Logos Bible Software just launched a new website called ref.ly (think bit.ly). It allows you to share Bible verses as links via Twitter and other places where you have a limited number of characters and want to keep the URL as short as possible.

Enter a Bible reference, and ref.ly will instantly generate a short URL linking to the passage at Bible.Logos.com. Since ref.ly uses Bible references to create the URL structure rather than a random bunch of characters like most URL shorteners, you can create the short URLs yourself without having to visit the site every time.

Don’t worry about trying to figure out which Bible reference abbreviation to use—ref.ly recognizes almost every conceivable form you throw at it. So you can share Matthew 11:25–26 in any of these ways:

1. http://ref.ly/Mt11.25–26
2. http://ref.ly/Mt11.25f
3. http://ref.ly/Mat11.25f
4. http://ref.ly/Matt11.25f
5. http://ref.ly/Matthew11.25f

You can share a single verse (e.g., http://ref.ly/1Co15.28), a range of verses, (e.g., http://ref.ly/Jn1.1-18), a chapter (e.g., http://ref.ly/1P5), or a book (e.g., http://ref.ly/3J), and you can even specify a particular version by simply adding @ followed by the version abbreviation (e.g., http://ref.ly/Re4.8@ESV).

Nope, not Bob Jones this time, for which making national news is fairly commonplace.

Heritage Christian School in Findlay, OH, a ministry of Calvary Baptist Church and the small school where I attended from kindergarten through 12th grade, has been getting a lot of unwarranted bad press over the last few days for suspending a senior who knowingly and willingly disobeyed schools rules—ones he and his parents had agreed to abide by—by attending the local public high school’s prom with his “girlfriend” (in a video interview, the girl said that they’d been dating for all of “a week and a day”).

The story was picked up by a number of news sources:

• The Courier: “Don’t go to prom, school tells teen” (also at Yahoo: “Ohio Christian school tells student to skip prom” and MSNBC “Christian school tells boy to skip prom” via AP)
• Fox Toledo: “Trip to prom could cost student” (a couple of videos)
• WTOL: “Footloose in Ohio: Teen suspended for attending prom” (a couple of videos)
• Fox News: “Christian Ohio School Threatens to Suspend Student If He Goes to Prom“
• Daily Telegraph: “Christian teen faces suspension for going to girlfriend’s prom“

One of the videos is on YouTube and is embedded below.

Heritage has posted an official response on their website. I won’t take the time to offer any thoughts, but will instead just point you to Chris Anderson’s characteristically helpful post.

HT: Valerie Adams (my little sis) and Sharper Iron (via Andy Naselli)

I follow Mark Driscoll on Twitter and just watched a little 4:27 video that he tweeted about: “Song of Solomon Q&A 3.” I’ve embedded it below.

It contains some solid practical advice for troubled marriages. On the whole, it’s good stuff.

Two items caught my attention—particularly because of how they seem to be at odds with things John Piper teaches:

1. “If [love is] commanded, that means it’s not a feeling.”
2. “God couldn’t command you to do something that was impossible for you to do.”

Here’s a transcript of the relevant portion with the key parts in bold:

Do you know that love is commanded in the Bible? If it’s commanded, that means it’s not a feeling. You ever thought about that? See, we live in this day when—”I don’t feel like I’m in love.” Well, the Bible says, “Husbands,” Ephesians 5—what?—”love your wives.” Titus 2 says that older women should train younger women to love their husbands. If it’s commanded, it’s possible. You say, “But, I can’t love them. I don’t feel like I love them.” The love doesn’t begin with you. God is love, 1 John 4 says. God’s love comes to you to love your spouse. The great lie is, I don’t love you so we shouldn’t be married. The answer is, you need to get closer to Jesus, and you’ll have all the love you need. God couldn’t command you to do something that was impossible for you to do. He couldn’t tell you to love someone if he wasn’t willing to give you the love to love them.

Love Is Not a Feeling.

On the first point, I wonder if Mark simply meant that love is not exclusively a feeling. I’m inclined to think so, but the words themselves struck me as being the very kind of thinking that Piper takes such great pains to refute in Desiring God (and elsewhere):

One thing is for sure: Love cannot be equated with sacrificial action! It cannot be equated with any action! This is a powerful antidote to the common teaching that love is not what you feel, but what you do. The good in this popular teaching is the twofold intention to show (1) that mere warm feelings can never replace actual deeds of love (James 2:16; 1 John 3:18) and (2) that efforts of love must be made even in the absence of the joy that one might wish were present. But it is careless and inaccurate to support these two truths by saying that love is simply what you do, and not what you feel. . . .

