kata Drew

School started back up the end of this week…which means that the quotables will now start rolling in. Dr. McDaniel reminded us this morning (at 7:30am!) that during Jesus’ temptation, he pulled directly from Deuteronomy to combat the Adversary

“If your struggle against sin depended on your knowledge of Deuteronomy, how well would you do?”

It might be fair to say that our struggle against sin should include a working, quotable familiarity with Deuteronomy. Nonetheless, point taken.

Codex Sinaiticus Project website goes live July 24, 2008.

I had my ESV opened this morning and sitting to the left of my laptop while finishing up some homework for my summer Old Testament II class. At one point I picked it up to get a better look and then set it back down. Upon setting it down, it began dancing as I happened to capture in the video below. To be honest I was considerably spooked out. I quickly grabbed my cell phone to record the action.

This may be silly but what immediately came to mind were the innumerable accounts of supernatural happenings in the middle ages. I, however, unlike a scribe of yesteryear, had the means and technology to record my preternatural experience. I could go to class this morning and share with a classmate my dancing, pneuma-filled ESV and prove it with a video, whereas a scribe in the 13th century going to class (or wherever a scribe would go to hang out with his buddies) after experiencing something like I did, would have to rely on his integrity as a truth-teller alone to gain an audience. You can imagine a scribe going to Haplography 102 and reporting his morning supernatural experience to his friends, the conversation being overheard by the class historian, and the account of a dancing scroll finding its way into the annals of Christian history as a mighty act of the pneuma of God. You can imagine it, right?

Well, unfortunately, I have to report that my dancing, pneuma-filled ESV has a natural explanation: the side fan from my laptop. Check it out (sorry so small; it’s my phone’s camera):

Matthew 8:23-27:

23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

Psalm 148:7-8

7 Praise the Lord from the earth,
you great sea creatures and all deeps,
8 fire and hail, snow and mist,
stormy wind fulfilling [doing] his word!

What sort of man is this indeed? The God-man. Before Abraham was, he was.

So, you’ve seen cross references in the margin, or footnotes, of your Bible. But what would all those look like represented visually? Chris Harrison, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has done it. He’s taken the cross reference data and worked out the image below. Beautiful. Amazing. It’s the kind of the thing you can just stare at for ages. He’s also done similar work with Biblical names and places. Go check out the whole Visualizing the Bible page where you can find the entire above mentioned (he’s also got plenty of other interesting visualizations to check out).

Hopefully, this can (really) get us thinking about the interconnectedness of Scripture. Exempli gratia, notice the overarching connection that is Genesis and Revelation. I praise God for individuals using their talents (and technology) in service to the Church. Wow.

(HT: Addison Road)

I didn’t post a weekly review for last week because we were on Fall break, which isn’t to imply that I did no learning during this week off, but that it was a week off! Today I’ve got a bunch of miscellanies for you since I had something due in each of my four classes this week, exam or paper or otherwise. Garn.

• Evangelical Textual Criticism has quickly become one of my most read blogs since hearing an interview with two contributors, Simon Gathercole (Cambridge) and Peter Williams (Aberdeen), on the new perspective of Paul. It’s a team blog so there are regular updates by a multifarious group of scholars. “A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.”
• Lots of freely downloadable Christian hip hop can be found at the Sphere of Hip Hop. You’ll definitely want to hear how “Jesus did walk with the ladies.” Intrigued?
• We’ve booked our flights to go back to England over Christmas. I have a mental list of things to try to remember to do: get a peak at Codex Sinaiticus, visit Bunhill to see the graves of Johns Owen, Bunyan and Gill and Isaac Watts…(Can you say supererogatory acts?), and my list is still growing. Of course spending time with the extremely jovial and congenial Hayes family is top priority. =)
• I took two semesterin of German in college and now it’s time to shift into Retention Phase. Thank you, http://ergebung.wordpress.com, a theological German blog. Klingt mir gut!
• That’s it. I’ve got a paper to write.

