Tag Archives: textual criticism

From Sanhedrin to Rabbinic Authority: Reinvention in the Mishnah: An Afterlife and Memory Study

Abstract The Sanhedrin of the late Second Temple period ceased to function in any meaningful institutional sense in the wake of the First Jewish-Roman War. Yet the institution did not disappear from Jewish memory; it was remembered, codified, and reimagined … Continue reading

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The Sanhedrin in Scripture: Narrative, Conflict, and Theological Framing: A Scriptural Portrayal Study

Abstract This paper examines the way the Sanhedrin, and its proto-forms, are portrayed within the canonical Scriptures. Its purpose is not to reconstruct the institution historically — that work belongs elsewhere — but to read the biblical text on its … Continue reading

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Appendix B Short Exegetical Notes on Psalm 95 / Hebrews 3 (Scope Controls)

Purpose of This Appendix Paper 3 of this suite developed the argument that the wilderness warnings of Psalm 95 and Hebrews 3–4 are biblically serious pastoral instruments whose proper use is essential to the assembly’s life, and that their misapplication … Continue reading

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Fragments, Translation, and the Pew

Introduction The previous papers have moved from foundations to method, from method to specific corpora of evidence, and from those corpora to the special case of fragments at the canonical edges. The present paper turns to a question that has … Continue reading

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Fragments at the Edges: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Unidentified Material

Introduction The previous papers have concentrated on fragmentary witnesses to the canonical text — Hebrew witnesses to the Old Testament, Greek witnesses to the New, and the methods by which both are read and reported. The present paper turns to … Continue reading

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Method: Reading, Reconstructing, and Refusing to Overreach

Introduction The previous two papers surveyed the principal bodies of fragmentary evidence — the Hebrew witness to the Old Testament and the Greek witness to the New — and assessed what each does and does not establish. Those surveys assumed, … Continue reading

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New Testament Fragmentology: The Greek Witness

Introduction The previous paper examined the Hebrew witness to the Old Testament and found, in the fragmentary evidence of the Dead Sea materials, the Cairo Genizah, and related corpora, substantial confirmation of the stability with which the Hebrew text has … Continue reading

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Old Testament Fragmentology: The Hebrew Witness

Introduction The first three papers of this series have laid foundations. The first defined fragmentology and argued that the believer who confesses Scripture as the Word of God has reason to attend to the partial witnesses by which that Word … Continue reading

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Defining the Field: Fragmentology and the Biblical Text

Introduction Every Bible a believer holds in hand stands at the end of a long chain of hands. Quills, reed pens, scrapers, ink, parchment, papyrus, and eventually movable type and digital files have all served to bring the words of … Continue reading

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White Paper: Pattern Absolutism and the Denial of Historicity: Failure Modes in Over-Analogical Historical Reasoning

Executive Summary Across several domains of contemporary scholarship, a recurring interpretive posture has emerged in which historical figures are treated as suspect or fictive primarily because their lives exhibit recognizable patterns that resemble earlier narratives. Similarities of title, role, literary … Continue reading

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