This article investigates features of the language of Am 7,1–8,3 which promote the cohesion of the text, and how these interact with rhetorical features of the text to promote a coherent message. In this passage, repetition of lexical stock is a particularly strong cohesive feature. It promotes reading the vision accounts, both the three which precede and the one that follows, with the biographical narrative in 7,10–17. Thus despite marked differences of genre and point of view, first person in the vision accounts and third person in the narrative, the sections of this passage as we have it work together. Together they promote the claim that Amos was a true prophet, and that his message of disaster for the kingdom of Israel was indeed a word from the LORD.
So if you are interested in Amos, or in the ways in which Hebrew Bible texts stick together do please read:
Bulkeley, Tim. “Amos 7,1-8,3: cohesion and generic dissonance.” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 121 (2009): 515-528.
It is currently available for a fee on the de Gruyter's website (apparently my wisdom is not priceless, but 14 pages is worth US$40 or about 3 words for every cent you pay), or perhaps a library near you has a copy, or if you promise to cite me in your own work I'll send you a copy, so enjoy ;)
Cet article étudie les éléments linguistiques d'Amos 7,1–8,3 qui produisent un sens de cohésion textuelle. Il note la façon dont ces éléments fonctionnent ensemble avec des techniques rhétoriques, de façon à suggérer un message cohérent. Dans cette section du livre d'Amos, la répétition lexicale constitue une importante structure de cohésion. Cet effet encourage une lecture des récits de vision prophétiques, les trois racontés avant la narration biographique en Amos 7,10–17 aussi bien que celui qui la suit. On constate ainsi des différences notables entre les sections de cette péricope, telle que nous l'avons reçue. Ces différences comprennent le genre et le point de vue (les récits de vision sont racontés à la première personne, mais la narration biographique à la troisième). En dépit de ce décalage formel, les sections fonctionnent bien ensemble. Elles suggèrent qu'Amos était un vrai prophète, et que son message de catastrophe pour le royaume d'Israël était en fait une parole du Seigneur.
Der Beitrag untersucht die Sprachelemente in Am 7,1–8,3, die für den Zusammenhalt des Textes verantwortlich sind, und beleuchtet ihr Zusammenwirken mit den rhetorischen Mitteln für die Herstellung von Kohärenz. Dabei wird der Verwendung gleicher Begriffe etwa für die Verknüpfung der Visionsschilderungen mit der biographischen Erzählung in Am 7,10–17 große Bedeutung zugemessen. Trotz der immer wieder angeführten Unterschiede in Gattung, Intention und »Ich«- bzw. »Er«-Bericht gehen sie auf eine Hand zurück. Zusammen formulieren sie den Anspruch, dass Amos ein wahrer Prophet ist und dass seine Unheilsbotschaft für das Königreich Israel Wort Gottes ist.
Labels: amos, biblical.studies, coherence, cohesion
¶ 3:42 PM
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The web has become a funny place. Despite its ethos of volunteerism and culture of free, increasingly volunteer effort and time are not enough for worthwhile projects. Meanwhile borrowed money, cosmetic surgery, pornography, and other essentials of modern life can finance themselves, and even enable others to make a modest income from blogging.The latest illustration of this strange situation is Librivox. LV is a huge volunteer effort that In a mere four-and-a-half years, has made thousands of free audiobooks for anyone to enjoy. The site gets 400,000 visitors every month.One recording I did has already passed 10,000 downloads. Yet LV is appealing to its volunteers to donate money as well to pay for the system that enables all this. LV is deeply committed to the dream of free culture, so all its recordings are placed in the public domain. This ethos sits uneasily with advertising, otherwise a combination of Amazon links and/or Google Adwords would ensure an annual income of far more than the $20,000 that they are seeking (in the hopes it will cover the next few years of opperation).
There is a strange logic here, even a tiny payment from a few of the users who download and enjoy the books would cover the cost. Yet LV asks the producers of the content (well at least one group of them, the authors and original publishers are mostly dead, so they are not contacted by the appeal). So it is the readers, prooflisteners and project coordinators who must pay.
Perhaps in the gift economy and the culture of free this is the way it should be, with people covering the cost of publishing their work. But how does this fit with academic publishing? Academics (with a few, over the 20th Century a dwindling few, amateur scholars as exceptions to the rule) are mercenaries, we undertake our scholarship for pay. Yet even in this realm of "workers worthyof their hire" (we hope) publication has usually been free!
No, books and journals have not been free, but authors have most often given them away, it is usually only the commercial publisher of the work who makes any significant money (and then often barely enough to meet their costs) royalties on the average book (or even well above average like your latest one) are barely cover the coffee consumed in its writing.
There's the real paradox of digital publishing, a sector (somehow in this over-managed world we are always part of a "sector") that traditionally gave away its (or at least this) product is wary of the new culture of free and hides its work behind the firewalls of commercial publishers. Apart from hidebound inertia and fear of the new what explains this strange reality?
[See also this old post by Mark Goodacre.]
Labels: academic, biblical.studies, biblical.studies.online, culture, digital, publication, scholarship
¶ 10:04 AM
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But as they say "the devil is in the details", and in this case I wonder about a couple of related details. Julia "point[s] out how Amos falls short of all-inclusive justice" citing Judith Sanderson in the Women’s Bible Commentary:
- "the description of Samaria’s women in 4:1-3 unfairly scapegoats women for the nation’s ills" does it? Or does this passage merely suggest that the women who enjoy the "good life" procured by oppression (cf 4:1 they at least enjoyed the drinkies) are condemned along with thoose who procured them these treats?
