Database of Objectively Dated Greek MSS: The CDDGB

A few days ago, Grant Edwards, PhD student at ITSEE in Birmingham and affiliated to Baylor University announced a new resource he has been compiling for some time, "The Collaborative Database of Dateable Greek Bookhands" (image below). This will be a collaborate and growing resource as users are able to sign up and submit new dateable manuscripts as well as suggesting revision to existing entries.

Here is Edwards announcement (via Papy-L) with links to the database and further description:

Dear Colleagues, 

I am pleased to announce a new online resource: The Collaborative Database of Dateable Greek Bookhands. The CDDGB is a catalogue of objectively dated Greek manuscripts written in a literary script between 0-899 CE. In time, manuscripts from earlier centuries will be included as well. 

The database and a complete description of the project can be found here: 

https://www.baylor.edu/classics/index.php?id=958430

To access the database directly click below:

https://airtable.com/shrZEkjkKomzgWh5Y

I hope this resource proves useful to those tasked with assigning dates to Greek manuscripts and to anyone interested in Greek handwriting.

If you have questions or comments please email me directly at cddgb.baylor@gmail.com.

Best regards,

Grant Edwards | PhD student 

Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing

University of Birmingham

Pasquale Orsini’s New Book on Palaeography

I’d like to draw attention ever so briefly to Pasquale Orsini’s excellent Studies on Greek and Coptic Majuscule Scripts and Books, published last month by De Gruyter (Studies in Manuscript Cultures 15). Many readers of our blog will have been familiar with Orsini’s prowess in the thorny discipline of palaeography, particularly due to his oft-cited article concerning the dating of New Testament Manuscripts, co-authored with Willy Clarysse. Furthermore, we were also honoured to publish his guest post (‘Palaeographic Method, Comparison and Dating: Considerations for an Updated Discussion [Guest post by Pasquale Orsini]’) where he responded to some recent proposals concerning the dating of the Bodmer Papyri.

In this volume, Orsini brings together seven specialised studies—originally published in Italian, now in English translation—along with a concise methodologically-geared introduction as well as a helpful (though perhaps too brief) glossary of palaeographical terms. The essays concern a wide variety of subjects: (1) The Scripts of the Nag Hammadi Codices, (2) The Scripts of the Bodmer Papyri, (3) Greek Biblical Majuscule, (4) Coptic Biblical Majuscule,  (5) Sloping Pointed Majuscule , (6) Liturgical Majuscule, (7) Decorated Liturgical Majuscule .

It is unsurprising that the essays are strong in content, given that Orsini represents the best of the Italian palaeographical tradition. Although not everyone is convinced by this school’s emphasis on stylistic typology, I for one appreciate its inductive nature, focus on the materials, and methodological sophistication. The influence of Guglielmo Cavallo, Orsini’s erstwhile teacher, is perceptible throughout, but the book is by no means derivative. At various places, particularly in the chapter on the biblical majuscule, Orsini refines Cavallo’s findings and takes them even further. In particular, the problem of geographical distribution of hands certainly needs further scrutiny and I hope that the impetus provided by this book will lead to further investigations. One could go on.

Finally, I should note that the book is an Open Access publication and hence free to download from De Gruyter website. And now, a little paraenesis: tolle lege!

Palaeographic Method, Comparison and Dating: Considerations for an Updated Discussion (Guest post by Pasquale Orsini)

As some of you may remember, Brent Nongbri and I have recently had a nice back and forth about palaeographical method. It started with my post on the Egerton Gospel, where I mentioned some hesitations about Brent’s recent suggestions concerning P66 and P75, to which Brent responded here and then, followed by my comment, here). Now, I’m very pleased to report that Pasquale Orsini, one of the great palaeographers of the recent generation, decided to chip into our discussion and I’m very honoured to include his guest post on our blog. [Update: I should also like to bring to your attention Pasquale's forthcoming monograph Studies on Greek and Coptic Majuscule Scripts and Books (Studies in Manuscript Cultures 15; Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2018).]

---

Rome, 6 February 2018

I want to contribute briefly to the debate between Peter Malik and Brent Nongbri on some principles of the paleographic method, without repeating opinions and concepts already written.

