Just came across the following quote in JVOG
‘To equate kingdom and church is at best putting the cart before the horse, at worst a complete anachronism. Trye, there is a sense in which the community of Jesus’ people was part of the overall meaning of his announcement of the kingdom. But this idea needs checking and modifying in far too many ways for us to able to assert that when Jesus walked around the Galilean villages announcing the kingdom he was telling people about the church he was going to found. Put baldly like that, it is bound to seem as out of place as the attempt to discover what sort of Computer Paul used to type his letters’. (222)
It’s a cracking quote. However, I actually think we can be fairly certain that the Apostle Paul used a Dell PC with Libronix software. He certainly did not use an Apple as he was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Was this part of Paul’s rejoicing in his sufferings?
Surely he was steeped in the wisdom tradition – Prov. 25:11 – ‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver’ or
Song of Solomon 2:5 ‘Sustain me with raisins, refresh me with apples.’
He may have used an apple in his wilderness experience but turned to the promised land of Pc’s on conversion. ‘He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. ‘ Deit 32:10.
I actually think that your epistemologically justified to claim that Paul used an apple. I think that point has been dealt with at the apple seminar in the 2007 SBL conference. See http://www.pauldidnotuseanapple.com for details
The rev. Rob Robinson’s taste in computers matches his dress sense and his theology.