As if every Sunday were not sufficiently a Holy Day of Obligation, today is Pentecost — and we’ll be driving all day. Prayers and thanksgivings and solidarity with our sisters and brothers in worship today, and our heartfelt wishes for a time when the truth will again be heard and understood by all, each in…
All posts in May 2009
Mulling Outsider
I’ve been thinking hard about Jeff’s recent post (as I almost always do), and his reflections resonate powerfully with my own experiences and ideas. Most obviously, it’s not at all clear that I’ll have an academic job this coming year, while my wife has secured an appointment; secondarily, I share Jeff’s interest in the importance…
Stage One
Safe arrival at Baltimore, preparing for Margaret’s faculty dinner, leaving tomorrow for Cleveland (“city of light, city of magic”).
Idiom Watch
Some people say “[I] have no dog in this hunt” (Google = 10.4K), and others “[I] have no dog in this fight” (Google = 116K). Now, competent readers recognize both expressions as colorful ways of disclaiming interest, so it would be mistaken to ask “which is right?” I wonder, though, whether one arose out of…
This Could Happen To You
Attention, parents: the wee little children whom we raised from potato-sized lumps (or, in Si’s case, a potato-sack sized lump) are growing up! In fact — and this is the vital headline — just a week from Saturday, Josiah will be getting married! As a public service announcement to the parents of small children…
For Reference
Deirdre Good first pointed me to this image, and now I’ve pinned down the specifics of its provenance, so I wanted to post about it here (for the sake of declining memory). It’s a depiction of St Matthew (on the right — not sure who the other saint is) from the rood screen at St…
Respite
As Boing Boing provides a unicorn chaser whenever they post especially gory (or otherwise disturbing) images, I take the opportunity to alleviate the leaden seriousness of the exegesis series by posting a picture of our neighbor, with whom we had dinner the other night. Luke’s sweet and talkative and fascinated with all manner…
Exegesis and Language
[Previously on this topic: One, Two, Three.] Many of the confusions that arise in exegetical inquiry come from the extrinsic factors we’ve been discussing: the ambiguous technical terms, the unstated expectations, the literary genres in which students write, and the multifarious contexts that pertain to interpretive reflection. At the same time, a great deal…
It’s For Them
Over the months that I’ve been an eMusic subscriber, I’ve seen a lot of recordings in which I felt no interest whatever, and an increasing number of recordings that I already own on CD (or that I have pre-eMusic digital versions of). I’m pleased, though, to observe that performers such as Al Green and Joan…
More On Exegesis
[Part One, Two] Finally, to the extent that sound interpretation entails identifying convincingly illuminating contexts with relation to which to read the text, teachers should bear in mind that the range of possibly-plausible includes so many alternatives that a student’s mind may reel at the prospect. Scholars typically concentrate on a select range of…
Mutatis Mutandis
Margaret pointed my attention to this Time article on the recent discovery of the complete fossil skeleton of an early primate (now nicknamed “Ida” — no word on the primate’s temperament’s similarity to fruit drinks). She appositely notes the way that the archaeological discovery of an artifact occasions monumentally overblown hype: All of which renders…
Go, Polar Bears!
College friend Paul Bolster (with whom we reconnected at last year’s reunion) appears on NPR’s Morning Edition today — bravo, Paul!