As soon as I announced the first-ever Septuagint Studies Soirée (and here it is!), J.K. Gayle responded with “Breast God: women in the male literary imagination of Genesis 49.” Find his post here. In it he writes about how the Greek translators of Genesis 49 rendered God’s Hebrew title Shaddai… or, rather, didn’t:
Then I recall what the Septuagint translators did with Shaddai in Genesis 49. They were men, weren’t they? Yes, breasts are mentioned, and womb. These motherly wifely womanly female images are in the Hebraic Hellene. And absence, margin, lack is there.
James Dowden offered further lexical analysis (I loved the detail) with a response here. These two gents are fine thinkers. And they are, indeed, gents. Gayle makes a point to recognize this in his WOMBman’s Bible blog, with a post in which he asks whether the Septuagint itself might not be some sort of soirée. I always need to spend some time with Gayle to really plumb the depths of his insights, but it’s time well spent. A sampling:
In many fascinating ways, this act of translating into Hellene opens up the text. It opens the text up into the debates over how Greek males (such as Alexander’s teacher Aristotle) may control the Greek language for elite educated men of the Academy. The language control was to exclude not only women but also sophists, rhetoricians, ancient epic poets, more contemporary poets, colonists such as those in Soli who committed “solecisms” in writing, and BarBarians who spoke in foreign barbarisms.
Along similar lexical lines, Suzanne McCarthy (Gayle blogs with her at BLT) tackled “another pesky Hebrew gender question” via Hebrew, Latin, English, and, of course, Greek. McCarthy also wrote about Adam’s nose (rendered “face,” but should it be?) here.
LXX Leviticus. Source: The Schøyen Collection
Jim West complained about Septuagint-o-mania (has he read the New Testament? has he read BLT blog???) but then posted a bunch of LXX-related links not long after (phew–he has read his NT, at least).
In two of the more substantive Septuagint posts this month, Nijay Gupta (who has impeccable taste in seminaries) wrote about the importance of the Septuagint (with an eye to pastors, among others). Part 1 is here. His Part 2 looks more closely at the Apocrypha. (“There is ample evidence to show that Jesus, Paul, James, and others certainly were acquainted with the Apocrypha and probably positively influenced by texts like Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach.”) His part 2 concludes with the promise of more to come.
Speaking of which, Jessica Parks was posting some great stuff on LXX Susanna earlier in the summer, so keep an eye out for anything LXX-related she may post in the future. She is now posting on Cataclysmic blog.
Brian LePort posted a good bit on the Septuagint in August (and before). He wrote about exegeting the Septuagint (with attention to its literary context) and even theologizing from it!
This pre-dates August, but Blog of the Twelve posted a few LXX-related resources for consideration. And while we’re still dipping (but only briefly) back into July, Brian Davidson wrote about Matthew as a new Genesis.
Larry Hurtado mentioned that a book he co-edited with Paul L. Owen is now in (affordable) paperback. It’s called “Who Is This Son of Man?” The Latest Scholarship on a Puzzling Expression of the Historical Jesus, found here.
These are not blogs proper, and not terribly active of late, but still worth checking out are this B-Greek forum (link malfunctioning at time of posting) and this Yahoo! group for LXX. The IOSCS (mentioned above) has a great page with some news and announcements here.
Feel free to leave more August 2013 LXX links of interest in the comments.
The headline is not in error. BibleWorks does not make an app for iPad, still, but Parallels has just released an app called Parallels Access that allows you to use an iPad to access any computer–PC or Mac, desktop and laptop alike. They write:
Parallels Access ‘applifies’ your Windows and Mac applications, letting you remotely access and experience them as if they were made for iPad. Tap, swipe, pinch and scroll any Mac or PC software application – even if they were not optimized for the iPad – and get more done on-the-go!
More about the Parallels Access app is here. It’s free in the App Store, and you get a two-week free trial. After that it’s a fairy expensive (as apps go) subscription rate of $80/year. I hope to offer further insights about the app in the future on this blog, but for now, I’m pretty impressed that you can use your desktop and laptop programs as if they were (more or less) native to the iPad.
And more to the interests of this particular blog, here is what BibleWorks (using Mac Public Preview) on iPad (!) looks like, via Parallels Access (click to enlarge):
Here are the sentence diagrams. Click to enlarge, and notice how crisp everything looks. (This is on an iPad mini.)
