Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • The Orthodox Study Bible: Wrap-Up (For the Moment)

    I received the Orthodox Study Bible free from Thomas Nelson in their blogger book review program, and as I have been using it in my personal devotions and study for my lectionary notes, (which notes have languished during a very busy period), I have already written about it substantially.

    But just what does it mean to “read” a study Bible.  Should it mean to read through it from cover to cover, to use it as you normally read a study Bible, or perhaps to read certain relevant portions?  I don’t know how Thomas Nelson will interpret this, and I have no intention to argue with them should they interpret it differently than I do–after all, they sent me a free book!–but I have chosen to take it in the second way.

    Now in using it in that fashion it would probably be another year or so before I would have read all of the book introductions and notes, at which point I would simply note that I have previously read the entire NKJV text of the Bible, which covers the New Testament, and I would have seen most of the Old Testament.  But such a long wait hardly serves the purpose of a review program either.

    Thus, having gone through a number of weeks worth of lectionary readings, sampled the translation in quite a number of areas and compared it to the text of Rahlf’s LXX (from which it is said to be translated in the case of the Old Testament), checked out the book introductions, and read the major articles, I’m going to write a review, and one which will be substantially longer than 200 words.  I’ll extract 200 words or so to post on Amazon.com, and then let the folks at Thomas Nelson know so they can respond as they will.

    Had this book lived up to my hopes, I would likely have been willing to read it through from cover to cover, just like an ordinary book, though presumably spending much longer.  My hopes were that there would be substantial quotations from the eastern church fathers and from Orthodox theologians, and that the translation of the Old Testament (I already was aware that the New Testament was NKJV) would also prove enlightening regarding the use and usefulness of the LXX in the life of the church.

    Unfortunately, I was disappointed, so that my use of the volume has become a duty rather than a joy.  I will link to my previous blogging about using this book at the end of my post, and will simply summarize here.  I’m going to start with the negative points, continue with the ordinary (though acceptable) ones, and end with the points I approved.

    Negatives:

    1. The translation.  I dislike the NKJV in the first place, but was trying to overcome that in light of the fact that the eastern church uses the Byzantine text.  Unfortunately, that proved to be more difficult than I thought.  In the New Testament, the NKJV is what it is, which is a fairly accurate, but not very engaging or readable translation.  I recall once when reading through Daniel in the NKJV (yes, I know I switched to OT, but it illustrates my point) that I actually consulted the Aramaic to discover just what was meant by an English phrase.  In the Old Testament, the translation itself does not improve, even though there was work to bring it into agreement with the LXX.  The quality is variable and wooden.  It reads approximately like an exercise by 2nd year students of Biblical Greek.  I’m sure there were many much more highly skilled persons involved, but somehow the translation style doesn’t reflect it.  It’s not that they were inaccurate in undestanding the Greek.  Rather, they appear afraid to actually write down the result in English.
    2. The verse-by-verse notes.  These are not entirely bad, but rather so variable, that one does not know what to expect.  One might find an enlightening note from a church father, or an extremely inane summary of the text in question.  I provide examples in one of my prior blog posts, all linked below.

    Ordinary things:

    1. The book introductions.  These are not bad, but are not precisely exciting.  I think they are mostly adequate given the space constraints.  At the same time, I am very glad that this is not my only study Bible, because there is simply too much missed.  I would note that while I personally want access to modern critical study, I am not criticizing this volume for a lack of that material.  I can get that elsewhere.  It’s in developing theological themes that I think these introductions could be improved.
    2. The general layout.  This is pretty good, but could well be improved in order to better use space and to make notes more easily related to the content.  I did appreciate the liturgical material in the inset notes.

    Positive:

    1. The christological focus.  Some might quibble that this could occur in a much better volume, and so it could.  But the western churches, especially protestant churches, often tend to see Christ in the Old Testament primarily as a chain of fulfilled prophecies.  I really appreciate the distinctively Christological understanding of scripture, even where I actually disagree with it.  This emphasis is quite clear in the essay “HOW TO READ THE BIBLE”, which starts on page 1757 and particularly in the section subheaded “Christ, the Heart of the Bible” that starts on page 1763.  This also shows in the notes from time to time.
    2. The liturgical references in articles and notes.  Where these are present, they are very helpful to me.
    3. The organization of the books.  It’s hard to get a picture of the Bible of the eastern church from western study Bibles that include the apocrypha, such as the New Oxford Annotated Bible, because the material is scattered.  The book order does have an impact on how the Bible is read.  The organization here is a genuine product of church history and the eastern communion.

