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Ichabod!

2001-12-19 6:27 a.m.

thoughts while working on my theology final.

something that bothers me a lot about historical studies, particularly scripture study in theology, is that you simply cant know everything that was going on in the past. like last night i read about the use of the term sophia in scripture study. why did i only find out about this now? why didnt they mention anything about this in my high school religion classes? i see now that my high school hebrew scriptures semester was horribly bare, and the first half of this semester was still only a little better. but i still feel like i could never know everything and get a complete idea of the cultural effects on the authors and other historical or etymological notes. i would never know enough to really get a historical idea of what it meant to the author and the first audiences. how did they interpret it?

the books that were required for this course are extremely valuable. i just opened one tonight, "after the new testament: a reader in early christianity" and its the coolest thing ever. it includes early "heresy" letters, martyrdom accounts, and apocryphal gospels. it shows me the paths christianity took on its way to being the church it is today, which i think is so much more valuable than just knowing what its teachings are. jesse, this goes back to something i remember saying over the summer, that i was less concerned with what a persons beliefs are than i was with how they came by those beliefs. i dont just wanna know that the church believes in the holy trinity, and that christ is both fully human, and fully divine. i wanna know how they decided that, see the sources they used in deciding, and decide for myself whether or not i agree. this book lets me read those primary sources!

the other books that im finding really great are the sociologists account of the spread of christianity and the skeptics account of the historical jesus. we didnt open up the catechism once. were using an ecumenical study version of the bible, which is cool because the notes with it are slightly more academic than in my other bibles. and "understanding the bible" is a great historical textbook to help understand the cultures and historical events going on oustide of the bible. i only wish i had time to read all of these and study them!

while im taking a break and writing in here, there was something in my physics textbook that i found very intriguing. it was discussing the correlation between temperature and wavelength and the colors of the stars. it explained that the only reason we cannot see the colors at night is because the rods in our eyes that work in dim light are not very perceptive to color at all. otherwise, the night sky would be "spangled with color" it said. wow. spangled with color. and the only reason we cant see it is because of biological human limitations! how frustrating. five am. by one pm, it will be all over. it had better be all over before then. i dunno how much longer this reading will take me to prepare for this final essay.

oooh. six. printing out the draft of my theology of martyrdom letter now. it was actually pretty fun to write...considering im not actually facing death. but liked it because i could make personal references to songs and not worry about citing ideas...every idea could only be my own. neat. i did cite a quote from st. ignatius though. im really curious to know what other people have written for this assignment.