I’ve updated my WORDsearch Versions Comparison page to account for the new Interlinear viewing capabilities in WS8, as well as to do some general cleanup.
WORDsearch Versions Comparison Updated
O, Emmanuel
“O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.” (O Antiphon for Dec 23rd)
The sequence of antiphons this week culminates today in what is one of the most outrageous claims ever made.
I was reading someone not too long ago who was speaking of the dangers that have historically been encountered whenever believers try to shift the focus of Christianity from the Passion/Resurrection to the Incarnation. Though the details escape me at this point, I recall it being a compelling read. But the tendency it criticized, if we can call it that, is also one that I am sympathetic to.
Part of that sympathy comes from the simple fact that the Passion & Resurrection take their distinctive character from the fact of the Incarnation – in other words, that they are dependent on it for their own ontological meaning. But it is also because the doctrine of the Incarnation is just so wildly exhilarating. The idea that the Creator becomes part of (and hence one with) His creation is mind-boggling, and casts a glow of sacredness and goodness over the whole creation – especially over the human race. Words would fail to describe what it would be to stand in the presence of the God-man.
We live in a world infatuated with celebrity. We put our faith in celebrities to save us from whatever it is we think concerns us. The news outlets in the Boston area are all atwitter tonight over a star free agent first baseman signing with the Yankees instead of the Red Sox. Well, there goes the joy, for sure. Court jesters and talent-poor troubadours bask in glory as they lead social movements to eliminate unwanted human beings while saving the polar ice caps. The leader of the free world gets elected on charm and charisma…
And to think that there once was a man born who was actually worthy of this kind of adulation. And to think that, through the Passion and resurrection, he is with us still, inviting us to partake of himself in Communion.
Embracing the Incarnation without the Passion might lead us to utopianism, but we shouldn’t lose our wonder and astonishment at the birth of God in a stable – and we sure shouldn’t be ready to trade the real deal for the cheap imitation of celebrity.
O, King of Nations
“O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.” (O Antiphon for Dec 22nd)
I find the notion expressed in today’s antiphon the most difficult to see my way clear to. The others all seem to allow a kind of “religious” perspective to them. I don’t mean by that to contrast the obvious political character of today’s idea against “religion” as a non-political aspect of life – nothing could be further from the truth. I do not see how political life can be lived apart from religion, and political approaches that intend to marginalize religion cannot suppress “religion” itself, but only religious virtues and particular religious character – leaving an impoverished shell in place that is not non-religion, but a caricature of religion, set in the service of the prevailing ideology. No society is possible without some kind of shared framework of values and belief.
Instead, what I mean by “religious perspective” is almost the same thing as saying they have a political perspective. What I mean is that they can be viewed as particular, in some way, to a people who are not whomever they are not. What I mean is that there are ways to see them in a less-than-catholic light. That’s simply not the case with the antiphon today.
In proclaiming Christ “King of all the nations,” there is only an “us” to be found – there is no “them.” In this view, there is really only one relationship of complete otherness, and that is the relationship between God and His People, and even that is transcended in Christ, as we explicitly celebrate in tomorrow’s antiphon.
O, Light of Dawn
“O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.” (O Antiphon for Dec 21st)
Natick, Massachusetts has been buried under a stubborn snowstorm over the past 48 hours or so, and it seems to have been a while since the light of dawn has made its presence felt. The feeling intensifies when I open my window to the world, and peer out at what is happening in my society today.
Christ, as the Sun of Justice, not only judges in righteousness, but also illuminates. For the second day in a row, the antiphon references the plight of those “who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:79). This seems strangely appropriate as I look on the spectacle unfolding around Barack Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren to pray the invocation at Obama’s inauguration ceremony in January.
When I first saw the swirling blurbs of a scandal brewing, I immediately assumed that conservative Evangelicals (often wary of Rick Warren anyway) were inveighing against Warren for accepting the invitation, and therein supplying Obama’s image machine with a pretense of mainstream Evangelicalism’s accommodation of Obama’s notoriously radical and unholy social agenda. I will confess to having had some initial pangs of sympathy with that perspective (no doubt partly fueled by my own ambivalence toward Warren, whom I rightly or wrongly see as more of a best-selling promoter of self-help religion than a prophetic Christian witness), but I soon concluded that such reactionaryism was unwarranted – recognizing that the requirement to pray for and honor public leaders is not conditioned upon their policy aims – nor even their character.
