Starred review from PW to appear next week:-

unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity … and Why It Matters
David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. Baker, $17.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8010-1300-3

Kinnaman, president of the Barna Institute, was inspired to write this book when Lyons (of the Fermi Project) commissioned him to do extensive research on what young Americans think about Christianity. Lyons had a "gut-level sense that something was desperately wrong," and three years of research paints exactly that picture. Mosaics and Busters (the generations that include late teens to early 30-somethings) believe Christians are judgmental, anti-homosexual, hypocritical, too political, and sheltered. Rather than simply try to do a PR face-lift, Kinnaman looks at ways in which the church's activities actually may have been unchristian, and encourages a return to a more biblical Christianity, a faith that not only focuses on holiness but also loves, accepts and works to understand the world around it. It would be possible to get lost in the numbers here, but the authors use numerous illustrations from their research and life experiences, and include insights at the end of every chapter from Christian leaders like Charles Colson, John Stott, Brian McLaren and Jim Wallis. This is a wonderful, thoughtful book that conveys difficult truths in a spirit of humility. Every Christian should read this, and it will likely influence the church for years to come. (Oct.)

Two finished pieces of writing

It's a happy coincidence that I finished two commissioned pieces today: an essay, "Jack, Our Savior?" for a collection of essays entitled "Secrets of 24" to be published in October and a 1750 word entry "Spirit" for a biblical dictionary to be published next year. Guess which one will have the wider audience? I found it well-nigh impossible to finish the latter and still consider it a woefully inadequate discussion of the topic given the range of literature and the difference of thought covered. Just take this as one indication of problems with a single verse. One could write 1750 words on this verse alone! The only thing I felt was useful in the "Spirit" article was to raise questions about when the noun "spirit" is capitalized in biblical translations and why.

First summer male Rose Breasted Grosbeak with female Goldfinch on feeder. We feed generations of Grosbeaks. This year's parents seem to have left.

"Here If You Need Me" by Kate Braestrup

Memoir of a chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, "Here If You Need Me" is a good read for anyone. It's well-written. My guess is that would-be priests aka seminarians would love it. Here's a review from the Christian Science Monitor. It's causing a stir here in Maine.

A paragraph from the review:-

The common thread in these riveting accounts – a young husband's death, a snowmobiler trapped under the ice, a lost girl, a couple who have been swept over a dam while swimming, and others – is the value of mindful presence, Braestrup's uncanny ability "to just show up, shut my mouth, and be." When friends and family ask the hard questions, she suggests, "if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love."

Recent survey on "family values" report from India

Indians are staying together as family, finds a 57-nation survey, according to the Times of India.

The average household size in urban India is 4.8 persons. In all Asian countries in general, the percentage of people living alone is very low. However, there are concerns about expectations from families. More than any of the other countries surveyed, 76% Indians feel that it is important that their families think they are doing well in life. Over half the parents want their children to move ahead in life, even if it means putting a lot of pressure on them, says the survey. The corresponding figures are 63% in China, 51% in the US and 33% in Germany.

California and paper votes

According to today's NY Times, California’s top election official on Friday decertified three voting systems widely used in the state but said she would let counties use the machines in February’s presidential primary if extra security precautions were taken.

The official, Debra Bowen, the secretary of state, said she made the decision in response to studies showing that the machines could be hacked.

This meets the definition of not being a sausage! We were just discussing voting irregularities in the last two elections at dinner last night with 6 friends.

Flawed etymologies

This week's TLS has a review of two books on Isidore of Seville's Etymologies, "The Verbal Doodles of Saint Isidore" by Emily Wilson, John Henderson
THE MEDIEVAL WORLD OF ISIDORE OF SEVILLE
Truth from words
244pp. Cambridge University Press. £55(US $99).
978 0 521 86740 5

Stephen A. Barney et al
THE ETYMOLOGIES OF ISIDORE OF SEVILLE
475pp. Cambridge University Press. £85. (US $150).
978 0 521 83749 1

Isidore's book of Etymologies was arguably the most influential medieval book after the Bible in the medieval west for 1000 years. He lived 530-632 CE.

