"Just" grammar?
My friend Matt, who happens to be a PhD student in New Testament studies at Fuller Seminary, and has been a TA for two of my classes now, has a strong opinion about the word “just.” He handed out a list of “Things to Avoid” to the class and this was at the top of the list:
Do not use the word “just” improperly. It should only be used in academic writing as a synonym of “righteous” or the like.
How did I go my whole life without getting this instruction? I actually forgot about the advice until I got my paper back from last quarter’s class and he had pointed out a few instances of my incorrect usage of the word “just.” What I’m wondering (and I’m sure he will read this and want to weigh in) is whether this truly is a hard and fast grammatical rule. Just from a cursory glance at various dictionaries via dictionary.com, most have the “improper” (as Matt understands it) uses of “just” listed under its adverbial usage. Through our library databases, I checked out “just” as an adverb in the Oxford English Dictionary (what’s more authoritative than that?). The OED agrees with the other dictionaries. None of these have usage notes like you would find for such contemptible grammatical mistakes as “irregardless” and the like. Cannot “just” be used with the meanings: “exactly, precisely; verily, actually; closely” or “in like manner” or “merely”? What’s the rule? Is “just” no longer an adverb in academic writing?
Sorry to put you on the spot, Matt!
Blogging towards Academia
I would like to highly commend to you two recent blog postings by Mark Goodacre on the New Testament Gateway blog: Should Blogs Count for Tenure? and Blogging and Tenure 2. Dr. Goodacre, as usual, pushes academia forward in trying to think about the potential for new technologies, rather than getting hung up on the dangers. He suggests that a well-respected academic blog (and his own would certainly fit the bill!) should count as one of many “esteem indicators” in consideration of an academic who is up for tenure. I agree; I think we should recognize the dangers, try to avoid them as best we can, but ultimately utilize whatever may be helpful to the academic enterprise. This is the “glass is half full” view of academic blogging and new technologies in general.
One comment that he makes stands out for me, given my own personal educational situation:
But I know that I would always look favourably on someone who has an intelligent and energetic blog, whether as potential applicants to a graduate programme, or as job applicants, or as applicants for tenure. To me it is likely to suggest several things, a commitment to the dissemination of scholarship outside of the guild, a commitment to collaborative scholarship, and some degree of courage and public risk-taking. So I would be strongly inclined to treat blogging as a plus.
I have a particular interest in this comment (and the whole post, for that matter) after recently reading a 2005 article from the Chronicle for Higher Education, entitled “Bloggers Need Not Apply,” which has a very unfavorable attitude toward academic job applicants with blogs (even if those blogs aren’t mentioned in their documentation!). Consequently, I locked up my more personal blog so only registered friends could read it and I thought twice about some of my past postings on kata ta biblia.
Being a future applicant to doctoral programs in NT studies, I am a little confused as to what role my blog on NT interpretation will play. Dr. Goodacre has a positive view of “intelligent and energetic” blogs, but there are obviously a lot of academics who are not as positive on the potential of academic blogging. Then there is the question about whether a blog would be considered academic (let alone “intelligent and energetic”) enough in the eyes of various academic readers. With these great unknowns, therefore, does a doctoral applicant make mention of her or his blog on her or his application? I lean towards “no.”
I would love it if professors or admissions committees reviewing my application took a look at my blog and, thinking it simply wonderful, count it as one of many various “esteem indicators” for me as their perfect applicant (yes, this is a grand fantasy). On the other hand, I am dreadfully aware of my ignorance on a great many subjects. My educational pursuit is in many ways a fight against ignorance, my own and that of other individuals, groups, or society as a whole. But I would fear that in this online experimental exploration of ideas, I may accidentally reveal some dastardly wrong-headed and unforgivable ignorance on one of my postings. As a result, instead of being an “esteem indicator,” this experiment would constitute a “folly alert” for those reviewing my application.