- Amos "failed specifically to champion the women among the poor" surely 2:7b does specifically champion a class of (poor) women (servant girls) from male abuse, and states that such abuse profanes the holy reputation of God.
Labels: amos, bible.reading, biblical.studies, gender
¶ 12:45 PM
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Whatever, I have done my duty, and later today can begin to relish chapter two, whose much more exciting title is "What Was the Alphabet For?
Labels: biblical.studies, culture, history
¶ 10:44 AM
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Miriam Bier wrote in her Facebook status "question: if you can disambiguate, can you not also ambiguate?"In view of my recent posts I have to claim an emphatic: Can I [you choose the punctuation]
Since the halcyon days when I was a bright young thing the world has gained an almost infinitely greater degree of capacity to communicate. I grew up in a world of broadcast (TV and Radio - basically one way transmission of information, one way is not communication), print (also basically one way - one way is a dead end ;) and occasional handwriting (letters and such) and even more occasional telephone chats (once or twice a week to my fiancée) as the extent of common long distance communication. So a face-to-face world enriched by a little long distance communication and a lot of one to many lecturing. Now, a generation later, I sit in a refugee camp and email colleagues around the world, MSN my children in other continents, and Facebook and blog to all who are interested. Almost instant, almost ubiquitous and almost free communication. My 1975 self would see this as utopian.
BUT this increased capacity to communicate also increases our access to information, which increases our (own estimates of our) knowledge. Greater perceived certainty is a dangerous thing. It leads to simplistic black and white thinking. This combined with our increased capacity to communicate, leading to fads (on a global scale like the latest TV sensation or publishing blockbuster, or locally like the way biblical studies bloggers have rashes of posts about the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon), produces an uncertain, unstable world.
That's dangerous as well as exciting. An uncertain world in which humans are more "certain" scares me. Certainty is the enemy of truth, truth comes from living with ambiguity, ambiguation is the servant of truth.
See also: John's History versus Myth: A True False Dichotomy and my Internet fast: The degradation of predictability - and knowledge.
So, my friends: Ambiguate all you can! Disrupt certainty :)
Labels: biblical.studies, culture, education
¶ 2:45 PM
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I've taught students about the importance of terracing to cultivation, and so the possible population density of the hill country of Palestine. I think I saw a reverse illustrative example today. Above us on the hill (here at the Akha Hill House in northern Thailand) there are cultivated bushes. In the photo you can see what I saw, the bushes higher on the slope are consistently smaller and those lower down larger. I assume it is greater availability of water and nutrients lower on the slope as they (and also topsoil) are washed down in the rainy season.If anybody with greater knowledge of horticulture or geology can comment to confirm or deny this I'd be pleased. Otherwise I'll probably use this photo next time I'm talking about terracing...
Labels: biblical.studies, teaching
¶ 12:01 AM
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DJA Clines is an iconoclast, I vividly remember the time I met him, SBL International in Jerusalem in '86. He was sharing a room with Robert Carroll, one of my few friends from Glasgow, and a guru I admired, but never tried to follow. I had the room next door. (The rich occupied the flash SBL hotels in town, the creative, the European and waifs like me occupied student accommodation at the Hebrew University.)
It was at that SBL International (or at the IOSOTS that accompanied it) that David met Heather, but I remember it more for one phrase. I think it was Clines' but it could have been Carroll's. I've Googled it, but could find no attribution (if you try that NOW, Google leads to me, but I know I did not invent the phrase - I just wish I had). That phrase, picked up from whichever intellectual nomad from the neighbouring room actually coined it, has guided, or at least served as Leitmotiv for two decades of (my) biblical study.
But back, from senescent ramblings about times past, to David's presidential address, David is an iconoclast, and his address topples many cherished icons of the academic world: the dichotomy of teaching and research, and the primacy of the latter, the modes of teaching, the hierachy of teacher and student... David is an entertaining speaker, and most of us chuckled and a few even dared to laugh... David is a prophet, and his address may even (like Muillenberg's in 1968, an SBL even I am too old to have attended) provide a stimulus for years to come... But is was not NEW. And there's the tragedy, Biblical Scholars are still not listening to other disciplines, we "borrow", occasionally, an unfamiliar notion torn from its context (preferably non-Anglophone) in Psychology (especially the esoteric and academically dubious fringes of Psychology) or Literary Studies for these can provide the dillettant biblical scholar with a neat paper for many sections in the SBL program guide, but we systematically turn our backs on the professionals. Professionals in teaching above all ;)
And that may be the truly iconoclastic element in DJA Clines' SBL presidential addesss in 2009. If he stimulates a few younger scholars to toy with the ideas of teaching theorists and researchers as he once stimulated me to toy with ideas of the unnecessary "hypothesis of the idiot redactor" then thank God for SBL Presidents!
Labels: biblical.studies, sbl, scholarship, teaching
¶ 5:47 PM
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OK, so I'm the idiot. What's the phrase?!?
By 
David Ker, at
November 24, 2009 9:16 AM
I doubt you are an idiot, David, and I suspect I am the more jet lagged of the two of us (in the USA for a few days), probably you scanned the post quickly but I did tell you - in the last paragraph, I just did not tell you too clearly ;)
By Tim, at
November 24, 2009 11:30 AM
This second of my recast podcasts continues thinking about Jesus as "fulfilment" of the Scriptures, by examininging at one topic that's been agreed universally by the Church universal for decades, and another that, in NZ where a bill whose detractors claimed would criminalise parents spanking children, was in the daily headlines when I recorded the 'cast.You can download it here.
