As most commentators have pointed out, Paul seems to make an allusion in 2 Corinthians 5:12c to 1 Samuel 16:7. As I am translating this section, I bring this up only to take a look of the use of idioms.

The verse in English is:
“So that you might have an answer against those who take pride in appearances and not in what is in the heart.”

Here is the Greek:
ἵνα ἔχητε πρὸς τοὺς ἐν προσώπῳ καυχωμένους καὶ μὴ ἐν καρδίᾳ.
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Paul Newman, who starred in many great movies including one of my favorites, Cool Hand Luke, died yesterday. Let’s go eat some eggs in mourning…

I know everyone missed their dose of Hebrew vocabulary last week. I wasn’t able to get around to it with the power loss. There is good news, though, fellow dead-language learners! Hebrew vocab is back again! Here are the words!
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Michael Spencer has a great blog post on “The Missing Voice of the Christian Counter-Culture.” Check it out.

I decided that since my blogging has gone down the past few months, I should let you guys in on what I’m immersing myself with instead of being online.
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What else is new?

I was able to pick up a new book today that I’m really excited to get the chance to read. The book is Total Church: A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. The books is put out by Re:Lit/Crossway and clocks in around 207 pgs. Here is the Table of Contents and Publisher Description:
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After 6 trustworthy years, my monitor on my desktop has given up the ghost. Thankfully (and even maybe providentially?) I was able to buy a new laptop about a month or two ago- so there is no worries on finishing any papers. I’m relatively sure that it is only my monitor that went bad for various diagnostic reasons, but I am in no hurry to buy a new one since all I need is on my laptop. That being said, I cleared off my desk and put everything away in the closet for the time being, and I am now using the desk for my laptop. It looked quite empty with just a laptop on it, so I moved all my books for my paper on 2 Corinthians 5 on there- not because I’m really productive, but because it makes me feel better to look productive. Here is a shot of the new scenery:
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As I was working on a bit more of my paper on 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, I was contemplating on what Paul is saying in verses 6-8, and verse 8 in particular. Essentially, in these verses, Paul’s degrees of preference surface: Paul would much rather live to see the parousia of Christ as opposed to the disembodied state (vv 2-3), but he would also prefer to be in the presence of Christ in a disembodied state than to be “at home in the body” (vv 6-8). This, of course, makes sense. This is not a hatred of life on Paul’s part, as we can tell from the first part of the letter which gives thanks to God for sparing his life, but a heart-felt yearning of wanting to be with Christ- whatever that may entail. This got me thinking about death and the Christian response.
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With the tagline, “Making a Difference for Christ in the City,” the Dehoney Center for Urban Ministry Training has released Volume 1, Issue 1 of their Journal of Urban Ministry. Readers of this blog may recall my shift in viewing my place in urban ministry from a month ago. This is a welcome resource for me as I continue to meditate and pray about what the next step is after seminary. Here is the table of contents for the journal:
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I was thinking about textual criticism the other day (the way people determine which readings of the many manuscripts we have are most-likely original, yes I’m a dork), and I realized something. Namely, I’m thankful to be living in a time when we have a sufficient base of manuscripts so that we can almost be certain of having the original text. Now, I could make up a super-spiritual reason for rejoicing over this (which I have, previously, I think on my old blog), but that would be lying this time. The real reason I’m thankful at the moment? A lot of textual variations were the incorporation of scribal notes in the margins. I just remembered that I have several older bibles with lots of really, really bad notes. I would hate for someone to dig up some “english manuscripts” in 2,000 years with my notes on them and think they might have been original.

Of course, even if that wasn’t the case, my notes would be rejected by means of spelling errors I’m sure.