    I think I have made enough specific points, and if you want particular examples, you will find them in my linked posts below.  There is much promise in the idea behind this Bible, and part of my negative reaction is due to excessively high expectations which were not met.  At the same time, I cannot honestly recommend this Bible, unless one looks at the negatives and decides that those are worth enduring for the positives.

    Here are my previous posts regarding the Orthodox Study Bible, one of which is on a different blog:

  • Christian Carnival CCLXII Coming Here!

    Neither does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but rather puts it on a lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.  In this way let your light shine before people, so they can see your good deeds, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. — Matthew 5:15-16

    So why not submit your best post for the last week (since last Tuesday at midnight) and let your light shine?

    Here are the basics:

    I’m hosting this week, and I’m looking forward to your entries.

  • Today at the John Webb Winter Golf Tournament

    I will be spending most of the day at the golf tournament, or doing preparation or cleaning up. As I have time, I will tweet from there or do a little live blogging, and even possibly post some pictures.

    We’re raising money for the child life program at Sacred Heart Hospital here in Pensacola. Check it out!

  • A KJV-Only Comment on my Video

    For a video that includes nothing but me talking and some amateur (by me) captions, my Why I Hate the KJV video has done well on YouTube.  With 3563 viewings as of the time I’m posting this, and 231 comments.

    I must confess that I have not paid much attention to the comments thread, because YouTube doesn’t permit links and comments are short, and because most of the comments are quite inane, as is usual in KJV-Only discussions.  After all, what profound and informed argument actually favors KJV-Only?

    Comment 231 caught my attention, not because it was profound or informed, but because it was bad in a new way.

    The comment reads:

    The HIV (NIV) false “bible” is published by the same company that publishes the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVay. Jesus Christ said a corrupt tree cannot produce good fruit. If you think the HIV is good fruit, you’re calling Jesus a liar and you need to get right with God.

    I mean one of the translators of the HIV was an OPEN PRACTICING HOMOSEXUAL. How much more obvious does it need to get? Burn your HIV!

    Of course we have all the usual charm and logical structure of the normal KJV-Only comment.  I have written previously on the issue of having a homosexual translator on the team, which I regard as not only ad hominem, but largely irrelevant even as ad hominem arguments go.  The key point here is that when a Bible translation is released we have the source texts, we have the translation, we can look and see whether it is accurate or not.  (Usually there will be disagreements, but that’s translation.)

    Debating the quality of the translators, even if one is discussing their actual qualifications for translation work, is generally missing the point.  If I find a translation that is poor, and I look and see that the committee involved was underqualified, I might take that as an explanation.  I wouldn’t read the list of translators, decide they’re underqualified, and determine that their translation was lousy without reading it.

    But I find the whole tree and fruit thing very interesting.  Here are some questions:

    1. Is the “tree” that produces a Bible translation the company that publishes it?
    2. If so, would a Bible become corrupt if it was first published by a “righteous” company, but later  licensed to a “corrupt” publisher, however defined?
    3. What kind of sin must a publisher be guilty of to pollute otherwise pure scriptures that it might print?
    4. What kind of sin must a translator be guilty of in order to corrupt his translation?  For example, would the translation be corrupt if the translator was a gossip?  An adulterer?
    5. Is the translation corrupt if the translator is guilty of such sin, but we don’t know about it?

    While this KJV-Only argument may strike many of my readers as beneath comment–though when has that ever stopped me?–perhaps what we should think about is whether when we make what seem to be high moral pronouncements, we also say things that we really don’t want to say.

  • What Stimulus Proponents Could Learn from a Book Title

    Readers of this blog know that I preferred our current president over his opponent in the election. After the bailout fiasco, I would have dearly loved to have had a candidate who actually opposed the whole idea. McCain bleated about socialism, but I honestly don’t believe he could have identified a capitalist or a socialist with a detailed checklist.

    All that has now passed us by. Given the candidates we nominated, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that we would have some kind of stimulus package and that the ideas behind it would be a bit murky, no matter who was elected. And I’m not 100% opposed to stimulus as a basic concept. I just don’t think the arguments for or against are being done all that well.

