I am going over the edits of Virginia Roberts tonight, to finish The I AM Sermons in the Gospel of John: The Name of God in Exodus 3.
Tomorrow morning, I will do another edit to finish and to send off to Janie Sullivan. The book will be full color only and about 50 pages long, trade paperback size.
I should mention that Dr. Bruce Church offered an important insight on the general use of common Greek in the days of Jesus. That was the universal language at the time of Jesus. Speaking Aramaic would have limited His audiences. I grew up and grew old under the false claim that the New Testament was first written in Aramaic; also, the argument that no "is" exists in Aramaic, so that voids the Real Presence, so they imagine.
Thanks to the progress of the computer and summer Greek courses (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm in Koine, to pretend seminarians know Greek) - nobody knows New Testament Greek from reading it in its context instead of using cute little phrases that might impress the congregation.
The question is not whether Jesus meant to equate Himself with God, but why no one seems interested in that fact. Those highly educated Jewish scholars, like St. Paul, certainly knew Greek as well as they knew Hebrew. When Jesus said "I AM" to the soldiers arresting Him, they fell back in terror. When the Jewish leaders taunted Him about His true identity in Mark (which is supposed to be the Unitarian Gospel for learned scholars), Jesus said, "I AM." That was a confession of His divinity. The Jewish leader tore his garment in ritual distress. They knew the truth from His raising of Lazarus, but they needed the confession.
My favorite contemporary professors are Brett Meyer, Zach Engelman, Pastor Jim Shrader, Terry Howell, Ed Buck, Dr. Lito Cruz, Randy Anderson, and Alec Satin.
My favorite theology professors are the sainted Otto Heick (Waterloo), Nils Dahl (Yale), Paul Holmer (Yale), Abraham Malherbe (Yale), and Roland Bainton (Yale). Still alive, Robert Wilson (Yale) was a new PhD, earned at Yale when I studied Genesis in Hebrew under him. Malherbe, Dahl, and Wilson veered me away from the modernist, Unitarian theories I learned in favor of studying the text itself. As Dahl said with unusual force, "The text! The text! All we really know is the text of the Bible."
Our little Bethany Lutheran Church in Springdale, Arkansas, is full of encouraging members. They always urge me forward to complete new projects, and I enjoy the support and the question, "What is next?" Answer - The Synoptic Parables.
We have almost 10 million views from the main blog - Ichabod, and 20,000 posts (some copied and cited). I am happy to know that "Nobody reads Ichabod" (ELS pastor) and that I have "No credibility" as he said on the phone.
Just over a year ago, Christina - my best and most diligent cheerleader - passed into eternal life after 55 years of love, laughter, disasters, and defenestrations. I still feel the overwhelming loss, but now I know that Christina's influence will continue in whatever I can do.
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| Christina's engagement photo. I was especially pleased to have her sister Maria and her husband Kermit Way attend the funeral service. |
