Tomorrow, Wed Dec 20th 2006, CNN will be airing a special called "After Jesus: The First Christians". More info here. Looks interesting. We'll see how it turns out.

Thanks to Scot McKnight for the heads up.

So I finally got my first volumes of the published Oxyrhynchus papyri today. This is the last of my birthday presents to roll in.

I got volumes 4 (published 1904) and 12 (published 1916), both for only $9.98 + shipping from here. Prices range from $9.98 to $132. I decided to go for a couple of the cheaper volumes for reasons of personal fiscal responsibility.

So what odd stuff do you find in these? Well, these volumes are published versions of papyri that span the lifetime of Koine/Hellenistic Greek, roughly 300 BC to 300 AD, give or take some years. Oxyrhynchus is a city somewhat close to the Nile in Egypt. Most documents are normal, everyday kinds of documents, like private letters, shopping lists, official declarations, and legal documents. In such cases their provenance is usually Oxyrhynchus, because there would be no reason to disseminate someone's shopping list.

For some documents this is not the case. Volume 4 contains various theological fragments. You can find noncanonical sayings of Jesus, a portion of the Septuagint (POxy 656), a very significant portion of Hebrews (POxy 657, aka P13), and a fragment describing a pagan sacrifice around 250 AD. You will also find fragments of Pindar, Aristotle, Livy (this one in Latin, which is unusual; most everything is in Greek), et al.

And, of course, they all come with handy translations and notes. If this is up your alley, order them from the link above for the seller. They were quite a bit slower than Amazon, even with basic shipping.

So I was flipping through my plethora of new stations last night and saw a pretty good show. It was on Alexander the Great and his conquests.

As far as content was concerned, it was pretty nicely done. Quite entertaining. If they were accurate, Alexander was indeed a brilliant tactician. Lots of interesting information on their tactics and weapons.

As far presentation was concerned, I would give it a 'C'. The program's info could have been boiled down to about 20 minutes. Apparently they had to fill an hour. There were a good number of commercials, and they spent several minutes repeating scenes from earlier segments after every commercial. Review is good when teaching, but this was way excessive.

If you're interested in this sortof thing, I recommend it. Good show.

Of course, if you record it with your DVR, you can wait until part of it is recorded to start watching it so you can fast forward through the commercials, even while it's recording ahead of you. Such a sweet feature...