Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature

I spent a lot of time at the book exhibition today, and spent some money. There are a tremendous lot of new books publishe, and several revised editions are presented. Among some of the revised editions of useful books are the new edition ofGeorge Nickelsburg,
Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah, with CD-ROM
Fortress Press, 450 pages 6 x 9 inches This version also includes some additional material, including now a chapter on Philo of Alexandria, and Josephus. Good to see Philo included where he belongs.
The list of the contents of the book can be seen here.

Philo on Gorgias Press

As mentioned by my co-blogger Kåre Fuglseth some weeks ago the Gorgias Press is to publish a complete Philo Concordance as a KWIC (Key-word in context) concordance.

Now they are announcing it on their website: "This edition, The Complete Works of Philo of Alexandria: A Key-Word-In-Context Concordance, is the ultimate printed form for any concordance with every occurrence of all Greek words. Each lemma is alphabetically ordered and presented within its context and thus designed to aid with research on Philo of Alexandria."

Skarsten, Peder Borgen, Kåre Fuglseth, Roald . The Complete Works of Philo of Alexandria: A Key-Word-In-Context Concordance
Gorgias Press. 7556pp; $ 1480.

Gorgias is listed among the publishers present here at SBL; hence I will have to look them up, and see if they have some proof pages etc so one can get an impression of what the books will be like.

Arrived half dead...

Arrived in Philly yesterday; after 18 hours of travel; and the jetlag is heavy.... But I have attended two sessions today: the first one on Biblical Exegetical Software in the Classroom, and then the first part of a Workshop on Bibleworks.

Some of the guys in the first session were quite clever; both in their presentations and in what they had accomplished. But most of them were presenting how to teach Greek or Hebrew with computer technology; I would have liked to have listened to someone coming up with something more related to historical (and exegetical)studies. And second; it looked like Bibleworks was quite popular here, so both sessions must have been very valuable for the Bibleworks company...

My institution has an older version of that program; maybe I should have a closer look at it. But so far I have been very satisfied with my version of its competitor, a name I perhaps should reveal here so it can get some PR in this posting too...

Tomorrow is one of those looong days; I only hope I do not wake up 3 o'clock in the morning,- as I did today...
Good night....

Update:
I did....

Preparing for the SBL Annual Meeting

On Thursday morning (very early in the morning..) I am leaving Norway for a short week, heading for the SBL Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. And just when I feel I have recovered from the jet-lag, I am no return back home, to take up another term of teaching.
The list of lectures and discussions to attend is written up, and so is the list of books wanted...

Acccording to the Program Book, it looks like Philo is popular at this Annual Meeting; in the 10 to 12 years I have been a participant I have never seen so many lectures and topics dealing with Philo, or at least including him in the material discussed. Early in the fall I listed the relevant sessions, but here is the relevant list of sessions I have on my schedule (including both Philo and non-philo related sessions):

S18-51Biblical Exegetical Software in the Classroom—Integration 101
11/18/2005
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Room 112-A - Pennsylvania Convention Center

S19-23Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
11/19/2005
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Room 409 - Marriott
especially: Celia Deutsch, Barnard College
Text Work and Religious Experience: Philo and Clement

S19-72Religion in Roman Egypt
11/19/2005
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Room 106-A - Pennsylvania Convention Center
especially Steven Weitzman, Indiana University at Bloomington
Philo on How to Befriend an Emperor (25 min)

S19-123Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
11/19/2005
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Room 409 - Marriott
(some of these will include Philo, according to the Abstracts)

S19-133Presidential Address
11/19/2005
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Room: Salon G/H - Marriott

S20-12Computer Assisted Research
11/20/2005
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Room: Room 411 & 412 - Marriott
(probably not much about Philo, but I am a participant in the panel)

S20-58Construction of Christian Identities
11/20/2005
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Liberty Ballroom A - Marriott
Theme: Ephesus and Antioch: Plurality of Christian Groups and Christian Texts in the First Two Centuries.
or
S20-62Hellenistic Judaism
11/20/2005
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Independence I - Marriott
Theme: Boundaries and Limits in Diaspora Judaism
here especially
Sarah Pearce, University of Southampton
Philo on Atheism, Judaism, and Egyptian Identity (20 min)
Abraham Terian, St. Nersess Armenian Seminary
Philo's Definitions of Israel in Relation to Historical Realities in the Greco-Roman World (20 min)

