One of my favorite non-biblioblogs, Marginal Revolution, has an occasional feature called "Opposite Day". On Opposite Day, the primary bloggers Tyler and Alex don their alter egos "Tyrone" and "Axel" and play devil's advocate, arguing opposite what they normally would.

I'm wondering if this could be a productive thing in the realm of biblioblogdom. I've thought for awhile about "opposite blogging" on my PastoralEpistles.com blog, using it to think through some issues from a perspective opposite of my normal views.

Just think of the possibilities:

• A Mark Goodacre alter ego blogging about Q
• A Jim West alter ego blogging about the archaeological reliability of the Hebrew Bible
• [insert your own opposite here]

Anyway, just a thought. Perhaps in the near future biblioblogs.com could attempt to orchestrate a biblioblogdom-wide "Opposite Day" where folks opposite-blog on the issue of their choice?

Update: Loren Rosson (The Busybody) comments here and responds favorably on his own blog. Jim West (Dr. Jim West) offers support and commits to a post. Thanks, gents! With that response, I'll take the lead and declare "Opposite Day" to be Monday, July 10, 2006. That'll give us all a little time to think over the weekend and write something up for Monday's blog readin'.

If you'd like to participate, you certainly may. Just send me a link to your blog and "Opposite Day" entry and I'll list them in a post on Monday. I'd recommend the following for posts:

• Introduce your question/topic. It can be anything, really, as long as you're arguing opposite what you normally would. Arguing against known positions is always enlightening (for reader and writer) but don't feel bound to that.
• Introduce your alter ego. I think this is important, we'll need to make sure that no future google searches stumble upon these entries leading folks to think you yourself are actually supporting something completely opposite of what you normally would. I think Tyler Cowen's example of always introducing "my good friend Tyrone" as the author, then blockquoting as if he's copied the text in from an email, is a good model.
• Make your (alter ego's) point. You can be short or long, doesn't matter. You might be surprised how well your alter ego can argue.

So let me know via email [text geek at g mail dot com is the address] or comments here if you'll participate!

Mark Goodacre, Loren Rosson and Pete Phillips [update: and Michael Barber] have provided answers to Francis Ward's questions. So here's my quick stab (note emphasis on "quick"):

1. How long have you been blogging?

My blog, ricoblog, has been active since August 2004.

2. What got you started?

I'd blogged internal to the company I work for (Logos Bible Software) for about 10 months previous to that. It seemed that ricoblog was the logical next step. I'd read some Biblical Studies blogs regularly (Stephen C. Carlson's Hypotyposeis, Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway Weblog, and Jim Davila's PaleoJudaica) and began to interact.

3. Do you have a history of diary/journal/log writing beforehand?

Not really. I just write; I wouldn't classify my writing as a journal or diary. I think through issues when I write, so many times my writing is complete meandering (yes, I can see y'all's eyes rolling here) instead of a tightly formulated statement I'd be willing to fight for.

4. How in your own mind do you negotiate the boundary between private and public? E.g. are there things that you would not put on your blog that you would put in a journal?

Since I don't write a journal I can't really answer this question. But yes, there are things I don't blog. For example, I try to stay completely removed from things political. I'd hate for someone to disregard the blog because they don't agree with my politics. The converse of this is true as well, I wouldn't want someone to read what I write just because we have a similar political perspective.

5. How do you decide? What criteria do you use for inclusion/exclusion?

There are no criteria. When I feel like posting, I post.

6. How much time, on average, do you spend blogging each day or week?

This goes in spurts, distilling an average wouldn't be meaningful. For example, right now my blogging is rather light because life is busy planning a wedding and a honeymoon (yee-haw!). I'm guessing blogging may perk up again as the 2006 SBL Meeting approaches.

7. How many other people do you actively engage with — e.g. are part of your blog community?

I interact with a subset of the blogs listed on biblioblogs.com. I at least skim them all. My interaction has become less and less as there have become more and more biblioblogs. There's just no way to keep up with them.

8. Who is your readership — literally; as far as you know?

I think my highest percentage of hits come from folks looking for recipes for balsamic vinaigrette. Outside of that, readers are those interested in Biblical Studies, perhaps doing graduate-level work or those teaching at colleges, seminaries or other graduate level institutions. And Logos Bible Sofware users are readers as well.

9. and metaphorically? Do you imagine someone to whom you write/with whom you engage?

