In one of my classes I was asked about translation, so I was delighted to see Susanne’s post Adoption of children: the NRSV and the ESV it deals carefully and clearly with a translation issue whose cultural implications are thorny and it involves both originator and receptor cultures. Do look at it :)
Browsing Posts in Spirituality
Photo adapted from Pete Markham
We want to change the way PodBible.com works. We’d like the page for each book to offer (as well as a list of chapters to download like now) an individualised RSS feed that will give someone who subscribes today a series of audio files as a podcast with the filename augmenting by one daily till a list has finished? E.g. Someone subscribing today on the Amos page would get Amos_Chapter_1.mp3 today, Amos_Chapter_2.mp3 tomorrow and so on till after Chapter 9 it says “Amos is finished, please go here [link] to subscribe to another book.”
This would make PodBible work the way many visitors hope it will. But do you know a technical guru who could help us achieve this wisardry? Ideally they would also help us to adjust the existing PHP so that the pages can be edited and the Luke page contain text and links we prepare about Luke, as well as the list of chapters it does now, and the subscribe link I just described. (Though we could do this part manually.)
Photo by iandeth
Link now working, sorry :(
I am still gradually expanding the open book Not Only a Father. I have added a section concerning “The Gender of Yahweh” to chapter five which (as a whole) is about “Theology of God as both Father and Mother“.
This growing book is an experiment in publishing as discussion, not merely a blog, but a coherent book-length exploration of a topic, but not merely a book online, since each thought and idea can be questioned, commented, challenged or expanded by the readers. The trouble is that unless it gets people visiting the material it does not get discussed, and unless YOU, or others like you who find the topic of using motherly language and pictures interesting, link to the material no one will find it, and the experiment will fail :(
Misty morning in the Akha valley (Photo by Tim B)
Visiting Lynn Schofield Clark‘s website (see Great advice for postgraduate students) I was struck by her link to her “Curriculum vita”. The phrase I’m used to is “curriculum vitae” and my memory of long ago Latin lessons is so poor that I wondered which was right, and whether curriculum vita might even mean the course of [my] lives (plural). It doesn’t, that would be curricula vitarum.
That’s what I need ;) not a curriculum vitae – a simple list of my life – but a curriculum vitarum – a list of my lives, because they are many:
- socially: I am not (quite) the same person in the home as in the pulpit, nor again in class or a conference…
- temporally: I have held a few quite different roles across my lives: social work in Belfast in the 70s, pastor of a small church in rural Wiltshire also in the 70s, missionary educator and administrator (vice-recteur of what is now a University) in the 80s, seminary and university teacher in the 90s and 00s…
- probably in many other ways
Are these lives all different people, each with its own curriculum vitae, or do they combine into one great mess of a curriculum vitarum ;) Which would you prefer a curriculum vitae (singular) or a curriculum vitarum (of your plural lives)?
Kenton Sparks, (Biblical Studies, Eastern University) has a good (if somewhat polemic) short post, part 2 of a series After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age in which he sets up nicely the inner-biblical problem of genocide in texts like Deut 7:2. I hope that it is more than merely a stick to beat the fundies with.
I was glad he pointed out that concern over such issues is far from new, citing Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395CE) one of the most respected patristic authors. Gregory was disturbed by the murder of Egyptian children ascribed to God in the Exodus narrative:
The Egyptian [Pharaoh] is unjust, and instead of him, his punishment falls upon his newborn child, who on account of his infant age is unable to discern what is good and what is not good … If such a one now pays the penalty of his father’s evil, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness? Where is Ezekiel, who cries … “The son should not suffer for the sin of the father?” How can history so contradict reason?
As Sparks points out, Gregory’s solution, which fails to take the text literally although there are no (or at least very few possible) signs that it was intended as picture language, will not work for us. But he is evidence for this issue not being only a modern one.
[The previous post was about a week earlier, so I'm hoping for some good reading next week.]
Otagosh posted a brief extract from a book with an interesting title:
Basically in the quote the author compares her experience in a weird sect (the one founded and run by the Armstrong dynasty Herbert and Garner Ted) and an extremely evangelical denomination, the two experiences were alike in frightening ways, not least the desire in both places to believe that your group alone knows all the truth.
How odd, Jesus said: “But when the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” Truth in the Spirit is a journey, one which evidently does not end in this life, because no one here and now knows “all truth”. Yet humans so love to feel superior that they keep demeaning themselves by following plausible and implausible leaders who claim to offer it!
Doing the podcasts on the E100 readings has made me even more aware of the need to provide some ‘casts that provide short introductions to some of the deeper issues in reading Scripture, like that of God as cold-blooded killer. I am currently preparing the audio comments on Proverbs, that most male of books, and realise that I need a podcast on women reading men’s texts.
