That’s right, Theologian Trading Cards.
Click on the image to see the product page on Amazon.
Zondervan is giving away a set, for which you can enter today and tomorrow. Go here for details.
I’ve received a set to review, and expect to post that review in the not-so-distant future. They’ve already been a great conversation piece (and geeking out piece) in my office.
Okay, some lessons from three beachside runs, actually. Because I’ve had three wonderful ones in the last seven days, one at dusk/sunset, and the other two shortly after sunrise.
As I ran along the beach a couple times this week, here were some things I thought about, in no particular order:
The ocean is awesome. Duh. But, really, look at it, if you can, for a long, long time. Just watch. It’s amazing in its vastness. It both sustains life and can completely destroy life in a second.
It changes constantly. I still can’t get over how different a beach looks at low tide versus high tide–it’s like a different landscape altogether. Those rocks that my 5-year-old son and I climbed up on the other day at low tide? Almost completely submerged this morning when I ran by them.
There are lighthouses where you didn’t notice them before. Yes, this could be on one of those cheesy motivators posters. But in the last week, with each run, I’ve noticed a new lighthouse off in the distance that I hadn’t seen before. The application to the life of following and trusting God has been quite clear to me.
There are more lessons. But I’ve got to go to bed now, so we can get up early in the morning. Tomorrow is my wife’s turn for a beachside run. (I get the kids.)
Daniel R. Streett has some good thoughts on reading Greek, summarizing some information presented at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting last week:
For proficient reading, automaticity is necessary. In SLA [second language acquisition], automaticity means automatic recognition and understanding of a word or phrase. It actually happens involuntarily, without intervening analysis. It is not subject to introspection.
He continues to note that “reading is hearing.” He says:
Of course, the only way you can “hear” the words in your mind is to have heard them before in real-life, communicative situations where they were used in a comprehensible context.
I don’t disagree with this post (read the rest here). I do find it interesting, though, that one of the tenets of speed reading is to silence that inner voice you would otherwise hear when you read. Streett is not talking about speed reading, but wouldn’t it be great to get to the point of speed reading even in another language? It’s hard enough for me in my first language!
In the meantime, I’m getting stoked to start reading through Greek Isaiah (slowly) in less than a week and perhaps the Greek New Testament (at a bit of a quicker rate) starting January 1.
Anybody out there proficient in speed reading in a second language?
One more week until more than 50 folks and I start a read-through of Greek Isaiah! There’s an already active Facebook group page for the endeavor.
One of the readers has been working on the Isaiah volume in the Brill Septuagint Commentary Series. He’s graciously shared links with the group to some of his notes on Greek Isaiah, which he posted in the “B-Greek” Biblical Greek group last year.
Look here and here to see what Ken Penner has compiled. I’m really looking forward to his input and guidance as we work through Isaiah.
When I had a chance to ask N.T. Wright one question in January, I asked him how to improve my Greek. His reply: “Read the text. Read the text. Read the text.”
I decided not long ago to read through the Greek version of Isaiah in a year, starting one week from today. Amazingly, more than 50 people have already joined the corresponding Facebook group; we will be reading together.
On a related note, there are just 260 chapters in the Greek New Testament. This means that, even cutting the longer chapters in half, one can read through the New Testament (in Greek or any other language) with just a chapter a day.
That seems doable. Already in the Greek Isaiah Facebook group and through this blog, I’ve been able to correspond with folks who have read the Greek New Testament in a year. All of them have described it as a rich and rewarding experience.
So I’m not sure I’ll commit to reading all of the Greek NT in 2013, but I’m at least going to give it a shot. For anyone interested in doing the same, Lee Irons has a helpful two-page briefing on how he goes about it. He’s posted reading plans in years past, too (see here for 2012). He recommends using the Reader’s Edition of the Greek New Testament in the image above, which is my favorite Greek Bible for reading.
If anyone reading this post wants to leave a comment as to your experience with reading through the New Testament (Greek or otherwise) in a year, I’d love to hear about it. I do know that if I take it on, it will be to improve my Greek, yes, but primarily it will be a devotional exercise in which I seek to more fully immerse myself in God’s Word.
