At the beginning of the year, I set myself a number of goals related to my writing. One of which was to write something I was pleased enough with to link to it on my blog. I think I may have just done that wholly by accident. If you haven't yet finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, look away! This is a short scene that follows immediately from the main action of the book, before the epilogue. It's not something I would ever have chosen to write about but I lost a bet on the identity of one of the horcruxes and this was the payment. I didn't enjoy writing this at all but I'm pleased that I did and I'm pleased with the result. I'd love to know what you think!

Picking up the Pieces

For ages I've been wanting to make a Noni bag. I adore their bobble bag and all the flower bags. Yesterday I finally went and bought this wool

in my current favourite colour combination and started knitting that fabulous spider chrysanthemum which will hopefully end up looking like this.

Happy day!

Sudden upsurge of interest in my blog - yesterday I had almost 1000 hits (my usual average is a couple of hundred). Now I feel obliged to start posting interesting, erudite comments so that everyone is impressed. Watch out for a fascinating entry on the Deissmann-Turner debate regarding the Greek of the NT - it's a thriller! And maybe we'll have to have the Indiana Jones-esque story of the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus. Yes, I'm making some progress with the NT reading course language and textual criticism sections. But right now I'm finalising lesson plans for NT 010 Greek a that starts on Monday.

Maybe this time I'll actually learn the alphabet in the right order. I have a sampler somewhere that has both Greek and Hebrew alphabets, sewn from memory, both with errors in them. Pathetic. But it'll make for some interesting textual criticism in a couple of thousand years time, don't you think?

So, J. K. Rowling has written seven increasingly long novels, plus two short supplements, describing in considerable detail Harry Potter's life, world, history, family and friends. Bizarrely, there are people who are unsatisfied with this, who are even now, less than a week after the publication of a 600-page book, demanding to know what happened next, begging for further explanation of plots and characters, and harassing her to pen a 'Potterpedia' which, in order to satisfy some of these vultures will need to be the size of the Internet.

The rest of this post contains some spoilers for DH (though nothing that JKR didn't say in her public interviews yesterday)

Read more!

Thanks to Iulia who left me a link to this site featuring the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins set to music. I've listened to a couple of the samples and I think these may be good, though to my mind Hopkins' poems have a rich enough sound not to need the additional music.

Last week at church we had a setting of 'Love (III)' by George Herbert, by I think Vaughan Williams, though I haven't got my service sheet to check. It was rather lovely, anyway.

The current sale at WTS Bookstore has incredible bargains on some terrific biblical theology books.

If you don't yet own the Goldsworthy trilogy (Gospel and Kingdom; Gospel and Wisdom; Gospel and Revelation) then you should. At only $8.44, you have no excuse!

Chris Wright on Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament is certainly worth more than the $8.80 they're asking too.

Here's a thing that hasn't changed.

In the search for pleasure, many Romans remained unmarried, numerous marriages remained childless, divorces were common, and the great host of slaves, both men and women, presented a constant temptation to immorality.

So what to do about it? I gather David Cameron's proposing various taxbreaks. Here's how Augustus dealt with the matter:

In order to stem this development, laws were issued for the protection of the Roman family: all men between twenty and sixty years of age and all women between twenty and fifty years were to be obliged to marry. In order to promote families, it was decreed that unmarried people could not inherit property, married people who were childless could inherit only a half of estates, and fathers with numbers of children were to be preferred in the competition for offices.

Go on, David, I dare you.

From, E. Lohse, The New Testament Environment

Alastair has some useful thoughts on this here.

In other news, I've been playing around with a wordpress blog. I'm definitely going to move, I think. They've just changed the way some of the functions work on this site, specifically to make it more irritating I think! Anyway, it'll be a little while before the new one's ready for public viewing but I'll let you know.

When I opened the parcel, I smiled. Two packages, one in pink tissue paper with a green ribbon and one in green tissue paper with a cream ribbon. This was looking very promising! As you can see I was not patient enough to untie the ribbon and look for the sellotape. The tissue paper was torn to reveal...

And here it is in full:

I love the way Samantha's quilted this in non-straight lines to give more texture, and I love the way she's followed the pattern of the blocks in the centre section, so that the bigger squares stand out.

But that wasn't all. I said two packages, remember? The other contained these beautiful fabrics. And on top of all that, she's sent me this cute little bag and some other pink and green goodies, including watermelon popping candy. How cool is that! I haven't had popping candy for at least twenty years, but I think now is the time to start again.

Thank you Samantha for taking so much trouble to send me something I really, really like.