    Now I’m not an economist by training or inclination, though I did study just a bit of political science. I’m not likely to be mistaken for one either. At the same time, as I listen to actual economists talk on TV, and sometimes even when I read their longer, and presumably better thought out pieces in print, I begin to wonder why any of them are mistaken for actual economists either.

    Let’s take just one little incident–the $1.2 million renovation of a certain executive’s office. Now there’s reason to be outraged here, but it’s not any of the reasons I’m hearing. Money spent on luxuries may be wasted from the point of view of a company’s or family’s budget, but in terms of the economy it’s not wasted. We really do underestimate the difficulty of keeping a good stack of cash down–when people get to make choices on how to spend it. Even $1400 wastebaskets provide employment and keep the money moving–a much better result than holding that money as a cash reserve. Of course, $1.2 million is a tiny fraction of a percent of the problem here.

    Then there are all those bonuses. People talk as though the bonuses went out with the garbage, never to be seen again. Actually, those bonuses probably did more to stimulate the economy than most of the other money provided as part of the bailout, simply because the money got out of the companies in the first place. I doubt it did very much, however.

    The problem, I think, is that we’re generally forgetting that an economy is more about people than it is about money. Ex-Senator Phil Gramm was pilloried during the campaign for saying that the recession was a psychological recession, but in fact recessions generally have a huge psychological element. In fact, the entire economy has a huge psychological element. If President Obama’s approval ratings remain high, he could have more stimulus effect by giving speeches than the actual spending of money has. I say that not to emphasize the power of speech, but rather the weakness of simple pouring out of money, especially pretend money, i.e. money we pretend we have.

    What we are forgetting all around, and what keeps the economists stirred up and largely wrong, is that we forget that the economy is about people. And herewith the book title: Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises. Now herewith a warning. Human Action is not a short book or an easy book. Ludwig von Mises dislikes most of the terms we commonly use, even labels of fields of study. He defines them and then figures he can use them throughout the book. My edition, the 3rd Revised Edition printed by Henry Regnery Company in 1966, runs to 907 pages including the index.

    I have read all 907 of them. My political science professor at the time advised against it. He said it was hard, and that my time could be better spent. I absolutely and profoundly disagree. It was one of the best decisions of my college life.

    But I believe the most important lesson for economists comes in the title of only two words: Human Action. Von Mises went so far as to name a new science, praxeology, the study of human action. I was asked by another one of my professors why one would name a book about economics “Human Action.” Once I had read the book I was able to answer: Because economics is about human action.

    And that brings me back to my personal outrage over the $1.2 million office renovation, or the billions spent on bonuses by the industry. It’s not that the money was spent. It’s not that the money was spent on luxuries. It is that the money was presented to people as a reward for failure. Companies whose performance was dismal were being paid huge bonuses. A man whose company was about to fail was allowed the choice of renovating his office. That was a choice he should have gotten only as a result of being successful.

    This was the problem with the bailout of the financial institutions and the bailout of the auto industry. The government decided to bailout whole industries as though industries thrive or fail. That’s not the case. People thrive or fail. Gather enough failures into an industry, and sure enough that industry will also fail. But if you push money into the industry it goes to those people, and it rewards them for failure.

    Many people are shocked that we could spend $350 billion on the financial industry and see it still in a tailspin. But if you find someone who is unwise in using money, and he loses $350 billion or so, and then you give him another $350 billion, what do you expect? I still think things would go badly, but at least a sensible lender would require a change in leadership. That’s one of the advantages of bankruptcy. The business gets “bailed out” (sort of), but a judge gets to put limits on the choices of the folks who failed.

    Similarly, we heard in the auto bailout that we couldn’t let the industry fail. But Ford still had cash reserves, even though its president was going to the trough with his fellow executives. Expecting them to reduce their own salaries and bonuses was a minimum sort of precaution, but did anyone ask why we should trust the same people with more money?

    The basic action here is human, and if we forget that, we are unlikely to be able to solve any of the problems. Companies that are rewarded for performing poorly will continue to perform poorly. We’ll get to throw good money after bad.

    The stimulus package that is going through congress right now is also being debated in the wrong terms. “How much of it is in tax cuts, and how much in spending?” we’re asked. But the problem is that we have none of the money, so the point in either case is how much money are we going to pretend to have, and where we’re going to inject our play money into the economy. Now pretending to have money is not necessarily doomed to failure, provided that you have some way of getting the actual money, or more importantly the goods and services that it represents.

