Disciple's Diary

Wayne, Well, even more than ministers read the Bi...

2010-03-16T15:41:46.799-04:00

Wayne,

Well, even more than ministers read the Bible. How about a retired CPA? I do not know if that is more or less encouraging. However, I think it is a small minority of people who actually read it for themselves. More people read or have it read to them in church. Even more people in the western world have an opinion about it. Few try to understand it in its original context (to the extent that it is possible to do this). Personally, I do not get very far without having my own perpective or tradition creeping into the picture. Of course, the post-modernists keep telling us that we have no other choice.

My! Lots of interest in this! Glad to see that min...

2010-03-16T09:15:01.647-04:00

My! Lots of interest in this! Glad to see that ministers are still reading the Bible! Encouraging.

Don't know, Travis, whether the accounts can be harmonized or not; don't know who knows. That was not my point or purpose. My point was that there is no basis in the text of the New Testament for the false tradition that Mary of Magdala was a "loose woman" or worse, a prostitute. Best we can tell, that whole thing got started as a result of a sermon by Pope Gregory in the 6th century and has been perpetuated ever since. It still amazes me at the lengths to which Christians will go to avoid actually reading the text!

J. Travis, I for one do not know if you have push...

2010-03-16T07:58:50.421-04:00

J. Travis,

I for one do not know if you have pushed the analogy too far or not. However, I think you have moved from Bonheur to Van Gogh.

Wayne, I do find your comments helpful. I was reac...

2010-03-15T09:47:31.276-04:00

Wayne, I do find your comments helpful. I was reacting to your statement: “The confusion, unfortunately, continues to be perpetuated by uninformed persons who pass on the misinformation.” I don’t think all of the confusion is caused by ignorance. Some of it is the result of the synoptic problem itself. Like most conservative scholars you posit two very similar anointings, which both coincidentally took place at the house of a man named Simon—one in Galilee in Luke, another in Judea in Matthew, Mark, and John. If that works for you, fine. You still have discrepancies among the non-Lucan accounts to sort out, which may be due to artistic license as your portrait analogy suggests. I want to push your analogy a bit further. John is the only evangelist who identifies the woman as Mary of Bethany and John’s gospel was written after (perhaps long after) the synoptics according to Bible scholars. Is it possible that John attributed the story to Mary for rhetorical, not historical, reasons? Or would that be pushing your portrait analogy too far?

Yes, the witnesses of the gospels are anything but...

2010-03-14T08:26:36.803-04:00

Yes, the witnesses of the gospels are anything but dispassionate. Jesus came to mean everything to them and He was the way they came to understand and interpret God and their relationship to Him. Their ultimate concern flows through history to this very day.

I think the analogy of "painting" vs "photography" is a good one to explain the four canonical perspectives on Jesus. I think scholars are still trying to figure out if the artists were more like Bonheur, Van Gogh, or Pollack.

One of the problems we moderns have in understandi...

2010-03-13T15:30:16.807-05:00

One of the problems we moderns have in understanding the Fourfold Gospel Tradition is that we are afflicted with what I sometimes call "The Sergeant Friday Syndrome." You may remember the old Dragnet television series (That's right...I really am that old!) in which Sergeant Friday would investigate some crime, and there would be an hysterical witness blurting out his/her "take" on what had happened, complete with a lot of information Sergeant Friday regarded as either irrelevant or unnecessary or both. Finally, in exasperation, he would tell the eyewitness: "Just the facts, ma'am. Just give me the facts."

Sometimes we read the Gospels as "Sergeant Friday" looking only for the facts without remembering that the Gospels were composed by believers for believers...people who were not trying to be "objective" by modern standards (the quotation marks being intentional), but were rather witnessing to their faith in Jesus in ways with which their audiences could connect and relate. That doesn't mean that they were not telling the truth; they were, and any honest and fair attempt to assess ALL the evidence (even by modern evidentiary standards) will, I am convinced, bear that out. But what it does mean is that they were not dispassionate or disinterested observers uninvolved in the events to which they were bearing witness, engaging in what one has called "drive-by reporting." Rather, they were first and foremost believers in Jesus Christ. And because both writers and audiences differed from Gospel to Gospel, the tone and texture, colors and hues, of their witnesses were crafted by and shaped for their peculiar purposes.

Through the years, the way I've explained it to students is by asking them to think of the Gospels more as "portraits" than "photographs." If I were to give four different people cameras and ask them to take a photograph of the same subject, all things being equal, the photographs should be identical. But if I were to give them a canvas and paints and ask them to paint a portrait of the same person, I would get four recognizable, but somewhat different, portraits of that person, each portrait revealing BOTH the subject and the painter; that is, his peculiar skill, emphasis, and perspective.

