Project Muse journals relevant to the ANE

http://muse.jhu.edu/

• Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism (Vol. 4 (2004) through current issue)
• American Journal of Philology (Vol. 117 (1996) through current issue) 
• Archives of Asian Art (Vol. 58 (2008) through current issue)
• Arethusa (Vol. 29 (1996) through current issue) 
• Asian Perspectives (Vol. 39 (2000) through current issue)
• Classical World (Vol. 99 (2005) through current issue)  
• Ethnohistory (Vol. 46, no. 4 (1999) - vol. 51 (2004))
• Essays in Medieval Studies (Vol. 18 (2001) through current issue)
• Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Vol. 69 (2009) through current issue)  
• Hebrew Studies (Vol. 31 (1990) through current issue)
• Helios (Vol. 34 (2007) through current issue)
• Hesperia (Vol. 74 (2005); archive only)
• Jewish Quarterly Review (Vol. 95 (2005) through current issue) 
• Journal of Biblical Literature (Vol. 130 (2011) though current issue)
• Journal of Early Christian Studies (Vol. 1 (1993) through current issue)
• Journal of Late Antiquity (Vol. 1 (2008) through current issue.)
• Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada (Vol. 7 (2007) through current issue) 
• Syllecta Classica  (Vol. 20 (2009) through current issue)
• Transactions of the American Philological Association (Vol. 130 (2000) through current issue)

Did Jesus Have a Wife? -- The Coptic Gospel Papyrus

Several papers have recently broken the story of the discovery of a 4th century fragment of a Coptic Papyrus codex that raises the possibility that Jesus was married. For the New York Times piece, see

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www


Karen L. King, a professor of Early Church History at Harvard Divinity School has studied the papyrus and published a draft article on it (the final version was to be published in the Harvard Theological [HTR] Review 106/1 [2013], but Harvard has postponed it):

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife

Some of the significant points from King's article are:

• that the fragment is too early to prove or disprove that Jesus was or was not married
• it does attest to the dispute which began in the second century
• the provenance of the fragment is unknown, and it is owned by a private (anonymous) collector
• the fragment has been in private hands since at least 1982, when a professor Fecht (Berlin) is supposed to have remarked "is the only example of a text in which Jesus uses direct speech in reference to a wife" (das einzige Beispiel für einen Text ist, in dem Jesus die direkte Rede in Bezug auf eine Ehefrau benutzt).
• by her own admission, King is "is neither a papyrologist nor a Coptic linguist," thus had to seek assistance for the translation from Roger Bagnall and AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton, who judged that the fragment is authentic and, based on paleography, dates ca. to the fourth century.
• Three reviewers for HTR have differed on the authenticity of the fragment.
• Although waiting for further testing (e.g. ink), King's review of the disputes led to the conclusion for authenticity.
• In her summary, King states: "What can be said securely is that our fragment contains the first known statement that explicitly claims Jesus had wife. It consists of a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples." She also reiterates that the late date of the fragment precludes it as evidence for the question of Jesus' marital status.
• Translation:

1 ] “not [to] me. My mother gave to me li[fe…”
2 ] The disciples said to Jesus, “.[
3 ] deny. Mary is worthy of it      [or, Mary is n[ot] worthy of it]
4 ]……” Jesus said to them, “My wife . .[ [
5 ]… she will be able to be my disciple . . [
6 ] Let wicked people swell up … [
7] As for me, I dwell with her in order to . [
8] an image [
1 ] my moth[er
2 ] three [
3 ] … [
4 ] forth which … [
5 ] (illegible ink traces)

6 ] (illegible ink traces)

My Responses

• King should be commended in that, thus far, she has generally operated with due caution and even-handedness.
• Although line 4 of the fragment does appear to indicate that Jesus attests to having a wife, the line is fragmentary: while somewhat unlikely the possibility remains that the lacunae before and after what remains in line 4 might qualify or undermine the putative attestation.
• As with other sensational finds (e.g., the Tel Dan stele, James ossuary), one must be very cautious about drawing conclusions about this fragment. Perhaps the greatest concern is its unknown provenance, which limits what one can say definitively about it.
• King herself is duly cautious and excludes the possibility that the papyrus is probative for the issue of Jesus' marital status.
• There is disagreement between scholars over the authenticity of the fragment.
• Very few scholars to date have had access to the papyrus (although King states her willingness to make it available).
• Establishing the date of such artifacts on paleographical grounds is not easy--even for distinguished epigraphers (e.g., André Lemaire on the James ossuary).
• Generally, the significance of such material is debated for years by scholars before a consensus arises.
• The first several centuries after Jesus produced many texts about him (as King notes) which were not regarded as canonical (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas).

