A riddle

If anyone can figure out what the nonsense verse below is and how it came to be in this form, without any further clues, I'll be very impressed!

In a car he even whole of this
Chi Hollox keep Prost on for a on
Cardiff chaos in hollow logs

Kata Matthaion

Yesterday we had a most incredible Greek lesson. I can’t say that there was any moment at which a penny dropped regarding a complex grammatical point – I remain relatively ignorant of such things; in fact, I feel less knowledgeable than I did before. The lesson was remarkable rather for the tangents through which the conversation meandered.
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To start with, one of the ‘students’, a very nice retired RE teacher, who comes just for the fun of it, wished to tell us, before the lesson got underway, about a friend of hers in Georgetown, Guyana. Apparently, the police came in the night and took away 350 men from their church for no good reason. The Lecturer at this point sensitively said, ‘I feel you’d like us to pray’, but equally sensitively, didn’t pray; one of the students is an atheist/agnostic and I imagine the university has rules about that kind of thing (praying in class I mean, not being athiest/agnostic). So, after a pause of about five seconds he brought us on to the Greek bit.
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Indeed, the lecturer showed himself to be a most thoughtful and sensitive character as the lecture went on. Somehow, about half an hour later he was questioning the value of doing theology. First, referring to understanding as children, and how much those with learning difficulties can understand. Then, about how most ‘normal’ people can only understand a little really, and even those who like him can spend their whole lives studying these things don’t really know any more. ‘One is left feeling absolutely dependent’ he said, I wanted to shout out, ‘Schleiermacher’ to show that I knew something but it didn't seem to fit with his humbling remark.

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He went on to talk about the lack of reflection on practice/behaviour in Christian traditions too. I'm not sure whether he meant it on a personal or corporate level or both but I was impressed by his thoughtfulness.
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It might have been in response to the comment about being dependent, or possibly something completely unrelated, when another student said something like, ‘being an atheist, er, well, agnostic the simplicity of it appeals…’ Unfortunately, what he said was so simple that I didn’t understand it and I don’t know what simple thing it is that he finds appealing.
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The same student also later revealed, quite naturally, that he’d read part of Plato’s Republic in Greek, possibly during his A-levels. I felt terribly ignorant and uneducated at this point.
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The lecturer later told us that he agreed with J. A. T. Robinson about the priority of John, which is quite unusual among NT scholars. (J. A. T. Robinson tutored J. C. O’Neill on his Doctorate, J. C. O’Neill tutored Jim Bewick and Jim Bewick taught me, among many other grateful, and not so grateful, souls) You might think this is to be expected in such a class but we were translating Matthew not John and it really wasn’t a natural move at all, although it seemed quite natural at the time.
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Somewhere in the midst of all this we went through about 30 verses from the sermon on the mount, which might have been the spring board for some of the wider discussion.
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I can’t remember all the other digressions the class went through but I know that I left the class feeling that we had bonded in some way. I also felt that the undergraduates were far more knowledgeable than me and that their Greek translation was more fluent. Furthermore, the lecturer, Phillip Burton, had shot-up in my estimation – that’s not to suggest that I didn’t respect him before.
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No doubt, I’ve distorted everything that happened in the class through misunderstanding and defective memory but it’s a special memory for me so it might be convenient to keep it that way. (Perhaps that's what it's like to compose a gospel)

Run away! Run away!

This weekend I went on a Crosslinks retreat. As strange as it sounds, it was my [first] real experience of spending time with Catholics. There were three or four from each Catholic, Methodist, and Anglican chaplaincies. And I'd have to say it was a good weekend without denominational boundaries.
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We stayed in an Anglican church hall, sleeping on the floor in the 'Upper Room'. There were spiritual activities such as worship, bible study and meditation but for me it was really about getting to know some of the others a bit better, which I did. (I'm quite a Philistine sometimes)
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On saturday evening there was a meditation led by one of the Catholoic girls. I think it was probably very good but my attention was focussed elsewhere. My stomach was making strange noises and I was sat there helplessly trying to stop it.
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Yesterday morning we needed to be up early because they needed to use the hall for the Sunday School. So I set the alarm on my phone. The alarm on my phone is the voice of P. McAvoy trying to sound like Frank Butcher saying, 'Get out of my bed you dirty slag!' I'm not sure how long it had been going before I woke up and switched it off but it seemed to have caught several people's attention. Later, when I was a bit more awake, someone asked, 'Whose was the gay alarm?'

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

How do you like that mate?

