It might get interesting here soon.

Situation: End of semester
Sleeps left: 10
Assessment to draft: 4
Assessment drafted: 1
Words to write: approx. 8200

But:
Situation: Overseas Holiday
Sleeps left: 20

But:
What amount of relaxation am I feeling right now?
≈ 0

Accidentally Polytheistic

You wouldn't think that grammar could have an impact upon one's theology.

Until one is proof reading an assignment and finds "...Gods' purposes..."

Dumb apostrophe.

Of course, how often would I make an error like that?

(okay, so I make many, many typos)

A compliment?

According to the course co-ordinator at my university I'm "academically incorrigible - in a winsome way"

And how much of an idea do I have as to whether it was a positive or negative comment?

Hmmm.... *goes off to find dictionary*

Depressing

I've pulled out my Greek books today and tidied up my storage space, which of course means reviewing the marks I got on the assessment last semester before I consign it to the archives.

And, boy was I so smart... and now can't recognise the half of the obscure grammatical points I identified in the final paper.

There's no resting on my laurels for this semester, though. Somehow I'd better pick it up prior to the beginning of the new semester when I'm doing New Testament Greek 3.

And what can I remember about hortatory subjunctives?

*brain slowly grinding into gear*

New Book Smell

I had a parcel delivered this morning.

Actually, two parcels - but one was for my Beloved's business and wasn't at all exciting, so the first statement shall be permitted to stand.

I had a minor melt-down when Google-chatting to Emily Sue, because I like new books where nobody has scribbled in or otherwise defaced my prospective property. But I am a realist and students on a budget should be somewhat thrifty. So I spent some time getting over it.

Then I checked out three websites for each of the 10 text books I need for this semester, and worked out which was cheapest.

And I was surprised that, for the most part, the current edition new texts were not that much more expensive than the current edition secondhand texts. (If indeed there were any secondhand texts from the current edition) They were, of course, significantly more expensive than the previous edition secondhand texts.

I have no idea why this was so, but I got stuck into the new ones and still came in under my book budget for the semester, so much so that I'm tempted to buy an additional Jewish study Bible that is recommended (but not required) reading for Introduction to the Old Testament. Wouldn't it give a great alternative perspective?

And what is truly delightful to this obsessive bibliophile is that they smell like new books. No highlighting, no notes to distract me, and my new Fourth Edition Greek New Testament is still in it's plastic wrap with a gold seal stating "The Preferred Text for Scholars" kindly informing me of my growing status as a scholar of ancient languages.

And the chance that I'll miss the tiny amount I spent extra to get new books?

Nine cents

Okay, so not earth shattering, but I really enjoyed getting an email from Amazon regarding half my text books for first session which showed the amount I paid in Aussie dollars was less than the amount in US dollars.

And the chance that it was a huge amount in my favour?

2012 The year of the Spiritual Disciplines

Okay, so I'm not exploring them all. But there will be a few.

Firstly, I've decided to take a semester off work so that I can study a full-time study load.

Guess what? Study is a Spiritual Discipline!

Because I'm taking time off work, the budget will be quite snug.

Guess what? Simplicity is a Spiritual Discipline!

I've been feeling a real call to prayer and meditation for this year, so I've made certain that my timetable includes sufficient time to make these areas of my spiritual life a priority.

Guess what? Prayer is a Spiritual Discipline!

It's making for a very interesting life. Grocery shopping now has something to do with God, because I have to shop within a tighter food allowance than previously.

Riding my bike places has something to do with God because I'm saving fuel money.

Avoiding junk food has something to do with God because there's only a small discretionary spending allowance for me and is it really worth it?

And ripping up Koorong catalogues without taking time to drool over them is about God, because my book budget for this year is restricted to textbooks (unless I choose to spend some of the disc. spend. allow.).

And now I just need to find a way to make travel overseas a Spiritual Discipline. Number of ways that have occurred to me?

Exciting Things...

There are a few.

And I haven't been blogging, time has been the factor.

So, a few things that are happening around here:-

1a. Our church can't afford a part-time pastor for next year.

1b. And we as a church really want to look at getting a pastor's job description that really fits the direction that we think God wants us to head for the future.

1c. And I've been feeling that I really need more opportunity to study.

1d. So I don't have a job for next year.

Interesting Times, hey?

2. I need to find a job, so I've been working on my resume (thanks to Emily Sue who is good at that stuff), and looking for jobs to apply for. There are a couple of options coming up. It's hard to know which way to go, but I figure if I apply for everything possible, I might get something.

