Sports in the age to come

I wonder how sports will be in the age to come. Surely the feats of physical prowess that we witness today will be a centerpiece of the creativity and athleticism that is sure to be a part of a renewed creation. But will we have winners and losers? Will we be stuck with the BCS? Will the Chiefs win every Super Bowl (er, I mean, Big Game)? Or will there just be slam dunk contests without the contest?

More succinctly, what is the role of competitiveness in a truly human society?

Sia

Back when Starbucks was doing their free-song-a-day giveaway, I picked up a song by Sia called "Day to Soon." I was really happy about scoring that song, because it's so fun. I still don't know what the song is about, but I love the sound. (Mmm . . . insidious subliminal messages.) Well, if Sia had me at "Day to Soon," I'm head over heels now. Not for the usual reasons necessarily: her album artwork is awesome! I saw the album at Starbucks (she's on the Hear Music label owned by Starbucks) and almost bought it on the spot. Instead I listened to the 30-second clips on iTunes, and then bought it.

The album is better than I hoped. There are several really fun songs, but I think one of my favorites is "Academia," a duet with Beck. It's nerdylicious! Her style is typically a solo high-octave throaty, sometimes black gospel vocalist sound. There was a pleasant surprise when my wife opened the CD while I was driving: the liner notes are mostly little two-sided cards with Mario Paint-style illustrations of the song titles. They're really great!

You can buy this album for some fun music, which I would recommend, but if nothing else, buy it to support great album art.

Certainty and schism

I went to a birthday party on Friday night, and conversed with some fascinating people. One of the fruits of the conversation was the idea that certainty is damaging to relationship. Rightness becomes an idolatrous pursuit when it declares victory over another. The specific situation we discussed is the enormous gap between two parties in the Episcopal Church, the one who wants to ordain homosexual people, and the side who refuses. Some would say that the American arm of the Anglican Communion (isn't that a funny word, "communion"?) is already in schism. I suppose technically that may not be the case since there is still a relationship between the Episcopal Church and the Communion.

The idea that fascinated me was one person's objection to the posture of the conservative party. He noted that there is no way a marriage will survive if one person says, "Here's my list of reasons why I will divorce you: . . . " When there is such suspicion in a relationship, it is almost impossible for it to survive, let alone thrive. Members in a relationship must approach each other in humility and servanthood. Sure great disagreements will arise, but a healthy relationship will take them as they come and work them through. No matter what. When infidelity occurs, maybe a divorce would be permitted, but God has already shown us his intention for dealing with infidelity. Submission. Service. Even to death.

The problem with drawing lines all over the beach is that it makes the relationship one of control. There is no openness to the humanity of the relationship, only a twisted puppetry where one creative being tells another creative being to not bother being themselves; that's already covered. By me. I. Myself. Dance puppet. Theologically, this is problematic, because one party in Christ's body is telling another, "Don't you dare. If you do, I'll . . . " What's to say that living like Jesus, that is, in humility, patience, self-control, service and grace, wouldn't solve a whole gamut of issues? What's to say that the God who has humbly served (and punished as he saw fit) his bride (Israel the nation and the true Israel, the assembly of his Messiah) can't take care of one more problem. Some issues take fifty to a hundred years or more to resolve. That's the upper limits and beyond of the leadership life of most people. Again I ask, can we trust God to take care of his body if we just live how he called us?

God is the only being who can legitimately play the certainty card, and I'm not sure he's willing. Let's all step back and bow before his throne and see what he'll do.

ha'olam haba' obama

You may be asking yourself, "What the heck does that title mean?" Ah, yes. My plan is working perfectly. For those who don't know Hebrew, ha'olam haba' means "the age to come." obama means "the guy we should elect for president." No, actually, I'm not saying Barack Obama is the messiah who will usher in the age to come. The Obama gag is merely a red herring to get people all distracted. Now I'll get to the real point, and maybe you won't be as angry with me, since you'll think that I'm joking about the next part. *But I'm not.*

My premise is that we need to abandon entirely the phrase "eternal life." It is an English translation that may have worked at one point, but is now so hopelessly misunderstood as to be completely detrimental. I take that back. I don't think it ever worked. The idea of the "afterlife" was thoroughly messed up by the time the first English translation used "eternal life." The reason the phrase needs to be abandoned is because, to almost all people, it means some pseudo-embodied or completely spiritual life in heaven (on clouds or something) forever for those who are Christians. Entirely leaving out the question of who actually gets in, the record must be set straight on "the age to come."