Most remarkable to me is that the Use Tab feature works–in the desktop/laptop version of the program, this works by hovering over a word. In the Parallels Access version of BibleWorks, a single click on a word in the Browse Window activates the feature.
Astounding. As my friend and long-time college roommate would say: We’re in the future.
We’ve had quite the readings today. We get people sawed in half, passing through a sea, and a prostitute being saved because of her faith. People are getting raised from the dead, standing up to grisly torture, and beating armies that they didn’t stand a chance against.
And it’s all because of their faith. These heroes of our religious tradition put everything on the line because they believed in God and in the promises of God.
We might add to this chapter all the stories of men and women around the world today who by faith are looking forward to a heavenly city: followers of Jesus in China who advocate for human rights, under threat of arrest; Coptic Christians whose churches and houses and business are being burned by extremists as the unrest and violence in Egypt continues.
I’m amazed at the faith of some of our brothers and sisters, past and present.
So is the author of Hebrews. This well-known and well-loved faith chapter, Hebrews 11, seems to just build and build with the inspirational stories of saints and martyrs who have gone on before us.
Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua… Rahab–a prostitute! After praising the faith of each of these, the author goes on:
“And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies.”
Hebrews 11:39 ends the chapter just like it began, by echoing Hebrews 11:2–these women and men were all commended for their faith.
What’s the Author Doing Now?
I had a college professor, a philosophy professor, who told us in the first few days of class that none of us knew how to read a book.
Well, obviously, Dr. Talbot, we know how to read, or we wouldn’t be here.
(Philosophy majors generally have a pretty high estimation of their own intelligence.)
But he said (and I paraphrase), “I’ll bet you haven’t been taught how to really sit down and wrestle with a text. To read it slowly. To follow the logic and argument of a text.” Dr. Talbot said when you read you should always be asking, “What’s the author doing now? What’s the author doing now? What’s the author doing now?”
And he always said it like that, in threes–”What’s the author doing now? What’s the author doing now? What’s the author doing now?” Seared into my memory.
As I was reading the end of Hebrews 11 this week, I found myself asking, why is the author of Hebrews spending so much time talking about faith? Why so many examples of acts of faith? What’s the author doing now?
In one sense it’s a hard question to answer, since we don’t know who wrote Hebrews.
Was it Paul? Barnabas? Clement? Priscilla?
Probably not this guy
There have been various theories over the years. The go-to author for a New Testament letter would be Paul. But virtually all Biblical scholars today agree that it wasn’t Paul, because the language and style of Hebrews is different than what Paul used. Not only that, but the author of Hebrews writes as one who is depending on others’ eyewitness testimony regarding Jesus, whereas Paul in his letters speaks about seeing Jesus firsthand, about having had direct revelation from Jesus himself; think about his conversion on the road to Damascus, for example. Others have suggested Barnabas, one of Paul’s companions, Luke, Clement (an early Bishop of Rome), or sort of a fringe theory is Priscilla. She was another companion of Paul’s who theoretically would have left any letter she wrote anonymous, because a female author would have been culturally unacceptable at the time Hebrews was written.
There’s no way to prove any of these authors, and as early as the 3rd century, theologian and teacher Origen summed it up: “Who wrote this epistle? Only God knows!”
But we can still make some progress on the question, “What’s the author doing now?” even if we don’t know who the author is. All this talk of faith in Hebrews 11 seems to come because the recipients of the letter were lacking in faith.
Both inward and outward pressures led to the very real possibility that the readers of Hebrews would lose faith, some in small ways, others perhaps in bigger ways. The readers are told not to “drift away” or “neglect” their salvation. They are to “hold firm.” They are in a “struggle against sin,” the author writes.
Who You Are
So what’s the author doing now? What, in chapter 11, is he (or she) trying to accomplish with this group of readers?
The author is reminding them of who they are. Hebrews 11 tells story after story of faith throughout the Scriptures.
And there’s some pretty extreme stuff.
Gideon, for example, a judge and leader of Israel. In Judges 7 he sets out with 32,000 soldiers to take on the Midianites and God tells him to reduce his army to 300 people, so that when they win the battle, Israel can’t brag, because only God can win a battle with an army that small. That took faith on Gideon’s part. A really gutsy faith.
