But where did it come from?

“If genius is the key, then there is no reason for Israel to have made these unique discoveries [of a transcendent God]. Pride of place would have to go to the Sumerians or the Old Kingdom Egyptians. Here were the real cognitive and cultural geniuses of the ancient Near East. Their discoveries shaped the thinking, commerce, politics, and science of the whole region for almost three thousand years. In fact, we still today use the Sumerians' sexagesimal mathematics when we divide a circle into 360 degrees. Yet when it came to their perception of ultimate reality, these profound thinkers came out where they started. If the given is this world and if any outside interpretation of that given in rejected, the final conclusions are all going to be the same—namely, those detailed in the earlier chapters.

“So if the Hebrews came out with different—radically different—conclusions about the nature of reality and the nature of human experience, they did so because they started somewhere different from everybody else. They, of course, tell us what that point was. It was in direct revelation from the transcendent One himself. Unlike the Greeks, who were willing to accept the accolades of being the world's greatest thinkers, the Israelites tell us that they were religiously retarded. Far from claiming to be unusually sensitive to religious truth, they tell us again and again that they were stubborn and stiff-necked, a people afflicted with severe spiritual myopia.”—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 148

<idle musing>
But, if you aren't willing to accept that a god can break into human history, what can you do? You end up running in circles; creating all sorts of interesting theories and ideas. They might make for good reading, and even spawn a new school of thought, but in the end they will fail. Without allowing for divine participation, they are all like dogs running on three legs.
</idle musing>

Control

“Like their pagan neighbors, the Israelites were constantly trying to fit the divine into a box of their own making so that the divine could be understood and controlled. Clearly, they forgot what their own doctrine of creation taught them: God is the infinite Creator, who cannot be boxed in. Unlike the gods, who are the recurring system and thus are incapable of doing anything new, Yahweh is outside this system, its Maker, and he rejoices to do things that have never happened before. Will he be consistent? Absolutely! Will he be predictable on our terms? Never!...

“It is often said, 'The winners write history.' But that is exactly what Yahweh would not allow to happen. He told them what their history meant, and it was usually quite different from what the rich and powerful would like to have had said about it and about themselves. In the end, the idea that the God of these little Canaanite principalities called Israel and Judah was in fact using the mightiest powers of the world to discipline and refine his people was the last thing that anyone would have expected to emerge from Israel's historical experience. For in the end, Israel's history is tragedy compounded by tragedy.”—The Bible Among Other Myths, pages 135-136

<idle musing>
Not a whole lot has changed in the last 2000+ years, has it? We still try to fit God into our box. We still want to control him. We still want to be the ones who write the story...
</idle musing>

More on magic

“...since we are discontinuous with God, we cannot participate in his life or receive his blessings through magical means. Any attempt to do so is met in the Bible with the bitterest of denunciations. Magic is a denial both of transcendence and of personhood, an attempt to mechanically manipulate another for one's own benefit while bypassing any meaningful relationship with that other.

“Interestingly, magic is not denounced, as in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century West, because it does not work. Whether it works or not, and often enough it does, is beside the point. The Bible denounces it because it is ra`—an attempt to use the world in ways it was never intended to be used.” —The Bible Among Other Myths, pages 132-133

<idle musing>
Interesting insight, isn't it? Whether magic works or not is irrelevant; it is an attempt to manipulate. That is not just true of magic; one thing that immediately comes to mind is pornography. That is clearly an attempt to “mechanically manipulate another for one's own benefit” and certainly bypassing “any meaningful relationship.”

Of course, another thing that fits that category all too well is advertising. Advertising certainly isn't interested in a meaningful relationship with anything other than you wallet! And it definitely is manipulative...just an
</idle musing>

Why not magic?

“Yet another example of these boundaries between God and creation is found in the prohibition of the use of all magic. Sorcery of every kind is forbidden, and the Israelites may not attempt to manipulate God in any kind of ritualistic way. Nowhere is this clearer than in the prophets with their insistence that the rituals in and of themselves accomplish nothing. It is only as the rituals express genuine repentance, exhibiting itself in the nonmanipulative behavior of righteousness and justice, that the ritual gives any pleasure to God at all The attempt to lay hold of divine power to accomplish our purposes and to supply our own needs is represented as disgusting to God. He is not a part of this system and cannot be manipulated through it.

“But if that is the case, how are the Israelites to get their needs supplied? Theyare to do so by surrendering themselves and their need to God in trust and faith (Ps. 51:16-17). They are to do so through personal communication, that is, prayer. This is, of course, a rather frightening alternative. As we said above, it is to put oneself at the mercy of the gods. But unlike the fickle gods, who sometimes bless their human worshipers to aggrandize themselves, the biblical God is faithful, keeping his word no matter what the cost. he longs to bless his people if they will only surrender their own attempts to get what they want without commitment, and trust him. But the price of self-surrender is a high one, and we often find the Israelites slipping back into the attempts to manipulate God through magic.

“This prohibition of magic calls our attention to a feature of the Israelite understanding of God that has been implicit in much that we have already observed. This is that Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, is absolute. There is nothing and no one beyond him. There is no raw power, no 'meta-divine' outside of him that can be appealed to through magic to force our will on him whether he likes it or not. Thus the Old Testament teaches us that the Absolute is a personal Spirit who is the source of all things—not because they emanate from him, but because of his creative will. He cannot be manipulated through creation, but he intends to bless all those who will surrender their attempts to perform such manipulation”—The Bible Among Other Myths, pages 75-76

<idle musing>
Not a whole lot has changed, has it? We still try to manipulate God; nothing is more scary than being out of control and depending on someone else. We want to be in control, always have. Didn't work in Genesis 3, doesn't work now...
</idle musing>

Apples

Over the weekend, I picked and processed some apples. The abandoned orchard where I usually pick apples didn't have any left; I should have picked them before going on vacation. Oh well, instead I went to Kercher's Orchard in Goshen. I usually buy our apples there during the winter; we prefer buying apples from the orchard instead of the store.

I wanted to pick 2 bushels; one of Jonathan and one of Cortland. I picked up my 4 empty 1/2 bushels and went out to the orchard to pick. I have never seen the apples as thick on the branches! I picked 2 bushels in about 15 minutes. I think I stood in line to pay for them longer than it took to pick them :)

Well, that was the easy part. Yesterday, I canned applesauce—15 quarts worth. Tonight I will continue to can applesauce—probably another 8-10 quarts. Then we will cut up about 1/2 bushel of Jonathans and dry them. Meantime, we have lots of apples to eat :)

New sales at Eisenbrauns

How about a new monthly sale? Here it is, direct from BookNews:

As the leaves begin to turn and the mornings get colder here in
Indiana, it seems like a sale on Israel Archeological Authority
titles is appropriate. Think hot and dusty--and savings of 20-40%.
Quantities are limited, so hurry.

As always, all sales on this web sale are final; no returns will be
permitted. Offer good only on orders placed at www.eisenbrauns.com
through October 30, 2009.

To easily access all the sale items, please visit:
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/SPECIAL
================================================================
"Atiqot 45: Early Bronze Age Site at Ashkelon, Afridar"
Edited by Zvi Gal
Atiqot 45
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9654061589
List Price: $36.00 Your Price: $21.60

"Atiqot 52 (2006): Studies in the Persian and Hellenistic Periods"
Edited by Zvi Gal
Atiqot 52
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2006. Paper. English and Hebrew.
ISBN: 9654061902
List Price: $20.00 Your Price: $16.00

"Maresha Excavations Final Report I: Subterranean Complexes 21, 44, 70"
by A. Kloner
Israel Antiquities Authority Reports - IAAR 17
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2003. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9654061503
List Price: $28.00 Your Price: $22.40

"Gamla I: The Pottery of 2nd Temple Period"
by Andrea M. Berlin
Israel Antiquities Authority Reports - IAAR 29
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2006. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9654061910
List Price: $28.00 Your Price: $22.40

"Tel Mor: The Moshe Dothan Excavations 1959-60"
Edited by Tristan J. Barako
Israel Antiquities Authority Reports - IAAR 32
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2007. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789654062022
List Price: $28.00 Your Price: $22.40

"Bet She'an I: NYSA-Scythopolis: The Caesareum and the Odeum"
by Gabriel Mazor and Arlan Jajjar
Israel Antiquities Authority Reports - IAAR 33
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789654062015
List Price: $28.00 Your Price: $22.40

"Necropolis of Bet Guvrin - Eleutheropolis"
by G. Avni, U. Dahari, and A. Kloner
Israel Antiquities Authority Reports - IAAR 36
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008. Paper. English.
ISBN:
List Price: $37.00 Your Price: $29.60

"Panes - Volume 1: The Roman to Early Islamic Periods.
Excavations in Areas A, B, E, F, G and H"
by V. Tzaferis and S. Israeli
Israel Antiquities Authority Reports - IAAR 37
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008. Paper. English.
List Price: $37.00 Your Price: $29.60

"Eretz Zafon: Studies in Galilean Archaeology"
Edited by Zvi Gal
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2002. Paper. English and Hebrew.
ISBN: 9654061457
List Price: $45.00 Your Price: $36.00

"Flights into Biblical Archaeology"
by Duby Tal, Moni Haramati, and Shimon Gibson
Israel Antiquities Authority, 2007. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 9789659028344
List Price: $62.00 Your Price: $49.60

Maybe you prefer the 10-day sale? OK:

Freshly back from tramping in the Minnesota woods and canoeing
the waters, I came up with a sampling of Eisenbrauns titles for
you to choose from. Enjoy 30-50% off on these titles.

