The Dallas Morning News tells us
A jury on Monday determined that the Holy Land Foundation and five men who worked with the Muslim charity were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
I suppose this proves that it’s best to keep one’s charitable giving at home, where one can see what it really goes for.
Niklaus von Flüe – oder Jean Ziegler? Karl Barth – oder Henri Guisan? Die SonntagsZeitung will den bedeutendsten Schweizer aller Zeiten ermitteln. In der Ausgabe vom 23. November stellt sie die dreissig Finalisten vor. Sie wurden in einer Umfrage von über 5000 Lesern am meisten genannt, nachdem die Redaktion eine Vorauswahl von 100 Persönlichkeiten getroffen hatte. … Unter den 30 finden sich zwei Heilige und sechs Theologen, auch Huldrych Zwingli, weiter die Flüchtlingsmutter Gertrud Kurz sowie Henri Dunant, Gründer des Roten Kreuzes.
Zwingli, in the top 30 of the most significant Swiss persons of all time. Of course!
Perished of the plague on the 24th of November, 1531, just over a month after his friend, colleague, and fellow reformer Huldrych Zwingli died at Kappel. The two were likeminded in things theological and were great allies of one another in the struggle against bot the Old Believers (the Catholics) and the Re-Baptizers.
Should you ever find yourself in Basel, make sure you stop by the fantastically beautiful church where Oecolampadius was the Pastor. There’s a very fine statue of him outside and inside the place is just wondrous. Indeed, Basel itself is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, as you’ll see below from photos of my last trip there.
Apparently there are plenty of Americans who don’t, and the companies they are supposed to pay suffer no adverse effects. Either they write off the bad debt on their taxes and are in a sense reimbursed for them or they get a huge bailout from the Government using the ‘we are too big to fail, and if we do, the country will be wrecked and the vandals will swoop down from central Asia and burn our towns, rape our cows, and leave us bereft of life.’
So why should I pay my bills? Why not just keep the money that goes to these companies for myself? They don’t lose a penny in the long run and in a sense, every time the government (what a feckless lot of worthless swine our elected officials are) gives them tax money, I do pay them! Indeed, in a way, I’m paying them twice. And that’s not fair.
So, again, why should I pay my bills? Because when one enters into a contractual agreement with a company for the provision of goods or services, one is obliged, ethically, morally, and indeed, theologically, to make good on one’s agreement.
If ever I felt a bit of envy for the pagans it is in precisely this point- for, since they drift through life without moral mooring, they doubtless feel free to leave companies they’ve contracted with in the lurch. That sort of freedom sounds awfully tempting- except there’s one other thing about it; it is itself slavery to self. So I’d rather pay my bills with honor than be a slave of a frail and fragile and foul creature.
[N.B.- and none of this in any way relieves the government of the absolute contempt I have for it and its elected officials - officials who care absolutely nothing for average folk.]
Craig Blomberg of Primetime Jesus notes the ‘discovery of a new fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ containing the text of Nehemiah. The folk at Primetime are a bit behind the times, however, as this fragment came to light back in July, and a photo of it too, via Lee Biondi, here. Sometimes, new news isn’t new at all. Or news.
Read Doug’s report of the SBL session devoted to the newly discovered object here.
My thanks to Bobby at Hendrickson for sending this volume along for review. In a word, Perry out von Rad’s von Rad in seeing the influence of the Wisdom tradition as nearly all pervasive. But why the odd title?
‘At twilight things become blurred, open to multiple interpretations, and there are not one but two twilights to each day, the one going from day to night and the other, the reverse. Taken together, they express the dynamism, the changing fortunes of human existence, perpetually shifting from happiness to misery, ignorance to clarity. Far from being moments of rapid passage, the twilights become the very image of human existence. For the text does not focus on stable entities like night and day, but rather on their perpetual flux and connectedness: “And it was evening and it was dawn,” two twilights, one single day’ (p. xi-xii).
Things don’t simply become blurred in half light though- they also become a bit blurred in Perry’s argument, for he is so keen to see the influence of the Wisdom school on the biblical text that he sees it in places it simply does not exist. He sees it in the tale of Tamar (pp. 9ff), Joseph (pp. 21ff)(though rightly in this instance), Pharaoh (pp. 39ff), Samson (pp. 53ff), Saul (pp. 77ff), Solomon (pp. 92ff)(and quite wrongly as Solomon is, if anything, a counter-example of wisdom- he is excessively unwise in almost all of his decisions), Psalm 1 (pp.. 109ff)(rightly), Qoheleth (pp. 125ff), and Proverbs (pp. 157ff). Shockingly absent is a thorough treatment of Job who really is wisdom personified in his personal and theological struggles.
