[I blogged on 1Co 13.1-3 awhile back, this post can be seen as a continuation of that one. I'm sure I'll have at least one more post on the chapter. And this post is going to be tough for me because I really want to blog on 1Co 13.8-13, but I need to do this section on 1Co 13.4-7 first.]

I've been meditating on 1Co 13 for awhile now. No, not "meditating" as you think some mountain-top-sitting guru from some eastern religion would meditate. What I mean is that it has been at the forefront of my thoughts for awhile. I've been working on memorizing the chapter and I think I have it down. As I review the chapter to memorize, I stop and think about the chapter or the portion I'm reviewing. I run over the text aloud while I'm driving to or from work, or to or from Amy's house.

Anyway, recall that the thrust of 1Co 13.1-3 is that without love as motive for actions, the actions are worthless. They are nothing. We can exercise the gifts we have been given, but if we aren't acting out of love, the effort is wasted. We can stand as martyrs, we can give everything to charity or the poor, but the action is empty and vain if it isn't grounded in love.

That's a provocative thought, but it really does make one ask: "So, then, what is love?"

And that's the question Paul now attempts to answer. The problem is that the answer isn't quantitative. All Paul can do to define love is to describe how one who acts with love as a motive actually acts. So this is what he does. Again, the ESV formats this as plain paragraph text, it doesn't format it as poetry. And that's a shame, because when it is presented as poetry, one stops to read and looks for connections. And those connections are what we need to properly understand the text. If we read this chapter (and this section) as prose, we're missing something we need to understand.

Here is 1Co 13.4-7 in a rather wooden/literal translation because I want to point towards the Greek, which I'll discuss later. The parens indicate implicit words/context that I'm simply making explicit.

Love is patient,
love is kind,
love does not envy,
(love does) not boast,
(love is) not proud,
(love is) not disgraceful,
(love does) not desire its own (way),
(love is) not provoked,
(love does) not reckon the wrong,
(love does) not rejoice at unrighteousness
but (love) rejoices with the truth:

(love) bears all things,
(love) believes all things,
(love) hopes all things,
(love) endures all things.

Now isn't that much more clear? Paul shows us the sorts of things one does (or doesn't do) when one acts in love. This list makes me feel rather guilty. I can, without too much effort, think of times where I've been impatient with others, or unkind. Or when I've acted with envy as a motive. Or where I've combined boasting and pride into a single conversation to make myself feel better and make the person I was conversing with feel small.

Paul says that when I do such things, I'm not acting in love. When I'm acting like that, based on what Paul is teaching here (cf. v. 2 earlier) I'm nothing. And, of course, he's right.

The one on the list that really gets me, though, is that "love does not desire its own way". The ESV translates that as "it does not insist on its own way". If someone else's needs are to be more important to me than my own, how can I elevate my desires above their needs? I can't if I am acting in love. I've screwed that up countless times.

Imagine if you were in the Corinthian fellowship when this letter was received, and when it was being read to the community for the very first time. This poetic list goes on and on. Even if you weren't paying full attention (as a friend of mine used to put it, you were in church but in your mind you were "scoring touchdowns", daydreaming) you would most likely hear this bit about love and what it is not. And you'd hear something in that list (at least one thing, I'd gather) that would jolt you out of complacency and make you think.

This is what you'd hear. And I'd like to recommend that if you know a little Greek and can pronounce the words to some degree, that you work through it and read it aloud, paying attention to the syllables per line, even the bracketed text that NA/UBS list as disputed (thanks to my new friend Ulrik for this suggestion):

Ἡ ἀγάπη μακροθυμεῖ,
χρηστεύεται ἡ ἀγάπη,
οὐ ζηλοῖ, [ἡ ἀγάπη]
οὐ περπερεύεται,
οὐ φυσιοῦται,
οὐκ ἀσχημονεῖ,
οὐ ζητεῖ τὰ ἑαυτῆς,
οὐ παροξύνεται,
οὐ λογίζεται τὸ κακόν,
οὐ χαίρει ἐπὶ τῇ ἀδικίᾳ,
συγχαίρει δὲ τῇ ἀληθείᾳ·

πάντα στέγει,
πάντα πιστεύει,
πάντα ἐλπίζει,
πάντα ὑπομένει.

I don't even need to make any of that text bold for you to see the repeated elements. In addition to the syllables, though, did you notice the ending sound of almost all of those lines (again, including the bracketed text)? It's beautiful, isn't it?