The very definition of love in 1 Corinthians refutes this narrow conception of love. For example, Paul says love is not jealous and not easily provoked and that it rejoices in the truth and hopes all things (13:4–7). All these are feelings! If you feel things like unholy jealousy and irritation, you are not loving. And if you do not feel things like joy in the truth and hope, you are not loving. In other words, yes, love is more than feelings; but, no, love is not less than feelings. (116–17)

Even if Mark believes that love is not exclusively a feeling, his conditional statement “If it’s commanded, that means it’s not a feeling” is logically flawed. There are plenty of commands in the Bible that deal with our feelings. Again, Piper comments,

Positively, Christians are commanded to have God-honoring feelings. We are commanded to feel joy (Philippians 4:4), hope (Psalm 42:5), fear (Luke 12:5), peace (Colossians 3:15), zeal (Romans 12:11), grief (Romans 12:15), desire (1 Peter 2:2), tenderheartedness (Ephesians 4:32), and brokenness and contrition (James 4:9). (Desiring God, 89)

While I’m not completely sure of Driscoll’s view on love as an emotion, my gut feeling is that there probably is no real disagreement between Driscoll and Piper on this point. I do wonder, though, if all of Driscoll’s listeners walked away with the understanding that love is both volition and feeling and that God often does command us to feel certain things.

God Doesn’t Command What We Can’t Do.

I’m nearly positive that Driscoll would disagree with the notion that God’s commands are possible for unbelievers. This is precisely the logic of Pelagianism—and a large segment of the church today: God wouldn’t tell people to do something they have absolutely no power to do, so God’s commands may be taken as indications of man’s abilities.

In this video Driscoll is dealing with believers, not unbelievers. But is it true that “God couldn’t command you to do something that was impossible for you to do”?

When I heard these words, my mind immediately went to Piper’s treatment of Hebrews 6:3. Here are some selections from Piper’s sermon on Hebrews 6:1–3, “Let Us Press On to Maturity”:

1. God governs the progress of sanctification (or maturity).

In other words, he has final say in whether we overcome our bent to sinning and make progress toward maturity. We will press on to maturity if God permits it. That is, we will make progress in our sanctification and holiness if God permits it. He decides ultimately if and how fast we advance in holiness.

. . .

3. God sometimes wills that something come to pass which he forbids us to bring to pass.

That is, he sometimes decrees what he forbids. In this case, for example, he may not permit someone to press on to maturity. Nevertheless he commands us to press on to maturity. So he is decreeing immaturity while commanding maturity.

If Piper rightly understands Hebrews 6:3—and I think he does—it would seem, then, that God can and does command believers to do things that are at times impossible for them to do (i.e., by virtue of His decree, that is, His unwillingness to enable us to do them).

Does anyone know if Driscoll deals with either of these two issues in more detail elsewhere? I’m curious to know if he agrees with Piper and, if not, how he would interact with Piper’s teaching on these points.

Like most of you who have taken classes with teachers who provided grammatical and stylistic critiques of your papers, I was told to avoid the passive voice as much as possible. Yet I was never really completely convinced of the notion. The Greek New Testament is full of passives, I rebutted, and a grammatical active may be a semantic passive (yet these, strangely, never got marked as improper). I just never felt like the case against passives was convincing. It was more of an unquestionable rule of proper writing style.

But not everyone is afraid to question this prevailing notion. I just read a scathing (understatement!) review of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style that addresses the issue of passives, among other things. It was written by Geoffrey K. Pullum, who is the head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh.

Here’s his discussion of passives:

“Use the active voice” is a typical section head. And the section in question opens with an attempt to discredit passive clauses that is either grammatically misguided or disingenuous.

We are told that the active clause “I will always remember my first trip to Boston” sounds much better than the corresponding passive “My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.” It sure does. But that’s because a passive is always a stylistic train wreck when the subject refers to something newer and less established in the discourse than the agent (the noun phrase that follows “by”).

For me to report that I paid my bill by saying “The bill was paid by me,” with no stress on “me,” would sound inane. (I’m the utterer, and the utterer always counts as familiar and well established in the discourse.) But that is no argument against passives generally. “The bill was paid by an anonymous benefactor” sounds perfectly natural. Strunk and White are denigrating the passive by presenting an invented example of it deliberately designed to sound inept.

After this unpromising start, there is some fairly sensible style advice: The authors explicitly say they do not mean “that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice,” which is “frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.” They give good examples to show that the choice between active and passive may depend on the topic under discussion.

Sadly, writing tutors tend to ignore this moderation, and simply red-circle everything that looks like a passive, just as Microsoft Word’s grammar checker underlines every passive in wavy green to signal that you should try to get rid of it. That overinterpretation is part of the damage that Strunk and White have unintentionally done. But it is not what I am most concerned about here.

What concerns me is that the bias against the passive is being retailed by a pair of authors so grammatically clueless that they don’t know what is a passive construction and what isn’t. Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses. “At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard” is correctly identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors:

• “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” has no sign of the passive in it anywhere.
• “It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had” also contains nothing that is even reminiscent of the passive construction.
• “The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired” is presumably fingered as passive because of “impaired,” but that’s a mistake. It’s an adjective here. “Become” doesn’t allow a following passive clause. (Notice, for example, that “A new edition became issued by the publishers” is not grammatical.)

