The Library

swasheck

04:11

@MonicaCellio HOW DARE YOU EDIT MY QUESTION????!!!!??!?!?!?! (i'm kidding, of course)

Jack Douglas

06:46

@TRiG It's not the only story in the Bible when a man makes a foolish vow to kill his offspring. Judges is supposed to be understood as a moral morass.

In the wider picture it speaks of the result of man attempting to live without submitting to God: the whole Bible shows us what that is like. God turns His back and says "go on then, if you think you can do better…". The new creation will be full of people who know not to make that mistake again because they know from experience what happens.

(I'm not saying you should believe this, but I do think it is the best way to understand the Bible as a whole work of literature and it sheds light on many individual passages)

TRiG

09:16

@JackDouglas Oh. I'd forgotten the honey story. Yes. It does make an interesting parallel.

Monica Cellio

12:57

@swasheck there are people on the site from whom I'd expect that (or an arbitrary third-party rollback is actually more common), but...yeah, not you. :-)

That said, though, what's with the new tag? Does "saying of jesus" refer to a particular body of text? If so, could you write a tag wiki for it?

Frank Luke

13:33

Suggested edit here seems more like it should be a comment than edited into the body of the question. Either a comment or an answer itself. Other thoughts?

Jack Douglas

@FrankLuke That's what I thought too: I'm not sure we have any option but to just reject it though, it shouldn't be an edit whatever, should it? It's also anonymous.

Monica Cellio

14:01

@FrankLuke it's not technically vandalism, but it has no business being in the question (and I rejected it). I don't know of a way to communicate with the anonymous editor to suggest that he answer if he wants to answer. (Maybe a custom rejection reason? He'd still need to know to go look for it, though, and he probably won't.)

swasheck

14:20

@MonicaCellio not really a particular body of text, but more of a focus on a set of sayings within a particular text. a subgenre of the "genre" of gospel

Monica Cellio

@swasheck thanks. Can you write a wiki excerpt?

swasheck

@MonicaCellio "can" or "when will"?

:)

Monica Cellio

@swasheck :-) When you get to it, but I'm asking because it's a new tag whose meaning was unclear to me at least. Maybe I'm the only one...

swasheck

@MonicaCellio probably not

Dan

15:47

@swasheck here goes another attempt to correct the misinformation about the perfect tense....

Monica Cellio

@Dan thank you for trying.

Dan

@MonicaCellio people seem to have an irrational clinging to misinformation about the perfect tense. Especially in John 19:30

@MonicaCellio it is sad because many freely available Christian commentaries give misinformation about Greek grammar all the time

@MonicaCellio what's interesting to me is that if you wanted to study a scientific subject, you wouldn't necessarily rely on freely available literature - especially not popular literature. You would know that is contains a high degree of bias and faulty science. Yet when we shift to non-scientific topics, people seem to expect that everything there is to know that is good should be freely available information.

Monica Cellio

16:04

@Dan I think you could remove "about the perfect tense" and your sentence would still be correct. :-) People cling to what they "know" and don't like to have assumptions challenged. Combine that with bad education (I'm taking your word on that, not knowing anything about Greek myself), and...ugh.

Dan

And people will believe their (possibly not formally trained) pastor over any biblical scholar

@MonicaCellio so true

Monica Cellio

@Dan yes! And "feelings" and "belief" play strong roles in some religions, making it worse. Why worry about what the text actually says if your pastor gave you a message you like?

It's part of why dogma-based voting here irritates me. Vote for the support, the reasoning, the answer to the question; don't vote for the sermon that you like. Sigh. Generic "you" of course; I know you know better.

Dan

@MonicaCellio a well known psychological phenomenon: the belief bias effect

See section 1.1.1 of health.adelaide.edu.au/psychology/ccs/docs/lsr/…

Monica Cellio

@Dan confirmation bias, I assume? (Haven't looked at the article yet.)

Dan

@MonicaCellio similar concept

swasheck

16:31

@Dan i believe this is a huge part of the problem. "Matthew Henry was smart, and his stuff's free! Who cares that it was a few centuries ago!?!?!"

Dan

@swasheck precisely!

swasheck

@Dan as an aside ... that was a great answer

Dan

@swasheck thanks

swasheck

there are a few more nuances to the whole participle order and action thing ... but given the fact that we can't parse an aorist from an imperfect from a perfect leads me to believe that those nuances would be lost

Jon Ericson

@swasheck True. But think of it as an opportunity to educate.

swasheck

16:35

@JonEricson we need a canonical answer and not on meta

on choosing appropriate research resources

Dan

@swasheck haha true

Jon Ericson

@swasheck I would suggest starting with "Is Matthew Henry a reliable commentary?"

swasheck

@JonEricson Canonical Answer: "It Depends"

Jon Ericson

I'm thinking we could do with more questions like:

13

Q: Bart D. Ehrman - respected critic?