Daniel’s Answer to the King, by Briton Rivière, 1890
As for Daniel and his gutsy faith, someone once said, “The faith that will shut the mouth of lions must be more than a pious hope that they will not bite.”
Hebrews just rattles off these names quickly–“Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets.” There’s more where that came from, the author seems to be saying–I’m just giving you a sampling.
And it doesn’t seem that the readers of Hebrews are in the same kind of mortal danger. So if men and women can withstand torture, war, beatings, etc., then the readers of the Hebrews can have faith to face smaller things.
Faith may lead believers into physically dangerous and psychologically threatening situations. Faith may call you to uproot and leave everything familiar to follow God. We saw this two weeks ago when we looked at the faith story of Abraham and Sarah.
Or… faith may have you stay right here. Having faith can be a very local activity. It happens right where you are. Maybe God’s not really calling you to go anywhere else right now, in a geographical sense, but to invest more deeply in the relationships and situations you’re already in. And so we long for a wholehearted faith that infiltrates our everyday routines, activities, and interactions.
4th century church father John Chrysostom said, “Faithfulness in little things is a big thing.”
“Makes Me Wanna Buy School Supplies”
I’d wager that a number of us find ourselves in such a position, as a new school year begins. We enter back into a familiar routine. And there’s excitement early on.
I love that line from You’ve Got Mail, where Tom Hanks says, “Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
But it doesn’t take long for excitement and novelty to turn into daily routine. Those newly sharpened pencils get worn down a bit, but we still have to find a way to write.
Hebrews calls for a redoubling of efforts, a reaffirmation of trust in God in the midst of the unknown and the familiar. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
Faith doesn’t always mean going somewhere else. Sometimes it takes all the faith and trust you can muster to apply yourself to a situation or set of questions or relationships that are already at hand. Faith is local.
The readers of Hebrews were being called to be faithful right where they were.
Great Cloud of Witnesses, “Watching Us from the Grandstands”
And then, the grand finale to the faith section, Hebrews 12:1-2:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us”–Let us run with steadfast endurance. Never give up. “Never, never, never, never give up.” Some have pointed out in this passage that perseverance, when mentioned in the context of running a race, probably speaks to a long-distance race rather than a sprint. You have to pace yourself, but stay steady.
We want to “throw off” all hindrances and sin, which so sneakily and deceptively tries to just pull us in.
And we can have a persevering faith because in some timeless, global sense we are surrounded by this “great cloud of witnesses.” It’s a massive support network, past and present, of people who have been in similar situations to ours–and worse–and somehow have managed to keep their trust in God.
Think of what they call “cloud computing”–iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud. If we get it set up right, we can access our same set of data from our phone, computer, and tablets. “The cloud” is everywhere, when it comes to computing.
We are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses.” They’re everywhere, just like data! In some sense, the women and men, past and present, local and global, who inspire us, are present to us… surrounding us.
Denominations have been divided over questions like this–who are the saints? To what extent are they present? Can they hear our prayers? Receive them? Should we pray for dead Christians?
But the unknown author of Hebrews seems not to really be concerned with those questions. The author just says, “We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.”
We get the imagery of a stadium here. We’re running a race. This isn’t a run alone in the woods (as much as we might love those); this is a run in a stadium with a massive crowd of witnesses–of faith examples–surrounding us as we run, cheering us on. When we’re tired we can look at them and recall their successful races, and get a new boost to keep going ourselves.
The Living Bible translation says: “[W]e have such a huge crowd of men [and women] of faith watching us from the grandstands.”
The Greatest Witness in the Whole Cloud
The chief of these witnesses is Jesus. He is the “author” of our faith–the very reason we can have faith to begin with. He is the “perfecter” of our faith–he “[carries] on to completion” the good work he started in us.
Men and women in Hebrews 11 may have stared down deep waters, undergone beatings, been ridiculed, and more… but Jesus “endured the cross” because of “the joy set before him.”
Jesus is the ultimate exemplar of faith. Out of the great cloud of witnesses, he is the greatest witness.
Whether having faith in God leads us into places far or near, situations dangerous or fairly safe, we find inspiration in that great grandstand of saints who have gone before us. We receive encouragement from those saints sitting next to us each week in church.