First of all, there is no ‘Italian’ method of paleography, but a paleographic method. This method is based on comparison (a paleographer once said that paleography is the ‘science of comparison’) of the graphic structure of scripts before that of single letters. However, in the last decades some paleographers (Guglielmo Cavallo ‘in primis’, Edoardo Crisci and myself) have questioned some principles of the paleographic method (for example, the concept of ‘canon’, its standard distribution in development / perfection / decline, etc.), recognizing the need for a reflection that is historically closer to the available data. These studies further develop the paleographic method of the 60s of the last century. And these studies should be read, even if they have been written in Italian language (with all the difficulties of this language).

Stylistic problems and ‘appropriate’ comparisons

P66 (P. Bodmer II)

The article of Don Barker (‘The Dating of New Testament Papyri’, NTS 57 (2011), 578–582) attributes the script of this manuscript to the graphic stream with angular formation of some letters (delta, ypsilon, phi) and serifs, and not to the ‘Alexandrian stylistic class’. According to this assignment, he proposes a dating between the middle of the second and the middle of the third century. As comparisons he proposes P. Oxy. 1622 (a fragment of a roll of Thucydides, assigned by Grenfell and Hunt to the ‘early second century” because the reverse was used for a contract dated 148 AD) and P. Oxy. 3030 (an official letter dated 207 AD).

I mentioned Barker’s article just to explain that in P. Bodmer II there is the roundness of the letters and not the angularity; there is no emphasis on the upper notional line; serifs or blobs on the ends of the strokes are characteristic of the ‘Alexandrian stylistic class” and then of the ‘Alexandrian majuscule”.

Brent Nongbri, in a more articulated work (‘The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P. Bodmer II (P66)’, Museum Helveticum 71 (2014), 1–35), reviews the various proposals of dating, analyzing the comparisons with manuscripts dated on basis of paleographic method. He does not find these comparisons satisfactory and suggests three new manuscripts: P. Bodmer XX, P. Cairo Isid. 2 and P. Lond. 1920.

P. Bodmer XX—part of the famous Miscellaneous Codex, which includes P. Bodmer V, X, XI, VII, XIII, XII, XX, IX, VIII—contains the ‘Apology of Phileas”: Phileas, the bishop of Thmouis in the Delta was martyred in the year 305, which gives a clear terminus post quem for the manuscript. P. Bodmer XX is therefore dated around the middle or in second half of the fourth century, when his apology had developed into a literary work. Nongbri says: ‘P. Bodmer 2 and P. Bodmer 20 show a number of compelling similarities in spacing, letter forms and overall appearance”, and soon after: “the two hands are noticeably similar in a number of ways.’ For Nongbri the chief (but insignificant) difference between these two hands is ‘the presence of serifs, or blobs, at the end of certain strokes’ in P. Bodmer II.

These two Bodmer papyri belong, however, to two different graphic typologies: the scribe of P. Bodmer XX used a ‘mixed style”, with elements of Biblical majuscule (alpha and ypsilon; contrast between fine and thick strokes) and of Alexandrian stylistic class (delta, epsilon, kappa, lambda, omega); the scribe of P. Bodmer II used an Alexandrian stylistic class (see particularly alpha, my, ypsilon). These different scripts cannot be compared for dating, even if they are contemporary.

More ‘appropriate’ is the comparison with P. Cairo Isid. 2, a letter from the archive of Aurelius Isidorus written in AD 298, and with P. Lond. 1920, a letter from a Greco-Coptic dossier of the monastery of Phathor dated about 330–340. Both scripts belong to the Alexandrian stylistic class and have elements in common with P. Bodmer II. These comparisons are convincing for me, and for this reason I accept a date between third and fourth centuries (expanding the chronological terms of previous article written together with Willy Clarysse, ‘Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates. A Critique of Theological Palaeography’, ETL 88/4 [2012], pp. 443–474: 465, 470; for P. Bodmer XX and P. Bodmer II see also P. Orsini, ‘I papiri Bodmer: scritture e libri’, Adamantius 21 [2015], 60–78: 61 n. 5, 63–64, 77 [Tab. 2]).

