Accordance and Philo

August 15 Kåre Fuglseth, my co-blogger, announced the publication of a digital version of Philo's works on several platforms.
Here is the announcement made by Accordance, on the integration and publication of Philo's works in the Accordance, the well- known program for Biblical studies on Macintosh computers. Suggested publication date is november 2005; perhaps in time for the SBL Annual Meeting?
They further say: "All the extant Greek texts of Philo have been prepared, lemmatized, and initially tagged grammatically by The Norwegian Philo Concordance Project, under the leadership of Norwegian scholar Peder Borgen (University of Trondheim), along with Roald Skarsten (University of Bergen), and Kare Fuglseth (University of Trondheim). The grammatical tagging has been extensively revised and updated for Accordance by Rex A. Koivisto of Multnomah Bible College, Portland, Oregon."

TLG - Philo - software

As most of you will know, the Greek texts of Philo are available in the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae project. These texts are, however, as will also be known,...., in beta form, and need software programs to be used. I have used one particular program for some time, but a recent review in BrynMawr revealed to me the fact that there are now several recently updated programs available for using the TLG CD-disks and their texts.

The TLG webpage has a spesial page presenting the various programs available; their presentation is rather short and neutral; but then you can go to the webpages of the respective companies to read some more enthusiastic presentations. I might even try some of them, at least as far they are downloadble in demo format.

Using the Works of Philo with BDAG

If you are using electronic access to BDAG, you will get some helpful suggestions by reading the recent blog on The Logos Bible Blog. You may also find this one useful: More on Looking Up Citations: Pseudepigrapha

Brill - SBL paperbacks

The Society of Biblical Literature announces in a recent news letter that SBL and Brill expand their copublication agreement. According to this, the announcement says

"As is well known, Brill Academic Publishers has published a cloth edition of every SBL title since 2002, an arrangement that has both benefited SBL authors and expanded the SBL's publishing presence in the European market. In light of the great success of this partnership, Kent Harold Richards (SBL Executive Director) recently signed an agreement with Brill securing for the SBL the right to publish paperback editions of ten Brill cloth titles each year during the life of the contract. Bob Buller (Editorial Director) is overseeing this project. The first seven titles slated to appear include:
(1) The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew: A Text Edition of All Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of All Parallel Hebrew Ben Sira Texts, by Pancratius C. Beentjes;
(2) The Elusive Prophet: The Prophet as a Historical Person, Literary Character and Anonymous Artist, edited by Johannes C. de Moor;
(3) Philo of Alexandria: An Exegete for His Time, by Peder Borgen;
(4) Early Christianity and Classical Culture: Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe, edited by John T. Fitzgerald, Thomas H. Olbricht, and L. Michael White;
(5) Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts, and Apologetic Historiography, by Gregory E. Sterling;
(6) Studies in Josephus' Rewritten Bible, by Louis H. Feldman; and
(7) The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation, by Albert I. Baumgarten."
This is to be welcomed, and as the list demonstrates, several volumes of interest for students of Philo and Diaspora Judaism are included.

Publications staff (bob.buller@sbl-site.org) welcome suggestions for future SBL paperback editions of Brill titles. By agreement, the SBL will not publish a paperback edition until two years after a title's original release, and Brill reserves the right to decline or postpone SBL publication of certain Brill titles.

LSL

For all of those of us who use the personal computer for something more than mere word processsing, the existence of various software that provides easy access to ancient texts in their original languages , and various lexica is a treasure. I have mentioned below that the Greek texts of Philo's works will soon be available; see also some other postings by my co-blogger Kåre Fuglseth.

Today I just want to point your attention to a review of Libronix Digital Library System's H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, and Wilhelm Pape, Electronic Edition of Griechisch-Deutsch: Handwørterbuch der griechischen Sprache that has been posted on BrynMawr Review webpage. The reviewer (Gerald Verbrugghe, Rutgers University, Camden)also makes some useful comparative comments on the The 1940 Liddell and Scott as available online from Perseus (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057)

Did you know, by the way, that there are som blogs out there that deals explicitly and primarily with discussions of computer programs related to not only the Biblical texts, but also other ancients texts. Have a look, for instance, at the Bible Software Review Blog of Ruben Gomez, and The Macintosh Biblioblog (yes, Kåre, that's for you....).

Online articles on ancient associations

Philip Harland has a posting on his blog on Some online articles on associations in the ancient Mediterranean that might be interesting to someone.

New hub, - late news.

Well, it looks like my news about this 'hub'below was late news. Tyler Williams blogged about it already July 22; but I was away on a good summer vacation at that time, hence.....:-)

Well, I would like to add here a pointer to his page on the Septuagint, you can find it here: http://biblical-studies.ca/lxx/lxx.html.
Nice page! I also finds interesting his pages on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and on Software for Biblical Studies.

New Hub for Septuagint Studies

Via Jim Davilas blog, I have been made aware of that on September 17, Vancouver’s Trinity Western University launches the Septuagint Institute, a hub for Septuagint research, translation, and publication projects.“The launch of the Septuagint Institute is a truly historic event,” says Robert Hiebert, “not only for our campus, but also for Canadian and international biblical scholarship. This new research centre is the only one of its kind in North America, which makes it vital since the Septuagint is such an important part of Jewish and Christian history in the Graeco-Roman period.” Further info can be gathered here: NewsWise.