Pardon me a moment whilst I mop up the drool puddle from my desk ...

Ok, I'm ready now.

Flipping through the SBL Annual Meeting program book, I noticed an advert for Hendrickson Publishers.

Specifically, I noted a book by Craig A. Evans, Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature. So, I hopped to Amazon.com and see that it is to be released in November. This thing sounds awesome; here's an excerpt from the blurb from Hendrickson's site:

Evans’s dexterous survey—a thoroughly revised and significantly expanded edition of his Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation—amasses the requisite details of date, language, text, translation, and general bibliography. Evans also evaluates the materials’ relevance for interpreting the NT. The vast range of literature examined includes the Old Testament apocrypha, the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, assorted ancient translations of the Old Testament and the Targum paraphrases, Philo and Josephus, Rabbinic texts, the New Testament pseudepigrapha, the early church fathers, various gnostic writings, and more. Six appendixes, including a list of quotations, allusions, and parallels to the NT, and a comparison of Jesus’ parables with those of the rabbis will further save the interpreter precious time.

Nota Bene: It's cheaper at Amazon by around twelve bucks. But I'm hoping it'll be even cheaper at the SBL Annual Meeting ...

Amy and I went on a cool little drive yesterday afternoon. We went up Chuckanut Ridge. It's really part of Larrabee state park. On your way south from Fairhaven on Chuckanut Drive, keep an eye out for Hiline Road. It is just before the fire station. Take a left, and drive up the paved road. It will shortly turn into Cleator Road, which is a dirt road. This will take you up the mountain. There's a parking lot on top (3.5 miles), a few picnic tables and restroom facilities. Here's a map, if you're interested. Here's a little more info on Whatcom County trails.

And here are a few photos that don't do the view justice. The first was taken from a pullout on the road. It isn't the greatest photo, but it has a warm glow that I like:

Here's a photo looking down on Chuckanut Bay:

That was taken with a telephoto lense. Here's another photo from the top taken with a wide angle lense:

It's a pretty cool little area. Might be a nice spot for a picnic lunch. It's close to town, but not in the main Larrabee state park complex, so it might be a bit less crowded.

I just read of Mark Goodacre's two-year blogiversary on Sept. 2. Congratulations, Mark! I know I'm looking forward to more. Cheers, and thanks for your work!

Ok, the title is a little lame, but I wanted to have a somewhat consistent title in what has now (unintentionally) become a series of posts on issues of context. (Previous posts: Context Involves Perspective, Context Is Everything.)

What triggered me this time? I was reading a recent post of Mark Goodacre's on the NT Gateway Weblog where he uses the adjective "wireless" in regard to internet access:

Alas, no wireless access or other internet access in the rooms so I have not been able to get my blogging machine into action.

Upon reading this, I thought, "wow, the use of the word 'wireless' sure has changed in recent years." It used to have to do solely with radio transmission. I suppose it still does, only instead of transmitting sound (radio telephony/telegraphy) now the assumed context is that of a wireless data network.

I checked m-w.com (Merriam Webster) to confirm my understanding. They have four different entries listed when one searches for wireless:

• wireless [1, adjective]
• wireless [2, noun]
• wireless telegraphy
• wireless telephone

None of these mention anything about wireless networks. So, even a prominent dictionary doesn't carry this new sense of the word. Yet I'd argue virtually everyone who read Mark's post understood immediately what he meant, especially since he added " ... or other internet access" to the sentence. This makes it unambiguous. Mark really wasn't trying to radio messages to us. He wanted a data connection so he could tell us about the cool happenings at BNTC.

This seems relevant to Biblical exegesis, at least to me. Once again, put yourself at least a few hundred years in the future and assume the requisite development/changes of language. You're reading the wisdom of that eminent (yet somewhat mysterious) sage, Mark Goodacre. His writings are normally clear, but in your frenzied research you stumble onto this somewhat strange fragmentary witness. Lacunae are marked by brackets:

Alas, no wireless access or other [...]
access in the rooms so I have not [...]
able to get my blogging machine [...]

Now you can make all sorts of crazy reconstructions. If you've got copy of the Merriam Webster Dictionary from the late 20th century, you'd only know 'wireless' as having to do with radio stuff. I can't consult the OED, so I don't know what it would have. It would be better to check in this case, but I'd guess the primary definition(s) there also would have to do with radio telegraphy. If you look later in the fragment and see "machine", you may jump and make the conclusion that he must be referencing radio telegraphy since he's talking about "machines" and therefore mechanical devices of some sort (It's all in the same semantic domain, you see). But you'd still be wrong. If you interpret the language in light of early 20th century terminology, you'll get the wrong idea (perhaps even without lacunae).

