As we consider this advent season, let us reflect on the incarnation of Christ- that God condescended to take on human nature, that he may live the life we were meant to live in our place, and face the punishment we deserve. Let us also reflect on our Lord’s promise that as he ascended, so shall he return. Here are some readings for the first Sunday of Advent:
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My good friend Brad shared this video for the eve of Advent.

Join the conspiracy.

Tomorrow, I will post some readings for the first Sunday of Advent along with a quote from Anathanasius to meditate on.

Next week is finals week, so I’ve been spending my Thanksgiving “break” trudging through the Old Testament, Hebrew, the Greek of 2 Corinthians, and Systematic Theology (Note: actual amount of energy spent studying is minimal). I was reading through some select passages of 2 Corinthians, when I read:

προνοοῦμεν γὰρ καλὰ οὐ μόνον ἐνώπιον κυρίου ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐνώπιον ἀνθρώπων

Which I translated “For we attempt to do what is good, not only before the Lord, but also before people.” They want a rather literal translation on the final. As usual, I try to gauge my translation against several others, including the ESV, TNIV, NLT, etc, though this isn’t really a hard passage at all. I was a bit confused at why the ESV decided to render the two genitive phrases differently however. The ESV says in 21b: “not only in the Lord’s sight but also in the sight of man.” I think the translation “sight” renders the ideal well (see also the TNIV’s “in the eyes of”), but see how differently the two phrases are rendered? This seems to ruin the parallelism of the verse to me. In rendering the word “before” as “in the sight of,” the ESV correctly translates the first phrase as a subjective/possessive genitive “in the Lord’s sight,” but then switches to “in the sight of man.”

Now, this isn’t an ESV hate post. The translation is correct (well, there is that issue of people/men). Just wondering why they inconsistently translated the two phrases, seemingly breaking up the parallelism. It just seems a bit soppy, or perhaps they decided to go with stylistic variation? I know, this won’t mean anything to some others, and that’s fine; it’s just that this kind of stylistic things jump out at me.

Have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving, knowing that every good and perfect gift comes from our Father (James 1:17).

Psalm 100
1Shout with joy to the LORD, all the earth!
2 Worship the LORD with gladness.
Come before him, singing with joy.
3 Acknowledge that the LORD is God!
He made us, and we are his.
We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
go into his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the LORD is good.
His unfailing love continues forever,
and his faithfulness continues to each generation.

Sojourn Music has listed five reasons you should celebrate Advent. In light of our recent mini-series on Christian liberties within our Romans Series, let me add that you are totally free in Christ to not celebrate the Advent season, but these are pretty good reasons.

Also, you can listen to a few seconds of each song on Sojourn’s Advent cd. If you like what you hear, you can pay what you want for the cd, or send an email to five friends and download it for free.

You can find out more about the cd at Sojourn Music.

In his latest roundup of ETS, Dr. Bill Mounce has responded to Dr. Mark Strauss’ paper entitled “Why the English Standard Version Should Not Become the Standard English Version: How to Make a Good Translation Much Better.” Dr. Mounce is the New Testament Chair for the ESV and a friend of Dr. Strauss. As I was reading his reaction to the paper, I couldn’t help but have a few questions.
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Theology about the end times is nothing short of fascinating. I find some of it to be much more sensationalistic than others, but here is a promo video for a course on the end times that looks promising:

[HT: Riddlebarger]

As Christians, we are called to engage the culture- using what is good for the kingdom and rejecting that which is bad. In light of this, Christians should take notice of the increase of interest in social media- aspects of the internet that are used to build community (whether perceived as real or not). This should give us notice as one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity is that of community and the unbelieving world is essentially crying out for a communal need, attempting to find it wherever they can. One of the biggest examples of social media is what you are reading right now: blogs. Other examples include link aggregation sites such as delicious.com, and social sites such as facebook.com. [if you are a member of facbook, you can join my blog's network.] One of the social media sites that has risen to popularity is the site twitter.com. This blog post will look at ways Christians can engage twitter for the kingdom.
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…on the existence of God, I think my opening statement will be:
“Bananas squid bubbles five pepsi.”
And then I would sit down.
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I’ve began working on my paper on 2 Corinthians 3:1-18, and thought I would give you my (wooden) translation, and breakdown of verses 1-3.

click to enlarge
You can ignore the [middle or passive] and <<ministered>>, those were idea “placeholders” as I translated through the text the first time.

This passage is a transition passage, connecting 2:17 with 3:4ff. The ὥς τινες (like some others) clause connects back to 2:17 (ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ, “like many others, who peddle the word of God for profit”). διακονηθεῖσα (ministered), πλαξὶν λιθίναις (stone tablets), and πλαξὶν καρδίαις σαρκίναις (tablets of human hearts) all anticipate the verses that follow: Paul as a minister of the new covenant, as well as a contrast between the old and new covenants.

Certainly nothing scholarly or hard, but simply a glimpse into what’s going on at the moment.