Quote of the day

"As far as the Laws of Mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." --Albert Eintein (thanks to Bob Whiting on the ANE list for the quote)

What to take

One of the problems on a trip is what to take to read. I always want to make sure I have enough to read, but don't want to overload the suitcase. I am definitely taking the On Earth as It Is in Advertising and the latest book in The Baker History of the Church, Reform and Conflict. I also always take my small NA 27 Greek NT. I would prefer to take the Large print NA 27, but it doesn't fit as well into the suitcase. I have come to love the size of that print.

I would like to take my small BHS, but my Hebrew isn't good enough to not have a lexicon, and they are all too large. If anybody knows of a good pocket Hebrew lexicon, please let me know.

Updated 7:53: As I was walking to work (it's a beautiful morning, 32 degrees and clear, perfect for crunching leaves), I realized that I had not mentioned Holladay. I don't consider that pocket, although mine is near falling apart. It was the lexicon I used as an undergraduate, back before HALAT/HALOT was done. Sure enough, I get to work and Jim West had already e-mailed me about Holladay :)

Another shipment gone

Yesterday the ASOR shipment left and the followup shipment for ETS. But, we are still waiting for the books from Israel. Now they tell me the books will arrive Monday. I hope so, they have been in Chicago since last Tuesday. We will have to ship some of them Next Day Air to get to ETS and ASOR on time. The shipment for SBL won't have to leave until Wednesday, but I will be gone by then.

I leave for ETS Tuesday morning, early. ETS runs from Wednesday through Friday, so I have to set up on Tuesday. I will have the digital camera with me and will be blogging from the convention. So, you probably know only too well what a convention feels like for an attendee, but if you watch this page you will see it from the perspective of an exhibitor.

Rick Brannan's Biblioblogger Paper for the SBL

Interesting paper here about Bibliobloggers. Thanks to Jim West for the link.

It looks interesting, but how many bloggers will implement it? I'll have to read it a bit more closely...

Another good book

I have been collecting what books I am planning on reading during my trip next week, not that I will get much reading time, once I look at the schedule. But anyway, I just received one yesterday (thanks, Steve) from Brazos entitled On Earth as It Is in Advertising? which looks to be a good Christian critique of our cultures marketing fixation. There is some good stuff coming out of Brazos, they aren't afraid to ask the "tough" questions that evangelicals often don't want to face. Rodney Clapp is doing a good job, I look forward to more offerings.

Fall

I love Fall. I love the crisp mornings, the sound of leaves crunching under your feet as you walk. I make a point of going out of my way to walk through leaves. Each Fall day is a special gift from God, you never know if there will be frost on the ground or if it will be 60 degrees (like yesterday). The sky seems bluer peaking through the clouds than it does in the summer.

When I was at the University of Chicago (years ago now) I was walking to class with a neighbor from Australia on a beautiful Fall day. I did my normal walk through the leaves, kicking them up in the air. He looked at me strangely and said that they didn't have leaves like that in Australia. How sad. Of course, they probably have stuff we don't, but I would miss walking through the leaves.

Clean desk

I am finally cleaning the stuff off my desk that has been accumulating since August. Wow, amazing what you find.
I found the install disk for my Palm Zire that I couldn't find anywhere. Problem of synching solved. Simple when you have the right tools. So, now my calendars will agree with each other for the first time in a few weeks.

Computer update

I got a new modem yesterday afternoon, Dave had called Dell tech support and told them in no uncertain terms it was the modem and to send us a new one. It came yesterday and Dave installed it, ran the diagnostics and told me to test it from home. I did that this AM, the last post was from home via the modem.

So, everything is almost back to normal, except I can't get my Palm Zire to synch with Outlook (don't even say anything). It will synch with Palm's desktop, but not Outlook. Anybody have any clues? I can't find the original install disk, so reinstall isn't an option. I tried getting the programs from Palm's website and all it gives me is the Palm desktop, which isn't bad, but I don't want to run two calendaring programs. Any help appreciated.

More thoughts on The Three Battlegrounds

I was reading some more in Frangipane's The Three Battlegrounds last night. Chapter 6 has a a good line, "...the purpose of all aspects of spirituality...is to bring us into the image of Christ. Nothing, not worship nor warfare, neither love nor deliverance, is truly attainable if we miss the singular objective of our faith: Christlikeness."

Too often we as Christians seem to get distracted from the goal. We get caught up in our problems, perspectives, goals, whatever, and forget the true goal. It is refreshing to be reminded that the true goal of Christianity is Christ. Seems too obvious, but sometimes the obvious is overlooked.

Eisenbrauns' conference order forms on the web

We just posted our conference order forms on the web, check it out here. But, if you go directly there, you will miss the blurb on the home page, which I really like, having just loaded the trucks...

"It's that time of the year again, when the semis arrive and we load up books and other goodies to take to conferences, where we sell at a deep discount. We invite you to come and get acquainted in person!"

ETS and AAR/SBL shipments

Whew! The shipments for both shows have left (thanks for the help loading!). The only thing that didn't get here on time was the shipment from Israel. I got a phone call this AM saying it wouldn't be here until tomorrow. So, a back up shipment will leave next week.

