Collateral Bloggage

When I was in High School and college, I read most of the way through an NIV Bible (The Student Bible), but never finished.  It wasn’t until I had switched to the New American Standard that I finally finished a full read-through.  And even after that, it was some time until I did a cover-to-cover reading of an entire physical Bible.  At this point, I aim to read a different translation every year.   So, I buy myself a cheap copy of whatever translation I’m interested in, and off I go.

This year, I decided it was finally time to go back and do the New International Version, so I’ve been borrowing my son’s Adventure Bible.  My thoughts thus far?

I really liked the New King James.  Although I grew up mostly hearing the NIV in church, and many verses I know come from that translation, I just don’t really appreciate it.  Why?  Well, I don’t like the translation philosophy.  It’s dynamic equivalence, and I prefer formal equivalence.

Time for definitions.  Dynamic equivalence means the translation committee tried to translate thought-for-thought.  Formal means they tried to go word-for-word.  Now, it’s impossible to go word-for-word from the Greek, because word order and suchlike get in the way.  But formal equivalence means they tried to do it as much as humanly possible.

Why do I like it?  Well, I like to know what the original said, and if there’s a tricky turn of phrase or a Hebraism that’s hard for modern readers to understand, I like to know I can go look it up.  With a dynamic equivalence translation, the translator takes that task away from me.  So, basically, I’m reading translation with commentary.  If I want a commentary, I’ll read one.

Of course, like I said, even formal equivalence doesn’t mean I get word-for-word.  Which is why I’m trying to learn Greek.

Now, for the most part, and for the average reader, it doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans whether the translator went with dynamic or formal translation.  If the translator was honest and thorough, you’ll still end up with just about the same thing.  But every now and again (or maybe even just once), you end up with something stinky.  Example?  Head coverings for women.

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul discusses whether or not the women of Corinth (and by extension, all Christian women) should cover their heads during worship.  He discusses the issue quite thoroughly, seeming to lay out the background of the issue.

Now, whether he intended there to be a general teaching for all Christians in perpetuity or now is up for grabs (actually, I think the “it’s all cultural” argument is quite lame).  My concern, though, is what he actually taught?  Why?  Because this is one of those areas where you can read two translations and get two different takes on it.  In 1 Corinthians 11:16, Paul sums up the issue like this (in the NIV):

If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice, nor do the churches of God.

Cut and dried, right? Paul lays it out, then says if you don’t do it his way, you’re going against both his teaching and the practice of the whole Church. Strong words.

Okay, but what if that’s not what he meant? Try the New King James…

But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.

Wait. What? No such custom, or no other custom? Obviously, both translations cannot be correct. It’s either there’s no other custom, or there’s no such custom. Which did he mean? For this, we could compare a bunch of other translations, and we’d get a fair split on it. NASB sides with “other,” as does The Message (not that it carries any weight), while NRSV goes with “other.”

Here, we have to go to the Greek. I’ll spare you the lexicon search, but I’ll give you a link to it. I got it from the NET Bible, my new favorite site, and was surprised to see they sided with the NIV on this. Even stranger is this: there seems no warrant for it once you’ve read their lexicon entry (by the way, the word is toioutos):

Definition: 1) such as this, of this kind or sort

I did a search to see if this word is found anywhere else. Yeah. In 1 Corinthians alone, it’s found nine times (or at least variants of it are found). Only in verse 16 of Chapter 11 is it rendered “other.” Every other place (ironic I’m using other here, no?), it’s rendered in the “such as” range.

Why did this happen? I’d rather not speculate, because it looks like conspiracy to me. If you didn’t bring a pro-head-covering philosophy to the passage, and the word is clearly “such,” why would you go with a different translation which carried no precedents?

I hope I didn’t scare anybody off from reading and enjoying the NIV. It’s very readable (although it lacks the style of the New King James - which is not hard to read), and it’s the one found in most pew-backs in the U.S. But, I do hope I’ve emphasized for somebody why it’s important to read more than just one translation.

Wow, did this get long. Sorry about that. Imagine my Power of Purest Boring if ever I actually learn Greek…

Last week, on vacation, I learned my new favorite joke.  And here I will reprint it for my loyal readership.

“Have you heard of that movie, ‘Constipation’?”

“It hasn’t come out yet.”

This still makes me ROFL.

An alternate punchline would be, “It’s really slow.”

I was going to post the famous “Male Restroom Etiquette” Youtube, but it’s kinda gross, and I can’t be responsible for its content.  Even though I avow it is truly too funny.

If you ever want an adventure, travel to Seattle and try to find a hotel.  It’s awesome.  It’s inspiring.  It’s spontaneous travel at its best.  Now, our trip to Seattle had been on the books for a few days, at least, before we left the house.  But did we get reservations?  Nah, that’d take the fun out of not-being-able-to-stay-in-Seattle-due-to-everything-being-booked (possibly the Gamer Convention and Mariners-Red Sox game had something to do with it?).