3. This leaves study in an odd position. I've enrolled in one subject per semester, but am hoping that with a part-time job I may be able to do 2 or even 3 subjects a semester (still distance ed.), depending on the number of hours required.

And the best and most exciting thing is:-

4. In June/July 2012 I will be doing my absolute dream overseas trip that I never really thought I would be able to do. My Beloved is not really interested, can't get time off work, and we can't afford it anyway, but I've convinced my Mum that it would be great, and Dad thought it sounded great too so they will be coming (Dad only for part of it before leaving Mum and I to get lost all by ourselves).

Oh, you want to know where to?

Well then, I'll humour you!

Starting with 5 days in Jerusalem and surrounds, going to some of the usual sites of interest to Christians and tourists; Temple Mount, Western Wall & tunnel, Jewish Quarter, Temple ruins, pools of Bethesda, Via Dolorosa and Holy Sepulchre, Qumran, Masada, Bethlehem, and the Herodium.

Then 14 days at an archeological dig at Bethsaida on the sea of Galilee. Digging in the mornings, recovering in the afternoons before pottery reading late pm and lectures in the evenings. The weekend is free, and I understand that the various lecturers on tour pick an interesting location to go to visit.

Then 5 nights in Southern Israel and Jordan, going to Petra, the Dead Sea, Negev desert, Mt Nebo.

Then Dad comes home and Mum and I board a plane to Athens. Or rather, we board a flight to Athens, then Dad goes home. I've always loved ancient Greek history, architecture, art etc, particularly Bronze Age. So whilst the tour we're doing is Pauline sites, there are a few days to spare between tours and so we get off the plane from Athens, and get straight onto a plane for Heraklion.

What? You don't know where that is? Crete. Minoan civilisation and beautiful artwork. I was initially depressed that the Aegean Cruise that we get to go on as part of the tour doesn't go to Crete (it used to), but we now get three days there between tours and that will be SO much better than a half-day wander about.

So we will see Knossos (Palace that was reputed to be home of the Minotaur and one of two places that I have ALWAYS wanted to go since I studied Bronze Age Greece - despite bad, bad, bad early archeology) Phaestos, Gortys, and spend time in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum which has some of the best examples of Minoan art and objects.

Then we go back to Athens to start a tour that is "In the footsteps of the Apostle Paul" And does Athens, Philippi, Thessalonika, Meteora, Veria, Corinth, Mykonos, Ephesus, Kusadasi, Patmos, Santorini (3 day cruise around the Aegean).

Then we have booked a day trip to Mycenae (yes, I have inconsistent Greek K/ Latin C use) so that I can see the Lion Gate, which is the other of the two places in Greece that I've always wanted to see.

We fly out in the afternoon of the next day, so that leaves us a morning to walk around Athens (rioting crowds permitting).

So how excited am I?

... approximately LOTS AND LOTS!!!!

Free for the Summer

Yes. I live. I survived the semester.

and I should pass, even, which is even better.

Now, what do I do in the evenings again?

The chance that I'm NOT a dag?

Okay, you've always thought I was a bit of a dag? Well you are so right!

Got home from morning prayer this morning (my day off, which I have dedicated to Greek - hopefully getting my assignment translation completed), to find a parcel up against the back door.

I crossed my fingers that it was from Amazon...

...and it was...

...and it was heavy...

...and being a martyr I made myself put on a load of washing before I let myself open it...

My Danker "Greek-English Lexicon" (BDAG) and Wallace "Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics" have arrived!!!

They weren't supposed to get here until the 9th September!

I might have done a little jig around the house clutching my new books and chanting a little nonsense song that might have included the words, "mine, mine, my books, all mine" at regular intervals. But I'd never admit to it.

And no-one in my life here understands my excitement, and my Beloved (who would probably laugh at me anyway) has his mobile switched off.

I'm just hoping that spending the equivalent of 3 months gym membership results in me using these books more frequently and for longer than gym membership inspires me to exercise!

P.S. They have a beautiful new book smell.

Addendum:

After writing the above, the joke got even better. I became vaguely aware of dog-like noises on the front verandah.

There shouldn't BE dog-like noises on the front verandah, because the LBD is restricted to the back yard, the back verandah, and now the garage.

I got up to see what was going on, and sure enough, the LBD was waiting for me to let him back in.

Obviously in my delight at finding a parcel against the back door, I had gone back inside, closed the garage door, and entirely forgotten to check that the LBD hadn't followed me outside.

Ooops.

I now know why we never covered participles in High School

The reason is not (as I have previously suspected) that Education Queensland wanted to make certain of our incompetence at our own language and ensure we were never able to learn another, but that they (participles) are stupid.

