Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Is it all right to wish a non-Christian a Merry Christmas?

According to Jamie Katz, it’s a lovely thing to do – because everyone with an ounce of sense knows that Scrooge was full of it when he said:

7th cent. BCE inscription on plaster unearthed near Jerusalem

The onset of the preserved text goes like this:

The Passover Recipe of Exodus 12:9

The way the Passover has been kept has varied through time and space. As befits a recurrence that has endured for thousands of years, its observation in the now remains under the protective shadow of the way it was observed – more precisely – the way it was textualized, in the past. Bible and tradition testify to the rite’s susceptibility to re-embedment through time. The selfsame contents of the rite have not been constant.

Is there a specifically feminine way to embody wisdom? A tribute to Carolyn Osiek

Sister Osiek, I learn from a page of her order’s website, has been honored with a Festschrift. I will seek to honor her as well, by way of responding to a question from Marilyn Johnson, a commenter and sometime contributor to this blog. Marilyn’s question builds on a passage in Carolyn Osiek’s Beyond Anger: On Being a Feminist in the Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1986). Marilyn notes:

Why the electronic edition of the Göttingen Septuagint beats the band

Let me count the ways. A digital copy of the Göttingen Septuagint (GS) for the pre-pub asking price of $299.95 was a HUGE bargain. At the current price of $699.95, you still can’t go wrong (it would cost you three times as much to purchase the 24 print volumes). Installed on the Libronix platform, the value of the electronic edition relative to the print edition goes up many times. Nearly every lemma is linkable via another Logos resource, the Septuagina: Morphologically Tagged Edition: Rahlfs, to an array of other Libronixed reference works, and online resources like Perseus. Logos is to be commended for offering an electronic edition of GS.  Below the jump, a worked example of the possibilities and limits of doing research with the electronic GS as one’s point of departure.

A Biblical Studies Carnival for November 2010

NZ Wrong AKA Deane Galbraith has put together a fabulous carnival for the month behind us. By the slant he takes, Galbraith serves the interests of Equinox - a great publishing house - and those of the biblical blogging community in equal measure. That is no small feat.

But the slant is crystal clear: whereas it is obvious that the B-I-B-L-E is not for the book for he, Galbraith pleasures himself in the desacralizing task of assuming intellectual and moral superiority over those who resource their own lives and that of a faith community within an intellectual and moral vision according to which Scripture is norma normans - the norm which norms all other norms. But I'm not complaining: he is very good at what he does, plus he's a cute little devil (check below the jump).  Here is the link.