Another book I've started to work through (though I'll be working through this much less diligently than others) is Richard Young's Intermediate New Testament Greek: A Linguistic and Exegetical Approach.

At least, I decided to read the introduction to see what his book was all about. And it confirmed my suspicions: Language is difficult.

Young doesn't shy away from the task, his intro brings up issues that need resolution. We know so much intuitively in our native language. Even reading on the page, we can discern things like tone. In acquired language, these things are very difficult. It's not enough to have perfect understanding of vocabulary, morphology and syntax. As I've been seeing in the very short time I've been working through 1John, there are other factors to consider. For instance, consider the following contrived example:

“The stove is hot.”

Analyzing it by itself, it is a simple declarative sentence. However, give the same sentence some context:

“Watch out, Johnny!” he said to his four-year-old son. “The stove is hot.”

Here it is still a declarative sentence, but really it's a prohibition or a command. He means, “Don't touch the stove, Johnny!”, though that's not what is actually said.

Even if we run through each word of the sentence and determine its morphological and syntactic qualities (somewhat naively, as I'm likely to do with an acquired language), we could still be a ways off from understanding what is actually being communicated.

Young breaks this stuff down. He talks about implicit and explicit information that can be garnered from the text and context. He talks about skewing, which is “non-correspondence between form and meaning” and the need to discern and account for it. He offers the following example:

Also, when Jesus said that Lazarus sleeps, He did not mean that Lazarus went to bed, but that he died (John 11.11). The words and grammar of such expressions cannot be interpreted literally, for they involve a skewing between form and meaning. (p. 4)

Young then goes on to talk about “Surface Structure” and “Deep Structure”. But, I digress.

The main point is that learning the intricacies of an acquired language is a difficult thing. It requires one to simply immerse oneself in a language, and just try to slog through it. The more one tries, the easier it gets. With some background, one then can read grammars and say, “oh, yeah, that makes sense!” instead of “what the heck is a dative of instrument?!”. Right now, I tend more toward the latter than the former, but my flashes of insight are becoming more frequent — and that's good.

This means, of course, that I still have a lot of work ahead of me. But that's ok. It wouldn't be as fun any other way.

As mentioned previously, one of the books I'm slogging through is Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation: A History.

I came across the following in the first chapter of the book. MacCulloch is running through the 11th-15th centuries noting the development of the church, specifically mentioning things that may have an effect on later development (read: the Reformation). He writes:

The Lollards [Wyclif's followers] can hardly be blamed for not enjoying Luther's access to printing, for that revolution in information technology was yet to arrive in Europe in their days of open activity, but they did fail (unlike Luther and the Protestants) to gain a significant foothold among the Church's leading popular communicators, the friars — and it seems they also missed the secret weapon of the sixteenth-century Reformation, popular music and hymn writing. (p. 35, italics mine)

I'd never quite looked at it that way before, particularly the bit about hymns and popular music, but it certainly makes sense. During the reformation times (Luther posted his 95 Theses on Oct. 31, 1517) virtually all forms of media were absorbed in the topic. Popular speakers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and others) preached directly to people about Reformation principles. Their writings and the writings of their followers were swiftly printed and found a ready audience. And the word was spread musically as well. I'll surely remember this the next time I sing Luther's A Mighty Fortress is Our God. The message of the reformers was being communicated by almost every available means.

One could make similar generalizations about the Great Awakening. Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys preached constantly to immense audiences. Their written works were devoured. And we all know of Charles Wesley's prolific hymn writing.

We're going to have to do the same thing to make it happen again. If there is to be anything of similar scope happen in the future, it will have to be across the most popular media of the day. For us, this means TV (network and cable, not just whatever is on PAX); that means radio (air and satellite); that means iPods and other “personal music devices”; that means web sites, blogs, and newsgroups. And not just talk (or preaching), but musically too.

It's a tall order. Especially in the area of music. So much of what I hear when I happen to brave Christian radio is ... er ... unchallenging. We don't need more praise songs that make the singer feel good about what he's singing (some of these songs are fine, but admit it — many are terrible); we need songs that clearly reflect the teaching of Scripture and challenge one to a deeper walk with God and deeper study of His Word (which is the primary method, along with prayer and fellowship, that we have of getting to know Him). We need songs that praise God, not songs that make us feel good first and offer some sort of non-specific praise second. We don't need to sing “Lord we praise you” or “Lord we lift your name” ad infinitum; we need to sing why we're praising Him and “lifting” His name (whatever “lifting” means in that context). We need Scripture-steeped poets writing lyrics that will become the hymns and praise songs of tomorrow.

