Moving

Well were moving next Saturday. The good news is we're going to have a good place right off Haskell and 75. Less than 5 min. from DTS. Can't beat that! Also Apartment Life has really come through and are actually having a moving company come and move us. We pack and supposedly they can move a house our size in 3 hours total. Wow!

So pray for us this week. Big time stress on the move with classes and all.

A Strike Against 4-Author Pentateuch?

Most of you guys are familiar with the non-conservative theory of the authorship of the Pentatuch. According to the theory, not only was the P. composed late, it was composed over time by four different authors (JEDP). Supposedly, Ezra or a contemporary finished the polishing of it at the return of the exiles.

Well, in another digression the other day, my hebrew prof. had a very interesting tidbit that serves as a "strike" of sorts against this argument. This is all from memory, so I may have a small detail wrong here or there, but the gist is still fresh in my mind. Anyway, my prof pointed out that in the Mesopotamian region prior to 1380 BC (which is the time of - I think - the Hittite Empires ascension) they had one word that referred to the third person pronoun - "huya" (trans: "he/she"). In other words - there was no gender distinction. However, following this time (after 1380) the word differentiated into a masculine and feminine form "huya" (he) and "hiya" (she). (Note: I may be spelling those words slightly different than they are supposed to be, but the point is the same.)

Okay so that's the background and apparently a solid archeological fact now. Well, the hebrew pronouns are similar: "hu" (he) and "hee" (she). The interesting thing is that if the Pentateuch was written by Moses it would have been written PRIOR to the date above. My prof. mentioned something about around 1400 BC. Hence, one would expect the text to reflect this archaic formation of the pronoun. And lo and behold, we do find that. In the P. and only in the P. we find a variation of the pronoun for "she" which is identical to "he" except for the vowel markings. In other words, while the rest of the OT has differentiation in the pronoun for gender, the pronoun in the P. is identical (except for vowel markings added later).

What does this mean? Well, it certainly argues strongly for an old date for the Pentateuch. There seems to be no reason why a later scribe would add this sort of thing. Or at least, it assumes that a scribe writing 600 - 800 years later actually knew that there was an "older" way of saying "she" and thought it would give greater "oldness" to the text. And that's kinda a stretch.

Anyway, kinda a long post but thought it was pretty interesting.

Genesis 1-3: Historical or Literary?

My prof in Hebrew had this huge rabbit trail last week where he made a strong arguement for the potential of taking Gen 1-3 as literary in genre rather than historical fact. He said that they may be historical, but that is outside the point of the text. His argument, apparently is relatively new and fairly unexamined. He said that people have talked for a while about some parallels between Genesis 1-2 and Mesopotamian creation accounts, but that only recently has the even more interesting parallels with Egyptian creation accounts come to light.

There was tons of stuff he pointed out in class. (None of which helped me learn any Hebrew language skills!) I don't recall it well enough to lay it out here - it'd be too long anyway. But the gist was that the Egyptian creation accounts have absolutely stunning parallels with Genesis 1-3. There's the creation and seperation of heaven and earth, there's the progression of days, there's this snake and a tree of life (apparently there are even pictures of this snake with its tail wrapped around the tree), etc. But there were also strong contrasts. For example, in Egyptian mythology the gods "arose" out of the "nun" or primordial waters, but in Genesis God is above the water. Hence, he argued that Gen 1-3 wasn't intended as historical narrative but rather was meant to be a polemic against the Egyptian mythological view of creation. In other words, the point of Genesis 1-2 isn't, "this is a scientific account of how creation occurred" but is simply that there is one God who all-powerfully created all things. He pointed out that this would have been critical especially for Israel as they came out of Egyptian captivity and an Egyptian mindset.

Now I'm not really educated enough on this enough to argue it much, but I thought my prof was pretty compelling. Again, his point was that to take Genesis 1-3 as historical truth is fine, but that in light of the literary nature of Gen 1-3 as a polemic rather than simple historical/scientific account, to argue a certain perspective of creation from it is beside the point of the text.

Now, honestly, I don't know what exactly to think about this. I have some opinions, but not strong ones yet. Any thoughts from you guys?

Good News and a Beef on "Senior" Pastors

The good news is it looks like Apartment Life has found us a place to live. We’ll see on the details, but it’s about 5 minutes from seminary which is a super location. I’ll let you know more details as soon as I find out more.

