Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Barack Obama and Billy Graham pray for one another

Civil religion in its various facets is deeply rooted in American culture. Outside of a few exceptions, politicians and believers alike, with varying degrees of comfort, find civil religion and the public expression of religious faith to be acceptable and propitious points of departure for the presentation of self in everyday life.

That being the case, it should not surprise that President Obama asked to pray with “Mr. Evangelical” Billy Graham, and that Graham and his son Franklin did so. A full report here. I am also not surprised that Barack, a convert to the Christian faith, prayed on behalf of Graham in that same context. The Obama family’s faith was nurtured for many years at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation I have worshipped with on several occasions. The congregation does not believe in raising up passive believers. Everyone is expected to be able to engage in extemporaneous prayer, to have a devotional life consisting of daily reading of the Bible, and to show fruits of repentance in their daily life.

Ancient Hebrew Poetry: A New Collection of Electronic Resources

Logos Bible Software is on a rampage. At the rate of 3,439 pages a minute,¹ the company is putting the corpus of English-language scholarship on the Bible into searchable, electronic format and thereby enhancing its usefulness several fold. The pre-publication price for a Libronixed set of seven hefty tomes (2,638 pages) of Hebrew Bible / OT scholarship available in hard copy from Continuum/T&T Clark/ Sheffield Academic Press is impossible to beat: $109.95. Why is this set, dubbed the Hebrew Studies Collection, of particular interest?

Constitutional and Anti-Constitutional Readings of the Bible

James McGrath reproduces a hilarious diagram designed to parody fundamentalist apologetics:

Marilynne Robinson, Genesis 1:27, 2:7, and Neo-Darwinian Dogma

Absence of Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) is a magnificent addition to the collection of gifts Marilynne Robinson has bequeathed upon the reading world. The volume is what would be called in Italian un’impietosa disanima, a merciless analysis, of scientism of the last two hundred years. She hangs up to dry one great thinker after another – even a biblical scholar, James Kugel, but more importantly, people like Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte, Steven Pinker, E. O. Wilson, and Sigmund Freud.

The Biblical Hebrew Portal: A New Address

The site of Matthew Anstey, one of the best young scholars working along the interface of linguistics and ancient Hebrew, has a new address: go here for a rich bibliography and transliterated biblical text according to rigorous linguistic standards.  

Ellen F. Davis Roundup

Ellen Davis is an articulate voice in the field of ethics of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. Biblical bloggers have offered substantial reviews of her recent Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, in particular (Philip Esler via) Loron Rosson, Joseph Kelly, and Charles Halton. Ros Clarke drew our attention to the SBL-New Orleans Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar which was dedicated to the volume noted.

The True Origin of Earth Day

Back in the days when people read their Bibles, the Pentecostal blessing was understood by Pentecostals in light of the breadth and depth of all of Acts 2, including  verses 17-21 and 42-47. Pentecostals felt themselves convicted by the entire chapter, as opposed to being merely validated by the fact that the birth of the ecclesia of Christ was accompanied by speaking in tongues. 

More often than one might imagine, Pentecostals used to have a heart for racial reconciliation, women in ministry, a critique of war, and a sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of planet earth. The true inventor of Earth Day was a Pentecostal named John McConnell, not Senator Gaylord Nelson (the latter took the idea over for his own ends). 

McConnell embodies much of what has made Pentecostalism one of the most potent and positive movements of regeneration the world has ever seen. At its best, to this day, Pentecostalism is John McConnell, not Benny and Suzanne Hinn. For the whole delightful story, go here. HT: Rick Wadholm

Beato tu tra le donne

The title of this post is a play on Elisabeth’s greeting of Mary in Luke 1:42. My wife Paola has teased me with this phrase the last few days, since we have two students from Italy as house-guests, and I am currently outnumbered five to 1 at the dinner table.

What are you talking about, you may ask? So far, what I have written is clear as mud in English. It makes perfect sense in Italian, because, like many of the world’s languages, Italian is a gendered language. “Blessed are you among women,” a straightforward translation of this post’s title in English, misses the point. As is true more often than translators like to admit, the only way to bring out the sense of “Beato tu tra le donne” is by paraphrase, something like, “Beatific are you, a male, among all these women.”

Are you still trying to understand the Bible by means of a translation? It’s a waste of time. You are missing half if not more of the splendid details of the text. Gender modulations are just one example. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are rich in them.

Below the fold, pictures of four of the five women who are currently keeping me in high spirits. La piccola is my daughter Anna. La mora is my daughter Elisabetta.

Animals in the Hands of a Merciful God: Another Look at the Book of Jonah

In the latest issue of JHS, there is a fine article by Yael Shemesh entitled "'And Many Beasts' (Jonah 4:11): The Function and Status of Animals in the Book of Jonah." Her main thesis: the Hebrew Bible and the book of Jonah in particular think of God as full of compassion for animals no less than human beings. On this score, she argues, Rashi, Aquinas, and Descartes, and the modern anthropocentric worldview tout court, represent a huge step backward with respect to the Hebrew Bible. Indifference to and mistreatment of animals in post-biblical teaching has been countenanced again and again. Shemesh's arguments dovetail with those of Ellen Davis (Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible). Davis also suggests that the modern world has much to learn from the Hebrew Bible in the realm of ethics, and in particular, as far as an ecologically sensitive ethics is concerned.

Is the Internet bad for Biblical Studies?

David Brooks has a thoughtful post on a related question: is the Internet a blessing for democracy? According to Brooks, the answer: a qualified yes.