November 29, 2008
I just realized tonght that my real name is available on wordpress for a domain. Thus, I moved the blog over there. So, rather than using the strange “last name + first two initials” formula my undergraduate school gave me for my email years ago, I’ll just go by my real full name.
So, with that, I hereby unveil:
www.paulburkhart.wordpress.com
So if anyone RSS’s this or keeps up with it in any way, just change your bookmark to that and we’ll keep having fun. Thank you for your understanding.
–paul
November 28, 2008
As ancient scribes copied manuscripts of Scripture, they sometimes wrote little notes to the reader in the margins or at the end of the document. Just read some of these “colophons” as they’re called. Some point out the difficulties of being a scribe:
“As travellers rejoice to see their home country, so also is the end of a book to those who toil [in writing].”
“The end of the book; thanks be to God!”‘
There wasn’t any talking allowed in the “Scriptorium” where the Scribes sat in groups to copy Scripture, so at times they would jot some notes to their neighbor in their own native tongue. At Princeton Theological Seminary there is a 9th century manuscript of a commentary on Psalms (from a Latin Scriptorium which apparently hired people from many regions) where we see written in the margins, in Irish, the following:
“It is cold today.”
“That is natural, it is winter”
“The lamp gives bad light”
“I feel quite dull today; I don’t know what’s wrong with me”
“It is time for us to begin to do some work”
Some things don’t change, I guess. But nevertheless, many scribes saw themselves doing God’s work and making it possible to have the Bible we have today. Thus, their work became worship.
“What happy application, what praiseworthy industry, to preach unto people by means of the hand, to untie the tongue by means of the fingers, to bring quiet salvation to mortals, and to fight the Devil’s insidious wiles with pen and ink! For every word of the Lord written by the Scribe is a wound inflicted on Satan. . . . Man multiplies the heavenly words, and in a certain metaphorical sense, if I may dare so to speak, three fingers are made to express the utterances of the Holy Trinity. O sight glorious to those who contemplate it carefully! The fast-travelling reed-pen writes down the holy words and thus avenges the malice of the Wicked One, who caused a reed to be used to smite the head of the Lord during his Passion.”
– Cassiodorus, 6th century
“O reader, in spiritual love forgive me, and pardon the daring of him who wrote, and turn his errors into some mystic good. . . . There is no scribe who will not pass away, but what his hands have written will remain for ever. Write nothing with your hand but that which you will be pleased to see at the resurrection. . . . May the Lord God Jesus Christ cause this holy copy to avail for the saving of the soul of the wretched man who wrote it.”
– anonymous, possible 2nd century
I hope you enjoyed this little lesson in textual criticism of the New Testament.
–p
November 21, 2008
I hate Christian cliches. With a passion. I really do. Few people have seen me more frustrated than when I talk about “pop Christianity”. I mean, potpourri at a Christian book store? “Testa-mints?” Really? Ugh.
Anyway, one of my big soapboxes is the misappropriation of the language Evangelicals use in relation to how the Bible describes things. The Bible never says “accept Jesus into your heart”, Jesus never gives an altar call, and Jesus never “knocks on the door of your heart” (that passage in Revelation is referring to Jesus knocking on the door of a church, not a heart).
One of my biggest frustrations was pounded into me by a good friend and minster. It was the use of “disciple” as a verb. As in “I am discipling him” or “I am being discipled by her”. I and my friends have often responded in an outcry of the Bible never uses disciple as a verb! You don’t ‘disciple’ anyone, you make disciples of Jesus!
Enter, Greek. In Greek class a couple of days ago we were studying the imperative mood of verbs. Well, sure enough, as is often the case, God took this moment to show me my pride and assumptions. In the famous Matthew 28:19 phrase “make disciples of all nations” that verb for “make disciples” is the 2 plural aorist imperative verb μαθητευσατε (matheteusate). This is the verb form of the noun μαθητης (mathetes) meaning “disciple”. The “make” is added by translators to stress the imperative/command sense. It literally means “to disciple”. It’s not two separate words for “make” and “disciple”.
So, I need to repent to all those I’ve been frustrated with for using the phrase. I also need to repent for talking bad about Jesus’ Bride and not trusting the Spirit of God to sanctify God’s Church, even in their pop culture and language.
until God’s next Sovereign moment of humbling,
