Today’s #manuscriptmonday for this first Monday of Advent, features P4, a manuscript that has the nativity story from Luke 1:75-2:7. It was hidden away and survived not only over 1 500 years of time, but one of the most systematized and wide-spread government attempts to destroy Christian Scripture. A 🧵. In 1889 a manuscript containing two treatises of the lst c. BC writer Philo of Alexandria, was discovered with portions of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke used for the binding.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday looks at what ancient documents can tell us about Jesus’s occupation prior to his public ministry. Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 has villagers from Nazareth asking “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” upon Jesus’s return to his hometown. So was Jesus really a “carpenter?” How do the manuscripts help us with answering that question? A 🧵. This is P103, a second century fragment that contains the Gospel of Matthew 13:55-56. The beginning of vs. 55 reads "Isn't this the
carpenter's son?"

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about the most famous story from the Bible that’s not actually from the Bible: The story of the woman caught in adultery (a 🧵)… If you look at your modern translation of the Bible you'll notice that at the end of John 7 the text is often sectioned out or bracketed off with the citation note that reads something to the effect of: "The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John
7:53-8:17.”

You’ve seen those “biblically accurate angels” posts. But are they? Today’s #manuscriptmonday tackles the subject (a 🧵). Titling these creatures “biblically accurate angels” is a bit of a misnomer. These aren’t actually angels.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is a Reformation Week post. Martin Luther nailed his famous 95thesis to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31st 1517… or did he (a 🧵)… One of the most famous catalysts for the start of what eventually became known as the Protestant Reformation was Luther's 95th Theses, which were famously reported to have been nailed to the Castle Church in Wittenberg, on October 31st, 1517.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about the King James Bible. Arguably the most well known English translation, a translation fit for a king! (A 🧵)… The King James Bible was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611. The beginning of it had a dedication to the King of England.

James was potentially the most scholarly king to ever sit on the English throne. He produced his own commentary/paraphrase of Revelation, and even his own translation of the Psalms.

October is an important month for the English Bible (a 🧵)… October marks the 490th year that the Myles Coverdale Bible, the first complete English translation of the Bible, was printed.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday includes a handful of copies of Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians. Particularly where Paul uses one of the most common statements about God — the Shema — and weaves Jesus into it (a 🧵)… The personal name of God throughout the Hebrew Old
Testament is YHVH. The Greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX), translates the name of God as kurios (Kúpiós), meaning "my Lord."

The name of God in the English Old Testament, is often rendered as upper case, smaller font, LORD. In the New Testament the term Lord is almost always applied to Jesus.

Ever heard someone say “I don’t read modern English translations because they took verses out of the Bible!” Well today’s #manuscriptmonday tackles that very issue. What if I told you that whatever Bible they’re using as the standard (although let’s be honest, they’re probably talking about the KJB), is part of a tradition that put verses into the Bible? It’s not a matter of “who took them out and when?” but, “who put them *in* and when?” Many modern English versions have supposed “missing verses” when compared with the King James Bible.

Back in 2022 my colleague Steve and I did a webinar in our ACLE (Apologetics Canada Literary Expedition) series titled, “The end of the world as we know it” on eschatology. Here are the breakdown infographics I made for that: a 🧵… Terminology:

Today’s #manuscriptmonday deals with copies of Josephus, and comes with a book recommendation that reveals the latest research on the authenticity of Josephus’s statements concerning Jesus. Flavius Josephus lived between c. 37 - c. 100 AD. He was a Jewish-Romano historian and military leader, known for writing many important works concerning the history and wars of Israel and the Romans.

I forgot to post my typical #manuscriptmonday yesterday. So here’s a Tuesday consolation (a 🧵). In John 12, following a discussion about the unbelief of a group of Jews, Jesus is recorded teaching. John makes an interesting comment following this narrative. He says that their doubt in Jesus’s teaching is actually a fulfillment of prophesy from the prophet Isaiah.

Then he says this….

The original 1611 King James Bible had a pretty elaborate and intricate few pages. These pages were purposeful in their intention to communicate things about the Bible. Here’s my breakdown of it all in a 🧵… 1.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is P.Hamb.Graec. 1011, which contains 13 lines of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (a 🧵)… In the June of last year (2024)
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, one of the leading academic journals in the field of papyrology (the study of papyrus documents) and epigraphy (the study of ancient inscriptions), announced the discovery and publication of the earliest known text of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about the chapters and verses in the Bible, the authors didn’t come up with them, so who did? (a 🧵)… Our earliest copies of both the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament did not come with chapter and verse divisions. So where did they come from?

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about 666 and the mark of the beast. Did you know that there are actually differences within the manuscripts of Revelation about what the number actually is? (a 🧵)… Everyone knows the number of the beast from the biblical book of Revelation, right? It's 666. That's just common knowledge!

Today’s #manuscriptmonday discussed ancient letter writing, and in particular, how the Pauline corpus of letters in our New Testament fit into the broader context of letter writing in the ancient world (a 🧵)… Letter writing was a common practice in the ancient world.
For example, P.Mich 8 490 (from the University of Michigan's collection), is a letter from a sailer writing to his mom while out at sea:

"Apollinarius to Thaesion, his mother, many greetings. Before all else I wish you good health and make obeisance on your behalf to all the gods. From Cyrene, where I found a man who was journeying to you, I deemed it necessary to write to you about my welfare."

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about the book of Enoch (a 🧵)… What is typically referred to as "The Book of Enoch" is lst Enoch. There are actually three Enochs.

This week’s #manuscriptmonday is 4Q521, a series of fragments originally from a single scroll and now part of the Dead Sea Scroll collection. It dates to the 2nd or 1st century BC, and gives a description of the
Jewish Messiah from the perspective of the Jewish Essene Qumran community.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about GA 2561, a 1000 year-old manuscript containing detailed images of Jesus’s life (a 🧵). This is GA 2561, a copy of the Gospel of John from the 1lth century.

Today’s #manuscriptmonday is all about St. Patrick and our oldest copy of Patrick's Confessio in the Latin/Irish diglot, the Book of Armagh. (a 🧵)… As a young man in the 5th century, Patrick was kidnapped from his home in Roman Britain and spent years enslaved as a shepherd in Ireland. He eventually managed to escape back to Britain, and then returned as a missionary to convert the Irish to Christianity.