My favourite game in the world ever is 'the book game' in which people bring books and read out the blurb to everyone else. They then have to write a plausible 'first line'. These are all collected in and read out along with the real first line, to much hilarity and some kind of voting system.

I still remember Chris Green's version of the opening line to Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim' featuring a llama and some exceedingly good cakes.

Anyway, James Oakley evidently remembers those good times too and has a link to a similar (though less fun) version of the game here.

My quilt arrived from the exchange. It's full of pink and green and cream and it's beautiful. Pictures will be along later. Plus my partner also sent me some beautiful fabric that I've had my eye on for months and several other lovely pink and green things all beautifully wrapped and gorgeous. This will require a full post later.

Also this morning, a CD of "Greek Resources linked to Duff's Elements" courtesy of Matthew Sleeman - thank you VERY much indeed!

Last night I went to see the new Harry Potter film which I enjoyed enormously. I think I shall model my teaching style on Dolores Umbridge. I'll paint my new office pink, and I'm fairly sure my flatmate is already planning to buy me some plates with kittens on them. If you've signed up for Summer Greek, you should be very afraid...

Here's a challenge for you: Harry Potter chat up lines.

From the film: 'I've never Stunned anyone like that before.'

From one of my LJ friends: 'Haven't I seen you before in the Mirror of Erised?'

Can you do better?

Looking for a way to let out your inner Cubist?

Mr Picassohead is the place for you!

Here's one I made earlier.

I'm becoming increasingly irritated by the misuse of certain parts of speech by people who really should know better.

The most frequently observed of these is the failure to form correctly a past participle. Sometimes this occurs when the participle is used verbally and sometimes when it's being used adjectivally.

Like this:

His writing was often cliche. (don't know how to do the accent in html, sorry)

No. Here's how it should be:

His writing was often cliched.

Or again, with another adjectival example:

Her tan skin stood out against the white shirt.

And correctly written:

Her tanned skin stood out against the white shirt.

Here's a verbal example:

That's what I was suppose to do.

And here's the correct form:

That's what I was supposed to do.

See? Not so hard after all.

On a different note, am I the only person in the world who thinks 'apocalyptic' is an adjective and not a noun? Even N. T. Wright seems to refer pretty freely to 'apocalyptic' as a genre. I keep wanting to scream 'apocalyptic literature'. It seems to be the convention, but it must be wrong, mustn't it? The noun is 'apocalyse'. To make another noun from the adjective of the first noun is just plain ridiculous.

...but I'm not holding out a lot of hope.

When I looked at the paper I almost decided not to bother until I'd done at least another week's work. Five questions out of a choice of six. One and a half of which I was fairly sure I could answer. Ten minutes in, inspiration struck for a second. I guessed the other half of the half. Still two more to try. Desperately clawing things out of my mind from an essay on mediaeval scholasticism I wrote four years ago, I scraped together another one. The fifth ended up being no more than two paragraphs, both of which were quite repetitive.

We'll see. For now, it's back to the NT books. I've finally started crossing some off the list but it's slow going.

I have to sit an Apologetics exam, probably tomorrow, which expects the level of knowledge of an MDiv student. I'm madly cramming at the moment, but I won't get through everything on the reading list

So, what are your top apologetics tips for me to remember? Extra bonus points if you've been in one of Dr Edgar's classes and can tell me what kinds of things he focusses on.

Thanks to all of you assiduous clickers, I have just ordered some books from the WTS bookstore and got $20 off using my Blog Partners rewards. Hooray!

Want to know what I got?

and

and

So, can anyone spot the common theme? With the WTS bookstore bargain prices and my blog rewards, I got $103 worth of books for just $55.71. Can't say fairer than that.

They're also having a sale on the 'Best of WTS' books - by current and former faculty. There are some great bargains to be had in the next week or so.

I feel like this is a book I should have read years ago. Still, better late than never. I've especially enjoyed the section on 'Tools for the Task' dealing with things like knowledge, literature, story, worldview, history, meaning, theology, and authority. This isn't just any 'Introduction to the NT' or 'Background to Early Christianity'!

Here's some bits I liked:

Worldviews as stories

Human life, then, can be seen as grounded in and constituted by the implicit or explicit stories which humans tell themselves and one another, This runs contrary to the popular belief that a story is there to 'illustrate' some point or other which can in principle be stated without recourse to the clumsy vehicle of a narrative. Stories are often wrongly regarded as a poor person's substitute for the 'real thing', which is to be found either in some abstract truth or in statements about 'bare facts'.

...

