Two newsworthy items today:

1. I was just interviewed, along with Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, by National Catholic Register regarding the new ESV-CE Augustine Bible. We get deep into the details about the origin and style of the new translation. Check it out: https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/augustine-institute-publishes-major-new-catholic-bible Here’s an excerpt:

Giszczak: A lot of Bible translations pursue a philosophy of “dynamic equivalence” or “thought for thought” style translation, which produces perhaps a very readable text, but not a very exact one. And the ESV takes the opposite approach of what they refer to as an essentially literal translation. The ESV is really trying to be as transparent as possible to original languages, and provide a word for word style translation rather than thought for thought style translation. And so it allows people who are studying Scripture, they get that much closer to the meaning in the original language, because they can trust what they’re reading is really what it says. So with the ESV, when you’re studying it or when it’s being preached from, you’ll hear a lot fewer of those phrases that we’re still accustomed to hearing in homilies, “well, what it really says here is.” So often the homilist or the preacher has to correct the translation in order for the people to understand it. But with the ESV, you have to spend less time retranslating in the context of study, and you can spend more time just understanding what’s there on the sacred page.

1. The Summer Scripture Conference 2020 at University of St. Mary of the Lake in the Chicago area has been cancelled due to the pandemic. I had mentioned that I was scheduled to speak at it a while back on my blog. But that won’t be happening. This is the year of cancelling everything! However, the organizers have asked me to film my planned lectures to share with their registrants. Once we do that, I’ll post the videos here too to share them with you.

Things I’ve learned from the present Covid-19 pandemic (I think):

1. We probably won’t make a vaccine since we’ve never made a coronavirus vaccine before.
2. Epidemiological models are more fiction than fact. No one can predict the future, not even a computer. (link)
3. We won’t solve the “testing problem.” If we were going to solve it, we would have by now.
4. Staying at home probably helped prevent a lot of sickness and death, but we’ll never know since there’s no counterfactual.
5. Shutting down surgeries and other procedures at all hospitals all at once was a dumb, ham-handed policy move that left hospitals without revenue, empty, furloughing doctors and nurses, instituting pay cuts. 171 hospitals are doing this at last count (link)
6. Work-from-home is white collar privilege, not a comprehensive policy. Asking blue collar workers at grocery stores, meat-packing plants, Amazon warehouses, etc. to risk their lives to save white collar people working at their kitchen tables on laptops is probably the best way to foment class warfare. Oops.
7. A pandemic is a national news story, but its effects are deeply local and vary from one place to another at any given time. Closing normal hospital work in California when the first wave is hitting Michigan and New York was not a good idea.
8. Politicians are selfish and, well, political. Their goal is to score points and votes, not to fix the problem. Same goes for the media organizations.
9. When everyone is terrified, selfish and angry, it’s hard to get good information (and toilet paper).
10. Trying to blame a politician or a country for the virus is like trying to blame someone for the weather. The blame game is fun to play, but this thing is literally a force of nature.
11. The more “takes” I read on the virus, the economy, how life will never be the same, the less patience I have for them.
12. Cancelling everything all at once everywhere makes people unhappy.
13. America eats over 500,000 hogs a day, but a pork shortage is likely coming.
14. The disease is terrible if you get it. Try not to.
15. Even though it seems like it won’t, a pandemic does come to an end eventually.

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These are early thoughts, after reading so much and trying to understand what is happening. We will be looking back on the decisions being made right now for the next few years.

Thinking in biblical terms, Solomon’s prayer comes to mind:

“If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own heart and stretching out his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind), that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers. (1Ki 8:37-40 ESV)