To the best of my knowledge, "the age to come" is when all things are set right. Humanity's enemies sin and death are completely and finally abolished. Those in the community of Jesus the Messiah will live in a restored/renewed creation that has substantial continuity with this one. The main difference is that heaven (read: the realm where God dwells) will come down to earth, and the present creation will be remade. Everything will be restored to God's intention, not to say that we will have the Garden of Eden all over again, but God will dwell with us, and we will live with him in his creation as he intended from the beginning. Culture of all types will be there as marks of the creativity God instilled in us. We will continue to create wonderful things under God's auspices forever. Those who reject Jesus the Messiah and grasp for control of their own existence will be relegated to the outer reaches of the creation. They will have no part in the celebration of life that is the new creation.

Compare that description to what image is conjured by "eternal life." For about five people on the planet, those are one and the same. But those five are already not using the phrase "eternal life." "Life in the age to come" is a suitable translation that makes one stop and think about what it means.

As I was researching ha'olam haba', I found a Jewish blogger who tried to illustrate the idea. People often talk about how the present age interacts with the age to come. There is the sense for followers of Jesus that the age to come is already breaking in, because he is the firstfruits of the resurrection. But sin and death still wreak havoc on us, meaning that we are still in the present evil age. There is the sense of "already and not yet." This drawing shows a bit of that idea. I'm proud that someone is thinking about this in an artistic sense, regardless of how impossible it is to adequately illustrate this awesome reality. You can see the illustration here.

Orthoprax

The word "orthoprax" popped into my head by analogy from "orthodoxy/orthodox" and "orthopraxy." However, it's not a new word. A Google search yields several hits from various quarters. Some of the most prominent are Judaic sites/blogs. I found this fascinating article about how different religions allocate "orthodox" and "orthoprax" (including whether either word applies to Paganism).

A very interesting claim in the article is that Islam and Judaism are religions of orthopraxy, and Christianity is concerned about orthodoxy. The former two have become religions concerned with right action, while the latter has become centered on right belief. There is obviously crossover between action and belief in each religion, but I have a feeling that we Christians should begin to move back toward a center position between the two. Right belief, while important, is worthless if you're fraught with wrong action. Remember that NT wisdom book, James? Yep, that idea's in there. One thing I would accuse Christians of today (myself included) is trying to get it all right in the head, while ignoring what might be the most important aspect of the life of the assembly of Jesus: redemptive action. Again, such action springs from right belief, but I believe belief can take a supporting role to action. The majority of Christians I have encountered have made belief the end. What action is required other than believing correctly? Oh. Lots more.

I move that we as Christians put a temporary hold on the use of the word "orthodox." We've spent too many centuries caviling about what we believe. If we had spent any significant amount of time _doing_ something, I think the articulation of belief might have fallen in line. So when we see someone doing something good, we should say, "That's very orthoprax!" Once we get our praxis to a healthier level, I'm open to talking about some doxa again.

Curses!

That's the exclamation I think when I hear someone taking a snippet from the Bible and twisting it to suit their own purposes. But I also think that word because it reminds me of a curse from the Harry Potter books. One of three unforgivable curses in that world is the imperius curse. Use it, and you will land in Azkaban, the wizard prison. When one wizard would point their wand at another (or animal or regular human or whatever) and say, "Imperio," suddenly that creature would do the bidding of the instigator until the curse was broken. What is so insidious about it is a normally innocent person would begin doing things out of character and no one could figure out who was behind it. A notoriously evil wizard could do lots of damage without much hindrance, because if they were careful, no one would be able to prove they were behind it.

I think the analogy is quite clear. We are capable of doing great evil by taking the normally trustworthy Bible and twisting it to do our bidding. And no one can quite figure out why they think something's amiss, because after all, I am quoting the Bible. People have unfiguratively gotten away with murder, by saying, "Imperio," as they tap the Bible page before stalking off to manipulate those around them. But more insidiously, innocent people have ignored context as they read the Bible and started living in a way that doesn't fit in the kingdom of God. And because discernment is one of the most under-practiced gifts in Jesus's body, nobody really gets that certain people are way off from Jesus's calling, let alone knows what a disciple should look like. So release the Bible from the imperius. Do its bidding instead.

