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Bono lists his Top Ten for the next decade in the New York Times.   Here's an example of one:

Matter Doesn’t Matter

God, it appears, is a Trekkie. (God help us.)

Dr. Anton Zeilinger, an Austrian physicist, is becoming a rock star of science for his work in quantum teleportation, which I know very little about but which I think I may have achieved backstage one night in Berlin in the early 1990s. At any rate, it seems to have something to do with teleporting properties or bits of information, not physical objects; even though Dr. Zeilinger plays down the possibility of a “Star Trek” moment, his breakthroughs are catching the attention of the nonscientific world for their metaphysical implications. His own version of E=mc2 ends in a cosmic punch line: that when it comes to the origin of the universe, information matters more than matter.

The whole article is worth a read.

I'm not sure what this says about this blog or the state of Biblioblogging...probably nothing either way...but I made the Top 50!  I'm number 46 in the ranking of Top 50 Biblioblogs for October 2009.

It looks like things are slowing down, and I'll be able to start posting again.  I know that excites the two or three of you that check in here.

Here are some items that I would have blogged about if I had been blogging:  

New Hebrew Bible in the Works
The Oxford Hebrew Bible " . . . will be a new critical edition of the Hebrew Bible featuring a critical text, apparatus, and text-critical introduction and commentary."   Hugh Williamson comments on it (and gives a good background to the present situation) here.

Galatians
You can find a series of commentary/notes on the chapters of Galatians at Quadrilateral Thoughts.  Here's a list of his posts (put together so well by Thomas at Paul's Epistle to the Galatians):

Galatians 1:1
Galatians 1:2-3
Galatians 1:4-5
Galatians 1:6-10
Galatians 1:11-17
Galatians 1:18-24
Galatians 2:1
Galatians 2:2-10
Galatians 2:11-14
Galatians 2:15-16
Galatians 2:17-21
Galatians 3:1-6
Galatians 3:7-9
Galatians 3:10-18
Galatians 3:19-29
Galatians 4:1-7
Galatians 4:8-20
Galatians 4:21-5:1
Galatians 5:1-5
Galatians 5:6
Galatians 5:7-9
Galatians 5:10-13a
Galatians 5:13b-16
Galatians 5:17-21
Galatians 5:22-26
Galatians 6:1-5
Galatians 6:6-10
Galatians 6:11-18

Codex Sinaiticus
As was announced by multiple news agencies, the complete Codex Sinaiticus is now online.  Daniel Wallace provides good bit of information about Sinaiticus and the unfortunate mis-information that has surrounded the launch of the site.

Cool Opportunity To Help With Greek NT MSS
Check this out .  If you have the skills, this would really be a cool and serving way of moving MSS studies forward.

Mark Goodacre's NT Pod
Mark currently has 3 really good (and brief) podcast entries on his New Testament podcast.  I really recommend "Paul the Letter Speaker ".

Mount Zion Excavations
James Tabor provides some very exciting bits of news concerning  "spectacular finds" from the recent excavations on Mt. Zion.  He writes the following concerning one of the finds:

A stone vessel with an ancient inscription of ten lines written in an archaic Jewish script. Such stone vessels were used in connection with maintaining ritual purity related to Temple worship, and they are found in abundance in areas where the priests lived. We have found a dozen or more on our site over the past three years. However, to have ten lines of text is unprecedented. One normally might find a single name inscribed, or a line or two, but this is the first text of this length ever found on such a vessel. We have shared high-resolution photos with various epigraphic experts in Jerusalem who are working together to try and decipher this text. It is written in a very informal cursive hand and is quite difficult to read.

That's about it for now.

Well...it's happening really soon.   It's only an hour and a half move, but it's still a move. Why does our house have so much crap?  I'm thinking we should buy a winnebago and never have to pack again.

Apparently wrote this note to myself a while back: 

• I choose to seek God's Kingdom first.
• I choose to recognize small moments for their great potential.
• I choose to be faithful to God's call and my conscience. 

I don't remember the occasion, and I don't remember if it was original or if I picked it up from someone.  But I like it.  I think I'll keep it.

 . . . but still never accuse you to your face.