I'm working with this material again for a possible short series in Daystar an NZ Evangelical monthly, which will be republishing my piece on families in the Bible in their December issue.
Labels: audio, biblical.studies, podcast, reading
¶ 6:40 AM
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I checked if IE would play it correctly and it didn't so I expect the problem is in the set up of the shortcut. Maybe there is a missing piece in the html. It sounds like what we used to have when we played an LP at 78 rpm - it all goes by too fast and then silence.
By Bob MacDonald, at
November 10, 2009 12:14 PM
It is a straight link to the MP3 file, so I think it must be a problem with the file itself, but one that only shows in some players...
By Tim, at
November 10, 2009 12:27 PM
So, here is the first of two audio posts discussing what it might mean for Jesus to "fulfil" Scripture:
What DOES "fulfil" mean?
PS this post is the first of several over the next few weeks while I will be either or both extremely busy or travelling in which I will repost here things that were first put on my 5 Minute Bible podcast if you first saw them there I apologise for cross-posting after all this time.
Labels: audio, biblical.studies, podcast, reading
¶ 4:00 PM
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For some reason that I cannot explain (but which was NOT the skill of other drivers ;) I was thinking on my drive to work this morning about the question: What would I change about my life if I KNEW there was no God and that death was the final curtain.- Would I still have wanted to be a faithful husband and father? Yes!
- Would I still love teaching? Yes!
- Would I still be glad we spent a decade teaching in Africa? Yes!!
- Would I still want to have been a Bible teacher for almost all my working life? No...
Frankly, if I did not believe (I do not use "know" for probabilities I assess as less than 85%, actually I am reluctant to say "know" at much higher probabilities than that, I am not even sure I would say 'I know that night will fall this evening' for I can envisage possibilities with greater than zero probability that it might not, but for this conversation let's set the bar low ;) that God exists, and that the Bible in some sense reveals God to us, then why bother spending the hours I do studying (even if not scholarshiping - since Philip and the others would claim that scholarship is not what I do) and teaching the Bible?
OK, the Bible is an interesting ancient text, its narrative style and poetry are striking and often beautiful... but to spend my life digging at it and encouraging others to do the same? Surely without belief that is הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים and great weariness of the flesh.
What a shame!
If I believe Philip and the other Secular Biblical Scholars that this title is redundant, and Believing Biblical Scholarship is an oxymoron, then I'd rather be no scholar, but continue to study (am I allowed that word or is that too an oxymoron?) Scripture, because it is Scripture. I just hope my fellow students (who are, at least some of them are, like me, no-scholars but believers of a sort, and so bereft of the Olympian certitude of the much-proclaimed "scholars") will continue to criticise and debate and discuss and test what I write as they always have and not descend into the moronic dictats that the "scholars" claim is the inevitable result of studying anything one actually ascribes value to!
Labels: biblical.studies, culture
¶ 12:40 PM
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Thanks for this post Tim. We don't actually deal in probabilities or certainty but in faithfulness, trust, and hope. And it is not a disappointment. Knowledge is a two way street.
Chris thus joins the existing biblical studies podcast series (the order is chronological, since style, audience and frequency offer interesting variety):
- Matt Page's Jesus Films (Sept 2006)
- My 5 Minute Bible (April 2007)
- Phil Harland's Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Oct 2007)
- Mark Goodacre's NTPod (June 2009)
- Steve Wiggins’s Sects and Violence in the Ancient World (July 2009)
Incidentally (but appropriately) our PodBible daily podcasts of the Bible itself from various amateur readers precedes all of these biblical studies 'casts :)
Labels: audio, audio.bible, bible.reading, biblical.studies, biblical.studies.online, podcast
¶ 7:01 AM
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Since this department is both well-respected and ranks highly on most formal and informal assessments, and since I enjoyed a most stimulating sabbatical there ;) I have written the email below to the Vice-Chancellor:
Prof. Keith BurnettIf you are a biblical scholar, or amateur of the field, you might consider a similar letter, the address is vc@sheffield.ac.uk
Vice-Chancellor
The University of Sheffield
Dear Sir,
I have been shocked to read reports that the University is considering closing the Biblical Studies department. As you know this department regularly scores highly in various comparative assessments, and has a excellent reputation worldwide as one of the major research and teaching institutions in the discipline. A generation ago there was suspicion of the unusual step of creating a biblical studies department outside theology, however developments in society and especially in the discipline since then have vindicated this decision.
As well as knowing of the department through its staff's publications I spent a highly stimulating sabbatical in Sheffield a few years ago, and have the highest respect for the work I saw. Teaching an undergraduate course as well as participating in the departmental seminars, which were the liveliest and most intellectually stimulating I have attended.
It would be a loss to the discipline globally if this department were closed. Many staff in institutions such as the one in which I teach received their PhDs from Sheffield (in our case most of us studied in NZ, but the head of our Mandarin-speaking programme is a Sheffield graduate).
I find the decision particularly shocking as there seems to have been little consultation either within the University or beyond.
Yours sincerely,
Tim Bulkeley
Labels: biblical.studies
¶ 6:31 AM
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fantastic tim, thanks
By Jim, at
October 9, 2009 6:49 AM
Thank you for your support. I would like to add that I think you will find both its undergraduate and graduate programs are equally innovative and respected, as attendance at any conference in the field will attest.