The review says:-

Isidore became the patron saint of the internet in 1999. The analogy between the Etymologies and our own information superhighway is in many ways a tempting one. Like the internet, the book contains information from a bewildering number of different sources, ranging from ancient Roman proto-encyclopedias (especially Varro’s De Lingua Latina, Pliny’s Natural History and Servius’ commentaries on Virgil), through Byzantine school manuals on logic, music, grammar and architecture, to the works of Boethius, Jerome, Augustine and Eusebius. One of the few disappointments in the new English translation of the Etymologies is that the authors offer very little detailed information about Isidore’s sources. To do so would, of course, be the work of several lifetimes: more information on this subject will be forthcoming in the ongoing French edition of the Etymologies, of which so far five volumes out of twenty have appeared.

It may often seem as if Isidore, like a bad search engine, offers little or no control over all this material. Certainly, much of the “information” he provides is (from a modern perspective) blatantly false, albeit entertaining. For instance, we are assured that “Beavers (castor) are so-called from castrating (castrare). Their testicles are useful for medicines, on account of which, when they anticipate a hunter, they castrate themselves and amputate their own genitals with their teeth”. Isidore lifts this detail of natural history straight from Pliny (backed up, in this case, by a number of other ancient authorities, including Aristotle and Juvenal). As with the internet, written testimony takes on a life of it's own – even in cases where you might think it would be better to go out and look at some beavers. That thought seems not to have occurred to anybody for several hundred years: the story of the self-castrating beavers was still current in the seventeenth century, and was mocked by Thomas Browne in his wonderful analysis of ancient errors, the Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

The review later rejects the internet analogy. My favorite paragraph:-

Most of Isidore’s supposed etymologies are – by the standards of modern academic philology – complete twaddle. About a quarter of them are made up out of his own head. The Etymologies often reads like a series of bad puns: “Horses (equus) are so called because when they were yoked in a team of four they were balanced (aequare)”; “Humus (humus) was the material from which the human (homo) was made”. His real subject is the Latin language in which he writes. This makes the Etymologies extraordinarily difficult to translate in a satisfactory way. As Isidore himself suggests, translators have to be like priests or prophets: “Translator (interpres) because he is the medium ‘between the sides’ (inter-pres) of two languages when he translates. But the person who interprets (interpretari) God is also called an interpreter for the humans to whom he reveals divine mysteries”.

It's truly alarming how etymological explanations still play a role in our seminary education. As if etymology offers the only necessary explanation of a word or idea. Is disgruntled the opposite of gruntle?? Does "prophet" in Greek really mean pro +phemi, namely, "someone who speaks on behalf of another person/God?" Does apostle really mean someone who is "sent out" from the Greek apo + the verb "stello"? Moreover, do these explanations make sense of what we actually know of prophetic and apostolic activity? Passion isn't only about suffering. It's about desire and enthusiasm and anger as well. Ekklesia does not define a "church" as being "called out." The word connotes an assembly.

Anyone care to share their favorite etymological fallacies?

A great day for women's golf

Isn't this a series of magnificent pictures and what a day for women's golf :) The R&A will never be the same...

C of E on Harry Potter

The Rt Revd John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, says "Although the fictional world of Harry Potter is very different from our own, Harry and his friends face struggles and dilemmas that are familiar to us all. Jesus used storytelling to engage and challenge his listeners. There's nothing better than a good story to make people think, and there's plenty in the Harry Potter books to make young people think about the choices they make in their everyday lives and their place in the world."

And no, I haven't read #7 (yet).

Raising a family

Here's Dad with two offspring (downy woodpeckers)in July. He's taught them to eat suet from the feeder but they still like being fed by him even though they are well-nigh adults.

James 4:5

Anyone looked at this verse? There are several things to ponder:-

# What does "spirit" connote in the phrase, "spirit which dwells in us"? The term only occurs in one other place in the Epistle, namely, at 2:26.
# What is the subject of the quotation in verse 5? God? or spirit? If so, in what sense might "spirit" be taken (see first point)? Is the spirit God's spirit? Since "pneuma" is either nominative or accusative, could "spirit" be the object?
# Which rendering of "dwell" should be preferred (there are two Greek variants of the verb), namely, "(God) made to dwell" or "(the spirit) took up residence?"
# Does "scripture says," introduce the citation which then extends to the end of v.5 followed by another (identifiable) citation in v.6 or (since the quotation in v.5 is unidentifiable) might we take v.5 as a parenthetical comment translating, "Do you think that Scripture speaks in vain? Does the spirit that God made to dwell in us desire enviously?"
# Whence the citation?

Here are some translations:-

"The spirit He caused to live in us envies intensely" (NIV, NEB)

"He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us" (NASB) or "He jealously desires the [human] spirit which lives in us"

"The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"(NKJ) or "the Spirit of God in us loathes envy" (Richard Bauckham)