For Lent I’m going to preach from the Old Testament. (That doesn’t mean what you think. It’s just that I mostly preach from the gospels.) It was a trip to be reading the ‘brew again.

I did my translation of Genesis 2:15-17,3:1-7. The first verse was a disaster, because the first word was yiqqach and I’d forgotten about roots where the initial L just vanishes (like LQH). But by the end, I was coming back strong, staring at words like nechmad and thinking that must be a niphal from HMD. (Then trying to remember what the niphal signified, but that’s another story.)

I’m gratified to note here that while my m4d H3br3w sk1llz aren’t what they used to be (i.e., pathetic but serviceable), I was able, eventually, to work my way through the entire mess. Hooray for me and Summer Hebrew.

I spent the day (with two helpers) swapping offices at church with the secretary. (Boy, will she be surprised! 🙂 Everything is done now except … well, actually a whole bunch of things.

But the main thing still to be done is reorganizing the shelves.

No. That’s not true. Realistically, the main thing is getting my phone to work. The FAX line (which is also the DSL line) works fine, but something went wrong when we moved handsets and now only one phone will work. For the time being, the secretary’s is “it”.

But ignore all that. Who phones the pastor, anyway? And more to the point, I don’t know how to fix phones. Rearranging bookshelves is more my speed. And now I have room to get things off the floor and onto shelves.

Anyway, here’s my new office:

Now compare that with the old office:

Yesterday, a couple of days after we’d planned to, we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum.

I thought it was an excellent exhibit, and I’m glad I went. There was a lot to see there. Beside the scrolls themselves (or, I should say, odd chunks of miscellaneous scrolls) I was surprised to see how much information they had on the Qumran site. It was helpful to me to understand the geography of the site better and to see what archaeologists have learned from its ruins. I also liked the displays that helped to explain paleography and its role in dating the scrolls.

Sadly, I found that my Hebrew, which is on the retreat even in the best circumstances, is not improved by putting all the words in an archaic script, in the handwritten equivalent of 8 point type, under thick glass, in the dark.

After we’d studied the DSS for awhile, we looked at some of the museum’s other exhibits:

Well, here I am two days into the downhill slide. Actually, it’s a year and two days, but you can kid yourself during that first year. (Forty-five sounds ambiguous: are you in your early forties, or your late, or some kind of middle-ground? Of course, you’re in your late forties. But it doesn’t sound that way. It’s because of zero-origin indexing, like most problems. From the moment of your forty-fifth birthday, you’re an old duffer, and that’s all there is for it. But that first year it’s not so obvious yet. It’s sort of like a bald man combing his hair over as long as he can.)

Anyway, I got the new Harry Potter book. It’s been in my Amazon wish-list forever, and now, finally, it’s mine. The only problem is that I can’t read it. You see, what I got is Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis: the Latin translation of Harry Potter book 1. When I put it in my list, I knew a bit of Latin, and thought this book might help me learn some more. But I’ve forgotten almost all the Latin I knew. (I’ve even forgotten most of my Hebrew, and I use it a lot more than I do Latin. Yikes!)

I also got some aloha-type shirts. My plan is to gracelessly transition from the stuffy Geneva gown to an informal Saddleback outfit someday Real Soon Now. (More on this topic here. Heaven forfend we might identify with the contemporary corporate culture rather than the medieval academic culture.) In the meantime, I can wear them to get used to looking sloppy. I mean, Californian.

Also, Mmhmm, to add to my Relient K collection. And a delicious cake. Low-fat, of course.

I was just in the kitchen a moment ago. I was recharging my AM/PM 44-oz tankard with Wal*Mart “Dr. Thunder” beverage (which, from the taste, is relabeled “Mr. Pibb,” a knockoff of Dr. Pepper foisted upon us by Coke).

When I was there, I noticed that the people preparing for the luncheon tomorrow had left a package of “premium napkins” open on the counter. The brand name was “Vanity Fair.”

I wondered what Bunyan would think, then I wondered how it is that “Vanity Fair” came to be a positive-sounding thing you’d like to associate with your product.

Waiting at the doctor’s office today, I finished reading John Ortberg’s God Is Closer Than You Think. Very good book, with allusions to everyone from Brother Lawrence to the man in black.

Typographically the book is too busy, with subheads and headings and little pull-out quotes in boxes. To its credit, the decisions about what to set off visually were usually the right ones: I didn’t have to underline nearly as many things here as I often do. (Having said that, I still prefer books that aren’t so cluttered-up visually.)

I have been preaching the Gospel text from the revised common lectionary every week so far during year C. That’s all well and good, you say, and, yes, the exegesis has helped my Greek reading skills inordinately.

But! I was just translating Psalm 121 from the ‘brew for an upcoming funeral and whoa! I’ve forgotten all of the 11 Hebrew roots I actually used to know. I knew I was in trouble when I couldn’t remember what SH-M-R meant (“keep”, “observe”, “guard”). Yikes.

(Also, the audioscriptures web site appears to have de-emphasized Hebrew. So to hear someone with a clue read it, I had to go here instead.)