Month: November 2012

Free youth ministry consulting at National Youth Workers’ Convention

Check this out:

Youth Ministry Architects is the official consulting service for the 2012 National Youth Worker Conventions in Dallas.

We’d love to connect with our friends and clients who will be attending the conventions. You can sign up to meet one-on-one with one of the consultants. We’ll listen carefully and do some creative problem-solving together. We’d love to come alongside you and help you build a more sustainable ministry. This service is being provided for FREE thanks to a creative, new partnership with Youth Specialties.

Though I’m currently on a bit of a hiatus from active consulting work, I’ve served as a Staff Consultant at Youth Ministry Architects. (And I wrote this study guide for Mark DeVries’s Sustainable Youth Ministry.)

Read all about the free consulting at the convention here. If you’re going to NYWC, I’d definitely encourage taking advantage of the chance to meet and talk with some of the fine folks at YMA.

Day of Prayer

Here’s part of a writeup I did on our Day of Prayer that took place last week:

In the evening we worshiped again as one in the chapel with a congregational expression of the Psalms through song. From a lone voice in the darkness expressing the cries of the Psalmist in Psalm 130, to voices in unison reading the Psalms of Ascent; from hymns to contemporary music to bluegrass; from a Taizé chorus to Gospel music led by the Gospel Choir, we raised our voices in prayer and praise together, using the words of the Psalms.

The whole post is here, at Notes Along the Way, the blog of Gordon College.

Lights withstanding the wind (Martinmas)

A guest post by my wife, Sarah K-J:

For the third time, I handed my two-year-old son his homemade lantern and hoped the wind would allow a few minutes more of light. We were on our first “lantern walk.”

Guided by another young family with experience in this ancient tradition honoring St. Martin of Tours, we stepped out into the dark. Each young child bore a homemade lantern and eagerly watched the wind catch and play with the flame. We periodically stopped to relight each one. In the darkening dusk we walked along the beach, flickering orbs bobbing in front of young, expectant faces.

I was amazed at how gentle the wind was, how perfect the setting. The stars began to gain strength, and distantly echoed the scattered constellation of lanterned children. The waves stood back and gave us firm ground to walk on.

Our lights were small and inconsistent in the north Atlantic wind, but their hope a meaningful tribute to St. Martin. A Roman solider, Martin met a starving beggar at the city gates of Amiens. Moved with compassion, he tore his cloak in two, giving half to the beggar. That night in his sleep, Christ appeared to him dressed in the half-cloak. He was soon baptized and later became a bishop in the Church.

I’m unsure how much of the beauty and meaning the children were able to absorb, but the excitement and courage with which they carried their fragile paper lanterns in the wind of the North Atlantic gives me hope.

Their small lights were extinguished several times, but they kept asking for their lanterns to be lit again. Whenever their light withstood the wind, they joyfully announced it to all around, and fixed their eyes upon its hopeful, persistent light.

Review of T. Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint

In studying the Septuagint, I’m regularly curious about how often the LXX translators used the same Greek word to translate a given Hebrew word. How often, for example, does καρδία translate the Hebrew לבב? And what other Greek words are used to translate it? Similarly, I wonder, for occurences in the Greek text of καρδία, what other Hebrew words might it be translating?

Takamitsu Muraoka has made such questions an emphasis of his scholarly writing and publishing throughout his career. His Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint is one of the standard lexicons in the field, and his Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint is the best thing I’ve seen in print for Hebrew-Greek lexical studies in the Septuagint.

Preceding that latter work was Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint: Keyed to the Hatch-Redpath Concordance. I’ve had a chance to use the work in Logos Bible software; this post contains my review.