The way he sees it

From a grande Starbucks cup, The Way I See It #289:
"So-called 'global warming' is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don't let them get away with it!"—Chip Giller, founder of grist.org

Coffee evangelism

I now have conclusive proof that Starbucks is an evangelist for their coffee. (I'm a convert, I confess.) Look for a moment at this food service pouch and you'll see that they categorize their coffee in terms of the 10/40 window. For once it's not Christians copying business!

Philanthropy

I was talking with a co-worker the other day about philanthropy. We're disappointed that the word seems reserved for really, really, ridiculously rich people who give their money away. At its root, the word means "people loving" and a philanthropist is a person who loves people. You probably don't need to be convinced that our world needs more of these type of philanthropists. So let's create a distinction. There are big-P and little-p philanthropists.

Little-p philanthropists are the rich people who give their money away. I'm not into letting money be the decider whether you're truly a Philanthropist or simply a philanthropist. So we'll let the harder category, that of those who truly love people in general, be the Philanthropists. If you do the easy work of amassing vast amounts of money and the hard work of truly loving humanity, and you put them together, you get to be called a philanthropic Philanthropist. Otherwise, we'll be looking for people to add to the ranks of the rare souls who are looking out for the good of humankind, the big-P folks.

Femininity

For whatever reason, I began thinking about the word "feminine." It sounds so . . . feminine. There is a subtle flow to the word. It is light and pleasant. Contrast the word "masculine." It's got a throaty velar scrape that makes me wonder if all wars were started by men (or women) who were feeling like the word "masculine" sounds. I'm rather egalitarian, but I do recognize certain fundamental differences between female and male, feminine and masculine. But I do recognize significant overlap in the gifts typically attributed to females and males. I know men who are more nurturing than most women, and I know women who are more hardchargers than most men. Just to clarify.

My actual point in this post on femininity is the atrocity of the label "feminine hygiene." I know it's not the poetry that some would hope from something titled "Femininity." But something needs to be done about it! There is nothing feminine about the need for those sorts of products. Doubtless, the conditions that necessitate the products are uniquely female. But I feel a word like "feminine" should be reserved for applications more in keeping with my sentiments on the word above.

I can think of two reasons this label emerged. One is a solid reason: that women will feel better about feeling unfeminine while using the products if they think of it in terms of making them more feminine. (I honestly don't know that most women buy into that.) The other reason, and my blood is boiling, is that marketers thought, "We can sell this product by making women think they're more feminine if they use this." Okay, there's a third reason: at the time this product class emerged, it was not polite to speak of such matters. They needed a code word that women would know was directed toward that issue (pun partially not intended). But I'm wondering in this day when all things personal, intimate and private are displayed daily in mainstream media, if we can reclaim the word "feminine" to mean something more befitting its onomatopoetic self.

Body and blood

I've been thinking for a couple of years about Jesus's statement in John to the people gathered around listening to him teach: "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them" (TNIV).

This morning, I taught a Sunday school class where we talked about the so-called Jerusalem council in Acts. Gentiles were wondering whether they needed to be circumcised to be part of the assembly of the Messiah. The leaders in Jerusalem kindly wrote back saying they didn't need to bother with that little matter. But they did need "to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality." While these particular prohibitions weren't the point of the class, it spawned an interesting discussion. What is it about these things that made them verboten? Some good thoughts that came out include the fact that each of these seem to be an integral part of pagan worship, and circumcision was the old way of differentiating yourself from the pagans. They seem to say that if you avoid these things, you will be distinct enough to avoid the cultural baggage (and physical pain) of circumcision.

What is it that's important about these animals and sexual immorality? The latter may be easier to start with. Sexual expression was a human enterprise that God created for various reasons, but for this argument, the prominent feature is that it is a covenantal act. It is very importantly that in its own right, but it is also a shadow of God's covenant with his creation. Deviant sexuality (or immorality, of any stripe) lampoons God's covenant with all creation. No wonder that's important. (And speaking of pagan practice, deviant sexual expression was a part of their worship in most cases.)