These examples can be found all over the Web in study guides for freshman composition classes. (Try a Google search on “great number of dead leaves lying.”) I have been told several times, by both students and linguistics-faculty members, about writing instructors who think every occurrence of “be” is to be condemned for being “passive.” No wonder, if Elements is their grammar bible. It is typical for college graduates today to be unable to distinguish active from passive clauses. They often equate the grammatical notion of being passive with the semantic one of not specifying the agent of an action. (They think “a bus exploded” is passive because it doesn’t say whether terrorists did it.)

The treatment of the passive is not an isolated slip. It is typical of Elements. The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn.

If you have any interest in grammar and style, I encourage you to read the whole thing: “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.” Pullum makes many valuable observations and leaves the reader with much worth chewing on.

Update: Justin Taylor picks it up as well and adds a helpful response from Pullum on recommended alternatives.

HT: Kent Hendricks

I knew that would get your attention.

Internet Archive, a site I use regularly for researching public domain books, just announced their newest project: OpenLibrary.org. Here’s the site’s description:

One web page for every book ever published. It’s a lofty, but achievable, goal.

To build it, we need hundreds of millions of book records, a brand new database infrastructure for handling huge amounts of dynamic information, a wiki interface, multi-language support, and people who are willing to contribute their time, effort, and book data.

To date, we have gathered about 30 million records (20 million are available through the site now), and more are on the way. We have built the database infrastructure and the wiki interface, and you can search millions of book records, narrow results by facet, and search across the full text of 1 million scanned books.

According to the homepage, the current numbers are 22,845,290 book entries and 1,064,822 books with full text.

I’m impressed by the site, and I look forward to seeing how it does. The good news for Zotero users like me is that it does appear to have decent (though not perfect) Zotero support, allowing you to grab and import lots of books at a time.

Other online book sites you might find useful include:

• Google Books
• Amazon
• Live Books (content still available at Archive.org)
• Books.Logos.com (currently in beta and free)
• CCEL
• SeminaryLibrary.com (not free)
• Dallas Theological Seminary Rare Books
• Princeton Theological Seminary Digital Library
• Scribd (I’m not very impressed. It has a poor selection and crashes Firefox 3.1 constantly!)
• Project Gutenberg
• Forgotten Books

Other helpful book sites that don’t have text available include:

• WorldCat
• LibraryThing

What are your favorite sites for researching books?

WTSBooks points out via Twitter a 5-part series (plus 2 Q&A sessions) by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. on “The Mystery of Union with Christ.” Gaffin delivered these messages at Matthews Orthodox Presbyterian in March of 2005. I’ve downloaded them and listened to part of the first one. It looks to be a very good series. They are available as free downloads courtesy of SermonAudio.com.

1. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Part 1
2. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Part 2
3. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Part 3
4. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Part 4
5. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Part 5
6. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Q & A, Part 1
7. The Mystery of Union with Christ—Q & A, Part 2

See also my bibliography of written resources on union with Christ (I may add audio at some point), which contains these two titles by Gaffin:

1. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Union with Christ,” “Union and Justification,” and “Union with Christ and the Resurrection,” in By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2006), 35–41, 58–68. [Amazon | Logos]
2. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Union with Christ: Some Biblical and Theological Reflections,” in Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology, ed. A. T. B. McGowan, 271–88. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006. [Amazon]

HT: @wtsbooks

A pastor friend of mine sent out an email to a few friends last week asking for recommended resources on the doctrine of our union with Christ. I’ve done some reading and studying on the subject in the past, so I pulled together a bibliography of articles, books, etc.

I haven’t read everything on my list, but of the ones I’ve read, here are some of my top picks:

1. Michael P. V. Barrett, “Union with Christ: The Security of the Gospel,” in Complete in Him: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Gospel (Greenville, SC: Ambassador-Emerald, 2000), 93–118. [Amazon]
2. Bruce A. Demarest, “The Doctrine of Union with Christ,” in The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation, Foundations of Evangelical Theology, ed. John S. Feinberg (Wheaton: Crossway, 1997), 313–44. [Amazon | Google Books | Logos]
3. Wayne A. Grudem, “Union with Christ,” in Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 840–50. [Amazon | Google Books | Logos]
4. Michael Horton, “Union with Christ,” in Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation, ed. Michael Horton (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 107–15. [Amazon]
5. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Union with Christ,” in God the Holy Spirit, vol 2. of Great Doctrines of the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 1997), 106–16. [Amazon | Logos]
6. John Murray, “Union with Christ,” in Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 161–73. [Amazon | Google Books]
7. Robert L. Reymond, “Union with Christ,” in A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Nelson, 1998), 736–39. [Amazon | Logos]

Go have a look at the new page, and feel free to add recommendations of resources that you’ve found helpful in the comments either on this post or on that page.

