The NA28 Greek New Testament is now available for purchase in Accordance Bible Software. The text itself is free here. The Accordance version includes the apparatus, marginalia, and other nice enhancements. Here’s a screencast that shows how you can use the NA28 in Accordance:
More about the Nestle-Aland edition is here. Its Accordance product page is here, with an Accordance blog post about it here.
Sharpen your knife and your priestly reflexes: are you ready for the Ultimate Rule Book? Leviticus!
Play the role of a busy priest working to keep God happy by sacrificing choice offerings of sheep, goats, and bulls with frantic speed and slicing precision. Combo your actions and the rewards get BIBLICAL!
Three sacrificial services a day, seven days a week. Can YOU make it to Shabbat? Download Leviticus! and start swiping to find out!
That’s the real description of this real iPhone and iPad app: Leviticus! It sounds like Fruit Ninja meets the Hebrew Bible.
I don’t think Leviticus can be wholly reduced to a rule book (it is also all about covenant), and I don’t think sacrifices are best described as just an attempt to “keep God happy,” but there is a lot of detail in Leviticus that most of us struggle through when (if) we read it.
Here’s a screen shot. Not for the weak of stomach, though neither is Leviticus the book:
From Tablet (via the agade email list):
Titled Leviticus!, the game, as its title suggests, is both irreverent and deeply faithful to the source text—all that business about doves and cows and purity is right there in the book. But whereas Leviticus is too thick with rules to make for a very compelling read, it’s perfect when played.
As irreverent as this game first seemed to me, it may actually help one better understand the book. At least, that’s one of its purposes, according to the creator:
And education is at the heart of [Sarah] Lefton’s efforts. The game, she hopes, will do more than just amuse. “We brought something to very visual life that’s normally left on the page,” she said, “and that a lot of people just never study.” Believing that Jewish literacy and digital literacy make for excellent bedfellows—learning how to code and create applications that, in turn, are designed to enhance Jewish education and engagement—she now has future plans that involve not only the production of more games like Leviticus!, but also workshops teaching students and educators how to create their own Jewish-themed software.
The app is free, and found here. I don’t have an iPhone or iPad, so if anyone reading this downloads and tries it, I’d love to hear more about what you think. And it’s not April 1, so, as far as I know, the app is real.
Within minutes of each other I had Facebook connections posting on Google Glass and linking to Luci Shaw’s poem “Knitting in the Wild.”
First I watched the trailer for a new Google-pioneered technology. It’s sort of like having a smartphone on your face, which is perhaps best experienced through this clip rather than described:
The technology is astounding. To be able to see where I’m supposed to drive without having to touch or click on anything? I’d benefit from that. But I got a little sad at 0:36 when I saw a special moment between father and daughter recorded by Glass. Not because I don’t value taking photos and videos of my kids (I do it a lot here and on Facebook), but because there was something about Google Glass–a physical and technological object standing between, recording, mediating–that seemed to interrupt the here-ness of that moment, the now-ness of it.
Having flight info show up in my glasses when I’m at the airport would be cool, but this feels a little too much like the apocalyptic Overbrain my friends David and Tim keep warning us about. (I.e., when all of our thoughts, actions, and moments are connected to and subsumed by one giant Cloud.)
Minutes earlier someone in my news feed had posted a link to Luci Shaw’s “Knitting in the Wild”:
The pale bits—twigs, fibers,
pine needles—sun-struck,
fall through the lazy air
as if yearning to be embodied in
my knitting, like gold flecks woven into
a ceremonial robe.Then surprise—a new marvel!
Like a parachutist, a very small beetle
lands on the greeny stitch I have just
passed from left needle to right;
the creature’s burnished carapace
mirrors precisely the loop of glowing,
silky yarn that he has chosen.When this shawl ends up
warming someone’s shoulders,
will she sense the unexpected—
this glance, this gleam,
this life spark?
I don’t know how to knit. But, amazing as Google’s new technology is, I imagine that I will pick up a pair of single-point needles long before I put on Google Glass.
I’ve already mentioned my excitement about hearing some new Postal Service tracks. One of those new tracks is now released. Listen to “A Tattered Line of String” here.
How my 5-year-old son responds to the blizzard:
What my 2-year-old son does:
What our car looks like:
Well. This is some good news.
In the early to mid-2000s Ben Gibbard decided to spend all his music energies on Death Cab for Cutie and not do any more with side project The Postal Service. The latter’s Give Up (2003) is a classic. Dance music for indie kids, I always thought, but as the years have passed, I see it now as just downright great music. Fans of the duo have long wanted more than that one full-length album and the handful of EPs that followed.
With HT to my friend Mike (of the great band We Were Pirates), I’ve just found out that Give Up is getting a 10-year anniversary release. Here are the details from the band’s Website:
There’s a tour, too. New album to follow? That would be great. In the meantime, here’s The Postal Service’s “Sleeping In.” You can read more at their Website. Full album tracklist (via Pitchfork) is below the video.
Disc 1 (Original Album):
01 The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
02 Such Great Heights
03 Sleeping In
04 Nothing Better
05 Recycled Air
06 Clark Gable
07 We Will Become Silhouettes
08 This Place Is a Prison
09 Brand New Colony
10 Natural Anthem
Disc 2 (New Tracks, Rarities, B-Sides, Remixes, Cover Versions, Etc.)
01 Turn Around
02 A Tattered Line of String
03 Be Still My Heart
04 There’s Never Enough Time
05 Suddenly Everything Has Changed
06 Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) (Phil Collins cover)
07 Grow Old With Me
08 Such Great Heights (John Tejada Remix)
09 The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (DJ Downfall Persistent Beat Mix)
10 Be Still My Heart (Nobody Remix)
11 We Will Become Silhouettes (Matthew Dear Remix)
12 Nothing Better (Styrofoam Remix)
13 Recycled Air (Live on KEXP)
14 We Will Become Silhouettes (performed by the Shins)
15 Such Great Heights (Performed by Iron and Wine)
The full text of the new NA28 Greek New Testament is available online for free. No critical apparatus (that will probably be for-pay only), but it’s nice to be able to easily access the text now. You can go here to do that.
More about the Nestle-Aland edition is here.
I wondered tonight whether this week’s Greek Isaiah readings might have something to say to the recent school shooting in Connecticut. Indeed, here is Isaiah 2:17-19 (my translation from the Greek):
Then every person will be brought low,
and the haughtiness of humanity will collapse,
and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.And they will hide everything that is made by hand,
as they bring them into caves
and into the clefts of rocks
and into the holes of the earth,
from before the fear of the Lord
and from the glory of his strength,
when he rises up to strike the earth.
The word for that which is made by hand (τὰ χειροποίητα) refers to idols. But as I read this I couldn’t help but think of the promise from Psalm 46:
He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
…bows, spears, and shields, of course, all being made by hand. I suggested here that a 21st century way of reading that verse could be something like, “He crushes guns and diffuses bombs, he destroys human weapons of destruction.”
One day either we or God himself will bring all our weapons of destruction–indeed, all our evil inclinations–into “caves” and “into the clefts of rocks and into the holes of the earth,” as we recoil at the glory of God’s strength. He will make wars cease; he will end all senseless violence; he will crush evil and wipe it away from the face of the earth.
Lord, as we mourn in the meantime, please hasten that day.
Words on the Word 