Summer 2010

(ignore the bedhead)

 We're missing a picture of Shawn and Si on his first Father's day! Bummer.


This week marks Si's eight week birthday and the one year (actually 51 weeks) anniversary of our move to Jerusalem. That means that the one month "Jerusalem" Ulpan starts at the university today. Shawn is taking both the Jerusalem ulpan and the regular summer ulpan (the one that starts in August).

  Obviously, Shawn has a busy summer ahead of him! The Jerusalem ulpan schedule is Sun-Thurs from 0830 to 1330 (except for Sun starts at 0930). There is a Biblical Hebrew exam on Thursday and he also has a few papers to write. Here in Israel, class papers are actually due after the semester ends. Strange, and some professors are more relaxed about the deadline than others. Is it any wonder that there are folks with their papers unwritten...years later? Degrees. Who needs them. Well, Shawn does. 

To celebrate the *almost* end of semester for Shawn, we are going to shop at the Book Gallery for yet another Hebrew dictionary and eat Ethiopian tonight. Our friend Adam showed us this restaurant a couple of weeks ago. Its fairly cheap, tasty as all get out, and friendly!  The dishes come with a small bowl of whatever dish you ordered (a beef, chicken, or veggie choice) and served with a flat bread, that to me, looked gray. Adam explained that the bread "expands in your stomach" and he was right. You don't need that much to be full. This was my first experience with Ethiopian food. Is this pretty usual? Grace, what do you think? Gray sponge-y bread? 

We are also upon the dreaded Jerusalem summer. Today is a little unusual with the intensity of the heat, but we will be in the mid-90s and as high as 98. Its also really windy. I am not venturing out until at least 1700. By the way, did I ever tell you about how we talk about the time here? From what I understand, Europe and Israel write 0800, 1300, 1400, etc, but say eight in the morning, one in the afternoon, 2 in the afternoon. Correct me if I am wrong. 


Anyway! Time for another feeding!

eight weeks

Update: Way too windy for us girls to go out today. Shawn may enjoy his bookstore though!

ZIBBCOT Update

A while ago we shared with you about the ZIBBCOT commentary. And today, they put up Job. You can read the entire commentary on Job, if you need any more motivation to buy the set!

Here is the Link

The Background to the Bible

I was a Teaching Assistant to Dr. John H. Walton at my time at Wheaton. He is a great professor and teacher as well as mentor. While I was at Wheaton, he made a big impression in the way I thought about scholarship and the church, and how to go about doing it. While I was working for him, he was making the finishing touches on a five volume commentary series published by Zondervan. The series is out now, and it looks beautiful! It has all kinds of wonderful pictures and is really good at dealing with the cultural context in which the Bible was written and what the people who originally heard the text would have thought about it.

We live in a very different world from the ancient Near East, and often we don't understand what the Old Testament is all about. This is exactly where this commentary will come into use. It helps to explain and show what the world of the Bible was really like. And with all the pictures in it, who could pass it up?

You should all buy a copy just for the beautiful pictures, but don't take my word for it, you can preview (for the next month) one of the books on Scribd. Here is the book of Daniel. Even if you don't really think you can slog through a commentary, if you have ever wondered what exactly I want to do, you should read the introductory essay by John Walton "Methodology: An Introductory Essay."

And if you need more of an incentive you should watch the following videos:



On a more serious note you should also watch this video:


So in summary, you need to watch the videos and then look through the commentary on Daniel in the series (once again found here) and then read the introductory essay on methodology.
(On page 539 there is a beautiful picture of the East India House inscription and I read portions of it this semester, and will read the rest of it next semester!)