Smooth things

"And now, go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness for ever. For they are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the LORD; who say to the seers, "See not"; and to the prophets, "Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more of the Holy One of Israel." Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, "Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and rely on them; therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a break in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose crash comes suddenly, in an instant; and its breaking is like that of a potter's vessel which is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a sherd is found with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern." For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength." And you would not, but you said, "No! We will speed upon horses," therefore you shall speed away; and, "We will ride upon swift steeds," therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one, at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill. Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you; therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him." Isaiah 30:8-18 RSV

Trusting

Yesterday's Oswald Chambers devotional really spoke to me (and still is):

Have you ever said to yourself, "I am impressed with the wonderful truths of God’s Word, but He can’t really expect me to live up to that and work all those details into my life!" When it comes to confronting Jesus Christ on the basis of His qualities and abilities, our attitudes reflect religious superiority. We think His ideals are lofty and they impress us, but we believe He is not in touch with reality— that what He says cannot actually be done. Each of us thinks this about Jesus in one area of our life or another. These doubts or misgivings about Jesus begin as we consider questions that divert our focus away from God. While we talk of our dealings with Him, others ask us, "Where are you going to get enough money to live? How will you live and who will take care of you?" Or our misgivings begin within ourselves when we tell Jesus that our circumstances are just a little too difficult for Him. We say, "It’s easy to say, ’Trust in the Lord,’ but a person has to live; and besides, Jesus has nothing with which to draw water— no means to be able to give us these things." And beware of exhibiting religious deceit by saying, "Oh, I have no misgivings about Jesus, only misgivings about myself." If we are honest, we will admit that we never have misgivings or doubts about ourselves, because we know exactly what we are capable or incapable of doing. But we do have misgivings about Jesus. And our pride is hurt even at the thought that He can do what we can’t.

My misgivings arise from the fact that I search within to find how He will do what He says. My doubts spring from the depths of my own inferiority. If I detect these misgivings in myself, I should bring them into the light and confess them openly— "Lord, I have had misgivings about You. I have not believed in Your abilities, but only my own. And I have not believed in Your almighty power apart from my finite understanding of it."

<idle musing>
Lots to think on here. I think it ties in nicely with the questions I asked about revival on Monday...
</idle musing>

Update on Junebug

Joel has posted an update on Junebug; here is a portion of it:

Junebug has been diagnosed with Ebstein's Anomaly. The tricuspid valve through which blood flows from the right atrium to the right ventricle is displaced, lower than it should be. Thus the valve is not functioning as it should, and is allowing blood to flow back into the right atrium. The stress on the heart could quite likely cause failure, even in utero. But this hasn't happened yet.

Please pray for them and for Junebug.

What does revival look like?

<idle musing>
I don’t know about you, but I pray for revival. But what does revival look like? Would I recognize it if it came? Do I have any idea what I am praying for?

As I read about revivals in the past, one thing stands out above all else: revival begins with repentance. When the presence of God falls, people get honest and confess the “little sins” that they normally would overlook. Am I ready for that? Am I ready to admit that I am truly fallen, that without the continual, moment-by-moment empowering of God I will do nothing but sin? Or, am I content to think that I am not so bad after all, that God will overlook all those “little sins” that society and I accept in my life? Am I ready for the spotlight of the Holy Spirit to look into the corners of my life? Am I ready to truly surrender? No just a conditional surrender, but an unconditional, absolute, no strings attached surrender?

If the answer to any of those is no, then revival will continue to tarry, at least in my life. Those are the conditions God lays down. And, one could go further and question whether I have any right to say that I am a Christian if I am not living on God’s terms instead of my own. . .
</idle musing>

Say it isn't so!

I just heard that Larry Norman died yesterday. Those of you who remember the underground days of Jesus Music know will know him. The rest of you should :) There is a nice post at Razing the Bar:

Larry, who died yesterday, was a friend I never knew, and a frustratingly untrustworthy witness to the faith. He was talented, insecure, prone to fanciful tales that bore little or no relationship to the truth, possibly mad as a hatter, and utterly, fearlessly in love with Jesus. The truth is that he made about three good albums over the course of thirty five years and dozens of releases. He repackaged his thirty great songs over and over again, made ridiculous claims about his role in the music industry (the founder of rap was my favorite), and claimed to be the spiritual mentor to everyone from Paul McCartney to Bob Dylan. He was also the self-proclaimed Father of Christian Rock, and for once he got it right.

Those who are familiar with the safe, sanitized world of Contemporary Christian Music might be startled if they listened to those thirty songs. There was nothing safe and sanitized about Larry Norman’s music. He sang about gonorrhea, drug addiction, NASA’s foibles, the death of Janis Joplin, and Jesus. Always about Jesus. Larry was wrong about some of those things. The devil never ever had all the good music. Larry Norman had some of it, too, and so did all the lost pagans Larry both excoriated and loved. But there was an emotional directness and honesty and prophetic tenacity about those songs that anyone – CCM musician or otherwise – would do well to recapture...

RIP Larry.

Quote for this day

"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and the calling of assemblies -- I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow." Isaiah 1:11-17, RSV

<idle musing>
Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it? I'm glad he doesn't stop there but goes on to proclaim the new day of the LORD.

I love Isaiah, the way judgment is juxtapositioned with hope. It smacks of reality: look around you and you know judgment has to be imminent (on everybody except me, right?), but look to God, and you see hope, forgiveness, and love—provided you quit doing it your way and let God do it his way!
</idle musing>

He's back

Well, a little over 24 hours later, and the irrepressible Jim West is back. I hope we don't regret this :)

In memoriam

Somebody hacked Jim West's blog. For those of you who haven't been around the biblioblog world for long, Jim was one of the first biblical scholars to begin blogging. He originally was on Blogger, but then was corrupted by the dark side and moved to WordPress, where his blog was until early this morning.

While I didn't always agree with Jim (I'm not sure he agreed with himself, sometimes!), I did make it a point to catch his posts everyday. Whoever hacked his site and deleted it definitely deserves the total depravity award that Jim would hand out from time to time.

Jim has said that he doesn't have the heart to start again, but I certainly hope he reconsiders. He did it once before when he moved from petrosbaptistchurch.blogspot.com to drjimwest.blogspot.com (anybody else remember that?); surely he can do it again.

Good stuff

I've run into some good stuff in the blogosphere today:

Musings on church:

Tell me something... what if we've got it all wrong? The church thing I mean...

What if church is not supposed to be about "worship"? What then?

What if music is supposed to play a minor role and not a major one (excuse the pun).

What if God doesn't care for self-focussed, romantic lyrics sung to boomer, 1980s, soft pop music...

What if church is supposed to be less about music, monologue, lecture-style teaching in theatre style auditoriums and more about living life with people who share the same questions, struggles, joys and challenges that I do?...

Do read the whole thing—thoughtfully and prayerfully (HT: The Heresy)

Some good thoughts on intercessory prayer by Ted Gossard:

Probably the most important aspect of intercessory prayer is to know that our Lord Jesus is interceding for us. And our intercessions are taken up into his perfect intercession. Because of that, we're encouraged to keep praying our often poor prayers, and those prayers are turned into something very good in God's will.

A new blog, by a cousin in Kentucky. I like his first post:

I must warn you I am controversial. I have an axe to grind with the Church in America. I may have one to grind with the world, but I only know the actions of American Christians. What makes me controversial may ask? I believe strongly in orthodoxy, and that orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy. From "right" belief to "right" action. My theology is experiential; I believe followers of Jesus Christ should read and experience what the Bible says. But I am most controversial because of my beliefs about sexual brokenness.

