book reviews, Christianity

Book Review: The Day Christ Died

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Yesterday I completed the next book on my reading list, The Day Christ Died by Jim Bishop, 1977, Harper & Row (ISBN 0-06-060786-6). This is a paperback version of the original 1957 book by Bishop, with some updates to reflect archaeological finds and changes in scholarship in the twenty years after the original publication. Includes a new Introduction by Dr. Paul L. Maier, about whom I’ve blogged recently.

This is a good book. Anyone who hasn’t read it and has the chance to will benefit from it. Bishop did several of these type books (e.g. The Day Lincoln Died, The Day Christ Was Born). His style was to take the twenty-four hour day on which the event happened and cover it hour by hour. In the case of Christ’s death, he begins at sundown on Thursday, since the Jewish day ran from sundown to sundown. We first see Peter and John making preparations for the Passover meal, and Jesus and the rest of the Twelve en route to Jerusalem from Bethany.

Bishop then takes us hour by hour. His research fills in many details, such as the probable menu of the Passover meal, the sequence of events within the meal–not just those in the Biblical records, but other things that must have been going on based on the typical Passover meal. He then takes us meticulously though the Biblical account: going to Gethsemane, the arrest, the interview before Annas, the trial before Caiaphas, the trial before the full Sanhedrin, the trial before Pilate, the pre-crucifixion torture, the time on the cross, and the burial.

Bishop fills out the account in many ways. He includes description of Jerusalem, describing the routes taken by various people. He tells us what the Passover celebration was like. He describes something of the background of the high priests. Three overviews from outside the day itself take up a good portion of the book: background of the Jewish world, background of Jesus (from the Bible), and background of the Roman world. These help us to think about why certain things happened as they did that day.

Some of the good points:
– We learn what some people were doing that is not described in the Bible. For example, exactly what did Judas Iscariot do after Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly”? Bishop surmises that it was John son of Zebedee who left in the night hours after watching the Jewish rulers convict Jesus, and went to Bethany to bring Mary to her son’s side in time for his death. [“John remained to find out what the supreme council would do. When the word came that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy, and that the judgment had been that he should die, John waited long enough to look once more upon the face of the man who loved him. The young apostle was close to tears as Jesus was led down into the courtyard, because the bound man was bruised and dirty, with spit running down his face, and his legs quivered with weakness and fatigue. Then John left. He needed wings on his young feet because there was much to do. He had to spread the tragic news among those who believed in Jesus and, sadly, he had also to run to Bethany to tell the news to the Mother of Jesus.“]
– Caiaphas’ activities are well described. We see him in all of his evil machinations, and get a sense of some of his motivation.
– We see many Passover pilgrims. Not individuals, but masses of people, and learn what they were doing, how they thronged to Jerusalem and to the temple with sacrifices.
– The rivalry between Pontius Pilate and the high priests is spelled out. Some of the statements that Pilate and the high priests made make a lot more sense with Bishop’s annotations.

A couple of things were not to my liking:
– The book takes a Roman Catholic view of the events. For instance, Bishop insists that when the Bible talks about the “brothers of Jesus”, this word means relative–cousin–and that Jesus was an only child and that Mary was “ever-virgin”. In fact, the copyright page indicates the book received a nihil obstat and a Imrimatur by a cardinal, indicating the book is free of doctrinal error.
– I’m not sure that Bishop fully represents all that Pilate did to try to free Jesus. When I put my harmony of the gospels together, I was surprised at how the different statements about Pilate’s actions in the four gospels seemed to be different actions on Pilate’s part. Possibly some day I’ll blog about that. Of course, perhaps no one else in the world would agree with me on that.

All in all, it is a good book. Well worth the read. I may hang on to this one rather than sell it in a garage sale.

Engineering, flood studies

Little Osage Creek

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My main work for over a month has been the flood study for the headwaters of Little Osage Creek in Centerton, Arkansas. I’m way behind on the project, and am soon to be over budget (in part because the project included a flood study of the headwaters of McKisic Creek as well; yet the budget is 80 percent consumed). I let this project sit almost a year, then got a promise from another department in the company to piggy-back it on one of their projects along the West Branch of Little Osage Creek. Somehow they didn’t do it, saying they never claimed they were intending to. So I had to take it back into my work load, dust off my “tools”, and get the job done.