I found Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why troublesome to my understanding of the translation process of the bible. It has made me review my understanding of the bible. However, this is just one book of many from different authors. I am wondering if Dr. Ehrman is ...

swasheck

as an aside ... i'm rewriting my whole SBLGNT thing in Go ... currently backed by MSSQL but would be open to postgresql if i could find a willing (read: beneficient) host (ahem, @JackDouglas)

and @Dan ... look what i found

github.com/biblicalhumanities/greek-new-testament/tree/master/…

(forked by Tauber)

Dan

16:45

@JonEricson me too, although we don't always get answers to these questions:

2

Q: Accuracy of Alfred Edersheim's "Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah"

Edersheim's book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah has been called "one of the best known and most important references on the life of Christ ever written." However, a lot has changed in the last century since he wrote his book (it has been over 130 years). N.T. Wright has mentioned how out...

hermeneutical-approaches history jesus second-temple-judaism

@swasheck awesome!!!

Jon Ericson

@Dan That's a great question.

Dan

@JonEricson I believe Mike took it as a personal attack

@JonEricson he often cites Edersheim in his answers

Jon Ericson

@Dan That's unfortunate. It would have been better if he could have answered what he sees in the book and where he's wary.

Dan

@JonEricson well, I practically answered the question in a comment stream, but is was mostly opinion

5

A: Explanation of Chronological Disparities between St. John and the Synoptic Gospels Concerning Jesus' Passion

The are some scholars who think this is a conflict as they suppose the passover is being eaten on conflicting days, but a simple answer is that there is no conflict. A simple solution is that John 18:28 is not referring to the evening passover meal which Jesus ate the previous evening but the day...

And my comments:

Edersheim is outdated and has been demonstrated to be wrong about a great many things. He operated under the assumption that everything he knew about Talmudic tradition was also true in the first century, and this simply is not the case. He did the best he could with the data he had, but we've learned a lot in the past century that he didn't have available during his lifetime. — Dan Jun 5 at 5:07

Most of his sources that interpret various historical data have been demonstrated to be misguided. Not to mention, there are some errors of blatant faulty logic and circular reasoning in the book itself, especially as he pursues his Victorian goal of a Gospel harmony (for instance, using Luke’s attention to historical detail as proof of its accuracy then turning around and using Matthew’s lack of detail as proof of its veracity – this is inconsistent). — Dan Jun 5 at 5:08

This is not to say that Edersheim holds no value or is always wrong. He has many good things to say. He simply doesn’t take into account more recent scholarship (he couldn’t have) from the fields of archaeology, history, epigraphy, classics, etc. that we have from findings of numerous Greco-Roman and early Judaic writings. I do appreciate your response, I just don't think it satisfactorily takes modern scholarship into account. — Dan Jun 5 at 5:09

don't get me wrong. He was a great scholar. He did the best he could with what he had. But 130+ years have since transpired with significant new findings.... — Dan Jun 5 at 15:24

I was accused of 'dissing' Edersheim, a charge I initially admitted to

But after rereading my own comments, I don't feel like I insulted Edersheim - I just challenged using him as a reliable source

@JonEricson I'm half-tempted to delete that question anyways

It was a poor question on my part - I was fishing for a specific type of response

I was beginning with the assumption of contradiction (which I still maintain, I still don't see how they can be reconciled without some big leaps), which I guess is not acceptable here

Jon Ericson

@Dan Or self-answer it. (Might need an edit to move Wrights footnote to an answer.)

Dan

16:59

@JonEricson to be honest, it showed me the strong conservative Christian bias of this site - rather than answers from that perspective, I mostly just got attempts to show me why I was wrong about it being contradictory

And I do agree I should allow these attempts, but few biblical scholars would give creedance to charts some random dude on the Internet made on his own website for his answer, nor would they give much creedance to Edersheim

Noah Snyder quotes Ehrman actually, which was a good response but needs more detail: hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/5013/423

Jon Ericson

@Dan Probably Ehrman's quote should be brought inline, rather than left behind a link.

