Joey Gibson's Blog

Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard the controversy surrounding the “ground zero mosque.” Essentially, a group of Muslims want to build an “Islamic community center,” that will house a mosque, two blocks away from the former World Trade Center. This has sparked a firestorm of protest from the right, claiming it is everything from insensitive to the next terrorist attack itself. This has annoyed me greatly.

One of the founding principles of this country was religious freedom. This means that you can support any religion you want, or no religion, and not be molested by the government. Increasingly, those on the right construe this as, “You can be any religion you want, as long as it’s Christian.” If you are a Buddhist, a Hindu or, (God forbid!) a Muslim, (I’m not sure if they consider atheists better or worse than Muslims), then your rights and desires are not relevant. This is a clear case of religious freedom: these people want to built a house or worship, on private property, using private funds. There is no compelling reason why they should not be allowed to do it. Unless you believe that all Muslims are terrorists.

And that’s exactly what most of the commentators on the right seem to think. Listen to the statements of Newt Gingrich, that moron Sarah Palin, or any of the talking heads on Fox News. They are all screaming about how “it just isn’t right” to build this Mosque “at ground zero” where so many lost their lives. Yes, 3,000 people did lose their lives at the WTC site, and yes, the attack was carried out by Muslim extremists, but that does not mean that all Muslims are terrorists.

Now, if you were to search my blog, you would probably find some inflammatory statements made by me about Muslims. Statements that might indicate that I considered all Muslims to be terrorists. I wish to publicly repudiate those statements right now. (Or “refudiate” them, as the learned Sarah Palin would say.) I’m not making excuses for my former statements, (well, maybe I am…) but I don’t think I was thinking about the situation rationally. I was caught up in a patriotic ferver, that I now see was incorrect. I’ll say it again: not all Muslims are terrorists.

In fact, a very small minority of them are terrorists, or support the actions of terrorists.

“But wait,” you say, “the Koran is ‘full of violence’ and commands by their ‘god’ to kill the unbelievers.” Indeed. May I then direct you to your bible to that part called the “old testament.” That’s the part that lots of Christians seem to forget about. There’s more violence in there than you can shake a stick at. Does that make us a violent religion? No. See what I’m getting at?

“But wait,” you say again, “those Muslims want to spred Islam all over the world! They want everyone to be a Muslim.” Indeed. Now, may I direct you to your bible, to Matthew 28: 19-20, which reads: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

What this all comes down to is a bunch of Christians who are scared of Islam and don’t like to see it spreading. Despite their claims of “But I have a Muslim friend!” or “I don’t care if they build another Mosque, just build it somewhere else!” or “I don’t have a problem with them building it, but building it there is just insensitive!” it all amounts to the same thing. They don’t like Muslims, and they want them to go away.

I think they should be allowed to build it. I think the protesters are wrong, but I support their right to protest and make their opinions known, as long as they remain non-violent. That is my main concern. I wonder how long it will take, after construction begins, before the site is vandalized (or worse) by those who oppose it. “But that wouldn’t be very Christian!” you say. Indeed, it would not.

Yesterday I played hooky from church, and my buddy Tim and I headed up to the North Georgia mountains for a bit o’ hiking. Tim’s been doing this a lot, but this was my first time, and it was great fun. We hiked Raven Cliff Falls, which was a five mile round-trip, then had some lunch, and then stopped by Tallulah Gorge State Park. I was completely bushed by this time, so we just walked to the easy-to-get-to overlooks, and then called it a day. I had so much fun, I’m ready to do it again. :-)

Here are a few of the better pictures I took during the day.

I don’t like “devotionals.”  They are almost always silly, trite, supposed “life lessons” that are tied, loosely, to a particular bit of scripture, with little to no theological grounding. Very often, that scripture has been edited to remove bits that either don’t fit the message of the devotional, or make the devotional-writer uncomfortable. The Common Lectionary does this, too, so it’s not just the writers of devotionals.

