implications of indictments

The indictments of Oded Golan and others for antiquities fraud is having wider ripples. Jim Davila notes this AP report on an advisory for world museums to re-examine their Bible-era relics in light of this situation.

more on asia disaster

Staggering, unimaginable horror in South Asia. Reuters and others are now reporting 120,000 plus dead, millions homeless or otherwise affected in the region. Please continue to give to relief efforts, continue to pray for God's mercy on these people. Theodicies are being dusted off by theologians and philosophers (see one summary here), but undoubtedly the greatest theodicy would be the demonstration of God's love by his people in the face of this tragedy, entering into human suffering as God himself has done in Christ.

calgary flames cp's team of the year

The Calgary Flames have been chosen as Team of the Year by Broadcast News and the Canadian Press. No small thing, considering the second-highest vote-getter was the undefeated and gold-medal-winning Team Canada at the World Cup of Hockey.

Go Flames Go! Well, maybe next year...

indictments in antiquities fraud

Some of my colleagues that I have been talking with about this may be interested to know that the promised indictments of Oded Golan and others for fraud related to the James ossuary, among other items, have now happened. Jim West provides a good summary here.

[Follow-up posts: more details on antiquities fraud; updates on antiquities fraud; more on the james ossuary; bas material on ossuary debate; the indictment and the ossuary; more on the ossuary; more on the ossuary (reprint); archaeology's trial of the century]

asia disaster

This Reuters report is just one of many on the unfathomable tragedy being unveiled in the region around the Indian Ocean. The death toll is 50,000 and probably rising, with millions in the area affected. Please give (Red Cross here), and pray...

tolle lege 2005

About one month from now, Prairie is hosting our third annual Tolle Lege ("Take Up and Read") public lectures, focusing on matters of biblical interpretation in the areas of Old Testament, New Testament, Christian Theology, and Christian Ministry. All who wish to come are welcome. Here's the lineup this year:

TOLLE LEGE 2005

Monday, January 24, 2005, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

• Tyler Williams, Assistant Professor of Old Testament, Taylor University College and Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. "(Re-)Reading Ancient Historiography: History, Genealogy, and Ideology in Chronicles." Is the book of Chronicles more theology than history? Or is it even political propaganda, or revisionist history? This presentation will explore what it means to "take and read" a piece of ancient historiography. More specifically, using the book of Chronicles by way of illustration, this paper will argue that ideological, aesthetic, and antiquarian factors must be considered when interpreting ancient history writing.

• Paul Spilsbury, Professor of Biblical Studies and New Testament, Alliance University College/Canadian Theological Seminary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. "Discerning the Dragon: Scripture and Politics at the End of the First Century." Biblical interpretation today is influenced by many ideological factors, including political ones - but this is nothing new. This presentation will focus on how biblical interpretation in the last decades of the first century was affected by people's political outlook, and how politics affected individuals' and communities' understanding of the Bible. Special attention will be paid to the way the visions of Daniel were interpreted in the writings of Josephus, 4 Ezra, and the Book of Revelation.

Monday, January 31, 2005, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

• Jan van Vliet, Professor of Theology, Prairie Bible College, Three Hills, Alberta, Canada. "God, Descartes, Pascal, and the Theological Task." Doing theology without prior epistemological commitments is both impossible and undesirable. Today's theological task requires us to utilize, not discard, existing epistemological traditions if we are to engage the contemporary intellectual current of "postmodernism." This approach is in fact nothing new, as the pre-Enlightenment thought of seventeenth century Puritan philosopher and theologian William Ames demonstrates.

• Andy Woodland, Professor of Missiology, Prairie Bible College, Three Hills, Alberta, Canada. "What Do You Do When the Greek Doesn't Help?" In working across linguistic and cultural boundaries one can encounter situations where the language and social situation of the people does not match up with New Testament Greek - either there is no equivalent in the language, or what at first appears to be equivalent proves to be otherwise upon further investigation. This presentation will describe several of these situations from personal experience, and draw principles from them that will be helpful in any ministry context.

Once again, anyone interested is welcome to attend. All sessions will take place in Founders Hall 231 on the Prairie Bible College campus, Three Hills, Alberta, Canada. If you need more information, please contact me.

course prep

Now that my marking from this past semester is finally done and I have the wrath of Saruman the Registrar appeased (our Registrar's self-description), I can turn my attention to this next semester's courses. Thankfully I've taught them all at least once before, which reduces but never eliminates the course prep needed.

One of the courses I'm teaching is an upper-level course on the book of Revelation. This one is a lot of fun to teach, but there are certainly challenges:

• A key challenge is the past experience that many of our students (and North American evangelicals in general) have had with Revelation. Many of them come out of churches in which a strong Dispensational eschatology is promoted (even when the rest of the church doctrine may not be prominently Dispensational), to the extent where in some cases they are unaware of any other form of eschatology. (If you're not familiar with Dispensational eschatology, think Left Behind, realizing that T. LaHaye's vision is only one, very popularist, version of such eschatology.) This often leads to one of two extremes: 1) a form of eschatomania, in which studying Revelation becomes merely an eschatological treasure hunt or jigsaw puzzle (perhaps with today's CNN or Jerusalem Post in parallel columns for convenient comparison...?); or 2) a form of eschatophobia, in which one sees Revelation as a theologically impotent (if grudgingly necessary) inclusion to the canon and eschatology as an irrelevent add-on for the hyper-curious. The challenge is to introduce my students to the different interpretive traditions related to the book of Revelation (and different Christian eschatologies generally), without turning them off from Revelation itself (or eschatology generally).

