Early Christian quotes from the bible

[sestir]

I am confused. Oo

Surely there must be some web site or book that list quotes (and possibly allusions) from the bible by people in the first few centuries, the way it was written in whatever manuscript it was preserved in and with a little context when possible.

There is e-Catena, but the text of the quote is in English, and there is Biblindex, but it appeared to me they do not have the texts but a reference to some book where the text of the quote is given. This would mean a lot of work for everybody to look up in various libraries.

Surely this would be of interest to more people than me, right? Can anybody recommend a useful resource that is somewhat like:

1 John 1:1
Tertullian - A Treatise On The Soul
{ Text of this passage in greek or whatever language it was preserved in. }
....
Origen
...

1 John 1:2 and so on...

Also, lots of research has been carried out on various verses in the academic world. Is there some easy way to access these findings for a person like me, who is not affiliated to a theological institution and so does not have access to the archives of all those peer-reviewed magazines for free? Reading blogs and anything more?

[TWTY-Admin]

Unfortunately, the answer to all your questions posed above, sestir, require only the two following words: "none" and "no".

To break them down a bit, with a slightly more fuller response other than "none" or "no":

"Surely there must be.....written in whatever manuscript....context when possible." - I know of neither a website or a book that lists them all in such a handy way, and definitely not with regards to the manuscript source for the quote. I find it almost nigh on impossible to even find what Greek/Latin manuscripts are used to produce such books as "The Ante-Nicene Fathers". These manuscripts must exist, somewhere, but will they tell you what they're called or referred to as? Will they heck!

The only thing I can think of that comes close is the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture set, but again, it is only in English and doesn't give much help in identifying the manuscripts used as the base text (the entire set also costs over $1100! - link | or available on Logos for the much more manageable sum of $308). They also don't give the Greek/Latin underlying text either.

"Is there some easy way to access... so does not have access to the archives of all those peer-reviewed magazines for free? Reading blogs and anything more?" - Again, no, there really isn't

JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) has finally started to allow Public access to their articles; however, you can only have three articles (not even a Journal issue) on your "shelf", and you are forced to keep them on there for an entire two weeks before you can remove them. This means you can really only read a grand total of 78 articles per year. With over 7 million articles to choose from, the "general public" use would need nearly 90,000 years in order to read them all. You could get the $199 a year JPASS in order to access a few more (but only download 120 pdfs a month).

I, like you, find it very difficult to find the information I want to know, and am quite certain most of the time that "surely, SURELY someone has already done this?", to only find that yes, the probably have - but like hell is it going to be easy to access, nor will it be exactly what you want.

For example: I wanted to see if someone had compiled a list of all the names used in Scripture, and provided the Hebrew, English and Greek counterparts (be them in the Mas/DSS Hebrew, Greek LXX, or Greek NT), and also reference where they appear in Scripture. Surely, after all this time, someone's done this, right?

Wrong.

I couldn't find a single place that had combined Hebrew/Greek/English, nor even Hebrew/English, nor even English/Greek, NOR Hebrew/Greek either. So, I'm doing it all by myself instead (which I will provide Free of Charge on TWTY once I'm done).

This, regrettably, is the world we live in - a rather annoying one!

[sestir]

JStor's concept seems to be the answer to my second question and they have some interesting journals in Register & Read. Their license agreement, however, makes their free offering to the public resemble the free offering of cheese that some people benevolently provide to mice through the concept of mousetraps. I do believe they have good intent, but there is a lot of risk in it so I will think it over and explore alternatives.

[TWTY-Admin]

Yes, the policy certainly is "you can read - but don't you dare quote anything!"

[sestir]

If a biblical quote is in greek, it is usually in Thesaurus Linguæ Græcæ, a little bit of which is free. I am not sure if their license agreement allows one to include any context. Also, since they suggest the texts themselves are copyrighted, I take that to mean they differ from the original because clearly, more than 70 years have passed since Origen, Cyril and Chrysostom lived so the copyright of the original works in greek should have expired. So maybe it is useless, but it might work in combination with Biblinfo.

[TWTY-Admin]

Yeah, I've never been able to find a genuine reason for how someone can "copyright" a manuscript quote. I guess the transcription done by the transcriber could be copyrighted? I really don't know.