On another note, here’s a problem that came up in class yesterday. A critical problem in the church today is that many are convinced that it’s the pastor’s and/or staff’s job to do ministry. Examples of this thinking are:
- “the staff is trained and ordained to do ministry”
- “that’s what we pay the staff for”
- “we’re not “called” to the ministry”
- “God won’t use us like He uses them”

Now I know that culture has shaped this “myth” to a degree but I also know that structure creates problems like this. I can think of two big structural systems we have in place in the church that perpetuate this. I’ll just post one today to keep focused but maybe I’ll post the other one later.

A big structural system that I think perpetuates the division between “pastors” and “regular people” is the idea of a “senior” pastor in each church. This creates the problem of people seeing a singular person as valuable and important and spiritual (a problem Paul had to nail the Corinthians for!) and it also helps in this divide people see between pastors and them. There are other big problems with a senior pastor model too that are separate from this (like leader-worship, burnout for the guy “at the top,” and a dicey accountability system).

So how do you fix this if it’s a problem? Personally, I really buy into the idea of “team” ministry. I think that the practical needs of ministry demand full-time pastors in most situations, but they also demand balance – which I think team ministry provides. This doesn’t mean “co-pastoring.” I think you have to have some sort of delegation of leadership along the lines of giftedness. But think about it! Team ministry combats a lot of the problems already mentioned! And since no two pastors are going to be alike and will have different gifts that they will use in different ways, it’s the perfect environment to illustrate the many gifts present in the church body and their need.

Frustration

We're still waiting to hear on the property we're thinking of moving to. It's frustrating how slow this is moving. Now apparently the apartment manager there is out sick! Two things to pray for:
1) that they'd have an apartment available big enough for our family (1,000 sq ft. or more)
2) that we wouldn't have to pay extra for that apartment

If either of those two things don't work out, then I don't know what we'll do.

Moving Update

As you guys know, we're going to have to move in the near future. Anyways, theres a good chance we'll be moving just north and east of here - still in Dallas. There's a place called Wyndsor Park that looks real promising to do Apartment Life in. It's not any better than where we are now in most respects. It is better in a few minor areas. But the drive is longer and the space is about 100 sq ft smaller. We'll see if it works out this week. Prayers would be greatly appreciated.

Tomorrow I start my regular classes for the semester.

Almost 5 inches of snow. I just got around to looking at our Xmas pix. We got about 5 inches of snow at my parent's house in Arkansas. So one morning my little brother and I got into a big snowball fight. This is from right before it. Notice the warpoint on my face. Definitely gave me the "edge."

God's Sovereignty

This rumination had its beginnings in a conversation I had with Roy the other day...

God is sovereign, right? Okay. We agree on that. Well, if God is sovereign, then is there such a thing as chance or luck?

I'm not saying that God doesn't KNOW what will happen or have the power to change things, but I'm asking how involved he is in things. I certainly believe that he is very involved in my life and cares deeply about people, often intervening in miraculous or just ordinary ways. What I'm asking is does he just allow things to happen? I'm thinking big picture here. The very fact that we have certain "laws" of nature that typically hold true (typically - because miracles are always a possibility) seem to me to indicate that God allows the world to "run it's course to a degree." God is sovereign and can do anything, but I can predict that it will be cold tonight here in Dallas because of a cold front coming down. God is sovereign, but I still have to stay up tonight and finish another paper for my class. God is sovereign but I can tell you a number of "predictable" things. Things that average out. Weather. Birthrates. Chemical processes. What does this mean? It seems to me that I can use the word "chance" because of this. Not that God couldn't intervene but that he doesn't. When I'm playing a game with a friend and roll the dice, is it a truly random event? Or not? Sometimes, yes? Sometimes, no?

Sleepy and Oranges

I feel better every day - now my sickness is just a nagging cold. But I'm just physically exhausted. I want to go to bed right now and it's only 9:45! Class is great this week but it's keeping me constantly busy. It's really neat how I'm getting a super intense look at Paul and his work.

For fun check out how to make a really tiny orange. I can't read the page, but man, if I wanted to make a small orange, this is how I'd do it. (Thanks Brian for the link!)

Big Time

Well, I'm sick right now. I stayed up a little too late and ate a little too much junk food over the last few days. I'm not down and out sick but I feel pretty cruddy right now. Bad news is I've got an intensive class all week next week so hopefully I can recover quickly from whatever this is.

Good news is this site is now in the big time. Well not really, but there's a fundamentalist website with the EXACT same name except that it ends in blogpsot instead of blogspot... Why? I like to think they are trying to profit off of people haplessly typing in an incorrect web address when trying to read my cutting edge ruminations. Well, maybe not, but it is kind of weird. Blogpsot?