The first half highlights the lasting impact of the King James Version while the second introduces erstwhile Christian missionary and translator Daniel Everett who walked away not only from Bible translation and missions, but also from Christianity and regrettably, his wife.

Recent technological advances are speeding up the process of Bible translation, not without controversy. Through it all, Bible translation and linguistic research have marched hand in hand, sometimes producing unintended results. In 1977, Christian missionary Daniel Everett went to Brazil with the intention of bringing the Bible to the Pirahã people of the Amazonian basin. He didn’t manage to convert anyone– except himself. He lost his faith, and became an expert in the Pirahã language. He theorized that Pirahã has no recursion, or ability to embed phrases within sentences, as in relative clauses. This was a direct rebuke to Noam Chomsky’s theory that all languages are recursive (which is a cornerstone of the idea that all languages share a “universal grammar”). Some linguists have taken issue with Everett’s findings. Read more.

Give the episode a listen.

My first teaching was back in November and covered the whole of John 13:1-20, “God the Son Dressed as a Servant” (MP3). In preparation for teaching that Sunday I researched the historical and cultural background of footwashing. I was blessed to discover what a deep and unique exhibition of love God the Son’s washing was. I understand it to be completely unprecedented in the ancient world for a superior to wash an inferior’s feet. But not only did Jesus wash his disciples’ feet, even more staggering than that, he washed his betrayer’s feet. This is the sort of radical savior we have, who made himself nothing, assuming the garb of a lowly servant to actually, physically serve his disciples by washing their feet. I was quite frankly overwhelmed at meditating on Jesus’ love in this story. Amazing.

My second teaching was only two weeks ago and covered John 16:4b-15, “The Ascended Sovereign Sender” (MP3). I love the fact that I got to pick up at John 16:4b. Well, versification isn’t original anyways, so why not accent it with letters of the alphabet, too! What I loved about teaching this passage is the surety of the savior’s ascension. “I was with you.” He speaks as if he’s already gone. Too, we daren’t miss the eschatological perspective of the ascended savior’s sending of the Spirit. We get a clear picture of this through Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2. It’ll come as no surprise to most readers that in my preparations for teaching this section I disappointingly found a dearth of Reformed/Calvinistic material on the Holy Spirit. The Reformed systematic theologies I have on my shelf (both physical and virtual) give little space to the One who fills all space. So, to what better place to turn than the Apostle Peter’s interpretation of Joel and the sending of the Spirit. That’s good enough for me!

Last week in my third teaching I picked up where my second left off and covered John 16:16-24a. I titled this “I Will See You Again and You Will Rejoice” (MP3). Here Jesus poses somewhat of a riddle to his disciples and, fortunately for us, he goes on to clarify what he means. While I found J. Ramsey Michaels’ new commentary on John (NICNT) really useful for preparing, on this particular section (Jesus’ “riddle” in particular [my quotes not his]) he proceeded with a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation for which he didn’t convincingly argue. In plain, whether naive or not, I stuck with what I think to be a common sense reading of the passage that sees “after a little while you will not see me” as Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial, and “after a little while you will see me” as his resurrection. Additionally, I was sure to leave room for a second adventual dimension to Jesus’ statement as we see hints of future eschatology in the subsequent verses (e.g., Jesus’ childbirth parable [allusion to  Isaiah  66?] and his words “in that day”). Overall, I loved teaching this section. As sure as Jesus is truth he will see us again and we will rejoice! Halelujah, what a Savior!

Man of Sorrows! what a name
For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Guilty, vile, and helpless we;
Spotless Lamb of God was He;
“Full atonement!” can it be?
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Lifted up was He to die;
“It is finished!” was His cry;
Now in Heav’n exalted high.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

When He comes, our glorious King,
All His ransomed home to bring,
Then anew His song we’ll sing:
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

The podcast features recordings from mechon-mamre.org and an enclosed text translation from the English Standard Version. The readings alternate from the Tanak: Torah, Prophets, and Writings. Yesterday’s edition was Genesis 1. Today’s is Joshua 1 and tomorrow’s will be 1 Chronicles 1.

I have it set up to deliver straight to my Droid where I collect numerous podcasts and listen through them daily. I’m already listening through a daily English reading plan, so original language daily reading makes a lot of sense.