Yesterday, at church, the minister said he was going to share one of these devotionals, which he had read during the previous week, with us. It had two pieces of scripture: Philippians 4:6, and Luke 12:22-32. The verse from Philippians is part of Paul’s exhortation to the church at Ceserea Philippi, and it reads:

…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God

That scripture is used a lot by people who live by the “God is in complete control” mantra, and who bother him with every mundane thing in their lives. That’s not the scripture I want to talk about, though verses 2 & 3 make a great case against those churches who use Paul’s writings to subjugate their women. Perhaps I’ll write about that another time.

The editing I’m concerned with is from Luke. The selected verses read thus:

And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Notice how that last line begins another quote and how it isn’t closed. That means there’s more to it. Here are verses 33 and 34 (emphasis mine):

Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

These two lines, also, are part of a larger discourse, and still do not end the quotation, but this is enough to make my point. I am not innocent of this, but Christians over the past 50 years or so have gotten into the mindset that “God wants me to prosper.” I’m not saying that God does not want us to be happy, or to have the things we need; the bulk of this passage says that he does. But the part that was omitted from the devotional was the part about selling your things and giving the proceeds to the needy. We don’t like to think about that. This stuff is mine. I worked hard to get it. Why can’t that bum just get a job and take care of himself, right? That may be our attitude, it has certainly been mine at times, but time and again, Jesus tells his followers to sell their possessions and give to those who have none. We give anonymously, sure. We toss a few bucks in the collection plate as it’s passed around on Sunday mornings, but are we really willing to sell what we have, and give to those who are in need? That’s a very difficult proposition.

A brief story. Thursday, I was driving over to Trader Joe’s to get some things. I was stopped at the traffic light at Roswell Road and Hammond Drive, when I saw two homeless people on the sidewalk. The woman was in a wheelchair and was missing a leg or two (I can’t remember if it was both or not) and the man was holding a cardboard sign, which read, “Can you help?” Both were filthy, as you might guess, but the man had a cheerful expression on his face, which surprised me. (He also reminded me of the Atlanta local guitar player Glenn Phillips.) I then remembered that I had a trash bag in the trunk that was full of change from when I cleaned out my old car and moved into the new one. I pulled into the nearest parking lot, scooped all the change into an envelope and walked over to where they were sitting. As I walked up, the women was lighting up a cigarette, which caused a visceral reaction in me, that I’ve had many times: if they can afford cigarettes, why should I help them? But then I paused for a second and thought to myself: homeless people can have addictions, too. If I can help them, regardless of what I think of how they might spend the money, shouldn’t I? Did Jesus say, “Sell your possessions and give to the needy, as long as they will spend the money the way you want them to?” No, he didn’t. Am I feeding their nicotine addiction? Perhaps. Did I possibly give them enough money for dinner that night? Maybe. Anyway, I walked up to them handing the envelope to the man, saying, “There’s not much here, but maybe it will help.” Both of their faces lit up with genuine gratitude. The man looked at the envelope and said, “No, man, there’s probably four or five dollars here. Thank you so much.” Both smiled at me, I smiled back, said good-bye and went back to my car.

I tell you that story, not so you can see what a great, compassionate Christian I am, but to illustrate that even in the act of charity, I was still caught up in the fact that I was about to give them my money and they better spend it how I think they should. Never mind that someone could have given them the cigarettes. Never mind the “give a man a fish/teach a man to fish” argument. These people looked like they needed help. I was in a position to give them a small amount of help, and I felt like they really did appreciate it.

Anyway, so we selectively edit scripture to fit a particular message, or to fit nicely with a pithy saying. So what about logical conclusions? Well, as I was thinking about the scripture, the minister was going on about how we need to “stop worrying” and just know that “God is in complete control” and blah blah blah… I’ve always hated that way of thinking. I despise the Sandy Patty song, “God Is In Control,” because I do not believe that is true.