Muraoka notes the impetus for the work in the Introduction. The Hatch-Redpath Concordance (hereafter HR), published around the turn of the 20th century, listed all Greek words used in the Septuagint with the Hebrew they were thought to have translated. At the back of the concordance was a list that basically noted the reverse, showing Hebrew words alphabetically with the Greek words used to translate them… or, rather, a key to the Greek words in question. As Muraoka notes, you would have this entry in HR:

אָמַר qal 37 c, 74 a, 109 c, 113 c, 120 a, 133 a, 222 a, 267 a, 299 b, 306 b, 313 a, 329 c, 339 b, 365 a, 384 a, 460 c, 477 a, 503 c, 505 c, 520 b, 534 c, 537 b, 538 b, 553 b, 628 b, 757 b, 841 c, 863 c, 881 c, 991 b, 1056 b, 1060 a, 1061 a, 1139 a, 1213 b, 1220 c, 1231 b, c, 1310 b, 1318 b, 1423 c, 1425 b, 69 b, 72 b, 173 a, 183 b, c, 200 a (2), 207 c, 211 b.

Whereas the Greek to Hebrew portion of HR lists the Hebrew words underlying the Greek of the LXX, the Hebrew to Greek portion at the back just has page and column reference numbers, as above. So the user of HR would have to turn to page 37, column c, page 74, column a, etc., etc., in order to see what Greek words were in those locations. Only in that tedious way could the user of HR see all the Greek words used to translate the Hebrew אָמַר.

Muraoka’s wife (who is a true co-author of this work) tediously wrote out (yes, by hand) each Hebrew to Greek entry so that instead of page and column numbers, it contained actual Greek words. The above, then, would look more like this:

אָמַר qal αἰτεῖν (37c), ἀναγγέλλειν (74a)…

…and so on. The HR page and column numbers are retained, but now the user doesn’t have to flip back and forth, since the Greek words are all in one place.

T. Muraoka then took his wife’s data and critically examined HR’s assessments in as many places as he could, drawing on advances in the past century in textual criticism, manuscript availability (like the Dead Sea Scrolls), and adding in analysis of “apocryphal” books, which HR had not fully included. The resulting revision updates both HR’s work and his wife’s manual collation.

What results, then, is an eminently helpful work where one can look up any Hebrew word and see all the Greek words used to translate it across the Septuagint. To be able to do this is valuable, and Muraoka makes it easy.

There are two things that lack here, though neither one of them is really the goal of the work, so I don’t actually criticize it for these omissions. First, there are not frequency numbers. It could be especially helpful to know not only what Greek words translate a given Hebrew word, but how many times each does, so that the user can get a sense of the distribution of each. Muraoka doesn’t have this. Second, he doesn’t have glosses or translation equivalents for words, so there is no English in this index.

But this is an index, and marked as one, so neither of those is a flaw in Muraoka’s book. In fact, here is where using Muraoka in Logos is especially helpful: you can tie tabs together so that a simple click from Greek or Hebrew in his index takes you to a corresponding Greek or Hebrew lexicon in Logos, where you can see that word’s meaning. Logos in this way really enhances Muraoka’s tool. And, of course, frequency statistics are easy to come by in Logos.

This is a good resource, and worth owning for students and professors of the Septuagint. A question remains: with all that Logos can already do, is it superfluous to purchase Muraoka’s index? Using the Bible Word Study feature in Logos, for example, I can see all of the Hebrew words that a given Greek word is used to translate, as well as all of the Greek words used to translate a given Hebrew word, as here (click to enlarge):

This may be sufficient for what many people need, especially since you can also search for a Hebrew lemma from within the Greek Septuagint text in Logos and receive results in Greek, so that you have before you all the verses with all the various Greek words that translate that Hebrew lemma. (I just learned this today from the user forums-very cool.)

But if you’ve got the money (especially if you qualify for an academic discount), and are sitting on the fence about Muraoka’s resource, I recommend it. It’s nice to have easily at hand a listing of all Greek words used to translate a Hebrew word in the Septuagint, even if there are other ways to get that information in Logos. Here it’s consolidated.

One other nice feature is that all the abbreviations throughout the index are hyperlinked to what they stand for, which you can bring up just by mousing over them:

You can see there are no verse references given, which are useful for in-depth study of Greek translations. Muraoka’s more thorough Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint offers more depth in this regard than this 1998 Hebrew/Aramaic (one-way) index. No Bible software currently offers the two-way index, but it would be great if Logos were able to make it available in the future.

