Ancient Hebrew Poetry

“first use the concordance, only later the dictionary”: Shemaryahu Talmon (1920–2010)

    That advice from one of the great biblical scholars of the last century is spot on. For a marvelous evocation of Talmon by Jonathan Ben-Dov, go here. Bonus points if you know what Ben-Dov means with his reference to sociological acumen as a “Talmonic quality.”

Reforming Public Education: Individual Performance is an Oxymoron

    Sir Ken Robinson makes many excellent points in this video, already accessed more than 2 million times.

Loci of inspiration and authority in Greco-Roman Judaism

    The functional loci of “inspiration” and “authority” range from the "constitutional" texts themselves; the authors reputed to be behind them; authoritative interpreters of said texts, past and present; and the community to which text and interpretation are vouchsafed. The charter of the Qumran community (1st cent bce) elaborates on the intersection of these loci (1QS 8:1-16). The relevant passage will be presented in a forthcoming post. Viewed in isolation, the various lines of authority are subject to misunderstanding.

Oral Performance of Statutory Texts in the Synagogue

    From the first century of the current era forward, the practice of reading excerpts from Moses and the Prophets on the Sabbath in synagogue is well-attested (Acts 13:15; Josephus, Against Apion 2:175; Philo, Hypoth. 7.10-14; Theodotus inscription, Mt. Ophel).

Judaism: A Canon-making Machine

    Classical Judaism, in a process that began before and continued beyond the Greco-Roman period, came to possess not one but several sets of authoritative writings. The Tanakh, a heterogeneous corpus of narrative, law, prophecy, hymnody, lament, wisdom, love lyrics, and comedy, often referred to today as the Hebrew Bible, is the primal Jewish canon. The textualization of components of its components dates in large part to the 8^th-6^th cent. BCE, at which time prior text constituted legal, narrative, parenetic, didactic, and liturgical precedent to be reframed and recast and subverted by subsequent textual contributions to a series of heterogeneous rolling corpora. In the early period, the existence of authoritative text set in motion an open process. As Bernard Levinson has remarked, if the text as canon is understood in light of its inner compositional dynamic, “[i]t invites innovation, it challenges piety, it questions priority, it sanctifies subversion, it warrants difference, and it embeds critique” (“The Canon as Sponsor of Innovation,” in Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008] 89-94; 94). To be sure, one might equally remark that it invites preservation, it promotes piety, it revitalizes precedent, it sanctifies "inveramento" or radicalization, it warrants systemization, it embeds coherence. The inner dynamic of the history of composition of biblical literature is omnidirectional.

Jews and Christians are rival siblings

    As if they were rival siblings, the presentation of self to one another of Jewish and Christian communities has often been marked by competition. The exchange of “in your face” self-understandings has made the respective communities more alike even as they sought to distance themselves from one another. Their habits of privileging texts through which to read themselves are intertwined. Attention to the reading habits of both Jews and Christians is necessary if the development of either faith is to be understood.

Canons of Jewish and Christian Scripture in Greco-Roman Antiquity

    It is evident that Jews in Greco-Roman antiquity were not in complete agreement about which books were suitable to cite and teach from, in worship and in polemics. Even when they read from the same books, they often read them in variant textual forms. A Hebrew text very close to the MT or received text of later Judaism in the case of certain books was read by some; a less or more developed Hebrew text of certain books was read by others. The Septuagint or received Greek translation of the same writings, however different in detail from proto-MT, was read by Greek-speaking Jews for centuries; others read the Bible in a revised version of the original Greek translation.

Atheism is a sad religion

    That’s the thesis of a 2010 Steve Martin comedy routine in which Martin is accompanied by the Steep Canyon Rangers. Go here.  “Atheists don’t have no songs.” “Atheists just sing the blues.” Atheists have rock-n-roll, but don’t we all.

    If atheism is “the religion of reason,” it might mean that its adherents are, by and large, ill-equipped to engage in flights of lyric imagination. But I like the 2009 song by First Aid Kit entitled “Hard Believer.” Its wording is explicitly atheist. It is bluesy. Go here.

    There are great comics who have advocated for atheism in their routines – George Carlin and Stephen Fry come to mind. Scientists who advocate for atheism are a dime a dozen. But, so far at least, it’s hard to think of songwriters who lift up their voices and sing the glories of atheism.

    Lyrics of “Atheists have no songs” and “Hard Believer” below the jump.

Eschewing Mythmaking about New Testament Teaching on Households

    The temptation to rewrite the New Testament so that it accords with a culturally conditioned point of view is strong. This is especially the case in America since, as Vincent Wimbush has argued, the US is not only the inventor and embodiment of the myth of “America,” but is constituted as a text-reading, specifically, scripture-reading nation (go here). Antebellum slave-owners in the South succumbed to the temptation of reimagining scripture in their image; so did Yankee abolitionists. On today’s scene, complementarians bend NT texts to accord with their point of view; so do "biblical egalitarians."

    How difficult it is to let Jesus, Paul, and Peter as presented in the gospels and epistles be themselves. Scholars no less than non-scholars fall into the trap of mythmaking. An example of a New Testament scholar who defends Jews and Christians of Greco-Roman antiquity from attempts to caricature them or remake them in a preferred image is Carolyn Osiek.

Anti-Christian pogroms in the heart of the Muslim ummah

    It is too bad that Marty_Peretz is likely to remembered most of all for his self-confessed sins:  “I have publicly committed the sin of wild and wounding language, especially hurtful to our Muslim brothers and sisters. I do not console myself that many other Americans at this moment are committing the same transgressions, against others. I allowed emotion to run way ahead of reason, and feelings to trample arguments. For this I am sorry.” It is too bad, because the truth is sometimes expressed only by those like Peretz who find it difficult to distinguish between courage and recklessness. I have outlined the dangers of anti-Muslim rhetoric before. Still, in a recent editorial, Peretz does not exaggerate when he says: