From Beyond The Sky And The Earth Text

[Darth Sanderson]

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In the early stages of my theological training I felt that Textual Criticism was a very arid and uninviting pastime. The present contribution reflects, however, a more positive appreciation for the discipline.[1]

In my opinion, Hurtado, through his scholarship and activity has contributed not only to the general interest in the field, but to all five of these specific areas; he surely practiced what he preached. At the same time, however, there was a certain focus in his scholarship on the early text of the New Testament, corresponding to his interest in the earliest Christian artifacts, to the devotion of Jesus in earliest Christianity, and to the (presumably) earliest canonical Gospel.

In chapter two, Hurtado demonstrates with data from the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB; ) how the early Christian scribes preferred the codex over the bookroll, in contrast to the contemporary book culture. The preference was intentional to distinguish the writings they treated as scripture. Conversely, Hurtado argues that a fragment like P. Oxy. 655, with the Gospel of Thomas written on a roll, was not prepared for use as scripture.

Chapter four is concerned with the staurogram (formed by combining the Greek letters tau and rho) and its significance for Christian origins. Hurtado argues that the staurogram is the earliest visual representation of Jesus on the cross predating the Constantinian period. The final chapter treats briefly various other phenomena in the early Christian manuscripts (sizes of codices and margins, columns, various reader aids, corrections, etc.), providing more information about the scribes and communities who produced and used them. For example, reader aids like textual division provide insights into early Christian interpretation.

The first area is the textual transmission of the NT writings. Hurtado reviews the early manuscripts, including the newly published Oxyrhynchus material. He concludes that the fragments from the second century justify the view that the more substantial manuscripts from the third and fourth centuries do not reflect some major recension of the text toward the second century. On the contrary, they reflect various points along a spectrum from more controlled texts reflecting a concern for careful copying to comparatively more free and careless copying. The former controlled texts are thus reliable witnesses of the text of the writings they contain.

He further notes that the very fact that the NT writings were brought together in collections had an effect on the transmission of the text. For example, the long ending of Mark probably presupposes a fourfold Gospel collection, and so do the many harmonizations of one Gospel to another. Earlier in the essay Hurtado points out that the regular liturgical reading of the four canonical Gospels also helps to account for the abundance of harmonizing variants. In this connection, I appreciate his remark that liturgical usage would at the same time also have set real limits on how much a writing could be changed without people noticing (and objecting). The repeated liturgical reading is yet another factor speaking against a wild and uncontrolled second-century text.

The third and final second-century area is the emergence of a New Testament canon, which is of course closely related to the other areas. In fact, those writings that made it into the New Testament during the canonical decision-making at later stages were those writings that had been widely spread, collected, and accepted for liturgical reading. Several of the earliest papyri were most likely produced for public reading. There are even reader aids in the earliest extant papyrus fragment P52.

We have, perhaps, somewhat romantically regarded the earliest Christian circles as so given to oral tradition that their writings took a distant second place in their values. From the earliest observable years Christianity was a profoundly textual movement.[10]

Dr. W.,

a great article on a truly extraordinary man. Your obvious admiration and affection for Dr. H. reminds me of the way he often wrote of those who came before him.

Though only knowing him through his books, numerous articles and most of all through his blog, which included substantial interactions on many issues; your article also warms my heart and reminds me that his untimely death was a great loss across a wide range of Christian scholarship.

Tim

From what we know so far, Earth is the only planet that hosts life and the only one in the Solar System with liquid water on the surface. Earth is also the only planet in the solar system with active plate tectonics, where the surface of the planet is divided into rigid plates that collide and move apart, causing earthquakes, mountain building, and volcanism. Sites of volcanism along Earth's submarine plate boundaries are considered to be potential environments where life could have first emerged.

Earth is the right distance from the sun, such that liquid water has been stable in significant volumes over much of the planet's lifetime. It has the right chemical ingredients for life (e.g. water and carbon), and chemical cycling (such as between the planet's interior and oceans by volcanism and other geological activity) provides chemical pathways for life to extract energy to survive.

No. Mercury has no atmosphere and it has an old surface covered in impact craters, so it is very unlike Earth. One similarity is that Mercury and Earth both have internally generated magnetic fields. Venus and Earth are very similar in size. There is emerging evidence for active volcanism on Venus, however, its atmosphere is up to 100 times denser than Earth's and is mostly carbon dioxide with sulfuric acid clouds. The surface of Saturn's moon Titan physically resembles Earth's, with mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas. The difference is that Titan's mountains are made from water ice, which is as strong as rock under its surface temperature (-180C), and the rivers and seas are full of hydrocarbons.

Scientists estimated that 1 in 5 stars like our sun has one Earth-like planet orbiting around them, which may support life. Considering that there are more than 200 billion stars in our Milky Way, there might be an estimated 40 billion planets that might support life in our galaxy.

Earth observation from space provides objective coverage across both space and time. The same space-based sensor gathers data from sites across the world, including places too remote or otherwise inaccessible for ground-based data acquisition.

And because Earth observation satellites remain in place for long periods of time, they can highlight environmental changes occurring gradually. Looking back through archived satellite data shows us the steady clearing of the world's rainforests, an apparent annual rise in sea level approaching 2 mm a year, and the increase of atmospheric pollution.

Earth is the only naturally habitable planet for complex (e.g. human) life in the solar system. The consequences of a warming climate are far-reaching and are already threatening some people's ways of life and damaging wider biodiversity. If Earth becomes uninhabitable we have nowhere else to go. Colonizing the Moon and Mars is no substitute for preserving Earth. The Moon and Mars cannot sustain Earth's population of humans and other organisms.

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