Ancient Hebrew Poetry

give me that old time religion – a response to Rich Rhodes

    Richard Rhodes is a linguist who teaches at the University of California-Berkeley. He blogs at Better Bibles. His last BBB post touches on a number of great topics: representation of gender in Greek and English; differences in style across the components of the New Testament; “natural English” as the way to go if we are to have better Bibles in English. Though this post is just an excuse for me to link to Johnny Cash singing “give me that old time religion,” before I offer the link, I will take issue with some of Rich’s claims.

Innovative Methods of Teaching Hebrew

What if we were to teach ancient Hebrew according to the method explained below? I can think of many lines in the Bible that would be suitable as graffiti. I want to write a textbook of ancient Hebrew that showcases the language of politics and culture of the Bible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/world/middleeast/learning-hebrew-on-the-streets-with-walls-as-assigned-reading.html

The Bible and the Contingencies of History: John Barton nails it

    In a recent post, Joseph Kelly cites John Barton to excellent effect: “Those who hold that nothing of religious importance can hang on the contingencies of history are supposed to be the people who are really serious about theology. Precisely the opposite is the case; for theology is not a game played among those already in a charmed circle, but a set of assertions about the way things really are.”

Voting early and often in Wisconsin

    To recall or not to recall. That is the question. A surreal calm cast its shadow over the cheesehead state this morning as crowds of people gathered at polling places at 7 am to cast a ballot. At my polling place, the only voting machine that was operational was a single infamous Diebold touch screen. Most people in my neck of the woods prefer to cast a paper ballot, but the machine into which you feed your paper ballot in order to verify that your vote has been counted was down. What chaos.

Introducing JESOT

    A new online journal just hit the electronic newsstand. The articles of the first issue are available in an easy-to-read, Kindle-like format (click on the cover page of the “current issue” here). The same articles and an excellent set of book reviews are also available in PDF format. What does the Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament, JESOT for short, offer that other academic journals in biblical studies do not?