Having received a Kindle Touch for Christmas, I thought I’d offer a quick review and comparison with the Kindle 3 (now known as the Kindle Keyboard). I’ve also included a list of gestures near the end, since I’ve not been able to find one elsewhere.

My wife got a Kindle 3 over the summer and we both fell in love with it immediately. It is an extremely well-designed device that can make reading digital text virtually as easy and natural as reading on paper. I’m not one to spend a lot of money on ebooks–though Amazon does have an impressive library of them–so mostly we’ve used it for reading classics, which are generally free since they are out of copyright. Amazon has a number of them itself, and many more are available through Project Gutenberg. I’ve also used it here and there for academic reading, either of classic texts like Wellhausen’s Prolegomena, contemporary articles that are available as PDFs through the university library, or personal notes and documents.

Sometimes this works great, other times less so. For documents that are not already formatted for the Kindle (.mobi), you either have to load them unconverted, which limits their functionality, or use Amazon’s conversion service, which is great but not without problems. One need only email the document to them with “convert” in the subject line and it will be sent directly to your Kindle within a few minutes, but unfortunately it only really works effectively with Word documents and searchable PDFs that are exclusively in English, and it can’t handle Hebrew or other right to left scripts at all. Even German comes out a bit garbled when converted, and transliterated semitic languages are unreadable. In all cases, original formatting will tend to be lost or cause display issues. Unconverted PDFs can be loaded instead, which will preserve the original scripts, formatting and images, but such cannot then be searched or highlighted, and unless they are saved to a smaller page-size to begin with (as with many journal articles), they tend to be too small to view comfortably without scrolling.

The Kindle Touch shares most of these advantages and disadvantages with the Kindle 3, but it does have a couple of additional limitations. In particular, there is no landscape mode, and you cannot highlight across a page break. The first is the more irritating, as unconverted PDFs, as I said, often cannot be viewed comfortably as whole pages, and work better in landscape mode (half a page viewed at a time). It is unclear why they deleted this feature–perhaps it would have made the page-turn gesture recognition software more complicated?–but hopefully they will bring it back for future models, or preferably through a software update (unlikely?). As for highlighting across the page, there is a workaround: simply decrease the font side using the pinch gesture until the full quote is on one page, make your highlight, then restore the text to its usual size.

Apart from those limitations, the Touch is in almost all other ways an improvement over the Keyboard version. Besides being smaller and lighter (it easily fits in my jeans pocket), while still keeping the same 6” screen size, the new burnished aluminum look is much more attractive, yet is still rubberized so as not to slip in the hands or feel cold. I can comfortably use it with one hand, including page-turning and for longer periods of time, though I find that I most often tend to use my other hand to turn the page.

In general, I find the touch interface much quicker and more natural for navigation and highlighting than the Kindle 3′s directional pad, not to mention saving a great deal of clicking. Simply being able to press and drag from the first word to the last is much easier, and adding a note is no more difficult with the on-screen keyboard than with the tiny little hardware keyboard on the Kindle 3, which I always found rather ugly. Granted those with big fingers will find either one difficult, but personally, I find I can type a bit faster with the on-screen keyboard. Neither model is conducive to extended note-taking, however.  The only real downside of the Touch on this score, and it is not a small one, is that there does not appear to be any way to make corrections within a note except to delete everything that follows and retype it. Tapping at a point earlier in the note does not move the cursor, which seems a rather glaring omission from the software. At least with the Kindle 3 you could move the cursor with the directional pad.

The E-Ink display is noticeably clearer and brighter over against the Kindle 3, since the touch capability it provided by inferred scanners built into the bezel, rather than built into the screen itself. This also means that unlike an iPhone or iPad,  it works without direct skin contact, so you can read with gloves on or even use the back of a pen or other pointer. The latter can be helpful if you have thick fingers, though the touch sensitivity does not appear to be quite as good with a pen as with my finger. The downside is that bumping the screen (e.g. with your sleeve) will be treated the same as your fingers would be.

In general, the touch capability is reasonably accurate, but not quite as good as I would have hoped. You really have to hit the on-screen buttons directly in the middle to activate them, and it does not always recognize my taps to turn the page, while other times I apparently have not held long enough to begin highlighting and instead accidentally turn the page. Presumably that will improve simply by getting more used to the device. There are also a small number of gestures built in, though for some reason Amazon does not (yet) appear to have any documentation for these. Trial and error and some help from Google has turned up the following (note that not all of these work with all kinds of documents, but with standard ebooks they normally do; if you know of any further gestures I’ve missed, please let me know!):

• Tap the Page moves forward one page
• Tap the Right Edge moves back one page
• Tap the Top Edge accesses Back, Search, Menu and Formatting Options
• Tap the Top Right Corner adds or removes a bookmark.
• Swipe Left moves forward one page
• Swipe Right moves back one page
• Swipe Up jumps to the next chapter (or section break)
• Swipe Down jumps to the previous chapter (or section break)
• Pinch Inwards reduces the font size one level
• Pinch Outwards increases the font size one level
• Press-and-Hold (2 seconds) accesses a pop-up dictionary definition with additional options
• Press (2 seconds) then Drag adds a highlight, then opens a pop-up dialogue with additional options. Close with a Tap.

The Swipe page turns are not really necessary when reading a book, since a simple tap accomplishes the same goal. I tend to do it anyway, though, as it feels more like turning a real page, and makes the refresh delay seem less unnatural to me. The Kindle also seems slightly more accurate at recognizing swipes than taps. On the Home Screen, where tapping a book title opens it (and press-and-hold accesses additional options), swiping appears to be the only means of turning the page. One issue I have had, and at first irritated me a great deal, is that occasionally a stray bump is interpreted as a Swipe Up, which jumps you to the next chapter. If this happens though, you can simply tap the top of the screen to access the menu, then click the Back button (looks like an arrow) to return to your previous position–much easier than trying to find your place by paging back repeatedly!

Accessing the menu does take an extra step compared to the Kindle 3, and also adds a bit of extra time for the additional page refresh. Indeed, the page refresh speed in general appears to be slightly slower with the Kindle Touch compared to the Kindle 3, and the Kindle 4 is quicker still, but most of the time I don’t even notice. Even the Home page takes a bit longer to load, despite there being a hardware button to access it (the four little lines on the front that look like a speaker), so as others have also noted, this is likely a software issue rather than a hardware problem, and might hopefully be improved by software updates.

I should also note that both our Kindle 3 and Kindle Touch were purchased with Wi-Fi and “Special Offers.” I have no need for the 3G and in any case prefer the convenience of emailing documents to my Kindle, which is free with the Wi-Fi version, but costs a nominal fee with the 3G version. As for the ads, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how unobtrusive they are: They do not show up in reading mode at all; you only see them in sleep mode and as a small banner on the bottom of the Home page. Moreover, they sometimes even offer legitimately good deals, such as free ebooks and audiobooks, half-off coupons for Amazon itself, and similar things. That said, I have noticed that the number of these seems to have decreased lately, with more standard ads taking their place (e.g. currently they are cycling through a $15 off ad for jeans on Amazon, a $50 discount for Travelocity, and standard ads for T-Mobile and a Katherine Heigl movie). If the latter two type of ads come to replace more and more of the former two, I may become rather less happy with the Sponsored Offers version than I currently am, but if it really gets bad, I can always pay the difference for the non-ad version later.

All around, I’m very pleased with the Kindle Touch, and definitely prefer it to the Kindle 3, even if it still leaves plenty of room for improvement in future models. Beyond the above complaints, I would like to see a model that had a touch screen with a small number of hardware buttons for Home, Menu, Back, and Search (useful for dictionaries especially), as the latter three currently require an extra tap each. The one button design seems an unnecessary concession to the iPhone/iPad, and I see no reason to stick with it. On the other hand, though at first I thought I would miss the hardware Forward/Backward buttons, in practice they are unnecessary and would probably just get in the way.

Image by neoporcupine on Flickr, by Creative Commons License.

Like any American male, I’m genetically obligated to love driving. I grew up building race tracks for my Hot Wheels and drawing pictures of Porsches and Lamborghinis. My best friend had a gas-powered go-cart that we used to race around the neighborhood, pretending we were in the Indy 500. To a kid, a car is freedom–to go where you want, when you want, without parental supervision. To drive is to be an adult. Unfortunately that is only too true.