As someone who is "not a false teacher" but "has the same results," I think I've experienced quite a bit of what James McGrath is experiencing these days.  Apparently someone has reported him to his pastor due to concerns about his teachings.  Here's a snippet:  

I've been thinking that a good slogan for my Sunday school class might be "Come work out your salvation without fear and trembling." This isn't yet another example of me being "unbiblical". I do think that there is a genuine and appropriate fear and trembling involved in exploring life's most important questions. But that is fear before God and personal acknowledgement of the seriousness of the matter. But too often, one's fear and trembling when "working out their salvation" is fear of recrimination, fear of ostracization, fear of other people and their opinion.

Such concerns often lead doubts to be denied publicly, perhaps even denied to ourselves. In such circumstances, being a Christian often becomes a matter of appearance, of pretending to be more certain than one really is, or simply refusing to ask certain kinds of questions . . .  For I am persuaded that intellectual and spiritual dishonesty is much more toxic to faith than honest questioning, historical criticism, academic investigation, or anything else that fundamentalists find threatening and at odds with a genuine Christian faith.<more>

Amen, brother.

Today, 14 years ago at 9:02 AM, I felt my apartment shake from the bombing of the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City, even though I was 12 miles away.  I soon found out that one of the students in our high school ministry and his younger brother had a dad that worked in the building.  The rest of that day, evening, and week was spent with the family waiting and trying to make sense of the senseless.  Their family would not know for days the fate of a man who was a great father, husband, son, brother, uncle, coach, and more.

That whole week is a blur.  I'm not even sure what day they finally received the news...Saturday?  It was a long week of getting up early and going to bed late, trying to be of some use and comfort for the family during the day.  I remember the waiting while we watched news reports in the hopes of seeing him being rescued or in a hospital.  I remember being in awe of the strength within this family.  Finally, the call came, and they asked me to join them as they went to the church north of downtown that had been converted into a family information centerr.  There they would find out the fate of their missing loved one.  I've never in all my life felt more helpless as a person in ministry than I did that day.  I couldn't think of anything to say, and everything I had been taught to say felt so empty.

The news:  He had not made it. 

And then the process of grieving, which had been delayed by hope, began.

That night was the first time I went to the bombed-out building.  Amy and I went and stared silently at the spotlighted structure that remained, where rescue workers were still searching for survivors.  It was so large and broken, larger than any impression an image or even seeing a complete building that size can capture.   That image and those emotions are burned into me.  The weight of it all--my tiredeness, my helplessness, my inability to fully grasp the loss my students had experienced--comes back to me when I think of it.  I will never forget it.    Amy and I went back a few years ago at night, walked around the memorial, and retraced our steps that night and quietly wished things had been different.

Whenever I think of the OKC bombing,  9/11, or see images of bombings in the media, I think of that wonderful family, and I say a prayer for them and the loss that will never end.  And then I think of the other families I did not know, and I pray for them.  God give them peace and help us to remember.

Well, I was looking at my site stats today.  It's interesting what shows up on the search engine phrases!  The really interesting thing to me is that my post on the Messianic Banquet as found in the appedix to the Community Rule, Qumran scroll 1QSa 2:11-22, has consistently shown up on the top 10, the first page, of the google search "Messianic Banquet".  I'm a little nervous that people researching that topic may regularly be coming to my site.  Maybe I should do a little more research!

The breakdown of my search engine hits for the past week look like the pie-chart to the right.  It's interesting to me that Microsoft Network has a slightly higher percentage than Google.  I would not have thought that to be the case.   It's also interesting to see the similarities and differences in the various phrases entered into each engine (see below).  I wonder what the demographics are of the different users of Google, MSN search, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc.

Okay...so my 4 year old and I are going through the channels this morning to find a kid's show, and we come across a TBN thing for children.  It's a "Bible Quiz".  I've looked for a graphic, but I couldn't find one so you will have to use your imagination.  The spot has an announcer's voice introducing a question and track of children merrily and excitedly cheering "Yea!" after his comments (the children sound like ages 8 and younger...think Sesame Street voices). 

So, here's the quiz question:  "Who murdered John the Baptist?" And then the announcer goes through a list of 4 characters from the Bible.

Seriously, 7:30 AM on a show for children:  Who murdered John the Baptist?  But the weirdest part was that once the announcer declared the correct answer (Herod!), the track of the children merrily and excitedly cheering "Yea!" again.  So here's the scenario:  Kids are you ready to play? [Yea!]  Who murdered Herod?  Goliath, Saul, Judas, or Herod?  That's right kids, it was Herod!  [Yea!] 

And then they followed up with a sketch that included a cheery song about Noah (and for those of you who know my issues with teaching Noah's story to children, no, I'm not kidding).