As always, all sales on this web sale are final; no returns
will be permitted. Offer is good only on orders placed at
www.eisenbrauns.com through October 7, 2009.

To go directly to the weekly sale, click on this link:
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/NEWSLIST
============================================================
"David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J. J. M. Roberts"
Edited by Bernard F. Batto and Kathryn Roberts
Eisenbrauns, 2004. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060922
List Price: $55.00 Your Price: $27.50

"Study of the Ancient Near East in the Twenty-First Century:
The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference"
Edited by Jerrold S. Cooper and Glenn M. Schwartz
Eisenbrauns, 1996. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 093146496X
List Price: $59.50 Your Price: $29.75

"A Handbook on Isaiah"
by Jan de Waard
Textual Criticism and the Translator - TCT 1
Eisenbrauns, 1997. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 157506023X
List Price: $39.50 Your Price: $19.75

"Scripture in Context II: More Essays on the Comparative Method"
Edited by William W. Hallo, James C. Moyer, and Leo G. Perdue
Eisenbrauns, 1983. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0931464145
List Price: $42.50 Your Price: $21.25

"Jeremiah: A Study in Ancient Hebrew Rhetoric"
by Jack R. Lundbom
Eisenbrauns, 1997. Paper. English.
ISBN: 1575060167
List Price: $22.95 Your Price: $16.07

"Patterns of Destiny: Narrative Structures of
Foundation and Doom in the Hebrew Bible"
by Diane M. Sharon
Eisenbrauns, 2002. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060523
List Price: $42.50 Your Price: $21.25

"The Reconstructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom"
by M. Christine Tetley
Eisenbrauns, 2004. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060728
List Price: $49.50 Your Price: $24.75

"In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient
World and the Origins of Biblical History"
by John Van Seters
Eisenbrauns, 1997. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060132
List Price: $47.50 Your Price: $23.75

"The Wilderness of Zin"
by C. Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence
Eisenbrauns, 2003. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060779
List Price: $49.50 Your Price: $24.75

"Ritual in Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning,
and Retaliation Rites in the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat"
by David P. Wright
Eisenbrauns, 2000. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060469
List Price: $45.00 Your Price: $22.50

Hesed

..the word hesed, a word not attested outside Hebrew, comes to be used as the descriptor par excellence of God in the Old Testament. The word speaks of a completely undeserved kindness and generosity done by a person who is in a position of power. This was the Israelites' experience of God. He revealed himself to them when they were not looking for him, and he kept his covenant with them long after their persistent breaking of it had destroyed any reason for his continued keeping of it. Ultimately they came to understand that God's holiness, that which in common ancient Near Eastern terms separated a god from a human, was most to be seen in his character. Unlike humans, this deity was notfickle, undependable, self-serving, and grasping. Instead he was faithful, true, upright, and generous—always. So the typical description of him, found throughout the Old Testament, is that he is patient, slow to get angry, merciful, kind, and true. He is just in that he does not suspend cause and effect for his favorites, But he does limit those effects to three or four generations, whereas he extends the effects of obedience to thousands of generations.—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 71

<idle musing>
Hesed has got to be the most wonderful word in the Hebrew language! Pull out TDOT some day and read the article. Then, go find a copy of TWOT by Harris, Archer, and Waltke and read their article. Both of them together give you a good idea of the meaning of the word.
</idle musing>

The significance of omens

“The past is only significant insofar as it shows us continuities that will repeat themselves. Thus, omens are of great importance. At some time in the past the shape of the entrails of a sacrificial animal coincided with some significant event. If that shape should present itself again, we may expect the same events to happen again. Thus the past will repeat itself and it is helpful to have information on hand to plan for that repetition.”—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 61

<idle musing>
If you have studied the ancient world much at all, you know how important omens were. If the omens weren't favorable, the army wouldn't move. Armies could be across from each other for days, waiting for the omens to be favorable—insanity by today's standards!

There are catalogs of omens, “if this then this will happen.” That is also why they watched the stars so carefully—remember the stars were divine, so they had an affect on your life (modern astrology depends on this same idea). There were tablets that listed “good days” called ume tabuti in Akkadian (sorry no diacritics).

As an aside, did you know that the Greek word for “left” actually means “well-omened”? The Greeks believed that bad omens came from the left, so they wouldn't mention the left, but instead they called it the well-omened side—no sense in invoking bad luck! Oh, and the Fates were called the “well-omened ones.”
</idle musing>

Frost!

We just had our first frost last night, two weeks early, too. I just couldn't bring myself to wear mittens this morning on my bike ride to work, but I sure wished I had 5 minutes into the ride.

We'll see how much of the garden escaped. I hope that the cherry tomatoes did; I want to take a cutting from it and raise them indoors all winter—or at least try it :)

This is actually one of my favorite times of the year. I love the crisp morning rides to work with the leaves turning and the fog rising off the lake, the warm afternoons with the smell of leaves in the air. The smell of wood-burning stoves...ahhh

The principle of continuity (long)

Oswalt has an extensive discussion of subject-object distinction. Huh? What that means is that the object is distinct from me, that there is a reality that exists apart from my existence. Something doesn't have to relate to me to have meaning. Am I making sense? Maybe this snippet will help:

If there is anything that is discontinuous with me, it is meaningless. If it is truly separate from me, it does not exist for me; I cannot participate in its life and it cannot participate in mine. Things only have meaning for me as they relate to me. It is pointless to make a distinction between me the subject and something that is not-me. What else is there but me the subject? Of what importance is anything except as it relates to me?”—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 53

This has some important ramifications:

When this understanding is projected on the divine, the result is obvious. Deity must be part of me as I must be part of it. To say that I am not divine, or that the divine is not me, or to say that the deity is not the world, or that the world is not the deity, is to make life uncontrollable and meaningless. As the source the divine is the subject, but as the manifestation it is the object. Because of continuity, it must be both at once. To distinguish between the source and the manifestation is to make the source unreachable through the manifestation, a circumstance that is highly undesirable.—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 53

Oswalt applies this to the Golden Calf incident:

Since Moses was worshiping the invisible One, the source, on the mountain, why should not the people worship one of his visible manifestations as a part of the Many in the valley? So God could be the invisible Creator and the visible created (the bull) at one and the same time. The text shows us that this is how they were thinking when it tells us that Aaron said of the image, “Behold your God [Heb. 'elohim] who brought you forth from Egypt” (Ex. 34:4, lit. trans.)

Aaron and the people did not consider themselves to be doing anything heretical. After all, this is religion as they had observed it in Egypt for years. As the source, God is One, and other than creation. But as a manifestation he is many and a part of creation. The mythmaker sees no contradiction. But Moses understood that the God who was revealing himself to the Israelites was somehow distinctly other than creation. Thus, no blurring of God and creation could be allowed to exist. To permit it to exist would be to deny that nature of reality as Yahweh was revealing it to his people.—The Bible Among Other Mythspages 53-54 (brackets his)

<idle musing>
Did you follow that? I hope so, because it is essential to his arguments throughout the book. Oswalt is arguing that the mythmaker looks around at reality as (s)he sees it and projects that onto the divine. There is no distinction (his principle of continuity) between the two realms. What you do in the visible realm is effective in the invisible realm because the two are essentially one. This is why magic, rituals, liturgies, etc., are effective; you are forcing something to happen in the divine by declaring it in the visible.