By 
, at
October 9, 2009 8:38 AM
My "at least for UG programmes" was meant to suggest only that I am unclear whether the PG programmes are also endangered, not that the department is any less innovative and respected at other levels <shocked horror> see the comments in the letter copied below.
I do indeed relish the contributions from past and present Sheffield staff and PG students at conferences as well as in journals.
By Tim, at
October 9, 2009 10:37 AM
Strangely enough I read this just after reading at Ruth Gledhill's blog that Rev Rob Marshall, who is one of the clergy at David Cameron's church in Kensington, London, "studied Biblical theology at Sheffield". Perhaps if you can somehow contact Rev Marshall (who is currently in Iona, but maybe someone will answer his phone as listed at the church website) he can get support for this campaign the man likely to be our next Prime Minister.
By Peter Kirk, at
October 9, 2009 11:34 AM
yea verily - I have emailed a similar letter. Nicely put, Tim.
By , at
October 9, 2009 2:02 PM
Just to clarify about the UG/PG situation, in the words of a current PG:
"The proposal (which remains indetermined) is to close the department to undergraduates, which would close the department completely - reassigning staff to other departments in the faculty. The plan to then create a research 'centre' of international excellence is weak and undeveloped, especially in light of recent redundancies."
The department currently has 3 full-time staff and one of these is on a years sabbatical.
The Facebook Group 'Don't shut down Biblical Studies at Sheffield' now has all of relevant information in detail.
By , at
October 10, 2009 2:12 AM
Post-graduate provision is indeed threatened. The closure 'to undergraduates' also means the closure of the departure proper.
Although the Senate has not approved the closure, the Faculty of Arts & Humanities (whose review recommended closure) has already declined to give the department an acting head (Hugh Pyper is on sabbatical). This means the department has no representation on the Faculty Board.
The Faculty is nominally committed to the creation of a 'centre for postgraduate research' once it has dismantled the department (the latter action being specifically detailed in the papers presented to the Senate), yet it has no plans to recruit new staff in the light of significant departures.
By , at
October 10, 2009 6:20 AM
Labels: bible, bible.dictionary, biblical.studies, multimedia
¶ 7:32 AM
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Check out the series of walkthrough videos on YouTube for a better look at the product. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZRx0QQJEX8
By William, at
October 4, 2009 6:20 AM
The link above should go here
By Tim, at
October 5, 2009 6:53 AM
PS thanks for the link William :)
By Tim, at
October 5, 2009 6:53 AM
Hi Tim,
Available now from Manna... I'm installing a copy as I type, but be warned - installation is not for the faint-hearted (and neither is the >1GB update it immediately wants!)
Looks great though!
Mark.
By Nichthus, at
October 14, 2009 5:43 PM
Labels: biblical.studies, biblical.studies.online, blogging
¶ 6:51 PM
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First, ‘minimalists’ aren’t extremists. Second, they don’t view the bible as ‘information’. ‘Information’ carries with it the notion of facticity.Ah, tales of misunderstanding and exaggeration! Mea culpa. My statement, that Jim objects to, was an exaggeration, and was unfair to many on both "ends" of the imaginary and unreal (but nevertheless useful) spectrum. The extremists do not wish to discuss facts, I accept that ;)
However, from where I sit, the débat des sourds between fundies and minimalists often seems to descend into mere wrangling over questions of factuality. Some members of the debating teams involved are oblivious to this descent because they wish to embrace the ideologies expressed in biblical texts unquestioningly, and seem to believe that affirming the facticity of the text supports this view. Members and supporters of the other side, may regret this “slippage” because their “real” intention is to unmask the hidden agendas and ideologies of these same texts. But energy is expended on debate about history and ideology. Personally, I regret this frittering.
Labels: bible.reading, biblical.studies, minimalist
¶ 3:28 PM
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Modernity worships factuality. It reduces life to facts. Mystery and wonder are relegated to "entertainment". Moderns know "the price of everything and the value of nothing" (as Oscar Wilde2 said).
No wonder, then if the Bible is important it must be full of facts, or if it must be dethroned then it must be full of errors! This is the student's approach to the Bible, examine, test and discuss it's facticity. How different the reader! Julia quotes James Joyce3:
[in reading novels,] we walk through ourselves meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.Readers of the Bible "walk through themselves" and in doing so not only meet themselves, but also meet God. What we need is more readers and less students of the Bible. For all students meet is information. But there's the paradox, our profession produces Bible students
Dare we, dare I, adapt the way we teach so that we may be less good at developing biblical scholars, but better at producing Bible readers?
This post is an expansion of a comment I left on Julia's blog.
1. In "Le texte biblique et le contexte africain" Revue Zaïroise Théologie Protestante II, 1988, 11-17, I argued that "conservative and "liberal" approaches to the Bible "la trahissent au nom de l'histoire" [betray the Bible in the name of history].
2. Wilde, Oscar, and Joseph Bristow. The picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford University Press, 2006, 42. (Bristow notes that Wilde adapted this pithy saying in Lady Windemere's Fan two years later, so he was perhaps as fond of it as later generations have been ;)
3. James Joyce, Ulysses. The Modern Library Edition. New York: Random House, 1934, p. 210
Labels: bible, bible.reading, biblical.studies, literature
¶ 7:02 AM
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As I get ready to start a new semester of teaching Introduction to Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, I'm thinking about how the learning can help people be better readers rather than "students" in the way you describe. How can the focus shift from skills and competencies to helping folks learn things that aid in appreciation and recognition?
