Posts filed under 'Bible Notes'
Comma-tary Vol. 4: Blinker pen
In a pencil cup on my desk is a blinker pen from the Stillspeaking store. It joins a collection of kitsch, including the “Magnify Your Faith” binoculars or the handy “Wash Away Your Sins” bath and body sampler received as a gift.
The logo on the pen reads, God is still speaking,
A button on the pen controls 3 light settings: quick blink, slow blink, and solid light. I’ve lost the plastic cover that immobilizes the button on the side of the pen, and the red light will flash if something in the pencil cup jostles against the pen and pushes the button. Sometimes as I work at my desk, I’ll reach for the stapler, and see the red light beating a quick rhythm.
I begin to wonder if the pen starts blinking on its own. Maybe I’m missing something.
I think of Moses. Did his pen strobe with a quick blink before he jotted down the 10 Commandments? Perhaps Paul saw a slow blink on his pen, like a beacon, and knew he couldn’t put off writing that letter to the Romans any longer.
Perhaps a woman wakes from a dream about a blinking light and records a story her grandmothers have told her, about a woman at a well. God is still speaking, what have you heard? Perhaps the prophet Hosea stares the unyielding red light on the pen, and sighs…his wife certainly won’t like this. Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
I sit at my desk and open mail, read mail, code invoices, draft reports, write bids, and reach for the phone to return a call. I sneak a glance at the pencil cup to see if my pen is blinking. I hope that somewhere in this punctuated world a pen is blinking.
Full Comma-tary Series:
2 comments April 5, 2009
Comma-tary, Vol. 3: Stillspeaking
Gracie Allen said, Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
This quote inspired a “proclamation, identity, and communication” effort in the UCC (United Church of Christ), with the tagline “God is still speaking,” The comma was intentional.
This appeared in messages, church bulletins, TV ads (or not), media, banners, websites. The focus of the media blitz was to emphasize welcome and inclusion at UCC churches. But I was stuck on that comma.
In a sermon, our pastor asked, “God is still speaking, What have you heard?”
We were a little dazzled that God still had something to say. That God had something to say to us. We knew this, of course, but the big black comma brought it home. If something came after the comma, we needed to listen and share and discuss what that was. All of us. We needed to hear what God might be whispering to each person.
The comma logo became shorthand for this welcome listening. A large black comma presided over the monthly newsletter. Ushers at our church wore small white stoles with a black comma, and still do. There were comma t-shirts and comma earrings. The Stillspeaking cycling team wore a comma on their jerseys. People made themselves into human commas, the UCC version of Lake Woebegon’s living flag.
I hoped we would not stop saying to each other, “God is still speaking,” That we would not forget to explain. Perhaps Sunday visitors met by greeters wearing a mysterious comma (apostrophe? quote?) would have no idea what it was all about. Perhaps the comma would become stale, and we would fall back into our old assumptions, sheltered from the wind.
“God is still speaking,” would be our church’s focus for a year, for 3 years at the national UCC level. I welcomed this. I wanted to think about all 3 parts: the stillspeaking, the comma, the what have I heard.
The comma became like an irritant thrust into the flesh of a mollusk. It bothered me every time I saw it. That’s not correct punctuation, my editing self would say. The comma should have been a dash or semi-colon (a period being ruled out by Gracie).
Something whispered, It’s meant to trouble you, Rules are sometimes meant to be broken. Are you listening? A pearl might form (or not), but the mollusk was mighty uncomfortable in the meantime.
Confession: I remain in this world burdened with an abiding concern for the comma.
Full Comma-tary Series:
Comma-tary Vol 1: The Oxford Comma
2 comments March 5, 2009
Comma-tary Vol. 2: Proof-punct
Confession: I came into this world burdened with an abiding concern for the comma.
In college, I read a newspaper article critiquing the campus dating scene. I agreed with the student’s assessment when she quoted the apostle Paul:
“We would not have you, ignorant brethren.”
It was clever, that shift of comma.
The translation of this Bible verse usually places the comma after ignorant. The King James version of I Thessalonians 4:13 reads, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep…” The student journalist had tidied the awkward usage of infinitive, as well.
In required Essential Christianity courses, students at my school learned about the perils of proof-text, the practice of ripping portions of Bible verses out of context in order to support a particular point.
