In a talk that apparently previews the argument of a much larger book(s) on the subject, John Barclay draws on ancient practices of gift-giving to argue that God's χάρις ("grace" or "gift"), according to Paul, is unobligated (so Luther) but not without obligation (contrast Luther). Just as in the ancient world gift-giving always set up a complex system of reciprocity--much like a covenant--so too with God's "grace": God's gift of grace is given to unworthy sinners who have no claim on God's mercy, but those who receive the gift are obligated to respond appropriately.
This is not sunergism, it is not completing grace with works, or making subjectively true what is objectively true--because the gift changes everything. The gifts that is grace is life--a transfer of realms from the rule of sin and death to the realm of life--and anything we do is made possible in and through the resurrected Messiah. (Another way of saying this is that it is the Spirit that gives life.)
The Christian, then, is not simul iustus et peccator ("simultaneously righteous and a sinner")--to use Luther's language--but simul dead and alive. The body--dead because of sin but alive because of righteousness--is the site of a battle. Those who are made alive must experience mind-renewal, which is always exhibited in a transformation, a change in habitus, from one set of bodily practices to another. This is no individual struggle because the body, for Paul, is corporate, and the disciplines of the Christian life are lived out in community.
Note: I jotted down these notes on paper within a week or so of listening to Barclay's talk on a drive to Regina last summer. Since I can't vouch for their accuracy, I recommend listening to the lecture (online here), reading the conference proceedings (just released by Baylor University Press), or, if you are a visual learner, watching this video on a related topic.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
Milestone
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| Pisidian Antioch |
I wish I had the maturity that, 10 years ago, I would have thought came with such age and experience, but it turns out that maturity doesn't happen automatically, and I still have a (long) way to go.
Anyway, the teaching part of my 19th semester looks like this:
- Mon/Wed 12:25-1:40 p.m. GRK300/700 (Second Year) Greek Syntax
- Tues/Thurs 12:25-1:40 p.m. HEB300/700 (Second Year) Hebrew Syntax & Exegesis I
- October 21-25 modular: BLST306/825 Romans
Friday, August 9, 2013
Bible Software Recommendations
In my second year Greek and Hebrew syllabi I recommend the following resources:
The best computer programs for serious
original-language study of the Bible are Accordance (Mac/Windows [coming soon]/Ipad),
Bibleworks (Windows/Mac), and Logos (Windows/Mac/Ipad/Android).
Accordance 10 (http://www.accordancebible.com/). The Original Languages Collection includes the grammatically-tagged
Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Greek New Testament, several lexicons and English
translations. Cost: $299.99 US.
Bibleworks 9 (http://www.bibleworks.com/). Includes the grammatically-tagged Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, Greek New
Testament, Targumim, Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, Philo, and Greek
Pseudepigrapha; as well as several lexicons, grammars, and many translations.
Cost: $359 US.
Logos Bible Software 5 (http://www.logos.com/). Ken Penner informs me that you can get basic Greek New Testament, LXX, and Hebrew Bible texts with parsing and translation for a $160 minimal crossgrade. If you want the standard Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, Rahlf's LXX and the BHS Hebrew Bible, you can choose the Bronze package, which includes the grammatically-tagged Hebrew Bible,
Septuagint, Greek New Testament, and Targumim; as well as several lexicons,
translations, and some new tools for syntactical analysis of the Greek New
Testament and Hebrew Bible, as well as other resources. Cost: $629.95 US. If
you purchase a major Logos package and you are a student or faculty member, be sure to apply for academic pricing: http://www.logos.com/academic/program.
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My 2 cents: In my view, Bibleworks gives you the most bang for your buck, though if I were to start over, I would probably go with Accordance. (I really like what they have included in their Original Languages Collection.) Logos has fantastic resources, but you pay a premium for them. For my earlier posts on Bibleworks and Logos see here and here. For another perspective, I recommend Mark V.G. Hoffman's blog Biblical Studies and Technological Tools.
