Septuagint Sunday: I Heart Maccabees


I’d give away half a bookshelf worth of books to see Mark Wahlberg or Matt Damon star in a film adaptation of 1 Maccabees. Judas Maccabeus (“Hammer” will be his nom de film) and his Hasmonean family drive out imperial powers and call the Jewish people back to faithful observance of the Torah. They do it with great violence, against all odds. (This would be an action movie, and not for small children.)

Here’s how Jonathan A. Goldstein, in his 1 Maccabees Anchor Bible commentary, begins his introduction. Try to call to mind that deep male voice that does movie trailer voice-overs:

The faithful Israelite living in Judaea under the rule of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids in the third and second centuries B.C.E. learned from childhood that the LORD’s chosen people had nothing to fear if they kept the LORD’s commandments. Subjection to the great empires of Persia and the Hellenistic kings had brought stability and security over long periods, which in part compensated for galling exploitation and servitude and for episodes of devastating warfare. Then, under the Seleucid Antiochus IV from 167 to 164 B.C.E., obedience to the LORD’s commandments became a crime punished with extreme severity. No harsher trial ever tested the monotheistic faith of the Jews.

[Cue music swell.] Goldstein/our movie trailer goes on:

The outcome was entirely unexpected: the desperate resistance of the Jews prevailed, and for a time the “yoke of foreign empires” was lifted from the Jews as they became independent under the Hasmonaean dynasty. After the centuries of heartbreaking delay, were the glorious predictions of the prophets of a mighty restored Israel being fulfilled?

That’s got to be good watching, folks. It’s certainly making for great reading! (I’m focusing on the first four chapters for a directed study for one of my seminary classes.) Here is a “Quick and Dirty Summary” of 1 Maccabees from Gordon College professor Ted Hildebrandt.

As I wrote in an earlier post about the Septuagint:

Books like 1 Maccabees, especially, fill out the intertestamental gap between Malachi and Matthew. I’ve been working my way through 1 Maccabees lately, and it’s really helping me better understand Jewish expectation of a conquering Messiah who would expel oppressive Roman rule.

Good book. Would make an awesome movie. The Maccabean Identity? Or, perhaps, simply: I Heart Maccabees.

Avoid plagiarism like the plague

Charles Halton writes about how one can avoid plagiarism. He links in his post to a set of tutorials from Duke that help students identify (and avoid) plagiarism. Good reading for all. I’m not a professor, but… oh, the stories I could tell!

And as for Bart’s presence above… one good Simpsons/academia piece of media deserves another.

The Bible as Narrative… sort of

I always bristle a little bit whenever I read things like, “The Bible is not a set of rules to follow or doctrinal propositions to which we must assent. It is a story to live into.”

I’ll give you that the Bible, among other things, tells the story of God’s great redemptive love for his people. And God does invite us–through Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit–to dwell in the blessed realities of his story. Many parts of the Bible are narratives. And the disparate books of the Bible, I firmly believe, join together in a unity that we can rightly call “the Bible,” which does have a grand sweep and storyline.

But it’s not all story, and to call it just that leaves out some important things.

The 10 Commandments are, actually, rules. Verily, they are even a list of rules to follow.

And there are doctrinal propositions to which confessing Christians must assent. I think of the Scripturally-rooted, “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again,” for example. Or Paul’s great confession of faith in 1 Corinthians 15.

Leslie Leyland Fields calls for Bible readers to carefully rethink “narrative theology,” calling instead for a more robust, “literary theology” of the Bible. In a new Christianity Today article she writes:

Story, as all high-school English students know, relies not simply on what happened but also on the language and literary devices used to tell it: metaphor, description, analogy, repetition, parable, image. Nor does this larger narrative movement pay heed to the other literary genres God chose to speak his words through—poetry, lament, epistle, proclamation, prophesy.

I don’t agree with everything in her article. For example, I wonder whether some of my emergent / ex-emergent / “postmodern” / postpostmodern friends would agree with her representations of that movement. (Although I love this line of hers: “[Rob] Bell defines even hell in terms of story: ‘Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story,’ which I found to be the most frustrating line in all of Love Wins, which I otherwise didn’t think quite as offensive as others did.)

Her cautions are words of wisdom. And I think she’s right on the money with the title and thesis of her article. Read “The Gospel is More Than a Story” here.

BibleWorks out of the box: Review of BibleWorks 9, part 1 (setup and layout)

The perennial question: Should I upgrade my BibleWorks program? I was perfectly happy with BibleWorks 7 until I upgraded to 8. (Then I was really happy with 8.) I thought 8 was such a vast improvement that when 9 came out, I saw no need… at least until I got to know version 9 a little better. Versions 7 or 8 are certainly still powerful in their own right, but my upgrade to 9 has been a great experience so far. In this and future posts, I’ll highlight why. Today: BibleWorks 9, out of the box.

