Way back when I got my first Mac and slowly became a tech ninja master, I adopted two major apps that completely revolutionized my work: Bookends (a bibliography manager) and Mellel (a word processor). Bookends continues to be a fantastic program that I recommend, though I now use a program called Sente. But my word processor choice Mellel has not changed.
I use Mellel for my academic writing. Early on when I made the choice, I chose Mellel because it worked flawlessly with Hebrew unicode—something MS Word STILL DOESN’T DO!! Another reason I chose it is because it is speedy with large documents, whereas Word is like molasses. Finally, while Word is a behemoth because it can do absolutely everything, I don’t 80% of what it can do. Mellel is for the academic. Finally, Mellel has built-in integration with Bookends and Sente (my previous bibliographic manager and my current one).
All of these years later, Mellel still rocks. Yes I use Pages for simple docs, and even Google Docs. But for academic work, nothing beats Mellel.
Something I knew, then forgot, and am now pondering as I work on my thesis: Both Matthew and Mark do NOT mention Jesus’ hands and feet being nailed to the cross, nor are they part of the story of the resurrection. Luke mentions them in the resurrection, but doesn’t mention the holes. Only John discusses the holes in Jesus’ hands and side (not feet).
Nailing would have been assumed when discussing crucifixion in the Gospels. My thinking is that as time went on and the resurrection appearances faced skepticism, Luke and especially John made it explicit that they saw the same man who had been crucified…with the holes to prove it.
While working on my dissertation on Matthew I stumbled across this little interesting tidbit from Origen’s hexapla. Origen helps us understand other early Greek translations of the OT.
Anyway, it relates to the Gospel of Peter because in that apocryphal Gospel Jesus cries from the cross “My power, My power, why have you forsaken me?” Seems like an odd change, perhaps hints of gnosticism or dualism right?
Not so. Aquila, an early (and pedantic!) translator of the OT translated Ps 22:2 as “my power, my power.”
I was quick to check with resident NT guru Craig Evans to see if this was already known, and it was :-( (nothing new under the sun!) Still, it is cool to find something new for yourself.
If you want to see for yourself, the information is free online on archive.org. I’ve embedded it below right to the page in question.
Very happy to have my latest project live on the app store. Check out iGreek for your iPhone!
In celebration of the Christmas season I’m offering 50% off ParseGreek and FlashGreek Pro until Jan 1. Spread the Word!
If you haven’t seen this new resource on the Dead Sea Scrolls yet, you need to! An unbelievably well done job. Now we need the bible software companies to make these into modules for us!
10 iOS apps PLUS The Singing Grammarian. Totally free !
I don’t do a ton of biblioblogging anymore, but I do still try and follow, and do post on occasion. The problem, as Mark Goodacre has recently discussed, is that there are so many blogs.
A way forward, possibly, is an increased use of twitter. I find I am actually reading a lot more blog posts than I use to, but I’m almost always going to them via twitter because I follow the reader on twitter. It got me to wondering if the plethora of bibliobloggers could utilize twitter to help people know about their posts. And I think the simple answer is yes…by using a hashtag.
So here is my suggestion: How about all bibliobloggers out there tweet your blog post title after publication with the #biblioblog hashtag? Then people who would like to know what is being written can follow the tag and very quickly see all the posts being written. Well, let’s see if I can start a trend - starting right now!
The evolution of the flashcard has just landed on the iTunes app store! This app has been in the making for many years and I’m really excited to release it to the world.
FlαshGrεεk puts multimedia Greek flashcards on your iOS device. What do I mean by multimedia?
- an image mnemonic
- audio
- a scripture example
- additional info on the word (part of speech, applicable English derivatives, principal parts of verbs)
FlashGreek is packaged in numerous ways. First - there is a unique version of FlashGreek compatible with most of the major intro Greek grammars out there:
- David Alan Black, Learn to Read New Testament Greek (2009) [app link]
- N. Clayton Croy, Biblical Greek Primer (1999) [app link]
- Jeremy Duff, Elements of New Testament Greek (2005) [app link]
- James Hewett, New Testament Greek (2009) [app link]
- William Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek (2009) [app link]
- Gerald Stevens, New Testament Greek Primer (2010) [app link]
- (soon!) S. M. Baugh, A New Testament Greek Primer (2009)
All of these are priced at only $5.99. These are ideal for students who are only taking 1 year of Greek. But if you’ll be in Greek for the long haul then….
FlashGreek Pro kicks it up a notch by containing every single word in the Greek New Testament. In addition to being compatible with ALL of the intro grammars mentioned above, FlashGreek Pro users can also study by frequency or by root (a future version will include the ability to study by book chapters of the NT too!). There is also a special Principal Parts mode where intermediate students can drill themselves on principal parts. FlashGreek Pro is only $8.99.
Check out the page for FlashGreek over on NTGreekResources.com (http://tiny.cc/flashgreek)
And in case you are wondering — YES ! FlashGreek (all of the versions) will make their way to Android soon