Jack Douglas

@swasheck do you just need a VM? You know 9.3 is at RC1 btw? :)

Dan

19:12

@JonEricson I edited his response and marked it as the accepted answer. I also copied one of Noah's comments into the body of the answer. I am requesting that the comments be deleted since they will now be obsolete and integrated into the post

@JonEricson also the comments on the main question have been addressed and can likely be deleted as well

@JonEricson I've already taken the liberty of deleting most of my own comments (in the process of doing it for the question now)

Jack Douglas

@Dan Do you want all of them deleted? I don't feel qualified to know which are still relevant if any :)

Dan

@JackDouglas I think all of the comments on the question and all the remaining comments on Noah's answer can be deleted

@JackDouglas thank you

@JackDouglas I made a valiant effort to give Mike and Joseph the benefit of the doubt on that question - I still just don't see it

Jack Douglas

@Dan Those questions provoke those kind of answers ;)

Dan

@JackDouglas also, if you don't mind, you might as well delete all the comments on Mike's answer (hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/5010/423) and I'll just go ahead and post a link to my related question about Edersheim, which will effectively summarize all of that quite nicely: hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/q/5012/423

Jack Douglas

good idea, done

Dan

19:23

@JackDouglas well, this is a secular biblical studies site, I shouldn't have to fight Victorian-era Gospel-harmonization ideals every time I point out contradictions that almost all scholars will acknowledge

2

@JackDouglas the comments on Joseph's answer are still relevant I think, if nothing else they lead to a chat room transcript where the issue was wrestled with extensively

Jack Douglas

@Dan they don't matter much anyway, it's a lot of scrolling to get down that far!

I like the comments to be tidy on the question and first couple of answers…

Dan

19:51

@JackDouglas very true!

@JackDouglas yes I was revisiting it and realized a lot of it was no longer pertinent or had been addressed via edits or other questions

I just learned that I can leave a specific room by clicking the little arrow to the right of it!

Never knew that

Monica Cellio

Hi @user2572! Welcome to the Library. Contrary to the real-world buildings, talking's just fine here. :-)

Dan

@MonicaCellio haha, I never considered the fact that this was called the Library before

Monica Cellio

@Dan :-) BTW, I never noticed that you could leave a room via the arrow; I use the "leave" link under the room description ("leave", not "all").

Actually, now that I looked, I don't see what you're referring to, unless it's that link. What little arrow do you mean?

Dan

@MonicaCellio since I know you can't see pics at work, I'll spare you the illustration. When you are in multiple rooms, you see them all listed on the right under "other rooms you're in"

To the right of each room you are not currently in the browser for, you see a little up arrow that is underlined

clicking on that arrow will cause you to leave that room, which you can do without having to first switch to being in that room

Monica Cellio

@Dan oh! Heh, I never noticed that. Thanks.

Jon Ericson

20:09

5

A: What should we call our chat room?

The Library Pros: Vaguely academic sounding Not religious (I think this is a 'Pro' because this is an academic site, not primarily a religious one, and not because I think 'religious' is a bad thing) Cons: You aren't supposed to talk in a library (but online chat is more like passing notes...

It's the only "con" Jack came up with. ;-)

Dan

20:22

@JonEricson @JackDouglas nice!

@swasheck are you following this comment thread? Am I missing something here or does this guy have absolutely no clue what he is talking about?

It is comment threads like these that make me want to save my breath and give up on people sometimes

Monica Cellio

@Dan did you mean to repeat that same link? Or did you have another train wreck in mind?

Dan

@MonicaCellio Yes, I meant to repeat it

sorry

Monica Cellio

20:37

@Dan no need to apologize! I was just wondering if there was another.

The thing that frustrates me about those, more than the content itself (which in this case is over my head), is that people see crap like that and then over-react and say "comments bad!", tarring everybody with the same brush.

swasheck

@Dan regurge of some outdated information

Dan

@swasheck yup, and it's not like Han is a reliable source - this has been proven repeatedly

he made mistakes

swasheck

i'm trying to be nice to the guy

Dan

I could actually understand if he confused an aorist vs. future optative or something tricky - but there are clear (and relatively simple) rules of grammatical verb tenses at play here which I think make it clear it is not imperfect

Especially the missing epsilon at the beginning of the stem

swasheck

@Dan yes. planning to go into that if he keeps coming back

Dan

20:46

@swasheck not to mention his repeated insistence that it is 'aorist imperfect' - it... can't... be....

swasheck

@Dan i have a past present verb here that's really throwing me for a loop

@JackDouglas :) i know

Dan

@swasheck ;)

Sarah

21:16

@Dan, just wanted to drop in and finally reply to your plea about the Ham Radio SE. I am sorry to disappoint you; but, I would not be at peace with that commitment. I am just not active enough with the Ham Radio and I am endeavoring to avoid immersion in o-line activities. Thank you for thinking of me and asking though. Blessings!