Of course one must also take into account the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the production of the Gospels (in ways I believe but cannot fully explain), and, of course, any analogy will break down if pressed too far; but this illustration does justice both to the fact that God's Spirit inspired the Gospel writers and also worked through each one's individuality in providing for the Church four different "portraits" of Jesus. That is to say, in the Gospels we see the real Jesus, (not a "made up Jesus" on the one hand, or four different "Jesuses" on the other); but because we're looking at Him through the medium of each Gospel writer's "portrait," we see Jesus through the eyes of the individual Gospel writers, each one choosing which aspects of Jesus he will emphasize in his "portrait."

Perhaps that will help. If not, you needn't bother with it a moment more.

Thank you for untangling the knotty problem of the...

2010-03-13T14:14:43.651-05:00

Thank you for untangling the knotty problem of the three Marys. The gospel writers bear some of the responsibility for the confusion and not simply because Luke introduces Mary Magdalene right after the anointing story. Is it just a coincidence that Jesus is anointed at the home of a man named Simon in all three synoptic gospels or that Matthew, Mark, and John agree that the anointing took place in Bethany? Although there are some differing details, the stories are quite similar. Is it irreverent or illogical to conclude that there was an anointing story based on one historical event, which each evangelist retold differently to suit his own rhetorical purpose?

All very true! Something that that needs to be ex...

2010-02-11T17:31:47.067-05:00

All very true! Something that that needs to be explicitly taught in seminary!

Dr. Stacy, I certainly agree that context and how...

2010-02-08T07:47:11.545-05:00

Dr. Stacy,

I certainly agree that context and how a writer uses a word provides reliable evidence of the writer's meaning.

Maybe I gave too much content that obscured my main point which was we all stand on someone else's shoulders. To learn greek as you have, I would guess that you had to rely on the learning and research of others.

I only work in the New Testament in Greek. Consequ...

2010-02-08T05:49:27.660-05:00

I only work in the New Testament in Greek. Consequently, I spend no time either with English translations or Greek lexica; therefore, I'm not familiar with the dilemma you describe.

The only reliable way to determine what a NT writer intends by a word is to see how he uses it elsewhere in his writing(s). New Testament writers didn't look up words in Greek lexica to see what they "meant" before they employed them.

My obersvation in this post is NOT a disagreement ...

2010-02-07T17:46:25.144-05:00

My obersvation in this post is NOT a disagreement with what you wrote. However, I have an observation that demonstrates how hard "evidence based" research can be and how sometimes we must simply "stand on someone else's shoulders".

Most of the details are not relevant and would take way to much time; however, the general circumstance was a question about a particular greek word in the New Testament. One person rightly pointed out that their were "multiple possible" meanings for the word in question and the meaning that he had chosen was cited in a well-recognized lexicon. Another person claimed that the lexicon chosen was not extensive enough and the lexicon he cited gave 30 possible meanings instead of just the ten used by the other person and this person chose a different meaning from among the 30 that was not among the meanings in the lexicon with just 10. Finally, another person claimed that the word certainly had multiple possible meanings, but the word chosen by the second person could not possibly be right because "the meaning chosen had only ONE occurrence in any of the sources and that occurrence was in the fourth century CE.

My problem with judging this claim
was how was I to determine if the meaning had truly occurred in only ONE place. It was going to take a loooooooooong time to read and translate "all" the sources to examine all of the evidence, something beyond my ability. As it turned out, I could verify the fourth century occurrence, but I could not verify the claim that this fourth century occurrence was the ONLY occurrence of this particular meaning.

The point of my story is that we all "stand on the shoulders" of others when it comes to evidence. Much of any translation from greek requires that I rely on some very detailed and time consuming work that entails much expertise and judgement that is contained in the lexicon's themselve.

It makes me thankful for all of us who have "come before".

As an aside and as a question, does anyone know if now in the age of computers is their a resource that would allow a comprehensive search of extant greek literature within a certain time frame for a particular word?

Your blog about research and a teacher of yours ma...

2010-02-06T20:54:45.522-05:00

Your blog about research and a teacher of yours made me think about several important things. In this comment I would like to share about a teacher I had and what he taught me regarding studying the New Testatment Scriptures. The teacher was Dr. Jim Blevins. He was a teacher at Mars Hill College and also at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He taught me regarding the study of the New Testatment:

1. Establish the text using the tools of textual criticism.

2. Translate the text.

3. Read what the Church Fathers had to say about the text.

4. Read what the commentators had to say about the text.

5. Interpret the text from your own theological perspective and from at least one other theological perspective.

6. Tell others what the text means to you, making sure that you interact with and use what you learned in steps 1 - 5.

While I have had many teachers over the years, few have had the impact and influence that Dr. Blevins had. While this blog has made me think about some other things, I will wait to share those at another time.

I very much enjoy reading your blog. I find it int...

2010-02-06T17:24:40.596-05:00

I very much enjoy reading your blog. I find it intellectually stimulating as well as challenging--especially as a pastor-theologian as you put it in your last blog.

I always read, but seldom comment thinking that I don't really have much to contribute. Often, it would be more "preaching to the choir."

Please continue writing. I will continue reading and more importantly, reflecting upon my own ministry and calling her in Memphis, to God's chosen.