In addition to working through what love is not, Paul makes four statements at the end of this section regarding what love does. These are complete and leave no exceptions. Sure, you might say that the point is rhetorical and Paul can't actually mean "all" here. But if he didn't why would he repeat it? (Hint: if you say "emphasis", that's a cop-out. Why would Paul want to 'emphasize' it if he didn't really mean it?).

I've run too long, and it's getting late. I'm going to leave it here. Hey, it's my blog, I can do that!

I'll start in again on 1Co 13.8-13, though that section may go long. It's such a cool piece of writing. Hopefully I can get to it in the next week.

So, I was poking around Flickr last night, and for fun typed in the word "polycarp" to see what was what.

And there it was for the world to see. I stumbled onto AKMA's secret passion: Early Church History in Legos.

OK, so it isn't really secret (he blogged about it a few times in June, search his blog for 'lego' to find more) but still — pretty cool!

• Here are his pics for Polycarp (6 pics)
• Here are his pics for Ignatius (2 pics)

I think this one is my favorite. A lego pope! Who knew? And check out the relics in the treasure chest behind him!

I was all set to be done blogging for the weekend, and then I heard that we (Logos Bible Software) went and made another announcement about work we're doing with Greek stuff.

Blass-Debrunner-Funk as a Logos Prepublication

The sooner you order, the sooner we can commence work and get another high-quality reference grammar into Logos Bible Software!

[Oh, and while I've got your attention -- a little bird told me that the Logos Bible Software version of the New International Greek Testament Commentary (NIGTC) is very close to shipping ... like, the disk is at or on its way to the replicators ... which means the pre-pub price will soon be a thing of the past, if you get my drift (nudge, nudge; wink, wink).]

[as I have a very busy weekend ahead of me (and most likely blog-free, at least until Sunday night), I thought it best to post this today, one day early]

It's true. One year ago (Friday, August 13, 2004) ricoblog went live on the internet to the world. Here's the very first post (I think!).

This past year has gone better than I expected. Last time I checked the ol' Site Meter, there had been over 22,000 visitors (and who knows how many pages actually served!) to my humble internet backwater. Then again, maybe that means I'm not really such a backwater anymore.

Anyway, thanks to all who visit. And thanks in particular to a few bibliobloggers who put up with my questions and even on occasion find something I post worth linking to. I'm thinking specifically of:

• Stephen C. Carlson of Hypotyposeis, who linked to ricoblog early and has encouraged me often.
• Mark Goodacre of the NT Gateway Weblog, who links frequently and is always complimentary and encouraging.
• Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica.com. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim in San Antonio and look forward to seeing him again in Philadelphia. I'm particularly jazzed to be presenting a paper in the same session with him, the CARG Biblioblogging session.

There are many I haven't mentioned; it would be tough to come up with a comprehensive list. But thanks for your encouragement nonetheless. I've learned a lot over the past year in my own areas of interest (NT Greek, Pastoral Epistles, Apostolic Fathers, Textual Criticism) and I think it can be directly correlated to the feedback and encouragement I get from the folks who read and interact with me through ricoblog. I can't say "thank you" enough.

Now, as seems typical for these sorts of posts, time for the retrospective!

[insert fanfare here]

Notable Posts of the Past Year

Favorite Post: Complutensian Polyglot Coolness. I had an entire series of posts on typography of early printings of the Greek New Testament. Click the "textual criticism" category, I think they're all listed in there.

Biggest News: New Project: PastoralEpistles.com. This soon morphed into a paper on biblioblogging that I'll present in November 2005 at the annual SBL meeting. I blogged about the latest title/abstract of the paper here: SBL Paper on Biblioblogging.

Most Popular Post: Balsamic Vinaigrette. Based on the frequency with which I see the search terms "balsamic" and "vinaigrette" show up in my referrals, this has got to be one of the most frequent search terms that brings folks to ricoblog. Come for the vinaigrette, stay for the musing! BTW, I still get compliments on this recipe from folks when they come over for dinner, so if you need a quick & easy salad dressing, this could be it.

Sentimental: The Scholarly Omnivore: Knowledge in the 21st Century. I've liked this one ever since I wrote it, so I just have to bring attention to it again.

If you have nominations, please feel free to leave them in the comments!

Epistle to Diognetus Posts

Finally, some of the longer-term ricoblog readers know that I've blogged off and on about the Epistle to Diognetus. I have two more chapters to blog about still, but now does seem like a good time to bring attention to the entire group of posts that I've written while superficially working my way through this work.