Now I can get other things done before being gone for a week :)

Book thoughts

A few of us in our church (a house-church) are going through Francis Frangipane's The Three Battlegrounds. The header of chapter 5 is worth quoting, "If you want to identify the hidden strongholds in your life, you need only survey the attitudes in your heart. Every area in your thinking that glistens with hope in God is an area which is being liberated by Christ. But any system of thinking that does not have hope, which feels hopeless, is a stronghold which must be pulled down."

Sermon on the Mount

There is an excellent post by Scot McKnight over on Jesus Creed about the Sermon on the Mount. I think he is right on target.

The Sermon on the Mount is not optional for "truly committed" Christians, it is foundational to Christianity. Too bad E. Stanley Jones' book The Christ of the Mount is out of print, or I would recommend it, well it is available used here

New digital camera

I got a new digital camera for work last Friday. We are going to use it for conferences, but I need to learn how to use the thing. It has a "stitch" function that lets you take the equivalent of a wide angle picture. It will be useful to take the whole booth in one picture at AAR/SBL, which is 40 feet long. Well, let's see how this looks--it is our living room and is 3 pictures. The cooling racks on the table are because Debbie was baking chocolate chip bars.

Another new book from Eisenbrauns

The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem
Judah under Babylonian Rule
Eisenbrauns - EIS
by Oded Lipschits
Eisenbrauns, 2005
xiv + 474 pp., English
Cloth, 6 x 9
ISBN: 1575060957
Your Price: $47.50
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~LIPFALLAN

The period of the demise of the kingdom of Judah at the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, the exile of the elite to Babylon, and the reshaping of the territory of the new province of Judah, culminating at the end of the century with the first return of exiles--all have been subjects of intense scrutiny during the last decade. Lipschits takes into account the biblical textual evidence, the results of archaeological research, and the reports of Babylonian and Egyptian sources and provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the evidence for the history of this 100 year long era. He provides a lucid historical survey that will, no doubt, become the baseline for all studies of this era to come.

Added note at 4:25 PM:
This book will be the focus of the "Literature and History of the Persian Period Section" at the SBL meetings in Philadelphia. The session is S19-117 (Saturday, November 19, 4:00 p.m.; check the session location on arrival in Philadelphia; more information on p. 46 in your program book). Panelists include John Wright (Point Loma Nazarene University), H. G. M. Williamson (Oxford University), Daniel Master (Wheaton College), Rainer Albertz (Univ. of Muenster), and Tamara Eskenazi (HUC-JIR Los Angeles).

Soup day

We tried something different today at lunch. Everyone brought a can of non-tomato based soup. We threw it all together in a crockpot and let it simmer. I thought it was good. It was a bit salty since no water was added and some were concentrated soups, but I would do it again. Most other people liked it too. Next time they say we are going to try it with only tomato based soups.

ETS/AAR/SBL/ASOR Alphabet soup

We are entering the final stretch. Yesterday the books (except for a few stragglers) were all picked and priced for AAR/SBL. That is a job, my thanks to customer service and Cindy for their hard work. The order forms are finished, proofread and (hopefully) correct. They are now being duplicated. The poster crate has been rebuilt after being destroyed coming back from the last convention (thanks, Andy). The catalogs arrived yesterday, but we are still waiting on some from a distribution partner.

All that is left is checking everything over, adding the books for another distribution partner and we are done. I need to go finish checking those books in...2 skids left.

Worship?

We were talking to our son last night on the phone, and he mentioned that the worship at a church he visited recently was wonderful. That got me to thinking about a section in Grace in a Tree Stump, page 17: "As a matter of fact, the purest worship--like the purest gift--has little or nothing to do with the satisfaction fo the worshiper or the giver, but with the satisfaction fo the recipient. We seem to have a good deal of misunderstanding at this point. So frequently we judge worship by the pleasure or fulfillment it gives us. There could hardly be a more dramatic perversion. Worship is not about me; it's about God. When I become absorbed with how much worship benefits my person, I make myself the object of worship rather than the God I profess to adore. If in my worship of God I happen also to be blessed it is a happy coincidence, and I can indeed see it is a blessing, because it isn't the point of worship and I am fortunate therefore to receive it. But God is the issue of worship, not I or my pleasure."

Good words to remember!

Books, part 2

I started reading Let's Start with Jesus by Dennis Kinlaw. He was one of my theology professors at Asbury Seminary. I caught him immediately after his first tenure as president of Asbury College. He taught 2 semesters before starting the Francis Asbury Society. Marvelous teacher, very nice person. Anyway, he says we should start our theology not with the attributes of God, but where the New Testament does, with Jesus. I have only read the first 25 or so pages, but it makes sense. We'll see how he develops it.

Books I'm reading

Last night I finished Calvary Road by Roy Hession. I hadn't read it in about 25 years. My favorite line is still the beginning of the last chapter: "We have all become so used to condemning the proud self-righteous attitude of the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican,(Luke 18:9-14) that we can hardly believe that the picture of him there is meant to apply to us - which only shows how much like him we really are. The Sunday School teacher was never so much a Pharisee, as when she finished her lesson on this parable with the words, 'And now, children, we can thank God that we are not as this Pharisee!' In particular are we in danger of adopting the Pharisee's attitude, when God is wanting to humble us at the Cross of Jesus, and show us the sins in our hearts that are hindering personal revival."

Only too true...