Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Quotable Fleming Rutledge

In the mainline church environment of today, it is much easier to find information about Celtic spirituality, labyrinth-walking, Jungian dream interpretation, the latest findings of the Jesus seminar, and other such eclectic topics than it is to find in-depth teaching about the Old Testament.

Fleming Rutledge, And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament (Kindle Locations 197-198). Kindle Edition. The print version was published by Eerdmans in 2011; Lauren Winner offers a crackerjack review in Books & Culture here.

Reflections on the Audience of the Book of Genesis

    Tim Bulkeley of the 5 minute Bible and sans blogue is teaching a course on the book of Genesis. Tim is simultaneously blogging and podcasting on the subject. For example, he has podcasts on Genesis as an edited text, on humour in the book of Genesis, and the audience of the book of Genesis.

Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity

    One of the great achievements of scholarship of the last one hundred years has been the progressive recovery of a startling variety of Judaisms and Christianities with specific examples of the latter correctly defined as varieties of Judaism no less than as varieties of Christianity.

How to pronounce the name Habakkuk

    There is no one answer to the question. A commenter to a youtube video on this rather important subject notes that in current English, it is pronounced like this or this, not like this (a hilarious mispronunciation). The last time a fellow academic asked me the question, I refrained from telling her the original pronunciation of חבקוק (you have to have a background in comparative Semitics to discuss the matter properly), and limited myself to repeating the traditional Hebrew pronunciation, “hav-a-kook,” with the accent on “kook” (pronounced here). To which she instantly replied, “every family hav-a-kook.”

The Weirdest Hebrew you will ever read

    A fabulous NYC photo archive is now online - whoops! - it is offline now. A photo that captured my attention immediately is offered here. I find Hebrew of the kind found in the photo incredibly weird. The photo is dated July 29, 1908. It pictures a storefront on Delancy Street on New York's Lower East Side.

The Poetry of Haviva Pedaya

    Haviva Pedaya (חביבה פדיה), along with Mois Ben Harash, has been named a recipient of the 2012 Yehuda Amichai Prize for Hebrew poetry. The turns of phrase she deploys often depend on the language of the Psalms and the siddur. She writes from a situation of need and distress. For that very reason, in a coincidence of opposites, her poetry is often “fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed.” According to the panel that awarded her the prize,

Reading the Bible with Hans Georg Gadamer

    Biblical scholars inscribe their interpretation of texts within a cultural project of large or small dimensions. Some read the Bible from a feminist point of view and/or from a post-colonial perspective. Others depend on a particular style of literary criticism, such as that attributed to Mikhail Bakhtin. Others come to the text armed with a methodology drawn from a discipline of wide application, for example, a linguistic theory of information structure at the clause, sentence, and paragraph levels. Many inscribe their reading of the Bible within a religious (or anti-religious) metanarrative. Readings of the latter type are especially appropriate. The Bible after all has generated and continues to generate vast communities of dedicated readers across barriers of language and culture. Most of these communities have a clear-cut religious and theological identity. Is there a method of reading the Bible that everyone should practice? I think there is. It is the method of reading proposed by Hans-Georg Gadamer.¹

Bible Translations and Christian Unity

    The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship puts together an excellent resource library on worship-related topics. A focal point of worship in most Christian traditions is the reading of Scripture. In an interview for the Institute, I argue that a translation that errs on the side of formal equivalence, for example the old RSV, the recent ESV, and the new NABRE, is the most appropriate for worship in a context that thinks of worship as a moment in which "the communion of saints" is realized.

Stanley Fish takes aim at Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker

    Why do scholars in the humanities take pleasure in deflating the pretensions of their colleagues in the hard sciences? Why does someone like Fish enjoy landing a few punches on the noses of the likes of Dawkins and Pinker? I have a theory; it goes like this: hard scientists are sometimes clueless when it comes to epistemology, that is, the study of justified belief.

America’s Theologian-in-Chief: Obama’s Passover/Easter Message

    So long as Barack Obama is president, the United States will have a theologian-in-chief. At Oslo, Notre Dame, and Tuscon; at the national prayer breakfast in Washington, the president has shown that not only faith (fides quae, a relationship) but theology (fides qua, specific content) matters to him and informs his politics. Obama’s recent Passover/Easter message is in keeping with his choice to make the interrelationship of his faith and politics explicit.