Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Christian Carnival 257

Happy New Year everyone! This roundup is a little late in coming. The head on the cord connecting my laptop to the server had to be replaced. But here we are.

The 2009 Sarah Palin Calendar you’ve all been waiting for

Here’s a link. Here’s another. The first comment on the second link is too funny.

Sarah Palin, in case you didn’t know, is America’s most admired woman after Hillary Clinton, and before that what’s-her-name, Oprah Winfrey.  

China bans Handel’s Messiah

And all other sacred-sounding music from the West. Here is the link. If I were afraid of Christianity, I would ban the Messiah as well. The last time it was performed in Shanghai, during the Hallelujah Chorus, "the audience rose to its feet and stomped and clapped and even screamed.” Music, you know. The language of close encounters of the third kind.

Reading Biblical Hebrew Online: A Guide

Here are some pointers:

The value of prayer lies in its uselessness: the Psalms according to Beat Weber

Beat Weber is a Swiss pastor and scholar. Here is an up-to-date list of publications. On average a full-time professor is less productive. The Psalms are Beat’s great passion and he knows them to be anything but a mere vehicle of information. The Psalms, he says, bring humanity into conversation with God, and God with humanity. Below the fold, an excerpt from a recent interview, in German and translation:

The Online Judaica Digital Library: A Free Resource

The Library has a nice search function that works well in English and Hebrew. The Library includes the excellent NJPSV Hebrew-English Tanakh and many volumes in the classic International Critical Commentary (ICC). I have all of this and more in my LOGOS library, but those who do not will find the Library a handy resource. The search function can be used for rough-and-ready concordance work.

Charitable Giving: Statistics and Trends

Why is the level of charitable giving per capita two to four times higher in the United States, Israel, and Canada than it is in England, Australia, the Netherlands, and Sweden? 10 to 20 times higher than it is in Austria, Germany, and Italy? Here is the relevant chart.

Arguments in favor of complementarianism

In an excellent post, Wayne Leman suggests that the strongest argument in favor of complementarianism is its conformity to the plain sense of Scripture. I don’t agree. It seems to me that the plain sense of scripture is set aside rather often by believers whenever they believe they have grounds to do so. For example:

An atheist explains why the world needs Christianity

Matthew Parris cares about results and knows success when he sees it. A “confirmed atheist,” he nonetheless says Africa needs the God of whom Christians speak. The world goes unmentioned. But Africa as he defines it is everywhere:

Andrew Compton on David Stein’s “Grammar of Social Gender”

Go here. Andrew is a careful reader, a detail person, a scholar’s scholar. For posts and comment threads on David Stein’s ground-breaking research on this blog, go here, here, here, and here, and last but not least, here. You will find the comment threads of interest, with contributions by, among others, David himself, Suzanne McCarthy, Peter Kirk, Iyov, Ari Lamm, Scott Gray, Kurk Gayle, Keith Williams, and a highly qualified anonymous commenter.