The first day I had my license, I caused an accident. I changed lanes on the freeway without double-checking my blind-spot and ran a guy off the road. The worst was that I didn’t even realize I’d done it, and continued on my merry way. After a while I noticed that some jerk was following me, and when I got to my destination he stopped right next to me and stared the whole time I was getting out of the car. I gave him a dirty look and walked away. That night, we got a call from the state patrol informing us of the accident, which the guy who followed us had apparently reported. Needless to say I felt like an idiot, and never again forgot to check my blind-spot.

Luckily the damage was minor, but the affair still cost us $300. Another accident a couple of years later seemed even less significant (I backed into a parked car) but ended up costing a lot more because it just so happened to catch the driver-side door at the wrong angle. A $1000 deductible and 3 years of higher insurance premiums for what looked like a little ding. I haven’t been in an accident since high school, but owning a car never gotten any cheaper. Loan payments, insurance, regular oil and filter changes, maintenance and repairs and gas, gas and more gas add up to an incredibly costly investment.

I’ve owned four cars, which were purchased for $6000, $1000 (from a family member), $11,000 (plus $3000 interest) and $5500 (plus $800 interest). I ran the first one into the ground, prematurely, as I did not realize the problem was fixable until it no longer was. The second was traded 6 years later for $800. The third I sold for $2000 (that was some serious depreciation!), and the fourth I also sold for $2000. That’s over $20,000 in sunk costs, not to mention hundreds of dollars a year for insurance, thousands of dollars a year in gas, and who knows how much more for repairs, major and minor.

Today I own no cars, three adult bikes, three children’s bikes, a bike-trailer and a Laufrad. All-told they cost somewhat less than 500€, require no gas or insurance beyond my normal personal liability insurance (pretty much necessary in Germany), and I can repair almost anything that goes wrong with them myself. If the worst came to the very worst, I could replace any one of them for under 200€. If I had to do that every other month all year, it would cost me less than I was paying in insurance for my cars in the US.

Last night I spent two hours fixing a flat tire on my bike, re-aligning my daughter’s chain, and adding a new coupling for the bike-trailer to my wife’s bike. It was the most effort I’ve had to spend on the bikes at one time all year, and it cost me 11€ for the coupling and a 10-cent patch. Later this week I might replace my rear brake-pads. That will set me back another 5€ and about 20 minutes. I don’t even want to think about what a blown tire, a drive-shaft problem, a new trailer hitch and new brakes would have cost on a car, even if I could fix them myself, but I’m fairly certain it would be just a bit more than 16€.

Living in Göttingen, I go almost everywhere by bike. I have a basket that suffices for a small bag or a few items, and if I need to move something bigger, I can use the bike trailer. If we need to go somewhere too far for the kids to bike themselves, they also can ride in the trailer (which is what it is actually designed for). We even have a kid’s seat on my wife’s bike that can be used in good weather. Two or three times a month we might take a bus instead, especially if our destination is up a steep hill or the weather is really nasty, and a couple times a year we may have reason to rent a car for a longer trip, though we usually just take the train. That goes everywhere, is comfortable and convenient, and isn’t necessarily expensive if you buy your tickets in advance or take the slower trains.

When I think of all the years I insisted on climbing into my car to drive 2 minutes down the road in the states, it seems absurd. Who on earth decided that it was a good idea to power 2000 lbs. of metal, glass and plastic by burning an expensive and highly explosive liquid, when a 20 pound bicycle powered by your own two legs could get you there just as quickly?

To state the obvious: A bike requires virtually no natural resources to use, produces no pollution, gives great exercise, and costs pennies on the dollar to maintain. On a sunny day it is better than a convertible, and far more peaceful. It is fully customizable and just about anyone can learn to repair one. When was the last time you tried to replace anything more complicated than a lightbulb on your car? I don’t even know what half the things under the hood do, much less how to fix them, while even my five year old can understand how a bike works. Yet despite all these advantages, few Americans even consider using a bike as a regular means of transportation, much less an exclusive one. For most of us (myself included before this year), biking is a form of recreation, nothing more.

To be sure, shopping and other errands require better planning on a bike, but that’s a small sacrifice. There are also risks involved–if a car hits a bike, the bike loses, every time–but I’m not convinced that biking is any less safe than driving in general, particularly in a city with good bike paths. A more common problem is weather, though with proper clothing that is not as big of an issue as one might expect. Heavy snow can sometimes make biking impossible, but personally I’d rather bike in the snow than in the rain, especially when the temperature is in the mid-30s–like today. Often the best you can do then is wait it out, as even wet days are rarely consistently rainy.

A bigger headache is broken glass. Bike tires are a lot more fragile than steel-belted radials, and people around here seem to have a bad habit of breaking beer bottles right in the middle of the bike lanes. It happens so often, I’ve begun to suspect it’s intentional. It’s rare if I can go a week before finding a new patch of broken shards somewhere along my usual route to work, and it is not always easy to see them quick enough to avoid them. Even so, the city has enough street-sweepers to do a reasonably good job of clearing such things up, and my flat tire this week was surprisingly the first I’ve had on this bike, and only the fourth I’ve had to fix all year.

Of course, if you’d rather not face the weather and the beer-bottle mine-fields, you can always ride the bus. It would take a lot of 2€ bus fare to add up to the cheapest used car, and even a monthly pass will be a fraction of the typical car payment. Sure, buses are less convenient than your own sedan, but they certainly beat sitting in traffic. That I once to looked down on people who took the bus just seems silly now. Why drive when I can sit and read while someone else takes me where I need to go? And if I do want to get there faster, even a car is no quicker than a bike over short trips, since a biker doesn’t have to stick to the roads or find a parking place. All told, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually wished I had a car in the last year.

Granted, there are probably few better places in the world to live without a vehicle than in Göttingen. It is a medium-sized city in a mostly flat valley, with moderate weather and a compact city-center. Besides the excellent transit system, there are bike paths on almost every street and most other places as well. Many stores have more bike-stands than parking spots, and drivers are well-accustomed to watching out for riders. Much of the downtown area is closed to traffic entirely, and it is amazing how that one rule can make a city of 100,000 feel more like a small town, without eliminating the conveniences of living in a city. It is almost impossible to go downtown without running into someone you know, simply because everyone is walking rather than racing past each other in their cars. Seeing a friend means you can actually have a conversation, not just a honk and a wave.

Unfortunately, it simply would not be possible to live without a car in most places in America. Urban sprawl, lack of decent bike lanes and unwary drivers would make biking impractical if not dangerous, especially with kids. Before we moved to Germany, my wife worked 30 miles from home and I went to school 60 miles away, and the only way we could have moved closer would have been to quit my job. Even going into town meant driving a couple of miles along a stretch of highway with a 55 mph speed limit and no sidewalks. Bus service was spotty at best, and train service a joke. To live without a car there would have been virtually impossible. But maybe if more people were willing to try it, more places would devote the resources necessary to make it feasible.

Sometimes I wonder how long it will take me to fall back into the habit of driving everywhere again, if and when we move back to the US. As it stands, I’d be happy to live the rest of my life in a place where I don’t need to own a car. But at the end of the day I can’t deny that a part of me would still love to drive one now and then. After all, I am living in the land of the Autobahn.

Polyglot Bible; image by sukisuki on Flickr, by Creative Commons licence.

Perusing the bewildering array of sessions at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, it would be easy to wonder whether “Fostering Biblical Scholarship” (our official mission) can mean fostering just about anything to do with the Bible. Is there anything beyond an interest in the Bible itself that holds us together as a society? What, after all, has “Bakhtin and Biblical Imagination” to do with “Economics in the Biblical World,”  “Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew” to do with “Bible and Film”? Are our approaches to the text so diverse that there isn’t even a common standard of measure?

I have a theory: The art of biblical scholarship—all biblical scholarship—is the art of making meaningful connections between a text and something else. “This text is better understood in connection with X” or “X is better understood in connection with this text” could summarize the vast bulk of what we call biblical scholarship. That might seem like nothing more than a restatement of the problem, since X could be almost anything: another text or set of texts, another aspect or portion of the same text, a tradition or source or redactional layer, a scribal practice or transmission error, the history of transmission, the history of tradition, a genre or typescene or trope, a symbol or metaphor or any other particular form of language, a literary theory, a sociological theory, a way of life (whether ancient or modern), a ritual or custom, an archeological find, an image or icon, a people-group, an historical event, a theory of history, a theory of midrash, a theory of myth, a theory of mind, a method or methodology, a social, religious, political or economic movement, a philosophical system, a theological system, a theological tenet, a theological error, an ideology, modern science, ancient science, modern film, medieval children’s stories, teaching, preaching, blogging.