Not really. I'd like to think folks who share similar interests with me and who can interact. I also like to ask general questions when I know readers know more about something than I do, for instance, which version(s) of Irenaeus to purchase.

10. What counts as successful blogging?

Because I primarily blog to think through issues (large or small), successful blogging is that which helps in the process of grappling with an issue—be it exegetical or otherwise.

11. What does blogging offer as a method of theological reflection?

I don't do much "theological reflection" blogging. Some theological reflection is inevitable with the kinds of issues I write about (say, examining the structure of a passage and working through how that might inform exegesis) but I wouldn't say it is a method. From my perspective, it is a side effect, and a minor one at that.

12. What potential do you see for blogging as a method of theological reflection?

For someone who "does theology", blogging would be a great way for them to share their working through theological issues or statements.

13. Do you know of examples of theological education programmes where students are required to keep a learning journal and blog as a form of journal?

I've heard of such things anecdotally, but have no actual examples.

14. Blogging and gender: do you think gender makes any difference to any of the above questions?

I think people are different and therefore will blog differently. Gender is one way to qualify those differences. I could likely pick any other either/or criteria (blue eyes vs. brown eyes?) and make assumptions as to how it may or may not affect blogging. But focusing on one aspect denies the importance of the whole package.

So head on over to Daily Hebrew and check out BSC:VII. H.H. Hardy has done a great job. Heck, ricoblog is even mentioned, so it's gotta be good!

Apparently they do. I stumbled across it searching around for other things today.

• OUPBlog

Even better, because I'm really not interested in most of the stuff on there, is their weekly etymology post (on Wednesdays) by Anatoly Liberman.

[non sequitur]

That reminds me, while we're on the subject of etymology, earlier today a colleague happened upon Ac 16.35-38 and noted that the word the ESV translates "police" might come from something originally meaning "guys with sticks". Of course I reminded him that this makes perfect sense because our English word "police" is really just a compound of "pole" and "ice" that hearkens back to the time when ice chunks were a valuable commodity. These "pole-icers" would use their poles to chunk the ice for sale. Because the ice was so valuable, they also started chasing away ice bandits with their poles ... effectively "policing" the area and securing the ice from ne'er-do-wells. We see the heritage today in the clubs that most policemen carry.

(Yes, that is sarcasm, not a bit of it meant to be serious. Please laugh along with me. Next we'll discuss the etymologies of "butterfly" and "cupboard" ... )

Richard Anderson (dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos theophilos) blogs briefly about stylometry and notes that he's got three volumes on the topic he's planning on reading through.

He also casually notes the bane of my existence: "Needless to say, stylometry now involves sophisticated math". I knew I should've paid more attention in my statistics class in college.

Anyway, here's my stylometry reading list at present. I have read most of these, others I am in the process of reading. If you have articles or books to suggest, please use the comments. I'll migrate them to the post to keep the post complete.

• Anthony Kenny, A Stylometric Study of the New Testament
• A. Dean Forbes, "Statistical Research on the Bible" in Anchor Bible Dictionary. This is well worth the effort to read and the bibliography for the article is quite helpful.
• Matthew Brook O'Donnell, Corpus Linguistics and the Greek of the New Testament
• Kenneth J. Neumann, The Authenticity of the Pauline Epistles in the Light of Stylostatistical Analysis
• Micheal W. Palmer, Levels of Constituent Structure in New Testament Greek (less about style, more about clause level syntax)
• P.N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles
• Stephen C. Carlson, A Cluster Analysis According to Lexical Contacts.

I'm also reading some discourse analysis stuff (Reed on Philippians, Guthrie on Hebrews, Van Neste on the Pastorals and some other stuff) in the hopes it'll spur some further thoughts. This is all background reading for the paper I'll be presenting at the SBL in November. Work is well under way, though digging into the math will be a bit of a challenge.

Update: Here are some brief thoughts on authorship of the Pastorals from my other (much less frequently posted-to) blog, PastoralEpistles.com. Please make sure to understand the gist of my point there — I think that NT authorship attribution studies that rely on unique vocabulary are inherently flawed, so in order to address the question we must throw those studies out and go back to the starting point. This means we first restate the internal evidence and argumentation for traditional authorship assumptions so skeptics can ask new questions about validity of authorship. Therefore we can start to examine questions of authorship again once the positive case is properly stated. The previous mode of argumentation was like this:

• Pauline Authorship: Yep, Paul wrote 'em. Says it right there in the salutation of each epistle.
• Skeptic: Hey, waitaminute! There's a lot of words in them thar epistles that don't occur anywhere else in Paul's letters. Maybe Paul didn't write them!
• Authorship Studies: Wow, you're right, Skeptic! We counted them all, and there really are a lot more (proportionately) in the Pastorals than in other Paulines. How could the same author have such a different vocabulary? You might be right! I mean, how else can we plausibly explain it?
• Commentators, etc.: Recent authorship studies show that the vocabulary of the Pastorals is much different than the vocabulary of other likely genuine Pauline epistles ...

So it becomes the accepted logic and can even be circular in nature as more studies are done citing commentators/etc. (and then new commentators cite the new studies ... ) as basis for hypotheses.

But other studies have been done recently and they've shown that one needs more data than the NT has available before vocabulary patterns can really establish anything regarding authorship (cf. O'Donnell's Corpus Linguistics and the Greek of the NT). Still more studies using differing criteria (more 'stylometric', so taking morphological data into account as well as vocabulary) show correlations close enough to not be unusual between some of the Pastorals and the rest of the Paulines (cf. Kenny's stylometric analysis that concludes 1&2 Timothy aren't that too different from the rest of the Paulines, but Titus is more different).

I'm just saying that some of these recent studies may require "Skeptic" to ask a different question. To mix my metaphors: As regards NT authorship/style attribution, I think we've beaten the vocabulary horse to death, and that dog don't hunt.

Pauline authorship adherents certainly need to do their homework too. I think one valuable area would be external evidence like early quotations from church fathers (Polycarp? Irenaeus? Didache?), canon lists, text-critical evidence and the like. Some work has been done in these areas, but more can certainly be done.

But the authorship question still remains so I say let's try some other approaches. Let's examine syntactic affinities between texts, now that we have a syntactically analyzed Greek New Testament available, and see what happens. Perhaps that dog won't hunt either. But we don't know 'til we tromp the cornfields and see what Fido does when we flush the bird.

[This is part of a running series on the Didache. See the introductory post for more information — RWB]

Phrasing/Translation

Ἡ δὲ τοῦ θανάτου ὁδός ἐστιν αὕτη·
And the way of death is this:

πρῶτον πάντων πονηρά ἐστι καὶ κατάρας μεστή·
First of all, it is evil and full of cursing,
   φόνοι,
   murders,
   μοιχεῖαι,
   adulteries,
   ἐπιθυμίαι,
   lusts,
   πορνεῖαι,
   fornications,
   κλοπαί,
   thefts,
   εἰδωλολατρίαι,
   idolatries,
   μαγεῖαι,
   magical acts,
   φαρμακίαι,
   potion use,
   ἁρπαγαί,
   robberies,
   ψευδομαρτυρίαι,
   false witnessing,
   ὑποκρίσεις,
   hypocrisy,
   διπλοκαρδία,
   double-heartedness,
   δόλος,
   fraud,
   ὑπερηφανία,
   pride,
   κακία,
   malice,
   αὐθάδεια,
   stubbornness,
   πλεονεξία,
   greediness,
   αἰσχρολογία,
   obscenities,
   ζηλοτυπία,
   jealousy,
   θρασύτης,
   arrogance,
   ὕψος,
   haughtiness,
   ἀλαζονεία.
   boastfulness.

διῶκται ἀγαθῶν,
Persecutors of the good,
μισοῦντες ἀληθειαν,
haters of truth,
ἀγαπῶντες ψεῦδος,
lovers of falsehood,
οὐ γινώσκοντες μισθὸν δικαιοσύνης,
not knowing the reward of righteousness,
οὐ κολλώμενοι ἀγαθῷ
not cleaving to the good
   οὐδὲ κρίσει δικαίᾳ,
   nor the righteous judgment,
ἀγρυπνοῦντες οὐκ εἰς τὸ ἀγαθόν,
not caring for the good,
   ἀλλ ̓ εἰς τὸ πονηρόν·
   but [caring for] the evil:

ὧν μακρὰν πραΰτης καὶ ὑπομονή,
From whom gentleness and patience are far removed,
μάταια ἀγαπῶντες,
lovers of vanity,
διώκοντες ἀνταπόδομα,
pursuers of reward,
οὐκ ἐλεοῦντες πτωχόν,
not having mercy for the poor,
οὐ πονοῦντες ἐπὶ καταπονουμένῳ,
not toiling for the one who is downtrodden,
οὐ γινώσκοντες τὸν ποιήσαντα αὐτούς,
not knowing who has made them,
φονεῖς τέκνων,
murderers of children,
φθορεῖς πλάσματος θεοῦ,
seducers of God's creatures,
ἀποστρεφόμενοι τὸν ἐνδεόμενον,
rejectors of the ones in need,
καταπονοῦντες τὸν θλιβόμενον,
oppressors of the afflicted,
πλουσίων παράκλητοι,
defenders of the rich,
πενήτων ἄνομοι κριταί,
lawless judges of the poor,
πανθαμάρτητοι·
people steeped in sin:

ῥυσθείητε, τέκνα, ἀπὸ τούτων ἁπάντων.
Be delivered, children, from all such as these.

Notes

Recall Did 1.1: "There are two says, one of life and one of death; there is great difference between the two ways". From 1.2 through the end of section 4, the first way — the way of life — was discussed. In this chapter the way of death is discussed. And it is done in, essentially, two lists. The first is a list of qualities that reflect actions, preferences and values of those who are following the way of death. The second is a list of sorts of people that are following the way of death. These people and the values they espouse are to be avoided. Irenaeus hints at this in his Proof of the Apostolic Preaching when he writes,

For the road of all those who see is a single upward path, lit by heavenly light; but the ways of those who see not are many and dark and divergent. The former road leads to the kingdom of heaven by uniting man with God, but the others bring down to death by severing man from God. Therefore must both you, and all those who look after the salvation of souls, make your way by faith, without deviation, with courage and determination, lest through lack of tenacity or perseverance you remain at a standstill in material passions, or even be led astray and turn aside from the straight path. (Irenaeus, Proof, paragraph 1)

The Didachist is making this same point. The way of life, discussed in §§1-4, is that which brings us closer to God. The way of death, discussed here, is that which leads us away from God. This is why the Didachist's closing plea in §5 is that the baptismal candidates be as far removed from those on the way of death as possible. The straight path, the path of life, is preferred.

As far as the qualities and sorts of people on these lists, not much can be said. Translating lists like this, particularly where there are similar items and qualities listed (and infrequently used words to boot) is a difficult slog that is never well rewarded. There is always semantic overlap so choice of translation is a bit of a pain. The thing to remember in these lists is that each item points toward painting the picture of the sorts of people and the kinds of actions that those who profess Christ are to avoid being influenced by.

Next we get into Did 6, which is a transition of sorts.

I need to preface this post by saying that I've read enough about linguistics and discourse analysis to be dangerous. This is just about something I noticed, I'm not making an assertion about how the text should be read. Working through things by writing is one of the primary methods I use to think about an issue and to assimilate data regarding an issue or question. So that's what this post is doing. I suppose this is why I find blogging so helpful, because it means I can get feedback on these preliminary sorts of thoughts as well. Also note that I haven't checked commentaries; I like to work through something and then check the commentaries because then I feel I can really interact with them — as opposed to letting them, intentionally or not, direct my study.

Before we start, here's the text in the ESV:

¹² We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, ¹³ and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. ¹⁴ And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. ¹⁵ See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. ¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ¹⁹ Do not quench the Spirit. ²⁰ Do not despise prophecies, ²¹ but test everything; hold fast what is good. ²² Abstain from every form of evil. (1Th 5.12-22)

I'm sure that many folks have noticed the string of imperatives in 1Th 5.14-22. At present (and this will likely change) I see a few sections in 1Th 5.12-22. They can be laid out thusly:

1. vv. 12-13a*
2. vv. 14-22
   • vv. 14-15a
   • vv. 15b-18
   • vv. 19-22

I think there is cohesion between the first two parts because the main verbs of each part (Ἐρωτῶμεν δὲ ὑμᾶς, ἀδελφοί and Παρακαλοῦμεν δὲ ὑμᾶς, ἀδελφοί) were used together earlier in 1Th 4.1 (Λοιπὸν οὖν, ἀδελφοί, ἐρωτῶμεν ὑμᾶς καὶ παρακαλοῦμεν ἐν κυρίῳ Ἰησοῦ).**