What say ye? Do prospective students reveal their blogs to doctoral programs? Perhaps it depends on the program and its professors? Perhaps one could mention it at appropriate moments in conversation with the potential doctoral advisors (e. g., “That’s interesting because I was just blogging about this the other day…”). This question is particularly for Dr. Goodacre, as this started out as a (too long) comment in response to his post, but I’d like to read what others would say as well.
BIC Job Opening: Communications Editor/Writer for Seek Magazine
For all my Brethren in Christ readers:
POSITION DESCRIPTION
Communications Editor/Writer
Position Summary: The Communications Editor/Writer is responsible to the Director of Congregational Relations to produce and publish Seek magazine and the companion online publication, Seeking more, provide editorial support for the denomination website and print publications as requested, and assist in producing presentation multimedia resources for General Church leaders.
Qualifications:
Faith: A vital Christian experience; commitment to the BIC
Education: Bachelor’s degree required. A degree in a related field such as journalism, communications, public relations, or marketing is an asset.
Experience: Print and web writing, editing and proofreading experience is required. Experience working with graphic designers and supervising volunteer and freelance writers and student interns is an asset. Knowledge of and experience with the Brethren in Christ Church is desirable.
Traits: Interacts confidently with good interpersonal skills; works well in a team; proficient in collaboration and networking; proactive and resourceful; able to focus on multiple tasks; works well under pressure of concurrent deadlines with creativity, accuracy, completeness, consistency; works with minimum supervision; focuses on objectives and attains desired outcomes; paces self and coworkers to meet deadlines.
Special Skills: Excellent publications management, editing, writing, proofreading, and communications skills; ability to recruit a network of qualified volunteer and freelance reporters, student interns, writers, editors, photographers, and illustrators; demonstrated planning and organizational skills to effectively utilize a team to meet deadlines; working knowledge of Windows operating system and industry-standard software such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and GroupWise; experience with or knowledge of Macintosh platforms is desirable; must be internet savvy and able to use (or learn) the Shelby database.
Ability to speak and write in Spanish is desired but not required.
View the full job listing at http://www.bic-church.org/news/employment/positions.asp
Omega is…
In Greek Reading tonight, my instructor said something that made me chuckle:
Omega is the ‘Jaws’ of Greek vowels.
~David Kiefer, Fuller Registrar and Greek instructor
Now, ponder that one for a minute. I am a “visual” person and I like to take imagery seriously. Can’t you just see the omegas nearly jumping off the page with violent, ravenous appetite for the destruction of all other Greek vowels? It will be hard to look at my Greek NT again without the image.
Hauerwas' Matthew: "Commentary" redefined
I got my review copy of Hauerwas’ commentary on Matthew yesterday. Thanks, Brazos! I am thoroughly appreciative and equally excited to examine this creative exploration of Matthew. Just flipping through it, I can tell that this totally redefines the term “commentary.” In his Introduction, Hauerwas talks about how he taught classes on Matthew and had students go through more traditional historical critical commentaries. He says:
I have learned much from my students and the commentaries I have read. I have learned much from the historical work done on the book of Matthew over the past two centuries. I have learned much from the commentaries written by the church fathers as well as Reformation figures. But finally I realized I simply had to write what I thought should be said in and for our time. Accordingly I have tried not to write about Matthew. I have tried to write with Matthew, assuming that the gospel was written for us.
If someone is looking for a commentary, the likes of which they are familiar, that person may be taken aback. Going through the chapters of Hauerwas’ book, there is no translation at the beginning of a section, no verse-by-verse analysis, etc. Footnotes seem scarce in comparison. Hauerwas breaks it up into the chapters one finds in the canonical text, so that chapter one is entitled “Matthew 1: The Beginning.” You also find, for example, chapters on “Matthew 5: The Sermon” and “Matthew 24-25: Enduring.” Hauerwas breaks out of the internal conversation of biblical scholarship on the biblical text. One does find references to Davies, Allison, and Luz, for instance, but the names with which Hauerwas interacts more often include people like Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Yoder. He also discusses Dorothy Day, Jean Vanier, Immanuel Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The early church is not neglected either, as can be seen with comments on Origen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Simon of Cyrene and, most prominently, Augustine.