See also my review of Demarest’s The Cross and Salvation. I wrote it in seminary several years ago, but it may still be of some benefit. :)

I had a discussion with a friend over dinner a few days ago, and we were talking about books on the Holy Spirit that we liked. We talked about Sinclair Ferguson’s The Holy Spirit, and then Larry Pettegrew’s The New Covenant Ministry of the Holy Spirit came up. I commented on Pettegrew’s unique view that all of the gifts—not just miraculous and revelatory ones—were temporary and had passed with the time of the apostles. My friend responded with surprise, thinking I was talking about someone else or just mistaken. So when I got home that evening, I pulled out Pettegrew’s book and found what seems to me to be evidence in favor of my reading of Pettegrew. (If memory serves me correctly, my Pneumatology professor, Gary Reimers, is actually the one that tipped me off to Pettegrew’s view.) I sent some key quotes on to him, and, to my surprise, he still wasn’t convinced. So I’ll let you decide.

In chapter 7, “The Conundrum of the Charismata” (155-87), Pettegrew makes several comments that seem to set him apart from most cessationists. Here is a selection of the pertinent portions from the chapter. I’ve added the bold and underlining for emphasis.

In the opening pages of the chapter, Pettegrew prefaces the discussion this way:

Bible students must rethink the doctrine of the gifts of the Spirit. The topic of gifts is especially pertinent to our overall study on the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit because the Spirit gave gifts to the first Christians if for no other reason than to make the transition from the old covenant program to the new covenant program as smooth as possible.

. . .

Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to present a brief theological exposition of 1 Corinthians 12–14. In so doing, we hope to answer the question so important for our overall study: Were the gifts of the Spirit intended to be a permanent part of the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit, or were the gifts (or some of the gifts) intended for only the initial years of the new covenant program? (157)

A few pages later, Pettegrew defines spiritual gifts this way:

A spiritual gift was a supernatural, Holy Spirit-energized ability that was sovereignly given by God for service within the local church during the transition from the old covenant program to the new covenant program. (160)

On several occasions Pettegrew makes the point that the spiritual gifts were given in a supernatural way because the NT was not yet readily available (see my point 7 below for the full significance of this):

We must be careful not to miss the distinction between the bestowal of gifts and the operation of the gifts. Not all gifts produced supernatural, spectacular operations. The gift of helps, for example, was probably not supernatural in its outworking, whereas the gift of miracles was.

But the Holy Spirit bestowed all gifts abnormally during the apostolic era. Christians were enabled to minister without having to learn in a conventional way. They did not have to attend a Bible institute or a theological seminary, in other words, to be able to minister effectively. The very fact that they did not have the New Testament prohibited them from learning how to minister as we do today. They needed supernatural help from the Holy Spirit.

. . .

. . . The gifts, therefore, were not just natural abilities that the people had developed even before they had become Christians; the Spirit of God bestowed these gifts on the early Christians supernaturally. (162)

Here’s his conclusion:

What is the relationship of the gifts to the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit? It is evident that the gifts were only inaugural in character, a truth for which we today can be grateful. To be under the full gift program is not something to be desired. The church members in the apostolic era always had to evaluate the prophecies, always had to determine if a translator was present, and always had to operate under the knowledge that their information was partial. Who would want this situation today? . . .

. . .

But Paul explained to the Corinthians that eventually revelation would be completed so that they would not have to go through all of the required checks. They could simply expound completed revelation.

[1] The revelational gifts, therefore, were bestowed on the apostles and prophets to explain what the church was to believe and how it was to operate in the first age of the new covenant program. [2] The miraculous gifts were given to authenticate the new covenant ministry and authority of the apostles—especially in the giving of revelation. [3] Many of the other gifts were given to enable the churches to function according to the will of God when no New Testament Scriptures were available on a widespread scale. We today have providential abilities, talents, or gifts that parallel the gifts of the New Testament era. But we must be careful that we do not focus so much on these that we miss the most important truths for spiritual maturity, such as the lordship of Christ and the sufficiency of the Word of God. . . . (186–87)

Allow me to make a some comments about these selections from Pettegrew’s work:

