Blue Cord

Some of my (former) students might want to check out Tyler William’s post reviewing commentaries on Genesis.  He also provides a list of additional commentaries that he does not review, in case the books he recommends do not meet your needs.

For additional commentaries, be sure to check out his more extensive list of OT commentaries.

Because of my interest in the history of the priesthood, I wanted to call attention to Steve Cook’s post on the social location of Ezra. Steve places Ezra in the Aaronid camp. I would love to see Steve expand upon his conception of the different priestly groups in the postexilic period, since this has direct impact on the question of which priestly group(s) are responsible for the final layer of the Pentateuch.

Just to toss one idea out as bait for Steve, it seems to me that Ezra is not among those who edited the final version. The Holiness School has a great openness towards outsiders, as can be seen in the repeated admonition that there should be one law for the Israelite and alien alike. Ezra, on the other hand, is not so open to outsiders, at least when they are getting married to Israelites. Any thoughts on this Steve?

Being down in Tennessee, I haven’t been doing much biblical scholarship.  Most of my time has been spent learning JavaScript.  But I thought I would blog a contest that the Johnson City Press, the local paper, is holding.

A number of area business and churches have gotten together and are giving away 600 Bibles.  Each Tuesday for 16 weeks, one page in the A section of the paper will have small advertisements from each of the 40 businesses and churches.  Each advertisement has a Bible verse written in it.  It does not give the reference for the verse, but it does give a range of four chapters in which the verse can be found.  For instance, they give the verse “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men,” which they say falls somewhere within Ecclesiastes 5 and 8.

To enter the contest, you have to locate the exact references for three of the verses and send them in within two days.  Winners will be drawn from correct entries and will receive a free KJV.  The Sunday School class or Youth Group that submits the most correct entries each week will get a study guide of biblical charts and maps.

The stated purpose of the contest is to get people to read the Bible.  While it would be nice if they gave away an up-to-date translation, it is hard to argue with free Bibles.  Judging from the one week I have seen, the contest has a lot more NT verses than OT, and the majority of OT verses come from Psalms and Proverbs.

After 14.5 hours in the car covering 860 miles through 9 states, I have arrived at my mother’s home in Tennessee. I left Massachusetts this morning around 9:00 am and drove straight through. I am going to be visiting here until Friday, when I will head to Washington, DC, for the weekend.

On my way down, I listened to talk radio, which is my preferred entertainment in the car. Since I was on the move the whole time, I got to listen to a number of different stations and different shows. What I heard revealed a lot about public discourse in America right now.

The talk radio that I heard was heavily slanted towards the conservative end of the spectrum. There was no point in the trip when I was unable to listen to a conservative talk show. I was usually able to pick up one or two stations during the day, or at least two different stations carrying the same show (usually Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity). At night, when AM radio propagation got better, I was able to pick up more than that, including one point when I could pick up five different conservative talk show hosts.

As a side note, propagation was quite good after sunset. While I was on I-81 in Virginia, I was able to pick up radio stations from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Cleveland, Chicago, Charlotte, and Atlanta, all within a one hour period.

By contrast, the only liberal talk show I heard was when I was in range of New York City. I was able to listen to about an hour of the Al Franken show. I may have also heard a liberal talk show host at one point in Virginia, but I only picked up the station for about ten minutes and couldn’t quite determine the host’s political leanings.

My biggest problem with this was not so much that the vast majority were conservative, although it would be nice to have a balance of opinion being presented. What I would love most of all is a nice moderate talk show, but except for NPR that won’t be happening.

Instead, the biggest problem was the low quality of the conservative talk shows. While the shows pretended to be focused on analysis, in reality they were simply providing a particular political spin on the news. Absolutely everything was geared towards shaping the opinion of their listeners. Instead of giving the audience analysis that would allow them to make up their own minds, the shows were meant to tell their listeners what to think. And they did so in a way that implied that anyone who disagreed was not a critical thinker.