This reasoning is the basis for the “name it, claim it, stomp on it and frame it!” reasoning of some “christians'” use of the Bible. Many people use the Bible as a book of magic; find a verse you like, or a promise that is appealing, speak it forth verbally and, voila! it has to happen. By speaking it, you have tied God's hands; he has to do it! Talk about paganism at its most blatant! Yet, that is accepted in some circles as “good Christian practice.”
</idle musing>

Danker's Concise Lexicon

The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament

Edited by Frederick W. Danker
University of Chicago Press, 2009
408 pages, English and Greek
Cloth
ISBN: 9780226136158
Your Price: $55.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/DANCONCIS

I just received Danker's new Concise Lexicon and thought you might like to know a bit more about it.

In the preface, he says that it is not an abridgement of BDAG, although it owes much to it. It is also not a reworking of his earlier (1983) Concise Lexicon. Rather, it is a fresh work that owes a bit to many sources, including a modern Greek, a Ms. Krug, who offered insights that he found helpful (this follows nicely with the recent thread on Greek NT scholarship by modern Greeks). In fact, she is even included on the title page.

The entries are short, with a brief etymology (where known), a definition, glosses, and references for the gloss. As befitting a work of this sort, many irregular verb forms are listed, referencing the correct lexical form.

I especially liked where he stated in the preface that Greek does not exist to serve the translator and is unapologetic for coining neo-logisms where English is inadequate.

This work certainly won't replace BDAG, but it isn't intended to. At $55.00, it is more affordable for the beginning student, but I would hope that whoever purchases it would eventually/soon use BDAG also.

The chaos monster!

"...myths are tied to the 'status quo.' They have two chief concerns: explaining why things are as they are now, and maintaining things as they are now. These concerns spring directly out of the human terror of chaos. We are afraid of chaos because it always destroys our security, and security is perhaps the greatest of all human longings. if we are to gain the security we so desperately want, the first order of the day is some sense of intellectual order. If we can explain why things are the way they are, then we have that sense of intellectual order, and we also have the feeling that we know how to relate to the thing explained."—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 49

<idle musing>
In other words, we want to be God; Genesis 3 all over again...the more things change, the more they stay the same. We don't want to submit to God; we don't want somebody else to have any authority over us. We are in control; we are God—NOT! We are not in control; we are not God. And we never have been! We are in need of God's empowering presence in the form of the Holy Spirit (some call it grace...) for our very existence from breath to breath.
</idle musing>

Vacation

As you probably noticed, I'm back from 2 weeks of wandering the world. OK, actually, I'm back from 2 weeks of spoiling the grandchildren :)

We had an enjoyable time—and an interesting time. While visiting Joel and Renee, I went on a day hike/canoe with Joel and Ryan (our son). Along the way up the Gunflint Trail, your tax dollars were at work; they had torn up 5 miles and it was some of the worst road I have ever driven on. For part of it, you couldn't exceed 10 miles per hour, and even then it was horrendous.

We made it to our put-in point and canoed to the bluffs we wanted to climb. You can see some nice pictures of them and from them here. After an enjoyable morning and afternoon, we headed back—over the same bad road. At the end of the washboarding, I shifted into second, accelerated...and heard a whine and clunk. Uh-oh. As I pulled over to the side of the road, transmission fluid spilled out onto the road. A short hike to the nearest phone (cell phone reception? are you kidding!) to call the tow truck and Renee and all was in control. Well, maybe.

The tow truck driver said he could repair it by Friday, if he could find the parts, which seemed likely. Once Renee came, we headed in to town to see him at the shop. His first words were, "We've got problems." He led me to the car and pointed to a nice separation of the axle from the frame. Literally shaken loose by the washboarding. Since a Metro is a unibody, there was nothing to do except bury it.

No problem; we can rent a car and drive it back, or so we thought. God had other ideas. Who would think that there wouldn't be a single car available for rental in Duluth and Minneapolis-St. Paul on a Tuesday! Guess we need another option.

We headed to the shop to see if he had any junkers we could buy cheaply. He had just gone to lunch! Hmmm...How about the local car dealer? Ryan and I walked in and I told him my car had jut died. He asked what I was looking for. I told him I was used to getting 50 miles per gallon. Rather than the expected look of terror, he said he had a used 2006 Prius. Ouch. I haven't had car payments for 14 years. But, that seemed to be what the Lord was directing. So, we are now the owners of a Toyota Prius with 50,000 miles.

By the way, it gets 57 miles to the gallon :)

Augustine and the Jews

Ok, I've been promising this for a while, so here we go (yes, I really did do something while on vacation other than spoil grandchildren!):

Augustine and the Jews
A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism
by Paula Fredriksen
Doubleday, 2008
xxiii + 500 pages, English
Cloth
ISBN: 9780385502702
List Price: $35.00
Your Price: $29.75
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/FREAUGUST

The book is divided into three sections: The legacy of Alexander, which describes the cultural background of Augustine's world, The prodigal son, which a biography of Augustine, and God and Israel, which deals with Augustine's evolving theology of what to do with the Jews.

The first section could almost be a book on its own. The cultural background, with the importance of paideia (the way society educated its young, especially wealthy, males) for worldview, the importance of rhetoric in daily life, the role of the gods in society, are all laid out in a very coherent and understandable way. The heavy influence of the Platonic/Neo-platonic disdain for the physical is highlighted, as it will have an important role in the development of Christian theology.I could recommend the book for this section alone. I only have one complaint, and that is that she has bought the current academic fad that there were multiple christianities that were all equally valid prior to “the triumph of orthodoxy.” But, that is another argument for another day.

Since I have lived with this material for so long, I tend to forget that most people don't know about the multiplicity of gods and their role in the ancient world. I was reminded of it just the other day while on vacation. I made some statement, which I thought would be self-evident, and had to spend the next ½ hour explaining polytheism and the concept of placating the deities. This section of the book would make a good read on that subject.

The second section, Augustine's biography, is a look at his journey through school, Manicheeism, and his eventual return to Christianity. The role of the Latin classics and translated Greek classics (Augustine never did learn Greek well enough to read it easily) in his spiritual journey is recounted. Along the way, Fredriksen highlights the importance of these ideas in Augustine's intellectual development and the way they informed his later ideas, especially in Confessions.

The third section finally gets to the title of the book! But, the first two sections are essential to the development of her arguments. You can't jump right in to the last section and understand how Augustine arrived at his, for the time, radical ideas about the Jews. The role of Faustus the Manichee is highlighted—indeed, many of Augustine's more important ideas are the result of his invectives against the Manichees. She examines Augustine's way of reading scripture, which included the, normal for the time, allegorical reading. But, he also read scripture ad litteram, which Fredriksen translates “historically.” This was unusual for the time, but it allowed Augustine to read the Old Testament as a document that wasn't just an allegorical statement pointing to the coming of Christ. He took the unique view that these things actually happened, and that by doing these things, the Jews were actually doing what God wanted. The common Christian viewpoint, under the heavy influence of Neo-platonism, was that the Jews misunderstood what God wanted and the physical fulfilling of the sacrifices was a punishment and didn't really please God at all.

As an example of how far the allegorical interpretation had taken hold, the confrontation between Peter and Paul in Galatians was seen as a ploy. The common view, held by Jerome and others, was that Peter knew that the law was no longer of value, and as a teaching tool he and Paul staged the confrontation. Augustine's reading of the text ad litteram allowed him to say that it was a genuine confrontation. He was more concerned that deceit not be in the scriptures than that Peter looked like a fool. Needless to say, Jerome launched an attack such as only a person of Jerome's personality could! He cited Patristic sources (all in Greek, since he knew Augustine couldn't read it!) showing how the church had always seen it as a ploy, but Augustine held firm. He saw that the New Testament church was—gasp—Jewish! The Jewish Christians continued to live as Jews, while the Gentile Christians continued to live as Gentiles. This was the only way that Augustine could make sense of the New Testament.

Augustine's realization that the Jews were fulfilling God's commands by doing the sacrifices allowed him to value the Jews in a way that the rest of the church didn't. It was this understanding that caused him to write of the value of the Jewish people. Fredriksen chases the development of what this entailed through Augustine's later writings. Realizing that rhetorical statements and real life don't always line up, she looks for any real encounters that Augustine might have had with Jews. Finding two, she examines them and finds that here, at least, Augustine was consistent with his rhetoric.

I would recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the history of the late Roman Empire, or the theology and history of the church in the fourth-fifth century. As I mentioned above, aside from her acceptance of the current academic fad of “all early versions of Christianity were of equal validity,” her presentation of the culture of the late Hellenistic-Roman Empire is excellent and could be read with profit by itself.

Cyclical reasoning

OK, looks like the review will have to wait...vacation starts at 5:00 PM today!