But this is not just to restate the diversity of biblical scholarship, it is also to see that each of these otherwise very dissimilar topics shares a similar structural relation to the text. Each of them is drawn upon to argue either that some aspect of the text can be seen more clearly in the light of the thing to which it is compared, or vice versa. Such a wide range of things to which the text can be connected explains the wide range of kinds of scholarship we engage in, the wide range of standards of evidence and argument we employ, and the wide range of conclusions we come to, but all such comparisons operate within a similar set of parameters.

Namely, virtually all good biblical scholarship, regardless of its methods and emphases, 1. makes an original connection, 2. provides compelling reasons for accepting that connection, 3. acknowledges the limitations of the connection, and 4. shows how the connection helps us to better understand either the text or the thing to which it is compared. Whether focused on historical criticism or queer theory, semiotics or Christology, any good biblical scholarship will try to show how the connection it proposes is original, convincing and fruitful. Any particular piece of scholarship may focus on one of those areas more than others, but one cannot completely ignore any of them for long.

When biblical scholarship goes bad, it tends to happen on one of those same points (whether due to poor writing or poor thinking): Either it fails to make connections that are original or non-trivial, or it fails to offer cogent, relevant and compelling reasons for accepting the connections it proposes, or it fails to counter damaging objections to its proposals, or it fails to show a significant interpretive pay-off that would result from accepting them. Non-scholarly readings of the Bible, in general, are uncritical in their making of such connections–even if sometimes insightful–but they cannot avoid making them, whether they are drawn from one’s personal life, social context, theological framework, secondary sources, or their own familiarity with the text. All of us are in the business of making connections with the text; what makes our reading of the Bible “scholarship” is our attempt to do so critically, by being explicit about the reasons, sources and implications of our proposals.

That’s my theory, anyway. Whether it is original or has any interpretive pay-off, I’ll leave for you to decide.

“The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that’s true… tell me… why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game of thrones?”

George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones may be the most “realistic” fantasy novel I’ve ever read. It’s extremely well-detailed, emotionally gripping, endlessly surprising without being improbable, and unflinchingly dark. This is no children’s fairy tale, but a deeply troubling and moving epic, full of violence, brutality and sex, but also honor, valor and humor. Driven by its characters more than its plot, it gives us images of humanity at its best and (more often) worst.

Though set in a fictional world rather like Middle-Earth, there are no elves or dwarves or orcs, in fact little supernatural activity of any kind. But if there is no magic object to find or destroy, there is also no single villain to expose and defeat. The action is driven by the intrigues and wars of seven kingdoms, none of which are fully innocent nor guilty. The attention is on the Stark family, who mostly try to be noble, with varying levels of success, as they face off against the Lannisters, who mostly range from arrogant to conniving to downright wicked. If in most other series the Lannisters would be nothing more than the hissable villains, though, Martin refuses to let us hate them all. In fact, the most entertaining character of all is a Lannister.

The book allows for a spiritual dimension to the world–both giving piety a central role in many of its characters’ lives and in hinting at monsters on the edge of the world–but it is men and women who are most to be honored and feared here. The gods are real–or maybe they’re not–but it is the selfish and selfless, cowardly and courageous decisions of human beings that drive this story, often to heartbreaking ends. There may be a dark evil force on the horizon, but there is unquestionably one in the human heart, turning friends against one another, and twisting even honor and loyalty to ruin, while the wicked walk free and seize power.

The story is told through the eyes of several different characters (each in separate chapters), which pays off beautifully, giving the book a great deal of psychological depth. At times, though, Martin makes surprising choices about which character to follow at key points. This is never more obvious than when he refuses to give us a first-person view of the two climactic battles in the book. The first is experienced through a person too far away to see more than fragments. The second and decisive one is even further removed, as we only hear of it as it is described to a character on the losing side, well after the fact.

At first this seems disappointingly anticlimactic, but maybe that was the point, as it prevents us from feeling too smugly victorious, ignoring the trail of blood that led there. Unlike so many other fantasy books I’ve read, the emotional climax for me came not at the turning of a battle, but in a quiet decision to give up vengeance for honor and solitude for brotherhood, a decision that almost no one else saw.

And more than anything, that is what makes the book so enjoyable, despite its darkness: that there are still people left–broken and flawed though they are–who will choose nobility and justice even if it kills them. And unlike in most books of this sort, it often does.

Many people seem to feel a strong taboo against writing in books. Maybe they don’t want to ruin the aesthetic of a clean printed page. Maybe they don’t want to disrupt the author’s train of thought. Maybe they just can’t bear to stop reading and pick up a pen. All very noble ideals, no doubt, but not very practical for serious research. In my opinion a book is a tool, and as much as we all wish we were Will Hunting, most of us need to do more than just read if we hope to remember the details later, and marking up a book is probably the quickest way of facilitating later recall. Besides that, no book is entirely correct or in all parts equally insightful or useful, and I see no problem at all with indicating your judgments on such matters directly in the book itself.

Personally, the only times I bother restraining myself from underlining and adding marginal notes are: 1. when I’m reading fiction purely for pleasure, 2. when the book is so lousy that nothing seems worthy of underlining, but not so outrageous as to demand vigorous rebuttal, or 3. when I do not own the book. And there’s the rub, since as a poor graduate student I simply cannot afford to buy most of the books I must use.

If I do own the book, or have a photocopy of it, I mark it up like crazy, underlining everything significant or interesting, starring anything especially important to remember, and even writing little notes and comments in the margins. I always do this in pencil, in part because I find the grey less obtrusive than a pen or (worse) a highlighter, but most of all so that I can make adjustments if I change my mind about what was important, or realize a particular marginal note has misunderstood some key point (which of course, never happens to me!). When I can underline in this way, I generally do not take external notes on first reading, except when I am struck by some novel thought that requires fuller discussion than is possible in the margin.

This approach makes for a messy book but not only does it take far less time to underline than it does to summarize the key points in a separate document. It also facilitates finding the information I’m looking for later in a way that even detailed notes do not necessarily improve upon. Not only do you have the key information already marked on the page, but the simple act of underlining requires you to read the line at least twice, and stopping to add a marginal note only further solidifies the idea in your head. Both require you to pay fairly close attention to the position of the text on the page, and I often find that even months later I can remember approximately where on the page the information I underlined will be, if only I can find the proper page.

Even more valuable is that marking up a book or article in this way allows one to reread it by skipping from underline to underline, which takes a fraction of the time of rereading the whole book, while still capturing the main points. I find that if I do this immediately after finishing the full work for the first time, I can not only quickly take fuller external notes (in a notebook or on my computer, depending on my mood), but I am also in a much better position to evaluate the value and validity of the author’s statements than I was upon first reading (and I can always reread the larger context around the underlining, if necessary later). By contrast, when I have not been able to mark the most important lines in a work, a second reading takes virtually as long as the first, and is only feasible for the most important resources.

In short, I find that by marking up my books and articles, and only afterwards taking fuller notes from the underlining, I can read both more quickly and more effectively than trying to both read and take notes at the same time. The trouble, of course, is that I cannot do this with library books. Well, I have done it with library books, but I’m older and wiser and hopefully a lot more considerate than that now. And in any case, I have a feeling Göttingen’s libraries would be far less forgiving of that sort of thing that my old liberal arts college.

What to do then? So far none of the solutions I have found are ideal: Either I photocopy or scan all the key parts of the book (as I always do for articles) and mark up the photocopies as usual, or I take detailed notes while reading, combined with the use of sticky notes or page flags.

The problem with the first, aside from the little legal and ethical issue of copyright violation, is that it really isn’t practical to photocopy the whole of any but the shortest books, and it is often difficult to predict in advance how much of the book will actually be worth reading in detail. I’ve often found that many of the sections I photocopied either prove unnecessary, or else depend on some other section that I had not photocopied. There is also the expense of the photocopies themselves, and though I am currently blessed with a virtually unlimited budget for that sort of thing (I sure wasn’t while writing my M.A. thesis!), there is still the environmental issue and even the practical problem of having piles of photocopies everywhere.

Using digital scans on the computer or similar device could alleviate some of these concerns, but I’ve yet to find a digital technology that allows all that I would want to do with a book, from smoothly flipping through, to naturally taking notes in context, all while sitting back in a chair rather than leaning over a desk. I also find that I write better when I can lay out my sources and notes side-by-side while I am writing, and even having a second screen for the computer is not sufficient to replicate that experience. As much as I still long for the day when I could carry all my books and notes around in my pocket–if not as a replacement, at least as a supplement–I don’t see that happening any time soon.