The installation is easy and quick. I consider myself somewhat proficient when it comes to computer know-how, but certainly don’t have programming expertise. No matter. BibleWorks is easy to install and keep updated. And the BibleWorks staff is constant in making updates available if and as they find bugs in the program. Better than any other computer software I’ve used, in this sense.

BibleWorks 9 comes with a “Quick-Start Guide,” which has the Installation Instructions (they are mercifully short–three pages and easy to follow) and a 12-page Orientation to BibleWorks guide. The guide focuses on the Search Window, the Browse Window, and the Analysis Window, and gives instructions and specific examples as to how to best utilize each in studying the Biblical text. My only quibble with the helpful guide is that the images contained therein seem to be from BibleWorks 8, not 9. But that doesn’t really keep it from doing what it needs to, namely, quickly and effectively orienting the new or only somewhat experienced user to using the program well. (The instructions do detail the contents of the new tabs in version 9.)

BibleWorks 9 adds a delicious fourth column (essentially, a second analysis window). It looks like this (click on the png below for a larger view, if you wish):

Already this opens more options. There are also more available tabs in the Analysis Window. For example, the new “Use” tab, in my third column above, instantaneously shows you all the uses of a word with how many occurrences it has in that book and version (here, the WTT=Hebrew Bible). You had to search on a word in previous versions to do this (using the first column above). I find this particularly useful for vocabulary acquisition. As I come across a word I don’t know in the text, I can easily see–does this occur 121 times and I should know it? Or is it just in the text two or three times, so I was okay in not knowing right away what it means?

The “Verse” tab and the “Mss” tabs are new, too–those are worthy of their own post. (Anyone familiar with BibleWorks, whether they have 9 or not, may already know that this new version allows you to look at and work with images of original manuscripts.)

And, what I find best of all, you can drag and drop the tabs between the third and fourth columns so that you can customize your setup. I had already figured out a setup so that I had my own equivalent of a “fourth column” in BibleWorks 8. Now I can do even more! Check this out (from a previous post):

It’s a thing of beauty.

BibleWorks has unbeatable customer service. The user forums are active and always helpful. (Good things to know when you’re considering getting set up with them.) And they’ve provided quite a few videos to show users their way around the program. If you don’t want to wait for the rest of my review, you can see all that’s new in BibleWorks 9 here. You can order the full program here or upgrade here. It’s even on Amazon!

I received a free upgrade to BibleWorks 9 in exchange for an unbiased review. See my prolegomenon to a review here.

Family Friday goes to the Olympics: Less ball sports, more boat sports

Image: John David Merce,, USA TODAY Sports

Olympic volleyball on the TV evoked two different reactions from our two boys the other day. The two-year-old started jumping up and down on the bed chanting, “Vol-ley-BALL! Vol-ley-BALL!”

This same two-year-old had at another time been lounging on the bed until he saw a gymnast come on, at which point he stood up on the bed and lifted his hands straight up in the air, high above his head. He tumbled forward in his best effort at a somersault.

The four-year-old, on the other hand, seeing volleyball on TV, said, “I don’t want to watch any more ball sports… I want to watch a BOAT sport.”

Son, I’m sorry you didn’t get to watch it yesterday, but you’ll be glad to know that the women’s eight rowing team has won the gold.

William L. Lane free downloads on the Gospel of Mark

Here’s a link to a Mark teaching series that Dr. William L. Lane led at Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN in 1998. He’s the author of the commentary pictured at right, one of the best for the Gospel of Mark. (Click on the image to look inside the book at Amazon.) From the By/For site:

This Mark teaching series is led by Dr. William L. Lane, author of The Gospel According to Mark from the New International Commentary on the New Testament series. This series was the final time Dr. Lane lectured on Mark.

The study page includes a pdf file of class notes and 13 lectures by Dr. Lane. See it all here.

“Do Olympic Swimmers Pee in the Pool?”

Breaking news: Olympic swimmers pee in the pool. A lot. From a former USA national team member:

Before a race is an interesting time. It depends on the meet and to some extent the color of the pool deck. I kid you not. You always try to pee before you swim, but sometimes your body defies logic and finds a way to refill your bladder just to spite you. Adrenaline and nerves wreak havoc on your system, and I knew tons of other swimmers that always, regardless of prior planning, had to pee right before a race. What to do if you’re desperate?

Read the whole thing here.

It was all sex and the Septuagint

Here are my top five most-visited posts for the month of July. It was all sex and the Septuagint (and BibleWorks!). Much more is coming this month on BibleWorks, as I will be reviewing BibleWorks 9.

1. Sex as colonization?

2. Why you need the Septuagint (now featuring two new updates about Jesus and the Septuagint)

3. BibleWorks in the pew? (Not quite, but the next best thing)

4. BibleWorks and the Septuagint

5. Sex as colonization? A reply to my comment, and my reply back

If you haven’t already, you can vote here for what you want to keep seeing at Words on the Word.