The Library - 2013-01-18

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3:06 AM

@DanO'Day Oops, false alarm. I can't spell, apparently. What made the question interesting to me was reconciling the "famous" use with a word applied to Tamar -- but they're not the same word. One is with an 'ayin and the other is with an alef (functionally homophones, though technically there's a difference). The four uses of 'almah (the one in Isaiah) are, in combination, unremarkable.

Oh well. Easy come, easy go. @DanO'Day, you are of course free to ask and answer it. I may answer too, depending on what happens to it before I get there.

2 hours later…

5:08 AM

@MonicaCellio But I'd also like to answer it, perhaps I will ask. Busy week, caring for a family member so free time is gone right now

5:42 AM

@Soldarnal I don't find it entirely convincing either, but I do find it useful. I'm not sure it would be possible to make such a 'whole Bible' interpretation entirely convincing, I think usefulness and plausibility are probably better metrics in this case, don't you?

1 hour later…

6:59 AM

@JackDouglas You're probably right; his answer did prompt me to go back and trace the "heel" through the whole Bible, so it has been useful. I'm actually quite sympathetic to whole Bible theology; but it has to be done well, and yes, this is a tough medium for that.

1 hour later…

8:25 AM

3

A: Coherence-Based Genealogical Method vs. Local Text-Types Theory

The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) has a lot of scientific backing but is not without critique. The method assumes an initial stemma and essentially just applies least-sum-of-squares statistics to find the linear regression line (the stemma that fits best). I suspect that it will actu...

@Monica this is the kind of answer and approach we are trying to encourage, right (even though it is short)?

@MonicaCellio I think that would be fine (I'm not sure from the thread in here if you have given up on the idea though?). If you state "tanakh-based, use any hermeneutic you like but show your work" in the question, any answer that does not fit that criteria is automatically "not an answer" and I see no problem with questions like that myself.

2

5 hours later…

1:39 PM

@JackDouglas I was happy with it. I did specifically ask if any scholars had issues with it so I want to see if he can name any (but for all I know he is a scholar haha), but I gave him the bounty and an upvote. Actually the bounty technically expired but somehow SE still let me give it.

2:09 PM

24

A: A grace period of one day to award the bounty after expiration (without remaining featured, of course)

No, this doesn't make sense to me -- "just one more day", well, why not just two more days? or three? or four? or seven? Where does it end? The bounty has a defined start and end period, everyone knows what they are as these dates are printed indelibly on the bountied question for the entirety o...

They (rather reluctantly) added a grace period of 24 hours after it is over :)

3:05 PM

@JackDouglas I agree. I think @DanO'Day handled it well, and I hope the poster comes back to add to this.

@JackDouglas thanks. I've abandoned asking this particular question, but I'm glad we agree that structuring a question like that is acceptable.

3:26 PM

@JackDouglas aha

3:50 PM

This site is only for Protestants or no? I looked around and sometimes answers seem to be for all Christian groups but other times I saw only Protestant theology. — theosis 13 mins ago

4:01 PM

So @JackDouglas if you only had one week with two kids to explore the UK, where would you base yourself and what would you do?

@swasheck What do you like doing?

I mean town or country for example

both?

i think that's the problem, we dont have a clue about what to do if we did this. we have no idea what sorts of things we could do that would hold our kids' interests.

i'm sure we could spend 3 weeks in london itself and not experience everything. we'd also spend a small fortune doing so.

but i'm also thinking wales, lake district, peak district ... but we've really not done much research so i may be all over the map here (literally)

4:16 PM

@swasheck you wil be spending quite a bit of your 7 days on the road, so it depends if you mind that?

@JackDouglas i guess we'd rather not :) but again, very little research has actually gone into this. it's been more like "i heard this is pretty."

@swasheck the lakes and peak district are great if you like walking

London or Oxford for sightseeing

it's weird and i think we may be trying this too soon ... i'm not sure how into these sorts of things a 7 and 5 year old will be

@swasheck good training then ;)

hopefully.

man ... who'd have thought this was a tough decision

4:31 PM

@swasheck we'd be glad to put you up for a weekend, and chauffeur to and from Heathrow if that is helpful: we're 20mins from the airport

also pretty close to Oxford, hence my earlier question about whether you'd be looking at colleges

@JackDouglas i appreciate that. you're very kind. we'll see what kind of family decision we make :)

cool :)

@JackDouglas Oxford ... i believe you have an exaggerated estimation of me :)

@swasheck wycliffehall.org.uk

@JackDouglas interesting

it's a bit different than many of the things i'd been exploring. maybe i just need to get more information from them :)

4:44 PM

@swasheck what's your tradition like? I think I know you are protestant, but beyond that I forget...

