Genesis Illustrated

Kelpie Wilson reviews Robert Crumb’s Genesis comic book.  Evidently the book is a fairly literal illustration of the narrative in Genesis.  The review notes that few people actually know what is in Genesis, even among those who claim to believe it.

Ben Witherington reviews the same at BeliefNet.

Biblical Scholars on You Tube

Zondervan provides brief interviews with several authors:

Peter Enns

Craig Keener

Walter Kaiser

John Walton

Oldest Hebrew Writing

Walton on Genesis and Ancient Cosmology

New Piece of an Old Book

An new fragment of Codex Sinaiticus has been discovered in Egypt by a British graduate student at St. Catherine’s Monastery.  The article in The Independent calls Codex Sinaiticus “the world’s oldest Bible.”  There are many fragments of biblical manuscripts older than Sinaiticus–but it is a nearly complete whole Bible in Greek, containing both the Old Testament and the New Testament.  In that sense, it is proper to call it the world’s oldest Bible.

Ancient manuscripts often had interesting histories.  Constantine Tischendorf found the codex in1859 in a basket at St. Catherine’s monastery, where it had been for centuries.  He made arrangements for the Russian government to purchase it.  Eventually the British government bought it from the Russians (who kept 6 leaves for themselves), and now most of it (347 leaves) is in the British Library in London.

The University of Leipzig, where Tischendorf was professor, obtained 43 leaves of it.  In 1975 the monks at St. Catherine’s discovered 12 new leaves and 40 fragments.  The new fragment was found as part of “recycled” parchment.  It had been used to form the binding of another book.

Until just this summer (June 6, 2009 to be precise) if you wanted to see the whole manuscript you would have to travel to museums in four countries just to get a glimpse.  (I saw a portion under glass in a dimly-lit room last year at the British Library.)  Only a few elite scholars have been actually allowed to study it.

But now the entire manuscript (well, except for the newly discovered fragments) is available online.  Go to the official site here to learn more about the manuscript and to see the digital images.

Thanks to Joe Collins for sending me the tip.

Hebrew Jonah Comic

I thought I posted this link earlier, but maybe that was on another blog.  The animated Hebrew Jonah Comic strip is a terrific tool for learning Hebrew.  You have to download Shockwave to run it, but you only have to do that once.  You can then play the comic strip online or download it.

The cartoons include sound, and the letters can be displayed in printed Hebrew, cursive,  or archaic script.  In addition, you can display a translation at the bottom of the page in any of several languages.

Review of Kitchen on the OT

The Bible and Interpretation had a review of Kenneth Kitchen’s Reliability of the Old Testament back in 2004.  Basically the review argues that Kitchen makes some valid points but resorts too much to name calling and polemics.  The reviewer, Charles Isabel, concludes that Kitchen is a better Egyptologist than OT scholar.

Easy Reading

Ian, at NT Math has calculated the Top Twenty easiest chapters to read in the Greek New Testament.  Ian is a mathematician with an interest in religion and the Greek New Testament, in particular.  Thanks to Daniel and Tonya  at Hebrew and Greek Reader for the tip.

I wouldn’t have guessed that John 17 is the easiest chapter in the GNT.

Top 50

Biblioblogs list the top 50 Bible Blogs  here.

West Semitic Inscriptions

The University of Southern California sponsers the West Semitic Research Project, which includes “Ancient images and commentary relating to the Bible and the ancient Near East, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and West Semitic inscriptions.

There are a few easy links to low resolution images for the general public and information to register for access to high quality digital images for scholars.

Sites for Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek Inscription

Telamon is a new online library of ancient Greek inscriptions from Bulgaria.  Right now the site only has three inscriptions, but each one is simple and interesting.  The site also has links to other similar projects.

If you are just learning the Greek alphabeta, try out some of these inscriptions–it’s good practice!

The TLG list of online resources is another great access point for budding scholars.

Interview

Daniel and Tonya interviewed Hebrew teacher Karyn Traphagen on their Hebrew and Greek Reader blog.  Karyn gives her advice on teaching and learning Hebrew, and on gardening, at her Boulders 2 Bits site.  Be sure to check out the “Hebrew Resources” page, if you are learning Hebrew.

Karyn is living in North Carolina; it’s a bit warmer there, so her tomato plants are ahead of mine.  But I’ll catch up by July, deo volente.