Read the rest. It's definitely going to be a blog to watch.

A less than favorable review of Pagan Christianity. He raised legitimate complaints, but glosses over legitimate points by Viola. I must admit, I was disappointed in what I have read of the book so far (some day I have got to update my sidebar!).

Finally, you need to check out the 2 posts at GoingtoSeminary.com today.

God in the ordinary

I needed this, maybe you do to.

When the Spirit of God comes to us, He does not give us glorious visions, but He tells us to do the most ordinary things imaginable. Depression tends to turn us away from the everyday things of God’s creation. But whenever God steps in, His inspiration is to do the most natural, simple things-things we would never have imagined God was in, but as we do them we find Him there. The inspiration that comes to us in this way is an initiative against depression. But we must take the first step and do it in the inspiration of God. If, however, we do something simply to overcome our depression, we will only deepen it. But when the Spirit of God leads us instinctively to do something, the moment we do it the depression is gone. As soon as we arise and obey, we enter a higher plane of life.

Hope

But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.
I rely, my whole being relies, Yahweh, on your promise.
My whole being hopes in the Lord,
more than watchmen for daybreak;
more than watchmen for daybreak
let Israel hope in Yahweh.
For with Yahweh is faithful love,
with him generous ransom;
and he will ransom Israel from all its sins.

Psalm 130:4-8 New Jerusalem Bible

Let them eat crow...

Whom? Me, of course. On Wednesday I said that I would probably regret posting this. Sure enough, at about the same time that I posted it, the site that had the survey on it posted this:

First Steps to Finding a Seminary

1. Pray - Seminary is a big decision. So much of what you learn at seminary will greatly impact your ministry down the road (whether vocation or not). With so much riding on this season of your life it is only proper to being your search in humble prayer before your loving Father God. Place your life and decisions into his hands and commit the whole process to his glory. From first to last, keep prayer a central theme in your journey to find a seminary....

4. Pray - In case you already forgot… pray.

I'm sure he didn't know I existed, although he will now that I have linked to him, so I know it wasn't my post that did anything. But, let it be known to all: I was too hasty! [I know you are all shocked that I would be hasty in anything :)] And I ask for forgiveness for a wrong conclusion based on a limited dataset.

So, even though I didn't cite the site in the original post, I want to now so that all can see a good model in how to decide if and where one should go to seminary, with special emphasis on points 1 & 4. Now that I think about it, points 1 & $ would be a good set of guidelines for anything in life...

And the winner is...

We have posted the results for the ANE Valentine contest here. The winners get a free book, which is shown below each winner.

I must say that the entries were very good and showed originality. We kept the judging totally arbitrary; I didn't decide it and Andy can't read any of the ancient languages that they were written in—although he did ask me on several of them.

We're thinking about having the contest again next year; what do you think? You have 366 days to come up with an entry. It might just be a reason to get out of bed next year :)

Believe, part 2

I will probably regret posting this...

<idle musing>
Part one was about Joel and Renee and believing prayer. Well, meanwhile, on a totally different subject, I was noticing (in my role as Marketing Manager) that Eisenbrauns was not well known among seminarians. So, as part of my market research, I began seeking out blogs by and for seminarians (great, more blogs to read!). I wanted to find out what their needs and thought processes are so that Eisenbrauns can better serve them.

One thing that I immediately noticed is that seminarians now are just like they were when I was in seminary—stressed out : ) Well, that is a subject for another post. . . But, the second thing that bothered me was the lack of feeling a need for, or sense of, God’s direction. One site has a poll on how to choose a seminary. Nice idea, but none of the options listed was “pray.” All of them were logical, cerebral things. Where is the sense of God’s direction?

On a different site, a person was worrying aloud about the future: Would there be a job? Would the church boards hire them? OK, reasonable concerns, in the flesh! Did God call you to the paid ministry? If so, then whose responsibility is it to supply the job? If not, what are you doing there in the first place!

And so it went, one site after another. On some there was a nod at God. On others, there was an acknowledgment of God in the abstract. But, what I missed seeing—and it might be there, but I didn’t see it expressed in writing—was an acknowledgement that since God called them it was HIS idea. He was in charge, not the person going. He was calling the shots, not them.

Please, if you are in seminary, tell me I am wrong! Tell me that you are depending on God for direction and support (financial, sure, but more importantly, spiritual, emotional, and physical) on a moment-by-moment basis. Tell me that you know that God has called you; that he is the one directing your life, both now and in the future.

If that is not true, then I submit to you that you are a practicing atheist, or perhaps deist. Either one of them denies God has an active role to play in your daily life. Both don’t expect God to intervene; nor do they expect prayers to be answered.

Another name for Christians is “believers.” What a misnomer in our society! If what I am seeing is the norm, then it goes a long way in explaining the current state of the church in the western world.
</idle musing>

Today at Eisenbrauns

Today was "Warm food for a cold day" at Eisenbrauns. Periodically we have informal events, such as Eisenbrownie day, or Eisentreat day. In fact, we even have a trophy made of oak that circulates. So, without further ado, here are a few pictures...


This was Marti's contribution; read the placard carefully (especially you, Nick!)



Yep, two tables full of goodies, and two more goodies were on their way when I took these pictures. Everyone was ready for a long winter's nap after the feast :)


Here's the Eisentrophy. Makes you want to work here, doesn't it?

The voice of God

I don't often read My Utmost for His Highest, but once in a while a headline pops into my RSS feeder that piques my interest. Today was one of those days:

We don’t consciously and deliberately disobey God— we simply don’t listen to Him. God has given His commands to us, but we pay no attention to them— not because of willful disobedience, but because we do not truly love and respect Him...

We show how little love we have for God by preferring to listen to His servants rather than to Him. We like to listen to personal testimonies, but we don’t want God Himself to speak to us. Why are we so terrified for God to speak to us? It is because we know that when God speaks we must either do what He asks or tell Him we will not obey. But if it is simply one of God’s servants speaking to us, we feel obedience is optional, not imperative. We respond by saying, "Well, that’s only your own idea, even though I don’t deny that what you said is probably God’s truth."

<idle musing>
Ouch!
</idle musing>

Desk shot

There is an untagged meme running around right now that asks us to put up a picture of our desk. Well, I finally remembered to take the camera home this weekend. Here are two shots of my desk.





By the way, I just built this desk last week. I have used a door as my desk for years, but the weight of the books had caused it to bow too much; everything was sliding to the middle! So, I went out and bought a 4' x 8' piece of 3/4" pressboard and a few 2" x 3" x 8' boards and built a new one. The desk itself is 33" x 85" supported by the 2" x 3" frame and a 2-drawer filing cabinet.

Believe, part one

<idle musing>
As you know, if you read this blog with any regularity at all, our daughter is pregnant and the ultrasound revealed a problem with the heart of the baby. I asked people to pray for the baby’s health, and we received some good news shortly thereafter: the problem is not genetic, which means the baby probably will not die immediately after birth, or have Downs Syndrome, or things like that. We praise God for that, and are thankful for the prayers on behalf of the unborn child and parents.

But, one thing that bothered me is that quite a few people were praying that God would direct the surgeons’ hands. Nothing inherently wrong with that, unless that was the first thing thought of. What I mean is this; did these people seek the will of God in this situation before they defaulted to medical science for the answer? If so, great, I firmly believe God can use medical science. If not, then that is idolatry, stealing God’s glory and giving it to man. I know that God still heals today. I know that he doesn’t need to use medical science. As all of us in the family were seeking God on how to pray, we all came to the conclusion, independently, that we were to pray for total healing in utero. So, that is how we are praying.