To elaborate on the quote above, Hauerwas continues,
By writing “with” Matthew I mean to indicate how I have tried to retell the story that Matthew tells as, Ephraim Radner suggests, a ruminative overlay. As a result I should like to think that the commentary imitates the form of commentaries common in the Middle Ages and Reformation that were moral allegories. Readers will discover that Herod becomes “Herods” who represent the politics of death, that scribes and Pharisees become “intellectuals for hire” to such a politics, and the journey of the wise men after their encounter with the Christ child is one we must take if we are to escape Herod’s politics. Such a “method”–and I certainly have no stake in claiming to know what I am doing–risks being heavy-handed. I hope the readers will discover that by following along they may discover how we are read by the story Matthew tells.
One challenge that I always try to remember when studying the Bible is to let the text read me and the community and society in which I find myself a part. I think that historical critical commentaries also risk being heavy-handed by strictly defining and confining things in a particular historical box. That being said, it appears that Hauerwas has done a close reading of the text, examined the more traditional approaches, and has based his exploration upon this foundation. In other words, I think he’s opened the “box,” so to speak.
My review is for Brethren in Christ History & Life and is primarily aimed at an audience of pastors and informed laypersons, though many scholars also read the journal (particularly scholars at Messiah College). I will have to find a balance in approaching the commentary between the people who are accustomed to traditional commentaries and those who could not care less about traditional commentaries (though the emphasis would weigh more heavily on the latter). I’m sure the task will be a pleasure.
Messiah College's bad press lately
Lesson: Don’t judge an entire academic institution based on the actions of one of its alumni. At the same time, don’t pass immediate judgment on an alumna because of your assumptions about Christian colleges.
Let me be clear from the start, in no way do I want to support the actions of the Attorney General and the Bush administration in this whole firing fiasco. But in the coverage of the story, particularly in regard to Monica Goodling (whom you may know as that woman that plead the fifth when called to testify), has revealed once again how we all can come too quickly to easy conclusions through lazy assumptions. The short story is that Monica Goodling was the director of public affairs for the Department of Justice and had some kind of role in the 2006 U.S. attorney firings controversy. When called to testify, she decided to plead the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
So, naturally, people wondered who this Monica Goodling person was and they saw that she went to Regent University (Pat Robertson’s school) and some school called Messiah College. Well, the assumption seems to go, she must be one of these “religious right” folks and Messiah must be a “religious right” school too. One editorial article actually described the two schools as “fundamentalist Messiah College and evangelical Regent University created by TV preacher Pat Robertson.” Now, there’s an interesting twist: apparently Messiah is more conservative than Regent University. A Washington Post article describes the character of Messiah simply by informing the reader “that [it] does not have co-ed dorms or allow alcohol on campus.” Elsewhere, I’ve heard that people have picked up on Messiah’s Community Covenant, which talks about the prohibition of “alcoholic beverages,” while it also condemns “greed, jealousy, pride” and other things. This is used to point out that Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. That’s not headline news, whether or not it’s true in this case. The regulations about alcohol are debated, however, not just amongst the students, but faculty and administration as well.
One syndicated article merely states that Messiah College is “committed to embracing an evangelical spirit,” which is actually a misquotation and should be “committed to an embracing evangelical spirit.” Big difference in word order there. The quote comes from the school’s “Identity and Mission” statement, which you find by simply clicking on “About Messiah” on the homepage. What they left out was the rest of the sentence:
The College is committed to an embracing evangelical spirit rooted in the Anabaptist, Pietist and Wesleyan traditions of the Christian Church.