In addition, there was nothing approaching journalistic standards. Any rumor could be reported as fact. Any lie could be told about those who disagreed with you. Any opposing voice who got through on the line had to be shouted down and insulted. Sean Hannity called one guy a “Clinton sycophant” just because he corrected one lie that Hannity had told about Hillary Clinton. Rush Limbaugh accused a caller of trying to confuse the issue when he pointed out that a statistic Limbaugh had quoted was wrong. After berating the guy, Limbaugh said that his point was still correct even if his statistics were wrong. In other words, Limbaugh quoted statistic to prove his point, but said his point was still correct when someone else showed that his statistic were wrong.

Listening to these talk shows is an exercise in pointing out fallacies that most of us learned to identify in freshmen logic classes. Personal attacks, hasty generalizations, post hoc ergo propter hoc, equivocation, and a host of other informal fallacies were rampant, not to mention the more egregious formal fallacies. Liberals were called liars and cowards; they were accused of wanting the government to take over everything; and they were presented as hating anyone who disagreed with them. Many of these hosts accused Democrats of hating Bush, which is ironic considering the vitriol with which these same talk show hosts offered up slurs against Clinton. What was so funny disturbing was how often the picture these talk show hosts painted of liberals was actually an accurate picture of the talk show hosts. It seems that their willingness to villainize those who disagree with them and do anything to win a political point has led them to think everyone else is willing to do that too.

Perhaps most ironic was the fact that several of the talk show hosts lamented the fact that there was no conservative voice in America. I heard this repeated by conservatives for 14.5 hours in nine different states in the supposedly liberal parts of the east coast, whereas I could only find one liberal talk show hosts. These guys have perfected the art of portraying themselves as a victimized minority, while accusing liberals of fostering a victim mentality.

I am sure this is not the best that conservatives have to offer. Conservativism is a strong, viable political philosophy. But calm debate will not get ratings, nor is it as effective in motivating crowds. If I were a conservative, it would bother me deeply that these people were the public face of my philosophy.

Is this finally what public debate has come to in America? Have people lost the ability to think critically to such an extent that these shows can be as popular as they are? Can the American public really be taking these people to be serious political voices in the public square? Even George Orwell would have had difficulty conceiving of a propaganda machine as effective as the one that currently exists on talk radio.

I don’t think it is accidental that these talk show hosts criticize colleges and universities. A good education teaches one to think critically, and critical thought is the biggest enemy to their popularity and to their ability to influence public thinking.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to practice my PHP skills, so I decided to write a plugin for WordPress. The plugin was supposed to allow me to type something like [ESV=Leviticus 3:16] and have the plugin automatically replace the reference with the actual verse. The only feed I found was the English Standard Version, so I decided to use their service.

I got the plugin to work perfectly. After finishing it, however, I was at the ESV website and I noticed their terms of service. Most of it was pretty standard, but I did find one problematic section:

This service is available for use only by individuals and non-commercial organizations that use the service in ways consistent with the historic Christian understanding of doctrine and the Bible, as summarized in the following foundational doctrines. (See our statement of faith.)

• The Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God.
• There is one God, the Creator of all things, who exists eternally in three persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man; he died on the cross, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and will come again.
• Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Most of this I can affirm with no problem. The inerrancy clause, however, means that I cannot use the service. I contacted them directly and asked for clarification, and they responded by saying that I do have to accept inerrancy in order to use the feed service.

I have no problem with the ESV people setting up guidelines for who may use their service. After all, I can imagine they wouldn’t want to provide the feed for people who are mocking the Bible or using it for other non-Christian activities. And, since it is their service, they of course have the right to set up any guidelines they want.

It seems to me, however, that limiting it to people who subscribe to inerrancy is limiting its use unnecessarily. For one thing, inerrancy is not a part of “the historic Christian understanding of doctrine and the Bible,” even though they claim this is the case. Do they really want to draw the circle so tightly? The Bible is a big boy; it can take care of itself. I don’t think it needs them to protect it from people who accept the inspiration and authority of the Bible but don’t hold inerrancy.

They have other guidelines that would allow me to cut and paste the ESV into my site, and those guidelines are not as restrictive. And I do have the ESV for Logos, so I could cut and paste with no problem. But if I am going to go to the trouble to open up Logos, I am going to cut and paste from the NRSV, which is a better translation anyway.

The long and short of this is that you will not be seeing the ESV automatically quoted on my website. However, if you are interested in the plugin and can abide by their guidelines, I would be happy to share it with you.