People like to say that he is in complete control, when things are going well, and when things aren’t going well, they say it again, hoping for a return to well-ness. But here’s the rub: if you believe that he is in “complete control” then you have to take that to its logical conclusion. If you believe that every good thing that happens to you is because God wanted it to be that way, then you must also accept that every bad thing that happens to you is because God wanted it that way. It’s all a part of “His Plan” or some such. If you believe that God wanted your team to win your softball game, then you must also believe that he wanted that seven year-old to get cancer and suffer for a couple of years before dying. If you believe that God wanted your plane to land safely, then you must also believe that he wanted those two planes full of innocent people to fly into the World Trade Center on 9/11. That’s an uncomfortable thing.

This only applies to those who subscribe to the “God is in complete control” way of thinking. It does not, necessarily, apply to those who believe in God and believe that he does, on occasion, answer prayers. That’s actually something I’ve never understood from the “complete control” believers: if he’s in complete control, and we are merely pawns on a chessboard, why is prayer even necessary? He already knows what he wants to have happen, regardless of what you want, right? Why do you need to tell/ask him?

Now, I will say that I do believe there is a God. Apart from the fact that I was raised believing that, and it’s a part of who I am, it makes as much sense to me as the “something from nothing” argument. Yes, it means we then have the question of where did God come from, but that at least pushes the question out another level, and I don’t have to think about it as much. :-) God does answer some prayers, but it’s pretty much impossible to figure out which ones he will answer and why. There’s another pithy saying, which I also hate, which goes, “God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is ‘no’.” That’s a way to rationalize why person A’s prayer seemed to get a favorable answer while person B’s did not: there was an answer, but the answer wasn’t what person B wanted, and person B just needs to accept that it’s part of the “plan” or the “big picture” and move on. Why do some people seem to receive miraculous healing, while my wife suffers with a degenerative nerve condition that keeps her in pain, 24 hours a day? That’s a very good question, and I don’t have an answer.

This is getting long and a bit rambling, so let me sum up. Any time you are reading a devotional, or in church, and you see that the scripture reading ends before a passage is complete or, worse, you’re supposed to skip some verses in the middle of a larger passage, go ahead and read those extra verses and see if it changes the meaning of the scripture. It won’t always make a difference. Sometimes, it’s just boring details that really have no bearing on the meaning. But sometimes, like in the case of Luke 12, it makes a big difference. And remember where logic takes you and what believing in absolutes means you have to accept.

With the rise of Scala and Clojure, there’s been a lot of talk lately about procedural vs. functional styles of coding. Most developers are accustomed to procedural coding, and functional can be hard to get a handle on. I was working through Programming in Scala (again) this morning, and I came upon this function:

// Procedural implementation
def longestWord(words: Array[String]) = {
	var word = words(0)
	var idx = 0

	for (i <- 1 until words.length)
		if (words(i).length > word.length) {
			word = words(i)
			idx = i
		}

	(word, idx)
}

The purpose of this function is to find the longest word in the passed-in array, and return a tuple with that longest word, and its index in the array. You can see that in this function, we have two vars, one for the current longest word, and another for its index in the array. We then use a for expression to walk the array, reassigning word and idx when we find a longer word. This is very much like how you would write this in Java.

I decided to rewrite this function in a more functional style, just to see how my functional chops are coming along. Here’s what I ended up with:

// A more functional implementation
def longestWord(words: Array[String]) =
	(("", -1) /: words.zipWithIndex) {(old, cur) =>
		if (cur._1.length > old._1 .length) cur
		else old
	}

First of all, notice how much shorter this function is than the first one. Also, notice that there is only a single expression in the function, so the outer curly braces aren’t necessary. What this expression is doing is calling zipWithIndex on the passed-in array, which results in an array of tuples containing each word and its index. We then call foldLeft using its operator name of /:, with its initial argument being a tuple with an empty string and -1 for an index. What foldLeft does is apply the function value passed to it to pairs of arguments. On the first pass, the arguments are what was passed in and the first element in the array. On the second iteration, the arguments are the result of the first pass and the second element in the array. This then continues through the entire array. What is returned after the final pass will be a tuple that contains the longest word in the array, and its index.

