I believe it is a good time to celebrate the visiting of this blog 40,000 times plus. When I began this effort, I received a lot of help from a pastor friend, Jeremiah Fyffe. He allowed me to learn what Google and other search engines are looking for, so that my blog would not get lost in the search.
I am extremely grateful to him, because this blog has continued to be at or near the very top of the search engines entries, when people enter the words "definition of holy". I want to also celebrate the fact that this now means that 40,000 times people have taken time out of their day to read my humble thoughts. I feel very fortunate to see this even further benefit from one fellow pastor's sage comments.
I also want to re-commit myself to continuing to writing much more and producing better quality entries to read. I know on one level that I am getting better, but I do wish I had more time to add diagrams and pictures to make my entries even clearer and more interesting.
A big "thank you" goes out to Jeremiah (and other helpers) and to all who have spent part of the their life reading what I have to say. Your time is precious, so hope you feel you have spent your time wisely.
In Christ,
Jon
P. S. I want you to know that the definition of holy that I propose is that it is "moral wholeness", but check out my other entries for what I do with "set apart" and "pure". You might find my treatment to be a new insight for you and very viable in terms of solid scholarship. Thank you again.
Showing posts with label scholarship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scholarship. Show all posts
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Holy: Understanding it Better Through Digging (like an archaeologist)
It is unbelievable some days what I discover through digging through old books rather than old rocks. I consider what I am doing a little like digging through the layers that archaeologists dig through and indicate in their photos. Today, I found another incredible discovery. It is a book by John August Henry Tittmann. Its title is: Remarks on the Synonyms of the New Testament.
It is an older book, but I am not ashamed to say that I like digging through the old as well as the new. What I have found is that many things obvious to previous generations have been lost due to a simple bias against the old. In this case of trying to discern the meaning of holy, it is a bias against older scholarship. I think instead what scholars, students, and pastors should do instead, is dig through the older layers and recognize all the layers in the process, not just the top soil of our present time. John A. L. Lee's work on lexicography shows how danger it can be to operate without a knowledge of layers and a blind trust in authority rather than trust and verify.
Here is a link to what this older scholar, Tittmann, has to say, so you can dig for yourself a bit: http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23329406M/Remarks_on_the_synonyms_of_the_New_Testament. Check out especially pages 35-46. And also if you really want to get right to the heart of what holy means, you can examine pages 45-46 for his summary.
If I may summarize what he says here, he says: "hagios (Greek) is that which, on account of integrity of mind and morals, is sacred to God and revered." What is most interesting to me in my investigations is his use of "integrity ... of morals". This would fit very well with the idea of "moral wholeness". But perhaps what is more valuable is that he also places purity and being set apart alongside of his "integrity of morals". He says that "ieros" (Greek) has a connection with the idea of "consecrated to, or set apart for God". He also adds that katharis (Greek) is connected to the idea of "pure" as would also "agnos" (Greek).
If you read what he says carefully, then you can see its parallelism with the proposal (by Andrew Murray many years later), that there are other possible words for being set apart rather than the words qadosh (Hebrew) or hagios (Greek). This proposal is worth considering and I must give credit to Richard Trench for his volume on synonyms for alerting me to this once renowned scholar. Its it too bad that often awareness gets buried by generations and time? I rejoice in another discovery and another opportunity to make people aware and bring knowledge to a sometimes darkened world. Digging has its rewards!
In Christ,
Jon
It is an older book, but I am not ashamed to say that I like digging through the old as well as the new. What I have found is that many things obvious to previous generations have been lost due to a simple bias against the old. In this case of trying to discern the meaning of holy, it is a bias against older scholarship. I think instead what scholars, students, and pastors should do instead, is dig through the older layers and recognize all the layers in the process, not just the top soil of our present time. John A. L. Lee's work on lexicography shows how danger it can be to operate without a knowledge of layers and a blind trust in authority rather than trust and verify.
Here is a link to what this older scholar, Tittmann, has to say, so you can dig for yourself a bit: http://openlibrary.org/books/OL23329406M/Remarks_on_the_synonyms_of_the_New_Testament. Check out especially pages 35-46. And also if you really want to get right to the heart of what holy means, you can examine pages 45-46 for his summary.