Look no further than 1 Corinthians 15:19 for proof that you should never read a Bible verse:

If in this life we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Oh, no! What did Paul say? How are we supposed to make sense of this? Read the verse in context and especially the following verse, v. 20:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Never read just a Bible verse for a text out of context becomes a pretext.

Drew,

I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for Uzzah. There he was, walking along hot and tired, chatting to his mates. An ox stumbles; Uzzah tries to stop the Ark from getting damaged, doesn’t want it to get scratched. He reaches out to help and he gets struck down by God. I know God is almighty and can do what he wants and maybe Uzzah had done other things to deserve God’s wrath. But the way the Bible puts it Uzzah sounds like an innocent man only trying to help. The nature of God in th Old Testament seems to conflict with the mesage of love and forgiveness in the New. Can they be reconciled? Jesus allowed people to touch him, even healed them. I’m thinking of that woman whose haemorrhage was cured when she touched Jesus cloak. I can’t imagine Jesus cutting down Uzzah for touching him. Has the Old Testament got God wrong? Is he as vengeful and bloodthirsty as it suggests? Maybe the New Testament is too loving and forgiving and God is stern and demands respect above love? Am I talking nonsense, Drew?

Jack

Jack-in-the-Email,

You’re not talking nonsense. I feel sorry for Uzzah, too: literally trying to lend a helping hand; but I guess when God says “don’t touch,” he means it. Sometimes I feel like if I do something [wrong] I may get arbitrarily zapped like Uzzah or worse yet get eaten from the inside out by worms like Herod in Acts 12; but then I remember that God isn’t arbitrary or capricious. He gave specific, explicit instructions for handling the ark, and Herod, well, he was just stupid for accepting deification from his people.

Should we then marvel if people are judged on the spot? We should marvel like the Psalmist when justice is delayed and cry out for the day, as Martin Luther King impassioned in his famous sermon quoting the prophet Amos, saying: “let justice roll down like waters” (Amos 5:24). The topic of justice is a nice segue into your email concerning the two seemingly opposing views of God presented in the Old and New Testaments.

A lot of people want to pit the Old Testament against the New Testament, but I would like to argue that they’re not at odds but complimentary. Is there reconciling to do between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament? Are there two gods at hand? If one has a cursory knowledge of the Bible and/or his view of the “Gods” of the Bible is taken from hearsay, I can understand that he may feel that there is a noticeable inconsistency when comparing the two Testaments; but after becoming familiar with the Bible as a whole, this inconsistency in the mind of the reader should decrease. What the Old Testament contains, the New Testament also contains. It is the error of Marcion to insist that two separate “Gods” exist in the Scriptures because the Testaments seemingly present two opposing views.

“But there is the wrath of God poured out on people in the Old Testament such as in the case of Uzzah, something Jesus would not condone.”
Consider the case of Herod in the New Testament who was smitten by the Angel of the Lord and eaten by worms. Consider Jesus depicted in the final book of the New Testament, Revelation, coming with a robe dipped in blood to judge the earth.

“The God of Jesus seems so loving but this aspect of God isn’t presented in the Old Testament.”
Consider the Psalms which are songs addressed to God: “your steadfast love is better than life” (Psalm 63:3). Also, the Law contains provision for the widow and and the poor and the foreigner that should find themselves in Israel. In fact, the golden rule comes originally not from Jesus in the Gospels but from Leviticus (book of law in the Old Testament): “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

The New Testament affirms the God of the Old Testament. Indeed he is the same, not two different, and both Testaments testify to him. It is necessary when thinking of God not too allow yourself to concentrate on only one attribute. Yes, God is love but God is also a righteous judge. These two attributes are not at odds. If we feel he needs reconciled to himself, we lack understanding and knowledge of the whole person of God.

I can see where one would think that the wrath of God in the Old Testament in opposed to the love of God in the New Testament, but I would encourage that person to read the Bible and see that both the love of God is presented in the Old Testament and the wrath of God in the New Testament.

“Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth.
Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!”
Psalm 67:3-5