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What do you make of it?
[The MP3 was produced by a husband and wife team, and together with a very good essay explaining and justifying the performance it was submitted for the last assignment in the Genesis class I taught recently. I shared some of the thinking behind this assessment on Theologians without borders.]
Labels: audio, audio.bible, genesis, teaching
¶ 4:12 PM
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Some authors achieve this status because their thinking is so clear, and their communication so straight and clear that one must either agree or disagree with them - they polarise. [Some of us are so good at seeing every facet of an issue that following our thought is like walking through untracked forest, a series of tiny decisions,rather than one momentous one...] Lewis earned his "brand" that way, and so has Carson.
He addresses a Christian approach to technology, and begins (predictaby) with Rom 12:2 and (also predictably?) 2 Cor 10:5. He states that "the most dangerous movements in any age are those that are so widely assumed that it is very hard to see them" supporting his case with reference to history, though any cross-cultural worker will be as aware that today's assumptions by Western Christians look very different in most of the world.
After an interesting, though to readers of this blog unsurprising, rehearsal of some features of current digital techno-culture he concludes:
We need to hear competing voices of information from the world around us, use our time in the digital world wisely, and learn to shut that world down when it becomes more important to get up in the morning and answer emails than it does to get up and read the Bible and pray. We may also learn much from church history, where we observe fellow believers in other times and cultures learning the shape of faithfulness. We begin to detect how easily the "world" may squeeze us into its mold. We soon learn that adequate response is more than mere mental resolve, mere disciplined observance of the principle "garbage in, garbage out" (after all, we are what we think), though it is not less than that. The gospel is the power of God issuing in salvation. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and living in the shadow of the cross and resurrection, we find ourselves wanting to be conformed to the Lord Jesus, wanting to be as holy and as wise as pardoned sinners can be this side of the consummation.Do read the whole editorial (HTML or PDF), and since Themelios does not have a comment feature (how I wish the church, and especially Evangelical Christians, would recognise that openness and discussion are healthy and not persist in old authoritarian modes of discourse) you are welcome to post any short responses
Labels: internet, technology, theology, thinking
¶ 12:54 PM
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As well as playing continuously a student can step through, or jump around just clicking on the phrase they want to hear:
Neat! Fred, the programmer who is preparing the program has just released a new version, but is not sure it can handle RTL languages with strange scripts. See http://talkingdocs.org/ ¶ 2:54 PM
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After making this video available to the world and her uncle (if she lets her uncle share her Internet connection, as most of the world [outside Western culture] does [and even inside Western culture close family are usually allowed the odd share]), Danny then ponders the future: "as I am trying to ultimately get them published, I’m not sure how many more to share freely online
".
Labels: culture, digital, funding, internet
¶ 8:47 AM
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I agree whole heartedly with your post, but is that more than day dreaming? I think in the realm of theology and biblical studies some hard questions need to be asked about the availability of scholarship. Why do academics who are payed salaries by institutions need to make money out of selling stuff? if they are being paid a living wage they should be glad to share the fruit of their labours for the glory of God.
As for Danny, setting a verb table to frere jaques is hardly something he could copywrite. It's a nice thing to share, but no one would pay money for that, it doesn't require any particular skill or specialist equipment to do. Danny should stop worrying about cashing in and feel the joy of giving.
By 
Jonathan Robinson, at
December 18, 2008 3:13 PM
Well thanks for the encouraging words Jonathan. As a matter of fact they are copyrighted and if it did not require any particular skill it would probably been done already. These songs and videos took a whole lot of time and effort. And I think that mixers and professional recording equipment and software are "specialist" equipment.
Time will tell I guess if people will pay money, but my students have been encouraging/harassing me through this semester to try and publish these. And I have several colleagues who have also encouraged me and are ready to endorse it, and I am talking to a publisher right now.
Perhaps it is different where you work or live, but the problem is that academics in biblical studies, especially those that choose to work in a confessional institution, choose pretty low salaries and are sometimes struggling to live on their wage. I'm not quite rolling in the money working at a seminary, in fact I'm in a lot of debt.