Yeah, we ended up in a dive in Edmonds/Lynnwood.  Exactly as we planned.  Since the place did at least have free Wi-Fi (connected apparently to a 56k modem), we quickly secured lodging for the next night we’d need it.  Apparently this is commonly done by other travelers.  Now we know.

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While in Seattle, we took in a Mariners game and a third.  Seriously.  It was an extra-innings affair (12 innings, to be exact).  Unfortunately, our baseball mojo has apparently either worn off or gone over to the visiting teams.  We had an unbeaten home team record going, including two major league games and two minor league ones.  Streak broken.  Mariners lost 6-3.

Still, it was cool to see Ichiro! take away a home run from J.D. Drew and to see a couple of home team home runs.  It was also cool that the Mariners turned three double plays, but none of them were the common short to second to first (or permutations thereof) kind.  Instead, we had the lineout to second, runner doubled off first, strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out, and lineout to right, runner doubled off first kinds.  Most cool.  Unfortunately, the Red Sox turned a typical double play in the bottom of the 11th, with runners on first and third and only one out.  And then the Mariners loaded the bases in the bottom of the 12th and still couldn’t scratch out a win.  Bummer.

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If I had to name my top five favorite fruits, I’d struggle to come up with five varieties of peaches, but I’d come through in the end.  Because peaches, to my mind, are the pinnacle of God’s creation, proof of the common grace available to all.

It’s getting close to peach season in our area.  This is awesome.  If you somehow missed the Hood Strawberries, don’t make the same mistake with the peaches.

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Speaking of peaches, a word about Jossy Farms.  By the way, it’s pronounced “Joe-ssy.”  How do I know this?  Well, because I’m a frequent caller to their Sales Number, (503) 647-5234.  The proprietor always has a detailed (and hilariously animated) message on their voicemail, explaining which crops are available for picking and which ones may soon be ripe (or, in some cases, are completely gone).

Jossy Farms is a U-Pick farm with several varieties of peaches (Veterans are my favorites), Gravenstein Apples and Bartlett Pears.  Yum!  Some farms will let you come and harvest fruit well before it’s ripe.  Not Jossy Farms.  If you pick there, you won’t be disappointed, and it’s fairly convenient.  You can check their website out and get directions if you’re interested.

Oh, and the Redhaven Peaches apparently won’t be ripe until the second week in August.  Bummer.

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Trend-setter that I am, I’ve decided to read The Shack.  I picked it up a few weeks ago at Christian Supply, but it’s been collecting dust while I’ve been working through my stack of library books.  But, I finished the one book that was keeping me interested, so I decided to pick up The Shack and get started.  Along with everybody else in the world, from what I understand.  I may post a review here once I finish (Weirdly, after I started reading it, I picked up one of my library books again and found it engaging again.  So, I’ll be reading the two of them…give me a couple of weeks to slog through).

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And now, back to work.  Ugh.

Local Man Understands Infield Fly, But Not Women

BOSTON, MA - An area man who wishes to be known as High&Tight is good at understanding baseball.  Not so much women, though.  He finds it easier to understand the Infield Fly Rule than women.

“Who couldn’t understand the Infield Fly Rule?  Fewer than two outs, runners on first and second or bases loaded, the batter is out if Infield Fly is called.  What’s not to understand?  You don’t want the fielders to get a cheap double play, do you?”

Mr. Tight also boasted that he understood why a bunt popup could be played for just such a cheap double play.

“Well, bunts don’t qualify for Infield Fly, so that batter had better run or he’ll find himself popping up into a GIDP.”

For the uninitiate, GIDP means “grounded into double play.”

But, for some reason, understanding the vagaries of late inning strategies in the National League does not help him understand women.  Says Tight, “I can understand the Double Switch, but how am I supposed to understand women?  I mean, I can tell what pitch is coming next, but I can’t read a woman’s mind.”

Among the mysteries not understood by Mr. Tight are the following:

• The desire to talk about things -any things- during normal sleeping hours.
• The need for Chapstick.
• The reason women shouldn’t be required to put the toilet seat back up.
• The need to air a problem, without the need to have that problem solved.
• The need to watch Jane Austen movies over and over.

“Give me ‘two runners occupying the same base’ any day over those things,” said Mr. Tight.

At this time, Mr. Tight describes himself as “single by choice.”  He claims he may look for female companionship after the season, but thinks it might get in the way of his annual draft party and fantasy camp attendance.

Source: O. Handwasher

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Note: Mr. Handwasher understands baseball, for the most part, and does not claim to truly understand women, but thinks he does a little better than Mr. Tight.  It is definitely not significant that this article will be published while Mr. Handwasher and his wife are out of town.

