Terrence Tao—the above average mathematician—notices we have individual friendships and mega corporations and huge groups. Small groups, the kind you can have meaningful influence on, have declined. Worth reading.
It also reminds me of Neil Postman’s thing about the change in the meaning of community. From “people proximate to me and my house” to “people with a shared interest with me.”
I think another big loss of those smaller level communities is that uncomfortable interactions with people who think very differently from oneself happen within them, but in a way much unlike interacting with the celebrity sound bite or news headline. You will also sometimes encounter a “perspective” or “viewpoint” within the context of that perceivers experience (“I prioritize X because when I was younger Y happened”). That is, the sort of interaction that contextualizes a view in a way that is more likely to sway your sympathies or at least make you listen for understanding.
The Magi give Jesus their θησαυρούς—treasures. The obvious etymological grandpa of “thesaurus,” but also the etymological forebear of “treasure” as well (via French tresor).
Today I learned from an amusement park worker about Giraffes:
- no horns, but ossicones which or cone shaped extensions of their skulls. And FIVE of them. More testosterone the bigger they are.
- Gestation is 13-15 months, born at 6ft tall.
- they can sit, and sometimes they do if it’s super windy
Read Matt 1:5 — I’m wondering if I need to reread the book of Ruth with the question, “How did the fact that Boaz was raised by the Gentile, Rahab, shape his behavior towards Ruth?”
Had an interesting convo with an art history student researching Cambodian art and French colonialism. He said that in Khmer (language spoken in Cambodia), you traditionally didn’t use the first person pronoun. Instead, you related yourself to the person you were speaking to. You call yourself “your student” when talking to a teacher, “your son” to a parent, and “your nephew/niece” if talking to an older male stranger (who will refer to himself as “your uncle”). The monks represented deity so they call themselves “god,” while the laity call themselves “servant of god.” The first person pronoun that is now commonly used derives etymologically from “servant,” going back to this idea. Really interesting to think about how this linguistic practice shapes the importance of societal roles.
Alas, while I did finish my PhD in 2025, I fell short of my goal of reading 12 books. Total came in at 10. Oh well. I take some consolation in that at least these books cumulated over 5,200 pages.
Loving this opening sentence:
“Dear Delegates, I wish to apologize in advance because I am obliged to refer to my lexicon and myself in this presentation.”
“My Medieval Lexicon” by Emmanuel Kriaras www.greek-language.gr/greekLang…
Grokipedia and Wikipedia
Found my way for the first time onto Grokipedia—an LLM aping Wikipedia with longish organized entries on all sorts of topics. Comparing the entries on “The Epistle to the Hebrews” brings out some of the differences in how a robot brings together mass amounts of info and how a few concerned citizens on Wikipedia do. A few observations on the “audience” sections in no particular order:
1 Structure
The AI version is far more readable. The structure is clear and topic sentences signal the paragraph content. It is far more cohesive and progresses logically. The Wikipedia version starts with a rando quote from a 1904 book by a German scholar I’ve never heard of on a book not specifically about the Epistle to the Hebrews. Odd.
2 Citations
Grokipedia cites sources at more consistent intervals, but they are all from the same two sources: ThirdMill (think John Frame and co.) and The Gospel Coalition. Only two sources, on repeat, both from a reformed evangelical perspective. Super narrow. (In general, I find LLMs to echo the views of reformed evangelicals on biblical studies topics—most likely because they are a far more online tribe than other denominations with the strongest Meme game. When I visit Catholic websites, I can sometimes see the HTML bleeding through in the background. Orthodox similarly.) Wikipedia’s sources are weird and spotty—a recent Journal of Biblical Literature article (through from a perspective that tilts strongly towards one side on the issue of audience and the letter’s purpose), random books about the NT, some stuff about Jewish-Christian relations. It’s all a bit slapdash. Neither resource is hitting the main scholarly players. None cites ANY BOOKS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE LETTER TO THE HEBREWS, of which hundreds exist.
3 Integration of Sources
Grokipedia doesn’t quote anyone—it maintains its authoritative voice throughout and gives you footnotes that leave the impression of ‘research’—again, to two popular-level, supped-up blogs from a decided perspective. Wikipedia has a few (not many) references to real people who think and say things (Adolf Jülicher, Abel Bibliowicz). It also includes something an AI never would: a parenthetical that calls an assertion into question (“Scholars [who?] have suggested”). This is almost certainly an automated feature on Wikipedia’s part—the function of something not so unlike AI—but it casts doubt onto what’s written.
The overall impression one gets from the two sources: the Grok version is far more “useful” (or better: “usable”) but far more misleading. Reading the Wikipedia article immediately informs you that you are interacting with a perspective (or a few of them), while Grok speaks with timeless authority. But the Wikipedia article does not give you a good look at the state of discussion either.
A question: how could these tools be integrated together to improve each other? I wonder about Grokipedia (which deep down I hope will die but I know that’s prolly unlikely) could automatically request experts in the field on its various topics to take the role of official editor? The problem is that old views long-debunked in the academy keep being propagated on such popular level resources. Unfortunately, there is also less impulse in the academy to do the actual work of making information broadly accessible (lip service to the “trickle down” effect is much easier than devoting a few hours on a Saturday afternoon to editing a Wikipedia page someone might ruin later). Right now, the two separate entities don’t cross paths. Perhaps that’s best (or safest). But perhaps there is potential for something organized, readable, but that couches topics in a more human-level of certainty.
Working on an argument that αἰών doesn’t mean “world”—ever. That’s clear enough in classical Greek, Byzantine Greek, and modern Greek. I’m wanting to knock out postclassical too. Paul Grices’s words are the methodological key: “Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity” (1989:47).