Blessing and Cursing our Brothers

Dr. Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, has issued a corrective for Wiley Drake, the California pastor who has called his congregation to pray curses on those who have opposed his combined religious and political activites. Witherington gives us a more appropriate hermeneutic for understanding human curses found in the Bible...

His supposed Biblical precedent for this is the imprecatory psalms of David. I don't know what seminary this pastor went to, but boy has he misunderstood those psalms. They don't reveal the will of God in such matters, rather they shed God's light of truth on what is in the wicked heart of human beings, including in David's heart, that old murderer and adulterer.

Witherington continued to point out Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings in the New Testament (Matthew 5.44; Romans 12.14) about loving our enemies, blessing them, praying for them, and NOT cursing them.

This is a good reminder to me. I have recently considered the appropriateness of following in the footsteps of Elijah and calling down fire from heaven. Seriously, when my house and my family are threatened, my first inclination—even my second, third, and fourth—is to respond in kind. And I don’t mean kindly, but in the same kind of way, but perhaps worse. After all, I’ve got God on my side, and I could show them what power really is, right? But when the disciples considered doing this, Jesus rebuked them because that was not the right spirit…

When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.”

Luke 9.54-56

One response to the Witherington’s post raised the issue of God's purposes in OT curses...

What is the best way to view these psalms of cursing? I have been reading Christopher Wright's book Mission in the OT and as I read the post I was reminded of the Abrahamic promise that God would curse those who curse Abraham's descendants. I wonder if some of these psalms are outworkings of this promise. Of course, it should always be kept in mind that the central purpose of the covenant with Abraham was to bless the nations with the knowledge of God.

I appreciate Witherington's follow-up comments, especially since he brings James into the mix...

I think actually Luther had a very good point when he said that in the prophets God speaks to us, but in the psalms we speak to God, and what is in and on our hearts is truly and truthfully revealed. How then are such psalms God's Word? The answer is not difficult-- they show God holding up a mirror to us so we will see our own hearts and what is in them-- ranging from praise to cursing. As James once said-- blessing and cursing should not be coming out of the same human mouth or heart for that matter.

I love this illustration of God’s word being like a mirror so that we can see our own hearts. The last devotion I gave in the Greek course this week was from 2 Corinthians 3.18...

Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Even though mirrors normally just show us the reality of what we look like (imperfections and all), when we look at God’s word as a mirror, or when we look at our Lord Jesus as a mirror, God uses the mirror to actually change us. We are transformed so that the glory in the image of Jesus is reflected back into us. We become like Jesus. His desires become our desires.

What is so interesting to me about the comparison between the comments of Jesus and James in Matthew 5.44 and James 3.1-12 is that they both have the spiritual status of the Christ-follower in mind, not primarily that of the enemy. Thus, not only does Jesus say to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" in Matthew 5.44, the next clause says, "so that you may become sons of your father in heaven." While we are urged to pray for our persecutors, the issue in focus in Matthew 5 is our own standing before the Father who acts graciously to both the just and the unjust. I'm surprised that the text doesn't urge prayer so that ‘your enemies’ can come into relationship with the Father. Instead, it says so that YOU may become sons of your father. Perhaps that's what Pastor Wiley Drake should be concerned about.

And what about Christians who follow Jesus' ethics? Has Pastor Drake in some way become our enemy? How should we respond to him and about him? Let's hope we reflect our Father's character.

By the way, the follow-up comments to Ben Witherington’s post includes an interesting translation-related question regarding the Arabic name for God, Allah. Arabic Christians and Muslims worship a God named Allah. But the Muslim Allah is the God of jihad and curses, and the Christian Allah is the God of blessing and love for one’s enemies.

Is Greek a "Must" to Love God?

My first several posts on this blog included references to learning Greek as a spiritual discipline of the mind. This was discussed in my July 30th posting Love God and Others: ΑΓΑΠΗΣΕΙΣ, in my July 31 posting Teaching New Testament Greek: Guiding Principles, in my August 1st postings Learning Greek is a Spiritual Discipline and Luther and Hafemann on Studying Greek, and in my August 2nd posting Researching God's Word, My Sometimes Idol.

A friend viewed these posts and asked...

Can I still love God with my mind if I don't know Greek?