After basically adopting Child's definition of myth (in Myth and Reality, pp. 27-28), Oswalt goes on to say:

Thus, myth is a form of expression, whether literary or oral, whereby the continuities among the human, natural, and divine realms are expressed and actualized. By reinforcing these continuities, it seeks to ensure the orderly functioning of both nature and human society...The fact is that the Bible has a completely different understanding of existence and of the relations among the realms. As a result, it functions entirely differently. Its telling does not actualize continuous divine reality out of the real invisible world into this visible reflection of that reality. Rather, it is a rehearsal of the nonrepeatable acts of God in identifiable time and space in concert with human beings. Its purpose is to provoke human choices and behavior through the medium of memory. Nothing could be farther from the purpose of myth.—The Bible Among Other Myths, pages 45-46

<idle musing>
Sounds like myth is a Platonic construct, doesn't it? We have the “idea” in the divine realm which we want to make real in the human realm. Does this definition of myth still make sense? Is it still commonly accepted? I don't know; the date on Childs is 1960. Can somebody help me out here?
</idle musing>

New sale

Eisenbrauns is running a new sale. Because I will be gone for two weeks, this sale will be longer than normal. Here's the skinny:

There will not be a BookNews for the next 2 weeks. I'm heading
to Minnesota to enjoy 2 weeks with two new granddaughters, some
nice hikes along Lake Superior, and, hopefully, some canoeing.

Meanwhile, enjoy the extended weekly sale, and don't forget
the monthly sale, as well: up to 50% off on Hebrew and
Ugaritic titles.

As always, all sales on this web sale are final; no returns
will be permitted. Offer is good only on orders placed at
www.eisenbrauns.com through September 27, 2009.

To go directly to the weekly sale, click on this link:
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/NEWSLIST
============================================================
"Ottoman Izmir: Studies in honour of Alexander H. de Groot"
Edited by M.H. van den Boogert
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 107
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2007. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789062583188
List Price: $45.00 Your Price: $36.00

"Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period:
Old Assyrian Archives, Studies, Volume 3"
Edited by J. G. Dercksen
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 111
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2008. Paper. English and French.
ISBN: 9789062583225
List Price: $49.00 Your Price: $39.20

"Constructing Communities: Clustered Neighbourhood Settlements of the Central Anatolian Neolithic ca. 8500-5500 Cal. BC"
by Bleda S. During
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 105
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2006. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9062583164
List Price: $72.00 Your Price: $57.60

"Zur Chronologie der Kaufmannsarchive aus der Schicht 2 des Karum Kanes: Studien und Materialen"
by Guido Kryszat
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 99
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2004. Paper. German.
ISBN: 9062581005
List Price: $49.00 Your Price: $29.40

"Old Assyrian Studies in Memory of Paul Garelli"
Edited by Cecile Michel
Old Assyrian Archives 4
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2008. Paper. English, French, and German.
ISBN: 9789062583232
List Price: $67.00 Your Price: $53.60

"The Ilipinar Excavations II"
Edited by J. Roodenberg and L. C. Thissen
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 93
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9062580947
List Price: $129.00 Your Price: $103.20

"Hittite Votive Texts"
by Johan de Roos
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 109
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2007. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9789062583201
List Price: $69.00 Your Price: $55.20

"Elusive Silver: In Search of a Role for a Market in an Agrarian Environment--Aspects of Mesopotamia's Society"
by G. van Driel
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 95
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2002. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9062580963
List Price: $85.00 Your Price: $68.00

"Veenhof Anniversary Volume: Studies Presented to Klaas R. Veenhof on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday"
Edited by Wilfred H. van Soldt
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 89
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2001. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9062580912
List Price: $111.00 Your Price: $88.80

"Tell Sabi Abyad II - The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Settlement: Report on the Excavations of the National Museum of Antiquities
Leiden in Balikh Valley, Syria"
Edited by Marc Verhoeven and Peter M. M. G. Akkermans
Publications de l'Institut historique-archeologique neerlandais de Stamboul - PIHANS 90
Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten/Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO), 2000. Paper. English.
ISBN: 9062580904
List Price: $97.00 Your Price: $77.60

The warrior

Lawson Stone, of Asbury Seminary is doing a 365 day project: one photo per day. That's no big deal, except it is a self-portrait and usually contains some good insight. Today's rings very true for me. Here's a snippet:

The uninitiated, the new student in a biblical studies program, seminary, or young scholar, encounters a gaggle of disconnected methods, a cacophony of voices, and a chaos of ideological values, typically supported by the power and resources of the scholarly guild, tenure review committees, and major publishers. It confuses, but it also dazzles and hypnotizes. The literary critic and philosopher George Steiner has pilloried the tribalized academy as “…covens which celebrate this or that rite of explication.”

And, we might add, eager for new initiates. The student began simply enough with a love for God and his word and a desire to study scripture responsibly, rigorously, and faithfully. But now she feels an undertow, a pull toward the fashions, predilections and preoccupations of the academy. A new acculturation begins to take place, the desire to please a particular professor, to appear on top of the latest trends, current, relevant…to whom?

Then there are the insistent demands of a church that is all too often in the tank with popular culture and impatient with analysis and reflection in its rush to be relevant. We demand that God speak to our problems right now, and any explanation of the Bible that isn’t “practical” is rejected. The concept that we might need to set our needs and agendas aside and simply listen to God…who does that? But in fact, if I don’t think the Bible applies to my life, maybe it is my life that is in the wrong place!

<idle musing>
Do read the whole thing; very insightful. Biblical studies can indeed be a dangerous place...
</idle musing>

The hound of heaven

Ok, I was hoping to post a review of Augustine and the Jews, but I ran out of time. Maybe tomorrow or Friday; if not, then it will be done while I am on vacation. Meantime, I started reading Oswalt's The Bible Among Other Myths. Here's a brief snippet from it:

When we ask the Israelites where they came up with these fantastic concepts, they tell us they did not “come up” with them. They tell us that God broke in upon their lives and dragged them kicking and screaming into these understandings. They tell us that they did their best to get away from him, but that he would not let them go. He kept obtruding himself into their lives in the most uncomfortable ways.—The Bible Among Other Myths, page 17

<idle musing>
Augustine called the Holy Spirit the “hound of Heaven.” He doesn't let us go, but chases us, woos us, pursues us to the depths of our being; he never lets us go. Praise God for that!
</idle musing>

A bit of perspective

"The empire, neither demonic before 312 [the date of Constantine's "conversion"] nor holy thereafter, lacked any absolute religious significance. And events whether positive (such as the universal proclamation of the gospel) or negative (famine, earthquake, or the fall of Rome) were eschatologically opaque: they could not be matched with scriptural prophecy to indicate anything of the divine plan. However certain in their faith, Christians could never be certain of their circumstances. For the period of time that stood outside the biblical canon, history's patterns and the ultimate significance of events, like God's standards of justice, were occultissimi [most hidden] as well."—Augustine and the Jews, pages 342-343

<idle musing>
Would that some of our modern "prophecy experts" would learn from Augustine! Why do we not heed the cry of Jesus that no one knows the day or the hour except the Father? Oh wait, I know, it's because we want to be God and know all things! Genesis 3 again; I might have guessed it. :(
</idle musing>

Free will

"But will operated with extreme internal constraints. The will as now constituted—as Augustine argued brilliantly when explicating Romans 9 to Simplicianus; as he demonstrated brilliantly in his narration of his own past in the first eight books of the Confessions—is undermined by its own self. Conflicted, ineffectual, this will is indeed "free"—no star or demon or external power compels it—but it is free only to sin. Absent grace, the best that a person can do is to want not to sin, though he cannot not sin.—Augustine and the Jews, page 277

<idle musing>
I don't disagree with this. But, I do disagree about the extent of grace; Augustine believed in apportioned grace. I believe in free grace—free to all, free from limits, free!
</idle musing>

Mosquitoes!

Bugs haven't been much of a problem this year; it has been quite dry; the garden hasn't suffered, though because of the drip irrigation. But, the rain 2 weeks ago sure changed things!

For the last few days, you can't hardly walk outside without being accosted by mosquitoes. I have started wearing long pants and a rain jacket while working in the garden. They bite right through a regular shirt; the nylon jacket seems to stop them. But, my hands and head are getting attacked continually while I am working.

Debbie read somewhere that Bounce™ sheets work for repelling insects, so she has started attaching the sheets to herself. Last night, she had one pinned in her hair, one on each sleeve, and one on her belt loop. It looked pretty funny—and she still got bit!

It reminds me of living in the north woods! But, "count it all joy..." keeps coming to mind.