If I may summarize what he says here, he says: "hagios (Greek) is that which, on account of integrity of mind and morals, is sacred to God and revered." What is most interesting to me in my investigations is his use of "integrity ... of morals". This would fit very well with the idea of "moral wholeness". But perhaps what is more valuable is that he also places purity and being set apart alongside of his "integrity of morals". He says that "ieros" (Greek) has a connection with the idea of "consecrated to, or set apart for God". He also adds that katharis (Greek) is connected to the idea of "pure" as would also "agnos" (Greek).
If you read what he says carefully, then you can see its parallelism with the proposal (by Andrew Murray many years later), that there are other possible words for being set apart rather than the words qadosh (Hebrew) or hagios (Greek). This proposal is worth considering and I must give credit to Richard Trench for his volume on synonyms for alerting me to this once renowned scholar. Its it too bad that often awareness gets buried by generations and time? I rejoice in another discovery and another opportunity to make people aware and bring knowledge to a sometimes darkened world. Digging has its rewards!
In Christ,
Jon
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Holy: Understanding Better the Value of Education
In Peter F. Drucker's (arguably the best management writer of the 20th entury) writings, you may find that one of his predictions for the future, based on what is already a known fact (a change) and then also what is the pattern of past history (how long it takes before the change takes effect or people recognize it as valid) is that "we are clearly in the middle of this transformation (from the Knowledge Age), indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 to 2020". I find this quote telling, because it shows that though a shift may be present, it may take a long time in coming. That is important, because we then cannot be simply satisfied with the current majority view in a controversy or in the face of uncertainty. We must dig deeper into issues to see if the only issue is that the time has not yet arrived in human understanding for what is already acknowledged by others including a minority.
Drucker was referring to the transformation in society that is coming from the G.I. Bill which resulted in a national shift in the level of education beginning with the WWII generation who returned from war and then enrolled in higher education at previously unknown levels. He seems to think that the effect of this education combined with other lesser events of the time set up the time of transformation or change to begin around 1960.
I am writing about this, because it is also interesting that in the scholarship of determing the meaning of holy, there were also four major names who made major statements about biblical understanding during the '60s. This might be only coincidence or it could be that the increase in education began a slow movement toward us discovering things that had previously been lost.
First, there was the biblical scholar, James Barr, who created a major change in biblical exegesis that still has not ceased in its effect. He introduced biblical scholarship to modern linguistics and its insights into language. He especially took aim at some exegetical fallicies committed in biblical scholarship. This is hard for some of the more traditional minds to accept. Its culmination is still in front of us and part of the reason for the delay in time might also be due to some of Barr's own excesses.
Second, there was a very important anthropologist, Mary Douglas, who tried to better understand biblical laws when it came to things like dietary laws. She expressed the idea that the laws must somehow be explained better than it had been previously. She suggested that the underlying concept could be that of being whole as opposed to somehow having a blemish or a shortcoming. In her initial idea, the idea was that certain animals were less than whole according to a comparison with the animals considered kosher. She then suggested that holy might mean whole also based on the whole stones used for an altar. Many biblical scholars will admit, if they are honest, that any writing on Leviticus must now at least take into consideration her view. Jacob Milgrom, who wrote a major commentary on Leviticus, for one interacted with her though he never seems to quite accept her view entirely. Yet he understood well Mary's challenge to take these ancient laws seriously and not just write them off as primitive in the same way older schools of anthropology and archaeology tended to do.
Third, there was a systematic theologian, R. A. Finlayson, who seems to have discovered in Andrew Murray that the so-called conservatives of the 1960s were in fact not conservative or fundamentalist theologians. Rather they were the innovators when it came to the meaning of holy, based on the writings of Andrew Murray. Murray wrote during the changes occuring both in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s. Murray had compiled in his volume Holy in Christ, a very simple history of interpreting holy's meaning up until his own day and pointed out that our popular defintion of holy as separate did not fit with the views of theologians like Jonathan Edwards. R. A. Finlayson tried to also ground Edwards' and Murray's position in his discussions of the holy's Hebrew etymology. For a while his ideas caught on in scholarly literature like biblical dictionaries, but then later faded.