I’m on vacation this week, but through the magic of Scheduled Posts, I bring you something I wrote on the 16th!!!

I recently read John Piper’s analysis of the Importance of Church Membership, and I think he makes some good points. I just think his overall premise is wrong. It’s natural that it should be wrong, given that the modern phenomenon of “a church of every flavor in every city” didn’t exist in the New Testament, so any apparently pro-church-membership arguments found there must be weighed against what they meant in their original context.

For a summary of Piper’s views, there’s a good synopsis here.

Basically, it boils down to the fact that we need church membership in order for the “members” of the local church to be properly discipled and disciplined.

Rubbish. Yes, we need accountability. But it strikes me that this emphasis on “membership” in a local church denies the membership of ALL CHRISTIANS in the Universal Church.

The notion that Paul’s comparison of the church to a body implies membership in a local body is just ridiculous, in my opinion. To me, that’s rewriting Paul. The more we subdivide the church, the less like a body it looks.

Paul vehemently denied that the church even could be divided.

In other words, if you were in Corinth and a believer, you were a member of that church. More than that, you were a member of the Church of Jesus Christ.

I submit myself to my local congregation, but I feel no pull to attending the membership class. I participate in worship and fellowship and volunteer my time in that body. Do I need some recognized membership? Would anyone in the congregation, seeing me up there holding a microphone, think I wasn’t a member because I haven’t taken the membership class? How many people take that class and then leave the church, or at least live lives that deny their membership? Yes, the church should be there to discipline them in those cases.  But it should also be there to discipline me if I go astray, member or not.

To me, we either agree with the Catholics that the Church is a monolith and has a visible organization, or we realize that the Church is an invisible entity otherwise known as the Kingdom of God. But what we cannot do is call the Church an invisible entity with a bunch of separate bodies with no connections to each other. Insisting on local church membership seems to be just that.

Now, for a bit of sanity, let me say that the idea of a church membership class is not a bad one. It’s a good idea, particularly for those new to the church or Christianity, to have a vehicle for expressing the basics of Christianity or the distinctives of the particular body. But I’d also submit that if someone attending the church can’t get that information by attending for a few months, the local church isn’t doing its job.

Maybe I’m way off here, and maybe I’ve misunderstood Piper.  Feel free to offer correction.

I have no idea how I’ve managed to post eleven Too Funny Tuesdays without hitting Dilbert.  Maybe it’s because I’ve only recently gotten an account on Dilbert.com.  A coworker sent out this series, and it’s very much in keeping with my view of management of major corporations.

It’s especially sweet to post something like this as I take a week off from the major corporation where I normally spend my days.  Biting the hand that feeds me?

just found out that Felix Hernandez will be the starting pitcher for the M’s at the Mariners-Red Sox game we’re attending on Wednesday.  This makes me glad.  When your favorite team is fairly lousy and you’re going to a game anyway, it doesn’t hurt when they send their ace out there when the other team is not lousy.  The opposing pitcher is Clay Buchholz, who threw a no-hitter last fall but has struggled a bit this year.  I’m looking for a Mariners win.  Woot!

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I sang on the worship team at church this weekend, and it was a blast, but a stretch for me. I did the special, and that went pretty well.  Actually, I felt really good about it.  But more on that later.  I was also the only male up there on the front vocals (there was another guy doing some vocals from his guitar).  Hence, I had to carry the melody on a couple of songs that are more tenor-friendly than lady-friendly.

Did I mention most of my melody-carrying happened in the Eleventh Hour?  That’s our more contemporary service.  That’s not generally my bag.  I’m more the lyric tenor, floaty-voiced dude.  So that made it interesting.

Even more interesting was when my Aviom (in-ear monitor) went completely dead right in the middle of the first chorus of “Happy Day” (which is an AWESOME song, but hardly an easy one).  Completely dead.  Battery.  Gone.  Of course, since everybody uses the in-ear thingies, we didn’t have the front wedge monitors going.

I was singing deaf.  On a song that was difficult.  And then on the next song, too.  Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice.  I think it went fine, and all I really noticed was an uptake in my sweat output.  But that’s hardly out of the range of normal for me anyway.

The lovely and talented Janet (our producer for the weekend) rescued me with a quick battery switch between songs (Ben the Guitar Dude was leading out on the next song, so I was free to dip backstage).

I console myself with the knowledge that I’ve had my mic go out before, and that is VERY noticeable.

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Did I mention Felix is pitching?  Still geeked about that.

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As I mentioned, I did the special this weekend, a song called “Questions for Heaven” by Chris Rice (why is it I always type “Christ” and then have to erase the “t”?).  It’s a light song about questions Mr. Rice would put to the Almighty if he could, but he’s willing to wait.  The band was its usual awesome self, and they put a really cool vibe on it.  I actually had somebody tell me it sounded Sting-y (not to be confused with stingy).

