Kerfuffle over Selah

I’m with Decker on this one, though I’m still not a fan of NIV for general use.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Mark stated that the NIVN crowd is teetering close to irrelevancy. Um, sure. The version that is actually worse than the original and has given in to cultural generalities and is just a bad translation is okay. Yet, the group that calls them on betraying even the Chicago statement is somehow increasingly irrelevant. The NIV is making itself irrelevant. Sniping Mark? Really?

Props to Hamilton on this one. He has outfundied a fundy.

The SBC was way ahead of this though. Sad to see fundies so far behind.

http://sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=1218

1 Kings 8:60 - so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.

[Andrew K.] As an aside, can we please stop using strikethrough comments? Even before they were trite, they weren’t that witty.
What’s a strikethrough comment? When I hear strikethrough this is what I think: strikethrough! Why so bad? What does your post have to to do with this thread? What does my post have to do with this thread?

Jim, a strikeout is how you explain the Texas Rangers attempt at a world series ring.

1 Kings 8:60 - so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.

JH used strikethrough to correct what he had written previously. RD objected to his wording and JH changed it, as the comments show.

So nobody was trying to be witty. :) (But your point is taken!)

EDIT: And another failed attempt at a strike tag. Guess the commenting system strips it out.

Someday I have to do an in-depth study of ancient Hebrew musical notation.

However, right now I am blessed to be teaching through the Psalms in an adult Bible study on Sunday mornings at our church. My understanding - and my practice - is that the use of the word “selah” in a musical context is *similar* to that of the “fermata” (also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) in current Western musical usage. Just as I did not sing the name of the musical instruction when I was a musical director, I do not speak out loud the name of the musical instruction “selah” when reading the Psalms. I just DO it: I stop, pause, and let the group reflect on what was just said.

For me, it is valuable to see any musical notation available as I present a song (Psalm). It is also interesting to see where Biblical scholars make topical breaks in the Psalm in correlation to the use of the musical instruction “selah”. As I compare commentary with commentary, and different scholars break the texts at different points, some use the musical notation as an indication to end the topical section, while others break the topical section in a way that leaves the “sela” in the “middle of the verse”, just like many of our songs in current hymnals.

Sorry. It’s interesting to me as a musician.

Bottom line: I like seeing it where it is supposed to be, and presenting it (unspoken) as the instruction indicates.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE
The literal meaning of the word “selah” is “rock”. The Hebrew word image is that, when you are travelling and come to a “rock” in your path, you have to STOP, think, consider.

Actually, the comments currently use a fast dying tagging system called BBCODE. So, to do strikethroughs you just have to do it in BBCODE rather than html.

So it works like this (only remove all the spaces) [ s ] word or phrase to strickthrough [ /s ]

(We’re probably going to say goodbye to BBCODE in January)

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.