I should add that all three programs are powerful and sophisticated tools. To get full value for your investment, you should plan to spend a minimum of 8-10 hours learning how the program works. No doubt it is because I have done this with Bibleworks, but not with Accordance or Logos that I find Bibleworks easiest to use--though not as user-friendly as Gramcord used to be.
Finally, my comments are geared toward students of Hebrew and Greek. If you don't know Hebrew or Greek, you are better off spending your time and money on learning a biblical language. Bible software power tools are no substitute for the ability to read the original.
I should add that all three programs are powerful and sophisticated tools. To get full value for your investment, you should plan to spend a minimum of 8-10 hours learning how the program works. No doubt it is because I have done this with Bibleworks, but not with Accordance or Logos that I find Bibleworks easiest to use--though not as user-friendly as Gramcord used to be.
Finally, my comments are geared toward students of Hebrew and Greek. If you don't know Hebrew or Greek, you are better off spending your time and money on learning a biblical language. Bible software power tools are no substitute for the ability to read the original.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
The Essentials of Biblical Hebrew Syntax
Technical post alert: I am interested in feedback from Hebrew-savy readers, and don't know where else to put my query.
As I began reading the Hebrew syntax textbook I assigned for this fall's "Hebrew Syntax and Exegesis I" course, it quickly became apparent to me that requiring students to read the whole thing carefully, or spending most of the semester talking about syntax as I have done in the past with Greek, would be cruel and unusual punishment.
Don't get me wrong, John C. Beckman's, Williams' Hebrew Syntax (3rd ed.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007) is fine for what it does. As a "traditional, sentence-level syntax that concentrates on the meanings of morphological categories" rather than "discourse-level analysis," the book is a clear, succinct and remarkably comprehensive resource (although its 19 categories for the [non-existent] Hebrew genitive is dwarfed by Wallace's 33 categories for the Greek genitive case). But most of the book describes what can happen in Hebrew; its main value is in explaining difficult and unusual constructions and linking to reference grammars. As with most syntaxes, long lists of categories threaten to drown the reader in second-order linguistic jargon instead of helping them learn to follow the linguistic cues of Hebrew.
Rather than reading about all the different possibilities, it is better by far to read Hebrew, and discuss unusual constructions as they surface in the Biblical text (where one can draw on a syntax as a resource). After all, the whole point is to help students learn to love reading Hebrew over the long term, and to read it well.
As I finalize my syllabus, then, I need to decide which elements of Hebrew syntax are essential for second-year students to learn because they can transform the way we read the text or because they are debated--or as is normally the case, both. While we will spend most of our class time reading Hebrew, there are a few places where it is helpful to stop and talk syntax because of its potential exegetical pay-off. Here is my list:
As I began reading the Hebrew syntax textbook I assigned for this fall's "Hebrew Syntax and Exegesis I" course, it quickly became apparent to me that requiring students to read the whole thing carefully, or spending most of the semester talking about syntax as I have done in the past with Greek, would be cruel and unusual punishment.
Don't get me wrong, John C. Beckman's, Williams' Hebrew Syntax (3rd ed.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007) is fine for what it does. As a "traditional, sentence-level syntax that concentrates on the meanings of morphological categories" rather than "discourse-level analysis," the book is a clear, succinct and remarkably comprehensive resource (although its 19 categories for the [non-existent] Hebrew genitive is dwarfed by Wallace's 33 categories for the Greek genitive case). But most of the book describes what can happen in Hebrew; its main value is in explaining difficult and unusual constructions and linking to reference grammars. As with most syntaxes, long lists of categories threaten to drown the reader in second-order linguistic jargon instead of helping them learn to follow the linguistic cues of Hebrew.
Rather than reading about all the different possibilities, it is better by far to read Hebrew, and discuss unusual constructions as they surface in the Biblical text (where one can draw on a syntax as a resource). After all, the whole point is to help students learn to love reading Hebrew over the long term, and to read it well.