All in all Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint is a solid resource. And its digitization in Logos has been well done, too. Logos can already accomplish much of what’s in this index, but the one serious about the Septuagint may want to have any and all tools at her or his disposal. In that case, this is a worthy addition to one’s library.

Thanks to Logos for the free review copy of this work, offered without any expectation as to the positive or critical nature of my review. Muraoka’s Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint is available in Logos here.

10 things about the new Archbishop of Canterbury

Breaking news: the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is on Twitter. (He’s funny, too.)

He comes to the Anglican Communion’s highest position from a post as Bishop in Durham, where N.T. Wright previously served.

A piece on him in the New York Times is here.

And the BBC has published an article with “10 lesser-known things” about the new Archbishop. I found this one particularly poignant:

4. He set up a special day for bereaved parents in Coventry Cathedral. There is now an annual service commemorating the lives of children who have died. A book with the names of lost children is always on display in the cathedral – anyone who has lost a child under any circumstances can ask for their child’s name to be added to the book.

Bishop Welby’s own eldest daughter, Johanna, died when she was just seven months old in a car crash in France in 1983. He has previously said her death brought him and his wife Caroline closer to God. The couple have five other children.

The rest of the BBC article is here.

My 5-year-old son reviews Wild Kratts

My 4-year-old son is now my 5-year-old son. We thought it would be a good idea for him to review his new favorite show, Wild Kratts. Here he is:

I watched it on TV and then I noticed it on there, and it became my favorite movie to watch.

It’s about Martin and Chris, and they are the Wild Kratts. Their colors are blue and green. Chris is green; Martin is blue.

Aviva, Koki, and Jimmy are in Wild Kratts, too. Aviva makes motions, like materials to help the Wild Kratts. Koki writes stuff up and checks what’s happening around the world. Jimmy controls his controller and it gets the miniaturizer to do stuff. Like, he pushed the top level button and it just, like, gets the miniaturizer to get going.

People stand on it and turn it on, and when you turn it on, it goes shoop! and then you’re that small. One of them or the other of them or two of them [Chris and Martin] get small. When they get small they check out little creatures, like a worm. That was one of them that they did a miniaturizer for.

My favorite part about the show is seeing new animals, like: a spider, a hort-hog [AKJ: warthog, he means], and… a horse. I don’t know if they have a horse one.

The tortuga is a flying kind of turtle. They get in it and it helps them fly around. They fly to wherever the rescue needs to be. (They rescue creatures.)

It’s on at 3:30 on channel number 3, PBS Kids Go. All those kids movies are called PBS Kids Go.

My brother likes it. He really sings it a lot. Now I think he really likes that one.

Logos 5 Review: Further Impressions

Last week I posted some initial impressions of the just-released Logos 5. Having had a little more time with it now, here are some further impressions I have.

The Data Sets guide the user through resources nicely and can do some unique things.

The Logos 5 Data Sets are what most stand out to me on further use. Two in particular to note:

Bible Facts (People): this allows me to search by a referent and not just by the actual wording in the text. For example, by going to “Tools” from the home screen, then “Bible Facts,” I can type in “Jesus” to see not just where that word occurs in the text, but also where the text is referring to Jesus, whether by “he,” as “Christ,” “Son,” and so on. It’s a lovely and very impressive feature. Take a look, and click on the image to see larger:

Clause Search: Another you-have-to-use-it-to-believe-it feature. Here I can find (in less than a second) every time Paul is the subject of a clause, whether “Paul” occurs in the text or not. This means I can search on Paul in Acts, but also on the things Paul says about himself (using just “I” in the text) in his epistles. Or, I can search at the clause level for times when Jesus is the subject and his disciples are the object. As here:

Note that the first result is Matthew 5:2-3, where the words “Jesus” and “disciples” don’t even appear in the text (!) but the “he” refers to “Jesus” and “them” to his disciples. Of course, there is some interpretation at play here in the results. The disciples are the closest referent to “them” in the text, but Matthew 5:1 also mentions the crowds, who could also be what “them” refers back to. But the fact that the Clause Search can, in under a second, return these kinds of results is astounding. It’s searches like this that are why Logos markets itself as “powerful.”


