Calumniated?

@ Duck and Decanter

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Amy-Jill Levine was in Phoenix this last week end thanks to Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology. I thoroughly enjoyed her lectures Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Especially thought provoking was her take on the parables of Jesus. Later I noticed my notes had more questions than statements in them; that is a sure sign that I paid attention. I don’t always pay attention to what I hear or read. I did pay attention to TCPC’s Fred Plumer when he wrote about The Times They Are A-Changin’. Change is often in my thoughts as you may remember from my last post, Change. Sometimes I even think about it the sense that Fred wrote about. – I am not going to tell you what Fred wrote; if you want to know you are going to have to click on the link.

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Yesterday my daughter, Cindy, called to rib me about inviting my 16 year old grandson, Chris, to be a Facebook friend. It made me think that maybe Cindy didn’t exactly speak the same language as I did. I think that not speaking the same language, when we think we do, causes a lot of difficulties. I believe this has always been a problem with reading The King James Version. I started thinking about this when I was researching Just a Matter of Time, my next to last post.

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I ran across this rather strange website put together by a computer whiz. The site, The Sheppard’s Page, on something called Abdicate net has a really great calendar converter. It puts every other calendar converter, that I looked at, to shame. It can convert dates to/from our Gregorian calendar to both Julian and Jewish calendar dates. Furthermore, unlike most calendar date converters it can do it all the way back to Year One (3761 B.C.) of the Jewish calendar. It seems almost anti-climatic to mention that you can view the calendar(s) in either Hebrew or English. Totally awesome! You can also find out more than you ever wanted to know about all three of three of the calendars – as well as the serial day number (used by astronomers and also called Julian day which should not be confused with the Julian calendar).

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The author of the site believes in the fundamentalist’s Jesus. He is also fond of The King James Version bible. He is so fond of the version that he also has the introduction to the 1611 (CE) edition on the site. All 11,338 words of it. Reading the Introduction convinced me that the translators/editors of the KJV and I did not speak the same language. The Wikipedia article on the KJV reports that the version was motivated politically to bolster the established church (Church of England) even if it was motivated to satisfy Puritan concerns. There were other factors as well. King James being a believer in the divine right of kings to rule (with only advice from parliaments) being one such consideration. This was accomplished by restrictions on how to translate certain words. The article and the Introduction also tell us that the Hebrew text (as opposed to the Greek Septuagint) was used for the Old Testament and that Greek texts were used for the New Testament. I should probably add that I am sure about the Wikipedia article and less sure about the Introduction. I had to do a lot of reading between the lines and translating of the Introduction to decipher any meaning in it.

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Having paid attention to Amy-Jill Levine I was able to test the accuracy of the KJV translation in one particular instance. There is a difference between the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew texts of Isaiah 7:14. In fact the difference shows that Matthew (OK the author of Matthew) used the Greek Septuagint and not the Hebrew text when he wrote the gospel.

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel

Isaiah 7:14 (King James Version)

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel

Isaiah 7:14 (NRSV)

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The verse as quoted in Matthew 1:23 is from the Greek text as is the KJV. It would not have done for the Church of England to differ from Matthew. I wonder: Does the computer geek that authored The Sheppard’s Page read Greek as well as Hebrew?

Change

@home, reluctantly

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This morning I was forced to change my schedule and my route to Duck and Decanter. I wanted to go to D & D to begin this post. It seems that President Obama also wanted to use the “51” in route from his temporary quarters at Lincoln and Tatum to the Mesa school that he was visiting. Things being the way they are, the “51”, or Piestewa Freeway, was blocked from Glendale South. Judging from the number of u-turns and the heavy traffic down 16^th Street, 12^th Street and 7^th Street, lots of other ordinary citizens also chose alternate routes. Finally, having arrived at D & D I found the wireless internet was not functioning. So once again I was forced to change and move to an alternate venue – after lunch of course.

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Across the freeway from the D & D there is an empty store in a small shopping center. The store was formerly a Mervyns store. It closed last year when Mervyns went out of business (December 31^st 2008). I was saddened and a little angry by the change. That store was the closest to my home and where I had purchased a good many clothes and house wares. Then last week it was announced that members of the founder might reopen the stores – read about it here. I was interested enough to sign up for email on the Mervyns.com (Coming Soon) site.

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Out with the old – former Mervyns

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Last December my father died.

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I guess some changes are more permanent than others. Some also come with age, especially in our bodies. Of course some people experience less change than others. I was thinking about this over my breakfast bowl of Grape Nuts, walnuts, blueberries, bananas and milk. For those of you who remember, that is the breakfast that Meighan taught us walking across the country three (almost) years ago. I was meditating on the milk and walnuts part of the meal. The milk part came from something Professor Amy-Jill Levine mentioned in a lecture on the Old Testament. She linked the promise of a land “flowing with milk and honey” with sustainability.

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“…why milk and honey? When you think about it these are two the very, very few foodstuffs that one can obtain without anything plant or animal dying. It’s quite interesting. Renewable resources.”

Amy-Jill Levine, Lecture Twelve, The Conquest, of Old Testament from the Teaching Company.

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I am, it turns out, in the twenty five percent of adult humans in the world (one of the 95% of northern European descent) that can digest milk. How fortunate I am. 7,000 or 8,000 years ago not many human adults could tolerate lactose (the ingredient in milk that most adults have a problem with). The change (evolution) in humans is due to a speeding up of evolutionary forces in humans. You can read all about that here. Interestingly our close relatives, the Neanderthals, were also Lactose intolerant – that can be found here and here. Isn’t change wonderful? I was congratulating myself on being so fortunate when a sharp pain in my lower left abdomen reminded me that maybe I should lay off the walnuts for a while. You see, walnuts, or any kind of nuts for that matter, tend to collect in my colon and cause colitis. That is a change that has come with age for me. A change I don’t enjoy at all. Should not surprise you that colitis is also caused by mutations.

