2013-2014 Course Line-up

I will be teaching second year Hebrew for the first time beginning this fall, and second year Greek for the first time in four years. I will also be teaching Romans as a combined college and seminar modular course (Oct 21-25). Although I have taught Romans several three times, I have never taught a mod before, so that will be another new experience. To fill out my seven course / year teaching assignment, I will be teaching Gospels and Jewish Backgrounds, along with the fourth semester of Hebrew and Greek next winter.

I mention this now because I am spending the day working on course design before the textbook order deadline at the end of this month, and I may post a question or two here presently.

A Briercrest Turkey-Greece Study Tour Review

From my Twitter feed (@ntdmiller):
May 1: From our hotel on the Med. #BcrestStudyTour
http://twitpic.com/cngugm
May 2: Long but good day from Antalya to Pamukkale
May 2: Our hotel outside Hierapolis
http://twitpic.com/cnrg0b
May 3: Living it up in Laodicea, Hierapolis & Kusadasi
http://twitpic.com/co0b2p
May 4: Fun fact for the day: The Turkish word for lion is Aslan. #BcrestStudyTour #Narnia #C.S.Lewis
May 4: Artemis of the Ephesians
http://twitpic.com/coaz9l
May 9: The view from our hotel room in Thessaloniki
http://twitpic.com/cpf8pr
May 10: Our Greek guide reminds me of another They Might be Giants song, unfortunately.
May 10: Sure noticing a lot of Greek inscriptions here... http://twitpic.com/cppuxp
May 20: Saw lots of these in Turkey and Greece http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_whipsnake …
May 29: 347 photos tagged; another 2250 or so to go #BcrestStudyTour

Biblical Sites in Turkey and Greece in their Ancient Context

I don't remember when I realized that with a few exceptions the maps in the back of my NIV Bible only listed places mentioned in the Bible. Obviously there must have been other settlements, but for those who haven't studied ancient history, your average Study Bible map can convey the impression that Attalia and Perga were the only cities in ancient Lycia. That's why I try to set Biblical sites in the broader context of the ancient world by showing my students maps like this one (click on the map for a larger image):

(I created the map using David Barrett's powerful but slow Bible Mapper program.)

The first map, however, only gives part of the picture. Here is a screen shot of Asia Minor, courtesy of the Pelagios Project that is hosted by the Ancient History Encylopedia:

Whence comes my interest in Asia Minor? Two weeks from today, participants on Briercrest's "Following Paul in Turkey and Greece" Study Tour will arrive in Istanbul. We will fly from there to the modern-day counterpart to ancient Attalia, and visit the sites included on the map below:

Can't wait!

Concerning the "Gate to Hell" in Hierapolis

Slow news day today: Reports are circulating about the discovery of a "Gate to Hell" in connection with the Temple to Apollo in Hierapolis: CTV news gushes "The mythical -- and, let's face it, horrifying -- "gate to hell" has finally been discovered in a cave in Turkey."  The source is, apparently, this Discovery Channel report, which has been picked up by the Huffington Post among others. Let it be known that I was there first, and reported on it back in 2007:

We were especially interested in the temple because the Blue Guide reports that "During the excavation, work was impeded considerably by noxious gas which seeped from the foundations. It was found that this gas originated in the Plutonium...a sanctuary dedicated to Pluto, the god of the underworld." The poisonous gas emanating from the Plutonium was well-known in antiquity. In the late 2nd or early 3rd century the Roman historian, Dio Cassius, "tested its lethal properties on birds" and "remarked also on the apparent immunity enjoyed by eunuchs" (Blue Guide 277). After what the guide books had to say, I imagined the Plutonium would be quite the tourist attraction, but the site is now overgrown with grass and is not exactly well-marked. The Lonely Guide comments that the gas "is still deadly poisonous. Before the grate was installed there were several fatalities among those with more curiosity than sense." Suitably warned, I took this picture using my camera's telephoto lens. 

For pictures, see the original post from my Turkey Travelogue.