Here, the author had engaged in an ironic bit of proof-punctuation. I realized this was actually a fair move, and very funny, though it might not hold up to close academic scrutiny.
Earliest New Testament manuscripts were copied with scriptuo continua, with letters run together. No spaces to separate letters or words. No capitals, no punctuation. Bart Ehrman illustrates this with godisnowhere. This could read “God is now here” or “God is no where.” Which?
Spaces, commas, periods, paragraphs. All Bible readings and translations (every one!) make interpretational decisions about these things. Context is intended to be the compass for translational decisions. In a large classroom in the old barracks that housed the Biblical Studies department was a sign printed on tractor-fed computer paper. The five-foot banner over the doorway shouted, CONTEXT.
The idea of a migrating comma intrigued me. How could a creative shift of punctuation change meaning? (Were other funny proof-puncts to be found?) How much punctuation in our modern Biblical translations is controversial, or not clarified by context?
And what about section breaks? Some of these impacted interpretation considerably. Did the sentence in Ephesians 5:21 go with the paragraph before, or after it? Was Luke 8:2-3 one sentence, or two?
Could something as small as a shift in a comma or carriage return change a doctrine?
Could a migrating comma shift the world?
Full Comma-tary Series:
6 comments March 3, 2009
Trust in Cod
A member of the pastoral counseling staff was misquoted in our church newsletter: “Over the years, I’ve just learned to trust in Cod.”
I would think of this while taking the kids to preschool. The newsletter used 12-point Times Roman font, making a C and G hard to distinguish. Spell-check wouldn’t catch it.
In the church parking lot, we’d pass the car belonging of the director of Welcoming Ministries. Her license plate read: 367-COD. Cod was made manifest and walked among us.
I’d nose our van into a parking space among the battalion of minivans and SUVs that swarmed with hopping children, and mothers carrying toddlers and diaper bags. I’d haul open the sliding door for our 3-year-old, check for backpack and jacket (shoes, hat, countenance), take him by the hand, and then walk to the other side of the van and unlatch the heavy carseat for the baby, who was finally asleep. Hoisting the baby seat in front of me like a lantern, I tugged my preschooler behind me, as we threaded a long path through narrow rows of cars.
I’d drive home, thinking of my license plate: 246-COW. It wasn’t a vanity plate; I’d have chosen something with gazelle.
I could remember a time when I’d debated the use of the Oxford comma, or the virtues of Words Into Type. I’d once bought the Chicago Manual of Style for a job interview. I’d written a thank-you note to a publishing house editor, who hired me for a freelance position. She’d pointed out that “accommodation” had more than one m, and sent me my first assignment.
I pulled the bovine van into the garage, and brought the baby inside. I had an idea for an article, if the baby slept before it was time to pick up his brother.
When the sun came up, Jesus was standing on the beach, but they didn’t recognize him. Jesus spoke to them: “Good morning! Did you catch anything for breakfast?” They answered, “No.”
He said, “Throw the net off the right side of the boat and see what happens.” They did what he said. All of a sudden there were so many fish in it, they weren’t strong enough to pull it in.”
–The Message: The Bible in contemporary language, John 21:4-6
3 comments February 6, 2009
Bird of Happiness – 2
House Wren, by John James Audubon
January has been warm this year, at least in our part of the country. We visit the cabin to check on frozen pipes (0), animal tracks (rabbit-1, deer-some, mountain lion-0), and critters.
A house wren moved in after New Year’s Day, just like last year. I try to nap on my bed, with sun warming a slice of floor. From the corner of the room to my left, the wren flies to a perch at the top of the open door. He seems chubby and reddish in the light, with a remarkably white throat. He notices me on the bed, with a sturdy chocolate Labrador curled against me, and flies down the hall to the other bedroom.
There is no singing. No cheerful chirping offered as a token of appreciation by last year’s wren. If we have to deal with an LBJ (little brown jobber) in the cabin, there should at least be some birdsong as we clean up. And how is this bird getting in the house?
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young, at your altars,
O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.
–Psalm 84:3-4, New Revised Standard Version
1 comment January 21, 2009
Passion
I’ve lost far too much sleep watching the Olympics this week. Phelps, Liukin, Torres, Misty May, Yang Wei, Coventry—the headliners, but every athlete in Beijing has devoted an inordinate chunk of life and sacrifice to training. What drives a person to pursue the shot put (all that chalk on the neck), or synchronized diving? I decline to participate in any activity, sport or otherwise, that requires a Brazilian wax.