New monthly sale at Eisenbrauns

Another back-to-school sale this month. Here's the blurb from BookNews:

BookNews from Eisenbrauns

As school starts again this fall, I'm sure many of you have read the Beloit College "Mindset List" (http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2013.php). They missed one very important item this year: Waltke & O'Connor's "Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax" has always been the standard by which other Hebrew grammars are judged.

In keeping with that theme, Eisenbrauns is offering you savings of 10-50% on Hebrew and Ugaritic resources for the entire month of September.

As always, all sales on this web sale are final; no returns will be permitted. Offer good only on orders placed at www.eisenbrauns.com through September 30, 2009.

To easily access all the sale items, please visit:
http://www.eisenbrauns.com/pages/SPECIAL
================================================================
"Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax"
by Bruce K. Waltke and Michael Patrick O'Connor
Eisenbrauns, 1990. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0931464315
List Price: $59.50 Your Price: $41.65

"Beginning Biblical Hebrew"
by Mark D. Futato
Eisenbrauns, 2005. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060221
List Price: $44.95 Your Price: $31.47

"A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew"
by Choon L. Seow
Abingdon, 1995. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0687157862
List Price: $36.00 Your Price: $23.40

"A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax"
by Bill T. Arnold and John H. Choi
Cambridge University Press, 2003. Paper. English.
ISBN: 0521533481
List Price: $19.99 Your Price: $15.99

"Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar: Edited and enlarged
by E. Kautzsch; Second edition"
Edited by E. Kautzsch
by William Gesenius
Clarendon Press, 1910. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0198154062
List Price: $69.95 Your Price: $55.96

"A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar: With minor revisions"
Edited by Christo H. Van Der Merwe, Jackie A. Naude, and Jan H. Kroeze
Biblical Languages: Hebrew - BLH 3
Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Paper. English.
ISBN: 1850758565
List Price: $72.00 Your Price: $50.40

"The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon with an
appendix containing the Biblical Aramaic: Coded with the
numbering system from "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible""
by Francis Brown, et al.
Hendrickson Publishers, 1995. Cloth. English and Hebrew.
ISBN: 1565632060
List Price: $34.95 Your Price: $20.97

"A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament"
by William L. Holladay
Eerdmans, 1971. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0802834132
List Price: $40.00 Your Price: $24.00

"Dictionary of Basic Biblical Hebrew: Hebrew-English"
by Shlomo Karni
Carta, Jerusalem, 2002. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 9652204986
List Price: $24.95 Your Price: $19.96

"Ezra-Nehemiah: Biblia Hebraica Quinta"
Edited by David Marcus
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ 20
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2006. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052806
List Price: $98.00 Your Price: $63.70

"General Introduction and Megilloth: Biblia Hebraica Quinta"
Edited by Adrian Schenker, et al.
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ 18
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2004. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052784
List Price: $98.00 Your Price: $63.70

"Proverbs"
Edited by J. de Waard
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ 17
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2008. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 9783438052773
List Price: $98.00 Your Price: $63.70

"Deuteronomy"
Edited by Carmel McCarthy
Biblia Hebraica Quinta - BHQ 5
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2007. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 9781598561982
List Price: $99.00 Your Price: $64.35

"Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Large Format"
Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 1987. Cloth. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052180
List Price: $79.99 Your Price: $47.99

"Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Paperback Edition"
Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 2001. Paper. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052229
List Price: $34.99 Your Price: $26.24

"Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Small format"
Edited by K. Elliger and W. Rudolph
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 1987. Cloth. Hebrew.
ISBN: 3438052199
List Price: $69.95 Your Price: $41.97

"Konkordanz zum hebraischen Alten Testament"
by Gerhard Lisowsky
Edited by H. P. Ruger
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft Stuttgart, 1958. Cloth. Hebrew and German.
ISBN: 343805230X
List Price: $84.99 Your Price: $67.99

"Biblical Hebrew in Its Northwest Semitic Setting:
Typological and Historical Perspectives"
Edited by Steven E. Fassberg and Avi Hurvitz
Eisenbrauns, 2006. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575061163
List Price: $49.50 Your Price: $34.65

"Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 BCE"
by W. Randall Garr
Eisenbrauns, 2004. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060914
List Price: $47.50 Your Price: $28.50

"Untersuchungen zur verbalen Valenz im biblischen Hebraisch"
by Michael Malessa
Studia Semitica Neerlandica - SSN 49
Van Gorcum, 2006. Cloth. German.
ISBN: 9023242408
List Price: $85.00 Your Price: $68.00

"The Verbless Clause in Biblical Hebrew: Linguistic Approaches"
Edited by Cynthia L. Miller
Linguistic Studies in Ancient West Semitic - LSAWS 1
Eisenbrauns, 1999. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 1575060361
List Price: $49.50 Your Price: $29.70

"Hebrew Verse Structure"
by Michael Patrick O'Connor
Eisenbrauns, 1997. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0931464021
List Price: $59.50 Your Price: $29.75

"Biblical Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics"
Edited by Robert D. Bergen
SIL International, 1994. Paper. English.
ISBN: 1556710070
List Price: $42.00 Your Price: $33.60

"Ugaritic Textbook: Grammar, Texts in Transliteration,
Cuneiform Selections, Glossary, Indices"
by Cyrus H. Gordon
Analecta Orientalia - AO 38
Biblical Institute Press / Editrice
Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1998. Paper. English.
ISBN: 8876532382
List Price: $128.00 Your Price: $115.20

"A Basic Grammar of Ugaritic Language
with Selected Texts and Glossary"
by Stanislav Segert
University of California Press, 1984. Cloth. English.
ISBN: 0520039998
List Price: $70.00 Your Price: $63.00

"Ugaritic Grammar"
by Daniel Sivan
Biblical Encyclopaedia Library - BEL 9
Bialik Institute, 1993. Paper. Hebrew.
List Price: $32.00 Your Price: $25.60

"Ugaritische Grammatik"
by Josef Tropper
Alter Orient und Altes Testament - AOAT 273
Ugarit-Verlag, 2000. Cloth. German.
ISBN: 3927120901
List Price: $100.00 Your Price: $80.00

"Ugaritisch: Kurzgefasste Grammatik mit Ubungstexten und Glossar"
by Josef Tropper
Elementa Linguarum Orientis - ELO 1
Ugarit-Verlag, 2002. Paper. German.
ISBN: 3934628125
List Price: $24.00 Your Price: $19.20

Sound familar?

"...any male member of the cural class from whatever religious or ethnic group would have been educated within and would have reaped the benefits of a purely pagan curriculum. Despite traumatic episodes of earlier pagan hostility, then, and despite the vituperation heaped upon civic celebrations and entertainments by their own church leaders, Christians, like Jews, accommodated themselves to majority culture, evidently with much less difficulty than some of their leaders would have liked. That is because majority culture, in many ways, was their culture. All of these people were themselves Romans."—Augustine and the Jews, pages 95-96

<idle musing>
The more things change, the more they stay the same...change the name from Roman to whatever culture you're in, and you get the same results.
</idle musing>

Define Consumer Christianity

Out of Ur ran a contest of sorts last month. They requested that people define or provide illustrations of "consumer christianity." They posted the results today. Some of them are quite funny, in a sad sort of way. Definitely take the time to read them.

Persecution

Another snippet from Augustine and the Jews, this time about persecution of the Christians:

We are so accustomed to "knowing" that Rome persecuted ancient Christians that we can fail to see how odd, unprecedented, and anomalous such a persecution, in such a society, actually was. Pragmatic religious pluralism had long characterized ancient Mediterranean kingdoms in general, the Roman Empire in particular. (No one wanted to have to deal with an angry god.) To understand the sources of this unhappy social innovation—the invention of religious persecution—we need to recall what concerned ancient people when they engaged in what we think of as "religious" activities. Ethnicity and antiquity; the standing obligations to one's own gods; the importance of communal cult acts, of showing and being seen to show respect; the premium placed on maintaining the pax deorum, the concordat between heaven and earth that guaranteed the well-being of city and empire: These are the considerations that mattered to them. Cult, the ancients assumed, made gods happy; and when gods were happy, humans flourished. Conversely, not receiving cult mad gods unhappy; and when gods were unhappy, the made people unhappy.

