I was excited to receive my copy of Konrad Hammann’s definitive biography on Rudolf Bultmann in the mail today. But once I opened the book I noticed that the binding was not done well and the glue was coming off (as seen in the picture below). For a bibliophile like myself, this is a faux pas! I did not pay $60 for cheap binding, so this may be the last book I purchase from Polebridge Press.
A issue like this is insignificant in comparison to real problems in the world. I just wanted to vent is all.
Over at his blog Denny Burk has the following to say:
USC shouldn’t be number one in anyone’s poll. LSU, Alabama, and a number of other teams would wipe up the floor with USC. So don’t believe the hype.
I may be crazy, but I do not think Denny was watching the same USC yesterday game as the rest of planet earth. Just so we can all see for ourselves, I give you the highlights of the USC vs. Hawaii game:
Now, from those highlights I do not see how Denny came up with his comment above. Now, before we say that Hawaii is no true competition, let’s see who LSU played:
Hawaii I know, but North Texas? Granted, it is a warm up game for both teams, but in their respective warm-up games, USC looked so much sharper on both sides of the ball. Scoring on offense, defense, and you can throw in the 100+ yard kick-off return while you are at it.
So, to say that there are other teams that can “wipe the floor” with USC is no where near the realm of reality. What I took away from yesterday was that USC has the best QB, the best receiver and receivers, one of the best running backs, a defense that can run with USC’s defense from last decade, and a special teams that is quite good. So, I am ready to see which team will wipe the floor with USC.
Those that know me know that I love cats. Not just any cat, but more specifically my cat. His name is Polycarp, and he is awesome. Well enough about Polycarp. The above video is awesome on so many levels. It proves that if you mess with a cat, it will mess back. And that goes for you Mr. Jim West. They know where you live and they will strike hard and fast. So be aware!
What may be unknown to some of my readers (all three of you, including my mom) is that I am a pretty big sports fan. When all is said and done, the Pittsburgh Penguins are the greatest sports franchise this side of Pluto. Period!
So when I came across this quote from the ace of the Anaheim (sorry, they will never be Los Angeles in my mind) Angel’s Jered Weaver, I just had to say well done! His agent, the infamous Scott Boras, recommended that he wait until he was a free agent to sign because if he did he would most likely receive a boat load of cash. What did Weaver do? He went against Boras and re-signed for what is significantly less than what he would have received if he tested the free agent pool. Here is Weaver’s reason behind re-signing with the Angels now, instead of later:
If $85 (million) is not enough to take care of my family and other generations of families then I’m pretty stupid, but how much money do you really need in life?” Weaver said Tuesday. “I’ve never played this game for the money. I played it for the love and the competitive part of it. It just so happens that baseball’s going to be taking care of me for the rest of my life (via ESPN).
While I still agree that pro athletes make more money than they should, I cannot help but say “well done” to Weaver. He is a SoCal native, and for him to stay home in California was more important than signing elsewhere for more money. Also, I must say that I like anyone who goes against Boras’ advice. Apparently Boras wasn’t so happy with this supposed hometown discount, which means less money for him. Boo-hoo Mr. Boras, boo-hoo.
With all the talk of the supposed rapture that is to take place, it is easy to forget the fallout that will undoubtedly take place from all of this silliness. While it is understandable to poke fun at Camping and all of his madness, under it all he is still just another false prophet trying to predict something that even the Son of Man said he did not know the hour of it’s happening.
What saddens me is that when 6pm rolls around the world continues on just as it did the day before, the world will now look at Christians and think us all loonies. We will have to spend countless hours rebuilding delicate relationships with family members, co-workers, etc. that were damaged by one man and his followers, so called “Christians.” These people are nothing other than antichrists. They know neither the Scriptures nor the Christ of the Scriptures.
While I do hope that Camping sees the folly of his ways and repents, this is very unlikely. My guess is that he will come out with some statement saying that he miscalculated his days and will set some new date for the apocalypse.
