Canon Comparison Chart

Worth referencing (click below):

Maoz Zur

Pick up some free cultural and religious enrichment at Amazon׃ a traditional Hanukah song which is more than reminiscent of the biblical Psalms.

While listening, try to follow along in the Hebrew. (Please try, if only to justify the time I spent typing it out!)

Hebrew:

מָעוֹז צוּרִ יְשׁוּעָתִי לְךָ נָאֶה לְשַׁבֵּחַ

תִּכּוֹן בִֵּית תְּפִלָּתִי וְשָׁם תּוֹדָה נְזַבֵּהַ

לְעֵת תָּכִִין מַטְבֵּהַ מִצָּר הַמְנַבֵּהַ

אָז אֶגְמוֹר בְּשִׁיר מִזְמוֹר הֲנֻכַּת הַמִּזְבֵּהַ

English Translation:
O mighty stronghold of my salvation,
To praise You is a delight.
Restore my House of Prayer
And there we will bring a thanksgiving offering.
When You will have prepared the slaughter
For the blaspheming foe,
Then I shall complete with a song of hymn
The dedication of the Altar.

Transliteration:
Ma-oz Tzur Y’shu-a-ti Le-cha Na-eh L’sha-bei-ach
Ti-kon Beit T’fi-la-ti V’sham To-da N’za-bei-ach
L’eit Ta-chin Mat-bei-ach Mi-tzar Ha-mi-ga-bei-ach
Az Eg-mor B’shir Miz-mor Cha-nu-kat Ha-miz-bei-ach

Literacy Rates and the King James Version

Literacy in the U.S. is embarrassingly low.

Nearly 50% of the adult US population reads at a 7th grade level or lower. Nearly 25% has reading proficiency so low they cannot read instructions on medication bottles, the manual that comes with a piece of machinery, or a newspaper. This means roughly 40 million Americans cannot do something as simple and critical as read the handout a pharmacist gives them that warns them of lethal drug interactions.

[From Blog Action Day 2008: Attack Poverty Through Literacy]

What does this say about the continued use of the King James Version in American churches?

The kids I have tried to evangelize over the past 10 years can’t even read the New American Standard. I’ve explained the theme verse at my one long-time weekly ministry—”Keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they will be life to your soul and adornment to your neck”—to countless low-income junior highers, and I’m not sure any of them ever understood it.

God used the common language of the day in the New Testament, Koine Greek. Koine (Κοινη), in fact, simply means “common.” We should not fear to do the same. The Bible contains some passages and truths that are difficult to understand (2 Pet. 3:16). Some are impossible to grasp without divine enablement (1 Cor. 2:14). But why make understanding impossible by using a language no one in this world speaks?

P.S.

I’ve already posted a list of a few verses in the KJV that are unintelligible. I just found a new one, Joshua 17:18. “It is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: and the outgoings of it shall be thine.”

Jonathan Edwards Is My Homeboy

One of my favorite teachers here at BJU recently read the book above to get insight into some of his more theologically inclined students. I want insight, too, and I had noticed this book riding some blogosphere buzz, so I picked it up. It was engaging, informative, and a nice quick read perfect for walks between home and work.

It also managed to warm my heart toward the Lord; He brought it to me at a time when I needed some help and some rebuke.

This book was three things for me:

1. A rebuke: Never be arrogant or cliquish about theology but always humble. That reminder came by way of a) stories about prideful theologues and b) the simple point that grace is not something you can work up for yourself.
2. A fascinating narrative: a backstage pass into conservative, gospel-centered American evangelicalism.
3. A reminder: Above all this book reminded me that my theology changes my life. My view of God affects me. Your view affects you. Rather than allow myself to be annoyed and frustrated by those who disagree with me, I want by God’s grace to focus on the positive. I want to give the Bible’s view of a powerful, ruling God free reign to change me into His image from glory to glory.

The Sins of the Bloggers

I publish these comments from the latest Themelios with some trepidation: I don’t want to be guilty of these sins. But I publish these comments with some hope: I don’t want to be guilty of these sins!

D. A. Carson:

Because the Internet is spectacularly accessible, almost anyone can voice an opinion or make a claim. In this sense, it is the most “democratic” of the media. Occasionally this means that voices otherwise silenced, voices that should be heard, are indeed heard. Much more commonly, voices multiply that are ill-informed, opinionated, often pretentious and arrogant. A higher percentage of these voices were weeded out when the distribution was via print, radio, or television; by democratizing the delivery system, every voice can be published, and it becomes culturally unacceptable even to suggest that some voices are not worth publishing. This does nothing to enhance either discernment or self-discipline. As Michael Kinsley likes to ask, “How many blogs does the world need?”

Carl Trueman:

The title ‘scholar’ is not one that you should ever apply to yourself, and its current profusion among the chatterati on the blogs is a sign of precisely the kind of arrogance and hubris against which we all need to guard ourselves. Call me old-fashioned, but to me the word ‘scholar’ has an honorific ring. It is something that others give to you when, and only when, you have made a consistent and outstanding contribution to a particular scholarly field (and, no, completion of a Ph.D. does not count). To be blunt, the ability to set up your own blog site and having nothing better to do with your time than warble on incessantly about how clever you are and how idiotic are all those with whom you disagree—well, that does not actually make you eligible to be called a scholar. On the contrary, it rather qualifies you to be a self-important nincompoop, and the self-referential use of the title by so many of that ilk is at best absurd, at worst obnoxious.