As for skipping the copies and just taking full notes as I read, this is feasible if the book is only tangentially relevant to my interests, such that I only need to keep track of a few of the points it makes, but if it is a monograph devoted directly to the question I am currently researching, this method is way too time consuming to be practical. It takes long enough to read a 300 page book without taking notes, but it takes 10 times as long if I try to type or write out summaries or quotations of all the key points as I go. Unfortunately, failing to do so makes it far less likely that I will be able to remember or find the required information later, even if searchable online versions have made that somewhat easier.

If I know that I can keep the book for a while, I can take less detailed notes if I combine them with sticky flags stuck to the pages of the book themselves. This is still less precise and more time consuming than underlining, but for longer and more important books that cannot simply be purchased or photocopied, it is better than nothing, at least until I have to remove all the flags and return the book. My main problem with this, though, is that unless you use a whole lot of them, such flags can only point out the general part of the page and not specific sentences. I also find that the more flags I use, the more difficult it becomes to flip through the book, and the less useful they are as a means of quickly finding an important section later.

My latest method, which I like quite a bit better, uses little strips cut from sticky-notes, not to hang off the page as flags, but simply stuck in the margins in place of underlining (pictured at the top and in close-up here). It is no substitute for underlining when I can do that, but it needn’t take any longer and can be nearly as precise, without disrupting page-turning like too many flags do.

I simply cut a very thin strip of sticky-note and put it directly next to the sentences that I wish to highlight, cutting it down or adding additional depending on how long a section I need to emphasize. For important details, I use a brighter color like pink, and for especially important points, I can still hang a flag off the edge of the page like normal. Full size sticky-notes can also be used in place of marginal notes, so long as one does not go overboard with them.

Using this method, I can then go back through the book a second time to take fuller notes nearly as well as I could with an underlined copy, without having to do any damage to the book itself. It also saves greatly on the number of sticky-notes I need to use, and should I need to return the book, I can always scan the marked pages before doing so and keep the digital copy for context, without needing to print it off (since it is already marked up), nor needing to determine in advance how much of the book I’ll need.

So that’s my current approach. I’m sure it could use improvement  (one trouble I anticipate is the little strips falling out too easily), but in the mean time I’m curious what methods other people use to keep track of what they read. Do you aim for speed and efficiency, or do you have a more detailed and methodical approach? Either way, what tips and tricks have you found?

Love is stronger than death. – Unknown

The power of love over death has been a major theme of Harry Potter ever since his mother’s self-sacrifice first saved Harry’s life and caused Voldemort’s initial downfall. Throughout the series, Harry’s love for and trust in his friends were also critical in many of their narrow escapes and victories, though cruelly exploited in the Order of the Phoenix. In fact, the whole thrust of the series can be seen as a profound meditation on what it means to truly overcome death, and this theme comes to a head in the Deathly Hallows (or die Heiligtümer des Todes, since I watched it in German).

Without giving any Part 2 spoilers for the sake of the one or two people left in the world who haven’t read the book, the film admirably emphasizes the power of self-sacrificial love. This is seen not only in the resolution of various love-interests (and I’m convinced that showing that love wins out is one of the major purposes of the infamous epilogue), but most especially in the climactic scenes involving Harry, Voldemort and a professor who will go unnamed. No, the film does not quite live up to the book in the latter case, but it comes close enough.

That love is stronger than death does not, in this story, mean that no one dies, but that love wins out through death, indeed that love is most perfectly expressed through bravely facing death for the sake of one’s friends, not cowardly killing to preserve one’s own life. This is, of course, one of the many ways that Harry Potter reflects the Christian story, and it is embodied not only in the climax of the the Deathly Hallows but also in the scene from Part 1 involving the Slytherine Horcrux and the cross-shaped Sword of Gryffindore. Closely mirroring a baptism, here it is only by diving to the depths of the deathly cold pool that the sword can be retrieved and evil destroyed. Harry cannot save himself in this instance, but must be saved by another, as he so often was before, just as he also does for others. One could hardly find a better image of the communal nature of salvation.

Thus it was especially satisfying to see both halves of the film back to back (our theater played them as a double-feature, with the second half beginning at midnight). I haven’t been in as full and enthusiastic a theater since The Return of the King, and the audience clapped and cheered and laughed out loud on numerous occasions. Between the two halves, they fit in most everything important from the book, with just a handful of explicit changes, many intended (it seems) simply to limit the amount of time the characters spent under the Cloak of Invisibility or disguised with Polyjuice Potion. Logically, this strains the credibility of the plot a bit, but emotionally you really want to be able to see your character’s faces, so I don’t begrudge them the change. That they expanded many of the duels is also understandable, though somewhat unbelievable in a world in which one unblockable curse can end any fight in a second (though the same complaint could be raised about the books as well).

A few of the other changes were less necessary and therefore puzzling (for instance, why move the Voldemort-Snape scene from the Shrieking Shack to the boathouse?), but all around they were much more faithful to the book than any other adaptation I’ve seen. The main thing to get cut down was the material about Dumbledore’s past and Harry’s resulting doubts, which left the King’s Cross scene less moving than it should have been, but it didn’t overly detract from the story. The only change that really bothered me involved Voldemort’s use of the Elder Wand in the final battle, but now I’m getting too close to spoilers, so I’d better move on to more technical aspects of the film (feel free to discuss spoilers in the comments though!).

The acting was all around very good, as was clear even through the excellent German translation. Germans are quite proud of their dubbing, and rightly so. The voice actors all fit and did an outstanding job, and the only time I even noticed the dubbing was in the opening scene of Part 1 with its extreme close-up of the Minister of Magic giving a speech. There were a couple of scenes where I found the German difficult to follow, but I’m sure that says more about me than the film. There were also a couple of one-liners that I could understand in German, but would rather have heard in the original English. For instance, Molly Weasley’s last line (if you’ve read the book, you know which one I’m talking about) always seemed more deliciously startling in a series that almost everywhere else avoided profanity. It just doesn’t have the same punch in a foreign language.

Finally, as this was my first experience with modern 3D I should say a word about that as well. All around the 3D conversion seemed to be very well done, certainly better than I had been lead to expect of the genre. This was true not only of the full-blown action scenes but also of more mundane settings. The Gringotts sequence was particularly impressive in 3D, though sitting one row from the back of the theater significantly diminished the effect, since I could easily see the edges of the screen. I sat that far away intentionally, as did not want to risk a headache, but next time I would sit closer to the middle of the theater.

Whether because of this or despite it, I found the 3D overall more distracting than immersive, and it did not feel any more realistic than 2D. But neither did it feel boxy, and unlike some forms of 3D, I was able to look anywhere on the screen at any time, without finding it blurred or hard on the eyes. Our theater used Real-D 3D (without even charging extra for it!), and the glasses fit just fine over my normal ones. Certainly the 3D did not ruin the movie for me, nor was the picture too dark, but I wouldn’t have paid extra for it. Indeed with 3D or without, the special effects where phenomenal, and the action and magical warfare were every bit as exciting and imaginative as you could hope.

In short, it deserves every bit of the 97% it is currently getting on Rotten Tomatoes. It is exciting, moving, thrilling and at times hilarious,  and as brilliant and fitting a conclusion to the franchise as anyone could hope for, surpassed only by the book itself in scope and depth.

For instance, Isaiah 40-55 is often considered the preeminent example of “monotheism” in the Hebrew Bible, even forming the climax of many treatments of the subject (as Nathan MacDonald argued, though not without some vigorous protestations from the audience!). This is, after all, one of the few places in the Old Testament to claim “there is no other” besides YHWH. Yet even here it is doubtful that Isaiah can be fit entirely comfortably into modern definitions of “monotheism,” particularly if that term is linked to the traditional divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and omnibenevolence, or the absolute exclusion of all other divine beings.

In one paper this week, Saul Olyan argued that even Isaiah is willing to set its denials of other gods as incomparable to YHWH alongside explicit and implicit references to just such deities. So where 45:5 claims “I am the LORD, there is no other; beside me there is no God,” 40:26 also admits that YHWH knows the heavenly hosts “by name,” and 51:9 refers to YHWH’s defeat of the divine monster Rahab. This is not, Olyan insists, a “monotheistic” text, at least in the sense in which that term is normally used. Indeed, he claims that even the most exclusive claims are not unprecedented in the ancient near eastern world, with similar things being said of other national deities by people who clearly accepted a wider pantheon. “Apart from me there is no god” is rhetoric, not philosophical description. That this is the preeminent example of “monotheism” in the Old Testament leaves it doubtful, for Olyan and others, that any of the Old Testament can be helpfully described as “monotheistic,” however we define that term.