Now, I don’t claim to be a functional master or anything, but I think this is a decent illustration of how the functional style can reduce the lines of code, and the number of mutable variables, while making the code easier to read and understand.

Last Thursday, on the way home from the office, I got on I-285 and quickly merged over five lanes to the left. I then realized that my accelerator was no longer making the car go faster. Fortunately I was on a long, downhill slope, and I had some built-up momentum, so I didn’t get stuck. I then coasted over six lanes to get to the righthand shoulder. Once there, I turned the car off, then back on. To my surprise, the tachometer jumped up, as it should have, when I pressed the gas pedal. I was able to drive the remaining 28 miles home without incident. But I knew there was probably something wrong with the transmission, based on how hard it was shifting.

The next day, I took it to my usual shop, and after checking it out, they told me that there was something wrong with the transmission, but they could not fix it. Since Saturn is no longer in business, parts are already getting scarce. I had already decided that unless the needed repairs were extremely cheap, I wasn’t going to sink any more money into it. This settled it.

On Saturday, we test drove and bought a new 2010 Ford Focus. It’s a very pretty red. I really wanted a blue one, but none of the six dealerships anywhere near us had an SEL model in blue. But once I saw the red, I liked it enough to get it. So far, I like it. It comes with the SYNC system, which is nice, but not without its quirks and problems. The car is peppy (for a 4 cylinder), drives smoothly and is very quiet in the cabin, even at high speed. Every time I drive it, it grows on me a bit more.

If you’re interested, here are some photos of it.

On our recent trip to Myrtle Beach, we ate at the Planet Hollywood our first night there. Apart from the fact that they were out of Key Lime Pie and bananas for the Bananas Foster Cheesecake, the meal was fine. Thomas and I walked around, looking at all the various movie props, but there was a gigantic battleship that was hanging from the ceiling that I could not figure out. I decided to ask the hostess if she knew. This is what transpired when I approached the hostess stand and asked her.

Me: “Hi. Um… what movie was that battleship from?”
Her: “Oh, that’s from a movie called ‘Toro, Toro.’”
Me: “What movie?”
Her: “‘Toro, Toro.’”

I then realized that she actually meant “Tora! Tora! Tora!” which is a WWII movie about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I was able to stifle my laugh, so I didn’t make her feel bad, but when I got back to the table, I had a good laugh with the family.

There are two reasons why this is funny. First, “Toro” is the Spanish word for “bull.” “Tora” is the Japanese word for “tiger,” which was used as a code word for “attack” when they bombed Pearl Harbor. Second, the way she said “Toro, Toro,” was funny. She said it with both authority and a very Southern accent that worked together to really tickle me, almost to the point of laughing in her presence, which would have been bad/mean.

Here are some of the pictures I took while in Myrtle Beach last weekend. Some are pretty good. Some, not so much. We had a wonderful time, and are seriously considering going back at the end of this summer. That’s how much fun we had. :-)

We went to Myrtle Beach, SC, last weekend and had a wonderful time. I have lots of pictures that I’ll be posting to Flickr very soon. I just got back from getting my waterproof, single-use camera developed, and there are a few shots in there that might show up, too.

In the meantime, here’s a complete and total summation of our entire trip. I shot this video within about an hour of our arrival, and the whole vacation was one great moment after another.

Tonight, whilst reading my lesson for Sunday School, I came across a quote that I really like. I normally don’t get much out of quotes, since generally they are out of context, don’t stand alone very well and can be easily misused because of that. This one, however, is complete all by itself. And it’s quite deep. It was spoken/written by one of three men: Alexander Chalmers, Allan K. Chalmers or Joseph Addison. Whoever said it, here it is:

The three grand essentials of happiness are: Something to do, someone [something] to love, and something to hope for.