@JackDouglas i have no tradition. i guess i'm a protesting protestant :)

in all seriousness, i grew up in a cult

and every "church" experience has been without denomination

i have some seminary friends who attend an anglican church here ... we loved it when we visited. it's not the denomination that is "different" ... i've been looking at PhD programs with specific research interests and you basically have to reach out to an adviser who will work with you through your research

@swasheck almost all theological colleges here are liberal in theology, it is very different to America

if that is what you are after, you are spoilt for choice, if not then it's Oak Hill (London), WEST (Wales) or Wycliff (Oxford)

@JackDouglas what do you mean? (sorry lost the flow)

@swasheck I mean are you happy to do a PhD at a liberal college?

if not your choice is limited

Liberal Christianity

Liberal Christianity, also known as liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward. Liberal does not refer to Progressive Christianity or to the political philosophy, but to the philosophical and religious thought that developed as a consequence of the Enlightenment. Liberal Christianity, broadly speaking, is a method of biblical hermeneutics, an undogmatic method of understanding God through the use of scripture by applying the same modern hermeneu...

@JackDouglas and i think this is where the consideration is still weighing on me. do i want further theological education/training, or do i want research training that i can apply to my theological foundation? i still go back and forth.

if it's research, then i'm less concerned about the relative liberality (word?) of the context.

if theology, then i'd probably stay stateside

4:59 PM

@swasheck you'd still be rubbing shoulders with the others at the college though whatever you are doing?

maybe that isn't such a valid assumption, idk

I like to be surrounded by friends :)

@JackDouglas because you have them :)

@swasheck ha ha, yes including many I've never met around the world :)

though I doubt I exactly 'fit in' anywhere any more than anyone else...

as an aside, i think that liberal theology is not always as bad as it's made to be. that may be the influence of my master's adviser

having said that, i agree with the need to be careful and discerning. what are churches like in England? are the majority of them liberal?

but I wouldn't do well surrounded by Christian's who didn't believe in a literal ressurection. I need the encouragement of like-minded folk I think

@swasheck yes, the great majority

The Anglican 'church' is actually a mixture of all different 'churches'!

so my biggest problem with Liberal Christianity is the unwillingness to claim that inerrancy of Scripture

in the end that's a foundational and fundamental difference that i can't really look past.

@JackDouglas shame. are you comfortable in your church?

and what are your thoughts on NT Wright?

and would anyone be upset if i used Meta for some personal quest?

5:17 PM

@swasheck What do you mean?

so he added a source. I will edit sometime for the grammatical errors, but what say you about the content. He only edited the last paragraph (added it).

4

A: Coherence-Based Genealogical Method vs. Local Text-Types Theory

The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) has a lot of scientific backing but is not without critique. The method assumes an initial stemma and essentially just applies least-sum-of-squares statistics to find the linear regression line (the stemma that fits best). I suspect that it will actu...

I gotta run for about an hour or so but will edit when I return (unless someone else does so) :P

@Soldarnal find something to research? i've been thinking about asking about open textual quandaries and unresolved issues. it's honestly a quest to stumble across a phd thesis. i have some fuzzy ideas, but dont know how to articulate them :)

I just don't want to get too edit-happy since I edited his initial response, but then again he didn't seem to mind. Or her (not sure which?)

6:08 PM

hahahaa @JackDouglas looking through the schools i found this

@DanO'Day I'm pretty sure he/she won't object that sort of edit

bath.ac.uk/news/2013/01/18/uni-closed-exams-postponed

@swasheck sure, we were converted in a town with two Bible-believing churches and consider ourselves very lucky. The central Anglican church is fairly well know and very large by UK standards, we went there for 4 years then moved to the other, a tiny 'free' church 10 minutes walk from where we currently live.

@swasheck just looking him up on Wikipedia—I'd heard his name but he is not someone I'd really registered. tbh we mainly read books by Americans or dead people in my house :)

@swasheck absolutely fine I think...

planning to do a book review there myself at some point ;)

6:50 PM

@swasheck Not necessarily. The British Museum is free, the Natural History Museum is free (and, if you like architecture, is also one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, being something of a cross between a cathedral and a Victorian railway station), the Science Museum is free, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (museum of art and design) is free. All (especially the Science and Natural History museums) have kid-friendly activities, and you could easily spend a week in any of them.

@swasheck But the people who do claim the inerrancy of Scripture are equally comfortable about ignoring the bits of it they don't like.