How profoundly shocked I was, once I bit on some of the story teases, to learn that the outrage was coming from the left! Warren’s rejection of the “gay marriage” ploy is apparently enough to constitute him as a “bigot” unfit to give such a solemn invocation. But I have to ask, what does that make every other minister who has ever given the invocation for the Presidential office? For that matter, what does it make virtually every single human being who has ever populated this sorry planet?
Shine upon those in darkness and the shadow of death, indeed, O Light of Dawn.
O, Key of David
“O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel controlling at your will the gate of Heaven: Come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom.” (O Antiphon for Dec. 20th)
The antiphon today focuses on the authority of Christ:
The Holy One, the True One, the One who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close, and closes and no one opens Revelation 3:7 (HCSB)
No small part of a genuine faith in Christ must be in the hope that His authority is real and actual. It’s not entirely evident that such is the case. We proclaim Him King (not just King-elect), and we know His law well enough, yet it is abundantly clear that He is not calling the shots in this world on a day-to-day basis – or at least that few people pay Him much heed.
It will not suffice to say that His time of authority within the historical sphere is yet to come, for the Gospel tells us plainly that He delegated His authority, to Peter (cf Mt 16:19), precisely for the sake of being exercised “on earth,” within history. Yet, even many Christians do not recognize that authority in Peter, insofar as the Petrine authority continues to be delegated down through the generations in history. Protests that the delegation of authority was intended to be less personal and more broadly apostolic are empty, because – even if this were true – were every bishop in the world to speak with one voice, the world would still yawn – along with many self-styled Christians, Catholic or otherwise.
The fact remains that the manifestation of Christ’s authority, delegated or not, seems far off. It is this manifestation that we pray for when we say “Come, Lord.” But we should not be so naive as to think that the judgment executed at His coming will be as indifferent to justice as is the contemporary scene which ignores His authority (delegated or not). And if that is true, then should we be so eager for His coming? For whether we are prepared for judgment ourselves or not, should we be so indifferent to the judgment of others as to seek the coming of the Lord in times which are so notoriously unjust and indifferent to Christ’s Lordship?
O, Root of Jesse
“O Flower of Jesse’s stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.” (O Antiphon for Dec. 19th)
The idea of the “root of Jesse” in Scripture is an interesting one, with a meaning that seems a bit fluid. The natural meaning of “root” is, unsurprisingly, a source or foundation. But as imagery, it beckons to new growth coming forth from a devastated stump – as if that which grows from the root can be called the root, in the same way that people carry the names of their ancestors.
Jesus, however, confounds this meaning a bit more in Mt 22:45 (and related) when he says: “If David calls Him ‘Lord,’ how then can the Messiah be his Son?” (HCSB). This seems to validate the literary usage of “root” as more than associative imagery, but as an image that, just like the Christ Himself, takes on characters both etiological and eschatological.
Anyway, looking back at the natural meaning of the term, I attended my kids’ school’s Christmas Concert this Tuesday. The concert departed from the usual Christmas script quite a bit, and instead looked back at the broader story of God’s revelation to His people, beginning with the creation, and skimming through salvation history. One of the highlights was a song about Ruth.
The song, naturally enough, focused on the greatness of Ruth’s character, as seen in her devotion to Naomi, to Naomi’s people, and to Naomi’s God. It struck me how much of that same fierce loyalty seems to have made it into the blood of David, as he demonstrates in his devotion to Saul, to Jonathan, and to the Lord. There’s a lot of Ruth in David, and I have little doubt that the contemporaries of the young Jesus said something similar of Him: “there’s a lot Mary in that boy.” The apple never falls far from the tree, indeed.
O, Adonai
O Sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, and gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free. (“O Antiphon” for December 18th)
I must admit: it is hard, in my circumstances, to relate meaningfully to the desire to be set free. I guess I have it pretty good. Freedom is, ostensibly at least, the fundamental principle of modern democracies. We not only don’t lack it, we could hardly get away from it. One could make, I think, a convincing argument that we have so much freedom, it is problematic.
In a certain sense, I know so much freedom that I become complacent, unable to see well enough past the easy life to notice the darkened corners of creation awaiting the visit of God’s mighty hand. In another sense, freedom is so pervasive that it is vulgarized, reduced to the ability to get away with irresponsibility.
As I was reaching the end of my agonizingly long ride home from work tonight, I was listening to a lecturer reflecting on Jean Paul Sartre’s take on freedom and responsibility. I surely can’t agree with Sartre on everything, but I think he was right on target in his understanding that we are always free, in that we always have choices to make as subjects, and that even seemingly overwhelming constraints in our circumstances never force us into specific responses as persons, as beings. The upshot to that is that there is no legitimacy in the constant refrain of excuses people make for their behaviors. We should not confuse expediencies for necessities.