Thanks again,

Kevin F.

Being a teacher of seventh graders and a science t...

2010-02-03T13:16:32.988-05:00

Being a teacher of seventh graders and a science teacher too, I rather enjoyed this entry.I use a simple card game to teach my students that the "scientific process" is actually a natural process of thought that all humans use to solve problems. I also ask them to decide which part of the process is the most important. Its interesting the cases they make for the question being the most important part of the process.Its also interesting to me how little questioning is taught or even permitted in our school systems.
Much love to you and Cheryl,
Stephanie

"Let there be Ken!" How refreshing to think that ...

2010-01-01T12:16:05.905-05:00

"Let there be Ken!" How refreshing to think that this is how God proclaimed my creation and that I can do that anew every morning.

Thanks for sharing that.

www.kenwords.com

I still believe in miracles. I also promise to wo...

2009-12-29T15:08:07.787-05:00

I still believe in miracles. I also promise to work to improve my research methodology.

I still believe in miracles. I also promise to wo...

2009-12-29T15:07:00.813-05:00

I still believe in miracles. I also promise to work on my research methodology.

Thanks, Dave! Advent Blessings, wayne

2009-12-10T13:00:20.698-05:00

Thanks, Dave!

Advent Blessings,

wayne

Dr. Stacy, The same could be said to those of us ...

2009-12-10T11:53:57.769-05:00

Dr. Stacy,

The same could be said to those of us who preach. We often go to the sermon with "what it means" already decided without letting the text speak for itself. Others go straight to the commentaries. Fortunately some of us have learned a better way of "doing preaching." I still go take that road every time I preach. Thank you, Dr. Stacy.

Wishing you the hope, peace, love and joy of Advent,

Dave

Dr. Stacy, Thank you for this blog post. Now...

2009-11-30T20:34:52.408-05:00

Dr. Stacy,

Thank you for this blog post. Now I know the background behind why you taught me New Testament Greek the way you did at Gardner-Webb University.
I have a personal "thank you" letter but I could not get your "email" link to work. Please email me at glenndkerstetter@gmail.com so that I can send it to you. Thanks. Glenn D. Kerstetter

Thanks for your kind comments, Whitney. Good to he...

2009-11-28T07:03:34.629-05:00

Thanks for your kind comments, Whitney. Good to hear from you. RWS

Dr. Stacy! Whitney Lonker here from Jacksonville!...

2009-11-27T23:06:31.078-05:00

Dr. Stacy! Whitney Lonker here from Jacksonville! I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am to have found you & your teachings on your blog! Thank you for posting and for still leading me in my walk...even all the way from NC! I look forward to the next post, and I'll "mark my time" until then...

thank you!

Whitney Lonker

Scholarship errors aside, you have to ask yourself...

2009-11-06T19:17:43.983-05:00

Scholarship errors aside, you have to ask yourself, Why would God be so incredibly cryptic if he wanted to REVEAL the name of the man of lawlessness? I'm afraid all of the debunking in the world cannot not convince those whose minds are already made up. People generally believe what they want to believe. BTW, your post reminded me of a similar one written by Dr. Claude Mariottini in 2006 in which dispelled the myth of George W. Bush as the Antichrist:
http://www.claudemariottini.com/blog/2006/06/is-george-bush-666-antichrist_06.html

Dr. Stacy, I am grateful that you have addressed t...

2009-10-02T21:39:48.928-04:00

Dr. Stacy,
I am grateful that you have addressed this subject, though I am reading it a few weeks late. I do so love the book of James, as he does tell it just like it is. The tongue truly can be a unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Though I have been a Christian for 46 years, I must admit that I have, in the very recent past, been guilty of offending by not adequately bridling my tongue. I posted a conversation, which was meant to be private (which would have been bad enough), but I accidently posted it publicly. I have already apologized and been forgiven by this person; I have asked the Lord for forgiveness, and I know He has been faithful to forgive. If only people could forgive as easily as He... My real problem is I cannot forgive myself, leaving me ashamed to the point of deep depression. I have certainly learned my lesson from this bad experience and hopefully shall not be guilty of such again.

I just want to thank you for bringing this lesson to our attention. Most people consider other sins, such as murder, adultery, robbery, etc., more vile than dangerous gossip or sharpness of the tongue. However, once those words are spoken, they cannot be taken back.

Thank you again.

Respectfully,
In Christ,
Dorcas

Thanks for your comments, Tim. They're always insi...

2009-09-24T08:13:22.779-04:00

Thanks for your comments, Tim. They're always insightful.

I hope you're wrong, however. I hope the return to a NT ecclesiology will not, as you say, "evolve slowly." It need not. All it takes is for some pastors, who themselves have a theology of church and ministry, to stand up and say to their own congregations, "Enough of this silliness! We're going to be the Church!"

That, contrary to the psycho-silliness or managerial manipulation served up in most of the popular "leadership books" out there, is real pastoral leadership.