Dan

@Sarah no prob

swasheck

21:28

@PatFerguson Aorist and Imperfect are both tenses. A verb can only be one or the other, not both simultaneously. — Dan 7 mins ago

Dan

@swasheck haha

I thought about using an analogy then decided not to waste my keystrokes

I am torn between not wasting any more time on this guy, and this:

swasheck

@Dan deleted as i dont want anyone to accuse you of anything. as an Orthodox, I'm pretty sure your Pneumatology is more robust than the rest of us Christians on here combined

@Dan at times it's fun. i like engaging until i realize they've got no clue ... then i back off

Dan

@swasheck I like engaging to help people learn

2

When it becomes apparent that they intend to cling to their faulty sources yet know nothing about Greek whatsoever, I begin to grow weary

@swasheck ?

swasheck

@Dan my impression is that the Orthodox community has a fairly well-developed theology of the Spirit

Dan

@swasheck I like to think so :P

@swasheck some have even said we're like Pentecostal Catholics

swasheck

21:34

:)

Dan

I don't think we're like either, but it's interesting nonetheless

If you ever get a chance to come to an Akathist service to Christ during Lent in an Orthodox church, I'd encourage you to (every other week is to the Theotokos/Mary, so you probably want to avoid that one as a Protestant). It contains full prostrations and involves all your senses

Plus as you probably figured out, akathist = no sitting :)

Great workout

swasheck

@Dan yes

Dan

@swasheck although that is actually the case in most of Orthodoxy outside the US (no pews/chairs)

only the elderly and infirm sit usually

but here in America many churches have pews

swasheck

@Dan figures :)

Monica Cellio

@Dan oh, I didn't realize the US was different on that. (I've heard only a little about Orthodox services, but "stand for three hours" was part of what I've heard. But now that I think about it, I think I got that from someone in Europe.)

Dan

21:47

@MonicaCellio yes, there are some in the US that retain this practice

swasheck

at this point i kinda feel bad for Pat. i'm sure he feels like he's been ganged upon

Dan

@MonicaCellio and that time estimate isn't an exaggeration

@swasheck I suppose

@swasheck on another note, I thoroughly enjoy Darrell George's questions

we need more questions like these

swasheck

@Dan indeed

Dan

Darrell George

47 4

salvation john acts ephesians faith

His questions are awesome

swasheck

hebrewhammer let me down on this :)

Good answer and +1 from me. I appreciate you drawing out the distinction between present participle and the aorist. I do question the relevance of Mark as he is a different author, but the point is taken Nonetheless. I was wondering if you'd be willing to highlight the use of the subjunctive and, perhaps, the function of the ἵνα clause (content, purpose, result, etc) for a bounty. — swasheck Aug 7 at 1:48

Dan

21:53

@swasheck yeah... you may want to post your own answer as that is pretty important to this passage

swasheck

@Dan i'm honestly too lazy ... you can and i'll award the bounty to you :)

Dan

@swasheck I don't need a bounty for that, it's simple grammar

But I'm also lazy

And I'm about to go to a bar to meet up some friends

So whichever of us has a chance to do it first - we can do it

haha

swasheck

having a chance isn't the hard part

it's prioritizing it

Monica Cellio

@Dan a Shabbat morning service can go close to three hours, so it didn't strike me as particularly alarming. It's different from the <1-hour services I hear Catholics talk about, but I didn't have an impression of uniformity among Christian denominations anyway. :-)

Dan

@MonicaCellio yeah most services in Catholicism and Protestantism are <60 min, some <45 min

I know of one Catholic church that shoots for <30 min

swasheck

21:57

:)

Monica Cellio

@Dan wow, that's short. (I assume we're talking Sunday morning and with communion -- I know some denominations don't do that every week, but I thought RC did.)

@Dan I wouldn't be surprised if some Baptist services go longer for the singing.

I went to a Roman Catholic ordination mass a couple years ago (for a friend); that was three hours or so, but you'd expect that. It was a pretty impressive service.

It was on a Saturday and I ended up walking almost 10 miles that Shabbat, though. In dress shoes. :-)

Dan

@MonicaCellio yes with communion. We would call this a 'communion mill' :P

@MonicaCellio it happens :/

@MonicaCellio come to mass, check the box, go home

well i gotta go

ttyl

Monica Cellio

@Dan TZT!

Dan

@MonicaCellio TZT?

Monica Cellio

@Dan sorry, just edited in the link.

Dan

22:05

@MonicaCellio ahh שָׁבוּעַ טוֹב to you too ;)

Monica Cellio

@Dan having fun with the keyboard? :-)

(I approve!)

Transcript for