I could go on, but I've started to ramble and need to think about this stuff a bit more. But this task begins with each of us, individually and personally. We need to focus on the Word of God and steep ourselves in His wisdom. We need to study His Word, personally and corporately (“corporately” meaning both small-group Bible study and the typical larger-group preaching/teaching). We need to be able to give compelling accounts of why we are Christians when folks ask us (1Pe 3.13-17). We need to use our gifts (Ro 12; 1Co 12) to glorify Him. And we need to do much better at prayer. Ok, at least I need to be much better in my own life in these areas; y'all can evaluate your own lives in these areas and come to your own conclusions.

Yeah, I'm still rambling. I'll stop now, but the original thought — about how the Reformation had the advantage of the printing press and the “secret weapon” of hymns and popular music is still a provocative thought. Mull it over some over the next few days; let me know if you come to any further insight or conclusion.

First, I fix my drippy bathdub faucet.

Then, I come home and check my mail. What was in there? Why, nothing but a little card from Starbucks. To thank me for being a “registered Starbucks Card user” they're poppin' an additional five-spot onto my account.

I dunno how much I've spent there (I'm a coffee-aholic: no fru-fru drinks, straight coffee or straight triple-shot tall americanos; an occasional double-short cappucino) but they've surely made more than five bucks off of me in the past year.

Still, it's a nice thing.

Let's see, I could get two double-short cappucinos, or three-and-a-half tall drip coffees, or a triple-tall americano and two tall drip coffees, or ...

Earlier, I wrote about my foray into plumbing, to solve the problem of my drippy bathtub faucet.

Today I received the part; a day before I expected it. The guys at FaucetDirect.com are studs. I had it delivered to the office, so I rushed home for lunch. I was so excited about crawling under the house again, I just couldn't wait!

Ok, not that excited, but I was excited to see if my diagnosis was correct. And it was! I installed the doo-hickey thingamajig (RP19804) and the faucet is now working properly!

In reading my RSS aggregator this morning, I found that I'd been linked to (favorably!) by the blog Blogos; specifically regarding my Concordance ordered by Semantic Domains of the Pastoral Epistles, part of my ongoing study of the Pastorals

Thanks for the mention and the addition to your blogroll. You've got some groovy stuff going on over there at SemanticBible.com as well.

The Concordance is a by-product of some Notes on Vocabulary on the Pastoral Epistles, the current object of my study. I assigned a LN domain/article number to each verb, noun, and adjective as I worked through the text. It's pretty rough and needs to be revisited. I may do that later when I (hopefully) do some sort of theme analysis to look for common domains in the corpus of the Pastoral Epistles.

The Concordance is generated from the Notes data set, which lives as XML on my hard drive. I've got a perl script that generates the form of the Notes for the web, another script that generates the Concordance for the web, and another script that generates an expanded form of the Notes for my own personal use.

Lastly, FWIW, James Tauber's blog might not support RSS, but he does offer syndication in the ATOM format, which most aggregators accept along with RSS (at least SharpReader, the aggregator I use, treats both as equal citizens). Check the “Atom Feed” in the navigation bar of Tauber's site for link info. He does a lot of post-tweaking, though, so watch out.

For my personal devotions for the next while (dunno how long) I'm going to go analog. That's right, I'll be using mostly books. You know, the paper codex thingies. Don't worry, I'll still use the LDLS and all sorts of cool resources for my Pastorals Study, but I'm looking to head a different way with my personal devotional time.

I'm planning on using at least three books:

• Culy's I, II, III John: A Handbook on the Greek Text
• Goodrich/Lukaszewski's A Reader's Greek New Testament
• Gingrich's Shorter Lexicon.

I'll also probably dig into Young's Intermediate Greek Grammar if I have cause to look something up that Culy doesn't address or treats ambiguously. I'm sure you're thinking I should use Wallace, and you may be right — but I don't have access to that in print.

