Fallen Into Knowledge

The first in a series of posts during my blitz through the Bible.

I was struck by the way that Abram treats Hagar. Not well. That’s not quite it. Here is the passage that is bothering me:

Sarah saw that Abraham’s son by Hagar the Egyptian was laughing at Isaac. She said to Abraham, “Get rid of this slave and her son, because this slave’s son must never share the inheritance with my son Isaac.” Abraham was upset by this because of his son Ishmael. But God said to Abraham, “Don’t be upset about the boy and your slave. Listen to what Sarah says because through Isaac your descendants will carry on your name. Besides, I will make the slave’s son into a nation also, because he is your child.“ Early the next morning Abraham took bread and a container of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder. He also gave her the boy and sent her on her way. (Genesis 21:9-14)

Abram seems to be troubled with what he is about to do - and from my perspective for good reason. Why does God say that - well, abandoning Hagar - is okay? I really don’t know.

Here are some thoughts - not right thoughts, but possible implications of this passage:

Our (moral) responsibility to those in the “family” are different from our responsibility to those outside the “family.” Or, to but it more bluntly, we may treat “foreigners” in ways we can not treat those in the community. This troubles my sense of “equality” and “fairness,” although I recognize that such values are not likely derived from the Bible.

Perhaps we are to read God’s words as releasing Abram from his “paternal” (sic) responsibility toward Hagar and Ishmael. As in, God was taking over care of them (which he does.) This would be more likely if God’s “blessing” of Ishmael was not so harsh. On the other hand, there are many such “harsh” blessings in Genesis.

It still troubles me. I suspect my sense of “morality” is derived from sources other than the bible - like, say - american mythology. This sort of passage seems to provide an entry point into evaluating my ethical system, precisely because it conflicts with it.

Thoughts?

This is a test of Journler’s post to weblog function.

If this works, then I may have found, at long last, my note-taking / digital junk drawer program.

A little background, in hopes that it does work (of course, if you can see this, it has worked). I have long wanted a note taking program on my laptop in particular. A program that was free form enough for me to draft blog posts, write out theological reflections, take notes while studying, and so plethora of other verbal activity. Of course, while the program has to be free form, it also has to make it easy to retrieve that information, and to help me make new connections between my notes: that means meta information, key words, smart folders, and searching.
Journler is doing that all, and it also claims to be able to post those thoughts directly to my blog.

Does it?

{edit} It does, mostly

It was a beautiful day in Portland today, as others have noted. Since I kinda got a late start, I thought that a drive would be good, so I went to Astoria. Even though I have lived in Portland all my life, I have never driven to the coast on highway 30. So I did.

As it turns out, just because it was nice and sunny in Portland, doesn’t mean it is on the coast; in fact, it was raining heavily. Still, I took some pictures, and ate fresh fish and chips. And salt water taffy. A good trip, overall, even if I did leave the one nice day in recent memory for the rain.

Maybe I’ll get a second chance to enjoy the sun soon. Maybe.

Yesterday morning, at about 8 am I distinctly heard birds singing. Birds. It sounded like spring. I have been an Oregonian for long enough to not get my hopes up, but the sound was cheering nontheless.

Okay, so OS X has a set of “services” which allows users to perform a bunch of different actions on text and what-have-you. One of the services is called “Summarize,” which summarizes text. What’s the first thing I wanted a summary of? The whole New Testament, of course. Conclusion? Perhaps the feature works better on genres that are not “narrative”
Seriously, though. I have been thinking about the uses of technology in analyzing the text of the Bible. There are certainly dangers here: see John Updike’s novel, “Roger’s Version” as one example and a whole slew of whacky number based mumbo jumbo as more examples. But, even still, there may be some good reasons for using technology as a tool.
Technology can isolate word clusters as a way of pointing toward authorial emphasis. A machine doesn’t approach a text with a pre-understanding of what a text “means.” A machine isn’t cognizant at all of “meaning,” only analysis. This is both our strength, and a big weakness: we think we know what it means and therefore subconsciously filter out anything that doesn’t conform to our expectations. A computer does no such thing.
The sort of analysis I am thinking a computer could do well have to do with finding instances of intratextuality - places where the bible alludes to itself.
Anyhow, here are the (less than) glorious results of the “summarize” tool in OS X:

(more…)

After taking a test of Bible Knowledge pointed out by Halden I said:

At 55% I feel a bit ashamed. Part of me wants to justify myself by saying that the questions asked don’t evaluate comprehension as much as they do retention. But, it seems that clear comprehension and good theology depends absolutely on retention.
A good lenten project indeed.

I have decided to do just that: Read through the Bible during the 40 days of Lent. It will mean giving up a significant chunk of “free time,” I figure on about 2 hours of reading a day. But, this will be my first intential Lenten Project.
If you want to join me, feel free to download the Schedule (right click, save as…)
(Really, the test was ridiculously hard…really, take it yourself)

I don’t know what will happen as a result of this, but assuredly, something will happen. The fallout will be huge.