As we run, may we keep focused on Jesus, who enables our faith and can even increase it. May God give us faith for where we are, right now, until that day when at last we see Jesus, at the right hand of the throne of God.
The above is adapted from the sermon I preached this past Sunday. See my other sermons, if you desire, here.
Which Bible software program should I buy? My answer to that question continues to be the most-visited post at Words on the Word. In it I offer a comparative review of BibleWorks (9), Logos (4 and 5), and Accordance (10).
A fourth popular Bible study software is by Olive Tree. Their “Bible Study App” works in the following platforms:
iPad
iPhone
Mac on Lion
Windows 8
Windows Desktop
Android
I’ve installed the app on a Mac and an iPad, and have received the NA28 Greek New Testament to review. In a short series of posts, I’ll report on the Bible Study App, and how it allows users to interact with the NA28 text and critical apparatus. Here I review the Mac version, using a MacBook laptop.
My opening screen, when I open the NA28 from my Library, looks like this (click to enlarge):
The interface of the left sidebar resembles that of the Mac Finder windows. In addition the sidebar affords immediate (in-app) access to the Olive Tree store. Once you click on “Book Store,” you see a screen that slightly resembles the iTunes store:
You can hide the sidebar and hide or customize the toolbar on top.
By clicking on the “Tools & Notes” icon on the top right (from the first screen shot above), I can open a second window (Olive Tree calls this “the split window”):
I have several options at the top of the split window: Resource Guide, Notes, etc.
With the NA28 open, I quickly found four ways to navigate to a given verse–each of the three shown below, as well as a right-click option to select a verse.
For the NA28 with apparatus, I open the text in the left window and the apparatus in the right. Clicking on a word or hovering over it will show its morphological information (i.e., parsing and gloss) either through a pop-up menu (when clicking) or through the “Quick Details” at bottom left in the shot below (when hovering):
Getting right to work within the program (with just the occasional reference to help files and a quick start guide) was easy enough. I didn’t find getting the two windows side-by-side to be as quickly intuitive as I would have liked, but I don’t know yet whether that’s a weakness in the program or just my newness to it. The interface is clean and visually appealing. I’ve already been impressed with all that’s available in the Olive Tree store.
More to come. In the meantime, Olive Tree has a blog post of their own on using the NA28 here.
Thanks to Olive Tree for the NA28 with Critical Apparatus, Mounce Parsings, and Concise Dictionary for the purposes of this blog review.You can find that product here.
This past week I was reminded why I’ve so much appreciated going through Isaiah slowly, just five or so verses a day. I wrote about a new observation I had (i.e., new to me) here.
This week and next week in Greek Isaiah in a Year will cover Isaiah 47:1-49:11. Here are the readings for each day:
08/26/13 Isa 47:1–5
08/27/13 Isa 47:6–10
08/28/13 Isa 47:11–15
08/29/13 Isa 48:1–5
08/30/13 Isa 48:6–11
09/02/13 Isa 48:12–16
09/03/13 Isa 48:17–22
09/04/13 Isa 49:1–3
09/05/13 Isa 49:4–7
09/06/13 Isa 49:8–11
Below is the text from R.R. Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint, first in Greek, then with his English translation. Ottley is also here in Logos (reviewed here) and here as a free, downloadable pdf in the public domain. The full reading plan for our group is here (pdf).
See here for more resources and links to texts for Greek Isaiah.
47 1 Come down, sit upon the ground, virgin daughter of Babylon; enter into the darkness, daughter of the Chaldaeans, for no longer shalt thou be any more called tender and delicate.
2 Take a millstone, grind meal, take off thy covering, uncover thy grey hairs, make bare the legs, pass through rivers.
3 Thy shame shall be uncovered, thy reproaches shall appear; I will do justice upon thee, no longer will I deliver thee over unto men,
4 Saith thy deliverer, the Lord of Hosts, his name is the Holy One of Israel.
5 Sit down in amazement, enter into the darkness, daughter of the Chaldaeans: no longer shalt thou be called the strength of a kingdom.
6 I was provoked at my people, thou defiledst mine inheritance: I gave (them) into thine hand, and thou showedst them no mercy; thou didst make the yoke of the elder very heavy.
7 And thou saidst, I shall be a princess for ever; thou perceivedst not this in thine heart, neither didst remember the last things.
