Category Archives: Fun!

Sometimes sarcasm

Biblioblog versus Biblicablog

So, because Esteban brought up my suggestion made in Biblical Studies Carnival XXVI (search the page for “biblicablog”) for an alternative monicker for blogs devoted to Bible-related issues, namely “biblicablog” in preference to the unspecific and widely otherwise-used “biblioblog,” I myself have bitten the bullet to count usage. In a Google search of “biblioblog” I received 552 hits. I just looked at every single one of those hits and made a tally of whether “biblioblog” is used in reference to Bible-related blogs, or general book-related blogs, including book reviews, library sites, etc. The findings:

Biblical: 129
Book-related: 360
Uncertain/neither: 5

So, on usage alone, we should find in favor of my neologism biblicablog, which with its seven Google hits, 4 relate to Biblical Studies, and 3 are domain name lists, so uncertain or unclaimed. It is, however, quite certain that no one wishing to form a blog of book reviews or on library science would choose any of the biblicablog domains, simply because the root biblica- refers to the Bible exclusively.

Now, I understand there is a certain amount of inertia, if not stubbornness involved in sticking with “biblioblog” as a description blogs devoted to Biblical Studies. But the word does not mean that etymologically, and usage is likewise against it, not merely in English, but internationally. Take a look at biblioblog.de and biblioblog.fr, for instance, or go ahead and do the whole Google thing yourself and see how overwhelmingly, by a factor of 2 to 1, biblioblog is used in reference to book- or library-related blogs, thus hewing closer to the root meaning of biblio- as referring to books in general and not merely one specific subset of books (ta biblia) or one book (the Bible).

Sticking to “biblioblog” and maintaining that its referent is “Biblical Studies” or more widely the Bible is what I’ve always thought of as a Humpty-Dumptyism:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean

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International Septuagint Day!

On the LXX list, Bob Kraft reminds us (once and twice) that today is International Septuagint Day!

To quote the inestimably esteemed Professor Kraft: “Do something septuagintal today, from a septuaginarian.”

The date was established last year by the IOSCS in 2006, reflecting, as Kraft says, “the one date we know of from late antiquity on which LXX/OG/Aquila received special attention (in Justinian’s Novella 146).” This novella (or imperial rescript or command) permitted the Jews of the empire (which now included much of the just-recovered west) to read the Scriptures in their synagogues in Greek, Latin, or any language they choose. Previous laws had restricted their public readings to Hebrew. This novella was published 8 February 553 AD.

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Biblical Studies Carnival XXVI

As exemplars of the half-life of internet involvement, old Biblical Studies Carnival posts are telling. Most of the participants in the first forty or so no longer blog, some have passed away. Links are broken (in more ways than one), and not just people, but entire blogs and websites are gone. It’s odd to see what people were so intensely focused on way back in the misty past of 31 January 2008, which seems much longer ago than it is. (I’ve some advice for me back then which I would share with me!) The below is my own, and only, compilation of a Biblical Studies Carnival. It was well-received. So I have retained it whilst I purge the rest.

Welcome to the Biblical Studies Carnival XXVI, covering blog postings made on subjects of academic Biblical Studies over the course of January 2008 (give or take a nickel). It’s been a productive month, so this is a very long carnival.

I was going to use a rather humorous theme or artifice for this carnival, preceding every heading with “Jesus'” so as to have things like “Jesus’ Tomb Symposium,” “Jesus’ Seal Discovered,” and “Jesus’ Paragaogic Nun Discussion,” because it seems these days to be all the rage to claim that various things belong to Jesus: ossuaries, tombs, and whatnot; however, after reviewing the entries for the initial subject, with my levity dampened and diplomacy worn thin, my concern is to avoid making this field of studies any more of a laughingstock than it already is. If only that concern were universally shared!