• This points to another key challenge: the variety of interpretive approaches to Revelation, even within an evangelical framework. When I teach most of my other courses focused on specific NT writings, there's usually an accepted, general interpretive approach to the book that I can draw from and work within, at least among historically evangelical interpreters. Certainly there are many specific interpretive variables and exegetical discussions in studying any NT writing, some of which have significant implications for understanding the specific book as a whole. But Revelation has those specific variables and discussions in addition to some unique "pre-exegetical" challenges: for example, genre discussions, particularly focused around the nature of apocalypses and the particular hermeneutical expectations and limits the genre provides; or another example, approaches to prophetic fulfilment in history, from preterist to historicist to futurist to idealist, or the more recently preferred eclectic approach drawing from several of these perspectives. The pedagogical challenge is to introduce my students to these discussions and the various approaches without making the course simply a "comparative exegesis" class on Revelation.

One of the things I'm going to do with the course is have the students read R. Bauckham's The Theology of the Book of Revelation. I'm hoping this will help them read Revelation differently, to recognize that Revelation has a lot more to offer theologically than just its eschatology, and even that its eschatology may function differently than they typically think it does. We'll also spend lots of time up front discussing the various hermeneutical issues related to genre, etc., and read some canonical and non-canonical antecedents to and contemporaries of John's Apocalypse: e.g. chunks of Daniel, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras 3-14).

For my own personal prep, I've taught the book before, so I worked through the text of Revelation and the major commentaries at that time. This time I've got Ben Witherington's commentary to read before the semester starts just to get the juices flowing, and then I'll re-work and update my teaching material as I go through the course.

[Update: I've now reviewed Witherington's commentary here.]

a wintry christmas gift

Last night we got a special gift: 12-15 cm of fresh, powdery snow. After shovelling all our sidewalks, it's hard to believe that next year when we're in England we'll be wishing for this.

christmas at the pahl house

There's nothing like a sewer backup to dampen the Christmas spirit, to bring the aroma of real life into a Christmas idyll... Such is our lot--literally, as the lot our home is on has several large poplars which delight in sending their roots into our sewer line. I suppose this is necessary payment for the shade they bring in those scalding summer days, but they seem to take special pleasure in blocking the sewer line on holidays and long weekends. But Mr. Friesen the Plumber saved the day once again, coming by within two hours of the incident and warding off an unpleasant holiday weekend--the benefits of small-town service!

Our family Christmas, like most others I suppose, is filled with those special family traditions: picking out a Christmas tree (scrapped this year in favour of an artificial one--score one for convenience), decorating the tree while dancing to Christmas music, wrapping the presents with tidy trim and unkempt secrets, worshipping with fellow Christians in lessons and carols throughout the Advent season, opening one present on Christmas Eve (usually from Grandma or great-Grandma, or a brother or sister) after a dinner of Chinese food, unloading stockings with gleeful giggles on Christmas morning, presenting a family Christmas program complete with music and liturgy, diving into piles of presents before devouring some special dessert-like breakfast, playing with presents in tired contentment, having a Jesus birthday party complete with cake and sparkler, filling up on Christmas turkey and all the trimmings, and so on. This is the stuff of earth that bears one up on the winds of heaven...

Though I doubt I've had many readers yet, a very Merry Christmas to any who stumble across this blog! Now to fill up those stockings, in anticipation of gleeful giggles tomorrow morning.

on my way

Well, I'm on my way to getting this blog site the way I want it, after fiddling with templates and such. I've added some links and a blogroll to the right, and I'm sure I'll tinker more with that all at a later time. But before that, I've still got some term papers to mark (deadline for grades is today, Christmas Eve--how evil is that?), which this blog stuff has helped me avoid somewhat. And, of course, there's that little matter of Christmas, isn't there?

signing on

And thus I enter the blogosphere! Though it is with fear and trembling that I do so.

I envision this blog eventually functioning as my primary personal webspace (if I can overcome my HTML ignorance and set it up as I'd like it), but we'll see where this all leads...

In the blogging, I hope to avoid the extreme, mundane-focused blogs that describe every event in the person's life--those are rarely interesting to anyone but themselves. But I do hope to provide some glimpses into my life with my family, especially for those of you who are close friends or family and want to hear about the goings-on of the Pahl Family, Three Hills Edition.

I also plan to include some reflections on my faith, my own perspectives or just questions on biblical issues, and even some more academic New Testament-related thoughts and netbits. These may approach the so-called "biblioblogs" at times (or whatever they're called!), but there are others out there that do this sort of blogging far better than I can. But some of you that are academic colleagues of mine might be interested in some of these posts.

In short, a little bit of my life and thoughts, every now and then.