Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • An RSS Feed for Dave Black

    Dave Black discusses RSS feeds, of which he has none:

    12:18 PM Yes, yes, yes, let’s hear it for RSS feeds!

    You may have bookmarked this blog, and/or other blogs and webpages. But you have no idea when new content is posted. So every now and then you click your bookmarks to see what is new. Sometimes nothing is new, and you’ve wasted a click.

    Impeccably good logic. Unless, of course, when you click on a bookmark and the site you visit is always publishing something new!

    But you can get an RSS feed of Dave Black’s blog. Really you can! Here’s how you do it:

    1. Got to http://page2rss.com
    2. Enter the URL for Dave’s blog, (http://daveblackonline.com/blog.htm)
    3. The site will give you back an RSS feed that will follow updates to that page
    4. Put that feed URL into your RSS reader

    For example, my reader currently shows the selection I quoted above as the latest update.

    I do update the Energion Publications (my company) book pages for the three of Dave’s books that I publish (with Dave’s permission), Why Four Gospels?, Christian Archy, and The Jesus Paradigm with relevant material from Dave’s blog, but that only gets a limited selection.

  • Christmas 2A – Celebrating Redemption

    That’s a pretty obvious theme, but it would seem even more odd to skip it! The second Sunday in Christmas is a good day to commemorate these events.

    There are a few different items that strike me here.

    1. The connection of the return from exile with the redemptive mission of Jesus.
      This shouldn’t be surprising, considering that we get many of the prophecies of Jesus from the exilic books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and 2nd Isaiah. The exile incorporated the ideas of the exodus, which are, of course, also incorporated into Christianity. In fact, if you work the connections far enough, this idea of redemption starts in Genesis 1 and goes through Revelation, as the exodus from Egypt, exile to Babylon and return, advent of Jesus and eventual final redemption in Revelation are all connected in imagery and language.
    2. Redemption is God’s idea.
      In each of our texts we see a strong expression that God initiates. He brings his people back in Jeremiah, strengthens and gives peace in Psalm 147, becomes flesh and brings light in John 1, and he does it because it’s his pleasure and because of his glorious grace in Ephesians 1.
    3. We are told to praise.
      Redemption draws a response. I think this is a universal theme both in the Old and the New Testaments. See my essay A Fruitful Faith.

  • Keeping Up with the Church Year

    One of the great benefits of using the lectionary, especially for major days during the church year, is that it helps us keep these various days in context. It’s easy for Christmas to be simply the holiday of giving, the one that allows us to sing all that good music and have some parties. Keeping track of the Christmas season lets us see some of the things that follow: the opposition, the danger, the hardship, and eventually death and resurrection.

    It’s easy to separate things. People who attend church on Christmas as Easter miss what comes before, after, and between. There is no Christmas without an emptying (Phil. 2:5-11). There is no Easter without Good Friday.

    Christmas is not simply a celebration of giving; it’s a celebration of sacrifice and also of receiving-receiving God’s gracious gift. Easter is not just a celebration of new life. It’s a celebration of the sacrificial death that preceded it and the way that “…by means of death he can do away with the one who has the power of death, namely the devil” (Heb. 2:14).

  • James 1:13 – Tempted by Evil?

    In the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament on James (my review) the suggestion is made that apeirastos kakwn should be translated as an objective genitive, as “tempted to do evil.” They oppose this to a subjective genitive (“tempted by evil”) or one alternative which does not involve a new way of reading the genitive (67, 70-71).

    It’s interesting to note that nearly all translations choose “by evil.” (I say “nearly” because all the translations I have in my library do so.) This is a time when I feel the limitations of my library, but Wallace (125) uses it as an example of a genitive of means, Robertson calls it ablatival (515-517), and Blass-deBrunner-Funk discusses it in a passage covering other cases of the genitive following an adjective, including examples that could have different translations, such as 1 Corinthians 9:21 (anomos theou/ennomos christou). The BDAG entry on apeirastos suggests “tempted to do evil” (and also cites the same passage from Blass-deBrunner-Funk that I have).

    As I look at this passage it seems to me that the more natural translation is “tempted by evil,” while I don’t deny the possibility of the alternative. At first glance, the context seems to suggest something more like “tempted to do evil,” since this then forms the basis for the claim that God does not tempt anyone.

    But I would suggest a logical connection to another phrase, James 1:17 “no inconsistency or shifting shadow” (ISV). Yes, this phrase is separated from the phrase in question, but it appears to me that James entwines multiple topics together as he relates them throughout the book. His point in 13 is that God is reliable and cannot be moved, a point which is actually supported by either translation.