As we shall see, worldviews, the grid through which humans perceive reality, emerge into explicit consciousness in terms of human beliefs, which function as in principle debatable expressions of the worldviews. The stories which characterize the worldview itself are thus located, on the map of human knowing, at a more fundamental level than explicitly formulated beliefs, including theological beliefs.

Stories as metaphor

Stories are, actually, peculiarly good at modifying other stories and their worldviews.

(He gives the example of Nathan telling the parable to David)

Tell someone to do something and you change their life - for a day; tell someone a story and you change their life. Stories, in having this effect, function as complex metaphors. Metaphor consists in bringing two sets of ideas close together, close enough for a spark to jump, but not too close, so that the spark, in jumping, illuminates for a moment the whole area around, changing perceptions as it does so. Even so, the subversive story comes close enough to the story already believed by the hearer for a spark to jump between them; and nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Poems as stories

We are, in fact, drawn irresistibly into the world of a story - and a story, moreover, which... invites us to share its world as much by what it does not say as by what it does. The effect of the poem is more than the sum total of the rhymes, the assonance, the evocative setting. These all fall within the wider effect of the story itself.

Literature as stories

...human writing is best conceived as the articulation of worldviews, or, better still, the telling of stories which being worldviews into articulation

Interesting to note here that the examples Wright gives of literature that articulates worldview include note only novels and poems, but also letters, textbooks, and so on.

And finally for now:

Speaking the truth

If the Christian theologian is committed to speaking true words about the past, he or she is also committed to speaking true words about the present and the future. This means that a proper concern for history will be balanced by a proper concern for justice and peace. Though it is impossible to explore this theme further here, history and justice belong together, as humanse are called to bring the divinely intended order to birth through their speech-acts. Words about the part and the future must all alike be used in the service of truth of every sort.

The BBC are looking for 100 word summaries of the Harry Potter series so far (yes, that's right 100 words for all 6 books), to get newcomers to the series up to speed before DH! Or something like that.

Why not have a go here?

David Field makes some important distinctions here.

This is a terrific little article on metaphor, language and poetry.

HT: Mindy

I like my blog. I like its pinkness and the flowers and the general way it organises itself.

But it is quite limited in what it can do. Can't put widgets in the sidebar. Doesn't tell me who's looking or how they got here. Can't muck around with how it looks.

So, I was having a look at wordpress earlier. They seem to promise a lot of freedom but I wonder how much they really deliver? I'm not a huge fan of the way blogger blogs look, but they seem fairly customisable? Or is it the case with all these providers that you only get the fun stuff if you pay (which I don't really want to do)? I have a LiveJournal whose appearance is limited only by my skill and imagination. But LJ isn't really designed for this kind of blogging, I don't think.

What blog provider do you use? Would you recommend it and why/why not? Bear in mind, I am the person who just bought a new laptop because it had flowers on it, without really knowing what any of the numbers meant. I am, however, quite capable at technical stuff if I have to be and can use both html and basic CSS at a pinch.

I've temporarily abandoned the long, dull books on Graeco-Roman religion in favour of N. T. Wright's, 'The New Testament and the People of God', which is a lot more fun and I wish I had time to read it properly.

This is Wright on meaning in history:

At its basic level, the 'meaning' of history may be held to lie in the intentionalities of the characters concerned (whether or not they realize their ambitions and achieve their aims). Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon 'meant' that he intended to set himself up above the law of the Republic. At another level, 'meaning' may be held to lie in the contemporary relevance or consequence of the events. Those who farmed on the Italian side of the Rubicon would have said that Caesar's crossing 'meant' certain things in terms of the subsequent state of their land. Again, the fact that we have uncovered a certain set of human motivations may suggest parallels in other historical events, including those contemporary with ourselves, where a similar set of intentionalities may be present, and from which we may deduce a 'meaning' in terms of our own world. Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon 'means' that would-be tyrants are to be watched carefully when they make vital symbolic moves. At yet another level, 'meaning' may be attributed to events on the grounds that they reveal the divine intention, and thus speak powerfully, whether to the ancient or the modern world, pagan as well as Jewish or Christian, of the nature and/or purposes of 'God', or a god. Caesar's eventual fate 'means' that his hubris did not go unnoticed, or unpunished, by divine vengeance.

Meaning of events, just as much as meaning of texts, is a slippery concept.

At Cresheim Valley, we're having a series of Sunday School sessions on the qualifications for eldership at the moment. It's been very helpful and thought-provoking. Last time we ended with the tantalising question suggested by 1 Timothy 3:4-5. I'm looking forward to hearing what Seth has to say about it, but in the meantime, David Field has an interesting way of looking at it here.

is a blog I occasionally read. Usually it has long thoughtful theological reflections on difficult issues. Rarely, however, does it have good knitting links. But here's one I enjoyed - you have to scroll down and then click on 'Knit Graffiti'. While you're there, why not click on the link in the same post to an interview with Andrew Sach and Steve Jeffery, two of the authors of Pierced for our Transgressions?