There is a marvelous story told about George Mueller, the prayer warrior of the nineteenth century; he was on his way to a meeting in Canada, via boat on the St. Lawrence Seaway. The fog was so thick that the boat was barely moving and it looked like Mueller would be late to his meeting. The captain came to Mueller’s cabin to tell him the bad news, and Mueller replied that he had never been late before, and God wouldn’t allow him to be late this time either. He said, “Let’s pray.” He then fell to his knees and asked God to clear the fog and allow him to arrive on time. After he finished his prayer, the captain was about to add his own words of prayer, but Mueller gently stopped him and told him not to even bother praying, since he (the captain) didn’t really believe God would answer. The captain was a bit taken aback, but had to agree. They stood up and opened the door of the cabin to a flood of sunshine. God had answered Mueller’s prayer.

So, while I know Joel and Renee truly appreciate all the prayer support they can get, I also know that they are receiving enough unbelieving prayers from local people that the last thing they need is unbelieving prayers from strangers!

Please, don’t misunderstand me here. I am not saying don’t pray. I am saying to seek God’s face and discover what you are hearing from him on how to pray. Then pray believing that he will do what he promised.
</idle musing>

Of cups and coffee

I don't usually just grab a post wholesale and repost it, but in this case, I can't just excerpt it without destroying it, so with thanks to Grace Roots:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: 'If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other's cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.

God brews the coffee, not the cups.........

Round up

I collect links, thinking I will get around to blogging on them. Problem is, I never get around to some of them and they start getting old. Sometimes I just delete them, but sometimes they are too good, so I post an assortment. This time I am posting an assortment...

First, a couple from Christianity Today:
Nice little post from the January issue of Christianity Today about the incarnation. They ask if Jesus would have been incarnated without the fall. Good food for thought.

And, in the February issue, some musings on the level of conversion we see now versus in the book of Acts. The article is entitles Singing in the Chains

The conversions I witness generally aren't as radical as they seem to be elsewhere and at other times. Our hunger and thirst for righteousness, the first mark of kingdom-dwellers, is for the most part anorexic, and our lust for self-vindication appears as hearty as ever. Domestic problems seem to be as prevalent among evangelicals as they are among the wider public. The amount of interchurch migration, and the low level of actual net church growth, is embarrassing. The willingness, as the apostle Paul put it, to share in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings so that we might attain to the resurrection from the dead is at a low ebb in most North American churches. . .

But what do we mean, what should we mean, by saved? Does it not also include freedom and power, here and now, to live a life so transformed that others glimpse in it the possibility of their own transformation? Please, let us always, in the name of the God who saves us, mean this by the gospel as well.

Rick Mansfield on the heritage we are missing:

...in rejecting tradition in all forms, we've thrown out the spiritual baby with the bathwater. Our churches try to replace tradition with one new program after another, but we're so afraid of tradition that we cannot even stay with one program for long. We follow trends and seek after the NBT's [Next Big Thing] of the contemporary "Christian" culture, but I'm more than ever convinced that for all the programs we've involved ourselves in and for all the activities we pursued under the guise of discipleship, we haven't moved anywhere nearer to the image of Christ.

Finally, I found this one via ecclesia, but he got it here. On living the Christian life:

"There are basically four ways to live the Christian life. The first way is to attempt to do it entirely on our own, by our own effort and willpower. This way is doomed to failure...

The second way to live the Christian life is frequently a reaction to the first. Having experienced the futility of the self-effort way, we go to the other extreme, deciding to do nothing at all...

A third way is the 'Lord, help me' approach. The chief characteristic of this way is a partial dependence on the Lord: the unconscious but nevertheless real attitude that I can of my own self live the Christian life up to a point but that I need the Lord's help after that point. It is the assumption--unconscious, perhaps, but very real--that there is a certain reservoir of goodness, wisdom, and spiritual strength within my own character that I should draw on for the ordinary duties of life, but that beyond that, I need the Lord's help...

The fourth approach to the Christian life is the abiding-in-Christ way. the believer who practices this approach knows that the self-effort approach and the 'let go and let God' approach are both futile. He has also learned that he needs God's help not just beyond a certain point but in every aspect of life. He doesn't pray for hep just during crises or stressful times. Rather, his prayer is, 'Lord, enable me all day long, for without You I can do nothing.'

<idle musing>
Amen! Good preaching! The only way that the Christian life can be lived is by abiding; that's how Jesus did it, by abiding in the Father; that's how we have to do it, too.
</idle musing>

Rain and books

Sunday night we got about 6 inches of very wet snow, and then it suddenly turned to a light rain. Last night, at around midnight we got a thunderstorm (the temperature was around 50F) and lots of rain. Because it had been cold (about 0-10F) the week before, the ground was frozen solid.

So, let's add rain to snow, add warm weather and you get...lots of water. Add frozen ground and you get: Flooding! Now, add a book warehouse to the mix, and what do you get? Yep, here it is, part of the north wall:



The north and west walls leaked, and some books got damaged. We won't know for sure if some are salvageable until they dry out—so if you see damaged books for sale on our website next week that say slight water damage, you know why! Here's a sample:



It wasn't as bad as it could have been, and insurance will most likely cover it, but what book lover ever enjoys seeing damaged books? Oh, and then Marti brings me this little gem, which got caught in the conveyor of the postal service:



Think I should sell it used? :)

Eisenbrauns February sale

For February Eisenbrauns is running a 30% sale on selected Paternoster titles in the series Paternoster Biblical Monographs, Paternoster Theological Monographs, Regnum Studies in Mission, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, Studies in Christian History and Thought, and Studies in Evangelical History and Thought.

These are revised dissertations, original monographs, and essay collections that are reasonably priced. The revised dissertations are actually readable, if you know what I mean :) They get rid of a lot of the dissertationitis, as I call it, and write readable sentences. I have reviewed some of them on this blog, Jim West has reviewed one or two, and Scot McKnight has mentioned them several times, most recently today he mentioned Saint Paul as Spiritual Director (that title isn't on sale, it is too new).

Oh, you can see the whole list here. Enjoy!

And it's not even April first

You can’t make this stuff up! Well, maybe you can if you are Lark News; in fact I had to check to make sure it wasn’t really from them. Anyway, this showed up on my RSS reader on Friday from Out of UR:

In 2008, the language of missiology is changing, so look for "church franchises" in your town.

Eddie Johnson, the lead pastor of Cumberland Church, espouses the franchising concept when it comes to the relationship between his church in Nashville, Tennessee, and North Point Community Church in metro Atlanta. On his blog, he states, "Just like a Chick-fil-A, my church is a 'franchise,' and I proudly serve as the local owner/operator."

According to Johnson, his job is to "establish a local, autonomous church that has the same beliefs, values, mission, and strategy as North Point." He completed a three-month internship at North Point and continues to receive training and support. He claims to rarely deviate from the "training manual."

"Just like that Chick-fil-A owner/operator," he says, "I'm here in Nashville to open up our franchise and run it right. I believe in my company and what they are trying to 'sell.'"

<idle musing>
Right! Let’s take God and package him up in a nice digestible portion. We certainly don’t want him to get out of our little box, if we do he might actually have the power to convict and change us! No! Can’t have that! It might upset our consumer model of Christianity.