Trust me, I am not worrying about cashing in on this. I made them for my Greek students to help them. And if I don't have them picked up by a publisher I won't lose any sleep. I have already felt the joy of giving these and the enormous time I put into teaching, which I take very seriously as I believe it is my spiritual gift. I don't think any of this negates trying to have this better distributed by a publisher and hopefully earning a little something.
If I wanted to earn money, I could have done a lot of other things.
By Danny Zacharias, at
December 19, 2008 2:54 PM
May i apologise unreservedly to Danny and to Tim for what appears to have been an unwarranted personal attack on Danny. I should have walked away for minute before posting and i would have said things differently. I did not mean to impune Danny's motives (I have never met him) nor the effectiveness of his learning aids (nothing works better than a catchy tune). Nuff said.
By Jonathan Robinson, at
December 19, 2008 4:10 PM
thanks. (I understand saying things too off the cuff, I've done it too)
Frank has another fine post, on Humanitarian Chronicle, this time he points out how the impulse to spend is the sign of a deep-rooted addiction in Western culture. He began:Allow me to make a confession - I have come to the realisation that I am an obsessive consumer. The sad thing is that in my world consuming is so normal, encouraged and needed for the survival of the economy in which I exist that I, like many other such addicts, have been mostly blind to my addictive compulsion. It’s placated so often without question that I’ve never been subject to the withdrawals and tendencies that drive my addiction to buy and consume.Do you think, like his first commenter "I have always been a thrifty person myself so probably struggle a bit less."? I wonder, of the two most thrifty people I know round here, there is only one I do not suspect of suffering those moments that begin "with a thought - 'hmmmmm, I feel like a…' Presently I try to ignore that little thought."
So, how's your spending? Can you survive without feeding the consumption addiction? Or do you try to assuage the beast with a little purchase?
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no, I can't afford to be addicted to spending...my wife and I live on very, very, very little income.
By mike, at
December 17, 2008 3:35 PM
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It was also interesting to discover that, although in NZ as a whole names like Smith, Wilson, Brown, Williams, Taylor, Jones... filled the top ten, with only the possibly amgiguous Lee at number ten suggesting the non-Anglo-Saxon component of contemporary NZ, looking at Auckland City gives a very different picture with only half the top ten being Anglo names, and Patel, Lee and Wang all in the top five.
Labels: bulkeley, fun, names, nz
¶ 1:31 PM
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I must be a suspicious person, according to Lifehacker only 4% of Internet users got all ten answers correct in the phishing quiz here.I thought they were mainly easy to spot. I had most difficulty with the ones that were genuine ;) all my instincts screamed things like: "You don't have an account with them! Spam it!"
What do you think?
Have I got a nasty suspicious mind, or were these scams fairly easy to spot?
Labels: internet
¶ 10:34 AM
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Phil writes:
The word for “land” is the fourth most common word in the Hebrew Bible, appearing several thousand times. On the other hand there are less than one hundred occurrences of the Greek word for “land” in the New Testament, and very few of these refer to the Land of Israel. The competing claims of the State of Israel and the Palestinian people to the “Land” depends in part on the biblical understanding of the notion of the Land of Promise, and calls for a biblical and theological response.The keynote speaker is Dr Peter W.L. Walker (Tutor in New Testament & Biblical Theology) @ Wycliffe Hall, Oxford who "has written and lectured extensively on the questions of the Temple, the City of Jerusalem and the Land in the NT. He will give the keynote address and sum up at the end of the Day."
I suspect this is too far for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere to travel, though I am sure we could arrange hosting if you did ;)
PS: If any of you, especially any of you in the South Pacific region would like to post about this on your blogs you would not only make Phil happy (and so me happy) but you might help convince LCGS that it was time to uprgade their web presence now that we have entered the century of the Fruit Bat * ;)
Labels: biblical.studies
¶ 3:45 PM
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Very interesting! I hope I'm around! :)
The dillettant in question is a male, who from his description must be middle aged (at least) however Jim illustrates his "Biblical Studies Dilettante Award" with an image of a young girl. This is WRONG, if the stupidity was committed by a middle aged male use a picture of a stupid middle aged male. As it is Jim seems to be suggesting that young blonde women are typically stupid, my daughter is a young blonde, and I'd bet on her rather than Jim (or most other middle aged male bloggers) in an IQ test.
