Textual Criticism Quiz

For matters relating to textual biblical studies, Dan Wallace over at Parchment and Pen has posted a quiz on New Testament Textual Criticism.  I went through it last week but discovered, with the answers now available by Dan, that there is key phrasing to some of the questions!  If you are interested in such quizzes head on over there before reading any further here.  The answers are now posted but I encourage you to work through the quiz first.  It’s a great learning exercise for ancient texts and manuscripts.

Some of the key phrasing — for example, with #1 the key word is “published” not “printed.”  With #6 the key word is “complete.”  My original answer was P52.  I should read my questions more carefully!

Here is the link to Dan’s answer key.

Free Rice

A new site Free Rice, started this month, gives vocabulary quizzes for people who want to donate rice for the poor. Its banner states, “For each word you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger.” This morning, while eating breakfast, I donated a portion — very easy! Give it a try.

Virgil’s Aeneid on iTunes

From a recent browsing through iTunes U, I discovered Standford University has available a series of lectures on Virgil’s Aeneid by Susanna Braund. So far the lectures I’ve heard are very informative and worth hearing. Take a look, listen and download.

Program of Imperial Domination

I’m now getting a chance to post! I wanted to share a few things for paper research in my Early Roman Empire course I’m taking this semester. Originally, I wanted to focus on the Romanization of the East in the areas of Palestine and Israel, with particular interest in the interaction between Marcus Agrippa and Herod the Great in the early Empire era. But I was unsure of what material to hone in within that. Though, over the course of the semester, I have noticed in the class lectures a recurring motif, which has intrigued me, of imperial domination depicted in imperial art — i.e., the image of the ‘orb of the universe’ — depicting emperors posing with foot near or on a globe to represent their domination over the (known) world. I’m also interested in the divine or semi-divine attributes given in these depictions. I haven’t started research officially but I know I have some good leads for the construction of the paper. Below are a few images. Hopefully, as I research this, I’ll find more images of this sort (foot near/on globe with emperors of the early Empire). If any of you have leads for more images, please share and leave a comment!

Silver denarius, Octavian as Neptune, before 31 BCE. Notice on the right: DIVI F — divi f(ilius), “son of a god” (emphasizing his inheritance to Julius Caesar).

Imperial family in marble relief. “Apotheosis of Augustus,” Claudian era, 40-50 CE. Notice on the right: Augustus depicted as Jupiter, wearing a crown, with his foot placed on the globe.

Trajan’s Fountain, Ephesus. Before 114 CE.

Detail of Trajan’s Fountain. Although poorly preserved, you can still clearly see the globe and a foot next to it.

Latin Nouns

Here is the next printable PDF — Latin nouns.  Soon I’ll have a link up at Google Docs in that format.Download: Latin nouns

• Update: for the latest click on the Latin Page in the side menu.

Updated linked files

Sooner than expected, I’ve updated each post which has a link of a printable PDF Latin or Greek chart. For now I’m ditching MediaMax because of its inconsistency and will stick with GooglePages for a while. These are only concerning the PDFs (which are only three at this point!).Here are the updates:

• Latin — Pronouns, Verb Paradigm
• Greek — Verb Paradigm

More to come soon! Stay tuned…

• Update: for the latest click on the Latin or Greek Page in the side menu or the designated tabs above (at top of the site).

mediamax

I’ve been storing files on this blog through MediaMax, but it seems to be doing a poor job of making them available.  I will soon take care of this problem, most likely this weekend, and have all the pdf files up and available through Google pages or some other free storage site.  If any of you are able to successfully open any of the documents, please leave a comment telling so.  The problem may be isolated with my computer.

stay tuned

I’ve been away quite a while since my classes and study time are occupying most of my time.  Soon I’ll probably add a post or two with one dealing with Augustus Caesar and Trajan — some observations from my Early Roman Empire course.