    So I’d ask the question of all the stimulus projects: Will this improve the economy, i.e. help improve production enough to pay for itself over the next 10 years? 20 years? 30 years? While psychology has something to do with it, optimism only goes so far before it must be fed by something that actually works. The government could stimulate the economy by building infrastructure, provided it’s good infrastructure, is needed, and is the sort of thing that government has to do.

    I sincerely hope we start examining what we’re doing with a different test, looking at what will actually be accomplished. I’m afraid the Republicans in congress, while right to be skeptical, are not being skeptical of the right things, and are not proposing anything that would be substantially better.

  • Annoyed at Certain Christian Labels

    On Wednesday I got snarky about a post by Jim West, dealing with “Biblical faith” and yesterday I wrote about a test that is alleged (incorrectly) to determine whether I have a “Biblical worldview.”

    There’s a common element here that annoys me, and it’s these multi-word or hyphenated Christian labels for things that might well be labeled with one word. The term “Biblical” comes in for particular and regular abuse. Now some of the labels I’m going to mention do have valid uses, but they are also susceptible to misuse on a frequent basis.

    Let me start with some examples without the word “Biblical” in them.

    How about “born-again Christian.” As opposed to what? A non-born-again Christian? If I read John 3 correctly “born-again” (much better translated “born from above” with a footnote on multiple meaning) is a metaphor for becoming a Christian, thus “born-again Christian” would normally be redundant. This is one of those I think should generally be dropped. It’s a label used to create a superior class of Christians. “Are you a Christian?” somebody asks. “Yes,” is the answer. “But are you a born-again Christian?” Any answer but “yes,” of course, means that one is either not a real Christian or belongs to some inferior class of Christians. (People who were born into Christian families and have been Christians as long as they can remember have a very hard time responding here!)

    Then there is “Spirit-filled.” Now I find this label useful occasionally, to cover what it most commonly means in a technical sense, i.e. someone who believes that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a separate experience, and also believes they have had that second experience. But in practice, it becomes much like born-again. There are Christians, the bulk of the pew-sitters and “professing” Christians (what a put-down “professing Christian” is!), and then there are the “Spirit-filled Christians” who have truly gotten it right.

    And how about Bible-believing? You can catch this one in a full label of a truly wonderfully superior sort of Christian, the “born-again, Spirit-filled, Bible believing Christian.” As opposed, of course, to all of the Christians who don’t “have” the Holy Spirit (I’ve always wondering about people who say they “have” the Holy Spirit), are not born-again, and think the Bible is so much wastepaper. This one is simply short hand for “a person who believes the same thing I do about the Bible.” In my area, it most commonly designates KJV-Only advocates, and because of that usage, many people who might normally claim to be “Bible believing” don’t use the phrase, since they might be mistaken for KJV-Only types.

    But I think the term “Biblical faith”, for example, can be, and is used in much the same way. In a Christian conversation, what specifically does a “Biblical faith” designate? I think it is used largely to look down on the faith of other Christians, which is not regarded as adequately Biblical. They might, for example, regard science and faith as compatible. If I were discussing the word “faith” in an interfaith context, I might use Biblical, though I’d be more likely to use the term “Christian”, since otherwise how might it be properly distinguished from Jewish faith. Jewish faith is surely Biblical in many senses of the word.

    Just as I have argued that here is no “obvious exegesis” I would also argue that there is no obvious “Biblical faith” and the use of the phrase very commonly means “a faith that agrees with my doctrinal understanding, a doctrinal understanding that I believe is consistent with the Bible–unlike yours.” Sorry for the wordiness, but that’s what I hear most often when someone uses that label.

    At least in the case of “Biblical worldview” the terms aren’t redundant. But in the way it is used, it is again clearly an example of putting down the “worldviews” of other Christians. If a Christian is a socialist, for example, according to that site I visited yesterday, they might be saved, but they don’t really have a “Biblical worldview.”

    I’d be interested in hearing other valid uses of these labels in the comments. Personally, while I think some of these labels get used in a valid way, I think they tend towards creating a privileged group of “especially right” Christians.

    And while we’re at it, we might ask ourselves whether our distinguishing feature as Christians is being “righter” than anyone else.

  • Having Trouble Giving?