P75 (P. Bodmer XIV-XV)

P75 was written by a single scribe in ‘severe style’. The dates proposed for this codex vary from the late second to the second half of the third century (see B. Nongbri, ‘Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV (75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament’, JBL 135 (2016), 405–437). Though comparisons with the manuscripts of the third century can indeed be made (P. Oxy. 1012 [205–250 AD; on the recto there is a document, P. Oxy. 1045, ca. 205 AD]; P. Oxy. 1016 [235–299 AD; on the recto there is a document, P. Oxy. 1044, ca. 234–235 AD]), a persuasive comparison, proposed by Nongbri, is also possible with P. Herm. 4 (about 317–323 AD) and P. Herm. 5 (about 325 AD), from the archive of Theophanes. For this reason I agree to extend the chronological terms, including the early fourth century (see Orsini, ‘I papiri Bodmer’, 77 [Tab. 2]).

The basic misunderstanding is to consider the script of the two Herm. papyri as belonging to ‘sloping pointed majuscule’: instead it belongs to the ‘severe style’. I shall not repeat here the characteristics of the ‘sloping pointed majuscule’ and its chronological problems (see my article: ‘La maiuscola ogivale inclinata. Contributo preliminare’, Scripta 9 [2016] 89–116), but the ‘sloping pointed majuscule’ develops through a transformation of the ‘severe style’ (Grenfell and Hunt, Schubart, Lameere and finally Cavallo have stated this), between the end of the IV and the beginning of the V century. The two Herm. papyri belong to a process of initial transformation of the ‘severe style’, but they do not yet present all the characteristics of the ‘sloping pointed majuscule’.

Egerton Gospel (P. Egerton 2 + P. Köln VI 255)

I agree with the dating proposed by Malik (150–250 AD; see P. Malik and L.E. Zelyck, ‘Reconsidering the Date(s) of the Egerton Gospel’, ZPE 204 [2017], 55–71: 65) for this ‘Alexandrian stylistic class’. Furthermore, I add—as ‘impression d’ensemble’—to the comparisons proposed by him P. Oxy. 4625 (AD 200–299) and P. Oxy. 3313 (AD 100–199), although these have some differences in detail.

Handwriting Analysis and Dating the Bible

Ostraca from Arad dating ca. 600 B.C. (source)

There’s currently a story making the rounds on the major news sites (NY Times, Guardian, etc.). The headlines are, as headlines often are, “exciting”:

• “New Evidence on When Bible Was Written: Ancient Shopping Lists”
• “The Bible Is Really Old, Handwriting Analysis Reveals”
• “Parts of Bible may have been written earlier than expected, archaeologists say”

The study these stories are referencing was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. What the article actually does is try to show that there were at least six literate people at the desert fortress of Arad ca. 600 B.C. It takes a bit more work to get from there to an earlier-than-expected date for the Bible obviously. Here is how the paper summarizes its own significance:

Scholars debate whether the first major phase of compilation of biblical texts took place before or after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Proliferation of literacy is considered a precondition for the creation of such texts. Ancient inscriptions provide important evidence of the proliferation of literacy. This paper focuses on 16 ink inscriptions found in the desert fortress of Arad, written ca. 600 BCE. By using novel image processing and machine learning algorithms we deduce the presence of at least six authors in this corpus. This indicates a high degree of literacy in the Judahite administrative apparatus and provides a possible stage setting for compilation of biblical texts. After the kingdom’s demise, a similar literacy level reemerges only ca. 200 BCE.

I’m certainly not qualified to comment on ancient Israelite literacy rates so I will leave that to others. But what’s much more interesting about this paper, in my opinion, is the use of computer handwriting analysis to detect multiple scribes at work on ostraca. Here’s the description of the method:

Our algorithmic sequence consisted of three consecutive stages, operating on digital images of the ostraca (see Supporting Information). All of the stages are fully automatic, with the exception of the first, which is a semiautomatic step.

1. Restoring characters
2. Extraction of characters’ features, describing their different aspects (e.g., angles between strokes and character profiles), and measuring the similarity (“distances”) between the characters’ feature vectors.
3. Testing the null hypothesis H₀ (for each pair of ostraca), that two given inscriptions were written by the same author. A corresponding P value (P) is deduced, leveraging the data from the previous step. If P ≤ 0.2, we reject H₀ and accept the competing hypothesis of two different authors; otherwise, we remain undecided. [Note the assumption favoring different hands.]