The problem with gentile Christians, then, in the view of the pagan majority, was not that these people were "Christian," but that they were "gentile," or rather that they were still "pagan"...Gentile Christians became the objects of local resentments and anxieties precisely because they were deviant pagans, refusing to honor the gods upon whom their city's well-being depended. In consequence, when things went wrong—as things tend to do—gentile Christians were easily, readily blamed...Divine anger would affect everybody. In brief, ancestral obligation, not particular beliefs—what people did, not what they thought—was what mattered.—pages 86-87

<idle musing>
I fear I might have cut too much out. I hope that makes sense to you. Atheism is what Christians were accused of—not in believing in no god, but in not honoring all gods!
</idle musing>

More about gods

Another selection from Augustine and the Jews. Speaking about Paul's view that the other gods are subservient to the true God:

But Jewish apocalyptic convictions, such as Paul expresses to his communities, represent an extreme attitude toward foreign gods and thus are by definition exceptional. On a day-to-day basis, for Jews as well as for others, what mattered was deciding how to deal with the gods of outsiders while dealing with their humans as well. This was a practical question: Any god by definition was more powerful than any human, and gods as a group tended to be incensed when slighted. In general, most people opted for a sensible display of courtesy, showing and (perhaps just as important) being seen to show respect. Such courtesy went a long way toward establishing concord both with other gods (who, if angered, could be dangerous) and with their equally sensitive humans.—pages 10-11

<idle musing>
Sort of like avoiding breaking a mirror, or not letting a black cat cross your path, or...you know the kinds of things I'm talking about. Rule 1: Don't tick off the gods. Rule 2: If you do, get it right, now! Or you might not be around to find out why they got mad.
</idle musing>

The ancient world

A few selections from Augustine and the Jews over the next few days, then—hopefully!—a short review.

...the existence or nonexistence of the gods of outsiders (those of a different genos or natio) was not at issue. Ancient people generally assumed that various gods existed, just as their humans did. When these gods, with their humans, were encountered, various kinds of recognitions and acknowledgments might occur. When Alexander conquered Egypt, for example, a priest of the god Ammon greeted him as Ammon's son. Deified himself, Alexander was depicted on coins in gorgeous Hellenistic profile, the ram's horns of the Egyptian deity growing out of his head. As culture encountered each other, their gods might be identified with, associated with, or assimilated to each other. Thus the Roman Jupiter took on characteristics of the Greek Zeus; statues of the Roman Minerva replicated aspects of Athena; indigenous Semitic gods (such as Ba'al shamim, "lord of heaven") gained currency by being present under Olympian names ("Zeus"). When different peoples clashed, their gods were imagines as fighting, too. But this was not always the case. The Romans, ever practical, bagan sieges by addressing the presiding deities of the enemy. Through rituals of evocatio ("calling out"), the Romans summoned the city's gods ot come over to them, promising in exchange for victory to respect and to continue their cult.—pages 8-9

<idle musing>
If there is one thing that people need to realize when studying the ancient world, this is it. The gods were/are real to these people. They have an affect on what you are, what you do, etc. These are not theoretically constructed deities for the sake of theological argument. They are real, and can really mess you up if you tick them off! Don't ever forget that!
</idle musing>

Thought for today

Actually, this might be a thought for a lifetime...I was recently sent a copy of John Oswalt's The Bible Among Other Myths to review (thanks, Emily!). I haven't really started reading it yet; I'm just finishing Augustine and the Jews—a very good book, by the way; watch for more soon :) Anyway, I was looking at the introduction and this hit me:

...the idea that this world is not self-explanatory and that revelation from beyond it is necessary to understand it is profoundly distasteful to us humans. It means that we are not in control of our own destiny or able to make our own disposition of things for our own benefit. This thought, the thought that we cannot supply our ultimate needs for ourselves, that we are dependent on someone or something utterly beyond us, is deeply troublesome.

<idle musing>
Yep!
</idle musing>

New sale at Eisenbrauns

Hey! There's a new sale at Eisenbrauns! Yep, 10 days of marvelous savings on Hittite, a language dear to my graduate studies :) Details are here

The price of books

Josh bemoans the high price of books, which prompted me to respond. The comments go back and forth. Jim West picked up the post, prompting both Josh and I to respond.

What can I say? As I pointed out in a comment on Josh's post, there are two basic pricing models in the academic publishing business right now. One is aimed at the library market, with a limited number of sales and a high cost per book. The other model prices the books more moderately and aims to sell more books at a lower income per book. The European publishers have generally opted for the first model. The American publishers have generally (but certainly not all!) opted for the latter model.

The part that is frustrating to me is that Oxford, especially, has opted to use the higher price model, but then gone with print-on-demand technology. The advantage is no inventory. The disadvantage is that the hardcover books all look bad and the binding is not signature bound, but rather perfect bound.

Print-on-demand is a higher cost per piece (about 2-3 times traditional printing), but you don't have to carry a large inventory, thus allowing a publisher to keep older, lower demand books in print. Eisenbrauns uses print-on-demand for older books, but only in paperback.

So, vent away about the price of academic books. I agree with you, which is why Eisenbrauns has chosen to price books more moderately. Maybe, if you cry loud enough, the publishers who have chosen the library model will listen. I hope so.

Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Scot McKnight has a good post on Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible today.

I must admit, it is one of my favorite Bonhoeffer books. Do yourself a favor and read, not just the post, but the whole book.

Vocation versus job

Very nice little blurb (it's not really a blog, so is it a post?) today at Stone's Fence about how the word vocation has changed its meaning over the years. I'll let Lawson tell it in his own words:

Time was, all Christians regarded their work as a divine calling. Maybe not a calling to the ministry of word, order, and sacrament, but a calling all the same. It’s why we called is a “vocation.” The word means “calling.” We quit a “job” once we don’t need the money it provides. But do we ever “quit” a calling?

I doubt it.

I wonder how many Christians in so-called “secular jobs” seriously subscribe to the old protestant notion that any and all honest work done for God’s glory is, in fact, a sacred calling? Done not only to support ourselves and to have enough to share with others in need, but also done out of a sense that in some very vital way, God has given us this thing to do. However trivial it might seem, however non-religious, however tedious…it is both his burden on us and his gift to us.

<idle musing>
Yes. No matter what you are doing, it is a sacred calling—if you are a Christian, that is. Nothing is a "higher calling." Nothing is a "lower calling." They are simply different callings.
</idle musing>

What's in a name?

<idle musing>
I've been wondering this for several years now. It just doesn't make sense to me and I don't mean any disrespect to people who do it, but why do some spell God as G-d?

I know it is out of respect and that it is supposed to be a carry-over from not pronouncing the tetragrammaton (YHWH). But, wouldn't it make more sense to write L-RD (small caps)? After all, we don't see in the Hebrew bible:
בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אלִֹהים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם
That is, 'elohim without the vowels. God is just a generic, as is 'elohim. YHWH is the name of God, so maybe we should write JSS for Jesus—at least if you are a trinitarian :)

The Greek LXX translators had various circumlocutions; some used paleo-hebraic letters, others wrote κυριος (KURIOS), others wrote...I've forgotten now, but I'm sure someone will remind me in a comment (or I'll remember at about 2 AM tomorrow). The Vulgate used dominus, and the English Bibles have traditionally rendered YHWH as LORD with small caps. So, why G-d?
</idle musing>

Harvest time

Whew! It was a busy weekend, garden-wise. We froze beans, made more bread & butter pickles (8.5 quarts), dried peaches, made applesauce (1/2 bushel=18 pints), pickled beets (disappointing crop this year), made more rhubarb jam (11 half-pints—I really like this stuff!), stewed tomatoes (only 4 quarts so far) and pulled a good percentage of the onions (we really like onions).

Because of the cool summer, the tomatoes are just getting started. The cherry tomatoes have just started going nuts this last week, with the other ones slowly following. I suspect that this week, if it gets hot like it is supposed to, will cause a large harvest. Watch me fall behind in canning them :)

Oh, I almost forgot, the green peppers are doing well, too. I have been using them in bread & butter pickles, but now we will start to dry those for use this winter.

With all that, we still managed a nice bike ride Sunday evening (about 29 miles). Just don't ask what time we finished with the canning and drying...

Interview

There is a very nice interview with Helen Brown of Accordance posted on the Hebrew and Greek Reader blog.

I especially like this one:

17. Any long-term projects in the works you can tell us about?

I could, but I would have to kill you afterwards. ;-) We do not like to market vaporware. We only announce our new features and projects when they are about ready for release.

<idle musing>
I first met Helen in my first year at Eisenbrauns. I was still figuring out what I was doing—keep the comments to yourself!—when I met her at the IOSOT meeting in Leiden, at the reception in the museum. A customer of theirs, a well-known Hebrew professor in England, was having trouble with something. She asked him if he had the computer with him; he did. For the next half-hour she walked him through the whole thing right there off to the side during the reception. Nice customer service, but that is just who Helen is.