To begin with, I will open this carnival with some perceptive words on the role of the critic from the well-known poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot:

At one time I was inclined to take the extreme position that the only critics worth reading were the critics who practised, and practised well, the art of which they wrote. But I had to stretch this frame to make some important inclusions; and I have since been in search of a formula which should cover everything I wished to include, even if it included more than I wanted. And the most important qualification which I have been able to find, which accounts for the peculiar importance of the criticism of practitioners, is that a critic must have a very highly developed sense of fact. This is by no means a trifling or frequent gift. And it is not one which easily wins popular commendations. The sense of fact is something very slow to develop, and its complete development means perhaps the very pinnacle of civilization. For there are so many spheres of fact to be mastered, and our outermost sphere of fact, of knowledge, of control, will be ringed with narcotic fancies in the sphere beyond. To the member of the Browning Study Circle, the discussion of poets about poetry may seem arid, technical, and limited. It is merely that the practitioners have clarified and reduced to a state of fact all the feelings that the member can only enjoy in the most nebulous form; the dry technique implies, for those who have mastered it, all that the member thrills to; only that has been made into something precise, tractable, under control. That, at all events, is one reason for the value of the practitioner’s criticism—he is dealing with his facts, and he can help us to do the same.

And at every level of criticism I find the same necessity regnant. There is a large part of critical writing which consists in ‘interpreting’ an author, a work. This is not on the level of the Study Circle either; it occasionally happens that one person obtains an understanding of another, or a creative writer, which he can partially communicate, and which we feel to be true and illuminating. It is difficult to confirm the ‘interpretation’ by external evidence. To anyone who is skilled in fact on this level there will be evidence enough. But who is to prove his own skill? And for every success in this type of writing there are thousands of impostures. Instead of insight, you get a fiction. Your test is to apply it again and again to the original, with your view to the original to guide you. But there is no one to guarantee your competence, and once again we find ourselves in a dilemna.

We must ourselves decide what it useful to us and what is not; and it is quite likely that we are not competent to decide. But it is fairly certain that ‘interpretation’ (I am not touching upon the acrostic element in literature) is only legitimate when it is not interpretation at all, but merely putting the reader in possession of facts which he would otherwise have missed.
Excerpted from the essay, “The Function of Criticism,” section IV

Continue reading “Biblical Studies Carnival XXVI”

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The Silvered Wings of a Dove

I’ve been tagged!

Why in prayer do we say: who will give me wings like a dove that I might fly away and be at peace?, that is: who will give me the wings of the Holy Spirit? And in another place the prophetic word is pleased to say: if you have rested in the inheritance, you will have the silvered wings of a dove, with its back in the splendour of gold. For if we have rested among the inheritance of the Old and the New Testaments, there will be given to us the silvered wings of a dove, that is the words of God, his back radiant with shining gold and splendour so that our sense may be infused with the senses of the Holy Spirit, that is, that word and mind may be fulfilled by his coming and we may not speak something we do not understand, except at his suggestion, and all sanctification in Christ Jesus may come, as to our heart, so too to our words and deeds by the Holy Spirit….

Fr Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery, p. 123, quoting from Origen’s Commentary on Luke

Here are the rules:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

I tag Maureen, Fr Gregory, Kevin, John, and Iyov.

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Per decem annos

I’ve been tagged.

1977: In the middle of sixth grade, we moved from Ohio, where I’d been in school since first grade with a bunch of great friends, to California, where I knew no one. The weather was an improvement, but the public schooling was not, the Ohio schools being vastly superior at the time. I, a sixth grader, ended up as a tutor to a fifth grade class. The school officials wouldn’t let me transfer to the honors school, because, they said, my having always been in honors classes I instead needed socialization with “normal” students. Welcome to California, the land of fruits and nuts….

1987: This was the second year of my studies at UC Berkeley, in the Near Eastern Studies department, with a Classical Hebrew emphasis (Biblical through Mishnaic), a program run by Jacob Milgrom at the time. I was also a reader (a paper-grader) for Isaac Kikawada, a lecturer, from whom I learned the foundation and many background stories of Ancient Near Eastern scholarship. I was in my second year of both Biblical and Modern Hebrew, and my first year of Akkadian. This may have been the happiest year of my life.

1997: I was two years into doing IT support for the UC Berkeley Library system (which has twenty-odd branch libraries all over the campus). They’re still using the help desk system that I put together for them at that time.