Fourth, a pastor on the West Coast and living in California, recognized that our English word holy, as used by the older translators, had the idea of wholeness behind it when it was selected as the word best qualified to translate the Hebrew word qadosh. He may have relied on some of the popular etymological insights into English, using an older volume by Sweate. Whatever he did, he without hesitation made this known to his flock. As a pastor, he thought that the word holy had been turned into a negative term from the beautiful term it was according to biblical writers. His commentary on Leviticus, The Way of Wholeness, points out in its title the meaning of holy as whole.
Each of these people were making an impact in the 60s. The most problematic impact is that of Barr, because his view in some people's minds dismisses the meaning of holy as whole, simply because he said so himself, but also because etymology is a tool that must be used with utmost care and he was not sure it was used carefully in the case of defining holy. Here he seems to differ with the other three. Yet this is where my own work takes off. I am trying to take a hard look at the meaning of holy through his insights primarily. That may mean learning from his cautions while disagreeing with some of his conclusions. That might in part in explain the slowness in gaining insight from his ideas. He was after all a little hyper-critical at times.
Let me summarize the gains from each of these four people. From Barr and semantics and linguists, we can learn to be more careful with the method of etymology. From Douglas, we can learn to be more careful in judging the past as primitive or nonsensical, instead it is our job to make sense in their terms. From Finlayson, we can learn to not judge a book by its cover. Just saying you are a conservative, does not make you a conservative (or a fundamentalist). From Stedman, we can learn that preacher have a responsibility to preach or herald a concept, even while others might be scornful of the idea. Some may have scorned his idea (including Barr!), but that does not mean he was not correct at the level he was operating at as a pastor (and as a mentor to Chuck Swindoll) in talking to the masses who entered his door. Remember many of us never learned of the remotest possibility that holy in the Bible could mean whole (I learned it in my forties). Isn't that a sad thing, not to at least be aware of the option? Didn't Stedman do people a great favor by at least giving them another option to look for in the biblical text? Didn't he in fact enrich their lives more? Isn't it sad that in many places there was only one option to chose from because the other was an unknown due to higher than mighty attitude?
So we are now left in the wake of a coming transformation with the task of sorting out this legacy that we have been handed from the 1960s. I wish I had more time to write about this on-line, but the need for making a living will not allow it. But given the time the bigger question is this: "Will we benefit from the efforts of these people or will we in stubborn resistance to the past squander a wonderful opportunity?"
That is yet to be answered. But somewhere in the world, I expect Drucker's words may prove prophetic though he never claimed to be a prophet. He just looked at what had already changed and then looked to past history to see how long it took for an idea to become a transformation.
I personally did not directly benefit from the G.I Bill. I'm not part of that generation. But I have stuck with the huge investment in education as a way to move forward in our own time through fresh discoveries (including that of the past). I have learned a great deal from my studies at the university level, the graduate school level and now at the post-graduate level. They have all taught me things I did not know existed before.
So look out, you might be surprised or excited during the decade we are in and following. And the meaning of holy may turn out to be the key to all of it. Please feel free to respond to any of my posts. I try to be generous in publishing them. I have only one that I still need to understand before I publish it. I want more than anything for my blog to be more of a dialogue and less of a monologue. Take care.
Sincerely,
Jon.
Drucker was referring to the transformation in society that is coming from the G.I. Bill which resulted in a national shift in the level of education beginning with the WWII generation who returned from war and then enrolled in higher education at previously unknown levels. He seems to think that the effect of this education combined with other lesser events of the time set up the time of transformation or change to begin around 1960.
I am writing about this, because it is also interesting that in the scholarship of determing the meaning of holy, there were also four major names who made major statements about biblical understanding during the '60s. This might be only coincidence or it could be that the increase in education began a slow movement toward us discovering things that had previously been lost.
First, there was the biblical scholar, James Barr, who created a major change in biblical exegesis that still has not ceased in its effect. He introduced biblical scholarship to modern linguistics and its insights into language. He especially took aim at some exegetical fallicies committed in biblical scholarship. This is hard for some of the more traditional minds to accept. Its culmination is still in front of us and part of the reason for the delay in time might also be due to some of Barr's own excesses.
