S.C.Carlson

No, Migne should really only be used if a Church father has not been edited in the past 100 years. Perhaps the best to way to have access to the best Greek texts of the fathers is to get an on-line subscription to TLG.

If you want books, there are a lot of Church fathers, so I'd consider getting what's most important to you first. For example, if you want the Apostolic fathers, get either the diglot edition by Mike Holmes or Bart Ehrman. Then, start in the 2d century and go up (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, etc.)

Nevertheless, a convenient copy of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History with the Greek (e.g. Loeb) is always useful.

A top-rate commentary which cites lots of opposing views is always good (e.g. Gundry, Joel Marcus). For Matthew, I really like the ICC commentary by Davies and Allison.

For TC, it's good that Metzger is on your list. I might also consider Aland & Aland either in addition or instead of (I haven't yet looked at Ehrman's revision of Metzger.) Hort's introduction is still a classic; one cannot understand modern TC of the NT without understanding what Hort argued. Loved or hated, he is the point of departure.

If you want to understand how TC is done outside of the NT, Paul Maas's little book, Textual Criticism, (55 pp.) is a gem.

Thanks for putting my book on the list!

Stephen

Ben C Smith

BTW, you might already know, but if you are looking for a plain Greek text (not a critical edition), the Skeptik site has a bunch of original texts (Greek, Latin, and Hebrew). I have indexed most of them for convenience. But, of course, when it comes to accuracy the standard hardcopy editions are the next-to-final word (second only to examining the manuscripts themselves).

Ben.

Julian

TLG? I am not familiar with that...
Is the Ehrman books diglot, or just the Holmes? I could not find the Holmes on Amazon. A search for Mike Holmes brings up all kinds of stuff not related to our field.
Looks like one for the list, however, they have two versions listed. One which says books I-V and the other one doesn't say that. I assume that I would want the one that doesn't say that?
Did you write this post for the military? Some many abbreviations... I will put it on my wish list but I am not sure I am ready for Matthew yet, I have been focusing on Mark and to some extent Luke. So much to learn and study...
I have the Aland's book. Good book but I find myself disagreeing with him more than I do with most other authors in the TC field. Still, an excellent source of information.
Check.
No problem. I have been following yours and Wieland's (and others) discussion on the TC list and want to know what it is all about. With what limited knowledge I have, I agree with you, so far, but now I must know what you wrote. Online you have argued your case well.

Besides, how could I not support the efforts of our posters here on II?

Julian

Julian

I have a really hard time reading the uncial manuscripts. For some reason I just can't make heads or tails of their writing. A printed uncial I can read, although not very well, and the minuscules, of course, but that two thousand year old scrawl is giving me a hard time. Maybe there is a book on how to read old Greek writing...?

Julian

mens_sana

I would hold off on Brown's "Death..." until you read John Dominic Crossan's Who Killed Jesus? (a nice slim paperback ISBN 0-06-061480-3), after which you will find you've saved yourself some money.

Now, while I could never recommend Brown's "Death...", his Birth of the Messiah is excellent, and his Introduction to the Gospel of John (and the John section in his Introduction to the New Testament) will give you a better picture that the book by C.H. Dodd.

Ben C Smith

Most of those Skeptik texts do not use uncials. Is it possible your encoding is not set to Unicode? On your browser, go to view, then encoding, then find Unicode (or UTF-8 or some such). Of course, you will need a Unicode font; there are several free ones online. Without those steps the Skeptik texts will not even be Greek. They will be miscellaneous Unicode gibberish.

I am proud to say that the TLG, or Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, is the crown jewel of the Classics department at my alma mater, the University of California at Irvine. It is a collection of ancient Greek texts that was originally slated to be comprehensive through about 600 AD, but now in fact goes deep into the Byzantine period, at least.

Ben.

Notsri

If I might interject; Holmes' edition is here.

P.S. If you're willing to consider monoglot (i.e. English) versions of the fathers as well, you really can't go wrong with either the Paulist Press's Ancient Christian Writers series (ACW) or the Catholic University of America Press's Fathers of the Church series (FOTC), both of which projects are ongoing. The FOTC has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100+ volumes, ACW maybe between 50-60—more than what you're looking for at this time I'm sure, but a healthy selection from which to choose nevertheless.

The FOTC is particularly notable for its many patristic commentaries. In fact, it just published about a month ago a first English translation of Didymus the Blind's commentary on Zechariah, and a translation of a commentary on the book of Revelation, by a certain Oecumenius, is slated for release in about another month.

Regards,
Notsri

jjramsey

Judging from the paper "When Prophecy Became Passion: The Death of Jesus and the Birth of the Gospels" that one can download from here,

http://ntgateway.com/weblog/2006/03/...e-passion.html

Crossan caricatures Brown's position somewhat. It may be helpful to read Brown's work to get a corrective on that. (That said, I haven't gotten around to reading either work, so take the appropriate size grain of salt.)

Julian

Okay, so I will remove C. H. Dodd from the list and add Raymond Brown's Introdution to the Gospel of John, instead. I will also add Holmes diglot since I cannot figure out if Ehrman's is a diglot.

For Ben: My problem is not the font, it is when I actually look at pictures of the papyri. I simply cannot read their sloppy handwriting. That TLG is a bit pricy for my blood. At least right now since if I bought a subscription for that I would not be able to buy any other books. It does look cool, though.

I have a grudging respect for Raymond Brown. I don't always agree with his conclusions but he does an excellent job of presenting all the viewpoints on a particular issue, including the ones he disagrees with. It makes for a great overview and means that I don't have to read eight trillion studies since he has done the work for and simply present a quick summary.

Julian

S.C.Carlson

Ehrman's, like other books in the Loeb series, is a diglot.

You might be able to access TLG for free from a terminal at a local university library.

I don't always agree with Brown, but he does a good slice of opinion on a lot issues. Because of that, he's helpful in finding the person who agrees with me.

Stephen