    I found this pretty funny!

    CVC Church – Tithe Phobia – The best home videos are here

    HT: Church Tithes and Offerings.

  • So I AM a Secular Humanist

    … at least according to this test. (HT: TheoPoetic Musings, who also turned out to be a secular humanist, though not quite as much of one as I am.) I scored 62 of 166, 37% which makes me a secular humanist!

    The interesting thing about this test was that I had a hard time deciding whether it was written by incompetent test question writers, or skilled marketers. In favor of incompetence I noted: (1) the obvious lead-in, which seems to announce, “We’re trying to suck you in!” (2) Questions with obvious false dichotomies implied, (3) The obviously American character of a worldview test, 4) Questions with multiple elements not necessarily connected logically.

    In favor of skilled marketing is that “sucking you in” feeling which might be much more effective on someone who doesn’t look for it everywhere. In this case it was very blatant, but their market may well be people who can only be drawn in by the obvious. The idea of the test is clearly designed to catch one’s fear of not really being on the in-crowd with God, despite several nods to salvation by faith.

    In the “I don’t know what it means” category is the ridiculous scale they use:

    • Strong Biblical Worldview Thinker
    • Moderate Biblical Worldview Thinker
    • Secular Humanist Worldview Thinker
    • Socialist Worldview Thinker
    • Communist/Marxist/Socialist/Secular Humanist Worldview Thinker

    Everything from support for war to economic policy becomes part of a Bible world view.

    War:

    One of the Ten Commandments is, “thou shalt not kill;”, thus it stands to reason that God is opposed to war and nations going to war.

    My answer of “tend to disagree” was said to be incorrect. The correct answer, if one has a Biblical worldview approved by these folks, is “Strongly disagree.”

    Similarly things like capital punishment and a capitalist economy are said to be a part of the Biblical worldview, and the only acceptable answer is to strongly agree that capital punishment is Biblical, and that the Bible overall teaches an economy built on private property and personal initiative. (I’m not so sure about the former, and the latter leaves substantial wiggle room, in my view.

    In any case, in the final analysis, it appears to that test is designed to produce the result “secular humanist” unless you’re an American right-winger who probably regards the Republican party as socialist, thus making you a good candidate for indoctrination into the so-called “Biblical worldview.”

  • A New Kind of Publishing

    When I was persuading by my wife and daughter to get a 21st century cell phone, my now indispensable Palm Centro, my friends were amused but not surprised that I soon had Bible software on it.

    I must confess that the one time I used that Bible in church I got some really suspicious looks.  “That guy’s using his cell phone during the church service!”  No, but I was checking out a passage the preacher was using in the ESV, which is the version I have on the phone.  (No, the ESV is not my favorite, but it’s quite usable for me.)

    At the same time, I’m dealing with the fact that in my own publishing work I’m finding that many more people want content that is accessible online, and you simply don’t get to talk to them if you don’t make things available now, and don’t make them interactive.

    David Ker relates these new realities to Bible publishing, and notes some of the potential problems as well.  I have found the same problem he has with devotional time.  I can often work Bible reading and study time into my electronically herded day, but prayer, meditation, and listening to the Holy Spirit are substantially more difficult.  For those I have to cut myself off from the world.

    There is a problem, as I noted tangentially in my post about church yesterday, with equating the technology we use to solve problems with the problems and/or the solutions themselves.  For example, the problem of keeping in touch with one another during the week so that we can spur one another to good works is not solved by employing technology as such; rather, technology can help us do what needs to be done.  It’s also excessively easy to equate social trends with the technology on which they feed; I’m certainly guilty of that.  But all these things do interact.

    I think the basic question will remain whether our tools control us, or we will control our tools.  The new interactivity can provide many new opportunities.  One element of the method of Bible study I teach is sharing.  By sharing I mean hearing from others as well as speaking to others, and testing what you think you heard from God against what others think and hear.  Technology, and particularly the number of voices we can hear will either help or hinder that process, depending on how we use them.  We can now interact with many more people, from many more points of view, but will we interact with them effectively and seriously, or will it be superficial contact?

    The potential is tremendous.  I congratulate David for getting us all thinking about this.  How do we use both social trends and the technology that accompanies or feeds them to improve our Bible study and our spiritual lives?

  • Change *I* Can Believe In!

    White House unbuttons formal dress code. I hate formal.