1. The statement “the Spirit gave gifts to the first Christians if for no other reason than to make the transition from the old covenant program to the new covenant program as smooth as possible” hints at the conclusion that this was the only reason, and thus at their temporary nature.
2. The question “Were the gifts of the Spirit intended to be a permanent part of the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit, or were the gifts (or some of the gifts) intended for only the initial years of the new covenant program?” hints at the conclusion that all (or some) of the gifts were temporary. At the very least he is open to the notion that all of the gifts were temporary.
3. The way he defines spiritual gifts suggests that he believes that all of the gifts have passed. (1) He uses the past tense was rather than the present tense is. (2) He says the gifts were “for service . . . during the transition from the old covenant program to the new covenant program.”
4. The emphasis on the bestowal of the gifts as abnormal and supernatural in connection with the distinction between Christians before the NT and Christians after the NT supports the notion of the cessation of all of the gifts. (See point 7 for more on this.)
5. The statement “It is evident that the gifts were only inaugural in character” seems by itself to answer the question. There is no indication that Pettegrew has a subset of gifts in view: (1) The chapter is a discussion of all of the gifts, not just a certain group of the gifts. (2) Every time he uses “the gifts” in an unqualified way (see the underlining above), he apparently has all of the gifts in view. (3) Two paragraphs later he explains what he means by “the gifts”: “revelational gifts,” “miraculous gifts,” and “the other gifts.”
6. He speaks of all three categories of gifts as “only inaugural in character,” not just the first two categories. See the last paragraph quoted above, and notice how he describes all three categories of gifts with temporary language. Even the non-revelatory and non-miraculous gifts served their purpose “when no New Testament Scriptures were available on a widespread scale.” The implication is that they were no longer necessary after the “New Testament Scriptures were available on a widespread scale” (emphasis added). (Notice, though, that he says “many of the other gifts.” Does that mean that Pettegrew sees a fourth category of gifts that were not temporary? Perhaps. He seems to all but shut the door on that notion. What seems clear, though, is that more than just the first two categories (i.e., revelational and miraculous) were “only inaugural.” “Many of the other gifts” were, too.)
7. When he says, “We today have providential abilities, talents, or gifts that parallel the gifts of the New Testament era,” it seems to me that he is indicating that whatever “gifts” today are, they are precisely not the same as the NT gifts that they parallel, for a thing cannot parallel itself. The point is made clear when comparing his use of providential here in contrast with he repeated use of miraculous when discussing the bestowal of the NT gifts.

Based on these points, it seems reasonable to understand Pettegrew as strongly inclined to consider all of the NT gifts as being “intended for only the initial years of the new covenant program” and unnecessary after the completion of the NT Scriptures. At best Pettegrew seems opened but disinclined to the notion that some of the gifts have continued to the present, but that list of gifts is considerably smaller than what the vast majority of cessationists would hold to (see my point 6).

I was going to email Larry and ask him for a clarification, but I have been unable to run down his email address. But more than just wanting to know what Larry intended, I’d love to hear from others who have read his book or perhaps had a class with him where he addressed the gifts. Was this your take on his view of the gifts? I’m also curious to hear from those who don’t know anything about Pettegrew or his view of the gifts. Do you think my reading seems exegetically sound (exegesis in the sense of drawing out the meaning of the book, not the Book)?

Update: I heard from several individuals via email who said that my reading of Pettegrew is right on target. One individual gave me Pettegrew’s email address, so I sent him a quick note to get confirmation. He sent a kind response indicating that I had indeed understood him correctly and that he still holds this view. He credited Gene Getz of Dallas Theological Seminary as one who influenced him on this issue. Pettegrew made it clear in his email that he considers this a minor issue, since God still providentially gives gifts to the church today similar to some of the apostolic gifts.

I saw this video this morning and just have to pass it along.

Here’s a transcript of the short exchange:

John Roberts: US News & World Report this week commissioned a poll that surveyed a bunch of women in American asking what role you should take on with your wife as Secretary of State. Thirty-seven percent, the greatest number of women, said, “House husband.” We’re wondering what you think about that.

Bill Clinton: I—well, you know, it’s funny. I told her when she left that I—that I wish now that I was an ordinary citizen, because I wish I could go with her and be there when she comes home at night and do for her what she did for me when I was President. But it’s not in the cards. I’m—we’re doing the best we can to work through this and do the right thing.

John Roberts: Would you ever be comfortable being a house husband?

Bill Clinton: No. I have to go to work. I’m—I’m too much of a Calvinist. If I don’t work every day, I get nervous.

A few brief thoughts:

1. First, I wonder if “it’s not in the cards” and “I’m too much of a Calvinist” have ever been used so closely together before—or even by the same person!
2. Second, the question being discussed around the blogosphere is what Clinton meant by Calvinist in this statement. My theory is that he’s seen the attention that Driscoll has received lately (e.g., Nightline and CNN) and thought perhaps claiming the label Calvinist could help him become more popular, too! (BTW, I’m not being serious.)
3. Finally, I don’t think I’ve ever before been so tempted to consider becoming an Arminian. :)

HT: Aaron Sauer

Amazon is currently offering Guitar Sampler, a 20-track album of classical guitar music, for only $2.99—the price of just three individual tracks in the album. I downloaded it last night and have been really enjoying it. If you like classical guitar, you’ll most likely enjoy this album. You can listen to samples of all 20 tracks to find out.

HT: Steve McCoy via Aaron Sauer

The last two Sunday mornings at church I’ve seen some lengthy strings of genitives. Last week was 1 Timothy 6:14, and this week was James 2:1. I remembered seeing some even longer ones in the past, so I thought I’d do a quick search and see what I would come up with.

This was pretty easy to do with the OpenText.org Syntactically Analyzed Greek New Testament. I simply called for a genitive word and asked for it to be repeated x number of times. I refined the number to give me hits I was looking for. (Download the query if you want, and put it in your My Documents\Libronix DLS\SyntaxQueries folder.)

The award for longest string of genitives goes without contest to Luke, who in Luke 3:23–38 strings together a massive 153 genitives.