Labels: biblical.studies.online, stupidity
¶ 2:30 PM
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Actually, Jim designated Jessica Simpson his official dilettante spokesmodel a few days ago in response to her desire to study the Bible based on some tv shows.
Yeah, you hadda be there.
Chuck Grantham
By 
goulablogger, at
December 12, 2008 4:47 PM
I see your point. But it's not just *any* young blonde woman. It's Jessica Simpson. I'm with Jim on this one. She is an excellent example of public stupidity.
By patmccullough.com, at
December 12, 2008 5:41 PM
Yes, Jessica Simpson is not one of this world's brighter bulbs, but I agree with Tim that reinforcing the stereotype that blonde women are stupid really isn't helpful.
By Judy Redman, at
December 13, 2008 12:08 AM
Yeah, but Jessica Simpson is darned if she does and darned if she doesn't. First she's ridiculed for being stupid but then when she expresses an interest in acquiring a theological education she's ridiculed for her motives. How exactly do the Jessica Simpsons of the world catch a break?
But not today. In his post Tools for creating your own web site he assumes that "you" will learn to use an HTML editor to make your site. A dozen years ago that was necessary, not long before that we had to hand craft our code in a text editor, five or six years ago using Dreamweaver or a free HTML editor was still the norm. But not today. To make a church website, or a personal site, today just use Wordpress (or if you want to host it on your own domain use Wordpress). It is (fairly) easy to adapt, anyone can edit and update, and it is free. With widgets and such it is fairly easy to do pretty much anything...
I created a simple site for our small church and in just a month or two people are already beginning to write it themselves - and longer term it will facilitate discussion, something a static site will not achieve. The Wordpress "Sermon Plugin" enables complex sermon audio recording archiving, you can even use Wordpress as a mini-social networking site (your very own local Facebook ;)
So, sorry, don't use Kompozer it is so 90s, do the 21st century thing and make the site in Wordpress, or if you need something more complex a full blown CMS... If WP is too techie for you there are loads of online build it yourself sites there is no need for a time machine, really ;) there's even a design-your-own-Wordpress-theme tool for total beginners!
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there's also the wordpress Reftagger plugin too, which is fantastic for scripture references - though it only works on non-wordpress.com sites.
By mike, at
December 10, 2008 1:48 PM
The first Christmas was likely in summer!
Remember those shepherds "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night"? Do you remember also Jesus' talk of sheepfolds (in John 10)? The habit, at least in areas near a village, was to pen sheep at night.
So, why were the shepherds "keeping watch over their flock" "in the fields" at night? The peasant farmers round Bethlehem ("house of bread") would hardly want sheep trampling their fields of grain! (Few fields were fenced or walled in those parts.) 
However, after the harvest, things were different, sheep ate the stubble and, following digestion, their excretions fertilised the fields. At that season, sheep in the fields makes sense. Harvest would be in summertime. If there were sheep in the fields near Bethlehem at night then it seems likely that God ordained the first Christmas for summertime.[PS: Bite my Bible has a post claiming erroneous calculations by an Aussie astronomer are behind thoughts of a summer Christmas Jesus was a Gemini? they ask, while (by implication) answering "No!" - I think they are wrong Bite my Bible is too cautious by half ;) ]
Labels: bible, christmas, geography, Luke
¶ 6:56 AM
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I am a kitten, not a Kerr. Without scholarship, where the careful and systematic study is lacking, all sorts of weird and wild ideas flourish (just look at the average American "Evangelical" website - or see the summaries offered by John Hobbins in The Poisoning of the Evangelical Mind: Antidotes or follow his links to the series of fundagelical posts by Michael Pahl). It may look as if we kittens are merely tangling balls of wool, but the tangling and untangling helps those who pay attention to avoid a worse tangling of the very ideas by which they live!