No wonder the church is a laughing-stock and is relegated to the edge of society.
</idle musing>

Book meme

Ah yes, I've watched it go round and round, and now it descends upon me. Jim Getz has tagged me. Here are the rules:
* Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more (no cheating!)
* Find page 123
* Find the first five sentences
* Post the next three sentences
* Tag five people

OK, well, I have three books about equidistant from me, but one is still shrink-wrapped (Megiddo IV, volume 2 only, which is why it is sitting here), and the other two—well I'll pick this one: A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries. Page 123 is part of the catalogue of ossuaries, number 193 to be exact. The first five sentences give the provenance and description. What we get here is the ornamentation Here goes:

F. Two metopes in line frames, each containing a six-petalled [sic] rosette inside a zigzag circle; segments link petal-tips; ivy leaves between petals, pointing inward. L. Zizag frame containing whirl rosette inside a zigzag circle. R. Zigzag frame containing eight-petalled [sic] rosette inside a zigzag circle; petals in form of ivy leaves, pointing inward.

Now wasn't that interesting? If anyone ever asks me about ossuary 193 in Rahmani's catalogue, I will now know what it is!

Now, who is left to tag? How about Charles Halton, Ted Gossard, Alan Knox, and two co-workers (in alphabetical order by last name): Jon Erdman, and Andy Kerr.

Now I'm going to lunch :)

Pricing and availability

I was wondering what to put on sale for February, so I started looking over what might be of interest to our customers. One of the things I do is visit some of our competitors to see what they have as a price—after all, it would be embarrassing to put something on sale and have the sale price be higher than their regular price :(

So, I was thinking about running a sale on the new BHQ fascicles (Biblia Hebraica Quinta, a replacement for the standard Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia). The newest volume is Deuteronomy, on which that nasty river in Brazil is beating us by about a dollar. But, it is interesting that when you look at the older volumes, General Introduction and Megilloth and Ezra-Nehemiah, they have them at list price.

So, what's going on here? Simple, run the newer stuff at a bit cheaper than your competition, lose a bit of money, but convince people that you are the cheapest. Then, jack up the price on the older and less in demand titles to make up the difference. That is business 101. Wal-mart has used it for years, as have the grocery chains; we call them "loss leaders."

So, out of curiosity, I looked up a few other titles:
Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon Old Testament: Study Edition, 2 Volume Set, the standard Hebrew Lexicon:
Eisenbrauns: $151.20
Amazon: $154.98
But, check this out: CBD doesn't even carry it! They carry The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic (cheaper, but that is because Hendrickson and CBD are the same company...), A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (more expensive), and Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament (a bit cheaper), but they don't carry the standard Hebrew lexicon.

Tuebinger Bibelatlas / Tuebingen Bible Atlas
Eisenbrauns: $120.00
Amazon: $150.00
CBD: nothing. Just in case they might have had the ISBN wrong, I did a search on "tubinger" and got a whole bunch of jewelry! Hmmm...

The Context of Scripture:
Eisenbrauns: $169.15
Amazon: $172.00
CBD: Nothing! Am I noticing a pattern here?

Don't get me wrong, I have spent thousands of dollars over the years at CBD (I started buying from them in 1979), and they are a customer of Eisenbrauns, but I have noticed a trend away from academic/scholarly stuff over the last several years. I suspect they took a look at the demographics of their customers and decided to concentrate their energy where they make the most; makes sense to me—that's why Eisenbrauns doesn't sell non-academic titles :)

So, where is this whole thing going? I feel sort of like Garrison Keillor with a stream of consciousness kind of thing going on.

I don't know what I'm trying to say! I guess that is why it is an idle musing :)

By the way, I still don't know what to put on sale for February! Any ideas? I need to have it up by Monday's BookNews.

Eisenbrauns poetry contest

Love is in the air! We're looking for a few good scholars to display both eros and erudition in our first (and possibly last!) Ancient Near Eastern Valentine's contest.

We want no more than three of your original[*] compositions, in any ancient Near Eastern language (we'll bend the rules a bit and allow Greek), accompanied by an English translation. Artwork is similarly welcome. All entries should be sent via e-mail to akerr at eisenbrauns dot com before noon on Wednesday, February 13.

The decisions of the judges will be final and, most likely, extremely arbitrary. Prizes will be given. Winners will be announced on February 14, 2008, and winning entries will be showcased on the Eisenbrauns website. Submitting an entry constitutes permission to reproduce your work.


[*] We have memorized the entire corpus of Near Eastern poetry, and will be watching for cheating. OK, we haven't — but someone out there will catch you at it if your words are not your own, and that wouldn't be good. So don't.

Lower price on Cogan's Raging Torrent

I just received an e-mail today from Carta telling me that they have reduced the price of The Raging Torrent. If you recall, they had listened to your feedback earlier and reduced the price. Now they have reduced it further to $64.00.

It is in press and should be in the United States sometime in late March.

For those of you who don't remember, here are all the details about this important book:

The Raging Torrent
Historical Inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia Relating to Ancient Israel
Carta Handbook
by Mordechai Cogan
Carta, Jerusalem, Forthcoming, winter 2007
ca. 224 pages + illustrations, English
Cloth, 6 x 9.25 inches
ISBN: 9652207071
Your Price: $64.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~COGRAGING

Description:
This volume presents a comprehensive collection of the royal inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia that treat the Land of Israel and the People of Israel. Covering a period of just over three hundred years during the first half of the 1st millennium BCE, these texts tell the story of the military encounters - both victories and defeats - between the Mesopotamian empires and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Many of the texts relate to events described in the Hebrew Bible, while others provide information about affairs that were unknown until their discovery in the modern times. All the texts have been newly translated from the original cuneiform documents and are accompanied by a consecutive commentary and select bibliography.

The Failure of Discipleship

Wayne, who runs ecclesia has a nice summary of why discipleship is failing in the contemporary church. Here’s his list condensed from Ogden’s Transforming Discipleship:

1. Diversion from our primary calling to make disciples.
2. Discipling through programs.
3. Reducing the Christian life to the benefits we get from Jesus.
4. A two-tiered understanding of discipleship (super Christians vs. ordinary believers).
5. An unwillingness to call people to discipleship.
6. An inadequate view of the church as a discipleship community.
7. No clear pathway to maturity.
8. A lack of personal discipling.

<idle musing>
In my experience, the most prevalent are 2, 3, and 4. Well, you had better add 5 and 6—wait, add 7 to that list also. Hmm. . .They are all way too common, but I would have to say that in the last week I have seen number 4, two-tiered understanding, pop up in conversation too often. Heresy! Either you are following Jesus, or you aren’t. If you aren’t, then you aren’t a Christian; you might be religious, but you are not a Christian!
</idle musing>

What a quotation

I was looking for something totally different and stumbled across this quotation from Augustine, as cited by Arminius:

"Let Pelagius confess that it is possible for man to be without sin than in no other way than by the grace of Christ, and we will be at peace with him."

<idle musing>
Wow! How come we never hear that quote from Augustine? You always hear about how Augustine believes in original sin, which is true. But, you never hear that he believed in the possibility of such a level of regeneration. So, one could argue that Wesley is more Augustinian than most reformed theologians when it comes to sin in believers! Talk about turning the tables :)

Here is what the Presbyterian Larger Catechism says:

No man is able, either by himself or by any grace received in this life, perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed.

