Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Vermes remembers De Vaux, Milik, and Strugnell, and responds to Elior

In a delightful retrospective, Geza Vermes retells the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The article reveals many a sordid detail about this scholar and that. Over and over again, the best-laid plans of mice and men went astray before the scrolls were properly published, in some cases, a half-century after they were discovered. HT: James Davila

Pius XI vs. Hitler; Bibel vs. Babel; Biblical vs. Babylonian Prayer & Praise

Alan Lenzi just shared the delightful news that a projected volume of Akkadian prayers annotated by him, with comparative suggestions, has been accepted for publication.

Gender-Sensitive Translation of Exodus 15:3 and Related Passages

KJV, ESV, and Robert Alter pursue similar translation strategies. Note how KJV, ESV, and Alter translate the following passages:

Gender-Sensitive Translations of the Bible

Translations, broadly speaking, are of two types. Type A translations are committed to the source text and its idiosyncrasies; Type B translations, to the idiosyncrasies of the target language and the felt needs of a particular demographic for whom the translation is designed. I use “types” in the sense of Weberian ideal types. In practice, translations are compromises. Types A and B are relative, not absolute categories.

Magness on Late Byzantine Jewish Synagogues in Palestine

The lecture by Jodi Magness last evening was splendid. It is worth summarizing the key points. With irreproachable archaeological arguments, she laid out the evidence for the claim that synagogues once thought to date to the 2^nd to 3^rd centuries of this era, such as the synagogue in Capernaum, date instead to the late 4^th to 6^th centuries.

Abraham Ibn Ezra – 900 years old

A favorite blogger of mine – Irene Lancaster – wrote a fine introduction to the great Abraham Ibn-Ezra. Background here; details here. Originally published in 2003, the paperback edition is just being launched.

Ernesto Grassi and the Speech of First Principles

A statement that is bound to infuriate rationalists, whether they are theists or atheists: knowledge and myth are inseparable. It is, however, a true statement. Below the fold, I put some flesh on this bold observation.

Mary Ann Glendon nails her thesis to the door of Notre Dame

Declining Notre Dame: A Letter from Mary Ann Glendon is a document of our times. It illustrates the crisis of conscience which first-rate intellectuals who do not, horror of horrors, align themselves with the gospel according contemporary liberalism are likely to be subjected to, more and more often, in the years to come.

Upcoming Jodi Magness Lecture: “Ancient Synagogues in the Land of Israel”

As announced by the Madison Biblical Archaeological Society, the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions, and the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Professor Jodi Magness (Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) will present a lecture entitled "Ancient Synagogues in the Land of Israel," tomorrow, on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 7:30 p.m., at the Pyle Center on the UW-Madison campus. Over 100 synagogue buildings, dating from the first to seventh centuries C.E., have been discovered in ancient Palestine. The slide-illustrated lecture will survey the buildings, focusing especially on the surprising pagan motifs that decorate some of them, and considering such questions as where and when the institution of the synagogue originated.

Why Knowledge and Myth are Inseparable

Donald Phillip Verene is a philosopher whose work deserves to be widely known. I’ve been reading his The History of Philosophy: A Reader’s Guide (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2008), and recommend it to anyone with ears to hear.

Verene’s essay is dedicated to the memory of Albert William Levi (1911-1988). Here is a Levi quote that succeeds in capturing the essence of two main streams of modern philosophy with razor-sharp clarity (p. 65, op. cit.) – in brackets, word-associations that came to mind: