A Greek Question

I was reviewing some Greek tonight and I've come across something I can't figure out : how do you write the imperfect of αμαρτανω? The issue is that the verb has both a first aorist and second aorist and the second aorist seems as if it would be the exact same as the imperfect (the 2nd aorist being ημαρτον).

Well howdy (subtitled: How to write a book review?)

I hope all is well out there for everyone who reads this on occcasion (to those of you who don't, I hope all is terrible). Another birthday has passed this week (I turned 24 on July 1...I'm getting old) and that means new cool books. Two of my favorites are Warren H. Carroll's first volume in his History of Christendom series (this one is titled The Founding of Christendom). The other book I got was Ben Witherington III, What have they done with Jesus. I just finished a few books - one being Mike Aquilina's The Mass of the Early Christians, and another on which he was an editor titled The Great Life: Essays on Doctrine and Holiness in honor of Father Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap. As well as reading Orchard and Riley's The Order of the Synoptics: Why Three Synoptics?

I'm mentioning these books because I want to be able to move into doing actual book reviews on the blog, but....I don't know how. Obviously I know how to write a book report from school, but when I sit down to write a book review for the blog I feel like I'm working without a framework and I don't like that. So, this is a post to see if anyone will divulge their book-reviewing secrets. Where do you start? What do you do while reading? How do you divide it up?

What's unique about Greek?

Mike over at En Epheso gives us the answer here.

Why I blog

It seems my bit at the end of one of my previous posts has gained some attention and I feel I should clarify what I meant. Rick Brannan weighs in with the helpful advice to just blog what interests you. Nick Norelli lets us know what the real secret is: drivel. I agree with points they both make. I do post what interests me (even though most of my focus now is outside of NT scholarship and has wandered off into Patristics) and most of it is drivel, so check and check. My point in my previous post was that if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing well - blogging included. The reason I blog is because I enjoy being included in a community of academics who share similar interests and communicate them via blogging. Being part of this community, I feel compelled to do my best, even though it's something as trivial as blogging.

The Mark of the Beast and Aniconic Jews

In the dissertation I'm currently reading by Deborah Taylor, she discusses the "mark of the beast" from Revelation 13. She recounts how Jews in Palestine had been provoked by "perceived idolatry of representations of the Roman emperor: by athletic trophies; by a golden eagle on a temple gate; by Pilate's brining 'the effigies of Caesar...' into Jerusalem." (Pg 105, citing Josephus Antiquities 15.8.1 and 17.6.2-3).

She goes on to give a brief history of the monetization of the East's economy and then talks about the mint that produced "virtually all" of Palestine's coinage, the mint at Tyre. Not only was the coinage produced at Tyre of a very high quality (Taylor states that it was about 96% silver - pg 108), but that it did not offend the aniconic Jews' sensibilities being that it bore the image of Melqart, the Phoenician Hercules.

However, during Nero's reign, both economic and political forces caused the Tyrian mint to be closed and later its currency to be removed from circulation (109). The closest mint was the Antiochene mint, which produced coinage bearing the image of Nero. Thus, as Taylor states, "[b]y the late 60s, aniconic Jews in Palestine would have compromised their principles with every major purchase."(109)

This isn't her entire argument (nor the focus of her argument, she simply uses this to help date the book of Revelation to the time of Nero's reign) - but I find it an interesting one. For the fact that there's incredible speculation about what the mark of the beast will be (I've heard everything from barcodes to credit cards to social security numbers), it's refreshing that someone has taken the book in its historical context and given an extremely compelling explanation of the mark.

An Update

Things are back up with the blogging machine, so here I am! In my little hiatus I was able to do quite a lot of reading. I'm currently working through Deborah F. Taylor's dissertation titled, "The Geographical and Adversarial Orientation of the Book of Revelation." She graduated with her Ph.D from CUA in 2005. It's an incredibly interesting dissertation (as far as dissertations go). I'm also reading through Carl Olson's critique of dispensationalism, "Will Catholics Be Left Behind? A Catholic Critique of the Rapture and Today's Prophecy Preachers." Olson is a former Evangelical who attended a Bible college that apparently had dispensationalist leanings. His critique is well-sourced in both dispensationalist authors and their critics. I'm also reading Mike Aquilina's, "The Mass of the Early Christians" (2nd Ed). I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Aquilina a few times. It's odd, but because I know him, I enjoy reading his books more - does anyone else have this experience? At any rate, it's a fantastic read and you should check out this book along with any others he's written.

I'll be getting back into more New Testament blogging shortly. I will say that I find as an undergraduate, blogging is daunting. When you're competing (if I can use that word) for readers' attention with people like Pat Mccullough, Chris Tilling, Jim West, Mark Goodacre, James Crossley, etc, it's difficult to have something intelligent and interesting to say on a regular basis when you're not as well-trained as them.

Blogging machine is down

My blogging machine is down. I should be back to the usual posting shortly.