N.B.: Don’t miss the latest Themelios. Trueman is always worth your time, as is Carson. And check out Keller (who in turn relies helpfully on Jonathan Edwards).

The Anglican Mission in the Third Millennium

Anglicanism is at times beautiful and rich, wicked and nonsensical, funny and sad:

Some years ago, in conversation with a prominent Anglican bishop in Britain, I asked how he would define the mission of the Church of England. After a pause for thought, he said, “I suppose I would say that the mission, so to speak, is to maintain the religious option for those who might be interested.” Needless to say, those who control the commanding heights of British culture do not feel threatened by that understanding of the Christian mission.

—Richard John Neuhaus, FIRST THINGS: On the Square

Narnia for Nineteen

I cannot recommend this set of CDs highly enough, and I cannot fathom that it’s being sold for $19!

These dramatized recordings of the Narnia stories are so well done—and so gloriously Christian! They catch the spirit of the books in a way the two Disney films haven’t. I am convinced that the reason the films falter (especially the latest) is that the stories were fed through a different worldview, an unregenerated one. How else can you explain the marginalization of Aslan?

I am moved deeply every time I hear Aslan lovingly explain his providence to Shasta in The Horse and His Boy. I ask with sorrow, how can a lost man understand the true meaning of that scene?

You simply must buy this set if you don’t have it!

Note: Rejoice Christian Software’s owner tells me he does not yet have a permanent page set up for this item, so the link above will take you to your shopping cart. But I have ordered many things from this site in the past; it’s totally legit.

Facebook Pronouncement

See the sad final line from this actual screenshot.

The irony is this: neither does “1,721 friends” really mean 1,721 friends.

Carl Trueman as Dove and Serpent

A follow-up on my last post:

For a calm, loving, and incisive response to Lisa Miller’s pro-gay opinion piece in Newsweek, see Carl Trueman’s excellent article at Reformation 21. Carl Trueman is always, always worth reading, even if he thinks the blogosphere is a “narcissistic echo-chamber.” He’s right, of course.

Homosexuality, Serpents, and Doves

The tag-line for BJU’s What in the World! newsletter is “helping believers be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” I borrowed, of course, the words of Jesus in Matt. 10:16 as He sends His disciples out on a preaching tour.

Every sinful age demands that Christ’s disciples have this serpentine wisdom or cunning—φρόνιμος is the same word used to describe the “subtil” serpent in Gen 3:1 (LXX). So one major purpose of What in the World! is to engage in what Bryan W. Smith calls “Christian-worldview shaping.” Readers need to know what the world is arguing and how to respond.

But Jesus also called for His servants to be “harmless as doves.” R. T. France points out in his TNTC volume on Matthew that this harmlessness or innocence (ἀκέραιος) “demands not naivety, but an irreproachable honesty” (p. 182). So What in the World! urges purity by shedding light on the sins of the church.

France’s last comment on Matt. 10:16 struck me today: “The balance of prudence and purity will enable Christians both to survive and to fulfill their mission to the world.” His words fit exactly our situation in the culture war over homosexuality and gay marriage.

If we were more prudent then, yes, we wouldn’t have biblically illiterate Christians making the Bible look silly during radio call-in programs.

But if Christians fulfilled the simpler task of being pure, then Lisa Miller could not have written important paragraphs in her recent infamous Newsweek opinion piece. Two points here:

• If Christians had led the culture—instead of dragging it backwards—in granting civil rights to all God’s image-bearers regardless of race or skin color, Miller and others could not so readily draw a direct line from Martin Luther King to Matthew Shepard.
• And if Christians didn’t divorce one another she couldn’t say, “Paul argued more strenuously against divorce [than against homosexuality]—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.”

If we love homosexuals we mustn’t give up the fight for the right to openly tell them the truth about their sin. But Jesus knew best: we must be wise and pure ourselves.

Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches – NYTimes.com

Another good reason to read the New York Times: Mark Minnick does! He mentioned in his Sunday-evening sermon that he had just read that afternoon the article from which I offer this interesting excerpt:

In “Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly.

[From Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches]

Book Giveaway

Trevin Wax is giving away free books to one randomly selected person.

Tolerance as a Defense Mechanism

Stanley Fish is always provocative and thoughtful in his New York Times blog. I presume his books bear the same qualities, though I’ve only ever picked up his most famous.

Gilbert Meilaender recently reviewed in First Things a new Fish book addressed to college professors: Save the World on Your Own Time.

Fish is on an admirable search for truth, according to Meilaender:

“You will never,” Fish writes, “hear in any of my classes the some-people-say-X-but-others-say-Y-and-who’s-to-judge dance. What I strive to determine, together with my students, is which of the competing accounts of a matter (an academic not a political matter) is the right one and which are wrong.”

But Meilaender has a helpful rejoinder which might give you insight into yourself, your students, or other college-age young people you know:

I do not disagree, but I think Fish . . . might ponder a bit more why it is that many students are drawn to the “who’s-to-judge dance.”

They are drawn to this position for the most understandable of reasons—and one for which we ought to have considerable sympathy. Theirs is, essentially, a posture of self-defense. Knowing that many of their beliefs are being deliberately undermined in their classes, and knowing also that (most of the time) they are not yet in a position to articulate a full defense of their views, they take refuge in tolerance. You are entitled to your opinion, which I ought not criticize. And, thankfully, this means that I am also entitled to my opinion, which you ought not criticize.