Funny thing.  Don (husband of the lovely and talented - like awesome worship leader talented - Jill) came into the greenroom after the second service and said he was sitting near an elderly gentleman (think 85 or so) who, after I finished singing, leaned over to his wife and said, “Who’s Evan?”

Let it sink in.

Henceforth and forevermore, the song shall be known as “Questions for Evan.”

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Felix.  Yeah, it’s that cool.

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One more thing about the singing this weekend.  Never let them see you sweat, right?  Yeah, that’s not at all on the list of possibilities for me.  So, don’t let them know you’re nervous, right?  Perfect.  I tell people all the time how nervous I get about soloing, and I usually get the (true or not, but nice to hear) response, “You didn’t look it.”

Here’s a tip:  If you don’t want the ENTIRE CONGREGATION to know you’re nervous, don’t tell the pastor.  Yeah.  Pastor Ron outed me as a bundle of nerves in both services.  Fun stuff.  At least he did it after I was done singing.  Then I got to hear the entire congregation doing the “You didn’t look it” applause.

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I will not be mentioning anything more about Felix, the Mariners, or baseball today.

Oh.

Report: Next Generation Questions Everything Except Questioning Everything

UBIQUITOUS, USA - The current crop of Next Generation Christians has discovered something novel: doing things differently than their parents did.

The big ticket items in this new edginess include listening to different music, questioning their parents’ politics, and rejecting the “main stream” of theology their parents subscribe to.

Spokesman from these NextGens insist that they are trying their best to “emerge” from beneath their parents’ shadows and take on a faith that’s all their own.  They’re challenging the status quo and not being satisfied with blindly accepting everything handed to them by their parents.

They are also, apparently, not buying into the materialism so rampant in their parents’ worldview.  They are even planning to, perhaps, vote for that “other guy” because he’ll bring change, and change is needed, because without change, nothing will ever change.

Today’s youth are also reading a lot of books, especially ones that “really speak to” them, even if all the books say basically the same thing: nothing.  The important thing in these books is apparently, “asking questions,” even if the books then provide no answers.  The questions are of the utmost importance.

This is a thing unheard of for at least the last several minutes.  It’s so radical that it’s only been done always.  Nobody’s telling the NextGens, of course.  Why burst their bubble?  They’ll conveniently forget they ever felt this way, eventually, and tell their kids they never were “that way.”

Source: O. Handwasher

I’ve noticed an intriguing symmetry in the Bible, running through the Old Testament and right into the New.  It’s all about Joshua.

The first time we encounter a biblical character by that name, he’s the right-hand-man to Moses.  But he was to go on to bigger things.  And what did Joshua go on to do?  Well, he took over for Moses and led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land.  So he was a big deal.

The next Joshua I want to bring up is a man usually referred to as “Jeshua,” but the Hebrew name is the same as Joshua.  What was his role?  He was the high priest in the time of the return of the exiles to the land of Israel after the Babylonian Captivity (he figures prominently in Nehemiah and Haggai).  He was a key figure in the post-exilic reformation that led to the Jews actually keeping the covenant in the centuries leading up to our final Joshua.

You might guess that Jesus is the final Joshua.  Many people are unaware that Jesus is simply the Greek rending of the Hebrew name Yeshua, which is the same as Joshua.  How do I know this?  Well, because I’ve read it and heard it taught by several Bible teachers.  But if you want a purely Biblical reason, check this out:

There’s no connection given between the name Jesus and the “save his people” thing.  But if you look up the name Joshua, you find that it means “Yahweh saves.”  Here’s the footnote from the NET Bible:

The Greek form of the name Ihsous, which was translated into Latin as Jesus, is the same as the Hebrew Yeshua (Joshua), which means “Yahweh saves” (Yahweh is typically rendered as “Lord” in the OT). It was a fairly common name among Jews in 1st century Palestine, as references to a number of people by this name in the LXX and Josephus indicate.

So, “Joshua” = “Jesus.”

I’m not going to really pontificate about this.  I just found it interesting that there are three critical periods in the history of Israel (inheriting the Promise, returning from Exile, and the New Covenant), and all three were ushered in by Jesus.

This is another reason that reading the OT is so interesting.

If you somehow managed to miss last week’s edition of Too Funny Tuesdays, go check it out. It’ll help with this week’s entry. It’s “The IT Crowd” again, and it’s my favorite scene from my favorite episode.

To set it up, you’ll want to know that Jen (the IT manager) is completely shoe-obsessed and is trying to talk herself out of buying a fabulous pair which has the unfortunate problem of being waaay too small for her. And all this while listening to Denholm drone on about stress. If you listen carefully, you’ll never look at a fire engine the same way.

The closing line of Denholm’s speech got me through some rough times at work.  I could load that thing up and get a laugh no matter how much of my lifeforce had been sucked out during a meeting.