It’s been another lazy day of revision and boredom (although the two usually go togeather). Read quite a lot of a thematic commentary on Matthew’s gospel by J. D. Kingsbury and also listened to one of the Hulsian lectures which N. T. Wright gave last year, the title of which was “Paul and Justification”. The talk I listened to was about Paul’s political scene and whether he was a political thinker. At some points, NTW seems to be reading too much into the text but I think on the broad picture he’s right that there are some resonances in the text which would have reminded people that “Jesus is Lord and so Caesar isn’t”. Not too sure on his political reading of Romans but I do agree that the Romans 13 section about obeying the governing authorities is actually bringing the rulers down a peg in terms of there is a higher king than them.
Found the following two pictures quite funny (click for bigger pictures): funny/2source.jpgfunny/church_stand_up.jpg
The Barn last night was very good – saw Mehmet for the first time in ages and we had a ‘mini Olympics’ night which was good fun for all involved. Harry’s today was similarly good, many people turned up and we went to Rachel E’s afterwards for toasties and chat – maybe 20 people went and it was great to get to know people better.
The rest of the day was nice – it was very hot here, perhaps 25 to 28 degrees and the wind was also very hot. I spent the day until 4:30 locked in my room trying to do some work, and I succeeded in the main part although not as much work as I’d have liked to. After Harry’s, I went into Sidney to check my mail and went to see Ellie to have a catch-up. We ended up going on a nice walk and chat until about midnight. Cambridge is all about just randomly meeting up with people and getting to know them better it’s such a privilege to be here.
Jim should be coming here from Oxford tomorrow, as is Rosalind (from London during her half-term) so I’ll probably be busy the next few days just seeing people and socialising. Really ought to start getting down to serious revision soon as my exams are only a few days away… First is my Greek on Thursday.
It’s been another lazy day of revision… Got up, read my Bible, went to the last lecture of the year about Islam! Then came home and listened to some lectures by Tom Wright and went to do Bible study with my mate Kim. Anyway, I really ought to get down to do some more work now…
I went to Christian Union tonight for the first time this term. We looked at Psalm 51 which is one of my favourite Psalms and very clear about forgiveness and how we should live as the people of God. It’s amazing how you notice something new every time you come to the Bible, and this time I noticed that David talks about being cleansed to be whiter than white by Hissop. Hissop was a type of tree in Israel and it’s quite important throughout the Bible as a sign of forgiveness – in the Passover (Exodus 12) the Israelites are instructed to put the blood of the lamb on their door posts using a branch of Hissop so that the Angel of Death might pass over their houses. In John 19:29 as Jesus is dying on the cross, someone gets a sponge of wine-vinegar and offers it to him on a Hissop stick. It’s also used throughout Leviticus 14 law about temple sacrifices, specifically to do with the blood of the animal which has been killed.
It’s really amazing to see how these really random themes just permeate all through the Bible – there’s really no chance to my mind that they could have been invented by the human authors of the Bible.
It was the last APU cafe last night. It’s been a good year, we’ve seen it grow from one or two internationals to have at its peak about 20. We had a good party at Briony’s, Richard baked some potato bread and Karunashur made some wonderful Indian food. Briony made some amazing cookies too. I started my “trying to get to bed early” programme and managed just past midnight.