Here is what I John says:

You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who does right is righteous, as he is righteous. He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God commits sin; for God's nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.—I John 3:5-9 RSV

I prefer Augustine here; at least he is scriptural.
</idle musing>

Update on "June-bug"

I just received an e-mail from Renee about their unborn baby, which they are calling "June-bug."

The genetic counselor from St. Mary's called today (Monday the 28th) saying that the amniocentesis results were available: There is NO genetic defect in this baby's body. There is also NO spina bifida. So praise God! Keep on praying for a healthy baby!

Joel and I still go to St. Mary's hospital on Tuesday the 29th to have an ultrasound and to meet with the Pediatric Cardiologist. We are believing God has already healed this baby.

Praise God! and thank you to all who are praying. Joel & Renee's blog can be found here

Who needs prophets, anyway?

John Hobbins remarks on the rightward shift of the world’s political leaders, and them makes this very insightful statement

But then, who takes the prophets seriously these days? I’ve noticed they make a nice wax nose for those who like to add a bit of religious incense to their political hackery of choice. Anyone who thinks the Hebrew prophets were liberal Democrats or social conservatives ante litteram hasn’t got a clue.

I am reminded of the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel in his classic study The Prophets

What manner of man is the prophet? A student of philosophy who turns from the discourse of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to an area of trivialities. Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into oration about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the market place. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. The world is a proud place, full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized, and rave as if the whole world were a slum. The make much ado about paltry things, lavishing excessive language upon trifling subjects. What if somewhere in ancient Palestine poor people have not been treated properly by the rich? So what if some old women found pleasure and edification in worshiping “the Queen of Heaven”? Why such immoderate excitement? Why such intense indignation?

The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world. There is no society to which Amos’ words would not apply.

He goes on to quote from Amos. Do read the whole first chapter of The Prophets
<idle musing>
Indeed! But who takes them seriously anymore? They obviously didn’t understand the give and take of the marketplace; the importance of turning a profit; the necessity of watching out for oneself by taking every advantage possible.

Unrealistic idealists, that’s what they were! Ignore them, or if your religious leanings won’t allow you to ignore them, then create a hermeneutic that reinterprets them so that they are essentially ignored. But, whatever you do, don’t pay any attention to them or the God for whom they spoke! If you do, it might mean changing your lifestyle and behavior.

Of course, that is fraught with problems, since you will soon find out that it is impossible! That is why we need God. . .
</idle musing>

Family update

We have some good news, and some concerns on the family front. Some of you know that Debbie and I have two grown children, both living in Minnesota. First the good news:

Ryan is getting married! Yep. He is getting married to Emily, a woman who loves the Lord and whom he has known for a couple of years now. The wedding will be in the Minneapolis area on May 31, 2008.

And, Renee and Joel are expecting another child. The baby is due sometime in the middle of June (they have been given two different dates, the 12th and the 17th). They just started a blog with some good pictures and a nice summary of their Christmas. I hope you enjoy it :)

Now the concern:
The pregnancy is a high risk one, since their first child was delivered via a C-section. So, on Tuesday, Renee went in for a routine ultrasound. The results were not clear, but seemed to indicate a problem with the baby's heart. So, they scheduled an ultrasound at a better hospital in Duluth (2.5 hours away) on Thursday.

Last night Joel called with the results. His first words were, "This is not a healthy baby." Yikes! Words that no parent/grandparent ever wants to hear. Apparently, there is an enlarged aorta, which could indicate a bad or small valve in the heart. They took an amniocentesis and will have those results on Tuesday when they meet with the specialist. There is a 5% possibility that it is genetic, which could mean Downs Syndrome or death shortly after birth.

At this point it looks like they will do surgery immediately after birth, but that means Joel and Renee will have to stay in Minneapolis when the birth gets close.

More details as I find them out.

Please pray for Joel, Renee, their kids, and the baby. I believe God still does miracles, but I also know that His ways can be a good bit different than ours. I know what I want, but I need to let God tell me what He wants. I don't mean that to sound wishy-washy because it is not. I have seen God do physical healings—on myself and others. But, I have also had my prayers go unanswered.

When Renee had Rachel after having Joshua via C-section, they told her she might be able to deliver naturally. So, she tried. After several hours of labor, it looked like things weren't going well so they transfered her to Duluth. They told her that she had a 10% chance of delivering naturally. The prayer chain started, and that 10% became 100% as God intervened and allowed a natural childbirth.

When I got hit by the truck on my bicycle, the entire medical staff told me my knee would need surgery based on the X-rays. They also told me I would have arthritis at the joint the rest of my life. The prayer chain started, and I didn't need surgery and I don't have arthritis, either.

Update: I fixed the link on Joel and Renee's blog. They now have a note at the bottom entitled Prayer.

What do we do with John 8?

I was looking over a book that came in yesterday, and ran across this quote:

Our present preoccupation with questions of historical accuracy and the restoration of the original manuscripts means we either deny this story [the woman caught in adultery] its place in the Gospel of John or treat it with marginal notes that state the earliest manuscripts did not include it. As a result, we have lost contact with the teaching of this story, which the early church found authoritative, wrestled with and finally recognized. As such the story of the woman caught in adultery illuminates how our methodological concerns may conflict with the teachings of the early church and the tradition that has been handed down to us.— Reading the Bible with Giants pages 73-74.

Interesting perspective, isn't it? Our preoccupation with the historico-critical method has cut us off from about 1700 years of the church's history...

The message of Easter

The other day we received some Easter cards to send to our sponsored kids. The message in the Easter card was wimpy, to say the least. Debbie felt prompted to write a letter to the sponsorship agency—a Christian one. Here is the content of the letter (warning, it's three pages long!):

Recently we received the Easter cards for our sponsored children. After reading one I was very grieved in my spirit. The last lines read, “Jesus is still alive today. He loves you and wants you to live with Him in heaven. That’s the story of Easter.”

Is it? Is that truly the story of Easter? That Jesus died so that we get a free ticket to heaven? And until then being a Christian means …”be good, read your bible, go to church, witness about Christ, etc., and someday you will grow into Christlikeness.

Please be patient with me as I share what the Lord has laid on my heart. Let me give my testimony. I accepted Christ as my Savior at the age of 16. For the next twenty some years I went to church regularly, read my bible almost everyday, witnessed, helped with music in some of the church groups throughout the years, prayed lots, etc. But throughout that time even with doing all these spiritual activities, I was not becoming more Christlike and yet I wanted to be more filled with Jesus. So I kept on reading, praying, etc., hoping that someday, somehow it would just happen. Well, when I was in my 40’s I started really hungering for God and His ways. I was tired of sinning (i.e., living in worry at times, getting impatient with people, wanting attention on myself, trying to be in control of my life and others’ lives sometimes, and so on…) I was sick of living in “the flesh” (as the bible puts it ), in the “old self,” in the sinful nature. When I sinned I would confess it to the Lord, thank Him for his forgiveness, and then find myself doing the same sins again. So I would go through the confession routine again…and on it went.

I wanted more. I wanted Christ’s holiness in me. I wanted God. It wasn’t happening by my doing all those spiritual exercises. It wasn’t happening by confessing sins all the time. I wasn’t getting any holier. And let me say that during all those years I did truly experience the Lord’s presence many times and did have his joy and peace and love. It just wasn’t continually. And as I got older I realized that how I had been taught Christianity wasn’t true Christianity. It was (and still is) man’s way of living the Christian life. “Do this, do that, read your bible more, pray more, serve in the church …Then you will become like Jesus.” NOT!!!!!!