OK I edited it. I hope I didn't take out too much, the last sentence wasn't really necessary -

4

A: Coherence-Based Genealogical Method vs. Local Text-Types Theory

The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) has a lot of scientific backing but is not without critique. The method assumes an initial stemma and essentially just applies least-sum-of-squares statistics to find the linear regression line (the stemma that fits best). I suspect that it will actu...

And the Natural History Museum (and probably some of the others, too) also has free tour guides. I was on one a few years ago. The one we were on was focusing on mammals, but the guide also does an architecture tour, so she gave us some of that while she was at it. It's terracotta plates on a steel frame.

@TRiG in my limited experience, I don't think that is a fair generalisation

what do you base it on?

@JackDouglas Besides the fact that the Bible is a self-contradictory mess, you mean? ;)

@TRiG is that the same subject?

7:04 PM

Er, mainly on many years of reading Slacktivist, if you really want to know.

there are well known methods to resolve apparent contradictions (eg the one mentioned in the Westminster Confession)

@JackDouglas Quadrilateral?

(From my vague memory.)

@TRiG not heard the term but basically: give primacy to the passage that is easier to understand, and never hold one scripture against another, always seek an understanding that accommodates the two. If you assume scripture is inerrant this is surprisingly easy to do.

I just think that the more liberal Christians tend to either ignore the Bible altogether, or take it really really seriously; whereas the more fundamentalist types read it in a very constrained fashion.

... On reflection, maybe my complaint is more with literalists than with inerrantists (is that a word?)

@TRiG ah, then I share your concerns

7:09 PM

@JackDouglas Terminology. It matters.

3

there is a way of reading scripture that makes no account of genre, that gets you into all sorts of trouble: Revelation is the hangout of all sorts of cranks and weirdos

I'm going to need to get better at that (getting my terminlogy right, I mean).

@TRiG :)

@JackDouglas Slacktivist maintains that the Book of Job is a playscript, which makes far more sense than any other approach I've come across.

@TRiG it's seems like something like that to me

I love Job, I answered a question on it here on the site. Whether it is 'historical' or not is of little importance to me, what it says about the way we view suffering a) now and b) after God arrives, is of high importance. (God 'arriving' is a very broad repeated theme in the whole Bible btw, bigger than particulars like judgement, salvation etc in my view)

7:17 PM

in The Upper Room, Aug 21 '12 at 14:23, by TRiG

Tell me, do I link to slactkivist (a) too much, or (b) far too much?

@TRiG I find it good to put people I disagree with in two groups, 1) rational people who I think are wrong and 2) the genuinely barmey ;)

@JackDouglas Don't forget the liars and the willfully ignorant (I must admit I sometimes find it hard to separate the latter two).

@TRiG very good point!

but it can take some time to decide what group someone is in I find

@JackDouglas The indigNation, the anti-kitten-burning brigade, and suchlike ....

tbh sometimes it takes me quite a while before I'm even sure whether I agree with someone or not

7:20 PM

@JackDouglas Well, there's very few people I agree with on all subjects, but that's alright.

yes of course :)

I don't even agree with myself on all subjects :/

2

7:35 PM

i think that the need for complete comprehension in order to be "acceptable" is an artificial human construct. i dont think that comprehension is a requirement that God places upon humanity.

2

@JackDouglas I can relate

:)

@JackDouglas @swasheck before I became Orthodox, I called myself an Eastern Lutheran for about a year. That was cognitive dissonance hell

Eventually I just stopped trying to reconcile Western and Eastern thought, Protestant and Orthodox theology

@DanO'Day you're probably much more sane

@swasheck No, I didn't stop thinking when I became Orthodox. I just found a lot more freedom to think.

7:43 PM

@DanO'Day ? sorry if i implied that you stopped thinking.

@swasheck no no - I was trying to imply that I'm not sane, wasn't taken in a bad way

:P

@DanO'Day surely you're more sane now that you're not trying to reconcile those lines of thought

@swasheck indeed

@swasheck It is notoriously difficult judging your own sanity :p

2

@swasheck but I'm reading a lot - and that always has me thinking in opposite directions on a routine basis

7:49 PM

@JackDouglas true

as a wild tangent ... i love 40 ... truly epic

@swasheck eh? is it your birthday?

@JackDouglas HAH! not yet. i'm 35 :). the U2 song(s)

ahhhhh

@swasheck 42 is better.

8:04 PM

@TRiG the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

8:29 PM

@swasheck Of course.

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Jan '1318

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