Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Larry Hurtado’s Groundrules

    Larry Hurtado is an eminent scholar of Christian origins. He has made a strong contribution to the world of biblical blogging in the last two years.  His recent post about groundrules for comments on his blog is spot on. He makes the following invitation to potential commenters: “if all you want to do is vent your pet view, and aren’t interested in engaging the data, learning from those with the expertise in the subject (which can certainly involve asking for the reasons for a given view), then I politely invite you to go elsewhere.”

Gender Representation in Ancient Hebrew

    David E. S. Stein is a careful researcher of gender representation in ancient Hebrew. He has published a number of ground-breaking articles in the field. He is also well-known for his  gender-sensitive adaptation of the NJPS translation of the Torah , which I discuss here, here, and note this as well. He just presented at a NAPH meeting on the subject: I link to a video slide version of the presentation below. In a series of posts, I will reproduce and interact with David's responses to a few pointed questions I threw into his lap. 

Q #1: If I boarded the elevator in the lobby of the Empire State Building, and rode to the 80th floor with a fellow Hebrew scholar who asked me to state the rules of usage that apply to the use of grammatical gender in ancient Hebrew, I would say the following in the 45 seconds at my disposal. (1) If the subject or subjects of a verb are exclusively masculine, the gender of the verb must also be masculine. (2) If the subject or subjects are feminine, the gender of the verb must also be feminine. (3) If the subject or subjects of a verb comprise masculine and feminine of a given species, the gender of the verb will be masculine, unless the verb has an explicit compound subject in which one of these subjects is to be spotlighted, in which case the gender and number of the verb will agree with the subject to be spotlighted, not the gender and number of the compound subject. (4) If the grammatical gender of a noun is feminine, but the social gender of the referent subject is masculine, the gender of the verb will be masculine. (5) I can't think of any examples offhand of the opposite, in which the gender of the noun is masculine, but the social gender of the referent subject is feminine. 

You will notice that I haven't used up my entire 45 seconds. What would you add to the above? Where do the above statements stand in need of correction? 

    Here are David’s first seven responses to this question (more to follow):

Why did James Holmes do it?

    Why did James Holmes do it? Why did he plan and execute a massacre of innocent people?