Second, there was a very important anthropologist, Mary Douglas, who tried to better understand biblical laws when it came to things like dietary laws. She expressed the idea that the laws must somehow be explained better than it had been previously. She suggested that the underlying concept could be that of being whole as opposed to somehow having a blemish or a shortcoming. In her initial idea, the idea was that certain animals were less than whole according to a comparison with the animals considered kosher. She then suggested that holy might mean whole also based on the whole stones used for an altar. Many biblical scholars will admit, if they are honest, that any writing on Leviticus must now at least take into consideration her view. Jacob Milgrom, who wrote a major commentary on Leviticus, for one interacted with her though he never seems to quite accept her view entirely. Yet he understood well Mary's challenge to take these ancient laws seriously and not just write them off as primitive in the same way older schools of anthropology and archaeology tended to do.
Third, there was a systematic theologian, R. A. Finlayson, who seems to have discovered in Andrew Murray that the so-called conservatives of the 1960s were in fact not conservative or fundamentalist theologians. Rather they were the innovators when it came to the meaning of holy, based on the writings of Andrew Murray. Murray wrote during the changes occuring both in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s. Murray had compiled in his volume Holy in Christ, a very simple history of interpreting holy's meaning up until his own day and pointed out that our popular defintion of holy as separate did not fit with the views of theologians like Jonathan Edwards. R. A. Finlayson tried to also ground Edwards' and Murray's position in his discussions of the holy's Hebrew etymology. For a while his ideas caught on in scholarly literature like biblical dictionaries, but then later faded.
Fourth, a pastor on the West Coast and living in California, recognized that our English word holy, as used by the older translators, had the idea of wholeness behind it when it was selected as the word best qualified to translate the Hebrew word qadosh. He may have relied on some of the popular etymological insights into English, using an older volume by Sweate. Whatever he did, he without hesitation made this known to his flock. As a pastor, he thought that the word holy had been turned into a negative term from the beautiful term it was according to biblical writers. His commentary on Leviticus, The Way of Wholeness, points out in its title the meaning of holy as whole.
Each of these people were making an impact in the 60s. The most problematic impact is that of Barr, because his view in some people's minds dismisses the meaning of holy as whole, simply because he said so himself, but also because etymology is a tool that must be used with utmost care and he was not sure it was used carefully in the case of defining holy. Here he seems to differ with the other three. Yet this is where my own work takes off. I am trying to take a hard look at the meaning of holy through his insights primarily. That may mean learning from his cautions while disagreeing with some of his conclusions. That might in part in explain the slowness in gaining insight from his ideas. He was after all a little hyper-critical at times.
Let me summarize the gains from each of these four people. From Barr and semantics and linguists, we can learn to be more careful with the method of etymology. From Douglas, we can learn to be more careful in judging the past as primitive or nonsensical, instead it is our job to make sense in their terms. From Finlayson, we can learn to not judge a book by its cover. Just saying you are a conservative, does not make you a conservative (or a fundamentalist). From Stedman, we can learn that preacher have a responsibility to preach or herald a concept, even while others might be scornful of the idea. Some may have scorned his idea (including Barr!), but that does not mean he was not correct at the level he was operating at as a pastor (and as a mentor to Chuck Swindoll) in talking to the masses who entered his door. Remember many of us never learned of the remotest possibility that holy in the Bible could mean whole (I learned it in my forties). Isn't that a sad thing, not to at least be aware of the option? Didn't Stedman do people a great favor by at least giving them another option to look for in the biblical text? Didn't he in fact enrich their lives more? Isn't it sad that in many places there was only one option to chose from because the other was an unknown due to higher than mighty attitude?
So we are now left in the wake of a coming transformation with the task of sorting out this legacy that we have been handed from the 1960s. I wish I had more time to write about this on-line, but the need for making a living will not allow it. But given the time the bigger question is this: "Will we benefit from the efforts of these people or will we in stubborn resistance to the past squander a wonderful opportunity?"