Maybe someday I'll write a book on it, and I'll look back here for inspiration ... and I'll conclude "what in the world was I thinking when I wrote that tripe?!!"

• Introduction
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Section 4
• Section 5
• Section 6
• Section 7a
• Section 7b
• Section 8
• Section 9
• Section 10

Update (2005-08-15): Thanks to all who have sent thier blog-iversary greetings to me, left a comment, or posted on their blog (Biblical Theology, NT Gateway Weblog, Hypotyposeis, and James Tauber's Weblog, at least that I've seen). It's been a fun year, and hopefully the upcoming year will be as fun if not more fun.

I was reading through the last three chapters of Second Corinthians this morning. I came across the following (in the ESV):

But whatever anyone else dares to boast of (I am speaking as a fool) I also dare to boast of that.

Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. (2Co 11.21-23)

Paul is belittling the false teachers who are apparently wooing the Corinthians with tales of strength and "street cred". Paul says, essentially, "hey, if that's your measuring stick, check out what I've got!" He's been on this riff since the beginning of chapter 10, and it goes through the end of chapter 12, where it sets up Paul's conclusion in chapter 13.

The larger context is important, but it isn't my primary purpose in looking at these few verses. What I noticed about the verses is that the structure is obviously repetitive in the English if you stop and read it, even though the paragraph formatting used by most Bible translations don't convey it:

Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.

By this time I was jonesin' to get into the Greek, but I had to leave the house and go to work. But I can take a little break now to look at this, so I hopped into the NA27. And the structure/repetition/pattern is even more evident there.

Ἑβραῖοί εἰσιν; κἀγώ.
Ἰσραηλῖταί εἰσιν; κἀγώ.
σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ εἰσιν; κἀγώ.
διάκονοι Χριστοῦ εἰσιν; παραφρονῶν λαλῶ, ὑπὲρ ἐγώ·

ἐν κόποις περισσοτέρως,
ἐν φυλακαῖς περισσοτέρως,
ἐν πληγαῖς ὑπερβαλλόντως,
ἐν θανάτοις πολλάκις.

Now, on the way I've highlighted the repetition in the first four lines, the thing to remember is that κἀγώ is a crasis for καὶ ἐγω. And then Paul uses ὑπὲρ ἐγώ. In colloquial terms, it's like Paul is saying "So am I" three times, and the fourth time he says, "I am so that!" or "I am so much more (a servant of Christ)".

But we sort of got that in the English. It's the second part that is almost like Mad Libs (Remember those? Or am I dating myself too much?). Here's the template:

[PREPOSITION ἐν] [DATIVE PLURAL NOUN] [ADVERB] {4x}*

Not only that, but we have a similar progression to the first four lines. These last four lines progress in severity, from "labors" to "imprisonments" to "beatings" to "near death". And that matches up with the descending specificity in the groups/persons in Paul's questions: "Hebrews" to "Israelites" to "seed of Abraham" to "servants of Christ". Let's look at all of this in a table:

The effect of all of Paul's "boasting" in these short verses is to show the Corinthians that if they choose to measure Paul on some sort scale that has a positive correlation with suffering and persecution (more suffering == better score) then they have no choice but to score Paul as high as is possible. Paul breaks the curve.

And in these verses, he's only starting! He actually lists out several of the things he suffered as an apostle in later verses (2Co 11.24-33), serving to annihilate this argument against him.

These few verses (2Co 11.21-23) really do convey the point and serve as a reminder and example to us. This is the calling that we who are Christians must be willing to encounter. I know I forget about it in the relative security of the United States, working at a Bible Software company, with Christian friends and family who great and encouraging to be around. This reminds me that I need to be ready to encounter whatever for the gospel of Christ. Paul did. And I'm supposed to imitate him as he imitates Christ. (cf. 1Co 11.1 and previous verses, 1Co 10.23-33).

* After I typed the "{4x}", I thought: "I wonder if anyone has ever written a praise chorus based on this section of Scripture." Yes, I'm in rare form tonight, apparently. If such lyrics wouldn't be about the painful portion of Paul's apostolic career, I'm sure it would've been done by now.

Hi folks.

I just added another new entry to my blogroll that I've been reading for the past few weeks. The blog is Tyler Williams' Codex Blogspot. Tyler's range is awesome and the posts are good to boot. He's got stuff like:

Going Potty in Ancient Times

But seriously (and more importantly), he's got stuff like this:

New Picture of Leviticus Scroll Fragments
A Step-by-Step Reconstruction of the New Leviticus Fragments

How cool is that?

