Our first hop on the path to appreciating Biblical Greek was Seeing Double. You must read the Bible in two versions and learn to analyze the different choices made by the translators. Two things normally happen. Either you see that the two versions are saying the same thing in different ways. Or that they are [...]

The poem Alla sera by Ugo Foscolo tends to be taken as an idyllic vision of evening peace. But I thought about Ugo in exile. In a debtor’s prison. His brother committed suicide. He lost the girl he loved. Perhaps evening for him was not a release from care but a symbol of his desire [...]

That’s the sound of me putting on the brakes. I am way overloaded this week and will be away from the blogifier for several days. Thanks to the blogomatic, I’ve let loose a few posts that are scheduled to detonate at various times during the course of this week for your entertainment. TTFN

My friend Speaker of Truth slipped out of town on Sunday so I’m going to take advantage of his absence to make a few wild claims about the atonement. As you’ve probably figured out by now, I am not a theologian. But willful ignorance of systematic theology can actually be helpful in thinking about the cross. Systematic theology can limit our perspective. [...]

I’m teetering on the edge of declaring a fast from blogging for a few days. Not that I’m burned out. Just all these topics are so fascinating that it’s making it hard for me to concentrate on the very pressing tasks on my table at the moment.  And I’m curious to see if I can do it without [...]

I’ve been having fun engaging in rhetorical scuffles with my fellow lovers of Biblical languages. But I think both sides of the argument have talked past each other enough that I should qualify a few of my statements. So I want to make the following assertions on this topic. They might help us to zero [...]

I published a revised version of my first Cyber-Psalm. In doing so I seem to have lost the original post but links are now reaching the new version. Let me know if it is working right for you. There were a number of minor punctuation and capitalization changes. But the major changes were: 1. Changing [...]

Non-native speakers can never have access to the original text by reading it in the original. They are in fact “reading” a third text heavily colored by their own native-tongue and largely based on highly subjective notions of what that text is saying. I love reading languages other than English. I read several romance languages, [...]

I’ve heard the name but never had a chance to check him out. Why is that? Is it because I prefer blogs with strange names? Was I intimidated by the DeeArrPeriod? Whatever the case, that’s all changed now because Dr. Jim West was nice enough to mention my blog and say that “Lingamish is simply [...]

In light of the amiable controversy sparked by a line from Cyber-Psalm 1, I thought we could try to rewrite the line in question: And you rejected him. This line has bearing on the infamous PSA firestorm. My contribution is: The Father and filial friend feigned fulsomely forsake. I tried to capture [...]

I published Cyber-Psalm 1. Aren’t those susserating* sibilants simply succulent? English orthography: Cy=Ps=S!!! English is the dominant language in the world because it defeats anyone who tries to master it. Today I tried to explain to some Mozambicans that “through” and “threw” are homophones. I had a terrible time in phonetics class. Happily for me, I married the teacher’s pet. That [...]

Read by Juli Jarvis

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God in heaven, Creator of the earth,
My heart is filled with wonder
As I consider the inky-black sky
Filled with countless points of light.
It’s dizzying to consider how immense the universe is.
And you are over and in every part of it.

And when I consider the whimsical penguin,
Black and white like the sky,
Marching miles to the [...]