It's what happens in verse 15 where I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before. After realizing there was a plethora of imperatives in the passage, I was slowly working through the syntax of the passage using the OpenText.org clause annotation (inside of Logos Bible Software 3, of course) and I noticed the position of the imperatives. In vv. 14-15a, the imperatives are at the front of the clause, which (depending on what you think about constituent order in Hellenistic Greek) is standard order with the verb first. In v. 15, though, the verse is split by the conjunction ἀλλὰ, providing contrast from the first part of v. 15 to the second part of v. 15, and this is how it is translated: "Ensure that nobody repays anybody evil for evil, but always pursue the good for one another and for everybody" (my own translation). In the Greek, "ensure" is at the front of its clause. But the second clause (joined to the first by the conjunction ἀλλὰ) has its imperative "pursue" at a later position in the clause, then further modified by two prepositional phrases.

After this, through v. 22, each clause has its imperative at the end of the clause. This visualisation I copied from the OpenText.org GNT in Logos Bible Software 3 shows it a little better. Note the highlighting of the imperatives (done using Logos' "Visual Filters" feature). 'P' is for Predicator, 'C' is for Complement, 'S' is for Subject, and 'A' is for Adjunct. The lines are broken into clauses and secondary clauses.

So I began thinking: Does the conjunction ἀλλὰ in v. 15 serve to connect the clauses in v. 15 but also serve a larger function in the discourse? Why, after that point, are adverbs, prepositional phrases, and objects fronted in their clauses with their predicators (here imperative verbs) following.

Admittedly, there are a few options. Here are the ones I thought of.

Option 1: Coincidence. That is, nothing intentional is going on here, this could just be the way the text was written and transmitted. Or the shift in constituent order in v. 15 could be incidental. Or the shift in v. 15 could be intentional, but the following constituent order difference could be coincidental.

Option 2: Focus. In vv. 14-15a, the focus is on the action itself. In vv. 15b-18 the focus is on how the action is carried out, in vv. 19-22 the focus is on to whom the action is done.

Option 3: Recipients of Action. In vv. 14-15a, the action involves things that those in the fellowship are to do to others. In vv. 15b-22, the action involves things that those in the fellowship do in relation not to people, but to ideas or practices.

I'm interested to know what others think regarding the idea that  ἀλλὰ in v. 15 may function both to join the clauses in the verse and perhaps may function at a larger level, joining two paragraphs/pericopes/whatever together. Feel free to comment, send email, whatever. Note I still need to read Denniston's Greek Particles to see if he lists this sort of function as possible for ἀλλὰ.

Whatever the split between vv. 14-15a and 15b-22, the further division of 15b-22 mentioned above is for reasons of subject matter, not strictly due to structure of section.

vv. 15b-18 involve things in relation to worship and obedience to God. The question, of course, is determining the 'this' of "for this is the will of God". What does that include? I don't have that answer at present (whether it is immediate content and therefore vv. 15b-18 or if it goes all the way back to v. 14) so we won't go there.

vv. 19-22 involve negatives, but I think it also proceeds from verse 18. Paul just laid down what the will of God is, vv. 19-22 (still using imperatives, here with fronted objects instead of fronted adjuncts) instruct the Thessalonians how to live now that they have a guide to the will of God: Don't squelch whatever comes, but test it to see if it is the will of God. Embrace it if it is of the will of God, squelch it if it isn't.

* More on 1Th 5.12 on the Logos Bible Software blog ...

** Note that 1Th 4.3 (Τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ) compares favorably with 1Th 5.18 (τοῦτο γὰρ θέλημα θεοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ εἰς ὑμᾶς). Thus we have good evidence of cohesion between that portion of chapter 4 and this part of chapter 5.

It was two weeks ago today (er, Monday ... yeah, I'm postin' late) that my sweetie and I put the wedding invitations in the mail. And tomorrow (that's Tuesday) we'll be going to the county auditor's office to pick up the marriage license! Did you know that the state of Washington has a three day waiting period for marriages? And that the license is only good for 60 days? And that they're more expensive than drivers licenses, even though they're only good for a 60 day window?

In recognition of all of this I figured I'd post some pics of the mailing of the wedding invitations. Enjoy!

That's the happy couple, with scads of invites!

We mailed the invitations in Lynden, WA ... so this
Dutch boy had to get a picture under the sign with
the wooden shoe and tulips!

Kudos and thanks to my future father-in-law Ted for taking the pics and for passing along the files!