What if Jesus did have a wife?

If it were ultimately demonstrated that Jesus did have a wife, then he would have lived the "default" mode of existence for a Second Temple period Jew. That is, the cultural expectation was for a man to take a wife. The NT spends little time addressing spouses, but at least some of the disciples--including Peter--were evidently married (1 Cor 9:5). Presumably Jesus would have enjoyed sexual relations with his wife, which, again would have been the norm and which would not undermine texts such as Heb 4:15 nor any Christian doctrine. If children had been produced by such union, then we would have pause for ontological thought; but at this point we are well into the realm of speculation.

Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew

http://www.sdbh.org/

This is a valuable project that is in the making.

From the website:

The Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew (henceforth SDBH) project is carried out under the auspices of the United Bible Societies. It was launched in the year 2000. Its aim is to build a new dictionary of biblical Hebrew that is based on semantic domains, comparable to Louw and Nida’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, which was first published in 1989.

     Preliminary research for this project was carried out by Reinier de Blois which resulted in a dissertation, titled Towards a New Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew Based on Semantic Domains, from which much of the contents of this document has been derived (de Blois 2000). In addition to this a computer tool called Vocabula was developed, that can assist the Hebrew lexicographer in his/her effort to create such a dictionary.

Several Hebrew scholars from different parts of the world are contributing to this dictionary. The editor for this project is Dr. Reinier de Blois, assisted by Prof. Dr. Enio R. Mueller.

     Several sample entries have been published on the web and more will be published as soon as they become available. There is always room for improvement and therefore users are invited to send their comments to the editor. If you want to have a look at the entries that have been published so far click here

Septuagint LXX Project

http://septuaginta.net/

From the homepage:

Septuaginta LXX Project aims to produce an online edition of the Septuagint with a comprehensive critical apparatus, and a new English translation. We seek to collate all extant ancient manuscripts of the Septuagint and make them available at this website.

Septuaginta’s Goals:

1. A new critical text of the Septuagint that is as close as possible to the original text.
2. A comprehensive critical apparatus.
3. A new English translation for the Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.
4. A PDF version of the Septuagint that will be made available for download.

Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts

http://csntm.org/

The mission statement from the website says it all:

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM), under the umbrella of The Center for the Research of Early Christian Documents (CRECD), exists for the following purposes:

1. To make digital photographs of extant Greek New Testament manuscripts so that such images can be preserved, duplicated without deterioration, and accessed by scholars doing textual research.
2. To utilize developing technologies (OCR, MSI, etc.) to read these manuscripts and create exhaustive collations.
3. To analyze individual scribal habits in order to better predict scribal tendencies in any given textual problem.
4. To publish on various facets of New Testament textual criticism
5. To develop electronic tools for the examination and analysis of New Testament manuscripts.
6. To cooperate with other institutes in the great and noble task of determining the wording of the autographa of the New Testament.

Lexicity

http://www.lexicity.com/

This website is an aggregator for web-based resources for the following languages:
Akkadian, Aramaic, Coptic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Old English, Old Norse, Sanskrit, Syriac, and Ugaritic.

From the web site:

Learning an ancient language is difficult, but it becomes more difficult if one isn't part of a high school or college class or doesn't have access to the more advanced resources of a university library. The natural solution is the internet, where some of those advanced resources are housed and where there is an abundance of materials intended to facilitate one's study.

However, there are a few problems when turning to the internet. First, if one is a novice in a language, it can be difficult to discern between resources that are actually useful and that are just filler. This problem is compounded when one has never learned an ancient language of any kind, as is often the case when students begin to study Latin or Greek.

Another problem is that the resources can be very difficult to find. While contemporary dictionary and lexical projects are usually very accessible, there are other ancient language resources which are buried in the depths of Google searches, having been created long ago for an audience which has since moved on. If the resources can't be found, they as good as non-existent for frustrated students.

The solution to these problems is to unite all the resources under a single banner after reviewing them to see which are most useful. Lexicity has done this for 16 of the most prominent ancient languages. All the ancient language resources we feature are free and available to anyone; they're easy to navigate, easy to sort, and easy to access. You don't need to be an expert or be willing to wade through 50 pages of search engine results - just visit our languages page to get started.

So get started. Visit the language of your choice and get a grammar. Take advantage of extra resources like verb and noun charts, and look up anything you don't understand in the dictionaries. Visit the forum, chat with our toolbar at the bottom, and tell your friends. Many people have always wanted to give an ancient language a try; as Lexicity has shown, there won't ever be a better time.