This is a great question. One might wonder from all my ramblings about the topic if my answer might be 'no'. But of course, there are lots of opportunities in which one can use the mind to love God. We use our minds to love God any time that we use critical thinking skills to weigh the input we're receiving from the world around us and submit that process to what we know of God's revelation to us.

But what about using the mind specifically in the process of understanding the scriptures? Can I still love God by using my mind to study his word if I don't know Greek? Well, certainly you can. You can read God's word, seek to understand his word, live of life of prayer informed by his word, and do his word, applying it critically and creatively in the world around you.

But what is God's word and what is your responsibility for training others in how to read it? No matter what English version you're reading, it's still a translation from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts, and there is no such thing as a perfect translation. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the fact that Philip explained the scriptures to the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:35), and that people like John Wyclif, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, William Carey, and Cameron Townsend advanced the cause of Bible translation so that the common people can hear God's word in a language they understand. And that's why I'm an advisor for mother tongue translators.

But the fact remains that the scriptures were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Anything else is a translation. No translation can reflect the intricacies of the source text language, and attempts to thoroughly do so may easily lead to information overload or distort the focus of a passage.

Every translation is also an interpretation. Even if the translators seek to remain unbiased in translating the meaning of the text, it is impossible to translate without interpreting the source text. They may do it inadvertently, but they do it.

Without the use of the original language tools, one can compare translations and read commentaries. But if one is willing to do that time-consuming work on a regular basis, why not rather learn Greek and Hebrew and interact more meaningfully with those secondary sources?

Here's what William Mounce says about this in his Basics of Biblical Greek grammar...

The main purpose of writing this book is to help you to understand better and to communicate more clearly the word of God.... Remember the goal: a clearer, more exact, and more persuasive presentation of God's saving message. But is knowing Greek essential in reaching this goal?

Mounce uses an illustration of an engine overhaul to make his point...

What tools do you select? I would surmise that with a screw driver, hammer, a pair of pliers, and perhaps a crow bar, you could make some progress. But look at the chances you are taking. Without a socket wrench you could ruin many of the bolts. Without a torque wrench you cannot get the head seated properly. The point is, without the proper tools you run the risk of doing a minimal job, and perhaps actually hurting the engine.

This reminds me of a saying I have often heard my dad say. Whenever we're working on a project and we struggle to get it right for a while before we find the proper tool for the job, my dad always says, "It's easy... when you have the right tool." When you finally have the right tool, you wish you hadn't wasted all that time trying to do the job with the wrong tools. The right tool does the job right and it does it quickly. The same is true for the task of studying God's word. Mounce continues...

The same is true with preaching, teaching, preparing personal Bible studies, and learning Greek. Without the proper tools you are limited in your ability to deal with the text....

But there is more. Almost all the best commentaries and biblical studies require a knowledge of Greek. Without it, you will not have access to the lifelong labors of scholars who should be heard.

So can we love God with our minds without Greek? Of course we can! But Greek is an invaluable tool for studying God's word more precisely and meaningfully.

Learn New Testament Greek - Dobson #1

It's not #1. This is just my 1st post about it. The textbook we are using for the New Testament Greek course is John H. Dobson's Learn New Testament Greek. This textbook was chosen by others who developed the course before I was asked to teach, so I cannot be credited or blamed for this choice. But at least I have the opportunity to review it. You can see where it lines up with other grammars according to Mark Goodacre's poll of favorite Greek grammars at his NT Gateway Weblog last month. My choice would have been William Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, which ranked highest in Mark's poll. I used Mounce when I started over learning Greek the summer before I entered the Wheaton College Graduate School in 1998. But perhaps Dobson's approach is the best choice for Melanesian students and the learning style that they are familiar with. I'll blog more about this later.

The first thing I can say about Dobson's textbook is that it far beats the textbook with which I was introduced to Greek in 1994. When I was at Houghton College, we used Story and Story's Greek to Me. Although it's a cute title for a Greek textbook, I'm afraid that was also the result--Greek was still pretty much a foreign language for me. The main feature of Story and Story's textbook was these little cartoon drawings that were meant to be used as mnemonic devices to learn vocabulary and grammar. The only one I remember was the first one in the book for the word ἐγείρω, which means "I raise up." A Robin Hood character is raising up an 'egg-arrow'. That one was actually pretty helpful. The others were not.

