Dave Black and Learning Languages

Dr. Black posted this on his blog awhile back, but I wanted to share it with people who may not frequent his blog.

The title of the post is "How to Master a Foreign Language." The last line is a great summation of the advice offered in the article..."Friend, do not be afraid to make mistakes. Do not fear correction. Swallow your pride and speak out!"

There are times when I catch myself not wanting to speak in Greek class. Either I can't remember how to conjugate something, or I worry that I'll get lost in the middle of a long word. I've done two summer missions trips to Guatemala and most of my friends speak Spanish (which they learned either in High school and/or the university), so I used to have a tendency to say -τε as "tay", like you would in Spanish. I've found this is a common thing among most of the people in my first year Greek class who have any background whatsoever in Spanish. Dr. Black's advice is invaluable...you just have to suck it up, say some words incorrectly, and continue to learn.

Updating

I'm sorry to all three people who read the blog that I haven't updated recently. I've been in the midst of writing papers, switching jobs, and reading Freud. Unfortunately, I've not had much time to do any personal reading, which is generally the source for all of my blog posts....me stealing other's ideas.

Things I'm working on:

My post on Liberation Theology (a bit behind)

My exegesis paper of 1 John 1:8-2:2 (I'll be posting my questions here soon)

Some thoughts on learning languages on one's own


A real nail-biter, I know. Stay tuned.

P.S. - Just a reminder, the Last Twelve Verses in Mark conference is coming up at Southeastern. Here's the link.

The Talpiot Tomb: Yeshua Inscription

I wrote a post concerning the inscription of "Yeshua (?) Bar Yehosef" and copied the PDF copy of the inscription into my post. Mark Goodacre has posted another PDF file from James Tabor concerning the rationale behind rendering what appeared to me to be "scribble-scrabble" (technical jargon, I know) as "Yeshua". To my very untrained eye, I still don't see it. But, for the sake of being fair I've included a link to the PDF File here, and a link to Dr. Goodacre's blog post here.

****Editor's Note 3/22*****

Just a few minutes after posting this, I went back and looked over the original PDF file and its inscription, and then the new PDF file and its inscription and they aren't the same. It may just be for the sake of clarity, but it's misleading if one assumes that this is how the inscription appears on the ossuary. Now, before I make a few observations, it should again be restated that I am in no way, shape, or form an expert on anything...at all.

1) The Yodh (י) still looks nothing like a Yodh.
2) The Shin(שׁ) still looks nothing like a Shin.
3) The Vav (ו) still looks nothing like a Vav.
4) The Aiyin (ע) is the only one which looks remotely like a real Hebrew letter and not the aforementioned "scribble-scrabble".

I have no illusions that ancient writing will always look as uniform on ancient artifacts as it does in our textbooks, but I included in my last post the facsimile of the "Yehudah Bar Yeshua" inscription, which is written far more legibly than that of our friend "Yeshua(?)", to show that not all the inscriptions are nearly this hard to read. I am with James Charlesworth when he writes that "[t]he scribbling is not an inscription, it is sloppy graffiti."

Oral Transmission of the New Testament

I was reading Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses the other night at work and I had a thought. Did skepticism ever play an editorial role in the oral tradition/scribal habits in ancient times? Granted, I realize that most of the hyper-skepticism today is the result of the Enlightenment, however, Herodotus mentions in several places in his The Histories that he thinks certain things are dubious, yet he records them anyway (and the things about which he has doubts generally turn out to be right!). But do we know of instances where the miraculous is edited out or "toned down" because of the skepticism of the storyteller/scribe.

Also, Bauckham says that the Gospel of John is written by an eyewitness, the "Beloved Disciple." The classic view on the Gospel of John is that it gives the highest Christology. Operating within Bauckham's theories, I wonder if a case could be made for the Evangelists (atleast Matthew and Luke) "toning down" the high Christology we see in John. I'm not saying that John was a source, but that the common oral history concerning a miraculous Jesus passed to the Evangelists was not edited out completely (we still have a Jesus who forgives sins, heals people, etc) but perhaps toned down?

Mind you, I realize that there are a number of complications with this idea. And I'm not advocating the idea, I'm simply wondering if there's any possibility to that being a viable idea.

Yet another blog on the blogroll...

I decided to take a bit of a break from reading Joel Marcus' The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in Mark (as I'm meeting with him tomorrow and I'd like to have something to say other than, "Golly, you sure are smart, mister! Ahyuck.") and I stumbled across this blog titled "Dunelm Road". The author is a postgraduate student over at Durham and a former graduate student at Dallas Theological. He has a ton of great information for Americans who are considering pursuing their Ph.D in the UK.

Fr. Jon Sobrino censured by the Vatican

The Vatican has decided to censure Fr. Jon Sobrino. You can find the details in this article.

Fr. Sobrino is one of the leading minds of Liberation Theology. LT, in my opinion, is a reactionary ideology to the church becoming cold and calloused to Jesus' calls for true discipleship. LT has a great deal of really good ideas that cannot be dismissed simply because of the Marxist overtones. I believe with the South American political climate becoming increasingly leftist, we'll see a resurgence of Liberation Theology.

If you want some good primary source material for Liberation Theology, I suggest reading:

Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: Perspectives

Jon Sobrino, Christ the Liberator and Jesus the Liberator

I'll post more about this in the near future. Also, one of my professors did his dissertation on Liberation Theology's Christology (which I read last fall for a bit of an intro to the subject), so I may see if I can get him to write up a guest post about Sobrino, his ideology, and perhaps where he sees Sobrino and LT going in the next few years.

New (to the blogroll) blog: Paleo-Judaica

Although I concentrate most of my studies on the New Testament, even more specifically textual criticism, I've been sucked in to the "Jesus as Jew" side of scholarship lately. As such, my interest in all things Judaism has peaked. I'm trying to get better at Hebrew, wanting to actually remember the history of the Old Testament, etc. I came across this blog awhile back and I've really enjoyed it. The author is a Reader in Early Jewish Studies at the University of St. Andrews. He's also the author of the book The Provenance of the Pseudepigrapha: Jewish, Christian, or Other?.

At any rate, check out his blog here or over on the blogroll.