James Gregory, of www.jgelements.com, has unleashed a monster for the 40th edition of the Biblical Studies Carnival. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a “Carnival” in the blog world serves to point others to the many discussions going on within a particular area of interest or study by giving links and commentary on those discussions. My own blog, (the one you’re reading now), got quite a few mentions by James (Thanks!)
I’m greatly humbled that James would feature a number of my posts, especially alongside some of the theological and linguistic studs that also appear. Thanks James! and I would recommend that you all go check out the rest of this month’s carnival.
Christiancolleges.com has erroniously placed me on yet another top 100 list- this time it’s 100 Enlightening Bible Study Blogs. You can find my blog under “Scripture,” which is a good place to be. Be sure to check out the other 99 blogs- there’s lots of good stuff there.
Pastor Chad Lewis gives 10 things that he is thankful for in his latest post, and then says: “We often focus on the negative aspects of our lives. We too often focus on the trials. If you had to write 10 things that you are thankful for, what would be on your list?”
Here is a list of 10 things I am thankful for.
I am thankful for…
…God absolutely flipping my life upside down when I was 18.
…a fiancee who is far greater than I deserve.
…a local church that is Gospel-driven and centered.
…a community group where we can dig into each other’s messy lives- and still be loved.
…a past that shows I have nothing to offer, but glorifies God by showing his grace to sinners.
…the freedom to read and study the ancient Scriptures.
…a mom who is amazing.
…sweet tea.
…the opportunity to serve Sojourn Community Church.
…the opportunity to see God work in others’ lives.
A few blog posts have come up on my reader recently about translation, specifically the method of translation. The first link, from Accordance developer David Lang, is an excellent article on fighting “Strongnosticism.” By this he means the tendency to look up a word in a dictionary like Strong’s, find a english gloss, and insert it into the text in such a way that they find a “deeper meaning”- all while ignoring the many factors that should be taken into consideration. Some of these factors include context (ex: should logos be translated as “word” “message,” “logic,” or any of the other glosses found in its semantic range?), author’s usage (Does Paul use “worship” the same way it’s used by Matthew?), etc. His first response to this (he promises more to come) is simply “[r]ealize that Greek and Hebrew are merely languages, and think about how you use language every day.”
You can check out David’s post here: Contra “Strongnosticism”
The second link is for the better bibles blog, where Wayne Leman takes a recent ESV article that included a chart dividing translations up between whether they are “word-for-word” and whether they are based on the “best manuscripts.” Wayne’s point of contention, and mine, is over the idea of a translation being “word-for-word.” There are no translations, other than an interlinear Bible, that can be called word-for-word. Wayne uses John 3:16 as an example of why the translations in the chart cannot be considered word-for-word. Another example that I like to use is in 2 John 12, where John uses a phrase: στόμα πρὸς στόμα λαλῆσαι which literally means “mouth to mouth to speak.” No translation would render it in such a “word-for-word” fashion. Most would translate it idiomatically as “talk face to face” because the idea behind the idioms (mouth to mouth in Greek, face to face in English) match.
Wayne, who is a far better linguist and translator than I, speaks to the issue here: comparing the five leading versions.
Christiancolleges.com has released their list of the Top 100 Theology Blogs, divided between the categories of general, criticism, politics, history, academic, clergy, society and culture, and writings.
I was more than surprised to see that this blog, katagraphais, was selected to be on the list! You’ll find me at number 49, which is under the “Academic” label. However, since you’re reading this post, you probably already read the blog. In that case, make sure to check out the list and find many other blogs that make for interesting and excellent reading.
This article was pointed out to me by a friend on twitter. I think it popped up in my google reader previously, but somehow got lost as I was trying to get my count back down to 0.
I just read a fascinating article at washingtonpost.com entitled “I’m still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq.” The author was a senior interrogator during the Iraq war who was responsible for the capture of “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war.” In this article he details how he captured al-Zarqawi by refusing to use the methods that were being regularly employed by the army, and instead chose to focus “on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information.”
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.
James Gregory, of www.jgelements.com, has unleashed a monster for the 40th edition of the Biblical Studies Carnival. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a “Carnival” in the blog world serves to point others to the many discussions going on within a particular area of interest or study by giving links and commentary on those discussions. My own blog, (the one you’re reading now), got quite a few mentions by James (Thanks!)