By Julia M. O'Brien, at
September 2, 2009 12:38 AM
I posted my reply to this post and some of the comments on Jim West's blog in a new post: Commenting on the Comments. http://juliamobrien.net
By Julia M. O'Brien, at
September 2, 2009 3:39 AM
Julia, I think skills and competencies are important, it is just that we focus on the wrong set. But (I think) worse than the "learning outcomes" are the "content" I include in class time and the assessments I use. Largely inherited from the past these elements of the course direct too much attention to history and/or ideology and too little to the literary working of the texts.
I have recently taught in two loci that in different ways put pressure on me to teach like that:
- in a denominational college (of a conservative Protestant family of churches) pressure from students interested in "defending" the Bible
- in a "secular" university pressure from colleagues to avoid anything that smacks too much of a religious approach
between the two reading oneself in reading the text seems to get left as casualty by the wayside.
By Tim, at
September 2, 2009 6:00 AM
Tim, I share your hunch that we spend too much time on "content" in the classroom. A lot of stuff I've been reading lately suggests that content is actually delivered better on-line than in person. What face-face interaction is best for is discussion and interaction. But, at the same time, I find that fewer and fewer students know the basic content of biblical stories and often aren't able to get that by their own reading of this often difficult text.
By Julia M. O'Brien, at
September 2, 2009 12:52 PM
Oh, yes, I agree, content is easy to deliver, on the web, in a textbook... that's why increasingly I relegate "content" to outside the classroom and test it's acquisition using simple online computer-marked quizzes. That way we can try to develop higher order skills and understanding in slass time :)
By Tim, at
September 6, 2009 7:03 AM
- a joint biblical studies podcast, maybe of two sorts:
- a virtual common-room, where a few of us chat about some topic
- a more prepared edited 'cast where different people speak briefly and then perhaps respond to what another has said (getting the interactivity but allowing a more considered approach)
- maybe using a Facebook page to encourage wider interaction with our podcasts - we each said that while we appreciated the way voice adds a richness, nuances like tone distinguish sarcasm from more gentle wry humour, we missed the interaction with an audience that other media like live talks or blogs provide
On the technical details:
- we thought of using Talkshoe so participants could phone in and would not need recording gear themselves
- we also thought of getting someone to act as host and ask questions / guide the conversation
- a topic: needs to encourage different points of view, probably to work well needs to allow different personalities to 'come through" (audio rather than text medium) needs to be potentially interesting to a wider audience
- a host: needs to be willing to refrain from expressing their own opinion!
- some speakers
- an editor: to take the recording and cut the fluff (remove the worst ums and errs, or where the participants make asides like "is this too loud?") - I'd be happy to do that.
Dramatis Personae:
Mark (as well as being the biblical studies Blogfather) has started an excellent NT focused podcast series NT Pod and for a couple of years I've been doing an occasional 5 Minute Bible podcast (basically Hebrew Bible focused but occasionally trespassing - nearly 40 'casts so far).
Labels: audio, biblical.studies, biblical.studies.online, podcast
¶ 2:26 AM
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I think the role of the מוֹכִיח - referee in Job (9:33, 32:12, 40:2) might be an interesting subject - maybe too hard to boil down to a podcast. I have just read Ticciati on this role and have an initial post. The problem has to be framed - that's hard. It requires a lot of information just to frame the discussion. One possible frame is the variation in translation of this term. Not even Young's literal translation gives a clue that this word recurs in these places in exactly this form. I have rendered them all referee to bring out the irony and the serious invitation in the recurrence. Post is here if you hav the time and patience with this youngster.
Anyway - it's nice to think you and Mark have both talked about the technology in this way.
By Bob MacDonald, at
July 22, 2009 9:42 AM
Thanks for the helpful post, Tim. I hope to comment on my blog too in due course, and also to set up the NT Gateway page on podcasts. Given that there are not yet many of us bibliobloggers in the podcasting world, it may take a bit of a push to get something collaborative off the ground, but I think it would be really worthwhile.
By Mark Goodacre, at
July 23, 2009 1:55 AM
I'd love to help however I can. I have recording gear and some editing experience. I also have opinions about biblical studies, but temperamentally I'm more like Leo than Dvorak (if you're familiar with This Week in Tech). Skype-centric podcasts generally sound excellent, and only require a microphone for each person calling in to the central host.
By Bryan, at
July 26, 2009 4:53 AM
The real truth is that "Out of 144 countries, New Zealand is rated as the world's most peaceful land. It is followed by Denmark and Norway." at least according to the Radio Netherlands Worldwide report. So people, you can not only study with the lowest fees and lowest cost of living in the developed world, enjoy skiing, golfing, surfing and other hobbies at prices ordinary mortals can afford. Not only study at universities that regularly get rated in the top 50 or 100 worldwide, but also live while you study in the world's most peaceful country, while enjoying scenery that inspired the movie version of Lord of the Rings. Whatever are you waiting for?
Just to get you started here is a random picture from our holiday snapshots:
Labels: biblical.studies, nz, postgraduate, study
¶ 8:36 PM
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Goodness - comparing Jim West's accuracy to that of Wikipedia! Clearly, you don't plan to attend this year's SBL annual meeting.