That is yet to be answered. But somewhere in the world, I expect Drucker's words may prove prophetic though he never claimed to be a prophet. He just looked at what had already changed and then looked to past history to see how long it took for an idea to become a transformation.
I personally did not directly benefit from the G.I Bill. I'm not part of that generation. But I have stuck with the huge investment in education as a way to move forward in our own time through fresh discoveries (including that of the past). I have learned a great deal from my studies at the university level, the graduate school level and now at the post-graduate level. They have all taught me things I did not know existed before.
So look out, you might be surprised or excited during the decade we are in and following. And the meaning of holy may turn out to be the key to all of it. Please feel free to respond to any of my posts. I try to be generous in publishing them. I have only one that I still need to understand before I publish it. I want more than anything for my blog to be more of a dialogue and less of a monologue. Take care.
Sincerely,
Jon.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Holy: Understanding it Better According to Roles
I have been asked two important questions about my work on the definition of holy among others: 1) Who is your audience? and 2) What is your level of authority or initiative in writing on this topic? (The latter question is often more implied than stated due to my level of education which is not on the level of a Ph.D. or what is described as the terminal (final) degree.) Let me answer the first one with "everyone". Let me answer the second question with the response that "I know my limits or level or degree". Now I will explain them in the same order.
First, then is the issue of audience. Usually when this question is asked, it is asked with 3 possible alternatives: 1) scholars, 2) pastors, and 3) laypeople (laity). The first is seen as the highest and the third as lowest in terms of having an understanding of written materials through education on the meaning of holy. There is, I think, an important misunderstanding in the alternatives offered. These alternatives see the whole process of becoming a disciple along one only one directional, while I see it as having two directionals.
In the diagram above (if it is too small just left click on it for a larger scale), you can see my view in picture form. It is drawn mainly from the deep and refreshing well of one of my professors at Bethel University (then College), Dr. Donald N. Larson. He was an important pioneer in trying to develop language schools that would recognize the understanding of languages (and other topics as well) as having two distinct directionals. He was involved with the Toronto Institute of Linguistics and with other language institutes including one in the Phillipines. I was very pleased recently to learn that his view and Dr. Wiliiam A. Smalley's view on learning a second language is still being used in a French language learning school for missionaries that is found in France. Their view was made practical through the Language Acquistion Made Practical (LAMP) text and method of Brewster and Brewster.
These two directionals are significant, because of what Larson and Smalley learned from the study of the success of language teaching programs for missionaries to foreign lands. Those studies of success point to the primacy of the vertical knower-learner directional over the horizontal teacher-studier (student) directional. This should make sense to all of us, who have had the opportunity to learn a language from our parents, because in most cases they lacked the formal training for being a teacher. They were often skilled knowers, who filled our learning minds and mouths with sensible speech. On the flipside, I can also point to the failure of a teacher-studier directional in junior high. Our teacher, who taught our class of students French skillfully, failed when she got to France in trying to speak French as the knowers of French do. What a disappointment this was for her as she expressed in class!
Now at this point, I need to make a corrective, so that you and I don't run around proclaiming that people only need the knower-learner directional to become a disciple. No, and again I say no. Dr. Larson believed that the ideal (and the most successful) is both directionals together. Being a learner-knower and a studier-teacher is better than only knower-learner, even if that is better than only teacher-studier. In fact, I would take it a step further and say that both are necessary, if we want to declare ourselves to be disciples. A real disciple is both a learner and a studier (student). I will end this discussion here to move on to the next question, but also I could say a lot more on this point to clarify it more and to answer questions you might have. If you do, feel free to post a question to me below.
Now from this understanding, lets talk about my intended audience. These two directionals is part of my reason for why I think my writing goes beyond being classified as narrowly as only for the scholar and the pastor and that it leaves out the layperson. Sometimes I am speaking directly to what the layperson has learned beautifully. They are after all, are still disciples and while they may not have reached a terminal degree as a studier and teacher, they certainly can be very advanced as knowers. Sometimes too I have also met great studiers among laypeople, who have relied on the books of teachers and who have been able to build on the teaching principles that they received in their younger years. The beauty of all of this self-study is mainly seen in the results of their work and the keen insights they deliver.