While Perry makes a good case for his perception of pervasive Wisdom, he does not convince. And though he says some really remarkable and profound things, he doesn’t prove them. For instance, he writes ‘This study examines how this transfer from divine to human creativity was recorded from the very beginning of the Hebrew Bible and remained a focus throughout’ (p. xvii). But that can hardly be the case. In fact, if anything quite the opposite is the truth. For the biblical narrative has nothing to do with human creativity (in a positive sense) but human wickedness overcome by divine creativity. While Perry out von Rad’s von Rad in seeing wisdom everywhere, he should have paid more attention to von Rad’s exposition of Genesis, with its incursion, spread, and ultimate defeat of sin in the call of Abraham and the promise of redemption.
Nonetheless, Perry does make some very intriguing observations. For instance, in his treatment of Solomon, he notes ‘It might be said, paradoxically, that Solomon and Judah were wise precisely in letting their own rightness be subject to the wisdom incarnated in Tamar and the ‘real’ mother (p. 108). What he doesn’t recognize, evidently, is that if Solomon’s wisdom is derivative, then it isn’t really wisdom at all but acquiescence.
Perry’s training is in romance philology and comparative literature. Hence, while he is sensitive to the intricacies of the text as literature, he has a blind spot in terms of the text as theology. This is, I think, the reason that he sees Wisdom everywhere; i.e., because it fits his literary theory. Theological sensitivity is paramount to the interpretation and understanding of theological texts. Absent it, authors too often find themselves simply gazing into the well and seeing their own reflection, shaded, in this instance, by the twilight / half light of preconception.
Still, I commend this volume to your attention. It is a great read and quite moving at points. The fact that the underlying theory is wrong doesn’t make it bad. For some, it might even make it better.
Daniel says
Christo van der Merwe (not just because he’s my soon-to-be academic advisor) told me not to buy the new printing of his Hebrew reference grammar because he’s embarrassed by all the errors T&T Clark have produced in it. How many authors tell you not to buy their book?
Most of the time author’s don’t have to tell you not to buy their books- reviewers will do it for them. Kudos to van der Merwe for being more interested in publishing quality than making a buck (or whatever it is they use in South Africa- the Rand I think), especially in a market glutted with garbage (and if you don’t believe it, troll your local ‘Christian Book Store’).
Psalm 65
1 Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion; and to you shall vows be performed, 2 O you who answer prayer! To you all flesh shall come. 3 When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions. 4 Happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple. 5 By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation; you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a pretty good report on an issue facing Baptist Churches (particularly in Georgia): Women Pastors. ‘What?’ say you. ‘That’s a point of controversy???’
A Southern Baptist statement of faith says only men can serve as head pastor in churches, but the churches are independent and can call whom they want as pastor. Last year Pennington-Russell became head of the nation’s largest Southern Baptist church with a female senior pastor when she was called to the 2,700-member Decatur First Baptist Church. Her appointment led to talk in the Georgia Baptist Convention of breaking ties with the church. On Nov. 11, the convention approved a policy that allows the convention to refuse donations from churches that do not adhere to Southern Baptist beliefs. That move would make the churches lose their association voting privileges but allow them to maintain an affiliation with the convention. So far, the convention has taken no action against Decatur First Baptist. Pennington-Russell said the Georgia Baptist Convention’s executive director has asked to meet with the church and that the meeting will probably occur in December. In the meantime, “Folks here realize the mission of this church is just moving forward in all kinds of creative, wonderful ways,” Pennington-Russell said in an interview between services. “I think it’s an unfortunate, momentary distraction.”
You see, ‘gentle snowflakes’ (to steal Estee’s favorite line), the great thing about being a Baptist is that each Church really is autonomous and can do whatever it wishes. You want to call a woman pastor- go ahead! You want to have men only in the pulpit- well that’s your business. We don’t care what you do, because you’re free to do whatever you wish.
When the media makes a big deal about whether or not other Baptist Churches or Baptist organizations approve or disapprove of the doings in a particular church, rest assured, it makes not one stitch of difference to the practice of that Church or any other.
Think of it this way: you’re at a big party and there are people there that you like very much and some you can’t stand. You hang out with whomsoever you wish and if others standing around say ‘why doesn’t Bob want to talk to Frank’ you say ’so what, that’s their business’. That’s what Baptists are like. We don’t have to ’split’ from the churches of the world that make other choices because we aren’t obliged to pay them any mind and we are only loosely tied together by a cooperative spirit of common mission.
And that, dear reader, is why it’s better to be a Baptist than it is to be anything else.