23 Καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν Ἰησοῦς ἀρχόμενος ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, ὢν υἱός, ὡς ἐνομίζετο, Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ Ἠλὶ 24 τοῦ Μαθθὰτ τοῦ Λευὶ τοῦ Μελχὶ τοῦ Ἰανναὶ τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ 25 τοῦ Ματταθίου τοῦ Ἀμὼς τοῦ Ναοὺμ τοῦ Ἑσλὶ τοῦ Ναγγαὶ 26 τοῦ Μάαθ τοῦ Ματταθίου τοῦ Σεμεῒν τοῦ Ἰωσὴχ τοῦ Ἰωδὰ 27 τοῦ Ἰωανὰν τοῦ Ῥησὰ τοῦ Ζοροβαβὲλ τοῦ Σαλαθιὴλ τοῦ Νηρὶ 28 τοῦ Μελχὶ τοῦ Ἀδδὶ τοῦ Κωσὰμ τοῦ Ἐλμαδὰμ τοῦ Ἢρ 29 τοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ Ἐλιέζερ τοῦ Ἰωρὶμ τοῦ Μαθθὰτ τοῦ Λευὶ 30 τοῦ Συμεὼν τοῦ Ἰούδα τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ Ἰωνὰμ τοῦ Ἐλιακὶμ 31 τοῦ Μελεὰ τοῦ Μεννὰ τοῦ Ματταθὰ τοῦ Ναθὰμ τοῦ Δαυὶδ 32 τοῦ Ἰεσσαὶ τοῦ Ἰωβὴδ τοῦ Βόος τοῦ Σαλὰ τοῦ Ναασσὼν 33 τοῦ Ἀμιναδὰβ τοῦ Ἀδμὶν τοῦ Ἀρνὶ τοῦ Ἑσρὼμ τοῦ Φάρες τοῦ Ἰούδα 34 τοῦ Ἰακὼβ τοῦ Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ τοῦ Θάρα τοῦ Ναχὼρ 35 τοῦ Σεροὺχ τοῦ Ῥαγαὺ τοῦ Φάλεκ τοῦ Ἔβερ τοῦ Σαλὰ 36 τοῦ Καϊνὰμ τοῦ Ἀρφαξὰδ τοῦ Σὴμ τοῦ Νῶε τοῦ Λάμεχ 37 τοῦ Μαθουσαλὰ τοῦ Ἑνὼχ τοῦ Ἰάρετ τοῦ Μαλελεὴλ τοῦ Καϊνὰμ 38 τοῦ Ἐνὼς τοῦ Σὴθ τοῦ Ἀδὰμ τοῦ θεοῦ.

Second place goes to John for his two 10-word genitive strings:

Revelation 8:13

Καὶ εἶδον, καὶ ἤκουσα ἑνὸς ἀετοῦ πετομένου ἐν μεσουρανήματι λέγοντος φωνῇ μεγάλῃ· οὐαὶ οὐαὶ οὐαὶ τοὺς κατοικοῦντας ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐκ τῶν λοιπῶν φωνῶν τῆς σάλπιγγος τῶν τριῶν ἀγγέλων τῶν μελλόντων σαλπίζειν.

Revelation 19:15

καὶ ἐκ τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ ἐκπορεύεται ῥομφαία ὀξεῖα, ἵνα ἐν αὐτῇ πατάξῃ τὰ ἔθνη, καὶ αὐτὸς ποιμανεῖ αὐτοὺς ἐν ῥάβδῳ σιδηρᾷ, καὶ αὐτὸς πατεῖ τὴν ληνὸν τοῦ οἴνου τοῦ θυμοῦ τῆς ὀργῆς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ παντοκράτορος

Third place is a three-way tie between Luke, Paul, and John with these nine-word genitive strings.

Luke 3:1 (a total of 26 genitives in the verse)

Ἐν ἔτει δὲ πεντεκαιδεκάτῳ τῆς ἡγεμονίας Τιβερίου Καίσαρος, ἡγεμονεύοντος Ποντίου Πιλάτου τῆς Ἰουδαίας, καὶ τετρααρχοῦντος τῆς Γαλιλαίας Ἡρῴδου, Φιλίππου δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ τετρααρχοῦντος τῆς Ἰτουραίας καὶ Τραχωνίτιδος χώρας, καὶ Λυσανίου τῆς Ἀβιληνῆς τετρααρχοῦντος,

1 Thessalonians 1:3 (a total of 22 genitives in the verse)

μνημονεύοντες ὑμῶν τοῦ ἔργου τῆς πίστεως καὶ τοῦ κόπου τῆς ἀγάπης καὶ τῆς ὑπομονῆς τῆς ἐλπίδος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ἡμῶν,

Revelation 14:10

καὶ αὐτὸς πίεται ἐκ τοῦ οἴνου τοῦ θυμοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ κεκερασμένου ἀκράτου ἐν τῷ ποτηρίῳ τῆς ὀργῆς αὐτοῦ καὶ βασανισθήσεται ἐν πυρὶ καὶ θείῳ ἐνώπιον ἀγγέλων ἁγίων καὶ ἐνώπιον τοῦ ἀρνίου.