So - to David, I'll sound like Jim (scholarship is the governor which holds back our faith from the worst extremes of which it is capable) and to Jim, I'll sound like David (any biblical study which does not begin and end in the community of believers is vanity).
Labels: baptist, bible, biblical.studies
¶ 10:22 AM
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For misspelling my name and rhyming it with cur I am going to have to get ugly.
By David Ker, at
December 8, 2008 12:33 PM
presumably it is safer in the dead centre than crossing a lane from one side to the other. I've grown very attached to the flush meridians the Kiwis put everywhere, and a good safe centre space allows many more pedestrians to safely cross eitherway. Lets keep the ivory tower and the babble tower but make more room for hanging out between them.
By Jonathan Robinson, at
December 8, 2008 4:28 PM
@ David Ker: For spelling your name wrongly (yet again, and demonstrating my inability to learn again) I am deeply sorry. On your personal beauty I cannot comment - since we have never met face to face - "I am going to have to get ugly" you might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment ;)
@ others: sorry I am just home after a day away from home and off to bed soon, I'll respond tomorrow, but thank you for the helpful comments!
By Tim, at
December 8, 2008 9:09 PM
Thanks, Tim,
for a sage reply.
Shemot/Exodus 13:4-8 from a modern Mikraot Gedolot (Wikipedia)
Jace Clayton, who performs music as DJ /Rupture, has an elegant demonstration of this in the Silver Shed gallery in New York right now. A spindle attached to the wall of the gallery is full of CD-ROMs, free to visitors; if you take a CD home and stick it into your computer, you'll find that it contains all of Clayton's commercially available music - 130 MP3s, 550 Mb, six and a half hours of music. One catch: Clayton has destroyed all of the metadata for the tracks. Each file is named something like "DJ_Rupture.mp3" (you can't have 130 files with the same name, of course, so the punctuation varies). Track names, album information, dates have all been erased; if you dump the MP3s into iTunes, there's the artist's name but nothing else.
A photo of the Merneptah stele
(Cairo Museum) from Wikipedia
On this view biblical studies is (almost) all about metadata. Whether one is a secular scholar, interested primarily in the history, culture or literature of the Ancient Levant, or a religious reader, interested primarily in the contemporary significance of an authoritative Scripture, it is the metadata which makes meaning.
In one case the primary set of metadata is historical: date, place of writing, author if known, other works from the same genre etc... in the other this set plays some part, but the primary metadata is the canon, whose other works provide a framework and context for reading, along with the tradition of interpreters and interpretations who have passed this canon on to us.
It is small wonder that "the guild" has such an identity crisis at present, we have moved from a situation where the religious readers were thoroughly dominant, through one where the "historians" (for want of a better term) have become dominant in the academy, but in which those willing to pay for our "product" (publications and teaching) are very predominantly still religious readers. Recognising the metadata that gives meaning to the texts, and the relative importance of different sets of such data, can help clarify this issue... ¶ 4:17 PM
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This boggles my mind. I'm tired of interacting with people that are smarter than me. I think I'm going to reactivate my Facebook account.
By David Ker, at
December 7, 2008 11:03 AM
In this context, the comment made by April DeConick as point 2 in her post about dating our sources is relevant. The fact that the text of the canon is not the original text, but a composite formed from a range of manuscripts copied centuries after the originals were written causes significant challenges for the average religious reader. Most would prefer just to ignore this.
Yes, we are the house behind the trees, down the drive, beside all the mailboxes, you can't miss us!Well, that was not a lot of help... so here's the bach:
Again, we are the house behind the vegetation, but this time you can see a bit of us, and a great shot of the neighbour's car ;)However, I've saved the best till last, here is Carey:
I'm not sure what Google's millions have bought us, but frankly I'll return to those beautiful and useful satellite shots. Street View is not getting a slot on my Bookmarks Toolbar :(
¶ 2:34 PM
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