I really like that. The quote as I read it in my book had “something to love” instead of “someone to love,” but either one works. If you try to center your life on those three tenets, it seems to me, your life will eventually approach happiness.

Using that as a benchmark, my life is overflowing with happiness. And it is.

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I was not happy about that particular number approaching, but now that it’s over, I feel great. My friend Steve Benfield emailed me early yesterday with the subject, “Welcome To Old…” which got the day off to a humorous start. I got tons of well-wishes from friends, many of whom I haven’t actually seen in several years. I had a demanding Tae Kwon Do class last night, and then I came home to a meal of tacos, lovingly prepared by my wonderful son, Thomas. He also baked me a cake, with chocolate frosting. Yum!

I have it pretty good. :-)

As you can probably tell, I haven’t been motivated to write anything in well over a month. I don’t know why, but that’s what’s happened. I didn’t finish my Lenten project, though I am still occasionally working on it. I did just earn my orange belt in Tae Kwon Do, so that’s cool. And I’m going to be 40 on Tuesday, which is not cool, but it’s sort of unavoidable. I had a lovely birthday dinner with my entire family on Saturday night at Stoney River, which is the most-bestest steakhouse in the world. I loves me some garlic mashed potatoes.

I have an idea for a post about direct vs. indirect quotations in the Greek NT text, but I haven’t fully scoped it out yet. Maybe it will be coming soon. Maybe not.

I’m doing a lot more playing around with Scala, though I am still a lightweight. Sometimes when I’m reading other people’s Scala code, I feel very uneasy about my skills. Scala is beautiful and elegant, but sometimes the terseness of it make it a little overwhelming.

I’m testing out Mercurial for version control. I also tried Git, but based on what I’ve read, and what I’ve experienced, I think Mercurial is the better choice, at least right now. Git is the new, sexy thing, but Mercurial is better established, and the tooling is far better than for Git. Git is gaining ground, but I’m going to stick with Hg for now. I just bought “Mercurial: The Definitive Guide” from O’Reilly, and I’m reading it now. My VP has started asking questions about DVCS and should we switch from SVN and such, so this experiment will be useful shortly.

I’m playing a lot of backgammon. I taught my mother-in-law to play a few weeks ago, and my mother last night. Both picked it up quickly. I’m reading “The Backgammon Book” by Jacoby and Crawford, and trying to commit all the charts and probabilities to memory and get some real strategy going. My game is improving, but I’m still easily beatable.

Oh, and I”ve lost 22 pounds since February 28. Yay, me!

So, there you have it. All two of you now know why there hasn’t been anything new here for a while.

Update, the First: As I said back on February 19, I’m working on translating the Gospel of Luke from Greek into English as a Lenten project. Once I changed the project from simply reading the text in Greek, to translating and analyzing the Greek text in two different forms and writing down a reasonable translation, I knew that my timeline was going to shift. I am now certain that I won’t be finished with the project before Easter. There’s just no way around it. I haven’t had nearly as much time for translation as I’d hoped, and the additional research takes up what little time I do have. Does this mean I’m giving up on the project? No. What it means is that even though I won’t be finished by Easter, I’m going to continue the work until it’s completed, however long that might take. If I’m still working on it in May, that’s fine. I will complete it, it just won’t be when I originally planned.

Update, the Second: As I said on March 1, I have started a new exercise regimen. I am getting up at 5:00 AM, Sunday – Friday, to workout. (To be honest, I have slept in until 5:30 a couple of days.) Each day I get up, do some warmups to get my blood pumping, and then practice every Tae Kwon Do kick, block and punch that I’ve learned so far, multiple times per side. I then go through my TKD forms (3 of them, so far), and then do pushups & sit-ups or squats. I may be dropping the 100 Push-Ups challenge from the regimen, for now, because yesterday when I tried to do a push-up, my right biceps made a sound that was not a good one, and it felt like if I continued, something was going to snap. Last Thursday, the last 5 push-ups really hurt, and not in that “pain is just fear leaving the body” sort of way. This was “if you do one more of these, at least one muscle in this group is going to break” way. I need to at least lay off the push-ups for a week or so and then try again. We’ll see.

