my heisman picks; who are yours?

my opinion about the heisman race has no impact on anything or anyone on this planet whatsoever . . . but it's still fun! here are my picks, 1-4. and i should clarify my criteria: the best player in college football this season.

1. case keenum, houston. his 5,449 yards is more than 1,500 better than the guy in second place, levi brown at troy. plus 43 td's, 9 interceptions. completed 71% of his passes. blew every other QB away statistically plus led an okay team to a really good season.

2. ndamukong suh, nebraska. the best player in the big 12 conference. defensive stats are great and he was double teamed in all 3 games i saw him in this year. i think he's the best defensive player in the country and i'm a die-hard SEC fan.

3. toby gerhart, stanford. he rushed for 1,736 yards and 26 td's. that's 10 td's and about 200 yards better than mark ingram, who by the way played in 1 more game than gerhart b/c the SEC has a championship game. i absolutely agree that the SEC is loaded with better defenses than the pac-10, but there's also the fact that gerhart did it on a less talented team with a weaker offensive scheme.

4. kellen moore, boise state. 39 td passes and only 3 interceptions. that's the best ratio i've ever heard of. and i don't care about the competition thing because of all the big name schools that refuse to schedule boise state, who apparently has been begging big teams to just let them come as the road team.

honorable mention: mark ingram, alabama; tim tebow, florida

sorry colt mccoy doesn't make my list; he threw 12 interceptions in a conference with horrible defenses. he played 2 solid defenses (oklahoma and nebraska) and stunk it up something awful.

2 questions: 1) who's on your heisman ballot, and 2) any thoughts on my picks? thanks for stopping by. i look forward to some thoughts and conversations.

next year's NFL draft

another semester is winding down, so i'm taking a few days off from bible-blogging (burnout!). just as important, however, is football! i'll be posting a few football questions over the next few days, you know, fun stuff.

since my team, the chiefs, is not really playing for much, i'm already thinking about next year's draft. odds are they'll get a high pick, given their current record (keep losing, guys!). if they do end up with, say, a top-5 or top-seven pick, whom should they draft? what position should they focus on? my immediate answer is that they should look for a franchise offensive tackle, a guy that can contain some of these NFL defensive ends. cassell will never look good if he never has time in the pocket, right? and the running game will never take over if the ends get into the backfield off the edge, right?

question - are there any franchise tackles coming out of college this year? last year there was a plethora of them. if so, whom should they look at? if not, what move should they make? and there's always this option - trade the high pick for a solid tackle, if that option is even out there.

just curious - who are the real studs coming out of college this year? any must-have players that a team might take even if that position is not their priority? what about your particular NFL team?

thanks for stopping by

a curious horsley quote

richard horsley wrote the following in his book about the gospel of mark called hearing the whole story:

much recent theologically based interpretation of mark simply assumes that mark is a story about christian discipleship, in which the ambiguously portrayed disciples function as provocative paradigms for the repentant discipleship of the reader. mark presents the disciples so negatively through the middle and especially the end of the story, however, that it is difficult to see how the reader could possibly identify with them (p. 28).

seriously? although i get tired of bible studies reducing mark to only a discipleship manual, i must say that i don't really find it too difficult to identify with the blundering, doubting, faithless disciples. as pathetic as they are in mark's gospel, i'm probably even worse. i'm a pretty pathetic disciple of Jesus Christ who identifies with the disciples so much that it sometimes brings me to tears. sure, mark is not merely a discipleship manual, but anyone who thinks the disciples are so awful that it's hard to identify with them . . . well, let's just say that person is better than me, way better.

thoughts? thanks for stopping by

were greek temples oriented towards the sun?