In closing, let us remember the words of Jesus himself as recorded for us in Matthews Gospel:
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matt 24.36).
I am no Jesus scholar. That is to say, I am a novice in the field of historical Jesus studies. But as of late I have begun to dabble a bit in some of the literature in the field, and I feel like the so-called quest for the historical Jesus is more like a quest for Atlantis, a never ending quest for a non-existent country. This is how I have felt in my reading of James Dunn’s “Jesus Remembered.” I cannot help but feel cheated in some way. While I understand the methodological procedure that Dunn undertakes to get to the “historical” Jesus, his skepticism of sources and their reliability seem to leave me skeptical of his conclusions. On the one hand, he labors to show that what is written is all we can know about Jesus—Jesus remembered. But this affirmation of the reliability and accuracy of the sources quickly sinks beneath the quicksand of skepticism and doubt. Dunn’s confidence in and affirmation of Q only seem to weaken his argument for a Remembered Jesus. If we cannot fully trust the written accounts of Jesus as he is remembered by the evangelists, how can we have anything more than a Jesus partially remembered, if not forgotten?
I get frustrated with conversations along the lines of the following: we cannot really know the meaning in the text because we cannot know the mind of the author. This seems to be a prideful statement clothed in supposed humility. If that is the case, why do these people write books? Why do I even blog?! If you cannot know what I am saying through the words that I write, why do I write to begin with! The Bible is full of propositional statements. Statements consisting of do this, do not do this; go here, do not go here, etc. As I read them, I have no trouble understanding that I am not to kill, lie, steal, commit adultery, etc. I know what they mean, even though I do not know the mind of the author, namely God.
I do not pretend to think that there are no problems with language. It is not perfect and I recognize that. But this imperfection is not an excuse to throw the baby out with the bath water. Albeit there are language deficiencies, this does not give us the right to cast aside meaning. It is possible to understand what is read adequately. We do not need God-like knowledge to know and understand what the Bible says; when we read it we know that “Thou shall not kill” means exactly what it says. There is no ambiguity in this statement.
Now there are ambiguous statements in the Bible. But the presence of ambiguous statements does not disqualify the whole of Scripture as ambiguous. I guess this is more of what I am getting at. There is a meaning in the text. The author has a specific intent in writing what he does (i.e. God has an intent in writing Scripture through his writers, who also have an intent). Words are not thrown together in hopes that a “community” will come along and solve the textual puzzle that the author has left. Readers do play a part in reading, but what they do not do is create meaning. The meaning of a text lies dormant until a reader comes along and interprets what the author has written.
Today at work I purchased Brian Vickers, “Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness.” Although I have only finished the introduction, I have already found a quote that I can say, “Amen!” to.
“There is in places a fair amount if Greek and Hebrew. I have not transliterated the languages. The reason is simple: I know few, if any people, who actually find transliterations helpful, much less people who can read them. Moreover, people who do not read Hebrew or Greek are not made to do so by transliterations. Essentially all it does is introduce two additional foreign languages into the text. It may look a bit more like English, but in reality it is not English nor is it Greek or Hebrew” (Vickers, Brian. Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006).
I was recently reading something, and I my thoughts about transliterations was that of Mr. Vickers. So I am glad that I am not the only one who has these frustrations.
I find it strange when one says that there is no authorial intent. Once the author finishes his last stroke of the pin (or the last key of a keyboard) he is dead and detached from his work. This is a literary phenomenon these days, and quite frankly it is absurd. The reason I say this is because I hear people talking about the intent of the law and it makes me laugh. I would really like to play devils advocate and say that there is no intent of the law, because there is no authorial intent. Let the communities interpret the law for themselves; each of their interpretations is just as valid as the next. Where one interprets it as do not do this, another interprets it as do this. Decide which one is the valid interpretation based on your communities reading but please do not appeal to intent, remember there is no authorial intent. Just my thought for today.