So I finally got to the point of really calling out to God – seeking Him with my whole heart (which I thought I was doing in my earlier years, but God knows when we truly mean it from the depths of our soul). And Hallelujah! God is so patient and so faithful! He started really opening my eyes to what being a Christian means, not according to man, but according to the Almighty Holy God.

Many things He revealed to me – the heart of it all being this basic truth: God’s definition of Christianity is simple. It isn’t us trying and striving to be like Christ. It is God living His life in us. The Lord himself will live His very own life in us fully when and only when we say “yes” to our sinful nature being dead so that the Lord can be the only life of our soul, of our whole being. The bible teaches it very clearly, I had read it over and over all those years and yet I didn’t see it. Why? The Lord showed me that it was because I loved me more than God. I wanted to be god of my life (which is true of everyone who remains living with their sinful nature on the throne of their life instead of God living His life in them – totally and only God.) I didn’t know it in these words at the time but that is what I was living.

I’ve learned that what Jesus said is true, “By their fruit you will know them.” Whatever is inside us, whatever or whoever is the true god of our soul is what comes out in our attitudes, thoughts, behavior, actions, words, etc. If the sinful self is on the throne of the heart, the fruit of self comes out - sin. If the Lord Jesus is on the throne of the heart and He is the life of the soul, then the fruit of the Spirit comes out - God’s character. It’s that simple.

And another truth that is so awesome (of course all of God’s truths are awesome because He is awesome) is the fact that the sinful nature of man can only be dealt with by God Himself. Only He can put it to death. It is not a life-long process of dying to self. If it were, then it would be a matter of works. It would be us trying to crucify our sinful nature ourselves – which we could not and never can do. Only God can take the old self/sinful nature to death. And the good news is that He already did! It is done! In Christ it is finished! Paul talks about it quite extensively in Romans especially, and throughout the New Testament, how Jesus took the sinful nature of man to death with Himself when He died on the cross. And then raised us with Him to give us new life – His very life to live in us instead of the sinful nature! Amen! Thank-you, Jesus!

“I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

We are now complete in Christ. It is Christ living His perfect, holy life in us. By God’s divine power we have all we need for life and godliness. We are temples of His Spirit. Christ Himself living in us – the hope of glory! And it is for now, not for some future date at the end of our earthly lives. All scripture that talks about these truths is in the tense of “has been” or “is”. For example, it doesn’t say, I “am being” crucified with Christ. Or I “will be” crucified with Christ. But it says, I “HAVE BEEN” crucified with Christ…Christ “HAS” taken the sinful nature to death, not “will” take the sinful nature to death. We “ARE” His temple, not “will be” His temple. Christ lives in me –NOW - not “will live in me someday.” Praise God!

Now perhaps you are asking, “If this is all true, why am I still experiencing “me” on the throne? Why am I still living in the sinful nature?” I’ve asked the Lord the same question many times at the start of my seeking Him. The Lord showed me that I was still experiencing the “sinful self life” because I hadn’t absolutely and completely surrendered my self (my sinful nature) to Him. I didn’t mean it when I said “yes” to its death. I thought I did. So God brought me to the point of seeing the detestable, stubborn, rebellious, proud nature of the sinful self and how much it immensely grieves Him. And as I’ve truly hungered for Him to be my All in All, to be the only Life of my soul – so that it would be, NOT I, BUT CHRIST living in and through me, I am experiencing His life in me more fully every day. By faith, Christ lives his very own life in me with the sinful nature dead and no more.

Sinful self is out – Christ is in.

It is a matter of believing, taking God at His word. Living by faith, not by sight. All of God’s truths are only ours by faith. We can’t experience His life in us until we believe that what He said is true. If we don’t believe, we are calling God a liar. We have to also be willing to die to self. Not as a process, but consenting to the fact that it is already done in Christ.

And as moment by moment I trust the Lord to keep me yielded to Him alone, He will continue to live His holy, loving, powerful, victorious, faithful ( and everything else that He is) life in me and through me to others.

Praise His holy name! Now I am truly saved. God is now total Lord and Savior of my life. Not just One who paid the penalty for my sins and bore God’s wrath for me – and praise God that He did! But also that He is my true Redeemer who saved me from my sinful nature, who saved me from sinning; from the power of sin. I am no longer a slave to sin. Hallelujah! I am a slave to God’s righteousness. Jesus is the life of my soul. It’s all Him. And all the glory goes to Him alone!

The message in the Easter card for the sponsored children reflects the decapitated gospel message that most evangelical Christians teach. And have for a long time. It’s only part of God’s truth. Praise God that Christ paid the penalty for our sins and opened the door for us to heaven. Amen! But even more so, praise God that He came to destroy the devil’s works, and took the sinful nature to death with Himself on the cross and gave us new life – His life to live in us. That’s the full gospel message. That is the story of Easter.

I pray that all who profess to be believers will hunger so much for God and His holiness, and for Christianity His way, that there will be true revival everywhere, starting in each and every heart that is willing to fully surrender to Almighty God – and say a hearty “Amen” to NOT I , BUT CHRIST!

In Christ,
Debbie

Things that make you wonder

I just saw this:

42.5% American congregations that spend less than 10 percent of their budgets on social services in their community.

12.2% Congregations that spend more than 30 percent.

Hmmm. Are we ingrown, or what? I wish they had shown what percentage of the budget was spent on the physical plant.

At the same time, I saw this by one of my co-workers in a list of reasons why the church should go underground:

1. Get the money out of the church
No more of the Big Green or the Bling Bling. No more big budgets, paid pastors who view ministry as a career path, no more expensive and divisive building projects, no more bright lights and neon signs, no more marketing and advertising budgets. Anything that needs doing can be done by those who give their time sacrificially.

He goes on to list 18 reasons the church should go underground, all of them good. I especially like number 17:

16. You have everything you need
Sure, books, sermons, DVD's, mp3's, etc. can be helpful. But let's ditch the Paperback Pope. If you've got issues/questions/struggles/opportunities the best thing to do is realize that the Spirit within is the main thing. Be rational and reflective. Trust yourself. Try. Fail. Love. Grow. Progress. Regress. You don't need to be a John Piper (or fill in the blank) Groopie [sic].

Monday's happenings

An interesting new title from Zondervan:

Sing and Learn New Testament Greek
Includes 1 Audio CD and a 36-Page Guide
by Kenneth Berding
Zondervan Publishing Company, Forthcoming May 2008
Compact Disc (audio)
ISBN: 9780310280996
List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $12.74
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~CDSINGAN

For those of you who haven't totally lost interest in the Talpiot Tomb media circus, some of the scholars involved in the recent conference have issued a healthy corrective here The final paragraph:

To conclude, we wish to protest the misrepresentation of the conference proceedings in the media, and make it clear that the majority of scholars in attendance – including all of the archaeologists and epigraphers who presented papers relating to the tomb - either reject the identification of the Talpiot tomb as belonging to Jesus’ family or find this claim highly unlikely.

Indeed!

More on Pagan Christianity at The Heresy, and a follow-up thought here

Sometimes you have to tell people the unvarnished truth regardless of how many people you tick off. I was thinking about this today as I pondered Frank Viola’s less than irenic spirit in Pagan Christianity. For years I’ve challenged people I’ve known personally in conventional Christian ministry. I’ve done my level best to be charitable, respectful and sensitive. After years of trying the net impact is still pretty much zero. If the issues you challenge people on go too deep they just ignore them no matter how constructive you are.