There are seven eight-word genitive strings: Acts 12:12, 1 Cor 1:9; Col 2:12; 2 Tim 1:10; Rev 3:12; 9:13; 16:14; and another 22 seven-word genitive strings: Mat 1:1; Acts 4:30; 12:11; 15:26; Rom 1:4; 1 Cor 1:10; 2:6; Eph 2:2; Phil 3:8; 1 Thess 5:9–10; 2 Thes 2:1; 1 Tim 6:14; Heb 11:9; Jas 2:1; 2 Pet 3:2; Jude 17; Rev 12:17; 14:8; 16:19; 18:3; 21:9; 22:19.

That’s as far as I’m going to go, since the numbers are starting to increase rapidly. :)

It’s noteworthy that Revelation wins for the highest number of large genitive strings with 12. Oddly enough, though, John’s Gospel and letters don’t have a single genitive string with seven or more consecutive genitives. (If we take the number down to six, two turn up: John 5:25 and 2 John 3.)

Some of these strings pose some real challenges to unpack, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

Surely someone has already analyzed patterns in long genitive strings like these. Anyone know of any significant work on the subject?

Though most people don’t know (or care when told), the correct character to use for a range of numbers is the en dash (–), not the hyphen (-). Even if you’re committed to using en dashes between digits, hyphens are a tad easier to type,^[1] making a find and replace necessary at some point. If you’re diligent and use the en dash faithfully, you will undoubtedly get a rogue hyphen in there somewhere if you do any copying and pasting from the internet or other documents that don’t consistently use the correct character.

A simple find and replace (- for –) would do the trick—if you wanted to replace all hyphens with en dashes. But you don’t want to do this, since hyphens in hyphenated words are correct. :) Alternatively, you could run that query but, instead of replacing them all at once, replace one at a time only the ones that appear between digits. But this could be time consuming on a large document like a dissertation. Another option would be to set up a query to find 0-0 and replace it with 0–0, then 0-1 with 0–1 and so forth, but that would require 100 different searches and probably take longer than the previous method! The previous method could probably be simplified by dropping the second digit since there aren’t likely to be any instances when you’d have a digit followed by a hyphen not followed by another digit. That would make only 10 find-and-replace queries. So this is as least doable, though still not ideal.

Fortunately, there is a better solution than any of these.

What we want to do is find any single digit followed by a hyphen followed by another single digit and replace the hyphen with an en dash, leaving the digits unchanged. I tried to use the special digit character, ^#, and came up with a query like find ^#-^# and replace it with ^#–^#, but this didn’t work because ^# is not valid in the replace field.

I knew there had to be a way to do it, but I couldn’t figure it out. So I went to Google and found my answer in just a minute or two.

Here’s what you do:

1. In the “Find what” field, enter ([0-9])-([0-9]).
2. In the “Replace with” field, enter \1–\2 (note that that’s an en dash, not a hyphen).
3. Check the box “Use wildcards.”
4. Click “Replace All.”

That’s it. Much easier than any of the other methods. See the article for more details and an explanation of the search syntax.

Footnotes

1. To type an en dash in Word, you can either use the default key combination Ctrl + – (the one on the keypad) or create your own shortcut. My shortcut is Ctrl + – (the one on the main part of the keyboard).

A new Gallup Poll evaluates states according to their religiousness.

Want to be almost certain you’ll have religious neighbors? Move to Mississippi. Prefer to be in the least religious state? Venture to Vermont.

A new Gallup Poll, based on more than 350,000 interviews, finds that the Magnolia State is the one where the most people — 85% — say yes when asked “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”

Less than half of Vermonters, meanwhile — 42% — answered that same question in the affirmative.

. . .

Overall, Gallup researchers found that 65% of all Americans said religion was important in their daily lives.

The top six most religious states were

1. Mississippi (85%)
2. Alabama (82%)
3. South Carolina (80%) [We used to live here.]
4. Tennessee (79%)
5. Louisiana (78%)
6. Arkansas (78%)

The top six least religious states were

1. Vermont (42%)
2. New Hampshire (46%)
3. Maine (48%)
4. Massachusetts (48%)
5. Alaska (51%)
6. Washington (52%) [Now we live here.]

USA Today has the details. The complete list of all 50 states is in the left sidebar.

HT: Cory Miller

A blog post at the City Room Blog at NYTimes.com has received some attention this week. In “Is That an Emoticon in 1862?” the author explores whether a ;) in a transcript of a Lincoln speech is an emoticon or a typo. Some are convinced that this is the earliest example of an emoticon. Most seem to think it’s simply a typo in the form of accidental transposition (e.g., see the comments here and here).

Here’s an image of the text under discussion:

It reads,

the front of the platform and spoke as follows :

THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH.