As of today, I am really, really close. I have completed a complicated computer model for calculating the flood flows. This model includes 18 detention ponds, some 21 subbasins, and a number of stream runs (called “reaches” in the vernacular). I have run this model for the 100-year storm, and had believable and predicted results. Next, in a separate program, I merged the existing FEMA stream geometry model with the CEI stream geometry model (the one my project was supposed to piggy-back on), filled in the 600 foot gap between them, corrected a considerable number of errors in both, added missing culverts, added needed cross-sections that were left out of the FEMA model and due to which the model never should have been approved, and finally, today, ran a successful stream geometry model together with the flood flows from the other model. I have an answer!

I still have some tweaking to do. The results (i.e. the flood elevation, which drives the spread of the flood waters) are not as favorable as I would like, so I have to look some more at it and see if anything in the merged geometry is too conservative. If so, I might be able to reduce both. If not, the City will just have to live with the calculated flood elevation and spread.

When I started the study I had some goals in mind as to how to improve the situation on the existing flood maps, which contained obvious errors along with some things that drastically changed from the previous flood map, but which may or may not have been errors. One of the obvious errors will be gone on the new map; the other looks like it will remain. That’s not a final answer, but it’s most likely.

Why am I writing this? Today there has been an emotional release with the success of these models. I still have much to do on the project, including model tweaks, calculating flows for other storms, writing a technical report, making a presentation before an unhappy city council, putting an electronic and print submittal together for FEMA, and then working through the (probable) six month FEMA approval process. But with the successful model having all missing links plugged, no obvious errors, and believable results, the release is at hand.

career, Life Group lessons, Life On A YoYo

A New Equilibrium

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This weekend was filled with chores and rest. Saturday morning I raked leaves, used the leaf blower on the rock yard and got all them out of there, on to a tarp and hauled off to the woods on adjacent, vacant lots (in hopes some of them won’t blow back when the wind is right). This somewhat wiped me out, but I went to the eye doctor in the nearest Supercenter to have my right eye looked at. It became bloodshot earlier in the week, not hurting a bit, but giving everyone who had to look at it fits. Since this is the third time this year I had such an occurrence, Lynda thought I should go, and so went.

The doc said there was no injury and no apparent reason for the eye to go bloodshot, except possibly a blood disease. He said to bring it up with my primary care physician, then come back and see him for my regular eye exam, which is over-due. I’m scheduled to see my regular doctor next week.

While I was at Wal-Mart, I took a lawn mower tire in for repair. Sitting in the auto area waiting room, I had an allergic reaction to something: right eye watering; sneezing; right nostril draining freely. This really wiped me out. The rest of the day about all I could do was accompany my wife to town and shop and do a chore or two.

Sunday was a true day of rest. After church and life groups, I had a leisurely afternoon. I typed quite a few pages of my harmony of the gospels, napped, caught up on writing blogs, read in The Day Christ Died, planned four life group lessons in the Life On A Yo Yo series, and worked on my written review of my son-in-law’s paper on Athanasius. All of this with minimal movement, and little exertion. The allergy reaction was pretty much gone by Monday morning.

Not one minute worrying about being published. Not one minute working on a query letter, proposal, poem, text for a book or article or newspaper column–none of these. And I didn’t feel bad about it. In fact I felt good about what I managed to get done. I suppose the Yo Yo series could eventually become a small group study guide, so there’s some writing work there, but very little.

Why don’t I feel badly about this, about a whole weekend gone by with nothing done about my writing “career”? I’ll have to wait and see what another week or two brings before I can answer that.

America, poetry

The People Have Spoken

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The election on November 4 was a clear signal, I believe, from the American people. They don’t like the job the Bush administration has done, and John McCain was not seen as a better alternative. Hence Barak H. Obama is our president-elect. I hope he has a successful presidency, and that my fears of an 8-year economic slowdown/recession/depression about to take place as a follow-up to the Panic of 2008 (which I believe will happen regardless of who had been elected president) will not happen.

I notice the Democratic gains in the Senate were about in line with expectation, while the gains in the house were a bit below expectation. Still, the gains were clear. That is surprising given Congress’ low approval rating as determined by pollsters, but is further evidence of backlash against Bush.

While some non-professional pundits are saying this is the end of the Republican party, I think that death certificate is pre-mature.