By Judy Redman, at
June 11, 2009 1:21 PM
So, I found his post Theological vs. “Plain-Sense” Exegesis of Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5 with respect to the Marriage Covenant stimulating, especially since we only partly agree about some of the key issues. In the course of his argument John wrote:
This [monogamous] take on Genesis 2 is possible if and only if it is read against the grain of its proximate context - the book of Genesis, in which polygamy is taken for granted - and with the grain of its macro-context – inclusive of the New Testament, in which the ideal of monogamy is upheld by Jesus and Paul. This kind of exegesis is convincing if and only if one has a high view of scripture according to which, in classical terms, it is verbally inspired. On this view, each and every word of scripture is there for a reason that goes beyond what its human author could possibly have imagined.A fun argument, with stirring rhetoric, but is John right? Must I swallow the camel of verbal inspiration, imagining e.g. God putting on funny voices to "do" Jeremiah and Isaiah differently, if I want to read Gen 2 in the light of the rest of, and the trajectory of, Scripture as a whole. I do hope not, because a God with "mouth" squinched to make Mark sound different from John, though possessing a fine sense of humour can hardly be taken more seriously than one who assiduously plants fossil animals in order to confuse 19-20th century natural philosophers!
Surely the simple fact that Genesis 2 is found, read and used as part of a canon - a collection of literature that I perceive as related and (at least somewhat) coherent is sufficient to enable me to read Gen 2 in a way that is like the way Jesus does in the Gospels?
Fun rhetoric, but I submit no score!
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, canon
¶ 10:40 AM
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doesn't God's provision of Adam with a woman rather than many (e.g. one for each rib) argue for a monogomous reading? Surely providing Adam with numerous wives would have been a better way to jumpstart the human race (as well as affirm polygamny)? And does OT narrative ever portray polygamy as a good idea? isn't it usually a mistake, a sign of a lack of faith, and/or a source of strife? In the case of David and Solomon polygamy is the cause of many terrible outcomes. or is that me doing eisegesis?
By Jonathan Robinson, at
May 18, 2009 4:02 PM
Hi Tim,
Thanks for interacting with my post. So I take it the problem is "verbal inspiration." Have you read James Barr's defense of the concept of verbal inspiration? I read the defense a long time ago in some obscure place, but he repeated it in his famous book, "Fundamentalism." Basically, I remember him arguing that for scripture to be inspired in any meaningful sense, it has to be verbally inspired; that is, in terms of the words it contains, its linguistic reality. If instead inspiration is located in events or thoughts behind the text, the result is that speculation on our part is elevated to the status of God's word. That cure is worse than the supposed disease.
Verbal inspiration, of course, is attributed to scripture on the assumption that it is prophetic in its entirety, or in any case is to be read in that sense. The assumption underlies 1 Peter 1:10-12 and much Jewish and Christian exegesis (Qumran, NT, Talmud, Church Fathers, etc.).
What is interesting is that constitutional interpretation is premised on a similar assumption (see Jaroslav Pelikan's work I reference). That is, old words whose reference was circumscribed in ways appropriate to the time are interpreted all over again in the light of later developments. The interpretation is not arbitrary but proceeds in reference to a canon, a set of precedents, and an overarching meta-narrative.
The advantage of distinguishing between a historical-critical reading of a biblical passage or the Constitution, and a paradigmatic reading of the same in light of a larger whole is that eisegesis pure and simple is avoided.
Perhaps, however, I am misidentifying your beef with the concept of verbal inspiration. It could be that you equate it with the dictation theory of composition. Phenomenologically, poets and prophets sometimes receive their words by dictation in some sense. Even the dictation theory is not completely off base. But verbal inspiration is a claim about the strength of God's providence, not about the means by which God made sure that the words we have in Scripture, and no others, are found there.
By John Hobbins, at
May 19, 2009 1:53 PM
John, I am afraid I am not going to get time to look at Barr any time soon :( nor even time to put my thoughts together with the care your response deserves :( so I'll settle for a brief comment...
I guess at bottom my beef with both "verbal inspiration" (which, yes, does sound to me like dictation) and with "inerrancy" language about Scripture is that they seem to diminish the wonder of Scripture as at one and the same time human and divine, by making it merely a magic book. If the words are God's like some more complex version of the tablets of stone from Mt Sinai, then they are indeed perfect. But it seems to me then human freedom is diminished, and the wonderful variety of Scriptural expression merely suggests a god with a bad case of schizophrenia ;)
I'm expressing this badly, and lapsing into rhetorical flourishes :( but I hope I give you an idea of my concern...
By Tim, at
May 23, 2009 10:49 AM
Jonathan,
I think there are better ways than counting ribs to see Gen 2 as fitting with the overall thrust of Scripture (which I take to be towards marriage that unites one woman and one man). I'd notice the corresponding to him in 2:18 and the conclusion of the chapter in v.24 to say that whatever its historical context this text does teach monogamy - in the context of Scripture.
By Tim, at
May 23, 2009 10:52 AM
Hi Tim,
I getcha now a bit better.
But if the options are:
(1) that the Bible is God's word and its teaching perfect and infallible, just what God intended,
or
(2) the Bible is imperfect and fallible - except for the parts we like based on some external criterion,
I will go with (1) every time.
But it's not that simple, at least for those who consider Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana
- a treatise on the scriptural interpretation - to be of fundamental importance.
In De Doctrina, Augustine first deals with "discerning the subject-matter of Scripture, defining it as the love of God, expounding it in terms of the rule of faith, Trinity and incarnation" (Frances Young, p 473 in the volume she edited, Early Christian Literature (CUP), which I recommend).
From an Augustinian perspective (see further blogger Cynthia Nielsen, whom I interviewed this month for biblioblogs.com), "in the context of Scripture" within a hermeneutic of love allows for the possibility of reading an individual passage against its own grain, as Jesus did when he relativized Moses' teaching on divorce, in light of the whole counsel of God contained in Scripture more generally.