The concluding prayer to today’s offices implores God to set us free from sin, and there can be no argument that I, like you, am by no means free from it. But I think Sartre’s point is well taken, and that even a total enslavement to sin is still a totally free disposition, in that it is freely chosen by the sinner. What we call compulsiveness is not truly compulsion, even when we have debased ourselves through chronic submission to a point of servile reactionaryism and passivity.
There is a sense in which freedom is an eschatological promise, yes, but it is also a fierce responsibility in this time of trial. We are burdened bearers of the awesome dignity of freedom, and we have no excuses. We call for Him to come, but will he find faith on earth? (cf Luke 18:8)
O, Wisdom
O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care; come and show your people the way to salvation.
Today, we enter more intensely into the Advent season – the Octave before Christmas – as the final week of preparation begins for the celebration of God’s breaking into human history as a fully vested member of that history. The “O Antiphons” are highlighted in the liturgy now, until Christmas eve.
These ancient acclamations are best known in the form they take as the verses of the venerable hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” In order, roughly translated, they are: O Wisdom; O Lord; O Root of Jesse; O Key of David; O Light of Dawn; O King of Nations; O Emmanuel (God with us).
In the Latin: O Sapientia; O Adonai; O Radix Jesse; O Clavis David; O Oriens; O Rex Gentium; O Emmanuel. The first letter of each, in the Latin, is S-A-R-C-O-R-E. When the order is inverted, they spell Ero Cras, which can be translated “Tomorrow I will be (there),” a Divine answer to the Church’s plea, in each prayer, for the Savior to come.
“To us the path of knowledge show” we sing to Wisdom in the hymn, while the world around us prattles on about the arrival of knowledge workers in the information age. But the words of Isaiah from the first reading of the First Sunday in Advent haunt me still: “There are none who call upon your name.” The world, indeed, has grown weary of God, has found better things to rejoice in, has reverted even to seeking the answers to life’s riddles in the marvels and complexities of nature – and the words of an ancient Jewish sage indicts the world that waits for Santa Claus and forgets the name of God, while toying with the manufacture and destruction of human life:
Wisdom 13:1-9 (NAB)
For all men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing
him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world,
they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods, let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these; for the original source of beauty fashioned them.
Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
let them from these things realize how much more powerful
is he who made them.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.
But yet, for these the blame is less; For they indeed have gone astray perhaps, though they seek God and wish to find him.
For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see,
because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge that they could speculate about the world, how did they not more quickly find its LORD?
HCSB 2nd Edition Released by WORDsearch (with Strong’s coding!)
WORDsearch yesterday released a revised version of the Holman Christian Standard Bible for use on their Bible Study platforms. This is a free update for existing HCSB license holders, and replaces the previous version on their download server.
This is a hugely improved study resource, as the text is now tagged with Strong’s numbers, providing easy access to the meanings of underlying Greek or Hebrew words using the Strong’s Dictionary, or other compatible lexicons. The HCSB joins the KJV and NASB (and an interlinear) as Strong’s-tagged English translations available on WORDsearch’s CROSS platform. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Strong’s-tagged edition of the HCSB on the market. I’m not crazy about the HCSB, but I’m delighted to have another tagged Bible to work with – this is a big step in the right direction.
Another pleasant surprise is the large number of cross references that have been included with this text – far more than had been available previously. Currently, these are only accessible by expanding footnotes within the Biblical text in a standard Bible window, but hopefully they will also be made available in a stand-alone xref window, as was the case with the previous edition of the HCSB in CROSS.
Finally, this is not just an apparatus upgrade. This release also appears to include a significant revision of the translation, which has been said to be in the works for some time, planned for a 2009 release. This was a very quiet revision release, as I can find no references to it on any Holman/Lifeway web site. It’s entirely possible that WORDsearch got an advance copy of the updated text to work with, and that a widely available updated text will soon be announced by the copyright holder. There is no indication from the WORDsearch side that the “update” actually includes a significant revision of the Biblical text, but it surely does.
At the risk of throwing cold water on this, it should be pointed out that since this updated HCSB will replace (overwrite) the original version, it may make for some confusion for WORDsearch and/or Bible Explorer users who preach from the HCSB, since their electronic study text will differ significantly from their hard copies. It might have been nice to be able to keep both editions available (like the NASB versions), at least until people can replace their hard copies.