Just another one of the reasons I like Accordance.
</idle musing>

Coptic, anyone?

I collect grammars. I have mentioned that before. One of the many languages I have a grammar for is Coptic. I have looked at it many times since I got it 3-4 years ago. The thing that scares me about it is that it looks too much like Greek. The alphabet is the Greek alphabet plus some letters; there are lots of Greek loanwords in the vocabulary. But, it isn't Greek syntax or grammar; it is Egyptianish. Now, one set of languages I avoided in graduate school was Egytian, so I get a bit nervous about being serious about Coptic. Besides, I need another dead language like I need another hole in the head or zucchini squash :)

All that to say that Eisenbrauns is offering a new 10-day Back-to-School sale on Coptic. For the next 10 days, you can save 10-40% on some basic resources. Go here to get some goodies. That way they can sit on your shelf while you contemplate learning the language :)

Spell checkers

I love spell checkers in e-mail—they are great for a laugh sometimes. I should start a list, but this one today was great.

I was sending an e-mail to a customer who is going to be teaching Akkadian using the Hammurapi stela. In the reply, typed Hammurapi also. I expected the spell checker to complain, after all, most popular books spell it Hammurabi, with a -bi instead of a -pi reading on the final sign. Well, it complained, but the suggested substitute was "Samurai" Huh? Wrong area of the world, let alone wrong time period...

Rain

We have had a very dry July and August—until yesterday. The creek that runs past our house had shrunk to a mere trickle about 2 inches deep and a foot across—until yesterday.

Yesterday, we received 5.5 inches of rain in about 22 hours. But, the ground was so hungry that there are virtually no puddles. Of course, not all of it soaked in; some of it ran off. I checked the creek last night, before it was done raining, and it had swollen to the tops of its banks. It had become a 5 feet deep, 15-20 foot across, swiftly flowing creek that would be difficult to ford. When we took our walk later, under umbrellas, we crossed the bridge and heard the wonderful sound of water flowing strongly under it. I missed that sound.

Our garden soaked the rain up like a sponge. We had added about 6 inches of composted leaves in the spring; that compost is always thirsty.

Because the temperatures stayed warm, the tomatoes are finally starting to ripen. I picked a few Big Girls, two Beefsteak, a couple of Romas and quite a few cherry tomatoes. We have two different kinds of cherry tomatoes this year: the normal small ones, and then some that I call cherry tomatoes with an attitude. They are about twice the size of normal cherry tomatoes; I sliced some of them into thirds and used them on my sandwich—fresh whole wheat bread with homemade pickle relish and a slice of cheddar cheese. Life is good :)

Preach? Or announce?

A while back, actually way back in December/January, I posted some excerpts and thoughts on the book To Preach or Not to Preach?. Just a week or two ago, Alan Knox did a series on the Greek verb κηρύσσω, commonly translated "preach." His conclusion was that the verb is more accurately translated "announce." I'll let him say it in his own words:

In three posts, I’ve looked at the use of the term κηρύσσω (kērussō – usually translated “preach”) in the Old Testament. I’ve explained why it is important for us to study the meaning of words in the Old Testament, especially in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. I’ve posted all passages in the Old Testament and the non-canonical books which include the term κηρύσσω (kērussō). I’ve concluded that in these passages, the meaning of the term is closer to the English verb “announce” than to any of the definitions of the English word “preach”.

He then proceeds to look at the works of Josephus and Philo, who lived in the same general time period as the New Testament was composed, to see if the word had changed in meaning. His conclusion: Nope.

<idle musing>
Hmmm. Does that line up with the arguments in To Preach or Not to Preach?, or not? I'll give you a hint: Yes! It's always nice to see scholars agree on something :)
</idle musing>

Thought for the day

I'm quite far behind in reading blogs, not just books, so I just saw this nice little snippet on Ted Gossard's blog, from last week:

The narrow gate is not, as so often assumed, doctrinal correctness. The narrow gate is obedience- and the confidence in Jesus necessary to it. We can see that it is not doctrinal correctness because many people who cannot even understand the correct doctrines nevertheless place their full faith in him. Moreover, we find many people who seem to be very correct doctrinally but have hearts full of hatred and unforgiveness. The broad gate, by contrast, is simply doing whatever I want to do.—Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 275.

<idle musing>
Amen! Reminds me of the final toast in C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters wherein Screwtape muses on the irony of extremely evil people being blended with those who thought they were fine to produce a bouquet that delighted him...
</idle musing>

Watermelon!

We are growing watermelon this year. I haven't tried to grow it for a long time, but we figured, "Why not?" The vines certainly took off and filled their area and some nice looking watermelons developed. About 1.5 weeks ago, we tried one...bummer, it wasn't ripe.

Last night, we summoned up our courage, along with Jim and Shannon, and tried again. Perfection! It was a delicious 15-20 pound, round, red, tasty, juicy, sugary mess to eat, but definitely worth growing :)

I'm looking forward to the other ones.

idle musings

<idle musing>
I haven't had much time to read lately; the garden is taking a good bit of time. Last night I canned 18 pints of bread and butter pickles; Monday night 5 quarts of dilly beans. That takes a chunk of your night away :)

Summer finally arrived over the weekend, with temperatures in the high 80's F and humidity to match. Good for the tomatoes; bad for physical labor.

I was hauling wood chips on Saturday to make a trail in the woods. Sunday, I took apart our 8' x 12' sandbox. The cats had turned it into a litter box :( That's a lot of sand to move, especially by hand with a spade and wheelbarrow. The whole thing was complicated by the nearby Maple tree deciding that the sandbox was for its roots. I suppose riding 40+ miles in the morning against a stiff wind didn't help...

On other notes, I saw a flier last Friday that was trying to guilt-trip people into getting their pets neutered/spayed. They claimed that a cat has 12 kittens per year and lives about 9 years, with the result of several thousand offspring. I don't know how they got that number, but you know the old saying about statistics...

My experience is that a cat might have two litters of 6 cats each per year. But, so far we have had 0, 1, and 1 as survivors in the 2 years we have lived here. We started with 2 cats, now we have more, but not the 144 that they claimed after 2 years...

And, speaking of misuse of statistics, did you see the cover of Time Magazine this week? It says that exercise doesn't make you lose weight. Folks, weight isn't the problem; fat is. I weigh more than I have at anytime in my life; I also am in better shape than anytime since high school when I was swimming on the swim team. My resting heart rate is in the low 50's; I can do 50 push-ups, etc. The bottom line is that muscle weighs more than fat.

Of course, the article qualifies stuff, but the bottom line is exercise without diet change won't help much. And, the part that most people still don't get, is that diets don't work! Covert Bailey preached that for years on PBS and in his books, but people still don't get it. Change what you eat to be more vegetables and fruits; cut out the fast food. Drop the corn syrupy soft drinks; add milk and water. As an aside, we drink about 5-6 gallons of milk per week between the two of us; I drink 2 liters of water at work per day.

Boy, what a rambling post...
</idle musing>

New sale 10-day sale

Eisenbrauns continues the back-to-school sale with Aramaic and Syriac. Save from 15-50%; details here.

Honest scrap award

Mike at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ nominated me for the honest scrap meme. I'm not quite sure why it's scrap, but here we go:



"…supposed to tell you 10 HONEST things about myself and then nominate 7 other blogs that I think deserve to receive the Honest Scrap Award."

1. Seems most start out with the vehicle they drive; I drive a 1995 Geo Metro 4 cylinder. It's the only car I have ever purchased new. It gets between 40 and 57 mpg; try finding a new car that is under $15,000 that matches that in the U.S.

2. Continuing in the "normal sequence:" TV? What's that?

3. Now the diversity begins... I was born on the plains of Minnesota, but was raised in northern Wisconsin.

4. I have been married to the same person for 30 years, 11 months, and 29 days (does that work out to August 12, 1978?).

5. I ride my bicycle to work almost every day—11 miles round trip. Yes, even in the winter, and even when it was -20 F last winter :)

6. I once could read about 8 ancient languages; now I struggle with keeping 3 of them up. But, I never got above a "C" in high school English and barely survived my final year of it. I didn't learn English grammar until I took (and taught) Latin.

7. I am an introvert. Before we got married, I would hide in a corner at family gatherings and read a book. Actually, I did it until quite recently.

8. I love gardening and wish I could have a greenhouse.

9. I used to run IT at a company and had something like 10 or so computers on a home network; I would test things there so I wouldn't crash the network at work. My kid's hated it :) I don't currently own a computer, or have Internet access at home...

10. I strongly dislike cell phones. I didn't have one until I needed to get one for conferences at work. It is a prepaid one, and I don't know the number, so don't ask.

