Chris Brady tweeted:

Apps I use daily Entourage Firefox NisusWriter iTunes Nambu Accordance Preview. During semester PPT and/or Keynote. Less apps than I thought

Wow. That’s … efficient. My list won’t fit in 140 characters, so I put it here.

Mac applications I use every day

• 1Password
• Accordance
• Acrobat
• ChronoSync
• DEVONthink
• Dreamweaver
• iCal
• iTunes
• Keynote (when school is in session)
• Mail
• NetNewsWire
• Pages
• Safari

Mac applications I use no less than weekly

• EyeTV
• GarageBand
• InDesign
• iPhoto
• MarsEdit
• Numbers
• PhotoPresenter (when school is in session)
• Photoshop
• Podcast Maker
• RealPlayer
• VLC
• VMWare Fusion (to run Windows XP)
• VueScan
• WireTap Studio

iPhone applications I use daily

• Clock
• iPod
• Mail
• NetNewsWire
• Phone
• Safari
• Scrabble (lately)
• Text
• Twitterific

What about you?

Lately, I’ve played more Scrabble than usual—against the computer-guided opponent built into the Scrabble iPhone app. Sometimes, I wish I’d never heard of Scrabble.

Take the game I just started, for instance. My opening hand was ENOORTT. On the iPhone, the human always goes first when playing one-on-one vs. the computer. I couldn’t figure anything better than ROTTEN for 14 points. My new “draw” (tiles randomly assigned by the computer) leaves me with EIEIOIO on my rack. No, I’m not making this up.

The computer plays HORDEINS for 74 points. I didn’t even know HORDEINS was a word. My Mac OS X dictionary widget doesn’t include HORDEINS. Turns out it’s “a simple protein of the prolamin class, found in barley grain” (Dictionary.com).

WIth a rack full of vowels, the best I can do is OE, placed next to the H to yield HE as well. +9 points, for a total of 23. I “draw” an R and an N to replace the O and E, leaving me with IROINIE.

The computer plays VELDT in a position that also yields OD and HET, giving itself 30 more points, for a total of 104.

Looking at 104–23 and rack that reads IROINIE, I struggle to come up with something worth playing. I’ve played two words and already I’m at an 81-point deficit. This does not bode well. I’d like to use that four-point V, but anything I do there is still just single-digit points for me and a big triple-word setup for the CPU. After trying out different things, I land on IRON/IT/RE/ON for a measly 14 points. Before committing, I use the game’s “Best Word” feature. Four times in a game, you can have the computer come up with your “best”—that is, highest-scoring—word. In other words, you can have the CPU play for you (though you can reject its suggestion). The CPU finds NOISIER for 16 points—but that word would land in a position that sets the computer up for an easy triple word score. Nope. I’ll stick with IRON.

New rack? IIEEAIM. No kidding.

CPU plays GAPED for 22 points.

AMI/ARE/MON/IN would get me 19 points. The “Best Word” feature finds AMIE/AE/MI/IN/ES for 24. I didn’t even know AMIE was a word. It’s the feminine form of AMI. I stick with the word I know, to salvage a shred of integrity from this debacle.

After scoring AMI, the game stands at 56–126 in favor of the CPU, and my rack holds IIEEIAH.

The CPU scores 39 points with GO/AX/OX.

There are 53 tiles left in the “bag.”

Sigh.

From Peter Enns, on his blog:

But if intention to remain “true” to a “tradition” (which already assumes its non-growth) drives an academic assessment of real evidence (most of which was wholly unavailable when the tradition’s trajectories were set), one runs the risk of adjusting evidence to what one already “knows” to be true. We do not tolerate such sloppy thinking in any other area of human discourse, but when it comes to theological discourse in some circles, it seems to be the preferred method of interaction. When one’s position is by definition unfalsifiable, any meaningful exchange of ideas functionally ceases. Any tradition that aims to promote truth rather than obscure it must be eager to be open to critical evaluation.

Four of Pepperdine’s five schools, including the arts and sciences school, Seaver College, use the Blackboard learning management system, and I personally use it extensively in my courses. Recently, however, Blackboard has given me no end of difficulties in the form of student complaints about grades. The problem arises from a disconnect between Blackboard’s mathematical operations and my expectations about what would happen when I selected certain operations. In my Spring 2009 Religion 101 classes, several students received grades lower than they expected, because I didn’t understand beforehand how Blackboard calculates “averages.”