    Thus my second reflection is that the traditional translation of this passage actually fits the logic quite well.

    Any thoughts?

  • When Do You Get On Board?

    Christian Girl at College has an answer: Now!

    Oh, well… I can’t do that now. I’m too young; I’m not really in control of my life – my actions. I’ll change after college, when I’m on my own. It’ll be a big turning point. That’s the perfect time to start being the Christian I want to be.

    …

    As if that will be ever.

    Read the rest!

     

  • Biblical Studies Carnival LVIII Posted

    The Biblical Studies Carnival has always been somewhat above your average blog carnival, and the December carnival at kol-haadam is above the average even for a Biblical Studies carnival.

    One nice feature is a separate listing for book reviews, which I have to mention since it links to a review of Ephesians: A Participatory Study Guide (note the word “participatory”), which is about to be released by my company, Energion Publications. Of course there are reviews of many other valuable books and it’s nice to have a list.

  • December Biblioblog Rankings

    I choose to link to Jeremy’s list, for no better reason than that I’m on his list. I’m back up to #23, which is probably the result of actually writing a few posts.

    Thanks again to Jeremy for maintaining these rankings.

  • Spiritual Fitness in the Army

    I find the very phrase “spiritual fitness” in any context other than a voluntary group, such as a Bible study, prayer, or meditation group, very troubling. What makes one fit can find such incredibly odd definitions.

    When I was in the Air Force, I was told by a supervisor that if I did not go out to bars with the men, my career would be stunted because people wouldn’t want to help me if I wasn’t their friend. He said this quite seriously in front of a room full of people. Oddly enough, our unit was dealing with quite a number of DUI incidents at the time, and I was and am a non-drinker. (No, I don’t think it’s wrong to drink; I just think it’s a bad idea for me to drink.)

    I give this as an illustration of the way such authority works. “Different” becomes dangerous. “Unit cohesion” or “morale” can be the excuse for forcing people to conform to what the leadership wants. If you think the leadership will always want something sensible, then you live in dreamland.

    Now I’m reading that the army tests for spiritual fitness and has remedial training for those who don’t seem “spiritually fit” enough. I think Ed deals with the topic sufficiently from the point of view of the secular person. What I’m wondering is how a believer can think this is a good idea. As a veteran, the very idea of any of the military leaders under whom I served, and that includes some people I regard as stellar leaders, is terrifying. The military is simply not the place for it.

    Fellow Christians, when we take the power of the state to enforce something we like, the results will not be good. The results of this idea will not be good either.

  • Praying Without Ceasing and Hyperbole

    Mike Sangrey has a post on translating 1 Thessalonians 5:17 at Better Bibles Blog where he suggests “Don’t stop praying!” would be more accurate than “Pray without ceasing,” which is what most of us are used to hearing. He arrives at this conclusion by looking at various uses of the Greek word in question (adialeiptws). Nonetheless the key argument seems to be that:

    the words “without ceasing” carry the idea of “unending, continuous prayer” to the English mind.  I think such an action is impossible and others think so, too.

    Just so! I think it’s impossible as well. But as the first commenter notes, this is likely a form of hyperbole. Now I’m quite comfortable with interpretive translations that try to adapt one idiom into another, or take a rhetorical device from the source language that is absent (or different) in the target language and replace it with another.

    My concern in this case is that hyperbole is a perfectly good rhetorical device in English. We use it regularly. Sometimes our “holy filter” keeps us from seeing it in scripture, but that’s not because it’s absent from the language.

    My question is this: If Paul was using hyperbole here, then what is wrong with hyperbole in an English translation? To be more precise, I could ask whether a Greek speaking reader might have heard the passage as “unending, continuous prayer,” realize he had encountered hyperbole, and apply it appropriately. If so, why not let an English speaking reader do the same?

    If I might illustrate further, when Jesus says that if your right eye offends you, pluck it out (Matthew 5:29), is it not likely that we have just a small amount of hyperbole? If so, should I translate this verse into something non-hyperbolic, such as “it might be better to be blind than to have your eyes lead you into lust”? (I’m not proposing that as a good translation–just a pointer.)

    I’m leaving comments open, but suggesting you comment at Mike’s post or on your own blog to keep the discussion linked.

  • Father-Daughter Blogging …

    John Meunier and his daughter are blogging through the book Almost Christian. It looks like it will be worth reading.