Certainly we must be careful not to distort these texts, either by reading later conceptions of Christian belief about God into them, or by comparing them negatively to such beliefs. To most people today, “monotheism” carries a variety of associations that are simply irrelevant and inappropriate in an ancient near eastern context, no matter how we understand the Old Testament. Ancient Jewish religion was extremely diverse, but as other papers insisted, always far more concerned with how one acts towards God and others (ethically and ritually) than with what one thinks about the existence of other divine beings. Even at its most monotheistic-sounding, the emphasis remains on who you trust, not whether your conceptual universe includes one rather than two deities. On that score, the Old Testament is not so far from its “polytheistic” neighbors as we sometimes imagine.

All of these are important cautions, and leave the area of research extremely difficult to navigate, as we not only must seek in a sense to examine and even get behind the more direct interests of the texts in light of their ancient contexts, but also to keep in hand difficult modern controversies that cloud the issues when using terms like monotheism, polytheism, monolatry, and so on.

And yet, the conversation can at times seem to be pressing too hard in the other direction, no doubt in reaction, underrecognizing the distinctiveness of the Old Testament in its final form. A couple of papers (by Mark S. Smith among others) rightly stressed that while perhaps no text in the Hebrew Bible exactly expresses “monotheism” as someone on the street today would tend to define it (would the average person on the street be able to define “monotheism”?), there is something new and distinctive in texts like Isaiah that we must seek to understand, even if we lack a term to precisely define it.

In fact, I wonder if this point could even be expanded. To be sure, the Old Testament preserves many “relics” of non-monotheistic religion, but the text as we have it still never approaches the kinds of depictions of the divine pantheon that we find in so many “polytheistic” ancient near eastern texts of a variety of genres. Everywhere in the ANE we find lists of deities identified by name, sometimes as characters in a narrative, sometimes as recipients of praise, blame or sacrifice, sometimes to reinforce blessings and curses in treaties, other times as the resident deities of various temples, and so on and so forth. This is an extremely important way of speaking about the divine that recurs constantly, yet as far as I know we lack a single real parallel to it in the Old Testament.

To give just one example: This week I had the great privilege of visiting the British Museum, where I spent the bulk of my time in their collection of Assyrian wall reliefs (I think I took about 400 pictures, including the one above). One of those is the so-called “Standard Inscription” of Ashurnasirpal pictured above (produced around 865-860 BCE), which decorated his palace. Now Ashurnasirpal clearly worshipped one deity above all others–Ashur, whose name is reflected in his own–and the text singles out Ashur in particular for praise, as the one who supported his rise to kingship. Yet the same text is also generous in its praise of many other deities, beginning:

“Palace of Ashurnasirpal, priest of Ashur, favorite of Ehlil and Nimurta, beloved of Anu and Dagon, the weapon of the great gods, the mighty king.”

He later goes on:

“When Ashur, the lord who called me by my name and has made my kingdom great, entrusted his merciless weapon to my lordly arms, I overthrew the widespread troops of the land of Lullume in battle. With the assistance of Shamash and Adad, the gods who help me, I thundered like Adad the destroyer over the troops of the Nairi lands, Habhi, Shubaru, and Nirib.”

There is simply no parallel to this kind of thing in the Old Testament, where even texts that clearly accept the existence of other deities besides YHWH tend to only mention one or two, and virtually always in polemical contexts. True, only a small handful of texts explicitly claim that YHWH is the only god, and even those can easily be read as exalted rhetoric in praise of one’s primary, national deity, but a great many other texts reflect an implicit but equally powerful assumption that only one god, YHWH, needs or even ought to be invoked, while other divine beings, if they exist at all, stand somewhere on the outside or fade from view entirely.

No, the Old Testament as a whole is not “monotheistic,” and given its frequent polemics against other gods, the ancient Israelite culture from which it grew certainly was not “monotheistic.” But the term does at least get at a real and important tendency seen across much of the Old Testament (not just Isaiah 40-55). Therefore however much we need to nuance our definitions to avoid imposing later categories onto the text, we should not let that danger blind us to the distancing developments that are to be found there. Indeed, as James McGrath and Mark Smith both noted, many of the terms we must use–religion, culture, gender, Bible–are later and difficult to define precisely, but should not therefore be abandoned.

Then again, maybe the more important point is simply this: Any attempt to reduce so complex a reality as our beliefs about ultimate reality to a single term is bound to end in failure. This is as true of our various names and terms for “god” as for our attempts to categorize them.

62 Stamford Street, London SE1 9LX

If you would like to attend, please leave a comment, send me an email (see the About page) or simply show up. If I get enough RSVPs I’ll make a reservation, but otherwise we’ll just go informally. And obviously feel free to spread the word on your own blogs [translation from the German: Please do!}.

I hope to see you there!

Having emerged from my German-learning cave, I’m wondering who is planning to attend the International Meeting in London next week, and whether we can schedule a meal together? If you plan to attend, please leave a comment, and mention any papers you might be giving as well. Also if anyone familiar with London can suggest a restaurant, all the better. If not, I’ll poke around a bit and see if I can come up with something.

Thanks!

Image by bark on Flickr, by Creative Commons.

For the better part of the last nine months, I have spent most of my waking hours studying, practicing or using German in one way or another. All of that has been leading up to next Friday, when I will take what I expect to be the most difficult exam of my life. Called DSH, this stands for “die Deutsche Sprachprüfung für den Hochschulzugang ausländischer Studienbewerber” and is designed to assess non-native speakers who wish to study at a German university. As such, it falls somewhere between the SAT and an AP German exam in terms of scope, except that unlike those tests, there are no multiple choice sections, nor any English at all to guide me.

In other words, this is not a translation test, but rather an assessment of one’s overall suitability to succeed in a German university, including one’s ability to follow lectures, read and interact with texts, compose texts with a clear structure and argument, and communicate in spoken German. Grammar, breadth of vocabulary and broader academic preparedness are also measured along the way. You are permitted use of a German to German dictionary, though if you have to look up more than a few words in it, you will not finish the test in time.

DSH is always composed of the same five major sections, though each university creates its own exam on this model: Hörverständnis (listening), Leserverständnis (reading), Grammatik (grammar), and Textproduction (writing) make up the written exam, followed by the mündliche Prüfung (oral exam). By all accounts, Göttingen’s is among the most rigorous in Germany, and runs as follows:

Hörverständnis: First is a listening comprehension test lasting approximately one hour, which requires you to listen to and take good notes on a lecture in German of approximately 10 to 15 minutes. You then receive a set of questions pertaining to the lecture and are given ten minutes to familiarize yourself with them (at some other universities, you are given the questions before the first reading). The lecture is then read a second time and you attempt to take further notes focused on those particular questions. Thereafter you have 40 minutes to answer the questions. The text should be at the difficulty level of a public lecture rather than a advanced seminar, but could cover virtually any area of academic study or contemporary culture.

Leserverständnis/Grammatik: Second and third are the reading comprehension and grammar sections, which are given together. You are given a text to read of somewhere between one to two pages, with a difficulty level comparable to a major newspaper (for instance ZEIT), which could again pertain to just about any area of academic study, current events, contemporary culture or politics, and so on. This is followed by several pages of questions, first pertaining to the content of the passage, then to its grammar. You have 90 minutes to complete both sections, of which they recommend you spend no more than 30 minutes on the grammar section.

Although it appears last, a good bit of advice I’ve heard is to begin with the grammar section, which can generally be completed just as well without having read the accompanying text, as it consists of reforming sentences so that they have the same meaning with a different structure. This is, to my mind, the easiest section of the exam (though for students whose training in German has been less formal, it can be among the hardest), and I can often finish it in 20 to 25 minutes.

The reading comprehension section is considerably more difficult, demanding not only broad-scale understanding of the passage and its structure, but also attention to small details, the ability to summarize and rephrase, and grammatically correct use of language. The questions generally demand either “Stichworten” (in outline) or full sentences. The first generally means you must find and rephrase information from the text into a nominal phrase with no verbs but the same meaning. The second means you must use different words than those found in the text to express the same meaning in a grammatically correct sentence. There are usually also a few true/false questions, but far from being easy, these tend to hang on very fine details, require you to cite from which line in the text your answer comes, and demand an explicit reason be given if you select false.