Granted, if the press used words like “Anabaptist, Pietist and Wesleyan traditions” then they would have to define these things for their audience. But Messiah has distinguished themselves from other types of evangelicalism by these traditions. If members of the press (or bloggers or whoever else is declaring an opinion on Messiah) knew what those traditions were and how they are embodied at Messiah College, they might be surprised. Furthermore, they ignored the more important following sentence in the statement (and this is a sentence that I have memorized):
Our mission is to educate men and women toward maturity of intellect, character and Christian faith in preparation for lives of service, leadership and reconciliation in church and society.
The bad press also has not latched onto one of the slogans of the school: “Unapologetically Christian, Rigorously Academic.” The first phrase would be great fodder for snide comments, and yet the second phrase doesn’t fit the characterization of a Christian school as not truly academic. Never mind that Messiah College was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as number four in its “Best Colleges” for comprehensive bachelor’s colleges in the North in 2007.
Whether the press explicitly states that they view Messiah College as a fundamentalist institution or whether they describe it in a tone that implies as much, they have not done their homework. A fundamentalist school does not have a woman as its president, as does Messiah College, one school out of a mere 23% of all college presidencies in 2006. A fundamentalist school does not allow “Equality Ride,” a gay rights protest bus, on campus and allow students to discuss the pros and cons of gay rights in a reasonable way. A fundamentalist school does not put on controversial plays and art shows. They do not invite people like progressive Christian leader Jim Wallis, Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission, The Color of Water author James McBride, Naomi Tutu, and Senior NPR Correspondent Juan Williams on campus as speakers (and those are just the ones off the top of my head). They do not have an entire center dedicated to “Service and Leaning” and take on the challenge of serving the social needs of a local city.
A fundamentalist school does have a statement of faith which affirms “inerrancy” of the Bible and denounces evolution in favor of “creationism.” These things are not to be found in the statements of Messiah College. Will you find students who believe these things? No doubt. The student body is generally more conservative than faculty and administration, in my estimation (though the students do have College Democrats as well as Republicans, mind you). I came into Messiah as a fundamentalist myself, but was one no longer after my first semester of classes. If you want to get an idea about Messiah College, check out the things discussed in the student newspaper or the Alumni and Parent magazine (the most recent issue is dedicated to environmental concerns). Read the latest news of activities on campus. In response to all this press coverage, Messiah’s President, Kim Phipps made this statement released yesterday (4/3/07):
Statement to Messiah College Employees and Alumni re: Recent Media Coverage
In recent weeks there has been local and national media interest in Messiah College . The reporting, unfortunately, has often been inaccurate and misleading. In connection with the media coverage of alumnae Monica Goodling, and other recent stories, Messiah College specifically, and Christian higher education in general, has been mischaracterized by many media outlets and blogs, either directly or through innuendo, as substandard in academic quality and narrow in its breadth and diversity of thought.
This has occurred in spite of the fact that College administrators and faculty have worked diligently with reporters to provide accurate, contextual information about Messiah, our mission, our academic quality, and the caliber of our faculty, students, and graduates. As an administrative team, we are being equally diligent in our efforts to correct this misinformation and set the record straight with our colleagues in the media who have inaccurately portrayed Messiah College . Recent events have affirmed my resolve that a continued priority for the Colle
ge must be to increase visibility and awareness of Messiah’s education distinctives to a broader regional and national audience.I am honored to be the president of an outstanding academic institution such as Messiah College . Our students are intelligent, gifted leaders who are compelled by their Christian faith to make a difference in our world through the use of their God-given intellect, talents, and abilities. Our educators, administrators, and staff are dedicated scholars and accomplished professionals, committed to supporting students in their educational experience. And our graduates exemplify service, leadership, and reconciliation, by the meaningful contributions they offer in all the areas of contemporary culture and society, both in the United States and around the globe.
Thank you for the role that you fulfill in the Messiah College community and for your commitment to our common mission.
