Sorry for the delay

For those few of you who do read my blog, I apologize for the lack of posting last month. I am really being hounded by deadlines right now. I have been out of town for Christmas and I have to have my course in Biblical Hermeneutics written and sent by Feb 1, I have 60 Amos exams to grade by next week, and we've just begun a new series at Encounter on James so I have had to gear up for that the past few weeks. I will be back...promise. Pray for my next month as I finish up all these projects and take a break for a few months! [And by break I mean focusing on my pastoring, taking only one class, and only being a TA for Mike's OTI].

Top 10 Movies I Watched This Year

Keep in mind, I don't ever actually go to the movies, I always rent them, so these probably came out in 2007. I have chosen these not based on entertainment value but on impact, either intellectual, emotional, or spiritual. In no particular order:

1. Lars & the Real Girl

2. The Great Debaters

3. The Savages

4. In the Valley of Elah

5. For the Bible Tells Me So

6. The Last Kiss

7. Martian Child

8. Horton Hears a Who

9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

10. When Nietzsche Wept

How Evangelical Are You?

When I was poking around Lark News today, this was one of the advertised links in the sidebar. Maybe WTS should put this on their website under the "employment opportunities" page?

Helpful ANE Resources

In case anyone is interested I found some helpful resources when dealing with the primary sources of ANE texts. Browse around. The first one looks hokey but the translations come from mostly standard sources or scholarly sources (such as the second link).

http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/

http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/

Augustine & the Hot Dog

Too awesome not to post...

The Burdens of The Giver

One of my favorite books to read is The Giver by Lois Lowry. Not to get all reader-response or anything but I love it because it means something specifically to me and reminds me of my role as a pastor/theologian. Let me explain:

In The Giver the protagonist is a young boy named Jonas who lives in a utopian society where there are no skinned knees and there is no experience of pain. In this society the time came, at the age of 12, when children became adults and were given what was to be there destiny, their place in the community, the role they were to perform for the good of the community. There were all kinds of jobs but only every great once in a while was there a replacement chosen for the most revered role of all, the role of the Giver. This lot befell Jonas.

The Giver was responsible for bearing all of the painful experiences and painful memories of the community so that the community didn't have to (Christ figure?). At the end of the day, Jonas decides that the joys that come with pain are worth the pain and so he releases the pain back into the community.

So where do I see the pastor/theologian? S/he is the Giver in the community. The weight of theological and biblical "pains" must be borne by them, they are the gatekeepers of the faith. Not everyone who claims Christ needs to master or even be aware of the myriad questions and theological problems the pastor/theologian is constantly confronted with. But the questions and problems must be dealt with by someone. 

With this position is the utmost responsibility - deciding in what scenarios and relationships it is best for the community to be exposed to a little "pain." Do you keep bearing all of the burden to shield those in your care? Or do you let them in on a little of your experience? But when will it do good instead of doing harm? This is increasingly the role I find myself in as a pastor and as a student of the Scriptures. 

As I tell most people who aspire to know more about the Bible...be very careful that you don't have false expectations about what this knowledge will bring. This knowledge is not primarily a gift but a burden. If we are interested in having our egos boosted by our knowledge then pick another field because the ethical weight of Scriptural knowledge can be a weight under which our pride and self-sufficiency are crushed.

Textual Variant & the Sabbath

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the NIV has smoothed over a difficulty in Genesis 2:2 with a "possible" reading.

The NIV reads: "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work."

The ESV reads: "And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

The Hebrew reads: וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה; וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי, מִכָּל-מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה.

The problem is that the ESV is more accurate. To translate the bet-preposition as "by" is a stretch. To translate wayekal as a pluperfect ("he had finished") is also a stretch. Even more of a stretch is to translate bayom as "by...day" in the first instance and then translate the exact same phrase only 5 words later "on...day." Why does the NIV do this?

Well, because God is supposed to be resting on the seventh day, not finishing up his work. The same language is used in Exodus 20:10 and even explictly says that God made heaven and earth in six days. So what do we do?

Well, rather than trusting in all of these stretches Ronald Hendel in his apologetic for a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible called The Text of Genesis 1-11: Textual Studies and Critical Edition suggests taking the textual variant found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, Syriac Peshitta, and Jubilees 2:16 and replacing "seventh" with "sixth."

Now, typically I am skeptical of taking textual variants but Hendel makes a good case for it.

1. "...to posit that scribes or translators changed the text independently in three (or four) textual traditions is extremely unlikely, given our cognizance of the numerous shared readings in G, S, and Syr." Also, G of Genesis is known for conserving the Vorlage so that reading "sixth" for a Proto-G is warranted. So then, it is better to argue for a common root than independent traditions.

2. So the question must now be settled on text-critical grounds. While typically the harder reading is to be accepted, in this case there is another plausible motive for why "sixth" could have given rise to "seventh." Verse 2 can be split up in this way:

בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה
בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִכָּל-מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה.

"With the exception of the stylistic variation of mkl in v 2b, the two sequences are identical but for the variation of ["sixth"] in the place of ["seventh"]. It is entirely possible that a scribe could have miswritten ["seventh"] in lace of ["sixth"] in the first clause, triggered by anticipation of the parallel in the second clause. This would be an accidental assimilation by anticipation" (33).

So the difficult reading is chalked up to scribal error. I like it, mostly because that's the best explanation I've heard so far.