 The important thing is that the computer software has to have “binary” images in step two. This seems to mean that the computer needs a crisp black and white image with just the letter and nothing else. But that means reconstructing letters from pottery that’s worn, dirty, scraped, etc. (see photo below). That’s the stage I have some doubt about since the handwriting algorithms work by measuring distances between vectors (see step 2 above). Depending on how sensitive those measurements are, the reconstruction process could make a big difference.

Visual representation of the process of restoring lost letters.

The authors did test the method on 18 modern Hebrew writers and it worked in about 98% of the cases. That’s impressive. But then they didn’t have to reconstruct their handwriting either since they had nice, clean scans of alphabets the 18 people wrote for them.

In the end, the analysis found at least six different hands at work in the 16 inscriptions used in the study. Thus (a) literacy rates were high and thus (b) the Old Testament was compiled in the 7th rather than the 2nd century B.C. That at least explains the headlines. The article actually doesn’t spend much time getting us from a to b. (Remember, it is a science journal.)

Still, I did find the handwriting analysis itself most interesting. I’d like to see the method applied to something like the correctors in Sinaiticus and see what it comes up with.

PapPal: New Resource for Ancient Paleography

In a comment to the previous post on a reassessment of the date of the early NT papyri, Christian Askeland mentioned a new resource for the study of ancient paleography, PapPal, which certainly deserves to be mentioned in a main post. 

Here is the announcement by one of the developers, Rodney Ast of the Unveristy of Heidelberg: 

We are pleased to announce the launch of PapPal (www.pappal.info), an online resource for the study of ancient paleography.  The site currently gathers thumbnail images of over 2500 dated Greek documentary papyri from collections around the world, which can be displayed either in gallery or slideshow mode.  Links direct users to full images and further information at the host sites and to metadata and transcriptions at papyri.info.   At the moment, there are only a handful of ostraka included.  In the coming months we will be adding more of them, as well as dated Latin documents.   I hope that you will take some time to explore the site and send me your comments.
Work on this project has been made possible by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the context of the University of Heidelberg's Cultural Research Center 933.  Material Text Cultures: Materiality and the Presence of Writing in Non-Typographic Societies, with further support from the Institute for Papyrology. 

Kind regards,
Rodney Ast

“Theological Palaeography”? Reassessment of the Dating of NT Papyri

A very controversial issue is the date of the early papyri of the NT. On his blog, Larry Hurtado summarizes a very important recent article on the subject of “theological palaeography”:

Pasquale Orsini & Willy Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88 (2012): 443-74.

Abstract :The date of the earliest New Testament papyri is nearly always based on palaeographical criteria. A consensus among papyrologists, palaeographers and New Testament scholars is presented in the edition of Nestle-Aland, 1994. In the last twenty years several New Testament scholars (Thiede, Comfort-Barrett, 1999, 2001 and Jaroš, 2006) have argued for an earlier date of most of these texts. The present article analyzes the date of the earliest New Testament papyri on the basis of comparative palaeography and a clear distinction between different types of literary scripts. There are no first-century New Testament papyri and only very few papyri can be attributed to the (second half of the) second century. It is only in the third and fourth centuries that New Testament manuscripts become more common, but here too the dates proposed by Comfort-Barrett, 1999, 2001, and Jaroš, 2006 are often too early.

I have compiled a small table demonstrating that the critique for a general tendency to date early in “theological palaeography” is not applicable to the Nestle-Aland edition. In spite of some significant differences, we see that seven papyri or uncials are still dated potentially to the second century (P30, P52, P4+64+67, P90, P104, 0171, 0212) . However, now three papyri in the second-century range in NA, are dated to the third century by Orsini and Claryssee (P77, P98 and P103), one uncial in the second-century date in NA is assigned to the fourth century (0189). Conversely, Orsini and Claryssee assign two papyri and two uncials in the second-century range (P30, P4+64+67, 0171, and 0212) which NA has dated later. Perhaps the most significant difference here is 0171 which Orsini and Claryssee think is 125 years earlier!