As I finalize my syllabus, then, I need to decide which elements of Hebrew syntax are essential for second-year students to learn because they can transform the way we read the text or because they are debated--or as is normally the case, both. While we will spend most of our class time reading Hebrew, there are a few places where it is helpful to stop and talk syntax because of its potential exegetical pay-off. Here is my list:
- Subjects, complements and adjuncts
- Construct relationships - We don't need a gazillion categories; it does help to be aware of the possibilities.
- Word order, topic and focus
- Narrative sequence and discourse analysis
- The tense vs. aspect debate in connection with the Hebrew verb system.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
"Jew", "Judaean", and Christian anti-Semitism
As I was completing the final section of my article (very rough) draft last night, I returned to some remarks I gave at Briercrest's faculty retreat last fall--and I thought they were worth posting here:
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On the surface, the hot topic in Biblical Studies that I am trying to describe, evaluate and contribute to comes down to the question, Should the Greek word, Ioudaios, be translated ‘Jew’ or ‘Judaean’? This appears to be the kind of hair-splitting about minutiae that typifies scholarship at its “best” (like an academic conference on The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs). But if you are studying ancient ‘Judaism’ the question has a certain urgency to it because you have to call Jesus’ contemporaries something, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself by using a discredited label. The scholars themselves would protest that the debate is much more important than terminology. According to Philip Esler,
In Matthew 27, Jesus is on trial, accused by Pilate of being the “King of the Jews,” when “all the people” said, “his blood be on us and on our children!” (27.25). In John 8 Jesus is in conversation with the “Jews who believed in him” when he declares “You are from your father the devil” (8.44; cf. 31, 48). In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul tells the Thessalonian believers:
This is one place where the translation question comes in. According to the NET, Jesus is talking with “Judeans” not “Jews” when he says “your father” is “the devil” (John 8:31). In the NLT, where the truth is “made clear,” the Jews disappear altogether and are replaced with the benign “people.” The NLT and NET are following the advice of the standard lexicon of New Testament Greek, which says:
*Correction: 1 Thess 2:14-16 troubles me. Period.
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On the surface, the hot topic in Biblical Studies that I am trying to describe, evaluate and contribute to comes down to the question, Should the Greek word, Ioudaios, be translated ‘Jew’ or ‘Judaean’? This appears to be the kind of hair-splitting about minutiae that typifies scholarship at its “best” (like an academic conference on The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs). But if you are studying ancient ‘Judaism’ the question has a certain urgency to it because you have to call Jesus’ contemporaries something, and you don’t want to embarrass yourself by using a discredited label. The scholars themselves would protest that the debate is much more important than terminology. According to Philip Esler,
[T]ranslating Ἰουδαῖοι [Ioudaioi] as ‘Jews’ is not only intellectually indefensible . . . but also morally questionable. To honor the memory of these first-century people it is necessary to call them by a name that accords with their own sense of identity. (Esler 2003: 68).By contrast, Amy-Jill Levine claims that switching from ‘Jew’ to ‘Judaean’ will do more harm than good:
The Jew is replaced with the Judean, and thus we have a …a text purified of Jews. Complementing this erasure, scholars then proclaim that Jesus is neither Jew nor even Judean, but Galilean. . . . Once Jesus is not a Jew or a Judean, but a Galilean, it is also an easy step to make him an Aryan. So much for the elimination of anti-Semitism by means of changing vocabulary (Levine 2006: 160, 165).The reference to anti-Semitism points to a deeper issue. Last week I had my Gospels students brainstorm answers to the questions: Why did Jesus die? What is the significance of his life? What is the connection between the two? When I asked, “humanly speaking, what got Jesus killed?”, the Pharisees kept coming up: They were jealous. They were bad. I was doing my best to smile and nod. Now I wish I had recorded the answers because I can’t remember whether the student who said that Jesus was sent to earth to show how “they” were wrong was speaking about the Pharisees or “the Jews”. But one gets the impression that they amount to the same thing. And who can blame them?