@#%+&# %@#$#

The tyre was flat agin tonight! :o(

Pride and Delusion

In the interest of getting to know each other a bit, three (four) of the four (Five) in my house went out together a couple of weekends ago. I think also it was because Eva, the Chinese girl, had finished her dissertation and she and Neil (her boyfriend) wanted to celebrate. All the same, it was nice of them to invite the rest of us along.
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So, anyway we went and watched Pride and Prejudice, the new version. I can't say it was good as the BBC version, especially in the portrayal of Mr Darcy, but it was good enough.
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Watching the film I caught myself thinking that I was a bit like Mr Darcy. (Someone else said I was like Mr Darcy when watching it about 18 months ago but I think that person has since, drastically reconsidered) Then I thought: 'I always do that, I always find myself vainly thinking the most noble character in the piece is a bit like me'. Though, I can't say I'm as noble or quite so stiff as Mr Darcy. When watching The Office, I imagine I'm most like Tim with a bit of Keith and Gareth thrown in. And when reading Much ado about Nothing, I thought maybe I was a bit like Benedick. I can't say I've ever identified with any of Clint Eastward's characters though. I usually find his characters a bit distasteful. And superman does nothing for me, he has no weakness (kryptonite excepted) that I can identify with. Batman and Spiderman are much more frail characters and for the reason generate more pathos.

So, I'm wondering, does everyone do this? What characters do you identify with? I imagine women mainly, though not exclusively, identify with female characters and men with male ones. Presumably, men who like Clint Eastward's characters have some sort of macho ideal. I presumably don't. I guess it's a literary ploy to get the reader/viewer involved.

Thinking about superman reminds me of Jesus in John's gospel. In John, Jesus knows everything in advance and seemingly exists largely to give 'the Jews' a good pasting. I guess to John's first readers, who had probably just been expelled from the synagogues, this was pure gold. But to me, in my context, it doesn't work so well. Despite the tears of blood in Gethsemane John's Jesus is too much of an 'ubermensh' (I only use that word for the sake of sounding educated) and at times comes across as petulant.

It's fortunate for me that most regard the synoptic accounts much more trustworthy when it comes to historicity. Hopefully, these scholars aren't using the same criteria as I am for their selection.

One useful contact

I'm still struggling to settle in here. Due to a slight mix up on the first day, I still don't know anyone who's doing the same course as I am. I did meet someone at a quiz last week, though, who did my course last year and is doing an MPhil now. He was interesting and said even more about Mark Goodacre being brilliant. (Which seems to suggest that Birmingham without him is a bit like BBC without Jim Bewick) I saw him again on Wednesday when he was going to give me some notes but he'd forgotten them. Instead I quizzed him on various issues and he gladly educated me.
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Judging by what he said, it seems that in NT studies there is a kind of dualism. On one side are (the villains?) the influential Jesus Seminar scholars who are mainly from North America, such as Crossan, Mack, and Borg who apparently follow in the footsteps of Wrede and Bultmann. They are on 'the quest for the historical Jesus' but they seem to dismiss certain facets of Jesus ministry, especially eschatological sayings and anything supernatural, before they start and have questionable assumptions about the Gospel of Thomas (concerning date) and 'Q' (concerning its very existence and multiple layers). Basically, they reduce Jesus to an ethical teacher and they conveniently appropriate more weight to the sources that support this view.
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On the other side are (the heroes?) the likes of E. P. Sanders, N. T. Wright, Mark Goodacre and Michael Goulder (an athiest apparently) who follow from Albert Schweitzer. I think these would also be on 'the quest' in some way but they don't dismiss apocalyptic/eschatological sayings and they don't prefer the Gospel of Thomas. As for 'Q', I think Goodacre makes a good case for doing away with it altogether. They might be said to be more open in their interpretation of the sources. Having said that, I've only heard one side of it.
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Nevertheless, the student was at pains to point out that Goodacre's attitude, at least, was to be open to the benefits offered by scholars on the other side, such as Bultmann's development of form criticism which is a valuable tool whether you agree with Bultmann's conclusions or not.
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I think this is interesting because on my degree there was another kind of dualism installed by Mr Bewick:

On one side, the villains were most definitely the fundamentalists who are prepared to change the words of scripture in order to maintain its authority. Their approach is characterised by inflexibility and being selectively critical.
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On the other side is anyone with a flexible, critical, approach. So the likes of Sanders and Bultmann who might be seen as opposites would both be preferable to Blomberg or Carson.
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It seems that Jim opened my eyes and now I'm ready (maybe) to step outside and see the full dazzling brightness of the day. That makes it sound a lot more romantic than it really is but its a nice image so I'll leave you with it.

Trying to blend in

When I was 15 this bike seemed like the height of good taste. I used to ride it into town and around the farm quite happy in the knowledge that if anyone saw me on it they'd probably be envious. But then, when I started driving, the bike was neglected and for the most part has remained in the dairy ever since. (We have a very cold room at home with a stone floor and no heating where we keep the fridge, the freezer and a load of miscellaneous old stuff with which we don't know what to do. For some reason, we call this room 'the dairy')
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Fifteeen years on, I've brought the bike out of retirement and suddenly I'm conscious of the fact the most bikes are less colourful these days. Even brightly coloured bikes have more sense than to be more than one bright colour at the same time. I feel quite self-conscious cycling around the Birmingham on this brash fashion statement that really doesn't match my personality. (BTW. The piece of paper hanging over the crossbar isn't an ASBO issued for riding a loud bike in a built up area)
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It's quite tempting to find some dark paint/spray and tone it down a bit so it might match my clothes better.
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Alternatively, I could ride it in my Korean outfit!
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I blurred my face in this self-portrait due to an odd expression. (I know, 'when do I not have an odd expression?')