About the site and author.

Ben C. Smith, amateur investigator into the era of Jesus and the apostles.

About the site.

Some of the projects that I present on this site will be simple collocations of data, while others will actually reflect my own judgments and opinions. As my goal is to go back to the original texts as often as I can, I trust that all of my projects will be of some use to the reader, even if my judgments and opinions are dead wrong. I myself treasure those books that grant me the most access to the original texts, regardless of whether or not I agree with the author on all points.

Sign up for my ezine, or newsletter, to receive site update information, as well as articles or links on the ancient texts. Take one of my ecourses for information on how to use the web to present texts written in ancient languages. Check out my ebooks for information that you can download to your own computer.

You may link to any page on this site.

My own links page is very general, usually linking to the index page of other sites rather than to pages nested deeply within the site. If you know of a good site on the Judeo-Christian tradition that I have missed, however, you can notify me using the feedback page.

Site conventions.

I generally adhere to the following conventions:

  • I use the reference format chapter.verse, with a period, instead of chapter:verse, with a colon, and do so across the board for any text that can be so subdivided. The reference of a work that spans volumes will have three elements, to wit, book.chapter.verse.
     
  • Anno domini, of course, is Latin for in the year of our Lord. It gives us the abbreviation AD. Throughout this web site I may refer to dates anno domini without any such reference. The year 30 will be presumed to mean AD 30, the year 70 will mean AD 70, and so on. Years BC will specifically be labelled as before Christ to distinguish them from years AD.
     
  • I use brackets [] and braces {} throughout the texts. Most of them derive from the source of the text transcription.
     
    Bracketed material is either the reconstruction of a fragmented manuscript or an adjacent passage that I have placed out of order for comparison and contrast. If the latter, the reference will be bracketed as well. The former needs no marker.
     
    Braced material is either the correction of an errant scribe or a distant passage that I have brought in for comparison and contrast. If the latter, the reference will be braced as well. If the former, the original text may or may not have contained the braced word or words. The fitness of the reading will tell. If the passage reads better with the braced material, then the scribe excluded it. If it reads better without it, then the scribe included it.
     
    Please note that some of the texts taken from the public domain may have brackets or braces that do not follow these conventions.
Technical notes.

This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer, JavaScript enabled. I designed the site with a monitor resolution of 800 by 600 pixels and a text size of medium, but other resolutions and text sizes have been tested, and ought to come out fine too.

I use WebLock Pro for source code and site protection on some pages.

Any of the usual Unicode fonts for polytonic Greek, such as...:

  • ...ALPHABETUM.
  • ...Code2000.
  • ...Palatino Linotype.
  • ...Athena.
  • ...Arial Unicode MS.

...will display all of the characters on this site except for some of the Coptic letters derived from Demotic (and those derived from Greek they will display in the Greek forms, not the Coptic, since Unicode does not distinguish the two languages). Only the TITUS Cyberbit Basic and Cardo fonts, so far as I know, will display them. TITUS Cyberbit Basic, as a matter of fact, will display all of the characters that I have used on this website. Cardo will display all but three of the archaic Greek letters. Both fonts are completely free.

My stylesheets for this site place Cardo in first place for ancient languages, then TITUS Cyberbit Basic, mainly because I think that Cardo is more legible. (For the character buttons on the TextDoctor I reverse this order because Cardo misses three of the archaic Greek letters.) Since, however, I myself write and format in unaccented Greek, Times New Roman will work for most of the pages. (I write and format in unpointed Hebrew, as well, but Times New Roman actually displays Hebrew vowel points splendidly.)

You are encouraged to report any errors that you may find on this site, and to offer feedback.

The links on this site may be underlined or not, depending on whether or not you have already visited the linked page (and provided you are using a browser that supports cascading style sheets). Before you visit, the link will be underlined. After you visit, the link will show an underline only as you move your cursor over it. The color will remain unchanged.

For viewing or printing purposes, try browsing the texts and excavations in print mode.

About the author.

I am a Christian. A gentile convert of the apostle Paul, in a manner of speaking. I do not hesitate to confess Jesus Christ as Lord.

My study of the ancient Jewish and Christian texts is part intellectual curiosity and part religious devotion. These two do not contradict. What discrepancy is there in scientifically and honestly pursuing a course of study, then finding oneself profoundly stirred by what one has discovered?

As a Christian, I find it essential to read the texts as if to actually learn from them. It is imperative, then, to reject all schools of thought that might serve to prejudice the reading before it even commences. Accordingly, I refuse to espouse inerrancy or infallibility as doctrinal stances. Whether these viewpoints are correct or incorrect is irrelevant. What matters is that they predetermine certain readings of the text, and thus prohibit, or at least inhibit, learning from the authors.

I strive to avoid, then, both apologetics and deconstruction on this site. I find myself leaning to the conservative side at times, and to the liberal side at times. It all depends on the evidence from the text. (Such is my goal, at any rate, though I no doubt achieve it imperfectly.)

Neither this site nor its author is beholden to any religious denomination, order, or organization. Indeed, I tend to regard the better part of modern Christianity as only peripherally related to the ancient Jewish sect that sprouted from the soil upon which Jesus of Nazareth trod.

I do, however, squarely align myself with the tradition of Jesus Christ and the apostles. My study of the texts has consequences. To discover that everything that I had ever believed about the foundations of Christianity was in error would affect me deeply. But the danger of such a discovery in no way relieves me of my duty to examine the evidences honestly and evenly.

For being a Christian, after all, is more about what one puts into the process than what one gets out of it. The ends do not justify the means.

I am also strictly an amateur. I have studied Greek and Latin formally, and have taught myself just enough Hebrew to be dangerous. But do not mistake what you find on this site for professional, peer-reviewed scholarship.