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Will these changes never cease?

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I wonder: Should I maybe switch to honey from walnuts?

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PS – The Old Testament is on sale this week from the Teaching Company.

Just a matter of time.

@ Duck and Decanter

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I don’t know how I get myself into these quandaries. It all started innocently enough. I found out that today, 9 February 2009, is the 15th of Shevat (of the year 5769) in the Jewish calendar. This is the day that is celebrated as the New Year for Trees. The reason that a New Year for trees is needed has to do with the fact that the tithes of fruit varies from year to year in a seven year cycle. I don’t have time (or inclination) to in to all of the details but if you are interested you can find out all about Tu B’Shevat here. It makes for interesting reading and points out the connection that Judaism has with the environment. I idly considered some of the implications of having a day set aside to mark when fruit is either assigned to the old year or to a new year. The first thing that I thought about was how global warming might affect the fruit of trees.

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The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar and works somewhat differently than our Western Gregorian calendar. One of the problems with having a calendar is that farmers need one that is linked to the seasons. Farmers need to know when to plant, harvest and when they might expect rain. In fact the reason we use the Gregorian calendar proclaimed (but not invented) by Pope Gregory XIII instead of the Julian calendar which was introduced by Julius Caesar is that it tracks the seasons better. Back to the lunar Jewish calendar. In the Jewish calendar months are tied to the moon. The problem with this is that a 12 month lunar calendar is approximately 11 days shorter than a year (as determined by going around the sun) and therefore the seasons would advance by 11 days a year. Left unchecked this would result in the seasons and dates getting out of whack. The Jewish calendar fixes this problem by adding an extra (leap) month every so often. The result of all this manipulation is that Tu B’Shevat wanders around our Gregorian calendar exactly like Easter does – and for exactly the same reason. Which brings me back to the quandary at hand.

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To start with I should point out that we are only concerned with trees in Israel, OK? According to what I have read about the reasons for having Tu B’Shevat on the 15^th of Shevat (this year on Feb 9^th – but can be as early as the 16^th of January or as late as the 14^th of February) is that this is four months after the winter rains start in Israel. So, is global warming affecting rain in Israel? According to the Israel Weather site it is.

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Since the beginning of the 19th century, when climate measurement began taking place n Israel, climate changes have been noted in Israel. In the northern parts of the Negev a tendency towards higher rain quantities is noted, while the opposite is happening in the North of the country. There are less days of rain but rain is heavier every time it rains. Temperatures are getting lower in the months of January and higher in the months of August. Weather is becoming more extreme and this is probably the result of Global Warming. In the future we can expect a rise of 4.6 degrees Celsius in average temperatures, assuming Co2 levels double.

`from Israel Weather -Supercell – Climate Changes in Israel

Climate changes in Israel – past, present and future page 6.

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From the quote we can interpolate that not only is the rainfall pattern changing but the temperatures near the start of the New Year for Trees are becoming colder which could affect when the tree buds. And the quandary? Well, since so much effort has gone into developing calendars that track seasons should I be thinking about developing a calendar that tracks seasons affected by Global warming? And exactly how might that work?

Different, yet the same

@ Duck and Decanter

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Millard Fuller died last Monday, February 2, 2009. He was the founder of Habitat for Humanity. I read about his death and some of his life in an On Faith post, Millard Fuller’s “Theology of Enough”, by David Waters. I was so taken by Fuller’s life that I went on to read of Koinonia Farm where Fuller started Habitat for Humanity. I continued reading about Clarence Jordan the one of the founders of Koinonia Farm. I felt humbled after reading about Millard and Jordan’s lives. I could go on and give a brief summation of their lives but not today. If you want to know about them you will have to follow the links and read for yourselves.

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What interests me is the connection between their spiritual practice of their faith and the care of the earth and its inhabitants. Last Sunday, February 1, 2009 I read another article, Praise the Lord and Green the Roof, in the New York Times about some very different people that have that same connection in their lives. Praise the Lord and Green the Roof is about an order of Episcopal women in New York City that is also driven to practice care of the Earth in their everyday living. I don’t know about you but New York City is not on the top of my list of places where spirituality or environmental are over riding concerns. Maybe my understanding of such things needs some work. My spiritual life could benefit from some also.

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I think I see some common threads in the lives of Millard, Clarence and the Episcopal sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. They were (and are) more concerned with living life according to the teachings of Jesus than they are in making life to be about Jesus. Evangelicals are notorious for making it about Jesus but mainline sects (such as the Episcopals) and us super progressives often make that same error. They are willing to accept less of material things in the pursuit of the Christian life. The most foreign to me personally is that they join in communities to pursue both their spiritual life and the furtherance of ecological concerns.

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Clarence Jordan was an ex-Southern Baptist as am I. I appreciate the way he put it:

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“an ex-Baptist,” a member of the confessional and universal church.

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Millard Fuller was buried yesterday, February 4 2009, in a plain wood coffin on Koinonia Farm in a grave with no headstone (in same manner as Clarence Jordan).

The Episcopal sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit continue living a quiet simple life a world away from Koinonia Farm in Americus Georgia but in a similar spirit.

I wonder if I can find that spirit in Phoenix.