BAGNALL, Early Christian Books in Egypt now available.

For the past hundred years, much has been written about the early editions of Christian texts discovered in the region that was once Roman Egypt. Scholars have cited these papyrus manuscripts--containing the Bible and other Christian works--as evidence of Christianity's presence in that historic area during the first three centuries AD. In Early Christian Books in Egypt, distinguished papyrologist Roger Bagnall shows that a great deal of this discussion and scholarship has been misdirected, biased, and at odds with the realities of the ancient world. Providing a detailed picture of the social, economic, and intellectual climate in which these manuscripts were written and circulated, he reveals that the number of Christian books from this period is likely fewer than previously believed.

Bagnall explains why papyrus manuscripts have routinely been dated too early, how the role of Christians in the history of the codex has been misrepresented, and how the place of books in ancient society has been misunderstood. The author offers a realistic reappraisal of the number of Christians in Egypt during early Christianity, and provides a thorough picture of the economics of book production during the period in order to determine the number of Christian papyri likely to have existed. Supporting a more conservative approach to dating surviving papyri, Bagnall examines the dramatic consequences of these findings for the historical understanding of the Christian church in Egypt.

Roger S. Bagnall is professor of ancient history and director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. His books include Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton).

Endorsements:

"This book is brilliant, concise, and elegantly written. Bagnall provides a masterful and readable study, while also addressing a number of controversies in early Christian studies. The book will be an instant and major classic in the field--it is that good."--T. G. Wilfong, University of Michigan

"Written by one of the world's leading papyrologists, this book is full of valuable and interesting information that will help to advance the discussion of a hot topic."--Robert Kraft, University of Pennsylvania

Table of Contents:

List of Figures ix
Preface xi
A Note on Abbreviations xv
Chapter I: The Dating of the Earliest Christian Books in Egypt General Considerations 1
Chapter II: Two Case Studies 25
Chapter III: The Economics of Book Production 50
Chapter IV: The Spread of the Codex 70
Notes 91
Bibliography 99
Index of Subjects 105
Index of Papyrological Texts Discussed 110

Canadian Gets Booted Out of the Creation Museum

 
Derek Rogers is a computer science student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada). I met him in Washington last April. He has been active in the atheist bus campaign and other events promoting a nonreligious point of view.

Derek was at the Secular Student Alliance meeting in Ohio and went along with the group that visited the creation museum. He was asked to leave. Here's the video of him explaining what happened to PZ Myers, Seanna and Steve Watson, and others who had just toured the museum.

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[Hat Tip: Friendly Atheist]

Happy Anniversary!

 
Today is our 41st wedding anniversary.

Here's how Ms. Sandwalk looked back when we first started dating. She looks the same to me today as she did back then.

She has posted an old picture of me on her blog and it's clear that I haven't changed very much either!

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Elaine Morgan and Aquatic Apes

 
The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis of Elaine Morgan is a classic "just-so" story that attempts to explain the evolution of modern humans by claiming that our ancestors once lived in water. It's a typical adaptationist perspective on biology since it begins with the assumption that every phenotype of humans must have been due to natural selection.

Morgan gave a talk last month sponsored by TED. It's posted at: Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes. You should watch it if you are interested in the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. In addition to being a good example of (false) adaptationist thinking, it's a good example of how a skilled journalist makes a "scientific" case to a general audience. The audience loved her. She gets an enthusiastic standing ovation at the end.

I didn't realize that Elaine Morgan was relying so much on attacking scientific conspiracy in order to bolster her beliefs. Many of her arguments sound similar to those of the Intelligent Design Creationists. Judging by the reception she gets, there's a lot of reasonably intelligent people out there who are willing to buy into the idea that scientists suppress knowledge of things they don't like just because they don't like them.

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[Hat Tip: John Hawks]

The Biologic Institute Expands

 
Posted yesterday on Evolution News & Views: European scientists working in conjunction with Biologic Institute.

The anti-ID crowd has an old canard about there being no serious scientists who doubt Darwin, let alone any that support intelligent design. And they like to say that there is no science being done by ID scientists. Both ideas are not just false, but absurdly so. Note this announcement of new scientific arrivals at Biologic Institute. Professor Matti Leisola, the Dean of Chemistry and Materials Science at Helsinki University of Technology in Finland; Colin Reeves, Professor of Operational Research in the School of Mathematical and Information Sciences at Coventry University; and Professor Stuart Burgess, Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bristol.

Three "serious scientists", eh? And not a biologist in the bunch. That's what we've come to expect in an institute that's supposed to be studying evolution creationism.