Tag yourself...I can't think of anyone right now. Besides, this is my lunch hour, and I want to go read a book and take a nap :)

Another excerpt

I think I am going to have to buy this book. I received another excerpt from it today. Here's some snippets from it:

Manipulation, threats of divine retribution, the micromanaging of people’s lives and morality, judgmentalism, paranoid insecurities, obnoxious self-righteousness: we can lay all these crimes at the feet of many of Christianity’s proponents, from the Roman Curia to the most protesting of Protestants. Yet, all of these are mere symptoms of a deeper illness. As Jesus said, the real sickness is hypocrisy.

Much of Christianity (and its leaders, I might add) is more concerned with protecting its position and power than caring for people. As such, it suffers from a crisis of credibility: it offers a false image of the God it represents. Granted, we can bring our individual and collective beliefs and practices under the lordship of Christ, and we who call ourselves Christians should do exactly that. But we must be quick to accept that even something we label “Christian” or “Christianity,” if it is not submissive to the words and ways of Christ, must be recognized for what it is: a damnable lie. Even Christianity can become idolatry.
---
Again, Jesus came to reform nothing. He came to set the world on fire. This realization, that following Jesus and practicing Christianity are not always identical, turns up the heat on those of us who have done our religion’s heavy lifting over the years. But when confronted by this Jesus, are we willing to change our conclusions about faith, about what it means to be Christian, about what it means to be “saved,” about most everything we have built our lives around and upon? Are we willing to change our minds? If we cannot change our minds, we cannot change anything.

Change is hard, especially for Christians. We are about as inflexible a species as they come. Certainly, many of the faithful are all too happy with this assessment, equating rigidity with orthodoxy. I’m not so sure about that.
---
Facing truths that do not fit into the framework of our truth, our “biblical worldview,” is nothing new, not in Jesus’ or Galileo’s day, and not in our own. What do we do when we encounter such truth? Typically, we reject it. We refuse all things that do not suit our perspective, labeling it sacrilege, just as the religious leaders in Jesus’ day did. Do not misunderstand me. I am not one who thinks that one truth is as good as another as long as sincerity is involved. I define truth not as a bullet list of talking points, drafted and adopted statements, or even age-old creeds. Truth is a person, Jesus, and we must pursue him.

Still, most of us in the Jesus camp tend to think that truth is locked in a dusty footlocker and stuffed underneath the church altar. It is a fixed, hard as stone list of propositions without adjustment, no matter what Galileo’s telescope or anybody else’s research says.
---
Launch into an examination of all that is locked away in that musty church locker and you might get accosted by the establishment. Start assailing the flawless truths of your church and you may find yourself seated next to Galileo at a heresy trial or next to Jesus at a Pharisaic dinner of inquisition. But do not be afraid. Truth can take it, at least those truths worth holding on to. Anything that cannot take it should be discarded anyway.

By the way, after this dual encounter with his nation’s religious leaders, we never find Jesus attending the synagogue services again. Never.

Who could blame him?

<idle musing>
Wow! The guy is too honest, isn't he? I especially like this line: "I define truth not as a bullet list of talking points, drafted and adopted statements, or even age-old creeds. Truth is a person, Jesus, and we must pursue him." That sums up my theology very well; Jesus has to be the center of everything we do.
</idle musing>

Psalm 12

Ran across this the other morning:

Help, LORD;
for there is no longer any that is godly;
for the faithful have vanished from among the sons of men.
Every one utters lies to his neighbor;
with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
May the LORD cut off all flattering lips,
the tongue that makes great boasts,
those who say, "With our tongue we will prevail,
our lips are with us;
who is our master?"
"Because the poor are despoiled,
because the needy groan,
I will now arise," says the LORD;
"I will place him in the safety for which he longs."
The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure,
silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times.
Do thou, O LORD, protect us,
guard us ever from this generation.
On every side the wicked prowl,
as vileness is exalted among the sons of men.—Psalm 12 (RSV)

<idle musing>
Seems that describes our culture right now, doesn't it? But then, it probably has described every culture at some point; Genesis 3 is definitely all-pervasive :(

Why is it that the poor ("needy" in RSV) are always looked down on, but God holds them in high esteem? It must just be another example of how we get things backwards...
</idle musing>

Love is the key

A good post at The Heresy about Majoring on the Majors. Short, but sweet on what we should major on (but don't):

As someone with an affinity for biblical theology I get very excited when I see themes pop up in scripture, especially themes that transcend different authors and types of literature.

Love is a very big deal.

In all my ministry training love isn’t mentioned much. In all the books I’ve read and conferences I’ve attended love isn’t a big theme. Even with the missional movement and organic church movement I don’t believe love is a big theme. I think some people in these movements do love a lot. I believe simpler forms of church make it easier to love.

I wonder if all the tension over missional/attractional is something of a red herring. Maybe our churches aren’t growing (or multiplying) because that is our goal and we know very little of sacrificial love.

<idle musing>
The last sentence says worlds; maybe if our goal weren't to grow and multiply, but instead to love God and others...It is God's church, after all. It seems he should be able to grow it without us getting in the way with our own methods. Maybe we should try letting him love through us.
</idle musing>

Legalism

I get lots of e-mails. Some I even read :) Actually, I get lots of e-mails from other publishers, hoping we will sell their books. Some are a good fit for Eisenbrauns, other aren't. They aren't bad books, in fact some are very good books; they just don't fit our market. Today I received one of those. Here's a brief snippet from the book they were offering me:

Question: Why won’t some people go to church?

Answer: Because they have been to church.

Jesus intentionally broke the rules and customs of the religious establishment of his day, not for the sake of rebellion, but to reveal how preposterous it was to hold to meaningless rules. Strict legalism that misses the point of God’s grace and freedom in Christ is more than preposterous. It is grotesquely sinful...

The practice of following an ordered [synagogue] liturgy is not unlike the average Protestant or Evangelical attending Sunday services at a local church. Even in the free-group churches of my childhood where we did not have written orders of worship, we knew what was appropriate and inappropriate. In those churches, having a preset order of worship, even a sermon title, was an act of heresy that quenched the Holy Spirit’s freedom. Still, we all knew the order of events, even the exact moment when old Mr. Scott would commence to shouting hallelujahs on the third verse of “Amazing Grace.” These traditions were not written down, but they never changed.— Leaving Religion, Following Jesus, Ronnie McBrayer

<idle musing>
Ah yes! Our old friend the legalist coupled with his best friend, tradition. What a straitjacket we make for ourselves. The good news is Christ has set us free!
</idle musing>

Books-obsolete?

More e-reader fun from Unshelved:

Eisenbrauns August sale

Back-to-school—already! As usual, Eisenbrauns is offering a back-to-school sale. For the month of August, it is Akkadian and Sumerian stuff. Over 40 titles at 10-30% off. The complete list is here

Akkadian and Sumerian not your style? How about a sale on Greek stuff for the next week? Try that on for size here

Portable reading devices

Saw this on an e-mail list I'm on:



That's what we do at Eisenbrauns, for more than 34 years now.

The url for the original is http://twitxr.com/richrennicks/updates/236399/ which I can't get to embed properly :(

Serving the king

Nice thoughts by Ted Gossard yesterday about a Christian and wordly kingdoms. Here's a snippet to whet your appetite:

It's not just about Christian pacifism, or nonresistance. It's -more to the point- to what and to whom we belong. God is our King. And we in Jesus are part of the kingdom of God made known and spelled out in the good news/gospel of Jesus.

So it's an identity issue. And then the question comes just how much, or to what extent we can be identified with our various nations, as the new Israel scattered throughout the earth. That is not an easy question, and both individual Christians, as well as churches will vary on their answers, or practice, even within the peace churches.

<idle musing>
Well said. As Christians our first loyalty is always to the King of kings. He cites Bonhoeffer as a good example of that.
</idle musing>

Book or Kindle?

I found out about a fun little video series being done by a bookstore in San Francisco today. They are doing a ten-day Smackdown between the Kindle™ and the Book™. Today was day two, but you really should start with day one (each one is about 3 1/2 minutes long):

Bicycling violence

A co-worker forwarded this to me yesterday:

Police say firefighter Charles Diez was upset that a man was riding a bike with his 3-year-old son on a busy street so shot the cyclist in the head. The bullet embedded itself in the rider's helmet.

<idle musing>
There are other links to the story with more details, but the bottom line is that the assailant had a gun in his pocket and used it. So much for southern hospitality.

I have been chased off the road on my bike by vehicles, but at least no one has drawn a gun on me yet!
</idle musing>