Textproduction: The text production section lasts 60 minutes and in Göttingen generally requires you to read a table or diagram of some kind, describe its contents (usually a set of statistics relevant to contemporary life, culture, politics and so on), and hand-write a brief text arguing for a particular position relevant to three or four leading questions. The essay is to be a minimum of 200 words and must accurately present and analyse the most important information given in the table (but in your own words), make a clear argument with examples, and answer the questions. You are evaluated for the contents of the essay, as well as for its style and grammar, the latter of which includes varying your sentence structure and word-choice.

The most difficult aspect of this section, for me, is time management. You essentially have 10 minutes to figure out what information is being presented and what the most important trends within it seem to be (this is not generally explicit, but must be inferred or even calculated–this is one of the places they sneak in a test of basic mathematic comprehension, for which there is no separate section), and come up with reasons and examples to explain the data. If you then take 30 to 40 minutes to write the essay itself, that gives you about 10 minutes to answer each question in its own paragraph, then maybe 5-10 minutes to edit the whole. You must save the last 4 or 5 minutes to count the exact number of words your essay contains, as this must be written down at the end of the essay. If this number is wrong, or under 200, you lose points, and if you repeat yourself or make grammatical errors within the essay, these are deducted from the word total (and point total), and if this drops it below 200, you lose additional points.

Schriftliche Prüfung: Together, these four sections compose the written exam, and must all be completed together. They are then submitted and marked, with 57% being a passing grade (DSH 1), and a minimum of 67% (DSH 2) required for most disciplines (including theology). A few faculties are yet more stringent, requiring at least 82% (DSH 3). At some universities, each section is graded individually and you must get the required percentage in each and every one, while at others all the written sections are taken together and it is the overall score that matters. Thankfully Göttingen takes the latter approach, which somewhat makes up for the generally higher difficulty of its exam questions themselves.

Mündliche Prüfung: If, and only if, you pass the written exam, you will be scheduled to take an oral exam a couple of days later. This is evaluated separately from the written exam and essentially holds veto power over it. That is, while you cannot improve your score by doing well on the spoken exam, doing poorly nullifies the written score itself. For instance, if you passed the written exam at the DSH 3 level, but only received DSH 1 for the oral exam, your final mark will be DSH 1, not 2 or 3. If you fail the spoken test, you have to retake the whole thing, regardless of how well you did on the written portion.

The exam runs as follows: You are given 20 minutes to prepare a 3 minute speech on a particular topic. Some schools give you a table or diagram to work with, some a short text, some both, followed by a couple of leading questions. At Göttingen, they generally give you a text about half as long as the reading comprehension example, but of comparable difficulty. Here however, they will generally choose an example that relates to your intended area of study, though how closely it relates I do not know.

After your twenty minutes of prep time, you go before the examiners, who will ask you a few questions about yourself, your background, education, goals, home country, current events or whatever else they feel. You then must give your three minute presentation, summarizing (in your own words!) the main points of the passage and answering the supplied questions. You may or may not be interrupted with further questions during this mini-lecture, but in any case it will be followed by yet more questions as the examiners wish. The exam lasts 15 to 20 minutes, and (as I understand it) is marked based on how well you understand and respond to the text and questions, the grammatical correctness of everything you say from the initial introductions onward, your use of diverse vocabulary (you lose points for (over-)using terms drawn from the text or repeating yourself), and the fluency of your speech (e.g. responding quickly, not struggling for words, not having to correct yourself too often–though apparently it is better to correct yourself when you do make mistakes than to ignore them).

This is the section that keeps me up at night, it part because it is far less predictable, and therefore more difficult to practice for, and in part because speaking ability remains my biggest struggle. The fact that this could potentially nullify my written score also adds to the pressure, and in any case, I suspect I would struggle to speak perfectly fluently in English in such an exam, much less in German, where my knowledge of the language is far higher than my facility with actually using it. Hopefully I’m not alone in that situation, and the examiners have some grace!

Part of me wants to rebel against the test and complain (as I did, perhaps unfairly, about the GRE) that it is a frustrating and unnecessary hoop to jump though. After all, I’m in Göttingen to work on an English-language research team, and will be writing my dissertation in English. But the truth is, however difficult the exam is, the things it tests really are foundational to success in a German university context. Being able to follow a lecture, read an article, write a short text and communicate in an unpredictable and interactive setting are all essential skills to develop, and the fact that they are difficult only stresses the importance of ensuring that students can in fact do them.

Having now spent nine months here, I appreciate all the more how important such abilities are, and only wish I were better prepared for them than I am. As nerve-wracking as it is to anticipate an oral exam auf Deutsch, I face similar situations all the time here in Germany, some of which have been just as important to my future here as any test. I may not have been graded for my grammar in those contexts, but my ability to understand and be understood without recourse to English has and will continue to to be vital to success both in the university and outside it. Besides that, it should give me a tremendous advantage in reading academic German going forward (which seems relatively easy now, compared to following a lecture or answering oral questions!).

I say all this now, so that if I don’t pass next week and start complaining that I have to spend another three months preparing for the next exam (offered in September), you can all remind me that this is still true, even if I don’t want it to be!

In an excellent op-ed responding to the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” David Brooks makes the following observations, echoing Dorothy Sayer’s classic book Creed or Chaos? (HT: a comment at ThinkChristian):

Vague, uplifting, nondoctrinal religiosity doesn’t actually last. The religions that grow, succor and motivate people to perform heroic acts of service are usually theologically rigorous, arduous in practice and definite in their convictions about what is True and False.

That’s because people are not gods. No matter how special some individuals may think they are, they don’t have the ability to understand the world on their own, establish rules of good conduct on their own, impose the highest standards of conduct on their own, or avoid the temptations of laziness on their own….

Rigorous theology provides believers with a map of reality. These maps may seem dry and schematic — most maps do compared with reality — but they contain the accumulated wisdom of thousands of co-believers who through the centuries have faced similar journeys and trials.

Read the whole thing here. One might also note Christopher Lane’s response, which does rightly emphasize the opposite danger of vying creeds themselves leading to chaos, but rather badly overreaches (in my opinion). As usual, wisdom lies somewhere in the balance.

“If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!” Psalm 139:19

“As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live.” Ezekiel 33:11

I was living in Canada on 9/11. I was 18 and had just moved there to begin university–the first time I’d ever lived outside of the US–and I felt so cut off from the world I knew. I spent the whole day glued to CNN, desperate for every detail I could learn about the attacks and the efforts to rescue survivors. It all seemed so far away, and I wanted so badly to be home, to mourn with friends and family. I don’t recall feeling any desire for vengeance, but I was proud of how my country reacted to the tragedy. I also supported “the War on Terror” when we sought to fight back in the coming weeks. I cheered when Bush vowed to “fight and defeat the forces of evil wherever they are,” and I followed the search for bin Laden with great interest.

In the ten years since then, however, I’ve lost whatever confidence I had in our ability to pinpoint the “wicked” and destroy them. For every terrorist we were told had been killed, how many hundreds of others lost their lives? Is the Middle East safer now than it was in 2001? Maybe, maybe not. We killed a dictator, and since then a number of others have seen their regimes weakened or toppled. The US has not been attacked again, and things in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to be more stable than they were a few years ago. Perhaps–hopefully–the situation will continue to improve and in the end the Middle East really will be a more peaceful place thanks, in part, to America’s intervention. I hope that is the case, but I do not know that it is, and I do not know if it was worth the cost.

I am living in Germany now, where just last week three men suspected of being members of al Qaeda were arrested for plotting high-profile bombings. The thwarting of such attacks is indeed a reason to celebrate, so how much more the downfall of the leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden? This morning I woke to find Twitter buzzing with news of his death, but also with the news of celebrations in D.C. and New York. Once again I feel very far from home, but this time I have no wish to join in the reaction. I understand the desire to rejoice that evil has, in some small way, been defeated, but I cannot join in. Did bin Laden deserve death? Probably. Are we safer because of it? Possibly. But we should not celebrate the man’s death. A letter posted on Brian McLaren’s blog expresses my feeling better than I can:

Perhaps everyone is right. Perhaps the death of Osama Bin Laden has made this world more safe. I do not believe, however, that his death has made this world more beautiful.

By all means, celebrate the rescue of the innocent, even if it required the defeat of an enemy, but don’t cheer the death itself. Don’t celebrate that an evil man was killed; lament that he could not be saved as well.