John Pieret has the scoop on these dudes. All three of them are creationists with strong ties to the Young Earth Creationist movement [The "Pros" from Dover]. John had the idea of comparing these guys to the Three Stooges. I thought it was appropriate so I "borrowed" it.¹

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1. I steal a lot of John's ideas but let's not tell him, OK? It gives him a swelled head.

Teabaggers

 
American politics is so much fun—I love watching it on TV.

But from time to time the subtleties escape me. This is one of those times. The opponents of universal health care are not referred to as "idiots," which would be the appropriate name—instead, they're called "teabaggers."

What the heck is a "teabagger"? I looked it up on the Urban Dictionary. There are several definitions. One of them involves actions that don't seem to apply in this context. (But it sounds like fun.)

For the benefit of all your foreigners out there, here are the definitions that seem to be relevant ...

4) a person who is unaware that they have said or done something foolish, childlike, noobish, lame, or inconvenient.

and ...

A whining fool shouting loudly for liberty but not willing to pay the bill.

"After most American workers saw more money in their paycheck due to the lower tax rate, the teabaggers at Fox News railed against high taxes, but did not discuss how much Jesus hated hypocrisy."

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On the Origins of Eukaryotes

 
Carl Zimmer has an article in Science with a provocative title: On the Origin of Eukaryotes. This is well-timed since it appears just when I've returned from a meeting on this very topic. [Go here if you can't see the article on the Science website.]

One of the things we learned at the meeting is that the Woose tree of life is almost certainly an over-simplification at best and wrong at worst. It is no longer possible to claim that eukaryotes have a simple vertical descent relationship with any archaebacterium (or any bacterium, for that matter).

Instead, the early history of life is characterized by a web or a net involving multiple gene exchanges between all primitive species. After some time, the major divisions of life emerged from this "soup" and became separate lineages with an semi-independent history. This view dates back ten years or so and it's illustrated by a figure that Ford Doolittle published in the February 2000 issue of Scientific American. I've used this figure several times. Here it is again so you can see how it relates to Carl's article.

In the case of eukaryotes, the history is complicated by an endosymbiotic event where a proteobacterium was engulfed and evolved into mitochondria. That explains many of the eukaryotic genes with a clear bacterial origin. Those genes, can be reliably traced to a particular lineage of proteobacteria. What this shows is that by the time of the endosymbiosis most of the main lineages of prokaryotes had emerged from the soup and become fairly well-defined.

This doesn't explain the origins of the host cell. That cell presumably had some of the features of modern eukaryotes. Where did it come from? Was it part of an ancient lineage that formed during the gene exchange period of evolution suggesting that some eukaryotic features are ancient? Was it formed by a fusion between a primitive bacterial cell and a primitive archaebacterium? (Or, did archaebacterial arise from a fusion of a primitive eukaryotic cell and a primitive bacterium?)

Some people even believe that the ancient host progenitor of eukaryotes arose fairly late in the game and was only related to archaebacteria, either through a recent common ancestor or from an archaebaterial species within the archaebacterial clade. This is not consistent with the tree shown above but that's OK.

These two hypotheses on the archaebacterial origin of the host cell are the ones that Carl Zimmer highlights in his article: the Three Domain Tree and the Eocyte Tree.


I don't think either of these trees comes close to representing the true history of eukaryotic cells. I don't think it's even possible to represent that history by a tree. Zimmer mentions this possibility in passing but I don't think he does justice to the controversy over the tree of life.

The controversy is not just about which branch of the archaebacterial tree the eukaryotes came from. It's about whether they came from the archaebacerial lineage at all or whether it's even appropiate to be talking about lineages and trees at this stage of the history of life.

Shifting gears slightly, I'd like to bring up another subject. Here's what Carl writes near the end of his article.

Whatever the exact series of events turns out to be, eukaryotes triggered a biological revolution. Prokaryotes can generate energy only by pumping charged atoms across their membranes. That constraint helps limit their size. As prokaryotes grow in size, their volume increases much faster than their surface area. They end up with too little energy to power their cells. Eukaryotes, on the other hand, can pack hundreds of energy-generating mitochondria into a single cell. And so they could get big, evolving into an entirely new ecological niche.

This is a widely believed explanation for the adaptive value of mitochondria and internal membranes. But many species of bacteria have internal membranes and, in the case of photosynthetic species, those internal membranes are packed full of energy-producing proteins.

Why couldn't bacteria have evolved internal membranes in order to get around the size limitation if it was that big of a deal? I don't see anything special about mitochondrial that couldn't have just as easily been handled by infolding of the inner membrane.

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