I think I’m starting to understand why I stop blogging for good amounts of time, and it lies mainly in that I spend my creative energies in other, more immediate contexts.
The problem with Biblical Studies, is that you have to always be thinking creatively and out of the box – or just read A LOT. Today I finished a presentation where I espoused the History-of-Religions view of the evolution of Monotheism from the El accounts from the partriarchal stories to Trinitarianism. Before that, I wrote a paper on my own interpretation of Genesis 2:25. Next week I have to write a paper on the use of extra-biblical apocalyptic literature in 1-2 Peter and how it affects exegesis. I still have to come up with a topic for my Acts paper, and I have another paper on why we should use the Septuagint, instead of the Masoretic text, as our primary Christian OT text.
Outside of the classroom, we just finished Airbands, where I artfully rendered Dashboard Confessional’s This Bitter Pill in full emo glory, solo-wise. My co-DM and I are trying to finish our D&D Campaign before the end of the semester, at which point I need to start building a new character for the summer.
So really, I don’t have much to say, not because I’m busy, but because I’m creatively spent. I’ve used up all that energy elsewhere, so that when I have the time to write something, I indulge myself on the creative energies of others, such Battlestar Galactica, Transformers, or the current Bionicle storyline. Nerdy? yes. Relaxing? definitely.
Well there’s 260 words for you to read. Hopefully I’ll have something pertinent to say soon.
As an aside, I cannot get this song out of my head:
And now you can’t either.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on March 16, 2009 at 10:04 pm, filed under Blog, Life, School and tagged Blog, creativity, meta-blogging, School. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Interviewed about the Maclean’s Surveys over at http://www.canadianchristianity.com.
No big deal.
Article here.
WK
This entry was written by , posted on February 20, 2009 at 4:40 pm, filed under School and tagged Canada, Culture, Maclean's, School, Tyndale. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
One of my classes this semester is a Text and Interpretation class on Revelation. I haven’t really been that interested in the class, as there is nothing new or particularly shocking being lectured (for me, that is). At most, the thing that has piqued my interest is the literary component of Revelation – it’s various chiastic and repetitive structures that scream Hebrew Literature. I’d be more interested in the idea that Revelation is the summation of the entire OT (and NT) with its 640-odd references to the OT, but I just can’t invest the time to read interpretatively the entirety of the Bible to really understand Revelation at a deep level. Interesting stuff, but nothing that has really hit me in the head to change my mind.
Until today.
Until today, I’ve been what you could call a preterist. That is, I believed that Revelation was primarily written to be a polemic against Rome for the persecuted Church in Asia Minor. Everything that is in Revelation concerning Powers, Oppresion and Evil can fit well into Roman Empire. My professor has been trying to get across to the class that Revelation is timelessly written, with next to no temporal prophecy involved, framed within Rome as the ultimate evil to which we wage holy war with our weapons of praise, suffering, and witness. After class today, that has changed.
In Revelation 17, we learn of the woman, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots. Rome, right? Babylon is code for Rome, right? Wrong. Throughout all of the OT, and all of our salvation-historical narrative history, Babylon was code for something older: Babel, the first worldly power that tried to overthrow God. Babel/Babylon is then every world power that has been mentioned in the OT: Tyre, Sidon, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Babylon, Rome, Egypt, etc. On top of that, its crucial to see that Revelation’s Babylon is a mother of harlots – more Babylons. So here’s the thing, this isn’t the first Babylon, and it certainly isn’t the last. Rome is irrelevant.
This is far more polemical than before. Instead of acknowledging (though condemning and judging) the powers of Rome, Revelation casts aside Rome as just another temporary world power.
Revelation is about being a faithful witness through persecution by the powers of the World, which will lose in the end to the power of God.
Revelation just got interesting.
This entry was written by , posted on November 12, 2008 at 12:29 am, filed under Biblical Study and tagged Bible, Interpretation, Revelation, School. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.