But perhaps I am the last person who should speak about the eccentricities of passion. I waited 2 long weeks for titles to arrive from Amazon: Eastern Pilgrims—the travels of three ladies (published in 1870), Books and Readers in the Early Church, How the Codex was Found. Guardians of Letters. Arcane books for an eccentric passion. Yes, they’re fairly riveting.
Not sure why I’m gripped by the interests I have. Who can explain why someone feels an inexplicable pull towards 400 meter backstroke or headstone transcription…Nascar, 18th-century furniture, LP album covers, hot-wire chemical vapor deposition?
Or, in my case, parallelism in Hebrew poetry, or the issue of parablepsis among ancient scribes? Are my Scotch ancestors to blame for this? Maybe all those canned green beans from my childhood.
3 comments August 16, 2008
Will the real Babylon please stand up?
I recently attended two very different conferences, back to back. The first featured Dr. Walter Brueggemann, a prolific and well-known Bible scholar, as guest lecturer at our church. The second was the annual conference for the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) in San Diego. These conferences were two sides of the same coin for me. One identified the problem; the other imagined a new answer.
Brueggemann focused on Isaiah in his workshop. The weave of prophetic tradition that forms the Book of Isaiah reflects on the fate of Jerusalem in roughly 700-500 BCE. Jerusalem was symbol for the national Israel. The prophet Isaiah ben Amoz (“first Isaiah”) warned Jerusalem against aligning with Babylon, the dominant military industrial complex of the time. Jerusalem’s leadership could choose strengthen the societal fabric by caring for the poor and disadvantaged, or pour resources into military assets and tribute for foreign rulers.
The prophet Isaiah says “it’s time to withdraw your attachments to the Babylonian definition of reality,” according to Brueggemann. It’s time to imagine a completely different reality. Then Brueggemann said something that made us wiggle in our seats: We are now babylon. The U.S. is the last superpower. We are, metaphorically, modern babylon.
As he spoke, I thought about Babylon (big B) and babylon (little b). After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US built a heli-pad on ancient Babylonian ruins, damaging part of the remaining Ishtar gate of Babilu (Akkadian, “Gate of gods”).
In 2006, I saw a piece of the Ishtar gate (built ca. 575 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar II) at the Louvre. Even as I had marveled at a splendid glazed lion from the Ishtar gate, backed with bricks of sea-glass greens and blues, the pavement of ancient Babylon in Iraq was being crushed by the military might of Halliburton and the new babylon. Biblical scholars would call this a “symbolic action report,” a prophetic act designed to send a message.
In the midst of war and utter destruction, the poetry of Isaiah 11:6 imagines a new vision of peace. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” (NRSV) The imagined future subverts images of predator/prey and conqueror/conquered. Instead, there is a peaceable kingdom where the innocent are no longer victimized. 
In the workshop, Brueggemann pushed further. If we want peace as imagined by the many voices of Isaiah, we must understand what is at stake. Disarmament and peace depends on a lower standard of living among the “haves.” The problem is oil. Brueggemann said, “Peace will require we use less oil. This is a high price to pay for peace, but until then, we will have to use muscle to keep our own access to oil.”
This is the hard task: to connect what we consume in our peace-loving, everyday lives with what we’re willing to subsidize and sacrifice, in order to have the fossil fuels that are the foundation of our economy. Isaiah asks, “Will the real Babylon please stand up?” Dang—it’s me. Time to withdraw my attachment to a Babylonian definition of reality.
Brueggeman writes, “Do not deliver us from the clashing poems which are your word to us.”
The Louvre currently has an exhibit called Babylon. It is co-sponsored by the British Museum, which issued a report in 2005 regarding recent damage to ancient Babylonian archaeological sites.
3 comments May 15, 2008
Plant a tree, write a book
” At the end of the day, what will people say about you? 
If folks were totally candid, totally honest, how would your epitaph read? In the Talmud it is suggested that to be successful in this life you should plant a tree, have a child, or write a book. This means you should be sure that you have exerted an influence for good in this life that lives on after your days are on earth are done.”
– At the End of the Day, James W. Moore
Tree of Life, David Friedman
5 comments April 12, 2008