The good news is that so far, I’ve lost 13 pounds. It’s been well over a year since I’ve been at this weight, so I’m quite happy with that. I just need to stay motivated and keep at it.

And finally, the trophy. I’ve been a member of Grayson NPS Tae Kwon Do since August 2009. This past weekend, 22 of us went to the ICMA Region 2 Martial Arts Tournament. I was part of the demo team, which took 2nd place (out of 7 teams) in the team demo competition. I also won 3rd place (out of 5) for martial arts forms (I did Taegeuk Ee Jang, for those of you familiar with TKD). Between us, we won 14 trophies, which is pretty darn good.

Much video was shot of the various competitions. As it gets posted, I will provide links.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that I’ve pretty much always had a weight problem. Even if you don’t know me, you can see from that picture over there to the right, that I’m a big guy.

I don’t like that.

I’ve tried many times to lose the weight and get into proper shape, with varying degrees of success. Back in 2001, I joined Weight Watchers, and thanks to an excellent leader, I lost 40 pounds in just over a year. Now, eight years later, all of those pounds are back, and then some. With a  rather large value for “some”, too.

Last August, I joined a Tae Kwon Do club, which has me working out for two hours each week, and while I know that has helped, that alone is not enough. Last week, I had my six-month visit with my doctor. I was all excited to tell him that I was doing Tae Kwon Do, but the day before my visit, I got on the scale. I was heartbroken. Not only was I heavier than the last time I visited him, I was at my heaviest ever. It may sound unbelievable to say that it snuck up on me, but it did.

And that day, I made a decision: Being fat sucks, and I’m not going to accept that any more. The weight problem ends, now.

So, what am I doing? Getting up earlier, for one thing. Starting yesterday (Sunday morning), I am now getting up at 5:00 AM, Sunday through Friday. I have a workout plan that consists of doing certain things every day, and other things on a rotating basis. The do-every-day list consists of

• jumping jacks (40+)
• stretches
• kicks, 10x on each leg
  • front
  • roundhouse
  • side
  • back
  • inside-out crescent
  • outside-in crescent
  • axe
  • hook
• blocks, 10x
  • low
  • inside
  • outside
  • high
• punches, 10x
  • middle
  • 2x middle
  • 3x middle
  • high
  • side
  • cross
  • low
  • down
• forms, 5x
  • Four Directions
  • Taegeuk Il Jang (form 1)
  • Taegeuk Ee Jang (form 2)

That’s the stuff I’m doing every day. On Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, I am doing both the One Hundred Pushups and the Two Hundred Situps programs. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I am doing the Two Hundred Squats program. All three of these plans have you take a day off between plan days, so this works out well. Pushups and situps go well together, and squats can be happy on their own. Thanks to iPhone apps for each of these programs, I can feed my geek nature and get in shape at the same time. And after completing a plan day, each app updates my Twitter and Facebook streams with my progress: #100pushups, #200situps, #200squats.

What about Saturday, you ask? Well, I’m probably going to sleep until 7:00 AM or so, and then I have Tae Kwon Do practice at 9:30. I don’t think I could handle two workouts in the same morning, at least not yet. :-)

I will be updating the blog with progress reports as I move through this life-change, this new habit. I’m only two days into it, but I can tell something is different from the last time I tried to change myself. It’s going to work this time. I know it.