Let me know if you subscribe or have any thoughts or suggestions.

photo credit: Lawrence OP

Sing for Joy

Every Sunday morning the pretentiously titled local classical station–The Classical Station–airs several syndicated programs featuring sacred music. One of those is Sing for Joy, a production of Minnesota’s St. Olaf College. Every week the College Pastor presents choral music selected to coincide with the readings from the revised common lectionary. The result is a beautiful production that is well worth your listen, especially if you come from a non-liturgical tradition such as I. I’ve found that keeping up with the common lectionary vocally enhanced by world-class choirs is a delightful way to connect with the Church universal. Sing for Joy presents that certain bountiful depth of sacred music that is too often forgotten. My only disappointment is that the broadcasts, as far as I can tell, are not available via podcast. There is, however, a vast streaming archive available on their site of current and past episodes. You can listen wherever you are no matter the day of the week. Check it out.

Lectionary at Lunch

I discovered this second gem on iTunesU. Concordia Seminary St. Louis hosts an enviable Lectionary at Lunch group every Wednesday that is led by a professor who reads through the OT and NT lessons in Hebrew and Greek, translates them and discusses particular points of interest. The podcast of the group is available free of charge and is well worth your listen, especially if you’re interested in exegesis, translation and original language study. I can’t tell you how beneficial this is to listen to. Check it out.

photo credit: jurek d.

Earlier in the week I listened to just an outstanding Veritas Forum presentation by Dr. Farr Curlin entitled What Moves the Scalpel? Science, Religion and the Practice of Medicine which was recorded back in September of this year. Below I’ve included the summary of the presentation from the Veritas site so you can get an idea of what it’s about and see if it piques your interest.

You can watch (or download) the video or listen to (or download) the audio of this pointed presentation which quite frankly floored me.

It’s refreshing to hear a medical doctor point out the necessary God-ward foundation of medicine. Not “necessary” in the sense that without a theological foundation medicine fails, but that without God and human beings created imago dei medicine fails to be consistent within a naturalistic worldview.

Summary:

No one ever asks what science has to do with medicine any more than they ask what books have to do with education and tools have to do with carpentry. Over the past century and a half, medical science has generated enormous advances in alleviating human illness and forestalling death, and there is good reason to expect substantial further progress. Yet, for all of the contributions of science, medicine remains animated and directed by other, less tangible, forces. A reasonable practice of medicine must give an account for what makes human life worthy of care and attention and how the medical arts contribute to human flourishing. For most people, such accounts begin in religion; for some they begin in a secular moral tradition. In this lecture, Farr Curlin unpacks the way medicine looks beyond science to find forces that motivate care for the sick, direct the application of medical technology, and ground clinical care in an orientation to the patient as person. He suggests that even though religious ideas are rarely made explicit in public and professional discourse about medicine, they are everywhere implicit and operative, necessarily so. In this light, Curlin argues that the time is ripe for clinicians and laypeople to develop practices of medicine that are more fulsomely and self-consciously grounded in and informed by religion.

In the full belief of the great doctrines he preached while on earth,
he invites his children, and all who read this,
to trust their eternal interest on the same foundation.

Lemuel Haynes,
who died
September 28th, 1833.

Love in death.

Lemuel Who?

I only learned of Lemuel Haynes today while listening to the Reformed Forum’s interview with Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman. Check out the podcast interview (MP3, 48 minutes). Hearing Haynes’ epitaph near the end of the interview brought tears to my eyes. I thought it was good enough to share. What a succinct summation of the gospel and lasting exhortation to Christ! He is believed to have composed this during his last couple of days.

Download Clip (350kb MP3)

I’m not sharing the preacher’s name or church because I don’t want to shame him in any way, but I made this little clip/excerpt just to share his slip-up anonymously. If you’re interested in finding the complete sermon, I’ve included enough information to get you there in the comment field of the MP3 ID3 tag.

What is metadata?

Metadata is simply data about data. If an MP3 podcast of an interview you conduct is data, then data about your data would be the date of the recording, the web site hosting the podcast, the interviewer, and the notes concerning the interview’s discussion questions. This is the podcast metadata. The data about the podcast.

This is precisely the kind of information MP3 metadata (called ID3 tags) stores. These tags can easily be added to any MP3 so that the file carries along with it the information you have tagged on it. Another more technical way of saying this is that you add ID3 tags to your MP3. ID3 tags are MP3 metadata.