The main negative I have heard in the last two days is that potential Republican hopefuls for 2012 are already making plans to head to Iowa. How sad we must be in a perpetual election cycle.

miscellaneous

Meeting Dr. Paul Maier

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This last Saturday the Lutheran church closest to us hosted a seminar featuring Professor Dr. Paul L. Maier. Dr. Maier is professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University. He is the author of a number of books, both fiction and non-fiction. The one of his I read was Flames Of Rome, a documentary historical fiction about the early church era following events in the book of Acts. Well, I think it covered more than just that time, but Maier’s purpose was to give some perspective to the years following Acts.

That was an excellent book, and I’ve always wanted to read more of his. Another of his that we had was A Skeleton In God’s Closet, a novel. Our son has it, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get it back. Maier has written some academic books as well, such as an abridgement/translation of the works of Josephus, and a modern translation of the church history written by Eusebius. We bought that one on Saturday, as well as Maier’s sequel novel More Than A Skeleton. These are pretty far down the reading pile right now, but I’ll eventually get to them.

Maier’s seminar topic was Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Working only from an outline that he gave to the class, Maier gave us 4 1/2 hours of informed, animated, interesting lecture. My is he a good speaker! I realize he has probably given this lecture before, and knows it quite well, but still the presentation was just incredible.

Most of us have studied some of the Reformation in school, and our Protestant churches may say a little bit each year on Reformation Sunday. But detailed information is generally lacking in most of our education and experience. I read a biography about Luther, from our public library, about ten years ago, but it didn’t stick with me very well. Consequently, some of what Maier said was familiar, but most of it was like new material. I think I understand what Luther went through, just how much danger he was in, and how much he truly accomplished.

As a side note, the lecture included some thoughts of how the printing press helped to fuel the rapid dispersal of information. This kind of confirms thoughts behind a book I’ve been planning to write. Unfortunately, it’s way, way down the writing list, which is tossed aside right now while life gives no time for writing. Oh, well, retirement is now only 8 years, 1 month, and 26 days away, assuming our elected officials don’t screw it all up in the meantime.

If you have a chance to hear Dr. Maier lecture, don’t pass it up. Consider reading his books. I don’t think you will be disappointed.

Bible study, Life Group lessons, Life On A YoYo, Writing

November Goals

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This being Thanksgiving month, beginning with my busiest week at work for several months, my goals will be modest.

1. Blog 10 to 12 times.

2. Finish planning “Life On A Yo Yo”, and begin writing as needed, with a target to present to our life group beginning in January 2009.

3. Beginning planning two other life group series. One will be “From Slavery To Nationhood”, which looks at the Israelites during the exodous and the years of wandering. The other is the one I thought of last week, which needs some more work before I make it public.

4. Evaluate the life group lesson series I thought of based on a story in the Apocrypha.

5. Since I found more writing things that need to be filed, and since I ran out of file folders and couldn’t file all of those I found, finish filing writing stuff.

6. Work some on one other writing project.

7. Continue typing the harmony of the gospels that I wrote some years ago.

goals, poetry, Writing

October Report

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Time to see how I did against my goals.

1. Attend 1 meeting of my critique group. It will meet three times this month, but I’m not sure I want to devote six hours (or ten hours including driving) to this activity this month. Did this; attended the first meeting of the month.

2. Complete my submission log. I came close a couple of months ago. An hour should suffice for this. Did this, including for the rejection I received mid-month, 14 months after I submitted the poem.

3. Contact the editor who has had The Screwtape Letters study guide, mailed three months ago today. Did this; the editor came back with a rejection (duly recorded), and we had a nice, brief e-mail exchange.

4. Continue to cull through the many writing-help items I have printed from Internet sites. Read or scan as appropriate, and discard anything not absolutely essential. I actually finished this, I think. I have freed up five notebooks at home and three at work, which formerly held printed material I felt would be helpful in a writing career. Some of these I had never read, and I read them all as I discarded them. Okay, a few of them, which I’d read before, I only skimmed. I am now down to one notebook at home that contains the essential advice for submittals. That’s all I’m keeping.

5. Add a few (say three or four) posts to the poetry workshop I started at the Absolute Write poetry discussion forum. I added some to this; not sure if as many as three or four; probably only one or two.

6. Gather all my writing, all the scraps and sheets that contain things as small as haiku or as long as chapters, into one place and file them as appropriate. I’m not really too far from having this done. I think three hours might be enough. This is somewhat far along, but not quite done. I think I have everything together that was at the house. Some of that is not quite properly filed, but is AT the place where it needs to be for filing. I ran out of file folders, and haven’t bought more yet.