Any part of speech that can't decide whether it's related to a verb or an adjective should not have the right to live.

I don't care if it is temporal or causal, if it introduces a participial phrase, and if it indicates relative time from the proper verb of the sentence, or what the heck its aspect is. I HATE PARTICIPLES!!!

And the chance that I'm not typing this as the little men in white coats try to convince me to put the keyboard down and slip into a very comfortable straight jacket?

Something... Anything

In the writing doldrums. To blog you need two concurrent things:

1. Something to write about

2. Time to write.

These have not been concurrent for me for some time, hence the radio silence.

The main culprit is the end of semester.

Then there was the break between sessions when I sit in front of the TV, loving the HD recorder that enables me to record stuff I'd otherwise have missed and watch it at night when I'm ready.

And so now I'm about to start the new session - New Testament Greek 2, having done pretty well on New Testament Greek 1. I'm looking forward to it because I'll be finishing the textbook and it doesn't look so full-on and hopefully I'll be better equipped to read the NT after I've done all the rest of the tenses and some participles and things.

And how useful will this be?

And sometimes you do end up studying tired...

I am laughing at myself. (again)

I've just been going over my latest chapters of the textbook that deal with the future tense to get the information firmly into my head before attacking the workbook. My head is full of contractions and ablauts; tense formative sigmas or epsilon sigmas; words that have two different roots but act as one; and all the other information that is not entirely settled into its logical place in my brain.

So I start to do the first exercise, carefully working out the person, number, tense, voice, mood (hard one, that, as we have only done indicative as yet!), and the lexical form. All going well, so far.

Then the actual whole point of the exercise - the inflected meaning. And I find myself staring at it blindly, trying to comprehend what to put in this box... So how do you render future in English?

"I will do" better next time, but I just thought I'd share.

The chance that studying joins driving as one of those things I don't do if I'm tired?

So I think the exam went okay...

...Just so you know.

The lecturer picked the easy paradigms... after I'd spent considerable time getting the difficult ones down pat.

And that impresses me how much?

And so I've just done and marked my trial exam...

And got an answer wrong.

And I could live with that.

But there were four other questions I made silly errors. Identifying nouns as singular and then translating them with the English plural form (and vice versa); leaving out the odd article when it clearly has one in the Greek (and one that is necessary also in the English - which is not always the case); and in one spectacular example, leaving out the second part of the question entirely.

Then, of course my maths is atrocious and as I marked the paper I came back with 68%, before realising that the first 4 questions were 10 marks each, not 5. I am much happier now.

I will pass.

But the chance that I'll not be irritated by the silly errors I accumulate along the way?

(The worst thing is that you can't really DO much about silly errors. I finished the paper by working solidly with only 4 minutes to spare, so I don't have time to go back over everything. I'm just feeling sorry for some of the other students who are struggling. I had 4 minutes to spare. I'm hoping that everyone will manage to finish the paper.)

So I would never have made it as a Wireless Operator

A very pertinent post for ANZAC day, I thought.

I'm dutifully studying my Greek.

I have an exam on Friday (not due til next week, but I don't trust Aussie Post to get it there in a short week) and also a tiny quiz to also submit the same day as it can be done online.

As I go through my exercises for this week, I begin to realise that I would have failed the course to become a Wireless Operator for the RAAF during the second world war.

What the?

Okay, some explanation for those who don't immediately follow where I'm going with this.

My Mum's Dad was, you probably have guessed (unless you're a family lurker and already know), a Wireless Operator during the second world war. He flew in the largely forgotten Halifax bombers from a tiny place in England for a couple of years.

He was lucky enough to get accepted as Aircrew, and because he wanted to be a navigator, the Airforce decided to send him to train as a Wireless Operator. (Ironically, on demobilisation they did aptitude testing to see what jobs he'd be good at back in the real world, and his scores were so good in one area that they supposed he must have been a navigator. No - that is something that he was interested in and had natural aptitude for - as if he'd get THAT job!!?!)

Anyway, to get back to the story, he had to learn Morse Code. In fact although there would be days when he would now struggle to remember my name, I bet you he could take a message in Morse Code just on reflex.

As he tells it, the trick in the examinations was to simply transcribe the letters as they came through. If you used your brain to make sense of it as it was coming, you'd suddenly find you weren't right and end up with the sort of mess that predictive text creates on mobile phones today, then you'd be lost and unable to catch up with the message. Then you failed the course and had to become an Air Gunner, taking a short sojourn in the kitchens because they didn't want everyone deliberately failing just to get through to the action more quickly and with less effort.

