Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

Today, while working my way through Mark’s story, an interesting but simple thought came to mind: Mark’s narrative contains some great wordplay. In this short study / post, I want to share just a few examples of where I think Mark’s wordsmithing shows up (which definitely makes the story more fun to read). One example is Mk. 1.1. Notice how in this verse, there is a lot of rhyming: του ευαγγελιου ιησου υιυο θεου. Another example stems from that phrase υιυο θεου. Of course, in English that translates to “Son of God”. The phrase appears a number of times throughout the rest of the narrative. Now, I think something interesting occurs when this relationship is underscored in 14.36 when Jesus prays saying αββα ο πατερ (abba ho pater), which, in English, is “Father, my Father” / “Father, the Father”. Of course, “abba” is Semitic and is often appears in context with the word “באר” (bar). “Bar” means “Son”. So, here, we see the relationship between the “Son” and the “Father”. Now, it is right ...

As my frequent readers know, I've mentioned my friend Daren Wendell on here several times. Daren is an old college buddy and teammate who has started what is called "The Earth Expedition". Here's what " The Earth Expedition " is, in a nutshell: About 2 years ago, my friend, Daren, decided that he was going to sell everything he had and spend the next 7 years of his life walking the world to raise awareness of the blood and water crises in Africa. Last week, Daren completed the American leg of the expedition (YES! HE WALKED FROM ONE END OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE OTHER!!! IN LESS THAN 13 MONTHS MIND YOU). Now, the European leg of the Expedition is about to begin and his partner will start that leg. Daren and his partner do not get paid for this. They live off of money that they saved up before the Expedition began and from the personal items that they sold (every cent they raise on the Expedition, over $20,000 so far, goes to help end the blood and water cr...

I wanted to let everyone know that I have created a new gateway to Pisteuomen and some other projects that I am working on. I needed a place where these things could all be linked together and so, I created http://www.michaelhalcomb.com/ . Of course, Pisteuomen will continue to be my blog indefinitely and I will maintain posting on a regular basis here (so, do not disable my RSS feed on your page readers). As I said, http://www.michaelhalcomb.com/ is mainly going to be like an aggregate site where a number of my projects are listed. Right now, as you will see when you go there, the site is quite basic. Expect more to be done with that later. At this point in time, I am working on a site for biblical scholars which I hope to get done soon; more will be said about that in the near future. Anyway, if you have a moment, head over to http://www.michaelhalcomb.com/ and check things out. Click any of the links above or click the photo below:

(Click on bracket to make it larger)

So, one of the toughest life-decisions I've ever had to make, choosing where to accept PhD offers, is finally behind me. I've decided to accept the full-ride offered to me by Asbury Theological Seminary. I will begin my post-graduate studies there this fall (2009) in Biblical Studies with an emphasis in New Testament. I have not declared a sole advisor yet but that will come later. As many of you know, I am an alumnus of ATS (I recived my MABS) there a couple of years ago. I'm happy to be going back as I love the culture and especially the focus on wedding academics and spirituality together. In the end, I turned down a few other schools after the wife and I evaluated our life circumstances (e.g. family, finances, church, time, community, , moving, vocations, future opportunities, etc.); again, this was a lot to wade through and it was not an "easy" decision by any means. Anyway, if you are not familiar with ATS, check out the image and read the bit below: Asbury ...

A couple of nights ago, the wife and I sat down to watch Bill Maher's latest film titled "Religulous". The movie was thought-provoking in a number of ways and was quite humorous at points. The style and presentation made the movie engaging and watchful. Yet, it was Maher's tact that made me take "Religulous" with a grain of salt. What I mean is, Maher basically fed his anti-theist presuppositions or better yet, frustrations with Christianity (the movie does question Judaism and Islam at points as well!) by interviewing certain types of people in certain types of places. There were billions of places and millions of people he could have went to for better information but he didn't! For example, Maher found it necesarry to go looking for answers at truck stop chapels and amusement parks, word of faith churches and other such places. In other words, he went to places where he knew he wouldn't get sound answers and people would most likely look silly whe...

This above image is a photo representation I created of the vocabulary of The Gospel of Mark. The larger the word, the more it is used (e.g. "kai" is used significantly more than any other word and that's why it's the largest) and the smaller the word, the less it is used. The text is based on NA27 / UBS4. Also, here is a link to a .pdf version of Mark's Gospel that I created. This version is different from others in that it is the Greek text with no headings/subheadings or verse/chapter numbers: The Gospel of Mark In Greek .

Boy is this a nice volume!!! Seriously, the sleek look of every page, the nice cover and the sweet hardback binding make this a beautiful looking piece of work. All that's left now is to read and review it (for CTR ), which I'm quite excited to do. Written by Gary Burge (Aberdeen), Lynn Cohick (U. of Penn.) and Gene Green (Aberdeen), this book appears as though it is will stand the test of time (content and durability-wise) as a great primer in background studies of the New Testament. As always, when I get into it, hopefully I'll have the chance to share some of my thoughts about it here on Pisteuomen.

I just got Ian W. Scott's volume Paul's Way of Knowing: Story, Experience and the Spirit in the mail today to review for WTJ . I haven't read any of it yet but for what it's worth, the cover is aesthetically pleasing and the book is a nice size (nearly 350 pages). S. Westerholm, R. Watts, D. L. Stamps and A. Reinhartz all give high recommendations of it. As most of you know, I'm a Markan fanatic. Before that, though, I was a Paul addict, so, I'm looking forward to getting into this work (the title actually reminds me of Witherington's Paul's Narrative Thought World which was an excellent book). Anyway, look for some thoughts on Paul in the near future here on Pisteuomen.

I've mentioned my friend Daren Wendell on here a number of times before. If you've missed those previous posts or are a new reader of Pisteuomen, Daren and I went to college together and were also soccer teammates. About a year ago, Daren decided to start-up what he calls "The Earth Expedition". In a nutshell, Daren walks 20-30 miles a day to raise money and awareness for the blood & water crises in Africa. He has raised upwards of twenty thousand dollars so far and as The Expedition continues, I'm sure that will be a drop in the bucket compared to what he will eventually raise. Anyway, a documentary about Daren and his Expedition is underway and I'm excited to see it in its entirety. He has whet our tastebuds, though, with the short video below. Give this video a watch and check out some of the stunning, beautiful scenery. If the rest of the documentary is as inspiring as this 6 minutes, it will be a great movie indeed!

The question raised in the title of this post comes from a question I raised of Brendan Byrne's book "A Costly Freedom: A Theological Reading of Mark's Gospel". There, Byrne asserts that Mark's text is both apocalypitc and eschatalogically-oriented (ch. 1). Though Byrne's view of these two elements differ a little from the ways that they are typically used, I cannot say that I go as far as he does when applying them to Mark's story. Still, that is not the issue I want to raise here. What is interesting to me is that for Byrne, who takes the view that Mk. ends at 16.8, there is precisely no encounter with the risen Jesus BECAUSE Mark (and his community) were eschatalogically-focused. In other words, if I'm understanding his initial chapters correctly, Byrne's arugment is that Mark purposefully excludes a resurrection scene BECAUSE he is more interested in the return of Jesus. Byrne suggests that to include an appearance of a resurrected Jesus would ...