Once you start to understand Goodacre the wise (I'm not going to argue for a proto-Goodacre in this post, and don't get me started on the Goodacre-ian redactors ... ) you learn that as one of the high priests of the biblioblog cult, he practiced something called "blogging", which was done on "computer" (also known as a "machine") and disseminated this "blogging" on the "internet". And that, way back then, these "computers" had wired and "wireless" connections to the "internet" via local wired and wireless networks. So "wireless" in the above fragment has nothing to do with radio telegraphy, it has to do with transmission of data packets across the air. So, you might conclude, the above quote had to do with expressing that at some point, he was unable to practice this ascetic discipline of blogging to broadcast instructions to his followers.

Or something like that.

Jokingly, earlier today, I asked a colleague:

"Hey, let's start a pool. We can guess on how long it'll take someone to find Hurricane Katrina using Bible Codes!"

He responded, "yeah, only we need an option for writings of Nostradamus, because someone will go that route too." So we added that option.

I mentioned this to another colleague a bit later on, and then I actually took a guess: Monday, Sept. 5, 2005.

My second colleague did an internet search. It seems I was too gracious in allotting a full week for someone to partake in shoddy mathemat-egesis (what, there's good mathemate-gesis?) because some guy did it yesterday (Sept. 1, 2005).

Behold: Revelation 13: The English King James version Bible code - Part 8d - Hurricane Katrina hit Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi in August 2005.

I honestly don't know how to respond. There is so much wrong with that, I'm speechless.

But I think I won the pool. No money exchanged hands, I only receive the admiration of my friends and colleagues.

Update (2005-09-02): My colleague who pushed for a Nostradamus exemption, disgusted in losing the pool, went and seached Nostradamus' quartrains himself. Lookie what he found:

Near the great river, great ditch, earth drawn out,
In fifteen parts will the water be divided:
The city taken, fire, blood, cries, sad conflict,
And the greatest part involving the coliseum
                               — Century IV, Quartrain 80

Apparently the AV geeks ... er, "serious Nostradamus scholars" ... have been discussing this already. Sheesh.

Update (2005-09-04): The Google hits are already coming on this one. Lest there be any question from folks who arrive here from search engines, I think the Bible codes (and Nostradaman prophecies, for that matter) are a bunch of bunk. I'm still mildly shocked that anyone would think such a practice could actually inform exegesis. It can't. Get out of the fantastic and just read the Bible. You don't need to dig for hidden messages and deeper truths, you need to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.

There's not much more to say about it. Several bibliobloggers have provided status of friends and family; praise God for those whose loved ones are safe, and may the Lord give peace to those who have lost loved ones or who aren't aware of the status of their friends and family.

Much needs to be done in the bayou. Consider making a donation to Samaritan's Purse, the Red Cross or another organization that you know will help out down there.

• Samaritan's Purse -- Here's a little more info on this organization, a non-denominational ministry that is already on the ground in affected areas.
• Red Cross via Amazon.com -- come on, you're a bibliophile and you're set up to one-click Amazon. The whole amount goes straight to the Red Cross, and you don't have to fill out a form. What could be easier?

Update (2005-09-04): ricoblog reader Kevin Purcell also recommends the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board. Kevin notes, "The great thing about this is fully %100 goes to relief since our churches support the administrative costs with our offerings." I don't have a horse in this race, I just see a tremendous need, as I'm sure everyone else does. If you can swing a donation, either financial or material, to some organization you know will use it well, then please consider it. 

Mark Goodacre (NT Gateway Weblog) posted a link to the homepage for the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) a few days back.

Since it sounds like my kind of place, I poked around the website. Boy howdy! It sure does sound like my kind of place.

Poking around the site, I found this paper. It is a proposed paper for SNTS in Halle:

The Joint IGNTP/INTF Edito Critica Maior of the Gospel of John: its goals and their significance for New Testament Scholarship

There is some decent background of the project as well as a very nice worked example of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) that uses James 4.12 as a basis. If you're into textual criticism, you'll probably want to read it.

I posted a few weeks back about my one-year blogiversary. Since then, August 2005 has been the best ricoblog month ever, by far. I just checked out the ol' sitemeter and grabbed this screen capture detailing traffic by visits and page-views, per month for the past year:

In August, according to sitemeter's calculations, there were over 3800 "visitors". These aren't 3800 unique IP addresses, but 3800 unique visits (where a visit consists of one or more pages consecutively viewed by the same IP). There were just over 7000 page views, or actual pages served. This does not include aggregators, which I don't really have a good way of accounting for. I have ideas, but nothing solid enough to broadcast.

I'm continually amazed when I look at the stats. Thanks for stopping by my outpost, thanks for coming back, and thanks for searching for "balsamic vinaigrette" (and, sadly, "broken toe pics").

Ok, navel-gazing is over.

Update (2005-09-01): OK, not quite over. I've decided to open up the Site Meter stats. You can go to the page from here, or use the icon thingie in the sidebar. The Recent Visitors "By World Map" is pretty cool, check it out.