If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

"The Incredulity of Saint Thomas" by Caravaggio (1601-1602)

In light of the ongoing discussions surrounding orthodoxy and heresy following the Rob Bell brouhaha, I thought I’d repost an older piece of mine that’s relevant to the underlying issue of the role of a questioning attitude in the life of faith. It was first posted here, and sparked a follow-up post here. I hope you enjoy it, but most of all I hope you question and discuss it:

I’m sometimes asked how I can trust the Bible when it (particularly the “Old Testament”) includes so many harsh laws and horrific stories, many of which claim divine sanction. Is a God of love and goodness truly consistent with a Bible that includes such atrocities? In fact, too many Christians do seem to be inconsistent on this point, claiming that morality is “absolute” in the present day, but then becoming curiously relativistic when it comes to our own scriptures. They will happily accuse moral relativists of trivializing the holocaust, while simultaneously trivializing the genocides in the Bible itself (such as that described in Numbers 31, to name just one abhorrent example). Even the most horrific biblical commands are sometimes claimed to have been right and moral “back then,” by people who otherwise claim to reject moral relativism.

The problem, as I see it, is that texts like these are generally glossed over or ignored by those who seem to wish the Bible were a monolithic work of systematic theology. Ironically, the common insistence that the Bible is “literally true” on every point leads to some quite improbably non-literal interpretations (like the claim that the conquest of Canaan is just a “metaphor” for spiritual warfare). It is little surprise then that many critics reject such obfuscations as ridiculous, and I must agree that such unquestioning trust in the Bible is misguided.

But the curious thing is that this view of the Bible is not actually biblical. Yes, there are passages which speak of the truth and inspiration of God’s word (and I believe them—the Bible truly is inspired), but they certainly don’t require that Christians treat it as a collection of unquestionable propositions, as too many do. For instance, only one verse in the Bible makes any claims about the nature of “all scripture,” and it falls far short of claiming inerrancy: 2 Timothy 3:16 reads, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Whatever “breathed out by God” means (the Greek word is theopneustos, translated “inspired” in other versions, and occurs no where else in the Bible, but in the early church it was also used to describe both scripture and non-scriptural orthodox texts), this verse merely claims that scripture is “profitable” (ōphelimos; which could also be translated “useful,” “beneficial” or “valuable,” but certainly not “inerrant”) for teaching and moral correction. The goal of scripture, according to the following verse, is not that we would be provided with a perfectly accurate knowledge of science, history, or even theology, but that we would be “equipped for every good work.”

Though there are other texts which claim “God’s word” or “the law” is “perfect” or “unbreakable,” such can only be applied to the whole of what we now call scripture by inference (and of course it would be entirely circular to appeal to such texts to “prove” themselves). Inerrancy, then, is a theological construct that is applied to the Bible, not a necessary conclusion from the Bible, and it too often obscures the fact that the Bible itself, upon inspection, is the product of a long process of writing and rewriting, debate and disagreement. The Bible is full of texts which take up previous biblical ideas and modify, extend, or call them into question. For instance, if you read Exodus through Deuteronomy as they now stand, you will find chapter after chapter of regulations concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices, all claimed to have been commanded by God shortly after Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Yet the prophet Jeremiah, writing several centuries later, attributes the following to God in 7:22, “in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (many modern translations, such as the NIV, add “just” after the highlighted terms, but there is no basis for this in the Hebrew).

Now there are only a handful of possible explanations for such a text (other than positing, without evidence, a scribal error): 1. Jeremiah was unaware of the Mosaic legislation, and so was mistaken about what God commanded at the Exodus; 2. What we now call “the Law of Moses” was not yet (fully) written by the time Jeremiah was speaking and/or; 3. Jeremiah knew of sacrificial regulations that were attributed to Moses, but disputed their divine origin or wanted to make a point (perhaps through hyperbole) that such regulations were misunderstood.

In all probability, the truth lies in some combination of all three. Jeremiah almost certainly was not aware of all that we call the Law of Moses, because not all of it had yet been written (though some of it had). More basically, in criticizing the corruption and injustice he saw amongst those in his own day who claimed loyalty to the sacrificial regulations of the Jerusalem Temple, it is very likely that Jeremiah was questioning whether such cultic practices deserved the divine approval claimed for them. In short, not only does this text provide direct evidence of the developmental nature of scripture, but it is also an instance of explicit disagreement between biblical authors.

But here’s the key point: Jeremiah’s purpose does not appear to have been to reject the Law of Moses as false (remember, it didn’t even exist in the form we now have it). His point, as the rest of the chapter makes clear, was to convince his contemporaries that injustice and oppression of the poor are far more serious matters than adherence to the Jerusalem Temple. In order to shock his contemporaries out of their self-destructive complacency, Jeremiah here proves himself so passionately committed to justice and faithfulness to God that he is willing to call into question the Temple and the Mosaic law themselves to make that point. And he was right to do so. At that time, Israelite society was corrupt and heading towards disaster. Within a few years, Jerusalem would be wiped off the map by the Babylonians, her Temple destroyed, and her people exiled.

Jeremiah was right, but to make his point—indeed to remain faithful to God—he was willing to question scripture itself. This, I must insist, gives us a picture not of a static and “eternal” Bible that must be accepted without question, but a text whose very tensions and “contradictions” challenge our complacency and pseudo-piety, forcing us ever and anew to face the God it claims to reveal. To trust the Bible then, means not to maintain a slavish conformity to an eternally unchangeable set of Truths, but to carry forward its calls to faith and justice into our own situations, with renewed creativity and passion.

Nor is this an isolated example. From Genesis to Revelation, scripture is constantly alluding to or citing previous scriptures to make new points, correct old ones, or extend them into new situations. For instance, during the Babylonian Exile, someone composed a rather unflattering history of the Israelite monarchy, which we now know as 1 and 2 Kings. After the return from exile, another group rewrote that history in a more positive (and Priestly) light, and that work is known as 1 and 2 Chronicles. Both works, presenting alternative (and often conflicting) interpretations of the very same history of Israel, were included in both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, with no official attempt at harmonization. Clearly those who wrote and collected the Bible did not share our modern obsession with consistency, or at least they considered it less important than the truth they found in these texts, tensions and all.

Such examples could be extended ad nauseam, all of which suggests that Christian scripture presents something far more like an engaging debate about the nature of God and God’s activity in history than a settled and permanent record of True Propositions. Therefore when someone points out to me that scripture describes some terrible things, I don’t feel any need to defend those things as “right” in our or even their own time. Perhaps the people who committed them believed they were following God’s will, perhaps God even commanded them for reasons that I can’t begin to comprehend, but nothing in the Bible demands that I accept that. Rather, the Bible presents me with an authentic portrait of humanity, and humanity has committed some truly awful deeds, many in the name of God.

To trust the Bible, then, does not mean believing it without question, but interacting with it, questioning it, reflecting its claims off of each other and our continuing experience, but, ultimately, letting it transform us. For despite what some seem to think, the horrific parts of the Bible, like the horrific parts of life, are not given the last word. The Bible places far more emphasis on laws which promote love and community; it highlights prophets who bravely condemned God’s own people when they clung to dead rituals and pious platitudes while ignoring justice and mercy; it tells the story of a God who loves the unlovable and constantly takes us back when we rebel; it even incorporates psalms and wisdom literature which question God’s own justice and faithfulness. But above all, it points to Jesus Christ, who calls us to self-sacrificing love as the only true and final answer to the evil we find in both the world and in the Bible, and who himself demonstrated the power and divinity of self-sacrifice through his death. To trust the Bible is to trust that God, not without question, but in the midst of our questions.

It may be hard to believe, but this little video sparked a minor explosion over the weekend. Though Rob Bell’s book is not even out yet, it is already being denounced as heresy with surprising vehemence. Justin Taylor’s response, which well-known pastor John Piper linked with the tweet “Farewell Rob Bell,” drew over a thousand comments and a quarter million pageviews, and at one point “Rob Bell” was even a top ten trending topic on twitter (where not a few folks had @robbell confused with @realrobbell). CNN has a good summary here, and Christianity Today has compiled a number of other reactions.

The crux of the controversy is the doctrine of universalism, and specifically whether it is acceptable for a Christian pastor to publicly doubt hell. According to Taylor and many other folks, Bell’s questions in this video border on heresy, as belief in universalism is simply incompatible with Christian orthodoxy. As Taylor puts it, “this video from Bell himself shows that he is moving farther and farther away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.”

I’ve written quite a lot on this topic, especially as part of a “bloggersation” that occurred a couple years back on whether non-Christians can be “saved.” As argued in this post, I’m rather partial to universalism myself, but am not sure I can quite accept it, for reasons detailed further here. I’ve also long been a fan of Rob Bell’s, and used his Nooma videos in our home group one year. There is a lot that’s debatable about Bell’s views as expressed in those videos (I’ve not read his books), but I love his ability to ask good questions. I find it ridiculous that asking such questions should be enough to get you denounced as a heretic, especially when it is not even clear that Bell does in fact accept universalism.