The Gutenberg Project has digitized a number of Doré's illustrations. UPenn has these editions online, the image quality is decent. Linking to the list of the books is a different problem. The below URL, copied and pasted to a browser address box, should work:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Dor%26eacute%3b%2c%20Gustave%2c%201832%2d1883

If you click it (from the blog; dunno 'bout aggregators), I doubt it will work.

Below is a sample illustration (I've decreased the size for presentation here) of Dore's from Dante's Vision of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, part 2.

Several bibliobloggers are making all different sorts of top-ten lists of books. I think Scot McKnight started the trend, and I think Stephen C. Carlson has had the best general statement to date. I won't link to others here; they're easy enough to find right now. Just go to the NT Gateway Weblog and do the clickie-clickie dance in the sidebar blogroll, and you'll find some lists.

I wanted to make a truly useful list, not some list attempting to reflect the form of platonic perfection in a particular area of theology or Biblical studies. And I've started a lot of books I need to finish, so what list could be better?

That said, here's my list. These are in no particular order.

• Arthur Vööbus, Early Versions of the New Testament: Manuscript Studies. Status: over halfway.
• Bruce M. Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission and Limitations. Status: not started.
• C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia.* Status: 3/7 of the way done.
• Stanley Porter, Studies in the Greek New Testament. Status: nearly complete.
• N.T. Wright, The Resurrection and the Son of God. Status: not started.
• George W. Knight III, The Faithful Sayings in the Pastoral Letters. Status: over halfway.
• J.M. Holmes, Text in a Whirlwind: A Critique of Four Exegetical Devices at 1 Timothy 2.9-15. Status: over halfway.
• Ray Van Neste, Cohesion and Structure in the Pastoral Epistles. Status: over halfway.
• Perry L. Stepp, Leadership Succession in the World of the Pauline Circle. Status: over halfway.
• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion (Battles translation). Status: halfway.

Pretty sad, huh? Looks like I can only get halfway through a book before I get interested in a new one. The sad part? I have two books I really want to put on this list, but don't for fear that then I'll think that means I really can start them (and I've actually started one of them ... shhhh! don't tell anyone!)

I'm close to finishing Vööbus and then I can put early versions to rest for a bit before I start Meztger. I'm not worried about Calvin; that's been on the back burner for the past two years; a guy can only chew on so much. N.T Wright -- well, I don't think I like where he's going in his magnum opus, so I'm not too encouraged to get back into it. That one can sit. Narnia will happen, it is good in-between reading.

Van Neste, Stepp and Holmes are the ones I'm worried about. I burned through the first half of each of them easily, but they've since moved off of my radar. I need to get back into them before I start the mystery book mentioned above (that I've already started, but remember, don't tell anyone). But the mystery book is so cool! I'll blog about that one for sure once I get through it!

Note: Aquinas is nowhere on my list.

Update (2005-08-10): Thanks to all the folks who have commented. A few notes:

Jim -- Thanks for the OK to pass on Wright for now. But that book is just staring at me, and I'm through two of the three published volumes, and feel like I should dig in and wrap it up. Still, I think I'll pass for now.

Brandon -- You speak much wisdom.

Murray -- Narina is before Aquinas because I want to read Narnia. Aquinas is something I should read, but am not motivated to. Hence, it is lower on the list. Plain and simple.

Loren -- The part I enjoy from Wright is his use of Pseudepigrapha and Dead Sea Scroll material to fill in some holes, though it largely has the effect of displaying my own gaps of knowledge in these areas. I typically have to read books like Wright's a few times before I really "get" what is being said, and I've only read the first two books once. And the series is a projected five books (right?) so I'm not even halfway into it. Which is why I want to withold judgement, for now. That said -- and I don't have any examples to hand -- there have been times when I've read a section and "done the math" predicting what certain statements might mean (either in the area of eschatology, or in the deity of Christ, or some other something) and not really liked the extrapolation. To be fair, though, such things are extrapolations and very well may not be the view Wright is promoting. Which means I need to read it and understand it. Which is why it is on my list. But it still gives me the heebie-jeebies sometimes.

* Yes, I'm counting the Chronicles of Narnia as one book, not seven. I'm just about to start the fourth book (in order of release), The Silver Chair.