So while each entry can't be for "everybody" everytime, it does mean that among these entries are entries for many classes of people. It is also true that I am not trying to make this blog into the writing of a dissertation for seminary, though that is something I am working on for my teachers. Here I leave out the terminology, but that does not mean I don't know the terminology. It is just that I am aiming for a wider audience.
Scholars though can certainly fire off questions to me and I can try to answer them to the best of my educational ability in their terms! While I was at Fuller Seminary I learned this difference from experience. I wrote what I thought was a very good paper for a class, but I received only a "C". I didn't understand, so I sat down the the Teaching Assistant for the class. He told me that I hadn't used the professors terminology frequently enough to show I had grasped the material. I went back to my dorm and re-wrote the whole thing, doing just one thing. I practiced inserting the professor's terminology where it belonged and I got an "A". So to this day I possess two versions of the paper. This blog is more like the "C" kind, though I can quickly edit it to be an "A" paper, if called upon. The real proof will be in my paper that I am writing for my S.T.M. on my way toward a Ph.D.
[major break for the second question]
Second then is who can a person trust. Let me start out by saying that one of the best indications is in the quality of recognizing one's limitations. But there is even more than that to tell us who is trustworthy.
Trust is built on being trustworthy and I would summarize the way of building trust, and its close cousin of influence, as being by 4 processes: 1)ethical intelligence , 2)relational intelligence, 3)wisdom intelligence and 4)logical intelligence. It takes character and competence to build trust.
Purpose: That everyone knows what I am recommending to them as a course of action on the meaning of holy in the Bible.
If you are a leader, I recommend
that
If you are a missionary of any kind,
I recommend that
If you are a pastor, I recommend
that
If you are a preacher, I recommend
that
If you are a teacher, I recommend
that
If you are a board member, I
recommend that
If you are a layperson, I recommend that
Conclusion: That my audience is
diverse and so I have different recommendations (not declarations) for each of them as described
in this blog entry. Also certain blog entries will make more sense to different members of my audience.
[I have thrown out my original plan and this is my outline for a new course for this entry. Please stop back to see its completion. ]
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Holy: Understanding it Better through Andrew Murray's Holy in Christ
Andrew Murray's great volume, Holy in Christ, is now available on-line and I thought it would be helpful to make this easily accessible to my readers. It may be that it has been accessible for some time already. You can find it on biblos or better yet by clicking on the following link: http://christianbookshelf.org/murray/holy_in_christ/index.html.
The best part is that the on-line version includes Murray's notes from the back of his volume on the meaning of holy. He gives some wonderful insight on the scholarship for the meaning of holy at his own time of the late 1800s (and early 1900s). He also points out the meaning of holy used by people like Jonathan Edwards. Part of my work will be to dig up some of the work of these older scholars that he mentions and to make their commments easily accessible on the internet.
The other thing is that Holy in Christ is often difficult to find, since some publishers elect to use a different title. I hope you will do some of your own digging now that it is more easily accessible.
The digging might include digging into the scholarship he mentions, because the works of these people are also becoming more accessible through the internet, the far reaching services of public libraries, and through publishers who care to preserve books of the past. Google Books also allows you to download some of the older sources as a free E-book. The only downside is that some of them are incomplete at this point.
Enjoy your hunting! I hope you will discover both new things and old things.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
The best part is that the on-line version includes Murray's notes from the back of his volume on the meaning of holy. He gives some wonderful insight on the scholarship for the meaning of holy at his own time of the late 1800s (and early 1900s). He also points out the meaning of holy used by people like Jonathan Edwards. Part of my work will be to dig up some of the work of these older scholars that he mentions and to make their commments easily accessible on the internet.
The other thing is that Holy in Christ is often difficult to find, since some publishers elect to use a different title. I hope you will do some of your own digging now that it is more easily accessible.
The digging might include digging into the scholarship he mentions, because the works of these people are also becoming more accessible through the internet, the far reaching services of public libraries, and through publishers who care to preserve books of the past. Google Books also allows you to download some of the older sources as a free E-book. The only downside is that some of them are incomplete at this point.
Enjoy your hunting! I hope you will discover both new things and old things.
In Christ,
Pastor Jon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