My contention is that mnemonic devices work best when the learners create them in their own minds.

Perhaps it would have worked better if the cartoons were in color like the one here, but the black-and-white line drawings had too much detail to easily make them out. My time would have been better spent using my own brain to learn Greek than trying to figure out what somebody else's memory aid was supposed to mean.

The main feature of Dobson's Learn New Testament Greek is that it has was designed for non-native English speakers. This means that grammatical terminology is only explained after the forms have been introduced in exercises that illustrate how they fit within the context of sentences. For example, the terms 'nominative', 'accusative', 'genitive', 'dative', 'masculine', 'feminine', and 'neuter' are only introduced in ch. 12, pg. 67, after these things have been introduced in successive chapters with only the use of English glosses.

I do appreciate the attempt to teach Greek in a way that follows some natural language-learning principles. I hope that the abundance of practice exercises in each chapter proves helpful to my Melanesian students who so frequently learn skills within their cultures by doing them, not by reading about them.

Because of the avoidance of grammatical terminology, the section headings in each chapter normally do not contain any description of the section's content. It seems that the book was intended simply to be used as a step-by-step procedure. This lack of descriptive headings, however, makes the book difficult to use when one wants to go back and review earlier content.

Certainly for people who speak English as a second language, the use of grammatical terminology could amount to information overload. Since I am teaching national Bible translators and pastors who regularly consult secondary literature, however, one of the goals of the course is for them to become familiar with the standard terminology. So in class, I use the terminology, and I remind them that they will not be tested on the terms. But I tell them I want them to be familiar with it so they have some idea what others are talking about when they come across these words in commentaries and translation helps. I usually get a classroom full of approving nods.

Cheap Theses and Dissertations

Rick Brannon of Logos Bible Software (what a great resource for those of us who need to carry our libraries with us to the farthest parts of the world!) recently posted about the high cost of some academic publications and one possible way to get similar content for cheaper.

Rick's post was about a book that I have desired related to one of my latest interests in biblical studies, textual criticism. James Royse's dissertation, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri, is a groundbreaking study in textual criticism that is frequently referenced in current literature on the subject. And now we can buy it for just $369.00 from Brill! Ouch! Well, that's the difference between publishing 100,000 copies of a book that will end up in every bookstore around the world and printing only several hundred copies that will end up in every major university research library around the world (and in the personal libraries of a chosen few who deem the subject worthy of such expense).

But even for those of us who think the book might actually be worth it's weight in gold, what if we just don't have the gold? We can either find it in our local research library--but I'm a few thousand miles away from my local research library(!)--or we can follow Rick Brannon's suggestion. Royse's original 1981 dissertation of 751 pages is available from UMI Dissertation Express for $41.00 plus shipping. That's still quite a bit, but it's 89% off the price from Brill. Of course, we don't know how much the dissertation has been changed in the last 26 years. Royse has not been idle for the last quarter century.

This option for getting Royse's dissertation reminds me of another service that's available to get electronic copies of theological theses and dissertations. Theological Research Exchange Network, or TREN, sells graduate studies in PDF format for a relatively small price. For example, an M.A. thesis from Wheaton College Graduate School titled "Noachic Allusion and Echo in James 3.1-12: Implicatures of New Creation Eschatology" is available there for $15.00. That one was completed in 2002 by someone very close to me. Of course, I could give you a higher quality searchable PDF for free.

But something I just noticed for the first time yesterday is that TREN offers all of their titles for free to TREN authors...

And remember if you are the author of a title on this list or in the TREN E-Docs library (www.tren.com/e-docs) and would like a free PDF copy of your file please write to me at rwjones@tren.com to request your copy. I'll be glad to email it to you pronto. Also, as an author if you notice a title in the TREN Edocs library that you'd like to have let me know. It's yours for the asking. Many thanks for your participation in TREN.

I don't know how long that has been true. I have purchased a few TREN titles in the last year. But now I and any other TREN authors can get all the other titles for free.

If you're not a TREN author, there are other great deals I just learned about today. Some of their titles are always offered for FREE! And you don't have to buy the other titles individually for $15.00. A 6 month subscription costs $100.00 and allows you 25 titles ($4 each). A year's subscription is $200.00 and allows you 70 titles ($2.85 each). There's a deal there for libraries too.

