Food

Now that I've gotten your attention with the title, it's kind of interesting how language reflects a culture. In Greek, the word "artos" means "bread", but it also means "food". I guess bread was a staple for the Greeks. Compare this to Korean, where the word "bap" means "rice", but it also means "food", reflecting the influence rice has upon Korean culture.

The things that go through my mind as I cram for a Greek test...

Another Reformation?

Some interesting discussion today at tutorial group. Somewhat of a discussion on if we thought the Reformation was good or bad. Hard to really be objective since we all spoke from a distinctly Protestant perspective. But what I thought was interesting is that we seem to be on the eve of the next Reformation, one that focuses on trying to bring unity to the Church, between Catholic and Protestant and between the different Protestant groups themselves? Hard to explain the discussion w/o writing an essay, so I'll just stop there.

Abba = Daddy? Part II

Well, after doing some "research" (essentially just reading a couple of articles/excerpts), it seems the whole "abba" meaning "daddy" debate could still be unresolved.

The whole thing generally started from someone named Joachim Jeremias who did a study back in the 1960s and found out that "abba" was what young children called their fathers, hence the idea that it means "daddy". Since then, it's been debated. The one my NT professor mentioned in particular was the article "Abba Isn't 'Daddy'", written by James Barr in the Journal of Theological Studies (1988) pp. 28-47. I didn't get into it too much as the read is pretty academic.

Gordon Fee has a response to Barr in his book, God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (1994) pp. 408-412. Fee claims that one of Barr's arguments against Jeremias is that not only could "abba" be what young children called their fathers, but also what adult children called their fathers, so the translation should be more "father", not "daddy". Fee says that although that may be true, just because adult children use it, it does not have to be an adult word. Children may have learned it from infancy and used it as adults. Fee also makes responses to Barr in a couple other cases. In the end, Fee's point is that though "abba" does not have a direct meaning as "daddy" in English (no direct meaning exists), there's enough evidence to allow for a translation of "daddy".

I don't claim to know in-depth the argument going on here (I only looked at two sources and don't have enough academic understanding to know the arguments fully), but it seems possible that "abba" could be used as "daddy", which is not what my NT professor thinks. Perhaps someone could check out these sources (and others) and give me a better analysis of the Abba-Daddy debate.

Abba = Daddy?

This was brought up in my New Testament class today. I came from a church which teaches that the word "Abba" in the Bible means "Daddy". My New Testament professor doesn't seem to think so. He says it simply means "Father". Looking online, there seems to be some debate as to if "Abba" does mean "Daddy", or if it's just a myth perpetuated in evangelical circles. It seems that Jewish children nowadays do use it in that sense, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the way it was used back then, or the way that Jesus used it. I need to do some further research on this.

Nevertheless, whether or not "Abba" does mean "Daddy", I think the fact remains that it is significant we can call God our father. We can still have that intimacy with him while also having a reverence for him, one that may be lacking in the English term "Daddy".

Tidbits

Some things I've learned from my classes as I TRY to get back to blogging...

• Despite what you may have heard, the world at the time of Christopher Columbus did NOT think that the world was flat. They'd known the world was spherical ever since the time of the Greeks and Romans.
• The greatest threat to an individual's fulfillment of his vocation is his PARENTS. This given by my Spiritual Discernment professor, Gordon T. Smith.
  
• Interestingly enough, the greatest asset to a child's faith development is her parents as well, at least until mid-teens. After that, the greatest threat to her faith development is her parents. This given by my Spiritual Discernment professor, Gordon T. Smith.