Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Reflections on “God of the Living: A Biblical Theology”

    Joseph Kelly and Charles Halton are to be thanked for drawing attention to a new volume of biblical theology, Der Gott der Lebendigen: Eine biblische Gotteslehre (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) by Hermann Spieckermann, a professor of Old Testament at the Georg-August-Universität of Göttingen, and Reinhard Feldmeier, a professor of New Testament in the same location.

A Short Introduction to the Scholarship of Daniel Bodi

    There are three principal reasons why the scholarship of Daniel Bodi deserves to be better known. First of all, Bodi is not afraid to offer bold hypotheses, plough new ground, and make fresh connections. If only more biblical scholars fit this mold. Not all of Bodi’s hypotheses are convincing, but one is always grateful for the verve with which they are presented.

Jews Reading the New Testament

    Is that just another way of saying, “Jews behaving badly”? Not according to Amy-Jill Levine, the co-editor, along with Marc Zvi Brettler, of The Jewish Annotated New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). “The more I study New Testament,” Dr. Levine told the New York Times, “the better Jew I become.”

Acculturation vs. internal development: framing the question with Mario Liverani

    Two poles of a false binary continue to play an inordinate role in the study of the history of ancient Israel and of Syria-Palestine. One pole attempts to explain the cultural (for example, the religious and political) history of a specific polity - for example, ancient Israel - with as little reference as possible to the impact of traits and trends that washed down the cultural slopes of contiguous societies over a same temporal frame; e.g., Iron Age Egypt, Philistia, Phoenicia, Damascus, Assyria, and Babylonia. Another pole attempts to explain the same history without remainder in terms of the features held in common with coeval contiguous polities. Nothing distinctive to see in a distinctive culture: move along. Parallelomania wins out by virtue of squatter's rights.

    A better though very partial formulation of the question: how do contiguous cultures in conflict acquire and assimilate into their own frameworks elements of another framework they dearly wish to oppose? How does that work? What if such assimilative processes are of paramount importance? Here is Liverani:

The History and Archaeology of the Ancient Levant: Formulating the Right Questions

    30 years ago, Mario Liverani delivered a lecture that outlined a research program for the disciplines of the history and archaeology of the Ancient Levant. The essay is also a masterful description of salient long-term trends that characterized Bronze and Iron Age Syria-Palestine. Published in Italian in a hard-to-find volume, it has not received the attention it deserves. Here, in translation, is how the essay begins:

Gender-in-Translation in the Revised New American Bible Old Testament (2011)

    The New American Bible Revised Edition (2011) is without a doubt a magnificent translation. It is the outcome of a consummate labor of love of leading scholars in the Catholic Biblical Association of America (the royalty dispute, now resolved, involved the bishops on the one hand and CBA of America on the other; for the long-suffering chronology of the revision, go here).

    A palpable improvement over the original NAB OT on every page, NABRE OT accomplishes this, according to its own preface, by being a more literal translation than its predecessor.

    The NABRE OT also bears the battle scars of the conflict in progress at the intersection of gender-in-translation and what counts as appropriate English diction in a translation of the Bible. NABRE OT overall makes a large number of concessions to the felt need of some that a Bible translation avoid generic masculine language. The NABRE Psalms, on the other hand, retain as a rule generic masculine language. The reason for the complex situation is explained in the preface to NABRE OT (2011):

Reading Akkadian Prayers

    Reading Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: An Introduction (Alan Lenzi, ed.; ANEM 3; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) belongs in the library of every serious student of the Hebrew Bible and every serious student of the ancient Near East. ANEM 3 is an outstanding example of open access scholarship. In the future, all scholarship of significance will be available in searchable, electronic form; if not, it will fade into insignificance. Like ANEM 1 and ANEM 2, ANEM 3 was, and will soon be available again, for free download online (UPDATE: go here).

Knowledge is one and truth is one: Introducing John Polkinghorne

    Bible-thumping creationists and fundy-bashing evolutionists dominate public discussion at the intersection of faith and science. It is great theater but little more than that. One of the saner and more responsible voices on science-and-faith questions is John Polkinghorne. Here is a pdf I prepared, a revised and proofed transcript of Maureen Cavanaugh's 2010 interview with Polkinghorne (audio track here). In the interview, Polkinghorne introduces his chief talking points in less than 2000 words. The pdf contains valuable links to other online audio and print resources. 

Select Commentaries and Monographs on the Book of Genesis

    Here is a select list of texts, translations, commentaries, monographs, and articles in the languages mentioned in the preceding post – Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and German – with scholarship in English thrown in for good measure. The first six entries are fundamental. Start with them and go from there: the doors of many worlds will open to you.

Jürgen Ebach on the Formation of the Canon

    The most effective way to master German (or any language) for the purposes of research in biblical studies is, I’m convinced, by way of listening to lectures in the language until one understands every turn of phrase on first impact. Practice makes perfect. I heartily recommend a rich and wonderful lecture by Jürgen Ebach for this purpose: "Vielfalt ohne Beliebigkeit" - Jüdische Bibelauslegung und postmoderne Wahrheitsfrage, that is, “Diversity but not Anything Goes” – Jewish Interpretation of the Bible and Postmodern Concepts of Truth: transcript and audio here. Below the fold, two paragraphs from the lecture, with translation, commentary, and bibliographical footnotes.