Zyphyr update on August 26, 2007:
I have learned today that I was mistaken about TREN authors being able to get unlimited TREN e-docs for free. The offer is simply for a free copy of the author's own work plus ONE additional title. Sorry for the confusion!

Greek and James: God's Grace and Mercy

I'm going to be relying heavily on the Lord's grace and mercy over the next two weeks.

In the Greek course, we will be reviewing after only 10 days of class...

• Greek alphabet and diacritical marks
• present verbs
• imperfect verbs
• subjunctive mood
• contract verb forms
• the gender, number and case of nouns and articles
• personal pronouns
• relative pronouns
• demonstrative pronouns
• adverbial and substantival participles

This next week Iwill be introducing...

• capital letters
• forms of εἰμί ('to be' verbs)
• prepositions
• infinitives
• the gender of participles
• and giving the first exam

So what does this have to do with James? Well, nothing, except that I will be preparing at the same time for my preaching responsibilities over the next two weeks at the international church here.

Here is what I have communicated to the church...

If you would like to prepare to hear God's word over the next two Sundays at the English morning service, the sermons will come from the Letter of James. It might be the most helpful if you try to read James as a coherent whole and not as a collection of unrelated topics. From James, we will continue to hear what we were hearing this morning. As it was summarized at the end of the message today, our faith comes from and is directed towards Jesus from beginning to end.

And the sermon titles for the next two Sundays...

• 19 August: "James on God's grace in the believer's life journey"
• 26 August: "James on God's mercy in the believer's judgment"

Consider it all joy,

Zephyr

The Meaning of the Word "the"

Since I was out sick yesterday, today was my first day in the classroom with 13 students who have been learning Greek for a week and 5 students who just arrived over the weekend. So the first group read chapters 10-12 for today while the newcomers are somewhere around ch. 6. My goal is to help make this course as successful as it can be for everyone, so I'm just thrilled that we have a full classroom and that the newcomers made the effort to earn their travel fare and make the long trek here.

Today in class, I decided to go back and review the main content in chs. 7-9, even though it was covered yesterday in my absence. I figured with several new members of the class and the quick pace of the course, it couldn't hurt to spend a little more time on review.

Since feminine nouns were introduced in ch. 9, this led to a comparison of Greek, English and the students' local languages in regards to the use of articles. I suspected that many of them did not even have definite articles in their languages. I made the point that Greek is very different from English in the use of definite articles, since English only uses 'the', but Greek has a paradigm of articles that includes three genders and five cases. And then someone asked...

What does the word 'the' mean?

Good question!

In English we call 'the' the definite article. It specifies a noun that is definite. It's known information. I used an example of a boy who walks into the back of the class. We could refer to that boy as 'the boy' because everyone in the class saw him come in and the noun phrase 'the boy' would refer specifically to him. On the other hand, if I talk about a boy that I can see walking by the window in the back of the class, I need to refer to him as 'a boy' because no one else knows who I'm talking about.

Because the definite article is used with nouns that refer to known information introduced earlier in a text, it serves a discourse function. The definite article doesn't operate only at the sentence level. In this way, English and Greek can be very similar in the use of articles.

On the other hand, there are differences. One readily observable difference is the use of articles with names in Greek! So when we read 'the God' in Greek, this should not necessarily trigger our normal English-language understanding of such a phrase. Greek also regularly speaks of 'the Jesus' just like it refers to 'the James' and 'the Peter'.

Greek Course Goes On Without Me

I came down with a bad cold on Tuesday, the day before the Greek course started. I survived the first three days of the course, teaching for most of 6 hours each day. I thought the weekend would give me a chance to rest up and get over it, but it steadily got worse on Saturday, and by Sunday it was clear I had a sinus infection.

So I contacted the three mentors who are helping with the course and asked if they could cover for me on Monday. I saw the doctor and started taking meds. She said I could go back on Tuesday if I was up to it. I'm so thankful for these assistants and all they're doing to help the course run smoothly.

One of the biggest reasons I don't want to be out for more than this one day is that 5 new students arrived late to the course over the weekend. They had to travel all night by boat and all day by vehicle to get to the course. It's going to be tough for them to catch up after missing the first three days of an intensive course, but we'll help them be successful.