So, here I'm trying to do Greek to English translation exercises and I've just realised that where I am going wrong is when I take the first meaning I remember for a series of words and bung them together and then read the answer to see what it OUGHT to be and realise that my translation is not only seriously dodgy, but that if I took a little more time and didn't start presuming where the sentence is going before I am finished, I would probably do a whole heap better at it. And maybe it would approach sense in English.

And the chance that this post is not simple study avoidance?

... and then I turned the page...

I was emailing with Emily Sue this week and expressing my relief that I've obviously done enough work on English case to be able to get some kind of handle on Greek case endings.

Last time I studied I was only ever able to get a grip on the genitive case as possession was the only thing that made sense to me out of all the rest.

She indicated that she didn't entirely get genitive when she studied it.

I didn't understand how that was so.

Then I turned the page in my text-book and it starts to give helps with translation and exegesis from the genitive case. It's throwing around terms like descriptive, separation, apposition, and plenary.

And the chance that the wheels haven't fallen off my ability to understand what the heck is going on here?

Greek Geek

So last week I would have went, saw, and conquered, but as that is more commonly rendered in Latin, it wouldn't really be appropriate to my trip.

I went on a residential school for New Testament Greek in our nation's capital.

Three days of intense language learning, sandwiched between travel. It was really good (very intense, very full, very mind-filling and not always easy - but good). The preparation work I'd done was sufficient to keep me in the same ball park as the lecturer, which enabled me to get much more out of it than if I'd been struggling with how to sound out Greek letters and a total incapability to understand grammatical case (thanks, Education Queensland).

I was pretty bushed by the time I got home at 8.30 Saturday evening, then had to preach Sunday morning, then go to a Seminar in a neighbouring town, followed by a meeting with my supervisor and a hospital visit, rushed Officeworks trip and home in time for music group.

Then madly preparing for my RI class Tuesday lunchtime.

Then the taking of the class (I have 28 grade 2s - that is WAY too many for a non-teacher to keep under control all at once), followed by child protection seminar.

Thankfully today had nothing down in my diary until Ministry Team meeting late this afternoon. I slept reasonably well secure in the knowledge that I didn't really have to get up and prepare for anything. I could get some essential housework done, get out tax stuff together and make a few phonecalls to organise some things.

The chance I appreciated the 8.05am phone call from the church wondering whether I was coming for the Pastoral Carers meeting? (which I chair - oops)

Three Hundred Words

These are the final words that I had to ditch or bung into footnotes in order to get my assignment completed. Of course, I needed to take out more than 300 in order to put more words in to make things intelligible.

It has been submitted.

With 2996 words.

I am free.

the following questions will be addressed. First, what does Paul mean when he talks about “law” or “the law”? Is there a difference discernable from the particular terminology he uses? Second, what is it that Paul states outright that the law is not? Third, if the law is not something, what then is its purpose or role? How does it function? Fourth, what is the context for Romans? Lastly, what are the possible conflicts that come from Paul’s treatment of the law in Romans, and does the context help resolve them? which can and that really However, Romans does challenge the privileged status of the Jews, and their false confidence that God in his grace will accept them, and that their sin is not as bad as the sins committed by the Gentiles living around them The law brings our sin to our attention. Romans 4:15 (NRSV) Morris explains that our passions are passive, such that experiences happen to them. goes further to: “But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of your relation to God and know his will and determine what is best because you are instructed in the law... For as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’” In particular the food laws, Sabbath, and circumcision were at times ridiculed by the surrounding Gentile population. it each of which may shed light on that seem to occur These are Some can be hazarded within life in Rome with a double character but modern theologians This has lead to outside of the contexts of both Paul and Rome Sanders does not find all Paul’s arguments convincing to the contemporary mind, even if his basic views are true. must confess have a for that Gorman would remind us that We do not have to choose between these classifications could make As such, . , including questions like “What is Israel’s role in salvation-history?”, and “What is the function of Torah/circumcision?” would would Romans can be dense and confusing because Paul’s style, thought patterns, and argument are not familiar to modern thought. as discussed above for , as it causes division , his crucial saving act because of himself Jewish to the

How much sense do they make out of context?

You see, there's this assignment...

Yes.

I've been very quiet.

Hardly had the computer on, in fact.

Pretty desperately trying to get the reading done on my final major research assignment that is due next Friday. A week. And I'm still reading. *Sigh*

That's in addition to the fact that tomorrow's the church Spring Fair.

And the fact that the LBD must be walked or he won't get his leg back working properly. Tried a swimming session today, but it was cold, misting rain and frigid breeze. I wasn't happy being up to my knees in the water, and the LBD had more sense than to try swimming.

So how much time am I spending on line until next Friday?