S20-119John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
11/20/2005
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM

S21-29 Philo of Alexandria
11/21/2005
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Room 103-B - Pennsylvania Convention Center
Theme: Linguistic Border Crossing: Philo of Alexandria and the Dead Sea Scrolls

S21-68Hellenistic Judaism
11/21/2005
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Room 404 - Marriott
Theme: The Cultural Context of Judaism in Alexandria

S21-127Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
11/21/2005
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Salon I (Level Five) - Marriott
Theme: Ethnicity, Identity, and Social Boundaries

S22-16Philo of Alexandria
11/22/2005
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Room 109-B - Pennsylvania Convention Center
Theme: Interpreting Philo’s De Virtutibus

Well, I will probably not be able to show up at all these sessions; by experience I know that the time spent in book exhibition area is eating up session-time every day. But where else do you get interesting (and sometimes expensive) books for 50 % discount? Long ago I discovered that people attend these annual meetings for three reasons; meeting people, buying books, and attend sessions. But not necessarily in this order....

By the way, did you ask for my book list? There is not one Philo-book on it! I did not find any in the advertisements texts in the printed Program book. Hopefully there might be some on the tables at the book exhibition.....

'Accordance' and Philo

Great news for all Macintosh users: The Accordance Bible Software now announces their new release of Scholar’s Collection 6.9(CD-ROM is $10 with purchase of Accordance 6).
This new release upgrades most modules, and offer major new tagged Greek texts of broad interest to scholars. In this edition the works of Philo are also included and thus available for unlocking ($100,- All the extant Greek texts of Philo prepared, lemmatized, and initially tagged grammatically by The Norwegian Philo Concordance Project, extensively revised for Accordance.)
You can read more about it here.

Logos Endiathetos and Logos Prophorikos

For those of you who don't read the comment fields to the various posting, I would like to republish this info: In a comment to a posting of mine below Phil H(arland?) was so kind as to direct my attention to the following article:Adam Kamesar, "The Logos Endiathetos and the Logos Prophorikos in Allegorical Interpretation: Philo and the D-Scholia to the Iliad," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 44 (2004) 163-181. It is freely available online at here.

Philo and Philodemus on Music

According to a posting by Mark Goodacre on his blog New Testament Gateway Weblog, there is an article related to Philo in the recent Festschrift to Abraham Malherbethat I have been unaware of so far; Early Christianity and Classical Culture: Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe, eds. John T. Fitzgerald, Thomas H. Olbricht, L. Michael White (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 740 pp. I don't know the page numbers but the article concerned is Everett Ferguson, "The Art of Praise: Philo and Philodemus on Music".According to the note by Mark, it looks like the book was published by SBL in 2005; according to the E.J. Brill webpage, it was published in 2003 in the well known series Novum Testamentum Supplements, 110. The book is large; 748 pages, and the price terrible: List price: EUR 192.- / US$ 275.-.

Update.
Since Mark G. (above) mentions the book as published by SBL, he might very well be correct. I know the SBL has an agreement with Brill in publishing some of their works, but so far I have not been able to find this book on the SBL's webpages.

News from de Gruyter

Walter de Gruyter publishing announces a couple of new books to be releaseed soon that may be interesting for Philo scholars. Here is the main fact about the issues:
Early Christian Paraenesis in Context
Ed. by Engberg-Pedersen, Troels & James Starr
- An up-to-date discussion of early Christian paraenesis in its Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish contexts in the light of one hundred years of scholarship, issuing from a research project by Nordic and international scholars.
http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-3110181541-1&l=E&ad=nle

Another volume, perhaps not that close to Philo, but relevant for students of ancient diaspora Judaism is this new commentary:Wilson, Walter T.: The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides.
- This commentary on the Greek text of the Jewish-Hellenistic Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides, a sapiential poem of the first century BCE or first century CE, offers a full treatment of its sources, structure, perspective, and purpose as well as a verse-by-verse translation and analysis. The Greek text is given as appendix. The cross-cultural nature of these moral teachings is emphasized through extensive interaction with Biblical, Hellenistic Jewish, and Greco-Roman comparative materials.
http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-3110182416-1&l=E&ad=nle