Greetings!
Its been a few days and we have some further news for you all (2nd person plural.) Greek is continuing to be as intense as purported. I’m not finding it too challenging but my brain is definitely not used to 5 or so hours a day of intense thinking. To make matters worse we unloaded two 25 ft Ryder trucks of canned and boxed food from the Michigan district yesterday. My arms, back, and neck are sore in addition to my already drained mind. It will be nice to be fed next month by these donations. They are always welcome at the Seminary. Food drives are good!
I’m going to try to be brief so I focus the appropriate amount of time on my Greek vocabulary as needed. As alluded to by my mother’s email, the house inspection found an few dramatic problems with the house that was presented as “clean and well maintained.” The most of the pressure piping is original lead piping except the new bathroom and maybe some of the kitchen. It doesn’t much matter if its all or some as hot water will leach the lead out of the pipes, especially corroded ones. I have asked that they all be replaced. The seller’s realtor responded that the supply main is lead but she forgot that this is the city’s responsibility and being cold water it probably isn’t an issue. We can filter the incoming if need be.
The shelter (formerly known as two-car garage) has a pretty rotten roof including rotten beams, side paneling, decking, and such. We already knew the doors had issues but now it is going sour. I expect she will not replace the roof (fine by me) but we will ask for cash back at closing or lowering sale price due to misrepresentation. The seller’s realtor even said that the seller was just waiting for it to fall down. Nice! I expect it will probably just get torn down.
Other issues aren’t dramatic for a 90 year old house, i.e. some knob and tube wiring on the second floor, a few misplaced soffit panels outside, some buckling to the sidewalk, shifting and settling of the porch and deck. The roof is pretty good, the furnace and AC test well (despite being 15 yrs old) and the interior is in great shape, some of which has been refurbished. We need to do some updating in the kitchen though. I expect I can do some of the necessary wiring changes on the second floor with a few weeks vacation some summer. Or more likely not! :)
The drive continues to be bearable although today I69 was a total disaster and I drove 30 mins out of my way to avoid it. Downed power lines!
The coming weekend is hectic with two weddings and Anne leaving for vacation. We are supposed to close on Tuesday, making next week a piece of work too. Fun times ahead!
I did get approved for the loan and at a decent rate of 5.6%. This puts my payments with insurance and property taxes around $650. Utilities are about 150-200$ according to previous owner. This is the same price as a rental but with equity being built (hopefully) and deductible interest payments. Financially we aren’t quite as well off as I had hoped but I did pay off the credit cards and the summer tuition with the equity check. I’ll be making the same car payments unless I can refinance it for lower now with current rates. Thankfully that is the only remaining debt and is pretty low interest already. We’ll see! I expect I’ll be working in the fall more than part time until I get a feel for the work and class balance. I will be picking up a few hours on campus later this summer (when I’m not driving 11 hours a week!)
I’ll give you a theological expedition before I shove off for vocab study. We hear the term “Son of Man” referring to Christ’s humanity. The Jews at the time of Christ we’re expecting a “son of man” but their understanding derived from Daniel 7:13, specifically an-end-of-time deliverer, an earthly king with a sword. In John 3:14, John uses the same term to refer to Christ. He typifies Christ on the cross to the lifting of the serpent onto a standard in the OT. Israel only had to look upon the snake and was healed much as Christ has healed us without our own doing. He uses a Greek verb “hu-psi-o-en” which means “lifted up” and “glorified” with the son of man because the Jews would have remembered this from Isaiah 52:13 thus connecting the “Son of Man” not just solely to the description in Daniel but also to the suffering servant of Isaiah. Also language is used in Phillipians 2:9 which connects visible form of God to the Jewish understanding from “Isaiah 45.” So through language and use of specific terms, God used the writers of the New Testament to show how he was fulfilling the promise of the Old Testament although not exactly in the way the early Christian church (largely Jews) would have expected.
Okay, one more for the road. We finally got into a discussion of preferred translations (been on everyone’s mind for a while.) In the end Dr. Geischen suggested becoming familiar with the English Standard Version as it is used in the new new hymnal (Lutheran Service Book) and is good translation. Even so it has its shortcomings, prompting one student to call for a “Gieschen Standard Version”. The overture failed. Some examples of typical problems are mostly in the Zondervan NIV translation. We pick on it quite a bit which makes it all the more ironic it is currently used for LW (hymnal) and our lectionaries. In the OT, NIV often translates “the Lord God” as “the Sovereign Lord”. Quite a difference, the first implying we should look at the contextual versus as God incarnate versus the second looking at good as a earthly king ruler. Another example is John 8:32a where NIV translated “may-in-ta” as “continuing” rather than “remain … in my word”. As discussed in my previous email, “the Word” is a proper name for God. Rather than continuing in the word of God (i.e. the Bible) a better translation would be that we should remain in the confession that Jesus is Yahweh, “the Word.” Finally the silly translators again in the NIV of Romans 12:2B translate “dokemadzo” (bad phonetics, please don’t critize) as to approve and to put to the test. Unfortunately the word does not have both meanings simultaneously, only one. The
translator neglected to look at context and choose the appropriate meaning. The focus of the entire context is what God does not a test that we can do. Consequently “to accept as proof” or better yet “to discern” would be a more accurate translation. All three above are examples of the translators false Reformed theology interfering with their translation of the Greek rather than letting the truth of the Gospel show through.
I went into a bit more detail this time. Look it up, it’s fun. See you next time!
Chris
Related posts:
- thinking-out-loud: The Marriage and Family of God
- Jesus: Tales from the Crypt – The Middle East Blog – TIME
- Touchstone Magazine – Mere Comments: Anthropo-logy
- Lutheran Heresies! -What’s wrong with the Lutheran religion?
- Thelogical Expedition