I finally passed my driving test this morning and am now the proud owner of a Pennsylvania Driver's License. Hooray. I last took the test in November in torrential rain when I could hardly see out of the back window. Today it was about 100 degrees and the air conditioning was blowing full blast.

The instructor said my parallel parking was 'pretty impressive'. It's never been called that before!

Since David Field doesn't permit comments on his blog (spoilsport!), I shall do my cheering for this post here. I discovered Jasper Fforde simply by browsing in a bookshop and have been recommending him ever since. He also has a very fun website here.

I picked this up a couple of weeks ago in Blackwells and thought it looked excellent.

Kevin Vanhoozer gives an introduction explaining the need for Christians to learn to exegete their culture and then a number of essays by his students follow in which they do just that. Films, music, shopping and even the blogosphere are subjected to a clear and thorough analysis. If you click on the link above you can view sample pages. Buy it, read it and don't forget to click on the link!

On which note, you may be interested to know that I am just 1 click away from earning my next $10 gift certificate. YOUR CLICK can make all the difference!

Nobody quite guessed the identity of the mystery object. It was, in fact, a nightcap.

Which leads me on to one of the most exciting things that happened while I was in England. I met the brother of this man. He has literally gone from A (in Norway) to B (in Nebraska), on a tandem picking up hitchhikers including Miss Universe, along the way. He's literally lost his marbles and taught an old dog new tricks. And now, he's literally invited someone in for a nightcap. I was happy to help and expect to become famous the world over as nightcap-knitter to the stars.

So join the revolution now! Let's stop people using the word 'literally' to mean 'figuratively' and start taking them at their word.

If you haven't yet discovered the joy and delight and sheer silly fun that is reading a Jasper Fforde novel, then you have a treat in store. Fforde writes about books, about reading books, about the world within the book, about the interaction between text and reader (not so much author) and does it all with utterly hilarious jokes. It took me a long time to notice that the romantic male lead is called Landen Parke-Laine. Try saying it out loud. Then add in the fact that his parents are Houson and Bildon.

Puns aside, the Thursday Next novels deal with time travel, goo, the Goliath corporation, smuggling cheese out of the People's Republic of Wales, and how to restore the kidnapped Jane Eyre to her novel which, since it is written in the first person, can't exist at all without her.

I read the fifth TN book on the plane last week. Fforde has also written two books in the Nursery Crimes series which are also fun. But not as much fun as the Thursday Next books, in my opinion.

Here's Fforde on the development of the book:

For thousands of years OralTrad was the only Story Operating System and indeed it is still in use today. The recordable Story Operating System began with ClayTablet V2.1 and went through several competing systems (WaxTablet, Papyrus, VellumPro) before merging into the award winning SCROLL, which was upgraded eight times before being swept aside by the all new and clearly superior BOOK V1. Stable, easy to store and transport, compact and with a workable index, BOOK has led the way for nearly eighteen hundred years.

And this is Fforde on what happens when a book gets read. From the point of view of the characters in the book.

As Pinocchio slept on, the reading suddenly swelled like a breaking ocean roller and crossed the room in front of us, a crest of heightened reality that moved through us and imparted a warm feeling of well-being. But more than that, a rare thing in fiction, a delicate potpourri of smells, Freshly cut wood, cooking, spice, damp - and Pinocchio's scorched legs, which I recognised were carved from cherry. There was more, too, a strange jumble of faces, a young girl laughing and a derelict castle in the moonlight. The smells grew stronger until I could taste them in my mouth, the dust and grime in the room seemingly accentuated until there was a faint hiss and a ploof sound and the enhanced feelings dropped away in an instant. Everything once more returned to the limited reality we had experience when we had arrived - the bare description necessary for the room to be Geppetto's workshop.

I think that's fascinating. The words on the page give the 'bare description necessary' but it is the reader who makes it come alive. It's not that the reader changes the text - it's always Geppetto's workshop, with burned Pinocchio and something cooking on the stove, but each reader imagines the workshop into life in their own way. I think those random things - the laugh and the castle - are the associations in the reader's mind that are, technically unrelated to the text, but through some experience of the reader, come together.

Anyway, these books are fun and clever and if you've ever read a book and enjoyed it, you'll love these!

The only annoying thing was that the first edition I bought at the airport doesn't have the footnotes pr