8 But now hear this, delicate one, that sittest, that art confident, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and there is none other; I shall not sit as a widow, nor shall I come to know bereavement.
9 But now shall there come suddenly these two things in one day, widowhood and childlessness shall come suddenly upon thee in thy witchcraft; in the strength of thine enchantments exceeding greatly,
10 In the hope of thy wickedness; for thou saidst, I am, and there is no other: learn thou, that the understanding of these things and thy harlotry shall be thy shame: and thou saidst in thine heart, I am, and there is no other.
11 And there shall come upon thee destruction, and thou shalt not perceive it; a pit, and thou shalt fall into it: and there shall come misery upon thee, and thou shalt not be able to be clear of it: and there shall come destruction suddenly upon thee, and thou shalt not perceive it.
12 Stand now in thine enchantments, and thine abundant witchcraft, which thou didst learn from thy youth, to see if thou canst be helped:
13 Thou hast grown weary in thy counsels: let the astrologers of the heaven stand and save thee; let them who look on the stars declare to thee what is purposed to come upon thee.
14 Behold, all shall be burnt up as brushwood upon a fire, and they shall not deliver their soul from the flame; since thou hast coals of fire, sit thereon.
15 These shall be thy help: thou didst weary thyself in thy traffic from thy youth: each went astray by himself; but for thee shall be no salvation.
48 1 Hear ye this, house of Jacob, ye that are called by the name of Israel, and that have come forth from Judah, ye that swear by the name of the Lord God of Israel, calling him to mind not with truth, nor with righteousness,
2 And holding by the name of the holy city, and staying yourselves upon the God of Israel: the Lord of Hosts is his name.
3 Still have I declared the former things, and out of my mouth went they forth, and came to be heard: I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.
4 I perceive that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass.
5 And I declared to thee the things of old, before they came upon thee; I made it to be heard of thee, lest thou shouldest say, Mine idols have done it, and say, The graven and the molten images have commanded me.
6 Ye have heard all, and ye perceived not; but I have also made to be heard of thee the new things from henceforth which shall come to pass; and thou saidst not,
7 Now come they to pass, and not long since, and not in former days didst thou hear of them; lest thou shouldest say, Yea, I perceive them.
8 Thou didst neither perceive nor know, nor did I open thine ears from the beginning; for I perceived that thou wouldest utterly set them at nought, and thou shalt be called a transgressor even from the womb.
9 For my name’s sake will I show thee my wrath, and my glorious deeds will I bring upon thee, that I may not utterly destroy thee.
10 Behold, I have sold thee, not for silver; and I delivered thee out of the furnace of beggary.
11 For mine own sake will I do it unto thee; for my name is polluted, and my glory will I not give to another.
12 Hear me, Jacob, and Israel, whom I call; I am first, and I am for everlasting:
13 And mine hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand established the heaven; I will call them, and they shall stand together.
14 And all shall be gathered together, and shall hearken. Who declared these things unto them? Because I loved thee, I did this upon Babylon, thy will, to destroy the seed of the Chaldaeans.
15 I spake, I called him, led him, and made his way prosperous.
16 Draw near unto me, and hear ye this; from the beginning have I not spoken in secret, nor in a dark place of the earth; when it came to pass, there was I, and now the Lord hath sent me, and his spirit.
17 Thus saith the Lord, thy deliverer, the Holy One of Israel: <I am thy God,> I have shown to thee, that thou mayest find the way wherein thou shalt walk.
18 And if thou hadst hearkened to my commandments, thy peace should have been made as a river, and thy righteousness as a wave of the sea;
19 And thy seed should have become as sand, and the offspring of thy womb as the dust of the earth; nor shalt thou now be utterly destroyed, nor shall thy name perish before me.
20 Come thou forth from Babylon, fleeing from the Chaldaeans; proclaim ye the voice of joy, and let this be heard, report it to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath delivered his people Jacob.
21 And if they be thirsty, he will bring them through the wilderness, he will bring water for them out of a rock; a rock shall be cleft, and water shall flow, and my people shall drink.