I find that in my quest to improve my Koine Greek skills, I need to go through the Greek text a bit more slowly, really thinking about each word as I come across it. Since I have the Culy book, and since 1 John seems to be the standard fare for second year Greek classes based on reading, and since I never had a second year of Greek, this seems to be a good way to work through the text.

This morning went well, but then again the first morning always goes well now, doesn't it?

I've mentioned this before in other circles (Logos Newsgroups), but I wanted to mention it again: Galaxie Software's Theological Journal Library (TJL) is one of the most useful complementary products I have installed as part of my LDLS library.

In my working through the Pastoral Epistles, I'm trying to not consult too many sources until I get my first pass of the text complete, proofed, and revised. A second pass is the point to add (or correct) based on other sources (commentaries, primarily).

However, some places are just plain tough. I've been working on 1Ti 2.8-15 for a bit now, and know what I think. But some of the terms (particularly αὐθεντέω in v. 12)* are tough with very few citations in secondary literature.

Working on αὐθεντέω, I simply searched TJL for the lexical form. I was pointed to an excellent article by Douglas J. Moo in the 1980 Trinity Journal. This had a response article by Philip Payne, and a further rejoinder by Moo. It helped in thinking about the word, how to translate it, and determining the function of the word in the clause. Fun stuff.

All this to say: TJL is a valuable compliment to any LDLS user's library.** The producer, Galaxie Software, is set up to release new “volumes” every year, it seems. The initial package is TJL vols 1-5, at a price of $99.95 — which is a bargain for the sheer volume of journals included. Two supplimentary packages have been released: TJL Volume 6 adds the 2002 volume for many existing journals, and adds a few new journals as well, for the very reasonable price of $49.95.

Even better news: TJL Volume 7 has just been released at the price of $49.95. 2003 editions of many journals, plus yet again more new journals (including 24 years of Review and Expositor).

OK, commercial over.

Update: Yikes! Rubén is right (sounds of keystrokes making corrections). I s'pose that's what I get for posting late at night (and thanks again to my 2nd grade teacher for getting me started on phonics early ... )

* Also incredibly helpful is H. Scott Baldwin's article “A Difficult Word: αὐθεντέω in 1 Timothy 2:12” in Kostenberger, Schreiner, and Baldwin's Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15. Baker Book House: Grand Rapids. 1995. Many thanks to Vincent Setterholm for letting me keep this on indefinite loan.

** I even think Mac users can get in on the TJL action; Galaxie has TJL vols. 1-5 and TJL vol. 6 in Accordance format as well.

It's after Thanksgiving now, so that means one thing: Christmas music in just about every radio playlist you can think of.

There are some great Christmas songs that truly reflect upon Jesus Christ's incarnation. I'm sure you're thinking of a few of your favorites right now.

But there are some truly horrible Christmas songs too. Did you know Ringo Starr made a Christmas album in 1999? The title song I Wanna Be Santa Claus is ... er ... well, I listened to it, but I hope I don't have to listen to it again.

To those of you who read this blog and who have access to Real Rhapsody, I offer a challenge: Assemble a playlist of up to 15 of the worst, tackiest, most awful Christmas tunes you can find within Rhapsody's library. Send me your playlist or point me to a blog entry with your playlist (the actual file) on Friday, December 3. I'll compile them and pop up a blog article. We can vote in the comments or something after putting ourselves through the sheer (yet strangely pleasurable) horror of listening to them.

Are you in? Drop me an email, add a comment, or ping me via trackback to an article on your blog with a similar challenge. We'll assemble some lists and see what kind of crud we can dredge from the Rhapsody library.

Update 1: Eli is in. Any other takers? I have a few dupes with his “originals” list. I have, at this point anyway, deliberately stayed away from bad versions of traditional Christmas songs simply because there are so many horrid attempts at creating new “standards” to choose from. I mean, why go for Babs' idiocy when you can go for, oh, I dunno ... “Melekalikimaka” by the Beach Boys (couldn't find the Don Ho version ... )? Or, to add to Eli's mention of Kenny Rogers' oeuvre, “Kids”? Rhapsody truly offers a wealth of horrible music. I won't even link to the putrescence that is “Larry the Cable Guy” (not suitable for family listening).

Update 2: Jacob Carpenter and Daniel Foster might be in. This is a reminder to all to make sure to send me a playlist before tomorrow (Dec. 3, 2004), when we compare notes. I'll compile initial lists in the morning.