GA no.	P30	P52	P4+64+67	P77	P90	P98	P103	P104	0171	0189	0212
N-A date	200–300	100–150	200–250	150–250	100–200	100–200 (?)	150–250	100–200	300–350	150–250	200–300
O-C date	175–225	125–175	175–200	250–300	150–200	200–250	200–300	100–200	175–225	300–400	175–225

Galatian Papyrus on Sale

Brice Jones (The Quaternion) has identified a Galatians (2:2-4, 5-6) manuscript for sale on eBay, here.  I am going to make sure we archive the image here in Münster.  Thanks, Brice!   I have to disagree with Jones, Suciu and Choat on what Brice qualifies as a "likely" dating of the papyrus.  Correctly, one could argue that our datable 4th-5th century Coptic codices have documentary qualities such as this, but the inverse assumption is dangerous and factually untenable.  In other words, we should not assume that all Coptic codices from later centuries must resemble those  high-quality monastic codices of Sohag, Hamuli and Saqqara, and that no later codices were written with documentary qualities.  I am hoping that younger scholars will be conservative than previous generations, and will avoid dating Coptic (and Greek) manuscripts to the 4th-5th centuries just because they are ugly and written on papyrus.  I would need to examine further samples, but epsilon and kappa have traits here that may reflect Alexandrian majuscule influence -- indicating a likely date later than the 6th century (contra alpha, which is clearly following a Biblical majuscule style).

Could this be a writing exercise?  Consider the spelling anomalies which Brice mentions, and I note also the spelling ⲧⲉ which has been corrected to ⲇⲉ.  The ductus suggests documentary qualities (epsilon's horizontal stroke, position of tau, eta written with one continuous stroke).

With regard to the Turkish seller, I have been wondering if this is the source for the Green foundation papyri.

New articles

Brice C. Jones, ‘The Bodmer ‘Miscellaneous’ Codex and the Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193: A New Proposal’ JGRChJ 8 (2011).
Generally useful survey. The new proposal would seem to be that we should think of these as composite codices, lacking any thematic coherence.

Don Barker, ‘The Dating of New Testament Papyri’ NTS 57 (2011), 571-582.
This looks like the publication of Don’s paper from last year’s SBL conference. Abstract:

The narrow dating of some of the early New Testament papyri and the methodological approach that is used must be brought into question in the light of the acknowledged difficulties with palaeographical dating and especially the use of assigned dated literary papyri. The thesis of this paper is that the way forward in dating New Testament papyri, or for that matter any undated literary papyri, is first to locate the manuscript in its graphic stream and using, on the whole, dated documentary papyri belonging to the same stream, come to an approximate understanding of where in the history of the stream the manuscript lies. The following New Testament Papyri will be so treated: P⁵², P⁶⁷+ and P⁴⁶.

Some interesting new articles and reviews over at TC journal:
Deena E. Grant, Reinterpretation of Scripture in Hymn to the Creator
Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman, Isaiah 44:5: Textual Criticism and Other Arguments
Jan Krans, Erasmus and the Text of Revelation 22:19: A Critique of Thomas Holland’s Crowned With Glory

Early Manuscript of Hebrews Discovered

Brian Small, PhD student at Baylor University and regular reader of this blog, published the following startling announcement (Polumeros kai Polutropos)

Newly Discovered Manuscript Fragment on Hebrews
Baylor University is hosting a King James Bible conference this weekend. Concurrent with the conference is an exhibit showcasing ancient manuscripts and Bibles through the Middles Ages and Reformation and beyond. One of the manuscripts is a newly-discovered (three weeks ago!) papyrus fragment containing a portion of Hebrews 11. It was discovered in a funerary mask and is dated to the second century! I have pictures but I cannot post them here since the manuscript has been assigned to someone for study and publication.

Apparently, it seems to be Scott Carroll, Research Professor of Manuscript Studies and the Biblical Tradition at Baylor, who is the scholar in charge of this collection to which I assume the early papyrus belongs. On his webpage we read about Carroll that "He is presently directing the research of some of the earliest-known Greek literary papyri in the world which Dr. Carroll extracted from mummy cartonnage and some of the earliest biblical texts known to-date."

