[all track links require RealRhapsody]

The Blind Boys of Alabama have released a new album, and it is available on Rhapsody. Here's a link to the Rhapsody Radish, a Rhapsody link blog, with a link to the album page on Rhapsody.

The album's title song, (Jesus Hits Like The) Atom Bomb, is a remake of the version originally sung by a group called The Pilgrim Travelers. The Soul Stirrers. A group called The Pilgrim Travelers has also done a version of the song. I only know about the song because awhile back Bob mentioned it to me (I don't recall where he heard it from), and another colleague at Logos dutifully looked it up in Rhapsody so we could all hear it. The song was originally written in the early 1950's 1949 — quite timely (perhaps a bit too timely) for a song about an atom bomb. Here's the chorus:

Everybody's worried
About that atom bomb
No one seems worried
About the day my Lord shall come

(You'd better) set your house in order
He may be comin' soon
And then he'll hit like an atom bomb
When he comes, when he comes.

More info on the album and the song is available at Christianity Today.

If you dig gospel, the The Blind Boys of Alabama are highly recommended.

Checking the ricoblog referrer logs, I noted a search for the unicode string "γινώσκω". I was curious to see what else might come up. The top hit was:

A Discourse Analysis of I Corinthians

This is a doctoral dissertation (supervised by Richard Longacre) from Ralph Bruce Terry (whom I am not familiar with). But it sounds like it could be fun to peruse.

Ed Cook reminds us today is Palm Sunday. So this morning I spent some time reading the accounts of the triumphal entry and I'd like to keep these readings going through Easter.

As such, I'm curious to know if Marc Goodacre (NT Gateway Weblog) or Stephen Carlson (Hypotyposeis) have recommendations for a presentation that aligns the accounts and provides readings for each day of the week through the resurrection. I don't have a modern synopsis in print at home. I do have an older copy of Huck (ninth edition) I picked up in a used bookstore awhile back that will suffice in a pinch.

If Dr. Goodacre, Dr. Carlson or anyone else can point to a reputable online source to use this week, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Update: Here's a table I whipped up for those who may be interested. Any errors here are mine; I am most definitely not a synoptician. I started in Mark and looked for the instances of new days, then did the same in Luke, then split Matthew up as best I could. All links are to the ESV.

Update: Dr. Goodacre responds with a link to a Passion/Resurrection synopsis. Thanks!

Folks reading about ricoblog in Northwestern College's alumni publication The Classic have started to trickle in. Welcome! Here are a few bits of info that may come in handy:

• If you know me from NWC, please feel free to leave a comment on this post or drop me an email if you'd like to update me on what's going on in your life — spouse, kids, job, whatever. You obviously know a bit about what I've been up to, feel free to tell me what you've been up to! I'd really like to know. You can send email to: textgeek (a-t) gmail (d-o-t) com.
• How does one get an article about himself (or herself) published in The Classic? Well, I didn't really try. I just updated them via this web form. If you're an NWC alum, you should really do the same — they may have pages to burn for you too! Here's a little more background on how it all happened. 
• If you want to see more pictures of my kayak (photos from every stage of the building process) check out my Kayak Building pages.
• If you'd like to know more about my Pastoral Epistles study, check out my Pastoral Epistles pages. If you'd like to commit to reading rough drafts and offering serious feedback, please let me know.
• More information about my employer and our way-cool Bible software, Logos Bible Software.

Thanks for dropping by. And I'm not joking or just being nice — if you know me from Northwestern College, I really would like to hear about what you've been up to for the past few years. Please do drop me a message. If you'd like, I can make sure you're on my yearly Christmas email update — just mention it and I'll add you to the address book.

I'd also like to say thanks to Duane Beeson and Amy Scheer for their work and David Scherrer (and Susan Grainger!) for some excellent photography. Everyone I've spoken to about the article thinks it is accurate and well written — so thanks!

Go Red Raiders!

Amy and I went for a walk along the Padilla Bay shore trail in the Skagit flats this past Saturday. It was windy and chilly, but it was clear. I had no idea there was an old barn/shed/structure out there. Finding a barn away from power lines is a trick (I know, I've been looking as I've been driving/riding through Whatcom county over the past year or so). Unfortunately, there's an oil refinery in the background that you can see a little smoke from.

Next time I'm out there, I'm guessing there will be less wind. I think I'll put on the wide angle lense and get a wider view of the scene. Until then, this should suffice:

More photos (only two more from Padilla Bay) are, of course, on my photo page.

Those interested in photographs of old structures might also like this one from the "English Camp" on San Juan Island. This building dates back to the 1800's. I've really got to get there in the spring or early summer this year, when the grass is green. More photos are available.

For those who are unaware or new to ricoblog, I also occassionally post information that has to do specifically with the Pastoral Epistles over at a different site: PastoralEpistles.com.

On that site, I've just posted a link to an article titled Distribution of Semantic Domain by Section in the Pastoral Epistles. This is a table of information that shows the frequency of occurrence of each semantic domain in each section (sections are based on the NA27 section boundaries) of the Pastoral Epistles.

I thought some folks might be interested in this, hence the cross-post. That, and I think the data is just plain cool, but my opinion may be biased.

In the fall of 2004, I supplied my alma mater (Northwestern College in Orange City, IA) with a brief personal update (address change, email, web page, and brief update) through a web submission form.

Someone in the alumni office read it, checked out my web site, and decided that they wanted to do an "alumni profile" on me in the Spring 2005 alumni magazine. I can only guess that they had extra pages to burn and figured they'd waste them on me.

I haven't received my print copy of The Classic yet, but the PDF is up and on the NWC publications web page. You can catch a recent photo of me in the Table of Contents (page 2) and in the article on pp. 14-15. And you can see a picture of me paddling my kayak! If you're in Bellingham, I hope to have some print copies soon.

To Download: The PDF is of the whole magazine, and is just over 5 megs (lots of photos/graphics). I'd recommend right-clicking and saving to your hard drive instead of attempting to browse online. From this page, right-click on the Spring 2005 link and do a "Save Link As" or  "Save Target As" or whatever the option is on your browser.

Update: I've received my print copies of The Classic, and so have others. Noel -- of course I remember you. If anyone else I may know from NWC happens to drop by, hop to this post and feel free to drop a note in the comments. Or if you'd rather, drop me an email. The address is textgeek (a-t) gmail (d-o-t) com.

Going through 1 Clement, I noticed the extended citation of Psalm 51 [LXX 50] in 1Cl 18.2-17. I decided to peek at the Greek and compare it to the Greek of the LXX, just to see if they were that different.

It was almost a let-down. Here I was prepared to get all text-critical with y'all, but these two excerpts are really very similar. The differences below are in bold. Please note that I pasted this in from MSWord; if your browser is doing something funky with the table, I apologize for it.

Apart from punctuation differences, the only major differences (that I located on two quick skims through the parallel text) are:

• a word broken by a space (διαπαντός vs. διὰ παντός)
• a trivial orthographic variant (ἀπορίψῃς vs. ἀπορρίψῃς)
• word switching (στόμα ... χείλη vs. χείλη ... στόμα) that doesn't make much difference (mouth ... lips vs. lips ... mouth).

I checked Lightfoot's edition of Clement, he says that these differences are trivial and inconsequential. Rahlfs doesn't list any variants for this section of text. I don't have access to the Göttingen edition, so I can't check that.