7. Plod along, as time, energy, and motivation allow, on three writing projects: the Elijah and Elisha Bible study; In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People (maybe write one more chapter); and the Documenting America column. Although I’m not planning to market it at this time, I don’t want to abandon it totally. I didn’t do much on these; in fact, I might not have done anything on these three writing projects, except maybe write a page or two on the E&E study. I worked on other projects (only a little), and captured some thoughts for potential future projects.

8. Post 10 to 12 times to this blog. Thirteen posts, so this was a success.

Life Group lessons, Life On A YoYo

Thought–and Captured

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I’ve only time and energy for a few words tonight. How nice it is, however, to have that energy at 9:17 PM in the evening.

Yesterday two thoughts crossed through my mind for Life Group studies, two lesson series I could develop and teach, maybe even write for publication. I won’t say what they are, since much thinking and development are necessary before I can do anything with them. They may not even turn out to be anything good (although I think they are).

But I captured them. One was actually a day old when last night arrived. I wrote this on to a simple concept sheet. It would only be a three or four week series, quite fitting for what many life groups want to do. The other one came to me yesterday evening. I’m not quite sure what it was I was thinking of that spurred the idea, but it seemed a good one, and so I captured it; wrote a concept sheet on it, although I couldn’t remember two things I needed to remember. Some research today and tonight in Wikipedia gave me the two missing links, plus a little more, and I have nine lessons in this series. This one would take some work, but if I can pull it together it may be one of the best things I could do.

Tonight also I worked some on lesson 3 in “Life on a Yo Yo: Peter’s Development as an Apostle”. This will probably be a fifteen lesson series, which I will likely teach after the first of the year. I don’t know how much I will write in the way of student handouts of other materials, but I will pull some together.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to substitute for our main teacher this coming Sunday, so I’m off to study.

Carlyle, letters, miscellaneous

$2.109

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This has been a very busy Saturday, raking leaves, cutting deadfall, trying to get a riding mower started, buying groceries. I’m much too tired to do much right now.

Last night I spent a lot of time on the Thomas Carlyle letters to Leigh Hunt, specifically one where Carlyle discussed poetry. Ideas for an essay came to me, and I began some notes and even some writing of the essay. Tonight I’m just going to read in the next book on my list.

A high note for the day was buying gasoline for $2.109 per gallon, the lowest it’s been here in over 3 years, if I remember correctly. Then, when we were at another part of town, I saw a gas station manager change their price to $2.099 per gallon. They are not the lowest station in town, so I suspect at the Murphy Oil on the Wal-Mart outlot it was probably about $2.069. Way to go, Congress, for ending the prohibition on offshore drilling, which is depressing the futures market, which is coming back to the current price.

Engineering, poetry, Writing

Alignment

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You hear of stars aligning, and astrologers will say that means something. Or you will hear someone say, “The stars must have been aligned for me!” Well, tonight events align for me. Significant events; events that demand my immediate attention, that will consume the evening.

Yes, today is payday, and in today’s mail will be my monthly bank statement. So tonight I get to balance the checkbook, see what bills have to be paid (or automatic payments recorded), and plan out my budget for the month ahead. Rarely do these two events come on the same day of the month. I will also use this occasion to enter several months’ worth of expenses into my budget tracking spreadsheet. So the evening will be consumed with the mundane.

Oh, you were expecting these events to be something momentous? Expecting me to announce a book deal, or some other publication acceptance? Sorry to disappoint. The mundane, common-place events of life govern, I’m afraid. In this regard I think of Charles Lamb, on of my favorite authors, a Romantic-era essayist and man of belles lettres. He worked at the East India House as a clerk, and did his writing on the side. His job was not strenuous, nor his hours long by today’s standards. Yet he always claimed his real work were not his essays, poems, and letters, but rather the endless ledgers in which he recorded endless sums for endless ships with endless imports.

So, perhaps, may it be with me. The works I shall be known for will not be the poems, essays, or novels I hack out in 30 minutes stretches on work day evenings or two hour blocks on weekends. No, it will be volumes of construction specifications, engineering reports, training class notes, internal e-mails and thousands of business letters. These are my works, world. Look upon them and despair.

Don’t mind me. Received a rejection last night, for a poem I submitted eleven months ago, and had long written off. I’m surprised it came, because it had the old postage on it.

And my key board here at work is acting up. Many letters I have to pound twice to get the pixels to behave, and the space bar is spaced out.

Author | Engineer