Why Tag Your MP3s with Metadata

#1 – Because it’s your MP3 and you don’t want people to forget it.

Oftentimes MP3s are disseminated without any sort of metadata, meaning that after the file has been downloaded, it’s difficult to impossible to figure out where the file came from. Personally, if this happens, I just delete the file.

Consider this example: you are reading a blog that posts an MP3 recording of a Socratic Club debate at Southeastern wherein John Piper debates Greg Boyd on the openness of God. The file you download is called 2009-01-29-sebts.mp3. Apart from knowing the date of the recording from the filename, you know no other information concerning this recording (excepting of course what you’ve read on the blog previously). Imagine further that months go by and you come across this file in your download folder, only vaguely remembering anything about it and having  not listened to it yet. It’s near impossible to figure out what this MP3 is if it lacks metadata. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#2 – Because it will send listeners back to your site.

Information tagged onto your MP3 goes with that file wherever it goes. MP3 metadata provides a slot to insert your web site URL. Should a curious listener then open up your file information, the URL will be there staring back at them. Moreover, simply tagging the name of your podcast in the metadata (e.g., “KataDrew’s Amazing Blazing Podcast”) gives just enough information enough for the average user to Google your organization’s name and get back to your site. Without it, the file is likely deleted or your presence is lost. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#3 – Because many MP3 players require it.

My Sansa sorts files on it by the metadata. MP3s without metadata are all lumped together in the folder labeled “Unknown” and usually then only show the filename which is most often doesn’t provide the information an interested listener is looking for. Properly tagged MP3s, on the other hand, display under their respective name as expected. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#4 – Because Last.fm will give you statistics if you do it properly.

Do you know about Last.fm? It collects information on what its users have listened to. For an example, see my last.fm account @ last.fm/user/admaust. Last.fm users can install a small program that runs in the background of one’s computer which sends played song information to its database periodically only if the MP3s are appropriately tagged. This makes sense for how otherwise would last.fm know to which artist and to which of that artists’ songs to accredit that play?

Because of last.fm’s social networking features, its aggregation is free publicity and also takes the pulse of your file with no extra work on your part except the extra seconds it takes to tag your MP3. Therefore tag your MP3s.

#5 – Because a telling filename (however so) isn’t enough.

No matter how helpful you think you’ve made your filename, you can always make the filename less invasive by including the desired information in metadata. Instead of a filename including a podcast’s name, date, subject, episode number and URL (e.g., KataDrewsAmazingBlazingPodcast-2009-01-20-ChristianityInTheNewWorld-Episode202-KataDrew.com.mp3), the filename could simply include  one or two of these and rely on metadata to carry the rest of the desired information.

#6 – Because software uses it to categorize.

Winamp, for example, catalogs downloaded MP3s according to metadata (artist, track name, album name, date, genre, etc.). Without this information the program becomes a lot like many portable MP3 players in being forced to list files lacking metadata all together in an “Unknown” category, proving useless for searches and quick finding. Tagged MP3s are found and listened to with ease. Windows Vista even now reads MP3 metadata.

#7 – Because more than all this, you can tag it as you please with whatever you please.

Seventh and finally, MP3 metadata features all sorts of slots for any sort of information you may want to include. There’s even a “Comments” field where miscellaneous information you wish to add may be included. Tag your MP3s because you can add whatever you like.

How Do I Add or Change Metadata on My MP3s?

I most often use Winamp to add metadata as its my main media player and its interface for adding tags is very straightforward. For example, while the MP3 you wish to tag is playing, right-click in the program and select View file info (or alt+3). A dialogue box then appears wherein you can enter desired information effortlessly. This works extremely well for single files.

To tag multiple files, try a freeware program like Mp3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en). Note: you should never pay for any software that enables tagging or adding metadata. Freeware solutions are readily available. Don’t buy one for this easy task.

If you are exporting your podcast from the freeware recorder Audacity, take the opportunity Audacity gives you during the process to tag your MP3. It’ll take ten seconds maximum.

With no additional software, tags can be added in Vista as mentioned above. Browse to the folder containing the MP3 you wish to tag. Select the file. You should then see the metadata displayed in the bottom portion of the window. Files without tags will look like screenshot below. Adding tags is as easy as clicking on the text Specify and entering the information.