Now what about animals? Food sacrificed to idols was probably killed in an inappropriate way, and its obvious association with idols led the council to forbid eating it. (Note that Paul lifted this ban in 1 Corinthians, as long as it didn't lead people to sin. Hm.) Drinking blood was a direct violation of the levitical demand to not do so. The explanation for this prohibition: "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life." Strangled animals still have the blood in them, so you would be eating the blood if you eat that meat. It seems that there is something incongruous about eating something where the life is kept inside it, even though it is dead.

That leads me to the revelation about what Jesus says in John about his flesh and blood. Given the preceding history about Jewish prohibitions on consuming blood, his hearers would have been very offended at his suggestion. I imagine they would have had a visceral reaction beyond mere offense. Why would any respectable person let such a thought out of their mouth? Jesus must have anticipated that "body" would be a metaphor for the assembly of his followers. Eating his flesh and drinking his blood would have been a sacramental and covenantal action on the heels of the Jewish sacrificial system. But this idea actually became what his followers called a "sacrament," that is, the fellowship meal, the great thanksgiving, the eucharist, holy communion.

It seems that the point of all this is, wherever there is an assembly of Jesus's followers, they can drink his blood as a way of taking in his life. He, being sinless, willingly offered for people to drink his blood (even if it is a metaphor). Jesus's life was in his blood, and in drinking it, we are taking in his life. And we partake of his body as well, to include ourselves in his body. The drinking of his blood then sacramentally animates his body here within his creation. If we ignore the sacrament, we ignore the fact that it is only through Jesus that life is restored. He is the resurrection and the life. He brings life, not only to humans, but also to the whole creation. We are now his body, animated by his blood and the Holy Spirit, here to bring life to all creation.

Creation care

I was driving to a different church at a different time today, and happened to hear this wonderful program called "Speaking of Faith" on our NPR station. I almost stayed in the car to listen to the rest, but figured I'd go on in to teach Sunday school as planned.

They interviewed Cal DeWitt, an environmental studies prof (and Christian) at U of Wisconsin as well as Majora Carter, who works to revitalize the South Bronx. I've heard Carter speak before, and she's great, but I hadn't heard of DeWitt. It's worth a listen.

One startling revelation from DeWitt was that the word "environment" came from Chaucer's "environing." He created the word, and it led, for the first time in Western language, to a concept of creation without humans implicit within the creation. This development allowed us to begin to talk about "that environment" rather than "the creation we are a part of." It seems that he prefers the phrase "creation care" to "environmentalism," not because of the negative connotations of the latter in churchy circles, but because it brings back an appropriate doctrine of humans being part of what God created.

Into the great not really known

Well, I guess I know what I'm getting into. I'm going with a couple of friends to a Chick-fil-A opening in Brighton, Colorado. Brighton is northeast of Denver, out on the plains. The thing about these openings is, you camp out over night to be one of the first 100 in line, and you get coupons for 52 combo meals. Amazing deal! Not so amazing weather. It's supposed to be close to zero tomorrow night. Dress in layers! Dress in layers!

Tent. Check. Heater to use inside tent. Check. Sleeping bag. Check. Extra blankets. Check. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I boring you? I'll keep my packing to myself. Grit my teeth. Free chicken!

More BibleZines (note corrected spelling)

I needed to arrange a place for a craigslist exchange. Starbucks seemed as good a place as any. Since I "was there anyway" I might as well get some coffee. And if I was going to be there, I might as well do something productive. So I took my copies of the aforeranted BibleZines to work on a review for a magazine. (Sorry I already spilled the beans on how I feel about them in the last post.)

I'm sitting there trying to get my mind around whether there is anything redeemable in them. I look up, and there's a girl sitting next to me reading her Bible. Bingo! I decided to ask her what she thought, at least to get an opinion outside my own rancorous head. Standard pickup-type line: "Hey, I see you're reading your Bible. Can I ask your opinion on something?"

"This isn't a Bible."

"Well, what is it?"

"A government procurement law textbook."

"Huh. Well, I thought the Bible was the only book shaped like that with two columns."

"Well, this stuff is pretty dense, so it needs to be in two columns like the Bible."

A great line about two-column Bibles.

Turns out she is an agnostic, and her opinion about BibleZines is that they are full of non sequiturs and stuff that is pretty much unrelated to the Bible. She said her mind was made up about the Bible anyway, but this stuff was silly, and it was really bizarre that someone decided to put the two together. So maybe BibleZines aren't outreach tools. Any thoughts on whether they can be used to any good effect by Christian teens? I'm taking this very seriously since I want to be able to talk intelligently about them. I don't want to be accused of denigrating the "competition" (since I work as an editor at a Bible publisher). I want my opinions, particularly on this piece, to be exceedingly well thought out.