But my interest today is with a post Taylor linked in his response. In To Hell with Hell, Kevin DeYoung offers eight reasons why he believes universalism is unacceptable, focused primarily on the issue of God’s wrath. I would like to respond to each point in turn:

First, we need God’s wrath to keep us honest about evangelism.

I’ve noted before that whether it is possible to be saved without being a Christian should not prevent us from sharing Christ, but I find this focus on the wrath of God unhelpful. Evangelism should be about inviting people into a relationship with God, not threatening them with punishment, and I fail to see how hell being empty should make the call to love God any less appealing or important.

Second, we need God’s wrath in order to forgive our enemies. The reason we can forgo repaying evil for evil is because we trust the Lord’s promise to repay the wicked.

I find this completely wrong-headed. It assumes that the only reason that we shouldn’t avenge ourselves on our “enemies” is because we know God will do it for us. Frankly, this doesn’t sound like forgiveness at all. It’s like a bookie “forgiving” someone’s debt only because he knows the mob will break the man’s legs for him.

Third, we need God’s wrath in order to risk our lives for Jesus’ sake.

This is simply false. One need only look to the very first Christian martyr, Stephen, who echoed Jesus words by praying “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60, see also Luke 23:34). That is, he died praying that God would not punish his enemies, not trusting that God would.

Fourth, we need God’s wrath in order to live holy lives…. Sometimes we need to literally scare the hell out of people.

Apart from the fact that we ought to be loving God for who he is rather than from fear of punishment, my main problem with DeYoung’s claim here is that it assumes that God cannot condemn our sin without condemning us to eternal punishment. This is patently false. Unless DeYoung believes that God only saves those who have never sinned, then he must admit that it is possible for God to condemn a person’s sin without sending them to hell, as this must be true of every single Christian. The inclusivist or universalist simply holds out the same hope for non-Christians as well.

Fifth, we need God’s wrath in order to understand what mercy means.

I actually agree with this point, but simply deny that it necessarily entails that God’s wrath needs to be eternal. That as sinners we deserve hell does not require that anyone end up there. That God might save everyone truly would be “amazing grace”!

Sixth, we need God’s wrath in order to grasp how wonderful heaven will be.

This is like saying that my kids cannot fully appreciate living in my house unless they know that I’m willing to throw them out on the street if they disobey. With Bell all I can ask is: “How can anyone call that good news?”

Seventh, we need the wrath of God in order to be motivated to care for our impoverished brothers and sisters.

To be sure, fear of hell could motivate one to love and serve “the least of these” (and this is perhaps the best reaction to belief in hell), but it is hardly necessary or even a particularly effective means to motivate charity. To say nothing else, I would simply note that some of the folks who give the most to help the poor are not Christians at all, much less motivated by fear of hell.

Eighth, we need God’s wrath in order to be ready for the Lord’s return. We must keep the lamps full, the wicks trimmed, the houses clean, the vineyard tended, the workers busy, and the talents invested lest we find ourselves unprepared for the day of reckoning.

This last point perhaps best captures the problem with DeYoung’s approach and the worldview it represents. Here he alludes to several of Jesus’ parables, the first of which is the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13), which contrasts those wise bridesmaids who kept their lamps lit awaiting the bridegroom–even though he was late in coming–and those ill-prepared ones who were absent when he came and so missed the wedding. This certainly emphasizes the importance of being prepared, but the motivation for all involved is not fear of being shut out but rather the desire to join in the wedding banquet. So also, it is not fear of hell that should motivate us to follow God, but rather joyful expectation of living with him.

While I’ve not found much time to post lately, I seem to have passed the blogging bug on to my wife. She started her own blog yesterday chronicling our experiences here in Germany, and already has a couple posts up. I expect she’ll have plenty of interesting things to say, without my characteristic vice of self-importance (yeah, I’ll try to work on that…).

Do swing by and take a look. She is especially hoping that the blog helps her connect with other moms raising kids far from “home,” so if that describes you be sure to drop her a note.

Image from dicktay2000 by CreativeCommons, and may or may not accurately portray what I actually drove...

In fact it was quite the eventful day. In the states visiting a store half an hour away would hardly merit a second thought, but here it took the whole day. We had to drop the kids at a friend’s house, take the bus across town to rent a car, then drive to the next city south to visit Ikea, where we purchased the rest of the necessities for our new apartment, then dropped the whole lot off with another friend to keep until we can actually move in next week. Oh, and we did all this in the snow–which of course didn’t stop anyone from passing us like we were standing still, when we were actually going 130kph.

Ah Germany!

This picture of the view from my office aptly symbolizes my first four months in Germany. Through the twisted branches you can just make out the three poles around which my life has unevenly turned: church, state and academy. On the right is the bell tower of one of the city’s old cathedrals. It is currently under renovation, much like my religious life. On the left is the main University library. So near and enticing, yet I’ve hardly found time to visit. And in the middle, frowning at the back of my whole landscape, stands the grey tower of the town hall.

You know those comedies where everything imaginable goes wrong until the last possible moment, when suddenly everything falls together at once, as if by magic? I hate those kinds of movies. They feel so unrealistic, and the constant misunderstanding and misfortune grates on my nerves. Apparently, God doesn’t share my taste in comedy, as that rather perfectly describes my life for the past four months. Since we arrived it felt like nothing could go right. I visited the immigration office more times than I can count. The first half-dozen visits I went in fully expecting to walk out with our permits, and each time I was given some new hoop to jump through instead. After the two dozenth time, I went in fully expecting to be turned away again. There was always something, and time was running short.

Along the way, they forced us to completely rearrange my financial relationship to the university, which in turn required us to replace our current insurance coverage (which had taken us forever to secure in the first place), and continually delayed our search for an apartment. Not that we were having much success on that front either. We could only stay in our current place until the end of January, but every time we found a reasonable offer, it would either be gone by the time we could get a hold of the landlord, or would come with a hefty agent fee, or would be impossible to secure a viewing, or would be 20 kilometers outside the city, and so on and so forth. Just a week and a half ago, after three and a half months of struggle, we still had no long-term residency permit and had yet to succeed in seeing a single apartment, much less signing a contract. We couldn’t help but wonder if either was ever going to happen, or whether we had made a huge mistake in moving here in the first place.

Then suddenly, with no time left to spare, everything fell together this week. Last Thursday we finally managed to visit an apartment–and actually liked it!–Tuesday we finally received our residency permits, and just yesterday we signed the papers for the apartment and finished the documentation for our new insurance coverage. In the space of a week, the three biggest worries that have been hanging over our heads were wiped away. We should get the keys to our new place in the next few days, and move in next weekend, and then maybe things will finally settle down around here.

And as nerve-wracking as the wait has been, it actually worked out better in the end than if we had been granted our permits at once. First, we will have more money per month due to the reworking of my funding. Moreover, if we had managed to convince them to give us the permits at the beginning, they almost certainly would have only been for one year, forcing us to go through this whole process again in 12 months. With the higher monthly income, though, (and proof that we actually managed to live, and save, even with the old lower income), they granted a permit through 2013. I’m not sure if they were finally convinced that we will be able to support ourselves, or if after four months they are just tired of dealing with us, but that was a welcome surprise.

More than that, the extended wait for the permits was also indirectly good for our family. My wife in particular struggled the first couple of months wondering if she really wanted to stay here at all. The uncertainty was especially hard on her, and at times she probably would have been happy if we had not been approved at all (though she felt bad for feeling that way). After four months, however, those initial feelings of homesickness and displacement have settled out and she had finally reached the point where the news that we could stay was exciting and relieving rather than merely bittersweet.

For my part, I never wanted to leave (though I did entertain a few doubts about our decision to come in the first place!), but the long delay was good for me in other ways. I’ve always been a procrastinator and have never been particularly assertive, so marching in and out of immigration, insurance and rental offices on nearly a daily basis was a major challenge to me. Add to that my longstanding hatred of calling strangers on the phone, and the last four months have been among the most stressful in my life. I think my hair has been turning grey faster than most American Presidents, and I’m only 28. In the end, though, I had no choice to press on, and found that I can be a lot more assertive and persistent than I’m used to, which can only benefit me in the future. At the least, no English phone call should ever be intimidating again.

In the end, though, we’re just excited to finally be able to move forward with our lives.

In case the font is too small, you can find the PDF here. There is also a follow-up.