Before 9 am, I was ready to write an absolutely unique entry about higher ed policy, credit transfer, CUNY, and Kevin Carey's paean to the Open Badge manifesto (or whatever you want to call the Mozilla apparatus). And then reality hit, and now it's 3 pm and I'm still not done with a bunch of tasks I thought were altogether going to take less than two hours. And I'm not even a department chair yet, just a lowly associate chair with delusions of multitasking. All of these tasks are important to the people who work within 100 feet of me, but there is a tradeoff.
And because apparently the Rapture will come tomorrow evening according to several people who can interpret centuries-old Greek scriptural text down to the hour, I suspect I'm not going to have time to finish the entry (addendum: before other folks are taken up–I'm sure I'll have time to finish the entry afterwards). (In addition to continuing admin stuff, I'm headed to an enjoyable bruising this weekend.) So the only way you're going to read the pithy post (which I will finish in the next few days) is if you're not quite virtuous enough.
Rapture cancelled due to high cost of early termination fees.
A bigger problem is that the word “rapture” does not appear in the Greek New Testament, but comes from the Latin Vulgate (St. Jerome’s translation). From there the word took on a life of its own.
The irony, of course, is that Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, where the idea (of meeting the Lord in the air) surfaces for the first time (it may have appeared in the Inter-Testamental period, and apocalyptic literature), was trying to be pastoral. Now it is has been taken out of context, and used in decidedly non-pastoral ways. Even the Vulgate isn’t used anymore, due to its poor quality as a translation.
But if English was good enough for Jesus….(*GRIN!*)