Indiana Wesleyan University Assistant Provost Jerry Pattengale is collaborating with an Oxford classics scholar to produce a series of books that brings people closer to some of the most important unpublished manuscripts in the world.
The Green Scholars Initiative: Papyrus Series, edited by Dirk Obbink and Jerry Pattengale, is "a new book series that will include rare, unpublished papyri texts from the private Green Collection," according to a press release from Brill, the Dutch publishing house who has agreed to release the series.
The Green Collection is one of the largest private collections of Biblical manuscripts in the world. Pattengale is the director of the Green Scholars Initiative, which facilitates the study of Green Collection manuscripts by both young and established academics.
"I'm humbled to be a part of all of these projects associated with the Green Collection. And this Brill series will help synthesize and distill the key research," says Pattengale. "The Brill series is more than simply a great scholarly venue, it also brings together the work of 30 research teams from several countries."
"Comprising of one to two new volumes per year, the new series will publish approximately 20 papyri with a thorough description, commentary with images, and web-based support for further resources."
"The first forthcoming volume in the series, planned to be released in early 2013, is dedicated to an early 3c BCE papyrus containing an extensive, undocumented work by Aristotle on reason, and is currently being analyzed by a research group at Oxford University."
A graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University, then Marion College, this latest project is just the most recent step in an academic journey that has taken Pattengale around the world.
"I've been fortunate in my journey to have begun at IWU, with Professor Wilbur Williams helping me to study archaeology in Israel," Pattengale said. After receiving his bachelor's degree from IWU in 1981, he earned a master's degree from Wheaton College and a Ph.D. in Ancient History from Miami University (Ohio), where he studied under the eminent archaelogist Dr. Edwin Yamauchi.
"Coupled with archeology stints in Greece and Israel, and helping to develop the Scriptorium's Collection, God was honing my skill all along," Pattengale said.