Getting up at 5:00 also has other benefits, which is why I chose that time. The first thing I will do each morning is my workout. Then shower and change clothes, and then eat a good breakfast. (I haven’t been eating breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are the days I have to drive to my office.) After breakfast, and the checking of email, Twitter and Facebook, I plan to spend one to two hours on my Greek studies. As you know, I’m translating the entire gospel of Luke for Lent, and I’m two days behind the pace right now. I need to get caught up, or I won’t finish on time. This extra time every day will help me achieve that goal.

Wish me luck. :-)

Submitted without further comment:

From an interview with Daniel B. Wallace, there is this question and Dr. Wallace’s response

Lastly, if there is one piece of advice you could give to someone entering New Testament Greek scholarship, what would it be?

Work on your languages hard. Without a solid foundation in Greek and Hebrew—and for doctoral students—German and French and/or Latin, Coptic, and Syriac—you can’t have an influence on biblical studies. It’s imperative that you take language acquisition and maintenance very, very seriously.

Well, I’m working hard on my Greek, as you can probably tell. I had some French in high school, and I do have a book on Coptic that I plan to read at some point. I definitely have plans to learn Hebrew, after I reach a certain point in my Greek studies. Where that point is, I don’t know. I suppose I’ll know it when I see it.

As for picking up German, Latin or Syriac, or of advancing in French… I need 63 hour days… :-(

As I said, I am reading the book of Luke in Greek as a Lenten project. At the urging of a friend, I have decided to write down my translation, which I will post here when completed. So today, I started working on the verses I’d already read, but had not written down. As I was doing this, I decided to read the Greek not only in my UBS4, but also in my Byzantine text. (The Byzantine textform is essentially the Greek text that underlies the Textus Receptus, which was used by the translators of the King James bible, so it is quite different in some places from the NA27/UBS4.) I have now noted two places in my translation where there are differences between them.

The one that was most interesting today was Luke 1:35b. Here it is from the UBS4,

διὸ καὶ τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον κληθήσεται, υἱὸς θεοῦ.

And here it is from the Byzantine,

διὸ καὶ τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον κληθήσεται υἱὸς θεοῦ.

Can you spot the difference? The UBS4 has a comma after κληθήσεται, but the Byzantine does not. Thus, the UBS4 would be translated something like,

And because of this, the one who is born will be called holy, the son of God.

But without the comma, the Byzantine comes across something like this,

And because of this, the holy one who is born will be called the son of God.

You can argue that there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two, and there probably isn’t, but the feel of the two is different. At least I think it is. The King James bible takes it even farther, with unusually awkward language,

therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

I think I’ll stick with my UBS4 translation. :-)

Of course, in antiquity, when these documents were originally written down, they didn’t use any punctuation at all. Or spaces between words! It wasn’t until the Middle Ages (I believe) before Greek writing included spaces, punctuation and accents. So, the placement of a comma or not is certainly up for debate.

I said I’d noticed two differences between the two texts, and even though this one has nothing to do with a comma, I will point it out for those who care. It is an additional clause in Gabriel’s greeting to Mary in Luke 1:28. The UBS4 has,

καὶ εἰσελθὼν πρὸς αὐτὴν εἶπεν, Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ.

and the Byzantine has

καὶ εἰσελθὼν πρὸς αὐτὴν εἶπεν, Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη· ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ, εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξίν.

The first would be translated,

And he went in to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

And the second,

And he went in to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one; the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.”

There was a bit of a punctuation change, a semicolon for a comma, but nothing major. The real difference was that the Byzantine had the extra bit about being blessed among women. I love this sort of thing, by the way: seeing differences between manuscript traditions and thinking about why one has something and another does not. I can’t tell you why the Byzantine has the extra clause and the UBS4 doesn’t, but it’s still an interesting thing to think about.

In 2007, I announced that I was going to try to translate all of the book of Jude from Greek into English as a Lenten project. It did not go well. I realized pretty quickly that my skills were not at a point where I could do the work, and so I quietly stopped working on it after a few days, and never mentioned it again.