Kim S. Phipps
President
Finally, I’d like to say that based on news coverage on Monica Goodling alone, I had a very negative impression. I was thinking along with everyone else: She took the fifth?! That doesn’t look good. But then when I saw Messiah College blasted and indirectly associated with Pat Robertson (since she went to his Regent University for law school), I realized just how quickly we pass judgments without knowledge. Dean Curry, professor of politics at Messiah, remembers Goodling and is quoted in Messiah’s student newspaper about her decision:
“It’s important to remember that [Goodling] hasn’t been charged with any crimes. This is all about politics,” said Curry. In Curry’s opinion, Goodling has pled the Fifth and chosen not to testify because “she feels that the environment in Washington is so politicized that she might open herself up to legal liability.”
Maybe we should try to give people the benefit of the doubt more often. Not that we know what she has or hasn’t done and why she has or hasn’t done it, but maybe we should just chill out a little bit. The political wars have their own collateral damage, and in this case that happened to be the reputation of a fine academic institution.
My friend in Mongolia
My friend Anthony, who is currently a Peace Corps worker in Mongolia, recently told me that he reads my blog. I was so touched by his words, I asked if he would mind if I shared his comments on here, to which he replied: “you’re welcome to use or misuse my comments in any way that helps you get to the heart of what I was actually saying.” Beyond just being an encouraging challenge to try to make my blog worthy of being read by my friends scattered across the globe (I’ve also got some good friends working with Mennonite Central Committee in Nicaragua who stop by the blog), the comment also serves as a reminder of how good I have it. I am so blessed to have access to an excellent education, fantastic library resources, and all the rest. And without further adieu, here are Anthony’s comments:
So, Pat, I’ve been reading your kata ta biblia blog fairly religiously lately. I’m really glad to have access to in depth seminary level biblical discussion that I can tap in on. I feel like I’m getting a seminary education and I don’t have any of the work of applying, getting financial aid, or doing anything in general. Vicarious study is what I’m all about. You read, do all the hard work of sifting through everything and I’ll stand on the other end and catch all the good stuff that filters out. Of course that probably means you’ll get the jobs too, but as long as I stay in Peace Corps, there’s nothing to worry about. But seriously though, it has been good to get an idea of what you’re wrestling with in your studies. I wouldn’t have thought it but over the past year and a half, we’ve had our share of discussions with other volunteers in our area about Christianity, the historical Jesus, the church, etc. The whole thing kind of started off when another volunteer in our area found out we are Christians and made it his mission for several months to try and undercut our faith in anyway possible. That didn’t happen and we’ve become friends with the guy but our continued conversations have challenged us to really understand our faith more deeply and try to whats going on in the debate/dialogue surrounding Jesus, the church, and the bible these days. As you can imagine, Mongolia doesn’t have a wealth of information available on these topics . . .
Thanks, brother. Keep up the good work (and I don’t just mean the faith conversations, of course) and I’ll try to keep bringing you some more of that fully paid seminary education. Maybe you should send me some reimbursement checks with all the riches the Peace Corps must pay you 
Some of the hard work of Anthony and his wife, Vita, in Mongolia (we miss them both!):
James Tabor is biblioblogger of the month
James Tabor, author of The Jesus Dynasty and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC-Charlotte, is the featured biblioblogger of the month, deservedly so. He had a good interview with Brandon Wason. Check it out.
The Bible and Flying Saucers
Hold the phone. I may just have to redirect the concentration of my own pursuit of biblical studies. I have just become aware of a subfield that had gone under my own “radar screen,” as it were. Josh McManaway has pointed out the book The Bible and Flying Saucers by Barry Downing. I looked this book up on Amazon and, my friends, I have some great news . . . yes, this book is available as “Search Inside.” That’s right, you can search and read the whole book on Amazon (three pages at a time, that is). Notice in the image how the “Search Inside” arrow is cleverly pointing to and covering up the UFO. Coincidence? I say there are no coincidences! Well, I had to take it upon myself to explore such an important resource and did happen upon a certain passage that has me dying to delve into this issue more fully. When talking about Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism and how the Spirit “drove” Jesus into the wilderness, “which implies something more violent then [sic] simply ‘leading,’” Downing conjectures: “It certainly would not be out of line for a UFO of the type we have seen in the Old and the New Testaments to have come upon Jesus at his baptism and to have carried him bodily into the wilderness. This would certainly make an impression on anyone who saw it happen, and would help explain why the baptism is recorded in each of the four Gospels” (142).