I wonder if any women readers would be willing to give me some very brief (just a few sentences) soundbites about one or more of the strategies you use. That I can edit together (ideally without any comment or even linking phrases from me, though the second aim may not be possible) to make a 5 minute podcast. (Of course if I got lots of takers it could be more than one podcast ;) Or is anyone willing to do a guest 5 minutes on the topic on her own?
It would mean either you recording yourself, or me phoning or Skyping you and recording, unless you are in Auckland… You can either be an anonymous voice, or identify yourself and be listed on the “credits”, as you wish.
I phrased the title as “Women men’s reading Scripture” because
- I am interested in ways of reading Scripture not merely the Bible – the difference being (in my mind at least) that one can read the Bible with only academic interest, but one reads Scripture because in some sense the text has divine authority.
- I am interested in how you read in practice, to offer practical help for others, not in how “Feminists” read, though “you” (the reader) may be thoroughly Feminist – I am sure I have not explained this well, but hope that you know what I mean…
- Some parts of Scripture are more men’s than others, the Song of Songs is less oriented to a man’s perspective than Proverbs to take two extreme cases, it is how you read the more male gendered parts that I think could be most helpful…
To volunteer, or to talk about the possibility, either use the (public) comments, or to do so in private email me.
I’ve been podcasting my way through the E100 (100 “essential” Bible readings designed to give a good overview introduction to the Bible). Today we got to Exodus 12: E100-19: Exodus12: A great festival, but a huge theological problem. I faced a dillemma, the podcasts are billed as 5 minute Bible, so I can’t go much over 5:30 for even a difficult passage. This chapter tells the story of Passover, vital stuff, not least (for Christian readers) as the NT takes it up as picture language to speak of what God does for us in Christ. But of course, in telling that it also (inevitably) tells of the killing of the first-born of every Egyptian household, even the animal ones (shades of the Ninevites in Jonah?). So how do I deal with that? How do you talk about God the cold-blooded killer in less than 5 minutes? Or at all?
At least, when many of your listeners are conservative Christians, who believe that the Bible is Word of God, and who do not understand that phrase as “liberally” as you do?
Photo by maaco
Mothers’ day yesterday was a double disappointment. It was not that the children forgot to celebrate Barbara, they remembered :) It was not that the service failed to include women who are not mothers, it did include them. But I still had two frustrations.
One was personal, but shared with huge numbers of others in this modern rich world, where so many people live so long. On Fathers’ Day, since my Dad is dead, I can remember his life and celebrate the person he was. But on Mothers’ Day, my Mum is still alive, except she has no memories, of me or of her own life, she is not my mum, and she thinks of me when I visit the UK as a nice man who comes (each day anew) to see her. That pseudo-life can’t be celebrated, yet it seems wrong to remember her as if she were dead…
The other is general, but shared (it seems) by very few. Surely, at the very least on this day of the year, beyond all others, we could talk in church a little (in our prayers and Bible readings if not in our sermon) of the motherly God we meet in Scripture and in the traditions of the Christian church. But no, it seemed that the intention to exclude all feminine language about God is held to equally rigorously even on Mothers’ Day :(
I wish, I really wish, more people would read Not only a Father, and if they disagree comment – or if they agree then make more use in public of the resources Scripture and tradition have provided us!
View from CTS across the rooftops of Colombo
Thanks to Jonathan who pointed to this: Who Says “No” to “Mission Trips”?
I had not found Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra‘s site. It is full of excellent stuff.
In this post, the description of many mission trips as attempts to make a holiday sound holy is so true. It raises sharply issues at the heart of such activities:
- a visit of a few weeks is not enough to even begin to learn about another people and place
- the visitors have money and power – the locals usually have not
- if you can’t speak the language and do not understand (a bit) local culture what good is your visit
He also tells (too briefly) of two chinese women who are on a real “mission trip”:
I heard recently of two Chinese women who felt called to be missionaries in Cambodia. So they simply went there overland and took jobs in a factory, and joined a local church.
Their experiences would be worth listening to. By contrast, if Western people need exposure to other ways of life:
…in America, Europe and Australia, there are millions of people today from every religion, culture and nation to be found in almost every major city: why not stay and learn about “mission” from the local churches that are working among such people?
And if people want/need more:
It baffles us why such Christian kids cannot learn about the world by doing what I, and several millions of their non-Christian peers, have done over decades: simply travelling as tourists and exploring the countries we visit, learning about the history and culture as we do so.
If the energy and money channeled into short term mission trips could be put to less selfish use think what could be achieved!
And now the really hard questions: What, if anything, distinguishes our visits to the Thai-Burma border from the sort of “short-term mission trip” Vinoth so aptly spears? Was our visit to his country to teach a course at CTS really significantly different (particularly if one removes Western ideas about the importance of getting the job done, and focuses instead on people and relationships)?