In Matthew 27, Jesus is on trial, accused by Pilate of being the “King of the Jews,” when “all the people” said, “his blood be on us and on our children!” (27.25). In John 8 Jesus is in conversation with the “Jews who believed in him” when he declares “You are from your father the devil” (8.44; cf. 31, 48). In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul tells the Thessalonian believers:
For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind …But wrath has come upon them at last! (1 Thess 2.14-16)These passages trouble me not* because I think the New Testament is anti-Semitic, but because of the role they have played in the tragic history of Christian anti-Semitism: Gentle St. Bernard of Clairvaux calling the Jews “a race who had not God for their father, but were of the devil” (source); Martin Luther who—if Wikipedia is to be believed—wrote, “"[w]e are at fault in not slaying them” ; Easter pogroms against the Jews in 19th century Europe, the holocaust, and my memory from junior high school of someone telling a Jewish classmate, “you killed Jesus.”
This is one place where the translation question comes in. According to the NET, Jesus is talking with “Judeans” not “Jews” when he says “your father” is “the devil” (John 8:31). In the NLT, where the truth is “made clear,” the Jews disappear altogether and are replaced with the benign “people.” The NLT and NET are following the advice of the standard lexicon of New Testament Greek, which says:
Incalculable harm has been caused by simply glossing Ἰουδαῖος with ‘Jew’, for many readers or auditors of Bible translations do not practice the historical judgment necessary to distinguish between circumstances and events of an ancient time and contemporary ethnic-religious-social realities, with the result that anti-Judaism in the modern sense of the term is needlessly fostered through biblical texts.I am with Amy-Jill Levine on this one: Leaving “Jews” out of our translations may make unsuspecting readings think Jesus was not a “Jew,” and deny to contemporary “Jews” their ancient heritage. I am also not convinced that the best way to atone for a troubling past is to sweep the issue under the carpet.
*Correction: 1 Thess 2:14-16 troubles me. Period.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Herding Cats and the Meaning of Ioudaios
"Determining the meaning of Ioudaios [Jew/Judaean] is a lot like ‘herding cats or participating in a greased pig contest.’"* So goes the first sentence of the conclusion to my final article on the meaning of Ioudaios. I still need to figure out what I will say in the rest of the conclusion, draft an appendix on how the term should be translated, and revise the whole thing. Meanwhile I leave you with this:
*The 'herding cats' quote is borrowed from George Nickelsburg's description of scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth in Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 337.
*The 'herding cats' quote is borrowed from George Nickelsburg's description of scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth in Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 337.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Using VUE as a free-form text editor - A Windows alternative to Scapple
Update (18 July): It turns out that OneNote already does what I wanted VUE and Freeplane to do. Oops. Back to my FreePlane & OneNote combination; still waiting for Scapple...
In my last post I said that I had settled on Freeplane as a stop-gap measure until Scapple becomes available for Windows. This afternoon I switched to VUE because Freeplane is just not up to the job.
Like Freeplane, VUE is a free open-source program, but it is geared toward concept mapping instead of mind-mapping (see here and here for a comparison). I might care about the difference eventually, but right now I am looking for something that neither program was designed for, but that VUE allows me to do: to type text anywhere on a limitless canvas and then move the bits and pieces around as I puzzle out the order in which my thoughts should go together. Freeplane supports multiple nodes, but it doesn't let you move them around; VUE supports text boxes that you can move around. The export options in VUE aren't great, but it does the job for now. Here is what I was working on this afternoon:
Samir Kurdi had this to say about an earlier version of VUE:
VUE offers a good balance between complexity and ease of use, and between offering the simple building blocks needed to create mind maps of all kinds, on the one hand, and sophisticated tagging, analytical, and presentation tools on the other.Now back to the job that VUE is supposed to be helping me complete!
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