Augustine goes on to discuss language, tropes, and allegory, the need for grammatical analysis and inference, the difficulties of reading a text in translation, and so on.
But the really important thing is that Augustine sees Scripture as norma normans (a norm that norms all other norms) which nevertheless gives rise to norma normata (norms normed by it and derived from it) which in turn serve to focus and provide criteria for the interpretation of the norm.
Is the traditional way of reading scripture a virtuous or a vicious circle of interpretation? With exceptions, I would say that the circle has been virtuous.
It's also possible to enrich the traditional circle by allowing, if only provisorily, an external criterion to stand in judgment of scripture: that might be Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism, queer theory, etc. I believe in this kind of enrichment, so long as Scripture is also allowed to stand in judgment of these external criteria, and have the last word.
If it is not given the last word, then its authority has been evacuated. Which is fine for a non-believer. But I don't see how a believer can make this move - though it happens all the time, empirically - without compromising his or her faith in the one who died and rose according to the scriptures.
By John Hobbins, at
May 24, 2009 4:47 AM
Once again, John, a less thorough and complete reply than you deserve :(
Is it true that "the options are:
(1) that the Bible is God's word and its teaching perfect and infallible, just what God intended,
or
(2) the Bible is imperfect and fallible - except for the parts we like based on some external criterion,Can't the Bible be imperfect and fallible, a human document that like human lives bears the marks of Sin, yet at the same time we can say of it something like Joseph's conclusion on his life experience "but God intended it for good and for the salvation of many".
As a Baptist, I trust that God is at work, revealing the divine purposes, in and through our "church meetings" - which are not (despite the claims of some Baptists) democratic gatherings (or ought not to be!) - so that out of the human debate, discussion and prayer God's will is understood. In a similar way out of the discussion, debate and poetry and (often tendentious) history etc. of Scripture God's saving purposes are known.
Scripture as a whole is perspicuous and sufficient, while its parts are falible and human! But only if and when God is at work in, through and under the frailty and even sin of Scripture's humanity.
So it seems to me we are very close to agreement, but that we each have "shibboleths" that the other cannot speak ;)
By Tim, at
May 24, 2009 4:01 PM
PS and if I am honest also, there are those who loudly claim your shibboleths not only as standards of communal belonging, but also at the same time afirm them about all the parts of the Bible and not (as I think you do) only of Scripture as a whole.
I see a greater need to deny the truthfulness of proof-texting fundamentalists, than I do to protect the soveriegn grace of God (in Scripture)!
By Tim, at
May 24, 2009 4:07 PM
Tim,
We are very close on the substance. Nor am I surprised.
Since I serve in a denomination in which proof-texting fundamentalists are hard to find, but admirers of John Shelby Spong abound, my priorities and rhetorical strategies, however, are a little different.
Thanks for the conversation.
By John Hobbins, at
May 24, 2009 4:16 PM
Then Wayne asked about translation gaps meaning places where a straightforward (rather than lengthily explanatory) translation leaves a naive reader lost to much of the meaning. He gives as example Romans 11:16:In the comments there I suggested that this was where a good (simple) set of cross references that points to possible allusions to other passages of the canon, or references to practices etc. was an essential part of a good Bible translation.Here is how the passage reads in the TEV (Good News Translation) which our children grew up on:
If the first piece of bread is given to God, then the whole loaf is his also; and if the roots of a tree are offered to God, the branches are his also.
The TEV is one of the most idiomatic translations ever produced in English. Its English is natural. Yet someone without background knowledge of Jewish religious customs would not understand Rom. 11:16 in the TEV or any other translation, for that matter. And we really can’t make an encyclopedia out of our translations, filling in all such large translation gaps.
So... all this got me wondering, what should be included in a good simple Bible translation for beginners, and what is unwarranted tinkering with the sacred words of Scripture?
Here is my first attempt to think through the question:
Organising the Text
Section headings were added so as to break up the text, make the Bible seem more like other books, and make it easier for users to find things - though as David points out headings in the header at the top of the page would achieve this.
Paragraphing (rather than the older practice of printing each verse as a separate paragraph) was also begun to make the Bible "look like" other books none of which (except poetry which is broken into lines) are printed as a series of consecutive "verses".
What makes paragraphs acceptable and headings anathema?
Firstly, almost all "normal" books in our culture have the prose printed in paragraphs, but section headings are optional. Second, although bad paragraphing misleads a reader, it misleads them much less than a badly placed or worded section heading. (That's why I am glad to see the layout of many modern Bibles indicate when the old [but not "biblical"] chapter breaks fall in the "wrong" place.) So, paragraphs do more good and less harm. Indeed they are part of the translation process for printed books in our culture are not merely worded in English, they have paragraphs for prose and lines for poetry. Thus in translating ancient Hebrew or Greek into modern English this adaptation of form is legitimate.
Chapters and verses are a similar case. They too are added to the Bible and NOT part of the text. Yet, they are very convenient, how else - if we wanted to check the cotext - would we know which precise part of Romans Wayne meant (above) unless we knew the whole book nearly by heart? But, since they are additions added to the text, make the indications small and as unobtrusive as is convenient.
Notes are potentially very useful and informative. Textual and translational issues can be signalled by the translators, so that a reader can understand that a choice has been made, and perhaps even the sorts of reasoning that prompted the choice.