Whether or not there is anything new to report, I'm really looking forward to returning to Hierapolis with the Briercrest Turkey/Greece study tour next month.

N.T. Wright and Herod Pantipus

We are reading N.T. Wright's Lent for Everyone: Matthew during our family Bible time this year as a way of entering into Lent and preparing for Easter. (Why is it that there are all kinds of children's resources for Christmas, but not Easter?)

The picture on the left was the result of one of our deep theological discussions last week...after I accidentally mispronounced "Herod Antipas."

Overall, however, we are all benefiting from reading Matthew, and the accompanying text is vintage Wright, which is fine. At its best it fixes the text more firmly in mind and encourages devotional reflection. One also gets a succinct and accessible version of Wright's model of Jesus in his Jewish context.

Here, for example, I think Wright nails the difference between Jesus and the Pharisees without denigrating first-century Judaism too much:

"That was the real bone of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees. They were supporting a system which, at its best, was pointing forward to God's great desire to find a purified people for himself. Jesus was claiming that God was now doing this, through him. They were setting up signposts; he claimed to offer the reality which made the signposts redundant."

March comes in like a lion

We woke up this morning to at least a foot of new, wet snow:

 Massive drifts (on top of all the snow we already had):

 And beautiful wind sculptures:

Before the latest edition, we could walk up the drift, over our back fence, and onto the prairie. Now the there is a 6 foot wide (at least) platform on top of the drift:

Logos 5: Is an upgrade worth it?

Technical, first-world problem alert: This post assumes familiarity with the major Bible software programs (Logos, Bibleworks and Accordance), and an interest in electronic resources for the study of Greek and Hebrew.

Despite the incessant advertising, I haven't been able to convince myself that shelling out 100's of $ for an upgrade from Logos 3 (Gold) to Logos 5 is worth it. Special upgrade prices expired last month, but I have an offer of academic pricing at 50% off until mid-May, so I can still think about it. What am I missing?

Let me explain my situation in a bit more detail, and then I'll look forward to suggestions:

• I use Bibleworks all the time. It is always open on my desktop. I consult it regularly in preparation for teaching, in general Bible reading, and in research. Bibleworks comes standard with morphologically tagged Greek texts of the New Testament, LXX, Apostolic Fathers, Philo and Josephus, as well as a morphologically tagged Hebrew Bible and morphologically tagged Aramaic Targumim. It also has more translations in more languages than you can shake a stick at. The best Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and Marty Abegg's tagged sectarian DSS (to name a few of interest to me), are available as add-on modules. I hesitate to pay good money to duplicate what I already have. 
• I do not require a library of commentaries or other resources on the whole Bible since I teach and research in a more limited area. When I start to teach a new biblical book, I will build up my library accordingly. No doubt a complete set of good commentaries would come in handy from time-to-time, but not often enough to justify paying for a set that will sit mostly unused on my virtual shelves.
• I am interested in more sophisticated ways to analyse and perform original-language grammatical searches on the Bible and related literature.

Questions about Logos 5:

• A minimal cross-grade would give me access to a few new Lexham tagged texts and reverse interlinears, some pictures, and a few new datasets that would allow me to search by phrases instead of words. I'm just not sure I would do this kind of search enough to make it worth $130. (The Logos sales rep I talked to actually said the cross-grade isn't worth it. What I should really do, he said, is shell out $1,000+ for one of the larger packages.)
• The Biblical Languages Upgrade looks more up my alley, except that I already have at least one morphologically-tagged database of everything in the package. What is the value of having multiple tagged texts of the same corpus? What is the benefit of reverse interlinears when any searches I do would be in the original language? I am open to being persuaded here. I'm just not seeing it. (If they threw in Moulton-Howard-Turner or the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament Bundle as part of the package, it would suddenly look a lot more attractive.)
• Which of these modules is worth the asking price?

How about independent resources: The Göttingen Septuagint, for example, is very tempting, and--as far as I know--not available on any other platform. If you were to purchase specialized resources geared towards work in the original languages, what would you recommend?