One Giant Leap

Today I completed a giant leap in the process of getting my Th.M. degree. Today I printed the first complete draft of my master's thesis. For more than a year I have been working on a collation of an ancient Greek New Testament manuscript. This means that I have recorded the variant readings in the manuscript and performed an analysis on those variants. this involved original research, which is unusual for a master's thesis. I also was fortunate enough to have seen and held the original 1200 year-old document when our team photographed it. The finished product (so far) is a very long 225 page thesis that now goes to my readers. I'm relieved that this step is finished but I'll still have more work to do once the first draft is read. In the mean time, on to those other classes that I need to keep up with.

My Weekend... Bad Start, Good Finish

My weekend started unexpectedly on Thursday afternoon with a phone call from the campus police. My car had been broken into so I met them in the parking lot to survey the damage. The glass in one of my back doors was shattered and my dash was ripped apart. The gave up early because all they got was the face from my stereo. It was more aggravating than anything else but I was lucky that that was all they did. By Thursday evening, I had repaired the dash, replaced the stereo with the factory model and made an appointment with a glass shop. Friday morning I was able to get everything repaired. Fortunately I was able to keep my plans to take the boys to see my parents over the weekend.

We had a good weekend trip. The boys got to play outside and go to a neighbor's house to see chickens and feed carrots to the horse. Caleb also worked on learning to shoot a BB gun. He got the hang of it and was hitting the target in no time. I got the chance to shot my Ruger 10/22 again, which I enjoyed very much.

I guess when Caleb eventually asks for his "Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time," I'll just put him on patrol guarding my car.

I'm Still Here

The summer is zipping by and I haven't posted anything here in a while. Well, what's going on in my world? In a nutshell, I've been busy. This summer began with a 1 week class followed immediately by our trip to Greece. After that I took a 3 week class on Hebrews, General Epistles and Revelation. While that was getting started, I was also turning in the first 2 chapters of my thesis. However, I'm still ready for the fall. Classes begin soon but fall also means cooler weather and football season. I hope my teams do at least as well as they did last year. The Saints made it to the NFC Championship game for the first time and the LSU Tigers won the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame. Fall also means woodworking. It has been too hot to spend time in the garage so woodworking has been on hold. I'm looking forward to working on the lathe and scroll saw again.

This fall I'm taking a pretty full load of classes. I'll have Gospels, Evangelism, Ecclesiology and Sanctification, and a class on Greco Roman Sites (New Testament Archeology). As busy as I'll be with classes, 2 of them are only 10 weeks long so the end of the semester should be fairly light.

I'm continuing to work with the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts in preparation for a likely return to Europe next summer. I'm in the process of refining the way we take pictures and process the files on the computers. I'll also be checking photos that were taken over this summer to make sure we have the pictures we should have. The probability is high that we will be given permission to return to Patmos and I pray that all of the arrangements are able to be made. We are developing a very good relationship with the Orthodox in Greece and I hope we are able to continue to photograph manuscripts and preserve them electronically for them and for scholarly use. This year we were able to give the Monastery 76 DVDs full of the 7000 pictures we took.

I haven't done a word of the day in a while so here goes...
Ecclesiology - the study of the doctrine relating to the church as a community or entity. "It's coming from the Greek ἐκκλησία meaning assembly or congregation." (You have to read the part in quotes like the father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding).