Several months ago, I blogged about an interesting little papyrus slip from Yale's collection. Be sure to check that post out. My edition of this little papyrus has just been published in the BASP, and I have uploaded a copy to the publications section of this site. So, if you are looking for a little Thanksgiving reading, you can access the full article here. 

For those of you who will be attending the Society of Biblical Literature's (SBL) annual meeting next week, you might be interested in a session that with a focus on the provenance of ancient artifacts. This session is being presided over by my erudite colleague Ross Ponder, and all of the panelists are highly respected scholars in their fields. They are also my friends. I am sad to announce that, although I am listed as a participant, I will not be able to make the conference. But I strongly encourage anyone who is interested in questions related to the provenance of ancient artifacts, and particularly papyri (all but one of the speakers are papyrologists), to attend this session. The information is listed below.

I am happy to announce here that my doctoral dissertation is soon to be published by T&T Clark in the Library of New Testament Studies (LNTS) series. It is in the very last stages of production and is on schedule to be released in March 2016.

The full citation is:

Brice C. Jones, New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity. LNTS 554. London: T&T Clark, 2016. 

Here is the abstract, followed by a link to where you can pre-order the hardback or eBook. Please note that this book will be released in paperback as well probably sometime in 2017. 

"Brice C. Jones presents a comprehensive analysis of Greek amulets from late antique Egypt which contain New Testament citations. He evaluates the words they contain in terms of their text-critical value. The use of New Testament texts on amulets was common in late antiquity. These citations were extracted from their larger Biblical contexts and used for ritual purposes that have traditionally been understood in tterms of the ambiguous category of 'magic'. Often, these citations were used to invoke the divine for some favour, healing or protection. For various reasons, however, these citations have not played a significant role in the study of the text of the Greek New Testament.

As such, this is the first systematic treatment of Greek New Testament citations on amulets from late antique Egypt. Jones' work has real implications for how amulets and other such witnesses from this era should be treated in the future of the discipline of New Testament textual criticism."

To learn more, please visit Bloomsbury's website here. 

An important e-mail from my colleague Dr. David Ratzan (NYU) introducing an extremely important new online resource: The Ancient World Digital Library. 

​"Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce that ISAW through its Ancient World Digital Library (AWDL) has begun publishing the monographic backlist of the ASP. The DC3 team has already kindly linked the scanned books to the Checklist of Editions online. Please also that you may download the books as PDFs. Here is a blog post from the ISAW Library with all the relevant information: http://isaw.nyu.edu/library/blog/AWDL-ASP1. 

If you have any questions, or suggestions for other scholarly content we should consider including in AWDL (mindful of course of US copyright law), please email me directly at [email protected].

Yours,

David M. Ratzan"