Another "Dawn Treader" Trailer

Here's the official poster... in Polish

And here's the newest trailer (with Polish subtitles!).

And, for those of you in the Saskatoon area, make sure to pick up those last minute tickets for the David Crowder* Band concert next Wednesday!

I'm not sure what that had to do with anything... other than the fact that clearly the DC*B has way too much time on their hands.

New Testament Poetry

All of us who are Bible readers are pretty familiar with poetry in the scriptures. However, for most of us, our experience with Biblical poetry is pretty much limited to the Psalms. We probably also understand that sections of Job, the prophets, etc are also done as Hebraic poems, but honestly, the only way we really get that is 'cause our English translations indent the text in a way that says to us: "THIS IS POETRY."

Without having at least a basic understanding of Hebrew or Greek there's no way we'd know that certain sections are poetry. This is where having a GOOD commentary helps immensely.

Recently I've been walking through Paul's letter to the Colossians with a group of guys.

Colossians just happens to be one of the New Testament books with a strong poetic presence. There isn't a lot of poetry in the New Testament (although there is likely a lot more than we usually make note of; ex. 1Tim3:16; 2Tim2:11-13; etc) and with the language barrier, what poetry is there we often miss.

One of the most amazing, powerful, and beautiful images of who Christ is, is provided for us in the form of the poem in Col. 1:15-20. Maybe in another post I'll break this one down, because I love it and think it's amazing! ...

... but this isn't the kind of poetry/literary device that I'm talking about. With this poem we can see it's structure and form even in English and can, as such, identify it as poetry. There are also sections of Colossians that are chiastic (don't know what a chiasm is? Click: here). These can also be identified in English.

But there's so much more going on within the text that we just can't see without the help of either a good commentary or a knowledge of (in this case) Greek.

Here are a couple of examples:

Alliteration:

Colossians 2:1-2 (ESV) ¹ For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, ² that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ...

It was Ben Witherington's Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Colossians that pointed out to me that the phrase "all the riches of full assurance" is, in fact, an alliteration: pan ploutos tes plerophorias.

Rhyme:

Here's where Witherington's emphasis on rhetoric really comes into it's own (speaking of Col. 2:16-19):

"Again, this section can best be appreciated if heard and not read. For example the end rhyme sets the cadence in 2:16 with brosei, posei, and merei and in vv. 18 and 19 with thelon, ton angelon, embateuon, kraton, ton haphon, syndesmon, and then epichoregoumenon and symbibazomenon. The length of the terms goes from two syllables to three to seven and six. By the very sounds of the rhetoric, Paul is building to a conclusion and the most polysyllabic terms, those that make the biggest impression, are served up last" (pg 151).

I know that this might look and sound a little technical, but surely you can see how (even if you don't know a lick of Greek) these groups of words rhyme with each other and that the rhyming words are grouped together by the number of syllables.

Punning?:

Colossians 2:8 (ESV) ⁸ See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

In N.T. Wright's commentary on Colossians (his IVP/Tyndale commentary, not the "for everyone" commentary) he proposes that the Greek verb for "take captive" (sylagogein) is a pun off of synagogue (synagoge). This makes perfect sense providing you agree with his thesis that the threat to the Colossian church is one with Jewish roots (ie. don't get "taken captive" into a "synagogue").

So, obviously not many of us will ever learn the original languages of the Bible in a way that we would be able to catch these subtle (or not so subtle) poetic/literary devices, but we are all capable of picking up a good quality commentary! Unfortunately, the more accessible the commentary, the less likely it will pick up on stuff like this... it's the more difficult-to-read, scholarly commentaries that will make note of this.

What other literary devices can you think of that show up in the NT?

How important do you think it is that we are able to identify these literary devices?

How do the existence of poetic/literary devices in a text influence how we interpret/translate a passage of scripture?

Do you ever read commentaries? If so, which ones?

Beauty from the Dust

So, I think the theme from this song follows up well from our theme last week: (those guitar players out there make sure to watch the whole thing as he explains how to play all of his fancy chords!)

I discovered "Gungor/The Michael Gungor Band" a few years ago and have eagerly gobbled up all of their albums. I find it rare that a "Christian band" has such a blend of creativity and ability.

In case you doubt his ability on the guitar:

And in case you are curious enough to listen to a little more:

God in the dark?

Those of us who are Christians and regularly read the New Testament are used to the imagery of light. We are familiar with statements like "I am the light of the world" (Jn 8:12) and "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 Jn 1:5), etc...

However, last spring I was going through the covenant passages and ran across an interesting description of what happened when God made His covenant with Abraham:

Genesis 15:12, 17-18 (ESV)

¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him... ¹⁷ When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram...

At the time I found this imagery of darkness striking and intriguing but didn't think too much about it until just recently as I read through the book of Exodus where I found more darkness associated with the presence of God. As Moses is up on Mt Sinai receiving the Law we see this:

Exodus 20:21 (ESV)

²¹ The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

And Deuteronomy's description of these events is very similar:

Deuteronomy 4:11 (ESV)
¹¹ And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.

And when Solomon dedicated the newly built temple:

1 Kings 8:12 (ESV) [also: 2 Chr. 6:1]
¹² Then Solomon said, "The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness...

We also see a fair amount of darkness language associated with God in the Psalms. This is just one of numerous instances:

Psalms 18:9-11 (ESV)
⁹ He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. ¹⁰ He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind. ¹¹ He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him, thick clouds dark with water.

Now, of course there is also a whole lot of light language used to describe God... in fact, as we would suspect, there is much more light language than there is darkness language but I find these scriptures fascinating.

What is your initial reaction to associating darkness with God?

What do these darkness scriptures say to you about who God is?

Any other examples?

Fairness vs Justice

How often do you hear people say things like, "... but that's not fair..."?

People often appeal to some sort of sense of fairness; in many cases I think that this is good and appropriate, but sometimes it clearly is not.

Sometimes people also appeal to fairness as if it's some sort of Christian/theological virtue. But when you actually think about it, I don't think there's much of a case to be made for fairness if you look in the scriptures.

The reason why this comes to mind for me is that I recently ran across this quote in an article written by N. T. Wright:

"Justice never means 'treating everybody the same way' [ie. fairness], but 'treating people appropriately', which involves making distinctions between different people and situations." (This was written in the context of the homosexual debate within the Anglican Church; if you care you can read the whole article here).

A quick search found that, in the entire Bible (ESV), only Dt. 25:15 used the word "fair" (there were other usages of "fair", like "fair weather" but that's not what we're talking about), and 2 usages of "fairness" in 2 Cor. 8:13-14.

Compare these 3 usages of fair/fairness to 139 hits for "justice"! (There were 212 hits for "just" but I was to lazy to sift through alternate usages of that word... ie. "these things happened JUST as the LORD said", etc...).

What do you think:

Is God fair?

Is God just?

How are these two concepts similar/dissimilar?

What do you think of Wright's definition of justice?

What might be some the results, theologically speaking, of saying that God is fair vs saying that God is just?

New Stephen R. Lawhead novel

So, as a big Stephen R. Lawhead fan, I'm pretty pumped that he has just come out with the first book in a brand new series. The book is, The Skin Map; the series is the Bright Empires Trilogy.

Also, I was surprised that they put out a "book trailer" for this new book. Check it out!

The trailer's a bit cheesy... but kinda cool. So far the reviews on amazon.com have been pretty strong too!