A bedtime lullaby I wrote for my two boys tonight.
Amazement is a common crowd reaction to Jesus’ teaching and to his miraculous powers of healing and exorcism in the Gospel of Mark.
Mark uses the Greek words ἐκπλήσσω, θαμβέω, ἐξίστημι, θαυμάζω to depict others’ amazement at Jesus. In Mark 1:22 the people are “amazed by his teaching.” In 1:27, they reiterate their amazement at his teaching and at his command of unclean spirits. 2:12 shows the people amazed at the healing of the paralytic. In 5:20, “All were amazed” (πάντες ἐθαύμαζον) after Jesus healed the Gerasene Demoniac. 6:2 shows the people amazed again at his teaching.
Then in 6:6, whereas the subject of the verb “amaze” has been the people, Jesus is amazed (ἐθαύμαζεν) on account of the lack of faith (ἀπιστία) of the people. The prior verse has said, “And he could not do any miracle there, except to lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them” (AKJV). This is odd. Just as Jesus’ miracles lead to amazement, now his lack of miracles in 6:5 lead to a lack of belief on the part of the people, and this leads to Jesus’ amazement at the people’s lack of faith.
In 6:51 the disciples are amazed at Jesus’ walking on the water, and in 10:24 and 10:26 at his pronouncement that it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. In 7:37 the crowd has gone back to being amazed at Jesus’ curing of a deaf man. In 11:18 and 12:17 they stand amazed (ἐξεπλήσσετο) at his teaching.
In 15:5 there is a new subject who is amazed: Pilate is amazed at the lack of a reply from Jesus in his own defense at his trial.
The theme of amazement is significant in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus in Mark is the divine Son of God who has authority to teach, heal the sick, and cast out demons. Because of this the crowds and his disciples are amazed. (Except in 6:5-6, where they are not.) And yet Jesus is not the political Roman empire-conquering Messiah that many Jewish people expected, so there is amazement even on Pilate’s part in 15:5 when Jesus does not respond.
Though no “amazing” words are used, the centurion in Mark 15:39 seems to have the final word of amazement in the Gospel. Having watched Jesus die, he utters in astonishment, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
I plan to read through the Greek version of Isaiah this coming year, starting December 2. (Here’s a vocab list I’ll use to help.)
If you want to join along, Greek Isaiah in a Year on Facebook is the central place for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc. Come join in!
Why did Jesus sometimes tell people not to tell others about who he was, or about how he healed them? This passage from Mark 8:27-30 (NIV) looks almost anti-evangelistic:
Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
This hard-to-understand aspect of Jesus’ ministry is often called the “messianic secret.” I.e., Jesus wanted his messiah-ness kept secret (at times). As the Handbook on Biblical Criticism (4th ed.) puts it, the “Messianic Secret refers to a discernible phenomenon in the Gospels, most especially in the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus explicitly conceals his messianic character and power until the closing period of his ministry” (124).
The messianic secret is not an attempt on the part of Jesus to keep people from knowing, believing in, and following him. But Jesus did seem to be careful throughout the Gospel of Mark to keep his identity as divine Son of God/Messiah from spreading. There are at least two reasons for this that I can see.
First, though Jesus is identified early in the Gospels as a miraculous healer and exorcist, early in his ministry is not yet time for his identity to be revealed. The fullness of time has simply not come. Perhaps Jesus had certain ministry objectives that needed to be accomplished before his crucifixion? He knew, either way, that as his fame spread, he would be tried and crucified for it. But this could only happen in due time.
Second, Jesus may have been cautious that a misunderstanding of the title “Messiah” would result if people were to say things like, “Here is the Messiah!” He was not the military insurrectionist and ruler than many Jews were expecting (I wrote more about this here), and he wanted to prevent title confusion, I suspect. So he often warned the evil spirits and those who received healing (and, as above, even the disciples!) not to tell anyone about him.
Even with those explanations in view, I still find the “messianic secret” difficult to understand. But perhaps this is because I am like Peter, in Mark 8:33, who all too often has in mind the things “of humanity” rather than “of God.” The messianic secret remains, at least to me, something of a mystery.
Words on the Word 