Fellow-Citizens : I believe there is no precedent for
my appearing before you on this occasion, [applause]
but it is also true that there is no precedent for your
being here yourselves, (applause and laughter ;) and
I offer, in justification of myself and of you, that,
upon examination, I have found nothing in the Con-
stitution against. [Renewed applause.] I, however,
have an impression that there are younger gentlemen

Looks like an emoticon, huh? ;)^[1]

However, as anyone familiar with the King James Version (or the American Standard Version) would realize, it’s actually neither an early example of an emoticon or a typo of any sort. It was perfectly suitable as little as 100 years go to include semicolons, colons, and commas at the end of parenthetical items inside the closing parenthesis.

Take this example from Ephesians 2:4–10 KJV:

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

The editors of this edition of the KJV were not joking about salvation being by grace.

This is hardly an isolated instance. The KJV has 54 occurrences of ;)^[2] and 39 occurrences of :)^[3].

Likewise, the ASV has 18 occurrences of ;)^[4] and 3 occurrences of :)^[5].

You’ll also find numerous instances of a comma before a closing parenthesis. For more examples of all three, see the Darby Bible.

So putting punctuation marks like semicolons, colons, and commas within parentheses at the end of the parenthetical text was quite common a century ago. When that fell out of practice, I’m not sure. What’s clear is that it is ludicrous to consider this an emoticon or a typo.

HT: Tommy Keene

Footnotes

1. Two pieces of evidence that the author of the blog post tries to use in favor of the emoticon view are (1) the switch from brackets to parentheses and (2) the space before the semicolon. Both are easily refuted. (1) There are other scattered uses of parentheses in the complete transcript of the speech, so this is not an isolated instance in an attempt to make a smiley face. (2) It was common to put a half space before colons and semicolons in that time period, as an analysis of the complete transcript and other literature from the time readily demonstrates.
2. Gen 14:8; Lev 18:27; Num 14:13; 31:46; Deut 2:29; 3:9; 4:31; 5:5; 21:23; Judg 9:18; 1 Sam 22:6; 1 Kings 8:14, 39, 41, 42; 12:2; 2 Kings 22:14; 1 Chr 7:15; 18:10; 26:10; Neh 6:1; 8:5; 9:29; Esth 1:14; 2:12; 9:1; Job 30:5; 31:18; 32:16; Jer 29:2; Eze 16:23; Mark 5:13; 15:41; Luke 2:23; 23:51; John 2:9; 7:22; Rom 2:15; 9:11; 11:8; 2 Cor 9:10; 10:4; 12:2, 3; Gal 1:1; Eph 2:5; 5:9; 6:2; Col 2:22; 4:10; 1 Tim 2:7; Heb 10:23; 2 Pet 2:8; 1 John 1:2.
3. Gen 49:24; Ex 23:15; 30:13; 32:25; Lev 24:11; Num 3:47; 34:2; Deut 29:17; Judg 1:10; 2 Sam 14:26; 1 Kings 11:16; 11:29; 2 Kings 7:13; 5:4; 1 Chr 5:2; 6:10; 2 Chr 5:12; 6:30; 34:22; Esth 1:1; Job 8:9; Ps 7:4; 49:7; Eccl 8:16; Jer 42:2; 52:7; Matt 6:31; 24:15; Mark 6:14; Luke 2:4; John 6:23; Acts 10:36; 18:2; Rom 10:6; 2 Cor 5:7; Gal 2:6; Heb 7:21; 11:38; 12:21.
4. Ex 30:13; Deut 3:9; 5:5; 15:4; 1 Kings 8:39; 1 Chr 18:10; 2 Chr 5:12; 6:13, 21; 34:22; Nehemiah 6:1; 8:5; Ps 7:4; 49:7; Jer 52:7; Ezek 5:15; 45:14; 47:1.
5. Ex 4:4; 1 Chr 5:2; Rom 10:6.

I stumbled across a helpful article on plagiarism that I thought I’d share in light of my previous post highlighting an egregious example of plagiarism. It’s written by the folks at Desiring God. I commend it to you.

The only issue I have with the article is that it is potentially misleading on what it means to paraphrase. Here’s the second of three items they list that entail plagiarism:

Paraphrasing another’s words without acknowledging the author whose words you are restating. In other words, if you do not quote the person verbatim but instead just change a few words and do not give credit, you have committed plagiarism.

The problem is that “paraphrasing another’s words” is not the same as “just chang[ing] a few words,” as the above statement seems to imply. (Perhaps the authors didn’t intend to imply that, but why introduce the concept of “chang[ing] a few words” unless as a means of explicating paraphrasing in the previous clause?) If all you do is change a few words, even if you have given credit to the author, you have still plagiarized. Paraphrasing involves using different words and syntax so that the mode of expression is clearly yours, though the thought is still clearly the author’s.

The reason that “just chang[ing] a few words” is and should be considered plagiarism, even when the source is cited, is that by accepted practice paraphrasing gives the author credit only for the idea, not for the mode of expression. (Quoting gives the author credit for both the idea and the mode of expression.) So your readers will think that you were the clever one to come up with the particular way of saying it, even though in reality both the idea and the expression of it belong to the author.

That minor quibble aside, it’s well worth reading.