Blue Cord

Claude Mariottini has a post entitled “The Golfer and the King” about a sermon illustration given by Joel Osteen in his book Your Best Life Now. He raises the question of whether the anecdote related by Osteen is one that actually happened or a story that Osteen invented to illustrate his point.

In my own sermons, I always make sure that I carefully distinguish between stories that are true and ones that I have made up (or someone else has made up).  Usually, stories in the latter category are jokes, so it is obvious that they are not true. And it always annoys me when preachers illustrate sermons with stories that are not true.

It seems to me that if the gospel is true, there should be enough true stories to illustrate it without us having to make ones up.

It has not been a good couple of weeks for my cars.

About a month ago, my 1992 Saturn developed transmission problems. I didn’t have the money to fix it, so I had to buy a used 1994 Subaru. I went in a few weeks ago and got insurance for the new car and registered it in my name. The Saturn was parked in a parking garage for a few weeks, but I moved it to the street about two weeks ago.

The day before leaving to go to the SBL, I got a message from the insurance company stating that my insurance had been canceled because I had a suspended license in Maryland. This is an error, because my license in Maryland was never suspended. But because my insurance is canceled, they will also be revoking my registration on the Subaru.

I had this same problem when I traded in my Maryland license for a Massachusetts license. They told me that I had outstanding speeding tickets on my Maryland license, which is not the case. I have never gotten a speeding ticket in my life. When they showed me the record, I pointed out that unlike the person whose record they were viewing, I am not a 5′8″ black man (it’s obvious that I am taller). But despite what their eyes told them, I had to get an official document from Maryland stating that I was not the Kevin Wilson in question.

Apparently this same problem has come back to haunt me again. I now have to get the same document from Maryland again and try to sort the whole mess out before the revocation goes into effect in two more weeks.

But the car troubles didn’t end there . . .

Last Wednesday, I got back from the SBL meeting. While riding the taxi back from the train station, I passed the spot where my transmissionless Saturn had been parked for two weeks. It wasn’t there.

I called to police station, and they confirmed that it had been towed. They first told me it had been towed because Massachusetts license plate number 955 GGJ was expired. I pointed out that my car didn’t have Massachusetts plates; it is registered in Tennessee. They then claimed it was towed because it violated a city snow ordinance that says cars must park on alternate sides of the street on alternate days. I looked up the law on the Internet, and it said that snow parking does not go into effect until December 15th. So, I called back. They now said my Saturn was towed because it had been parked in the same place for over 36 hours. Apparently, being parked in the same place with out–of–state plates is cause for suspicion. So, they ran the plates (as TN plates) and they came back expired, even though my plates are not due to expire until next June. After multiple phone calls, I finally established that Tennessee has not sent their updates to the national database since the last time I renewed my registration.

So, I am stuck with the towing bill as well as a week’s worth of storage. Due to Thanksgiving, I couldn’t get the matter cleared up until today, but the private business the police paid to tow and store the car was still charging me for each day. The city of Lawrence refuses to pay it because they say it was not their mistake. And I have been advised that the only way to get Tennessee to pay for it is to take the to court, which I can’t afford to do.

Whoever said that state and local governments are more responsive to the people than the federal government obviously never dealt with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

While I have serious doubts about the ability of technology to overcome stupidity, at least the Stupid Filter project is giving it a shot.

Last week while at the SBL, I wrote on things to avoid in a scholarly paper. It has generated some nice comments and has floated around the biblioblogosphere. Chris Heard at Higgaion and Charles Halton at Awilum picked up on the idea and added some points.

My favorite piece of advice is Chris Heard’s dictum that presenters should bring enough copies of handouts. More than half the papers that used handouts had to apologize for not bringing enough. This happens every year. It is not that expensive to print copies, especially since most of us can just slap it on the department copier and hit the copy button. Even if your department doesn’t cover the cost, do us all a favor and spring for the extra couple of dollars. Here is the breakdown of your expenses:

• Flight to the conference – $400
• Hotel room – $550
• Annual meeting registration – $135
• Having enough copies for your presentation – Priceless (or $2.25)

I hate it when we are told we have to share sheets with another scholar. After all, you don’t know where some of these guys have been (I mean, some of them could have gone to safety schools). So, I am always stuck in a pickle: do I let the other guy have the handout and risk not understanding the paper (thereby wasting a trip to San Diego) or do I keep the paper and risk the irony of being selfish at a biblical studies conference.

By the way, I am watching the Baltimore vs. San Diego game, and they just showed a shot of the city that showed my hotel and the convention center. I’m still enough of a hick that I find things like that cool, but I’m still rooting for Baltimore.

Duane Smith at Abnormal Interests also posted on the topic. He argues that scholars should present their papers instead of reading them. I’m not sure I agree with him. His point that we don’t read from lectures in class is well taken, but in those cases we are talking about things that we know very well and have spoken about many times. In papers, however, we are presenting new information and we are usually giving rather detailed arguments. In class we can gloss over those details, but not at conferences. I think the nature of the paper is different enough that they need to be read in most cases.

Of course, part of my hesitation to endorse this idea stems from my suspicion that there are very few scholars out there who could give a paper well without reading it. Papers can be boring when read, but the alternative could be much worse.

I have just come across a review of my book, The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine, in JSOT 30.5 (2006): 51-52. The review is written by Diane Edelman. It is just a one paragraph review, and she mostly just summarizes what I have to say. At the end of the review, however, she says:

His analysis leaves unexplained three points: (1) why a pharaoh would establish a political alliance with a foreign commoner, marrying one of his daughters to him, (2) why the geographical scope of the list is limited to Cisjordan, unlike the wider range found in other such lists; and (3) why there are so many unique sites here that are not attested earlier or later.

I wanted to point out that I did, in fact, discuss all three of these points. In the conclusion on pp.98-99, I discuss the campaign from a foreign policy standpoint, suggesting that Shoshenq established a political alliance with Jeroboam in order to weaken Solomon’s kingdom. This policy changed the situation in Palestine. Egypt went from being faced with a relatively strong nation under Solomon, a nation that controlled the others in the region, to being faced with numerous weak nations, one of whom was in alliance with Egypt. This would have been a much more favorable situation as far as Egypt was concerned.

I addressed her third point on pp.44-46, where I discussed possible sources for the topographical list in Shoshenq’s relief. I think onomastic lists are a strong candidate for the source of the topographical list. Onomastic lists were kept up to date by the scribes so that they had an accurate catalog of cities. Since the other examples of topographic lists are from the Late Bronze Age, we should not be surprised that the Shoshenq list is different. It comes from several centuries after the lists of Thutmose III, Seti I, Ramses II, and Ramses III. The cities in Canaan had changed greatly during that those centuries, and the onomastic lists would have reflected those changes.

As for the list being limited to the Cisjordan, there are some sites, such as #22 (Mahanaim), which are located in the Transjordan. Given how incomplete the list is and the fact that we are unable to identify a large number of the sites, I don’t think we can say that the list is limited to the Cisjordan. I doubt the we have sites outside of Palestine (with the exception of ##1-9, which include Egypt, Nubia, and Libya), but the presence of Mahanaim means that we cannot rule out sites in the Transjordan.

If anyone is interested in reading a short summary of my dissertation, Bible and Interpretation has an on-line version of a paper I gave on the topic at the SBL meeting in 2000.