Oh yeah. They have "Redefine" now, a BibleZine for baby boomers. Yikes! It makes a little sense to do a fashion mag style Bible for teen girls, but baby boomers? And that was another comment from the woman at Starbucks: the teen boy edition, Refuel 2008, looked exactly like Revolve 2008, except they changed some colors and fonts. Do boys look at fashion type magazines? Maybe if it were more like Sports Illustrated? I dunno.

Bible-zines

I received some "Bibles" to review today, and they are unfortunately some of those Bible-zines. They're glossy fashion magazine-style books roughly the girth of Vanity Fair that have the text of the New Testament with all kinds of extraneous notes that are catchy or clever or engaging or relevant or something. Those types of notes aren't the problem, necessarily. Catchy and clever and whatever notes are fine, as long as they drive the reader back to engage the biblical text. But I don't think the biblical text is meant to be read in the format of a fashion magazine. Here's why.

The act of reading implies a contract between the author and the reader. The contract is somewhat fluid. It implicitly states that, among other things, the reader will engage the text as the author intended. Sometimes this is impossible, for instance if you happen to find a scrap of paper with a few words scribbled on it. It may have a very uplifting aphorism scrawled on it, but that may have come in the context of a scathing critique. There are some extenuating circumstances in how the reader keeps this contract. You only got a few words. You take them at "face value," that is, bringing your culture and understanding to the text, and taking away something relevant to yourself, namely, encouragement. But you can only do this because there is no other context in which to understand it. It's also very easy to go directly for the personal application if you don't take the author's intention very seriously. You have no context to understand the intention, therefore it's very easy to discern the import of the text. It's throwaway; you can take it for whatever you want.

However, with the Bible, there are a myriad of expectations placed on the text. This is "God's Word to me" (or "god's word to ME") or "my ticket to Heaven" or "God's plan to save the world." Whether or not these have any ground in reality, to the person who believes them, they are very important. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to understand this contract between author and reader. And in the case of the Bible, we need to carefully study the context of composition (Who's writing? Why? What are the circumstances? Who is the audience? There are several good books on this: How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth by Gordon Fee, for starters.) in order to get a good grasp of what the actual message is. Again, this is a bit fluid. We don't know everything about the original authors and audiences and circumstances of writing of the biblical text(s). In some cases we know very little. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try for accuracy. On the other hand, there are uses of the biblical text, that are egregiously wrong. For instance (crassly), we don't say, "This Amnon fellow was a pretty good guy. Firstborn of the great King David. He had agape love for his hot half-sister Tamar. [Yep. It's in the Septuagint.] It was okay for him to force himself on her." Ridiculous. But we take all kinds of passages grossly out of context like that. "I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you." That was very specifically about the nation of Israel. But we assert that for ourselves or people around us all the time. We may still be able to claim that after we do the work of understanding God's working in the passage, but most people grab it with no attention to what God's doing. And that's important. So the contract says to do our best to understand what God is communicating, not do our best to hear what we want to hear.

That brings us back to Bible-zines, for those still with me. If a teen comes to the text expecting to find beauty tips (because they're formatted as fashion magazines), they're going to expect that the Bible is all about them. Because that's how fashion magazines present themselves. How do people read fashion magazines? They scan the columns for something that catches their eye. And while God does amazing things in catching people's eyes, that's a horrible Bible-reading habit to cultivate. But these Bible-zines format the Bible text jumbled in with all kinds of opinion polls, tips and charts. Suddenly the genre of every Bible passage is set to "teen fashion mag." Whatever catches your eye is all about you and will make you coolandsexyandattractiveandpopular. Or you're unworthy and won't ever measure up to the perfection of botox and silicone and photoshop. (To be fair, these Bible-zines for girls promote modest dress and "it's what's inside that counts." But remember, your genre is "teen fashion mag." That's the set of expectations that's now thrust upon the text.) Some will object: "But if it gets kids into the Bible, it's worth it." Yeah, it's fine if it wrecks how they read the Bible for the next decade? God uses a myriad of strange things, but if we know better, we shouldn't do it. Discipleship is the key. Teach your teens how to read the Bible, if you know how.

