Divinity United

After Sunday's games, I do not see how FIFA can continue to avoid video technology or at least two more officials (one at each goal line). Lampard's disallowed goal and Tevez's offsides for a goal (which he has admitted to) were game changers. Both were unfortunate and unnecessary. Hopefully something will change. It would be horrible to see any other matches decided this way. The South American teams have done extremely well at the World Cup. All five made it through to the round of 16. Only one is currently out--Chile after being defeated by another South American team Brasil. It looks like we could be headed toward a Brasil vs. Argentina final. I would rather see the Nederlands there. We shall see. It will be an exciting week.

I have to say that the early exits of France and Italy, the finalists from 2006, makes for a much more interesting tournament. Well done to Paraguay, Slovakia, Uruguay, and Mexico. The Kiwis did not lose a game and finished ahead of the defending champion Azzurri. A great tournament for the New Zealand All Whites!

Here is my attempt at a reconstruction of Codex Alexandrinus' 1 John 1:7 with allelwn . Any such reconstruction like this is arbitrary in choosing of letter size. I have kept open the possibility of a longer line as in 1:5 which trickles into the margin. A comparable example can be seen at 2:7 in the same colum with 1:7. The scribe also has a tendency to make the characters smaller if need be as the line nears the margin. My reconstruction does face difficulties with the third line down (1:8) where there is indication of smaller letters being used sooner. This suggests that the margin did not extend as far as my reconstruction would necessitate. However, I still think allelwn should not be ruled out as a possibility (e.g., note the eleventh line from the bottom in the same column). Further study of the scribal habits in Alexandrinus would help in answering this question. The original image can be found at http://images.csntm.org/Manuscripts/GA_02/GA_02_0084b.jpg .

In Novum Testamentum 52 (2010) 267-271 , Roy Ciampa (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) has a brief article on the reading of Codex Alexandrinus where the NA27 text has met' allelwn ('with one another'). The textual apparatus in NA27 indicates that Alexandrinus has evidence of the reading met' autou ('with him'). Ciampa points out that in actuality Alexandrinus has no evidence of anything following me. (See the manuscript here at the nttranscripts.uni-muenster.de site.) Most textual critics have assumed that allelwn will not fit on the line and thus autou be a better option. Ciampa contends that meta ths ('with God') should be another option listed among the possible readings of A at 1 John 1:7. These are clearly all options; however, I am not completely convinced that it is impossible for characters of allelwn to fit. The margins are clearly fluid as Ciampa notes, and in the preceding column, it is clear that the scribe is willing to squeeze the c...

The Journal section has been under construction for some time. I have finally updated the list. I will probably add to it in the future. If anyone notices any key journals I have left off, please let me know.

There are certain circles in which it is commonly thought and taught that Saul was Paul's Jewish or Aramaic name and Paul was his Greek name. Thus, when Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles, Acts uses the Greek Gentile version of the name (Paul) and the Jewish version (Saul) then disappears. The situation is actually a bit more complicated, as a brief perusal through NT surveys quickly shows. In their recent publication The New Testament in Antiquity (Zondervan, 2009), Wheaton College faculty Gary Burge, Lynn Cohick, and Gene Green explain the Saul-Paul name question as follows: 'Paul was a Jew and also a Roman citizen..., born in the free city of Tarsus, the capital of the province of Cilicia. As a Roman Paul would have had three names: praenomen , nomen , and cognomen . A Roman's cognomen acted as a surname and, in the apostle's case, this was the Latin Paullus (Gk. Paulos), which identified him as a member of the Paulli family. He was known also as Saul (G...

The Swiss have just upset Spain 1-0 in the second group H match. In my mind, Spain have what it takes to win the cup, but not if they keep this up. They need to win group H (Honduras, Chile, Switzerland, and Spain) in order to avoid Brasil in the second round, but that assumes Brasil wins group G. Brasil's defeat of North Korea yesterday 2-1 was not as convincing as most expected. See more details of the Spain-Swiss match at BBC Sport .