22 There is no rejoicing, saith the Lord, for the wicked.
49 1 Hearken to me, ye isles, and attend to me, ye nations; after long time shall it stand, saith the Lord. From my mother’s womb he called my name,
2 And set my mouth as a sharp sword, and under the shelter of his hand he hid me; he made me as a chosen arrow, and in his quiver he sheltered me,
3 And said unto me, Thou art my bondman, Israel, and in thee will I be glorified.
4 And I said, Vainly have I laboured, in vain and for nought have I given my strength; therefore my judgment is from the Lord, and my toil before my God.
5 And now thus saith the Lord, that formed me from the womb his bondslave, to gather together Jacob and Israel unto him, I will be gathered, and will be glorified before the Lord, and my God shall be my strength.
6 And he said to me, It is a great thing for thee, that thou mayest be called my servant, that thou mayest set up the tribes of Jacob, and turn again the dispersion of Israel; behold, I have set thee for a light of nations, that thou mayest be for salvation unto the end of the earth.
7 Thus saith the Lord thy deliverer, the God of Israel, Sanctify him that lightly esteemeth his soul, him that is held abominable by the nations, the slaves of the rulers; kings shall see him, and rulers shall rise up and worship him for the Lord’s sake: for faithful is the Holy One of Israel, and I chose thee.
8 Thus saith the Lord, In an acceptable time I heard thee, and in a day of salvation I helped thee, and gave thee for a covenant of nations, to establish the earth, and to cause to inherit an heritage of a desert,
9 Saying to them that are in bonds, Go forth, and (bidding) them that are in darkness be revealed. And in all the ways they shall feed, and in all paths is their pasture.
10 They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall burning heat nor sun smite them; but he that hath mercy on them shall comfort them, and lead them through springs of waters:
11 And I will turn every mountain into a way, and every path into a pasture for them.
Vocabulary cards have done wonders for my efforts to learn Greek and Hebrew. (And, really, anything else I put on a two-sided card.) Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be reviewing a number of Greek and Hebrew vocabulary apps for iOS, with the iPad specifically in view. Today I review Zondervan’s Basics of Biblical GreekVocabulary Cards app.
The above picture is the opening screen, following the branding and design of the popular textbook by William D. Mounce. Yet it is additionally keyed to five other popular beginning Greek grammars. This makes the app flexible to a number of students, so that they can be learning their exact vocabulary lists as presented by any of these textbooks. You can select the a book in the settings section:
Words first appear on the screen like this:
Then by tapping or swiping up or down, the English meaning is revealed:
Swiping left or right from a Greek word goes just through the Greek words and doesn’t show English. (Tapping the double arrow keys at the bottom of the screen does the same.)
From what I can tell, the gloss (English “meaning”/equivalent) stays the same regardless of which grammar you select. This may be a rights or permission issue–that Zondervan would just use Mounce’s word glosses, even with the other grammars–but users of other textbooks besides Mounce’s should be aware of this.
Verbs helpfully come with principal parts, displayed once you tap or swipe to show the English:
Note also the audio icon on the bottom right of the screen above (just to the left of the “Quiz” button). For any given card, tapping on that icon plays an audio pronunciation of the word, which is a nice add-on, compared to the print cards. You can also set pronunciations to “on” in the preferences section, so that you automatically hear it every time you show a new word.
There is a glitch when switching to landscape mode. The same card as above looks like this in landscape orientation:
That’s a pretty noticeable bug for such a simple and common function/gesture on an iPad, so I hope Zondervan fixes it soon. Along similar lines, another un-iPadlike bit of behavior is that if you close a case/cover to put your screen to sleep while the app is open, when you wake up the iPad, it shows the opening screen every time. It does remember your place, but to see the opening screen in such an instance seems odd. I don’t know of any other apps that do that.
Here is the “Sort” screen that shows all the ways you can customize the set of cards you want to go through. This is the app’s greatest strength.
As you can see, you can sort not only by grammar, but also by chapter. For someone going sequentially through a textbook, this is a good feature. (It has the same effect as just “pulling” given chapters from one’s vocab card deck, though note that you can only select consecutive chapters here.) You can also quiz yourself by a single part of speech: “any,” noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, or particle.
There are frequency settings, too, so that one can easily isolate words that appear just 50 to 100 times in the New Testament, for example.
I experienced it as a fairly significant loss (compared to the print cards) that these cards do not have frequency information on them. On the print cards you can see how many times a word appears in the Greek New Testament. Here there is no way to do so. You can set the frequency of what words you’ll study, but if you selected words with 50-500 occurrences, there would be no way to differentiate from within that set. The best you can do is to study a set within a range of frequencies by descending frequency (i.e., with most frequent words coming first in the “deck” you create for yourself).
