Five such features are touched on in this article: (1) the growing canon consciousness and emergence of the codex and their interrelationship; (2) subscriptions (scribal notes at the end of NT books, often reflecting very early traditions) and colophons (blessing, supplication, or mild complaint by a scribe at the end of his codex); (3) the significant but essentially ignored role of female scribes through the centuries; (4) the part that paratextual features in these MSS played in helping scribes to memorize scripture; and (5) the visual priority given to Scripture over tradition in MSS with commentaries.

The article has a substantial and interesting discussion of each of these points, as well as some helpful additional discussion and bibliography in several of the footnotes.