In the 1990's Carroll helped Robert van Kampen build the private Van Kampen Collection of Bibles and related material in Florida. Now he is working with another wealthy family, Green, to build up another great collection of bibles and manuscripts to be exhibited in a Bible museum in Dallas. More information about the Green collection in NY Times story here and here (slideshow). One of the MSS they acquired last year from Cambridge was Codex Climaci Rescriptus, which we reported about here (with further links). Apparently, Carroll himself is currently working on a publication of Codex Climaci Rescriptus.

In addition to the growing collection, there is the Green Scholars Initiative which has been organized allow scholars to research and produce scholarship around items in the Green Collection. Scott Carroll is Director and Principal investigator of the collection, whereas Jerry Pattengale is Director of the Green Scholars Initiative.

While we wait for a scholarly edition of the Hebrews papyrus, hopefully including images, and adequate information about the provenience, we have to be extremely cautious about the claimed second-century date. In the past there have been numerous claims from representatives of collections like these including the Van Kampen collection, and of course there is, coupled with a strong interest to promote the items in the collection, a real danger to through out sensational claims about "earliest biblical texts known to-date," etc (which media just loves). For a discussion of the the "early dating issue" raised by Roger Bagnall recently, see Peter Head's posts here and here.

The papyrus is on display at Baylor University until tomorrow. Perhaps some reader of this blog, who lives nearby Baylor could go there and take a peek for us? Any significant readings?

Conference schedule here

Conference and exhibition flyer here

Up-date: Some photos from the exhibition have been posted on the Baylor web-site (here) - image 13 has P39 and another papyrus text - probably the Hebrews text under discussion. (HT: MH)

Hurtado Reviews Bagnall Early Christian Books

I thought I'd post something to make Peter Head feel better (he has been ill lately), so here is an announcement of Larry Hurtado's review of Roger Bagnall Early Christian Books (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), in Review of Biblical Literature 01/2010.






Here is an extract regarding the controversial issue of dating Christian papyri:

In support of his contention that the widely accepted number of second-century Christian papyri is too high, Bagnall points to the slightly later dates of early papyri assigned by the great papyrologist/palaeographer Eric Turner, rightly observing that Turner’s expertise was unsurpassed. (It must be noted, however, that in general Turner’s dates differ by only a few decades, e.g., dating several items to the early/mid-third century instead of the late second century.) Bagnall also offers an argument from probability. Essentially, he contends that we should expect that the percentage of Christian papyri among extant second-century papyri should correlate with the likely percentage of Christians in the population of Egypt in that time. In the absence of hard data on either the population of second-century Egypt or the number of Egyptian Christians then, Bagnall adopts Rodney Stark’s “guesstimates” of the number of Christians in the early centuries. This leads Bagnall to propose that Christians comprised as much as 1 percent of the Egyptian population only by “the late 220s” (19). So, he reasons, Christian manuscripts from the second century should comprise no more than 1 percent of the total extant, or about one or two manuscripts. Consequently, he concludes, the widely accepted view that we have as many as eight second-century Christian manuscripts must be wrong.
I share Bagnall’s high regard for Turner and am also reluctant to base much on any dating of manuscript that conflicts with Turner’s judgments. But I am less swayed by Bagnall’s attempt to mount his argument from probability. It all seems to me too much guesswork to form the basis of anything compelling.

See Peter Head's evaluation of Bagnall's book here and here.

The Prologue of Revelation in the Syriac Text

In reading the latest issue of JETS the article by John Noe includes a reference (derived from James M. MacDonald) to the “Syriac version of the Bible” which apparently entitles Revelation as “The Revelation which was made by God to John the evangelist on the island of Patmos, into which he was thrown by Nero Caesar.” Is this peculiar to one particular ms or is it widespread? It would provide evidence that some in the Syriac church dated Revelation to the 60s.

The prologue to Revelation includes up to 60 different wordings (cited by H.C. Hoskier, Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse: Collations of All Existing GreekDocuments [1929], 25-27). I think the TR includes a reference to “John the Theologian” and 1775 includes the longest description: “The Revelation of the all-glorious Evangelist, bosom-friend [of Jesus], virgin, beloved to Christ, John the theologian, son of Salome and Zebedee, but adopted son of Mary the Mother of God, and Son of Thunder” -- that’s quite an introduction!

Interesting stuff!