Again, indeed!

And how about efficiency versus acting as Jesus would? That's the question that Ted asked the other day:

I was raised in a strong work ethic inherited from parents who experienced the hard times of the American Great Depression. And probably influenced somehow by the strong Protestant work ethic, which in its place is good. On top of all of this is at least the factor of an efficient American way of activity in getting the most bang for buck. And with all this, even for me as a Christian, one can fail to really follow Jesus.

So as I stood there in our work with my younger brother and friend, it was like a revelation hitting me, small as it was, yet large in significance. I had to tell myself to let it go. And instead of making an issue of it, accept the inefficiency. Maybe, in love, there could be a time and place to make a general suggestion. But even in the fast pace of work life, and perhaps especially there, we need to take care that we be followers of our Lord, loving God and loving others over all else.

Amen!

Reader's Hebrew Bible review

Zondervan kindly sent me a preview copy of their forthcoming A Reader's Hebrew Bible (RHB). I asked for a sample page to put on our website, and they sent me the whole Bible! How's that for service? Anyway, I appreciate it and hope they don't regret doing it after they read this review :) Here are the bibliographic details:

A Reader's Hebrew Bible

Edited by A. Philip Brown and Bryan W. Smith
Zondervan Publishing Company, Forthcoming, May 2008
1680 pages, Hebrew and English
Duotone
ISBN: 9780310269748
List Price: $49.99
Your Price: $39.99
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~BROREADER

I showed it to 4 other people here with varying degrees of Hebrew. It seems that the less Hebrew they knew, the more they liked it, which is a good thing, since it is aimed at those with weaker Hebrew skills. Personally, the first thing I noticed was the bleed through on the pages. I don't know if the page scans below will reflect it or not, but under normal room lighting, the bleed through from the opposite page is pretty distracting. However, when looked at under a bright reading lamp, it is barely noticeable. The bleed through isn't evident at all on the PDF on Zondervan's website, since it is a function of the thin bible paper they use.

I'm also not sure I like the gray screening of proper nouns occurring less than 100 times. I like the idea, since more than once I have spent a good bit of time looking for a word in the lexicon, only to discover that it is a proper noun, but the execution isn't quite what I would like it to be.

The vocabulary footnotes contain words occurring less than 100 times, with a 7 pages glossary with words occurring more than 100 times. A nice feature is that if the same word occurs more than once on a page, the same footnote number is used (provided the sense is the same). This is an improvement over the A Reader's Greek New Testament (RGNT), which footnotes each occurrence, even if on the same page. The foreword says that the glosses were derived primarily from BDB and HALOT, secondarily from Holladay and DCD.

The text has no masora or apparatus, but that is to be expected; it is a Reader's Bible, a fact they stress in the introduction. Qere and Ketib are marked in the text, which, by the way, is the Westminster version of Leningrad; the same text that BHS and BHQ use. This is a plus, since you can read with others; this is unlike the RGNT, which uses a different text than the N-A and UBS texts.

I found the introduction to be very good; I just hope others will read it. The editors very clearly state the goals and limitations of the work. They hope to encourage reading and warn heartily against using their glosses as definitions. They also recommend that you have a text with an apparatus available—something with which I heartily agree!

OK, the real question is, "Would I use it?" My answer is...No, I would not use it. Why wouldn't I use it? Because I know enough Hebrew to use a straight text with a lexicon. Also, because I prefer to look up words in a lexicon where I can get the fuller meaning that I can from a simple gloss.

BUT, I know lots of people who would use it, and I would definitely recommend it to them. I would recommend it more heartily if Zondervan had not used such thin paper (and if they had been a bit more careful about the word justification in layout; there are places where the words are way too far apart on the line. If they had just taken a bit more time...but for most that is a cosmetic issue that few outside of publishers would notice). As Rick Mansfield has said repeatedly, Zondervan seems fixated on thinline bibles. The HRB is about 25-33% thinner than the large BHS and weighs a bit less. Personally, I would rather have seen them use a thicker paper and eliminate the bleed through. Maybe UBS will do one and get it right, that's what happened with the UBS Greek New Testament. Zondervan took two editions, and still doesn't have it right; hopefully they will listen this time and get the Hebrew one right.


This is a scan of Chronicles, note the gray screened names


This is from Judges 3

What's going on?

Time for a quick round-up of some stuff I've run across this week...

Despite what some may think about cats, they are intelligent and relatively well behaved. In fact, according to this post academics could learn a bit from them:

Academic squabbles are often compared to cat fights, but as one who has owned cats for several decades, I’ve come to believe that such analogies are unfair to felines. Cats, for instance, instinctively know to terminate a chase when they would consume more calories than their prey would provide. And even the pugilist tabbies I’ve owned eventually learned to give wide berth to rivals who consistently bloodied them. All of this suggests that cats may be more evolutionarily advanced than a lot of academics.

He goes on to list 8 on-going arguments in academia. This article generated a good bit of traffic on the L-Classics list.

Don't think that military training carries over into civilian life? Check out this sad commentary in the New York Times

Another good review of Pagan Christianity just appeared at The M Blog. Maybe I should take Nick Norelli's advice and ask for a review copy for myself...

I just got the most recent Moody Press catalog. I don't usually see anything of interest, but this time there was a biography of A.W. Tozer advertised. It looks interesting, but if you notice, the link I gave doesn't take you to Moody's site; they haven't listed it yet! Isn't that basic marketing? Anyway, I think I will have to get it for myself. It's not the kind of thing that will sell at Eisenbrauns :)

Oh, I almost forgot this one...Apparently there is a synchroblog on fools right now. Anyway, Alan Knox has a good one here. I quote in part:

Once upon a time, God used a donkey. How foolish! Not today. Today, God has other means of transportation available to him. He uses nice cars - Cadillacs, BMWs, Mercedes, even limos. God even uses jet planes. Why would God want to use something as foolish as a donkey when he has planes available to him?

Once upon a time, God used pagan prophets and philosophers. How foolish! Not today. Nothing good can come from culture. Today, God wants his people to read Christian books, watch Christian movies, and listen to Christian music. If God has something to say, he would never be so foolish as to speak through a pagan.

He continues on. Very good food for thought.

And finally, I'm surely not the " only person over 15 who enjoys snow"!

We want our cake...

I get a variety of journals related to marketing as part of my job. Sometimes they actually are interesting :)

Today one came that has an interesting article on eco-friendly travel. Here is an excerpt:

This October, the Travel Industry Association of America, an Orlando, Fla.–based partnership, issued the results of their "travelhorizons" survey. Some highlights included the fact that more than half of all American adults advocate environmental responsibility, but only 14 percent said it would influence their choice of travel suppliers. Just 13 percent said they were willing to pay higher prices to address their environmental concerns, although 56 percent said they might. Seventy-six percent said they would not pay more than 10 percent extra and the majority of that group said they would not pay more than 5 percent extra. Americans believe in supporting the environment as long as it's free or inexpensive to do—at least that seems to be the primary implication of this survey.

<idle musing>
Yep. All talk and no traction. That is the way we do things around here, isn't it? We want everything for nothing, even salvation. We want Jesus to die for us, but we don't want to die. We want heaven in the future, and our own way now. If the scriptures don't agree with that, we create a theology that allows us to man-handle them in such a way that they will...