It sure would make an impression on me, too. Now, I really need to know about the type of UFO that “we have seen in the Old and the New Testaments”! Thanks for the heads up, Josh!
Text criticism and why I want to be a scholar
I’m reading through David Alan Black‘s New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide for my Exegetical Methods class. It’s a handy little book that just goes through the basics of the field in a quite accessible way. To my surprise, when I joked to my wife that since I was going to go do the dishes, would she read the book for me . . . she actually started reading it! I must inform you that my wife is a dietitian, far removed from heavy theological debates, and she normally steers clear of in-depth geeky Bible stuff. It did get us into an interesting conversation, though, about what all this stuff means for the average Bible reader. If scholars debate about this textual criticism stuff, how’s the non-specialist supposed to know what to do with it? How are they supposed to trust what they read in the Bible?
For my readers who don’t know, “textual criticism” is the study of (you got it) texts of the NT (or of any historical document, for that matter). It’s the search to figure out what the actual original words were for Paul’s letters or the Gospels, for example. That said, you should know that scholars are fairly certain about the wording of the vast majority of the NT. Furthermore, the vast majority of the inconsistencies in manuscripts of the NT are either easy to figure out or rather innocuous to matters of faith (like a shift in word order: Jesus Christ instead of Christ Jesus–it’s interesting, but doesn’t make to much difference for the person of faith today). I assured my wife that she doesn’t have to worry too much about not being able to read the Bible on her own. I think an average reader could get by with reading good introductions to biblical books in informed study Bibles, taking a look at a solid Bible dictionary for some lingering questions, even reading accessible commentaries if they want to go in depth (I recommend the Believers Church Bible Commentary series in that regard), and of course, learning from teachers who have done the dirty work for them. As for the text issues, I told her that a lot of the more significant textual discrepancies, the ones the nitty gritty scholars aren’t sure about, will be noted in the footnotes of the Bible or even bracketed off as a warning to readers.
Basically, I tried to convince her that you don’t have to be a scholar to understand the Bible (that would be a very cruel theological joke). She asked the obvious question: So, then, why are you doing this? Meaning: why am I interested in pursuing scholarship, if I’m standing there downplaying the importance to scholarly debates. It’s a fundamental vocational question, and a good one. My answer, I think, is that the scholarly debates are not irrelevant, they just need to be distilled to reach the non-Bible-geeks like my wife. I want to be one of those people who wrestles with the hard stuff, because I have an acquired palate and passion for it, and then makes the nitty gritty more accessible for those who aren’t interested in spending their lives buried in books and libraries and heady classroom discussions (not to mention the reading of biblioblogs!). In my career, while I would like to do some scholarly pushing and pulling in more technical debates, I think my primary goal is to be an educator and communicator. I’m reminded of the need for that by all the people closest to me who ask me these very good questions.
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Elsewhere . . .- Blog titles beginning with "A" to "Z" on your reader Mark Goodacre
- Of making many books there is no end Chris Brady
- Free Online: The Liddell-Scott Jones Lexicon S and C
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? II agathos
- Steven J. Friesen and the Identity of Satan’s Throne in Pergamum alan
- Does Higher Criticism Attempt to “Destroy the Bible”? agathos
- Bloomsbury buys Continuum Mark Goodacre
- Imperial America Peter J. Leithart
- C.F.D. Moule on the Birth of the New Testament d. miller
- Responding to Kostenberger (with comparisons to Marshall) Jeremiah
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