Below, I’ve provided a table comparing changes in Ephesians from the original edition (left column) to this 2008 update just published in CROSS (right column). Looking just at Ephesians, I found that 46 out of the 155 verses in the book have changes in this revision – some of them non-trivial. That’s not counting an additional handful of verses with only punctuation changes or a conjunction added/dropped.
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2003 HCSB |
2008 HCSB |
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Ephesians 1:1 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 1:1 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 1:7 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 1:7 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 1:11 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 1:11 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 1:13 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 1:13 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 1:18 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 1:18 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:2 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:2 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:4 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:4 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:5 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:5 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:6 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:6 (HCSB) 6 Together with Christ Jesus He also raised us up and seated us in the heavens, |
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Ephesians 2:7 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:7 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:8 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:8 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:11 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:11 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:12 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:12 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:15 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:15 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:17 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:17 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:21 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:21 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 2:22 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 2:22 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:10 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:10 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:11 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:11 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:12 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:12 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:14 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:14 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:16 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:16 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:18 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:18 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 3:20 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 3:20 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:10 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:10 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:21 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:21 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:22 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:22 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:24 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:24 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:29 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:29 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:30 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:30 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 4:31 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 4:31 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:5 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:5 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:6 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:6 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:18 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:18 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:19 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:19 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:23 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:23 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:24 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:24 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:25 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:25 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:26 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:26 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:27 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:27 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 5:28 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 5:28 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 6:7 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 6:7 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 6:9 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 6:9 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 6:16 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 6:16 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 6:18 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 6:18 (HCSB) |
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Ephesians 6:21 (HCSB) |
Ephesians 6:21 (HCSB) |
It’s Thinking Weather
A true winter chill has settled in to Massachusetts tonight, as we begin to close in on the winter solstice. I took the dog outside a few minutes ago to prepare for locking up the house for the night, and I was taken aback by the beauty of the night as I headed down the porch stairs. The sky is crystal clear, the moon and stars: brilliant. The temperature is just below 20 degrees.
As I was wandering around the back yard, I was thinking how I so enjoyed these kinds of nights when I was young and carefree, and walking all over town with my friends at night – instead of being inside doing homework or other useful things. I think I enjoyed them even more when I was working nights, in my early twenties, loading trucks and sampling drums of chemical waste. It’s not so cold as to be oppressive, just cold enough to keep everything crisp: the ground, the air, the shadows, and the mind. There’s something about a cold, brightly moonlit night that clears the cobwebs from the head, and invites clarity of thought.
I had a lot of room in my life back then for thinking, though I can’t honestly say I did a very good job of it – especially as a teenager. But there were plenty of nights, spent – mostly alone – jockeying trucks and loading them up in the yard over at General Chemical, that I would let my mind wander over various ideas: working out moral problems, trying to understand political questions, wrestling with religious doctrines, and generally trying to find my place in the world of ideas. I wish I could reach back and grab that kid by the lapels, give him a little direction, and dispossess him of a few particularly noxious notions, but that’s just not the way life works.
One thing I might tell that young man, were I to have the chance, would be not to get impatient with life, but to treasure the opportunity that such a life provided for reflection. By the end of the decade, I’d grown quite tired of the kind of labor that provided me that opportunity for reflection because of the lack of mental challenge inherent in the work. I wanted work that allowed me to use my mind, and eventually, that’s exactly what I found.
But what I lost in the process of finding “meaningful work” was the freedom to think for myself. It could hardly be any other way: how could I possibly think for myself if I was busy thinking for somebody else? The great questions of my life would have to wait for my “spare time,” so that I could focus my mind on “meaningful” matters like desktop configurations, networking protocols, technical security schemes, business benefits, requirements analysis, project dashboards, and stakeholder satisfaction.
Life, it turns out, is full of trade-offs – not simple solutions, or “progress.” I should also not have been surprised when my weight ballooned after giving up manual labor – though I’m sure it never crossed my mind at the time. No doubt, I’ve appreciated the financial benefits of my current career – and I’m hardly ready to give them up. But as I find it harder and harder to keep my mind focused, during the day, on matters that seem to me ever more trivial, I have to wonder where this is all leading.
I took a deep breath this weekend, and began the process of applying to Franciscan University’s Masters in Theology program. This is going to be a long road, and I hope I’ve weighed the trade-offs appropriately. For all the good – and there is plenty of it – that the last 15 or so years have meant for me, I can’t deny that I feel myself being called back to an earlier, simpler way, in many respects – even as I look forward to brand new possibilities. Truth be told, there have even been plenty of days over the years (more recently than prior) that I’ve wished I was working outside again. I’m not sure how reasonable that is at this point, but I do need some kind of fresh start.