Ancient Hebrew Poetry

A Tense-Prominent Analysis of the Biblical Hebrew Verbal System

Matthew Anstey kindly sent me a copy of his programmatic essay, hot off the press, entitled “The Biblical Hebrew qatal verb: a functional discourse grammar analysis,” Linguistics 47 (2009) 824-844. The essay is lucid, fully engages the field of linguistics, and is respectful of perspectives at odds with its own - trademark qualities of Anstey’s scholarship. To whet your appetite, I will quote his key conclusions, add a few titles to his status quaestionis summary, and intersperse observations of my own.

On Reading and Hearing Papers at SBL-Rome 2009

James McGrath has a post up entitled On Reading and Hearing Papers at SBL, in anticipation of SBL-New Orleans 2009, but he doesn’t note the recurrent problems that arise as soon as a paper designed for publication is delivered to a live audience. “Consuming” papers delivered at academic conferences is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The presenter almost always engages in TMI (too much information), and at the same time – a paradox - so many gaps in the train of argument are left to the audience’s imagination, so much background knowledge is taken for granted, that many people are left to wonder as they wander and wander as they wonder.  

A Review of Muraoka’s Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint

I purchased Muraoka's Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2009) in Rome at ISBL. It is superbly bound and printed, as we have come to expect from Peeters of Leuven. We owe Muraoka a huge debt of gratitude for this lexicon. GELS is an indispensable research tool, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Muraoka thanks one of his students, Max Rogland, who improved the author’s English “in countless places” (XVI).

The Need for a Revision of the New JPS Translation

The time has come for the Jewish Publication Society to consider undertaking a revision of the new JPS translation. Work on the NJPSV began in 1955 and came to a conclusion with the publication of the entire Tanakh 30 years later, in 1985. Those who contributed most to the translation were among the finest Hebraists of their era: Harry M. Orlinsky (1908-1992); Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (1902-1965); Harold Louis Ginsberg (1903-1990); Moshe Greenberg (1928-); Jonas C. Greenfield (1926-1995), and Nahum N. Sarna (1923-2005). Since 1985, NJPSV has become the pre-eminent translation of the Tanakh among English-speaking Jews, and is found on the shelf of every student of the Bible, irrespective of religious background, who has had a first-class introduction to the field of academic biblical studies.

Reflections on SBL-Rome 2009 (Part 1)

   SBL-Rome was a blast. It's impossible not to have fun bumming around Rome, especially if you know the language and a few of the town's nooks and crannies (I was a student at the Biblicum and the Waldensian School of Theology a few moons ago). It's impossible not to have fun taking skeptics to a "bar" near the Pantheon where they serve the best "granita al caffé" in the world, "con panna." The skeptics eat their words. I especially enjoyed watching Phil Sumpter of Narrative and Ontology as he downed the best ice cream in the world at La Palma and Giolitti. His knees wobbled at the brute force.