I am Kevin P. Edgecomb, BA University of California at Berkeley, MDiv Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, MPhil University of Oxford. (For those unfamiliar with the MPhil, it is equivalent to an ‘ABD PhD’, ‘All but the dissertation PhD’.) Throughout the course of my education I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have learned from a number of world-class scholars. I’m deeply grateful to them all, and hold dear the memory of those who have gone from us, some all too soon.
Many things have happened since my beginning to write this blog in 2005, including several extended, if unintended, hiatuses. Over the course of time, my perspective and interests have, of course, experienced a number of changes. Rather than retain writing in which I find little of value, I have pruned the blog of what I found to be dead branches.
My primary interest is textual criticism, particularly in the “Old Testament”, with a special focus on the Greek books of Kingdoms (Samuel and Kings), and the fascinating interrelationship of its Old Greek, Kaige, and Lucianic texts and their relationship to the Judean Desert Scrolls and the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. I am likewise an afficionado of the Peshitta and its relation to all of the above. My fascination is liberal, extending to the other ancient works surviving from antiquity as biblical or parabiblical literature. In addition, I find a subset of liturgical studies quite fascinating: lectionaries. Lectionaries were some of the first things I posted on a personal website, before it was bombaxo and long before it was the blog biblicalia. Selected other subjects of interest, in no particular order, are: ancient near eastern studies, classics (more Greek than Latin in enjoyment and preference), Williams Blake and Shakespeare, Byzantine liturgical texts (especially menaia), esoterica (Hermetica, apophaticism, hesychasm, Jung), various patristic writers (generally eastern), the extended pre-Raphaelite circle, and well-designed and well-constructed things (books, art, clothing, buildings, etc). I also really like coffee. And good beer.
Thank you for visiting bombaxo and biblicalia.
About the name “bombaxo”
One thing I’ll tell you is where to find the origin of my domain name bombaxo:
Line 45 of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae. “Bombax!” is an exclamation of wonderment used by a very funny character, Euripides’ father-in-law Mnesilochos. In line 48, he elaborates it to “bombalombax.” What does it mean? You’d have to ask Mnesilochos….