If ever there was proof needed of total depravity, that has got to be one of them.
</idle musing>

Quote

“It can seem as if biblical scholars are the privileged interpreters of scripture. They alone can determine what the Bible means. But the Bible was written for believing communities, not critics, and real biblical interpretation when scripture does something to such a community. When the church places special emphasis on an academic and critical approach to scripture, it easily sets up a new of priestly control of the community by a guild of experts whose work is authoritarian, not in the sense that it cannot be questioned, but in the sense that it is the privileged responsibility of an elite.”—John Goldingay in Models of Interpretation of Scripture

<idle musing>
I like his emphasis on transformation: "real biblical interpretation when scripture does something to such a community." Without transformation, scripture is a dead stack of paper with letters on it—and transformation can only happen through the power of the Holy Spirit.
</idle musing>

Quote

Hey! This is a rare happening, I ran across a John Calvin quote over the weekend that I actually agree with:

“The scripture should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all his life in learning, he will never reach the knowledge of the truth.”—John Calvin

Weekly sale at Eisenbrauns

We are still rummaging around in the warehouse, finding more stuff to offer at great prices. This week is a real potpourri, ranging from Anchor Bible volumes to the Syriac New Testament; discounts range from 33% to 50%. Links to purchase items are here, but here is a list what's on sale:

"HarperCollins Concise Atlas of Bible"
Edited by James B. Pritchard and L. Michael White
HarperCollins Publishers, 2000. Paper. English.
ISBN: 0062514997
List Price: $25.95 Your Price: $15.57

"Exodus 19-40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary"
by William H. Propp
Anchor Bible - AB
Random House, 2006. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0385246935
List Price: $49.95 Your Price: $27.47

"1 Chronicles 1-9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary"
by Gary N. Knoppers
Anchor Bible - AB
Doubleday, 2004. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0385469284
List Price: $49.95 Your Price: $24.98

"The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News"
by James M. Robinson
HarperCollins Publishers, 2005. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0060762179
List Price: $21.95 Your Price: $13.17

"The Reluctant Parting: How the New Testament's
Jewish Writers Created a Christian Book"
by Julie Galambush
HarperCollins Publishers, . . English.
ISBN: 0060596368
List Price: $24.95 Your Price: $14.97

"The Gnostic Discoveries: The Impact of the Nag Hammadi Library"
by Marvin Meyer
HarperCollins Publishers, 2005. Paper. English.
ISBN: 0060821086
List Price: $21.95 Your Price: $14.62

"Pocket Dictionary for the Study of New Testament Greek"
by Matthew S. DeMoss
IVP Pocket Reference
InterVarsity Press - IVP, 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 0830814647
List Price: $8.00 Your Price: $5.33

"Greek-English New Testament"
Edited by Eberhard Nestle, Barbara Aland, and Kurt Aland
German Bible Society, 2001. Cloth. English and Greek.
ISBN: 3438054086
List Price: $59.99 Your Price: $30.00

"Visual Education Biblical Greek Academic Study Card Set"
Visual Education, 1998. . Greek.
ISBN: 1556370075
List Price: $14.95 Your Price: $10.45

"Syriac New Testament with Psalms"
American Bible Society, 1985. Cloth. Syriac.
ISBN: 090018549X
List Price: $16.99 Your Price: $9.34

Quote

I ran across this a while back in Rome and Jerusalem, on page 348:

Knowledge is power, but the views of professors do not carry weight in all societies. Scholarship and philosophy were acceptable attributes among members of the political elite in Rome, but they were neither necessary accoutrements nor particularly helpful in establishing a politician's authority.

Hmmm...that could be said of a society closer to home, couldn't it?

By the way, this is a very good book. I have to admit that my reading time is near nil since we bought the house back in October, and it shows in my sidebar, doesn't it? No new books read since before that. Oh well, I am almost done with this one, and only have a stack about 10 high of books I need to read...

Pagan Christianity

Apparently Barna has a new book out, co-authored by Frank Viola. I briefly reviewed Barna's last book, Revolution back in August 2006. The new book, Pagan Christianity is generating a good bit of blog activity—some favorable, lots not. Here's an excerpt from a good post (with links) by The Heresy

Barna used to be a very popular man in the pulpits of North America. His primary role was surveying the spiritual and religious landscape of America. He has shared the fruit of his research through dozens of books, conferences and in academic institutions. His life, career and business were driven by the needs of conventional churches and para-church organizations. Over the years he identified several areas of deep concern for church and tried to be an agent of change. Despite becoming one of the most authoritative voices on the church in America his own research revealed there was very little positive change. He concluded that the average Christian in America was biblically illiterate, failed to hold to a biblical worldview (from an evangelical perspective) and lived a morally indistinct life. He discovered the impact of churches on society was dwarfed by that of the media. After years of trying to help conventional churches change he gave up. Unlike most of the church which keeps trying to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results he changed. He became an advocate of unconventional churches and a prominent voice in the simple church movement...

While I see lots of people coming up with all kinds of criticism (including a healthy dose of straw men and mockery dressed up as humor) of the book I’ve yet to find someone appeal to scripture to prove that contemporary church practices are biblical. The reality is most of conventional church practice has very little basis in scripture. In my very intentional efforts to study what the New Testament says about church I became more and more convinced of this. While a great many Christians are willing to split hairs over what the bible says about sexual ethics or the sovereignty of God most don’t care about what the bible says about the church. This is a huge HUGE mistake. The church in the western world is adrift and we still refuse to consider the possibility that guys like Jesus and Paul actually knew what they were doing. Meanwhile many churches in various cultures that more closely resemble the New Testament church have no problem making disciples.

Too true! I'm going to have to get the book and read it. Meanwhile, you can download a sample chapter here (warning, it's a PDF).

Yet another quiz

OK, I'm a sucker for them...blame Jim West! No real surprise in the results:

What's your eschatology? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Moltmannian Eschatology Jürgen Moltmann is one of the key eschatological thinkers of the 20th Century. Eschatology is not only about heaven and hell, but God's plan to make all things new. This should spur us on to political and social action in the present. Moltmannian Eschatology 80% Amillenialist 65% Premillenialist 45% Preterist 40% Dispensationalist 20% Postmillenialist 15% Left Behind 10%

I'm not sure if that will appear correctly or not...

Got milk?

I was in Chicago last week until Sunday for AIA/APA. While there, I tried doing what I always do, ordering milk at a restaurant. I'm used to people giving me a weird look, but this one was a new twist...

Me: I'd like a glass of milk, please.
Waiter: A glass of what?
Me: Milk.
Waiter: What kind?
Me: Whole or 2%.
Waiter: Oh, you mean milk! I don't think we have any. Let me go check.
2-3 minutes elapse before the waiter returns.
Waiter: I'm sorry, we don't have any milk. We have [he lists the different types of soda they have], water, and coffee. Would you like one of those?
Me: No thank you, I prefer milk.

Now, what is weird is that I had been in this same restaurant 2 days earlier and they had found some milk for me... What's up with that?

This isn't the first time recently that I haven't been able to get milk. Going to AAR/SBL in San Diego, I normally get milk on the airplane. They didn't have any this time. I've been flying for well over 20 years, and that was the first time I couldn't get milk, except for short little commuter flights that just hand out bottles of water.

I don't think the American Dairy Association's "Got Milk?" campaign worked very well...

Why milk? I don't know, I just prefer it. Debbie and I go through almost a gallon a day; she drinks skim, I drink 2%, almost a 1/2 gallon each per day. Maybe it is because we both have spent about 35 of our 50+ years in either Wisconsin or Minnesota? Or, maybe we just prefer it. It definitely is better for you than soda!