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Which Byzantine Ruler Are You?

From Mike Aquilina’s The Way of the Fathers blog, the Which Byzantie Ruler Are You? quiz.

Which am I? Why, Saint Justinian, of course! (He was in mind as I giggled my way through answering the questions!) Here’s Mike’s blurb on this undeniably great emperor:

In the sixth century, Justinian accomplished the brief recovery of the empire’s old territory in the east, in Africa, and in the west. His victories, however, were hard won over the course of decades, and they came at a great cost in human life, not to mention taxation. Paradoxically, Justinian’s military successes probably contributed to the empire’s subsequent decline. The conquered lands were hardly secure, and many were lost in the years after his death. During his reign there was a great flowering of Byzantine culture, whose monuments remain in Istanbul (e.g., Hagia Sophia) and Ravenna. His reconstitution of Roman law, the so-called Justinian Code, is still the basis of civil law in some modern states. Justinian is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church.

Next to Justinian’s law code, we have several important different works on this period from a man very close to the Emperor, the consiliarius of the great general Belisarius, Procopius of Caesarea, who wrote the extraordinary Wars in eight books (Loeb edition: Books 1-2, Books 3-4, Books 5-6.15, Books 6.16-7.35, Books 7.36-8) chronicling Justinian’s reign and Belisarius’ remarkably successful campaigns, and the Buildings (in a volume with a general index to all the Loeb Procopius volumes), describing Justinian’s magnificent building program which included the Great Church, the Hagia Sophia. He also wrote the unfortunate Anekdota, often called The Secret History (Loeb volume), an embittered attack on Justinian, Theodora, the Church, the State and apparently anything else that entered Procopius’ sight. (Procopius seems not to have been a happy man.) Ostensibly a continuation or supplement to the Wars, the work is marred by the bitterness of its invective, and sometimes outright viciousness. This makes it, owing to the delight in gossipy trash so reflective of popular culture, the most well-known of his works. Of course.

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Fishers of Men

At that time, as Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left their boat and their father, and followed him. And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people.

Matthew 4.18-23, today’s reading in the Greek Orthodox lectionary.

Once I got home today, I happened to see a nice travel show about the Cinque Terra region of Italy, five little towns hugging the coast in the northwest of the country, their multistoried pastel buildings seeming to tumble eagerly down the slopes to the sea. One interesting thing that they showed, which took on new importance to me having heard today’s Gospel reading, was the anchovy fishing of Vernazza, one of the five towns.

First, you should know that the inhabitants of these towns number in the hundreds, not thousands, and their families date back centuries, and some families or groups have developed specialties through the centuries. So, I don’t know if it’s one family that does the anchovy fishing or several, but it’s an organized cooperative effort of a small group of men in Vernazza.

Anchovy fishing is done at night, when everyone else is asleep. There are several small boats used, each with a light at the bow. The small boats, with their lights, row hither and thither, seemingly aimlessly, attracting schools of anchovies with their lights. Then, slowly but surely, the small boats head together toward one spot, leading all the schools of anchovies together, and attracting even more when their several bow lights brought together into one spot become one bright light. While the small boats are attracting the anchovies, a larger boat has spread a net, and once all the small boats have gathered all the anchovies into one area, the large boat starts to close the net, and then everyone scoops up anchovies with other nets into the boats.

Amazing, isn’t it? And there’s precisely a lesson in there related to the Gospel for today, wherein Jesus told Peter and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” See, we do manage to collect a few souls as individuals by our light. But the real success comes when our lights are combined, working together as we should, is a shining beacon which draws those looking for light to it while the rest of the world is asleep, enjoying the darkness.

So, just remember that the next time you think, “Anchovies? Ech!”

And get fishing!

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Tombs of the Apostles

Christine, who lives with Excellent Man and Chaos Puppy on an island in the Salish Sea and who is the author of the wonderful Mirabilis blog, has found a great article [dead link] on the Tombs of the Apostles. Since I have recently written two posts on precisely that subject, I wam delighted to learn that a man named Tom Bissell has actually visited all those various places and is writing a book describing his adventures! As soon as it’s published, I hope to get a copy.

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