The search speed of the program has improved (though is still not the fastest on the market).

Logos 5 is an overall faster program than Logos 4. (I use Logos primarily on a Mac.) The clause searches I’ve done, for example, have been lightning fast. But Logos is still not quite as fast at returning results for original language word searches as BibleWorks or Accordance. I wondered with Logos 4 whether this might be because Logos has a large library of resources. Whatever the reason, the multi-second waits for search results to come up are less common in 5 than in 4. Most of my searches have been showing results in a second or less, even the clause searches that I’d expect to take longer. Accordance and BibleWorks, however, give near instantaneous search results. Logos, with v. 5, is at last in the same ballpark with regard to speed.


The contents of the base packages have changed significantly. 

This does not affect previous Logos users necessarily, in that you always keep your Logos resources with you (for life). So if you upgrade to Logos 5 via a new base package, anything you had bought previously stays with you, even if it’s not in the new base package. For someone like me who primarily uses Bible software to study biblical languages, the Original Languages Library in Logos 4 was great (except, perhaps, for its lack of an English translation of the Septuagint). Even with its retail price under $500, that package still included the full 10-volume Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), making it a good deal, and a great deal with the academic discount.

Now to have TDNT in a base package (if you don’t already own it), you have to buy the “Gold” package at a retail price of just over $1,500. The Silver package in Logos 5, that I received to review, includes the entire New American Commentary set, the full Pulpit Commentary set, the Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint (and the same to the Greek NT), several Greek and English Apostolic Fathers texts, the Theological Lexicon of the OT (and that of the NT), as well as many more resources for a retail price of about $1,000. I was particularly excited to see a new English translation of the Septuagint, coming from the Lexham suite by Logos. Users will simply have to weigh whether the included resources in a package justify its cost. The Silver package seems to be worth the price. (Though note that the fairly standard Rahlfs Septuagint text is not included in Silver; Swete’s text is.)

This video from Logos gives a good overview of what’s new in Logos 5, with special focus on the Data Sets:

See also my initial impressions of Logos 5 in an earlier review.

Thanks to Logos for the review copy of Logos 5 with the Silver package, provided to me simply with the expectation that I offer my honest impressions of the program.

Rocks cry out on the Day of Prayer

What a great way spend a day this Tuesday! We had our annual Day of Prayer at Gordon College. (Here is the schedule of events for the day.)

As I wrote before, I’m struck by how the Day of Prayer is a microcosm of an important aspect the school’s life together: we are one and we are many. There are more than 40 denominations and Christian traditions represented at Gordon. On the Day of Prayer we prayed as one body—lived out in the morning and evening services in the chapel—and we prayed in diverse ways (for example, in the Orthodox tradition, through hymns, in the Catholic tradition, by reading Psalms together around a fire pit, in the dark, with artistic expressions, through dancers leading worship, a Gospel Choir, and more).

The picture above (via a Gordon student) is of a rock cairn that the students added to throughout the day. Students, faculty, and staff wrote prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving on a rock, which they then placed next to the entrance of the chapel. Watching the rocks pile up throughout the day, as praises going up to God, was a highlight for me. These rocks cry out!

See student response to Day of Prayer (with pictures) via the Twitter hashtag #GCDayofPrayer.

New Archbishop of Canterbury

The Telegraph reports that the new Archbishop of Canterbury has been named: Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham.

Sources have confirmed that the Eton-educated bishop will be announced as successor to Dr Rowan Williams as early as Friday, after the Crown Nominations Commission put his name forward to Downing Street.

It marks a meteoric rise for the former oil executive who has been a bishop for only a year, but insiders described Welby as “the outstanding candidate”.

The full article is here.