Here’s what a card looks like when you send it into “Quiz Mode”:
This feature works well and is a good way to track progress. You see the Greek first, then tap or swipe to see the English, then tap the red X or green check mark to show if you got it right or wrong. Then the app tracks your answers for a quiz score when you’re done:
Using the icons at the bottom left of the above shot, you can either reset or shuffle a given deck:
At $20, the Basics of Biblical Greek app is more expensive than most iPad apps a person would buy. There are other vocabulary app options on the market that do a similar thing (with even more customizability) for a lower price. I’ll explore some of those options in the future. I’m not convinced that the $20 is warranted with the app in its current iteration–I’d like to see a fix of the landscape mode option, as well as the addition of frequency statistics for individual words. The font is easy to read (though not the same font as used in Mounce’s materials), and the audio pronunciation is a nice addition.
8/27/13 UPDATE: I’ve heard from a developer that an update to the app will be released very soon that includes word frequency counts on the individual cards, fixes the landscape orientation bug shown above, and an English to Greek vocabulary card function. (This last one is a great idea, especially.) I know the developers are open to suggestions, so if you have used this app and have any ideas, feel free to leave a comment here. Future updates to the app will include additional features, as well.
The app is here, via the iTunes store. If and as it receives any future updates, I’ll post about them here.
Thanks to Zondervan for the complimentary app, given to me for the purposes of a review, with no expectations or pressures as to the content of this review.
The Oxford Comma is one thing. I support it and will for all time. But what about the disappearance of the ill-fated vocative comma?
When addressed to a person or group of people, a sentence that names said person(s) ought to have a comma in place like this:
Michael, take out the trash.
Hi, Betty.
Welcome, tourists!
But it seems to be going by the wayside. You’re hard-pressed to find, “Michael take out the trash” but “Hi Betty” and “Welcome tourists” are fairly ubiquitous. (And technically not correct.)
However, many say that conventions of grammar, usage, punctuation, etc. do and should follow how people actually speak, write, and use words.
So will the Vocative Comma go the way of the Oxford Comma?
Last call for nominations for any blog posts (or articles, etc.) you think should be nominated for the Septuagint Studies Soirée. I’ll be posting it in just a couple of days, so let me know if you see anything you think should be included.
You can comment here or on the original post, or email me using this form.
A dear friend recently remarked (wryly) that he saw a lot of “for dummies” books on my shelves. One of those books is a sort of bible of blogging: Blogging All-in-One for Dummies.
Why blog? I answered that question a year ago, shortly after starting Words on the Word, and again six months in. More than a year later, I’ve had the chance to spend some time with Susan Gunelius’s massive work.
It consists of “8 Books in 1,” or “minibooks,” as Gunelius describes them inside. Each minibook (and each chapter therein) is meant to stand alone. (It’s easy to read and use the book this way.) The minibooks range from 65 to 136 pages each. A basic glossary and carefully compiled index round out the 700+ pages in the book. It carries like a phone book, but with thicker paper, still of the newsprint variety.
The work aims to be (and is) “a complete guide to blogging, all in one place.” The author writes “primarily for a beginner audience–people who have never blogged,” but as noted below, there is plenty of advanced information for even the “skilled bloggers” she also has in mind.
Here are the eight overarching topics that Gunelius treats:
Book I: Joining the Blogosphere
Blogging 101–from the history of blogs to the types of blogs, including motivations behind different blogs and how to make them successful. This is a sort of quick start guide. Particularly helpful for beginners here are the screenshots showing the various parts of a blog (comments, trackbacks, home page, etc.). The “Blogging Rules and Ethics” section is essential reading.
Book II: Niche Blogging
Niche blogs “usually fill a void that other, larger blogs are missing but audiences want.” There are some drawbacks to niche blogging, Gunelius notes, like a smaller audience and less traffic, but there are still unique opportunities for monetization (which she treats more at length later in Book VII) and building relationships with others who have a similar area of interest.