one classicist and archaeologist says yes they were! dr. alun salt (univ. of leicester) demonstrates that 40 out of 41 ancient greek temples in sicily are oriented towards the east, i.e. the rising of the sun. and the one exception? that would be a temple to hekate that may have been built to honor a moon goddess, so it may have been deliberately built so as NOT to face the sunrise. salt concedes that greek temples outside of sicily do not have such a strong ratio of ones facing the east, but he believes the very high percentages of temples facing the sunrise is far beyond coincidence or chance. it will take time for more definitive claims to be made, but this should be an interesting conversation for some time. you can see a press release here.

some archaeological updates

the oxford centre for maritime archaeology released some inscriptions from the underwater excavation of heracleion in egypt. most notably a stele that is 19 feet tall was discovered, dating to about 116 bce. apparently it has greek and egyptian hieroglyphs. see the press release here.

----------

another article begins with this teaser: "The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers." There's a lengthy article here.

----------

the tehran times is reporting that archaeologists are preparing to excavate a pre-elamite site in iran. in persian studies, "pre-elamite" ANYthing is sort of, well, iffy, so this dig could turn out to be something special. here's to hope! you can see that article here.

----------

thanks for stopping by!

more on 2 corinthians and scholarship as worship

i've been pouring through 2 corinthians for a research paper. in the process, i kept spotting places where paul emphasizes how he's an open book before God. in 3:17, for instance, paul contrasts his own sincere, difficult ministry with the insincere ministry of those "peddling the word of God." here paul reminded the corinthian readers/hearers, "but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God." in other words, God sees everything! in 5:10-11, this idea comes up again. after talking about future judgment (v. 10), paul says in v. 11, "therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade people; but we are made manifest to God!" (or, "but we are an open book to God," if you want go with a dynamic translation).

here's my point. when i said a bedtime prayer with my son, i found myself praying that we would remember that we are open books before the Lord and that we would have the desire to live like God is watching. and in keeping with 2 corinthians, i prayed (as usual) that God would help us be witnesses to Jesus, that we would tell people. i think this might be a good example of why students in biblical studies shouldn't have to put a partition between our academic study of the bible and our devotional reading of it. i KEEP hearing that scholars and students should have a "devotional time" that's separate from academic study. i would contend, however, that the academic study of the bible should be devotional as well, an "act of worship" (as a good friend once put it). now let me be honest - i still just sit down quite often and just read my bible (though i always find myself looking for a pen or highlighter or something). that's not really my point. my point is that the academic "stuff" should also be devotional, that we should learn how to live from it, that we should pray through it, that we should be pious WHILE being scholarly and academically honest in our studies. i suppose this is not true methodological atheism, which is what most programs prescribe, but it's where i'm at. thanks to my academic study, i had something important to pray about, something relevant & necessary.

thoughts? thanks for stopping by. i look forward to some thoughts & conversations

is relevance really the goal?

several times in the last few weeks i've heard people talk about the church and "relevance." more specifically, they have said that unfortunately the church is irrelevant and needs to find ways to be relevant again. it's something worth thinking about.

i do think, however, that perhaps the problem in this area is that the church is a bit too relevant. think about it. during the last presidential campaign, churches across this nation were hosting politicians! a pastor in my neck of the woods recently spent several weeks talking about, preaching about, & blogging about, about sex. more specifically, he was encouraging all married couples in the congregation to have sex every night for 40 nights (shouldn't we have a sermon about indulgence in our back pockets?). and of course there's the you-tube video of a certain guy in washington state (hopelessly) trying to preach that song of songs commands wives to perform oral sex.

maybe it's just me, but i think the pervasive infatuation with politics and sex from the pulpit demonstrates how the quest for relevance can derail churches from being who we are supposed to be (note the word pervasive). that does not mean we can't talk about the biblical perspective on political issues and sex . . . but it does mean we need to remember what is really relevant: the gospel of Jesus Christ. ultimately the indulgent activities and the political systems of the world neither satisfy nor save, but Jesus Christ does.

thanks for listening to my caffeinated opinion piece. i'd really like to hear your thoughts on this matter. thanks for stopping by