Now it’s three years later, my translation skills have improved, and I have more confidence. I heard about this Yahoo group called LentenGreekReading a couple of weeks ago and their announced plans to tackle the book of Luke for Lent. I joined the group and on Ash Wednesday, I began my reading.

Lent, as you may recall, lasts 40 days. Well, we say it lasts 40 days, but the actual time varies by denomination. Basically, you just don’t count the Sundays between Ash Wednesday and Holy Saturday (the day before Easter). If you do that, you get 40 days, even though it’s really 46. Anyway, Lent is observed by the Catholic church, and some Protestant denominations, like mine, the United Methodist Church. While Lent is traditionally a time of fasting and self-denial, more recently, some Protestants have used it as a time of devotion to a special purpose or project. Hence, the reading plan.

So on Ash Wednesday, I read Luke 1:1 – 38, which took me about 2.5 hours. Yes, 2.5 hours to read 38 verses. Those verses covered Luke explaining to Theophilus why he wrote the book and the foretelling of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus,

The next day, I read Luke 1:39 – 66, and that only took about an hour. Yes, there were fewer verses, but I could tell I was moving at a better pace. Those verses included Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the Magnificat, and the birth of John.

Today’s reading was Luke 1:67 – 2:20. I finished it in about an hour, but I had a bit of a head start, since I had already translated all of Luke 2:1 – 20 for Christmas. This reading included Zechariah’s prophesy about John, and the birth of Jesus.

I am pleased with my progress so far, and I feel good about my changes of actually finishing the project before Easter. I will post occasional updates if I find something interesting in the translation. Wish me luck; I’m sure I’m going to hit some rocky spots along the way.

See those two images up there? Those are scans of my latest acquisition, and I’m so excited about it. It’s a page from a Greek Bible that was printed in 1526. If you don’t want to do the math, that’s 484 years ago. According to the seller,

This is a leaf from a Biblia Graeca, Old Testament (Septuagint), printed in Strassburg by W. Kopfel in 1526. Originally from volume 2 of a 4 volume set and is the third edition of the complete Greek Bible by Johannes Lonicerus (Lonitzer). The octavo paper measures 162 x 99 mm. in totality and contains 30 lines of Ancient Greek script printed single column. The verso contains the same amount of lines and type.

I found this on eBay about two weeks ago, and I just had to have it. It’s nothing really special, as old documents go, but it’s the oldest thing that I have ever owned, and it fits in nicely with my Greek hobby. It contains bits of two chapters of the book of Esther. It starts partially through chapter 6, verse 1, on the front and goes through about half of chapter 7, verse 8, on the back. I can read some of it, but since it’s in Ancient Greek, and I am a student of Koine, it will take some extra effort to actually translate it.

One thing that is very interesting about it is the typography. There are symbols that I’ve never seen before, and weird ligatures that make it quite hard to read in places. I don’t know if this is typical of printing in the 1500′s or not.

What I really like about this piece is thinking about what the world was like when it was printed. Think about it: it was printed in 1526. That was only 34 years after Columbus set sail in 1492. The first British colonies in what would eventually become the United States would not be founded for another 81 years. It was printed 9 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and only 5 years after he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. It was the same year that William Tyndale first published a version of the bible in English.

This thing was printed a long time ago. And now it’s mine.

I don’t know which country this commercial aired in, but it’s pretty good. And there’s a twist.

Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Last night I spoke at the Atlanta Scala Enthusiats meeting about operator overloading and a little on implicit conversions. I think the talk went well as I got lots of really good questions from the audience, and they laughed at my jokes. This presentation grew out of a blog post I wrote a few months ago entitled Scala Gets Operator Overloading Right; I beefed it up and made some slides and more code samples. Incidentally, if you Google for “scala operator overloading” that blog post is the first result.

For those of you who weren’t there, here are my slides and the code samples that go with them. I wrote these samples against Scala 2.7.7.final. They should work with the latest Scala 2.8, but I haven’t verified this.

And here’s the source code: oopres.zip