Book III: Corporate and Business Blogging
Using examples of business blogs (“Companies That Do It Right”) like Southwest Airlines, Zappos, and Wine Library TV, the author shows how to build an online brand through blogging. She notes a “fine line… between publishing promotional content on your business blog that is useful and valued by readers and publishing so much promotional content that your blog is viewed as all marketing and no substance.” There are practical, simple pieces of advice, too: have a giveaway contest, include social media links for sharing your blog posts, responding to comments. The content here is not exceedingly advanced, but addresses appropriately the target audience of … well… dummies (i.e., beginners).
Book IV: Choosing a Blogging Application
This is one of the most useful minibooks. Even if a would-be blogger is ready with good content, topics, and publicity, knowing what medium to use can be a challenge. Here Gunelius offers a guided tour (again, complete with screenshots) of WordPress, Google Blogger, TypePad, and Tumblr. She includes both free and paid options in her analysis. I’ve been using WordPress for a year, and had no idea about all the free themes available at the WordPress Themes site she mentioned.
Book V: Blogging Tools
Once you’ve got a blog, this minibook looks at SEO (search engine optimization), measuring blog traffic, using images, blog feeds, and more. This is probably the most advanced material in the book, that even non-beginners will find useful. Her almost pastoral admonition to “try to refrain from checking your blog’s statistics every day” (i.e., “worrying about daily traffic fluctuations”) is a needed one for many bloggers.
Book VI: Promoting and Growing Your Blog
More advanced material here. She covers contests, guest blogging (whether you do it elsewhere or host it on your blog), “social bookmarking,” and other ways to increase site traffic.
Book VII: Making Money from Your Blog
Most bloggers (hopefully) realize blogging is not a terribly lucrative business, especially not in its initial stages (i.e., first couple years). But there are still ways to make money from blogging–whether that is through ad placement, merchandising, or participation in affiliate programs. Gunelius begins this minibook as she so often does, with the big picture: “[Y]ou need to determine what your blogging goals are and then decide whether publishing ads on your blog in an attempt to make some money matches those goals or runs counter to them.” Especially helpful is the short section on the Federal Trade Commission’s guidelines for any “material connection” a blogger has with a company or product they are reviewing or advertising.
Book VIII: Microblogging with Twitter
Ah, Twitter. I wrongly predicted its demise just months after its inception. “Microblogging” might be too strong a word for how some people use the site (“wordbutchering” could be more appropriate?). I’m not sure Gunelius’s “Everyone is tweeting!” assessment is completely on target, but she is right, I think, that Twitter and other “microblogging” services go beyond what just 140 characters of text can offer. And because microblogging is “convenient, far-reaching, and free,” bloggers ought to pay attention to it. Gunelius takes the reader deep into the world of tweeting, URL shorteners, hashtags, and third-party Twitter applications.
Blogging All-in-One for Dummies is engaging and easy to read. Gunelius is clearly an expert on this topic, and this encyclopedic work bears that out. Copious screenshots and diagrams give visual reinforcement to the text throughout. The index and clearly delineated chapters make it a highly useable reference work–one which I know I’ll turn to often as I continue to blog! It’s a great one-stop shop for bloggers or those who would be bloggers. Yes, even still in 2013.
You can see more about Blogging-All-in-One for Dummies at Amazon here (affiliate link) or here (Wiley’s product page, including an excerpt and the full table of contents). The book’s “cheat sheet” is available here. Many thanks to Wiley for the gratis review copy for the purposes of my writing an objective review.
“St. Paul Writing His Epistles,” by Valentin de Boulogne (17th Cent.)
For the first time that I can remember (after nearly 30 years of reading the Bible) I noticed the connection between Isaiah 45:23 and Philippians 2:10-11.
Paul clearly sees this Isaiah passage as being “about” Jesus.
Isaiah 45:23
English: …because to me every knee shall bow and every tongue acknowledge (=confess) God…
English:
…that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow
(in heaven and on earth and under the earth)
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
While Isaiah speaks of tongues’ acknowledging God (i.e., confessing belief and trust in God), Paul says more specifically that every tongue will confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Paul carries over “God” (θεός) from Isaiah, but explicitly names Jesus Christ as the sovereign Lord (κύριος) over all.
T. Michael Law’s When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible went on tour. A multi-stop tour. Find all the posts gathered here at Near Emmaus. Oxford University Press, First Things, and Near Emmaus interviewed him.
Words on the Word 