New Open Access Journal: Bulletin for Old Testament Studies in Africa

The Bulletin for Old Testament Studies in Africa has now published, open access, its issues from 1996-2006.

http://www.mhs.no/article_204.shtml

Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism

A consortium of institutions has now made available a number of texts from the Cairo Geniza that purportedly demonstrate that Jews continued to use the Greek text of the Old Testament well into the Middle Ages.

The website provides critical information about and high-quality digital scans of manuscripts as well as diplomatic and "normalized" versions of the texts.

http://www.gbbj.org/index.html

Here's the raison d'etre from the website:

The story of the Jewish transmission of Greek Bible versions has yet to be told. While it is recognised that the books of the Hebrew Bible were originally translated into Greek in Greco-Roman antiquity by Jews for Jews, it is generally supposed that at some early point Jews gave up using the translations, along with the use of the Greek language generally, and they were preserved and used only in the Christian Church. However, materials have come to light, some very recently, that make it plain that some Jews continued to use the Greek language throughout the Middle Ages, and that, while the Hebrew Bible came to play a central part in their religious and cultural life, they also knew the Bible in Greek.

The aim of the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism project is to gather evidence for the use of Greek Bible translations by Jews in the Middle Ages, and to make these texts available to scholars as a corpus, together with the information necessary for an appreciation of their historical background, meaning and exegetical implications.

TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism

TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism has been resurrected, although the announcement makes the future of the journal sound rather tentative. Nevertheless, the fifteen volumes are open access:

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/index.html#page=home

Ancient Egyptian Texts online from Gallica

Gallica has made available online a number of ancient Egyptian texts. The website is in French and has links to digital images of many significant texts, e.g., the Book of the Dead (Livre des Morts).

http://gallica.bnf.fr/Search?ArianeWireIndex=index&f_typedoc=manuscrit&isPersoPart=false&isPersoPart=false&isPersoPart=false&q=Livre+des+Morts&lang=FR&n=15&p=1&pageNumber=9

Dig-it-al NEA

Near Eastern Archaeology has just released Dig-it-al NEA, an "online forum" that "features original essays, reviews, and other content to complement the print publication of the journal."

http://www.bu.edu/asor/pubs/nea/dig-it-al-nea.html

Hopefully it will decide to publish NEA open access online before long.

Free/Open Access Bible Software

Dr. David Instone-Brewer of Tyndale House (http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/) comes up regularly with very useful information and resources for biblical studies. He has recently published a list of electronic software for biblical studies, much of which can either be accessed directly from the web or downloaded free. The list is too long to replicate here, so I'll simply give the url and let you browse:

http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/index.php?page=tyndale-tech&add=http://tyndaletech.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-ways-to-study-bible.html

Some of the categories are parallel and interlinear Bibles, dictionaries, lexicons, concordances, structural analyses of texts, atlases, and, of course, the sorts of searching on Hebrew and Greek texts that one finds with commercial software such as BibleWorks. Instone-Brewer provides screen shots of the software, which is rather small; but just place the cursor over any and they enlarge. Tap/click the shot and you are taken to the website of the respective manufacturer.

Journal of the Evangelical Society

Volumes 12-50 of JETS -are now available, open access.

http://www.etsjets.org/JETS_Online_Archive

The Foundation for Archaeological Research in the Land of Israel

The Foundation for Archaeological Research in the Land of Israel is a nascent, yet promising, website

http://www.farli.org/home

Search engines for UK (EthOS) and European (DART) theses/dissertations

To search UK theses (EthOS), go to:
http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do

For European theses, go to:
http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php