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Those of use who attend to such things have a couple of new Judean inscribed artifacts to talk about. The Israel Antiquities Authority has been publicizing this week a bone seal (photo by Vladimir Naykhin, IAA). As you can see from the photo, a chunk of the right-hand side of the seal is broken off. Remember that, in order to make the proper impression in clay, seals were inscribed in mirror image and must be read left to right. This seal’s inscription, then, reads (when reversed for right-to-left reading):

[...] לשאל
ריהו

According to the IAA press release (which strangely marks the lacuna at the beginning of the second line rather than the end of the first), Ronny Reich suggests an eighth-century date for the seal. Chris Rollston agrees with that general assessment, and sent some other helpful comments, too. I reproduce his e-mail here with his kind permission (I’ve spruced up the formatting a little for readability).

Basic Data: (1) The seal is written in mirror image (the norm for seals). (2) The script is definitively Old Hebrew. (3) The seal consists of two registers. This is fairly typical for Old Hebrew seals. (4) First inscribed register: The personal name “Shaul” is preceded by the prepositional lamed, as is the norm for seals. (5) The second half of the first inscribed register is broken. (6) The second register is preserved rather nicely, with the first letter of that line being a resh. (7) Arguably, the resh is the final letter of the patronymic (in such a case, letters such as ayin and zayin [yielding azaryahu] or gimel and mem [yielding gmryahu] could then be restored at the end of the first register). Restorations are precarious things, therefore, I personally would not wish to posit a particular restoration as being probable. (8) The yahu theophoric of this seal’s second register is, of course, reflective of the norm for Judean Old Hebrew personal names (contrast the yaw theophoric for many Northern Israelite personal names attested in the Reisner Samaria Ostraca, for example).

Palaeography: Dating seals is difficult, because the script of seals tends to be more conservative than the script of ostraca. For this reason, the plus or minus for seals must be greater than for ostraca. However, for well-preserved seals, with a constellation of diagnostic letters all pointing toward the same chronological horizon, typological dating can be done with substantial reliability by a trained palaeographer. With such caveats in mind, here are some palaeographic reflections: (1) The lamed is a fine Old Hebrew lamed. The morphology of this lamed is very well-attested in the 8th century Old Hebrew epigraphic corpus (note the nice hook). Obviously, there are some 7th and early 6th century-seals with hooked lameds, so I wouldn’t want to push this feature that hard. (2) The shin is also a fine exemplar and falls nicely into the script typology of the 8th century as well (note especially the high junctions of the internal strokes…this is very important because even in seals the junctions of the internal strokes “drop” through time…note, for example, the lower junctions of the seals from Arad VI-VII). (3) The alep is also vintage 8th century (note the length of the vertical stroke intersecting the horizontal strokes). However, long verticals persist in Old Hebrew seals into the 7th and 6th centuries, therefore, I would not want to push this feature of the script all that hard. (4) the resh fits nicely into the 8th century typology as well (especially because of the relative length of the vertical stroke), but I would not want to put too much emphasis on the morphology and stance of the resh. (5) The yod is very important for the purposes of dating Old Hebrew epigraphs of various sorts (e.g., ostraca, stone inscriptions, seals). Note that the yod of this seal preserves the classical form of the Old Hebrew yod. However, of greatest import is the presence of the tick on the bottom horizontal of the yod. This feature is a rather ephemeral feature of the Old Hebrew script, attested in the Reisner Samaria Ostraca (early 8th century), Royal Steward Stone Inscription (late 8th century), Gibeon Inscribed Jar Handles (late 8th century or very early 7th century…pace Cross, who originally dated them later). I have discussed this diagnostic feature of yod in various publications, some of which have appeared and some of which are forthcoming. (6) The fact that the top horizontal of he does not have even a modest “overlap” might be of some import (as an early feature), but I wouldn’t want to push this feature very hard (as seals from the late 7th and early 6th centuries often don’t have much of an overlap…contrast, of course, the script of Old Hebrew ostraca). (7) The morphology of the waw in this seal is more characteristic of seals of the 8th century, rather than of later periods (e.g., late 7th or early 6th centuries). Therefore, I would be inclined to date this waw to the 8th century, rather than later.

Summary: There are no “late” features of the script of this seal that would suggest a date in the mid to late 7th or early 6th centuries BCE. Rather the palaeographic features of this seal all line up nicely with the Old Hebrew script of the 8th century. Moreover, I would be most inclined to date it earlier in the 8th century, rather than later.

I mean, seriously. Is this really headline news? I’ll definitely agree that Ehrman writes with verve and clarity. But, honestly, I can’t agree that his scholarship breaks new ground. To me, Ehrman looks like a skillful popularizer of old news. And CNN writers skillfully hook people’s interest, with questionable analogies like this one:

Ehrman, a best-selling author and a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a biblical sleuth whose investigations make some people very angry. Like the fictional Robert Langdon character played by actor Tom Hanks in the movie “Angels & Demons,” he delves into the past to challenge some of Christianity’s central claims.

Come on, now. Ehrman is a serious historian. Langdon is a fictional nitwit plying a nonexistent trade.

To pile question upon question, why did CNN turn to William Willimon, of all people, for sound bites, and cast him as a “scholarly critic” of Ehrman’s work? Sure, Willimon wrote the Interpretation series commentary on Acts, but can’t CNN tell the difference between an ecclesiologist/theologian and a New Testament scholar? Anybody ever heard of Mark Goodacre? Never mind, don’t answer that. At least Willimon had the good sense tell CNN:

He keeps presenting this stuff as if this is wonderful new knowledge that has been kept from you backward lay people and this is the stuff your preachers don’t have the guts to tell, and I have … There’s a touch of arrogance in it.

I don’t know much of it is arrogance, and how much of it is marketing.

On the other hand, Ehrman had the good sense to communicate an important (though by no means pioneering) thought to CNN:

Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.

“Christianity has never been about the Bible being the inerrant word of God,” Ehrman says. “Christianity is about the belief in Christ.”

I suppose that treating Ehrman like a trailblazing scholar is a small price to pay for getting that critical message across.

I’ve loved Star Trek for years; I was born in 1967, in between the first two seasons of the classic Star Trek series, and my mother tells me that I watched Star Trek in utero. I also loved J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek “reboot” when I saw it Thursday night. The actors portrayed the characters very well, and the storyline made good “Trek sense.” I appreciated all the little nods to existing Star Trek canon, and I didn’t mind the small rewritings of Trek history (putting a shipyard in Iowa, for example). Of course, the storyline itself explains the big changes—if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go see the movie already!

I confess, though, that the tiny Thursday night crowds worried me. I went with two other guys, and we must have comprised about 10% of the entire crowd. The low Thursday turnout made me fear the show would flop. I needn’t have worried—the box office take was enormous. I sure hope this breathes new life into the franchise, and isn’t just a one-off success.

From time to time, I listen to the podcast “Unbelievable,” if I find one of their weekly topics interesting. The May 9 episode bears the title, “Was Jesus the Jewish Messiah?” Nah, he was the Irish messiah. Come on, people. Modifying “messiah” with “Jewish” is like modifying “baseball” with “American.”

If you think about it you’ll see that’s true. You think you are right about everything. I think I’m right about everything. If you asked me, “Why do you hold this view?” and I said, “I hold this view because I think it’s wrong,” you’re going to say, “What an idiot.” No, I hold all the views I hold because I think they are right. I’ve found out sometimes in the past that I’ve been wrong about something, but now I’ve changed my mind about it and I’m right on everything again. I also realize that I may find out some place down the road that one of the views I hold is wrong, but I don’t know what that is because if I did, I would have changed already and again I would be completely right. Everybody thinks they are right about everything. The question is whether we are open and humble enough to say, “It is possible I might have it wrong.”

—Randy Harris, God Work: Confessions of a Standup Theologian (Abilene: Leafwood, 2009)

Michael Heiser offers PaleoBabble as an “antidote to cyber-twaddle and misguided research about the ancient world”—you know, ancient astronauts, conspiracy theories, and anything having to do with Dan Brown.

Julia M. O’Brien has started an eponymous blog for “look[ing] at the Bible and culture.” Julia teaches Old Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary, and I know her best through her provocative work on the prophets.

Give both of these blogs a read. You’ll be glad you did.