Now for the prophetic gem. You heard it here first. Thomas Nelson first published Revolve for teen girls a couple of years ago, then Refuel for teen boys and Becoming for college girls. Sales were good. Now we have Revolve 2008 (and Refuel, Regurgitate and whatever else). They've annualized their production schedule to make a profit off of the Bible, and off the guilt people feel over reading the Bible, and off the awful capitalist mantra that you have to tell people what they need in order to make money off of them. Sorry, that was the history, not the prophecy. Prediction: the next step marries fashion mag genre and Bible reading plans. They sell a monthly mag for $3.95. You get the full text of the NT in a year, plus all your gory or gooey fashion stuff. (I note gory, because to a dude, that's what fashion stuff is, and also because the first mag for boys featured all the best battle scenes from the Old Testament.) On the same schedule as every other fashion mag. And people will buy it, because it's the same price as one decaf-venti-soy-no-whip-caramel-macchiato per month. (Spell check suggested macchiato, which is Italian for marked or stained, should be spelled machete. Hm.) Thomas Nelson, here is your free idea that will make you biblezineloads of money. But if you had read the idea in context, you would know that it is WRONG.

Litmus verse

Today, my co-worker was relating a story about a conversation he had concerning the TNIV translation of the Bible. The girl insisted she shouldn't like the TNIV, but she couldn't remember who had said so or why. She rummaged around the Bible to find one of the verses that would tell her immediately whether the translation was bad or not. When she found it, she said, "Well, I guess it's okay." What is this activity called? Yep. It's a litmus verse.

The Rentals

I heard The Rentals' EP The Last Little Life today. Quite a pleasurable listen. Three songs I'd never heard, and a remake of Sweetness and Tenderness. I was looking forward to hearing the remake, but I wasn't prepared for how different it would be. It's pretty awesome! I didn't like one little dipsy-do the lead singer did toward the end, but the rest of the song was excellent. The thing that made the song for me was a little riff-nod note progression toward the David Bowie song The Man Who Sold the World (covered by Nirvana). I never would have put the two songs together, but I'm glad The Rentals did! My other favorite track from the EP is Little Bit of You in Everything. Okay and the first track, Last Romantic Day, too. What do I like about these songs so much? It's the vocals and the instrumental originality. You can enjoy them in the background for hours, then focus on the sound and enjoy it all the more. The lyrics seem poetic and heart-rendering (not rending, but they do something to your heart), but I haven't gotten past enjoying the background sound to listen to them yet. Highly recommended!

Mighty hilarious:

My brother sent me this link.

Sycophants

I was reminded today that's it's been a while since I posted. What with the holidays and this wicked head cold that has hung on longer than any sickness should dream.

Today someone asked about how Ecclesiastes 7:7 is translated. For conversation's sake, the TNIV renders it:
"Extortion turns the wise into fools,
and a bribe corrupts the heart."
The question was why the NIV renders "extortion" so and why the NASB translates it "oppression." I know. Big literal vs. dynamic equivalence showdown in the offing! I called on my co-worker's expertise in Hebrew and my prowess in Greek to figure this one out. (Confidentially, "expertise" and "prowess" mean "ability to parse respective alphabet and look up words in a lexicon.") The result? Lexically, the Hebrew word means "oppression, extortion" and the Greek used in the Septuagint means "oppression, extortion, blackmail" among others. Hm. That's like saying, "The Hebrew word for 'dirt' here means 'dirt.' " Said co-worker helpfully pointed out that the rendering should more likely be "extortion" since it makes more sense with "bribe" as a parallelism in Hebrew poetry. NIV wins. Yay!

What I found immensely more interesting is the Greek word for "oppression, extortion" is the root word for the English "sycophant." Etymologically, it means "to show figs." Go fig. Legend has it that there were suckups who would rat out people who were illegally exporting figs from Athens. They presumably blackmailed or extorted the black marketers, but at the same time, they were sucking up to the authorities. Also, peripherally, the verb translated in TNIV "turn into a fool" and in NASB "make mad" can be transliterated "periphery." Etymologically, the verb means "to bear around," and I'm wondering if it's a picture of someone "running around like mad" or if it denotes a person who is on the edges of society because they're crazy.

Enough geekery for one sitting.