The News

Texas researchers reveal secrets of a medieval Spanish altarpiece


Professor and author receives prestigious medieval studies award


Oil painting 'originated in East'


The Great Escape


and the antidote at In the Middle blog

A Distant Mirror

Ancient timbers restored by sugar

Time Team archaeologists dig deep to find ancient village

Germanic invaders 'did not bring apartheid' to Anglo Saxon Britain

AND

Germanic invaders may not have ruled by apartheid

Vikings acquitted in 100-year-old murder mystery

ANGLO-SAXON MOUND FIND IN SHERWOOD FOREST

VIKING ARCHAEOLOGY DIG IN SHERWOOD FOREST

Hoo goes there at Diss bookshop?

FIND COULD BE MEDIEVAL STAGE DOOR FOR SATAN


Remains found at toll road site

Stalemate for Lewis chessmen

Boy, 9, and grandfather find medieval silver treasure in Sweden

Patristics Carnival X

I missed this earlier this month, I think: http://uperekperisou.blogspot.com/2008/04/patristics-carnival-x.html

News of the Week

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DIG UP MEDIEVAL ARROW HEAD AT BATTLE ABBEY

Dig team finds medieval gateway


Bejeweled Anglo-Saxon Burial Suggests Cult


Medieval ‘head’ discovered at dig

Medieval brooch unearthed in field


Bay could reveal Viking secrets


Digs reveal Anglo-Saxon settlements

A barbed compliment to the power of medieval warfare


European history in cod bones


Italy: Plague victims discovered after 1500 years


Rare artefact stolen from church

Only copy of sacred book from the 15th century to go on public display

Czech medieval crown jewels go on rare display


The Art of the Hunt, as Practiced Way Back When


Treasure hunter unearths ancient ring

Scribal Error and DNA Mutation

I bet no one thought those two topics would be discussed in the place at the same time, ever. Certainly never occurred to me. But Jonathan Jarret at A Corner of Tenth Century Europe points to this site at http://www.bioc.cam.ac.uk/uto/howe.html that does just that. The point of the article seems to be to point out that scribal errors down a manuscript stemma show a remarkable similarity to mutations down a DNA string over time. Interesting, but who knows what it means.

The problem of course is that it assumes that the more copies a text goes through the more scribal error there will be. But that isn't the case. Part of the problem in textual criticism is that such assumptions are easily proven false, and one part of the stemma may indeed be very pure, even centuries and multiple copies removed from the the original, while another copy only one copy removed from the original may be rife with errors. In fact, this is just the problem I'm facing right now: I have a mnauscript very close to Aelfric's lifetime that contains many errors, another that is 2 centuries later, and other than updating the orthography into late 12th, early 13th century orthography (the ge- prefix on verb forms in OE becomes an i- prefix for example), is remarkably free of scribal error even though there is active editing of the text (leaving out portions on purpose). That is, the later manuscript, which displays activity that should add a layer of opportunities and situations that give rise to scribal errors is surprisingly free from such errors whereas a manuscript that is supposedly a straight copy and is close to the original has many scribal errors. So far as I know, such an example is not something duplicated in DNA, but I could be wrong, and undoubtedly will be corrected.

Krister Stendahl and David Noel Freedman

It is with sadness that I pass on the news making the round of blogs and e-lists that Krister Stendahl has passed away. I have to say that he was influential on my own fledgling biblical theology career way back in the day. I even met him once at a rather intimate gathering where he presented a paper and had a q and a session and he allowed me a few moments afterward to ask questions privately. I doubt he remembered, why would he?, but I do. That's a teacher! An obituary

Edit: Also, I've been informed that David Noel Freemdan has also passed away. Hard to stand on the shoulders of giants when the giants keep dieing out from under one. May they rest in peace. Update: Today's LA Times has an obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-freedman17apr17,1,3210473.story

Oh at last!--all these years I thought it was just me!

Biblical Carnival

Biblical Carnival is up

So Sad

I've been involved in another forum in a discussion about the early medieval period. I reacted, perhaps too strongly, to characterizations of the period as "having no keen interest in classical antiquity" and "the Merovigian kingdom in particular was a dark age for learning" and to citations of books such as Charles Freeman "Closing of the Western Mind" which accuses Constantine and the church of giving up "reason" that was resuscitated until Aquinas, devoting a whole 4 pages to 6 centuries of thinkers. I had thought that after Peter Brown and the reassessment of Late Antiquity of the last 35 years or so, that we'd gotten past this, but apparently not when well educated, intelligent people can speak of the "dearth of science" in the period seriously or that there was no philosophy etc.

We Early Medievalists have a long way to go.

The last charge (the Templars)

Anglo-Saxons honoured their dead with household objects

Gold coins of rebel British Emperor uncovered

Barbary lions were part of medieval Tower of London zoo

Viking treasure found on Silloth beach