Cross References can suggest passages with similar wording, or that treat a similar topic or theme, or which might serve as background to the passage to which they are appended. These are extremely useful, and even (see above) can be considered part of the translation process, if the readership is deemed to include users who are new to the biblical world. Such references can become dangerous, especially when they are combined with words that suggest their meaning (rather than simply the Bible references). So, that is a practice to be avoided ;)
Explanatory information is added by the publisher (since this sort of note is often not composed by the translation team - though perhaps they should be, see my comment on Wayne's post) may add notes explaining customs, historical details or other information that helps a reader understand the what text might have been intended to mean. This sort of note is potentially more "dangerous" as they might be used (and often are in "Study Bibles") to push a particular line of interpretation, but they are very useful especially for beginning readers.
What would you add? Where do you think I have gone wrong? The aim is a translation that:
- is faithful to the biblical text
- is useful to a contemporary English-speaking (or other modern language) reader
- avoids unnecessary additions and interpretations of the text.
__________________________________________________
It is probably no accident that the Bible I describe above is very like the French La Traduction Oecumenique de la Bible except that my copy has the iniquitous headings added :( but its cross reference apparatus is brilliant, and every Bible publisher should try to licence it and copy it as soon as possible ;)
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, translation
¶ 3:14 PM
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I love my copy of the TOB as well. I hear there is a revised version of the TOB in the works, and completed already in part.
By John Hobbins, at
February 27, 2009 5:01 PM
I strongly disagree that "headings in the header at the top of the page would achieve this", i.e. "make it easier for users to find things". I find my Bibles with these headers much less easy to find my way round than ones with section headings. The text also looks much more intimidating. Add to that that it is even more difficult to produce appropriate page headers than appropriate section headings (they depend on page layout, and so cannot be standardised or agreed in advance by the translation team), and I really fail to see any advantage in this method except to follow one particular 19th century tradition.
By Peter Kirk, at
February 28, 2009 7:42 AM
OK Peter, maybe that was overstating it, though if headings are desirable mainly because "The text also looks much more intimidating." why not just add pictures? They would be less likely to mislead, or force the reader into a particular interpretation; they might even be helpful!
By Tim, at
February 28, 2009 5:30 PM
PS, what would YOUR ideal Bible translation look like Peter?
By Tim, at
February 28, 2009 5:31 PM
Labels: biblical.studies, hermeneutics
¶ 9:51 AM
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Claude is running a series about one of the ways many Evangelicals are tempted to commit this impiety, saving the Bible from itself. The reasoning seems to go:
- the Bible is God's word
- therefore it can contain no error
- my Bible seems to say that Joshua wrote the book that follows Deuteronomy or that Amos wrote the book that has his name on it
- but scholarship shows that these people are very unlikely to have written these books
- therefore scholars are wrong and not proper Bible-believing Evangelicals
As to the Author of this Book, it is better to suspend our judgment than to make random assertions.
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, culture
¶ 1:04 PM
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- Narratology and Biblical Hebrew Narratives, Part 1
- Narratology and Biblical Hebrew Narratives, Part 2
- Narratology and Biblical Narratives, Part 3
This is a false task because I have not written a dictionary article, but prepared a course, but still... What are the most important things to say about Biblical Narrative if one only had a few sentences?
Biblical Narrative in one paragraph:
Prose Narrative is the most widespread genre in the Bible, with examples in both Hebrew Bible - comprising most of Gen-Kings, plus other "historical" books and several shorter more focused stories like Ruth, Jonah and Esther as well as episodes elsewhere - and New Testament mainly in the Gospels and Acts. Events are recounted very much as if "seen by an observer", with minimal interpretation or interpretative clues offered by the writers, there is also minimal description, so these accounts are "fraught with background"1 meaning hearers/readers have to interpret meaning for themselves (as we do in real life). Working within such a framework, hinting much while saying little, encourages hearers to engage with these narratives rather than just enjoy them.
That's my first draft, what would you write?
1. This is Auerbach's phrase (Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. 50th ed. Princeton University Press, 2003, 18.) RETURN
Labels: biblical.studies, hebrew.bible, narrative
¶ 10:55 AM
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Thomas is preparing a tool to covert such documents to Unicode, now standard and much more transportable! But he needs help, a large collection of documents with old Hebrew and/or Greek text that he can test the conversion tool with to make sure no characters or accents etc. are not converted properly.
If you might have such documents email me, or leave a message in the comments and I will put you and Thomas in touch...
Labels: biblical.studies, hebrew
¶ 8:28 AM
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Stephen begins his "Introduction" with human experiences that challenge comfortable easy images of God: "God exists and God cares, 2 Isaiah claims, but God's uncanny ways sometimes defy our human categories of rationality and morality" (xvi) is a good introduction to the claim that this work (Isaiah 40-55) focuses on reverence - see my post introducing the book.To a reader whose faith was challenged in teenage years by a father's nervous breakdown, to centre the presentation on Is 45:15: "Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior" draws me in. For this is not a book for pentecostals and charismatics, convinced weekly by signs and wonders of God's power and glory; it is for "Anglicans" (and others) to whom the "uncanny, fiery side of God" does not appear easily. (xv)
On the next page Stephen quotes twice from Aelred of Rievaulx, a Cistertian writer I have not come across since the days of research for my thesis! A clear indication that this book has an erudite writer who writes for intelligent, explorative and imformed readers. It is deeper than the average "popular" book on biblical studies, and so should fill a gaping hole in the market for such readers. If they find it, the main barrier to publishing such works is that in the 20th century book market few of them could discover such books, so few sold... perhaps in the 21st century we will see a rennaisance in such works, as digital communications puts readers and writers in contact - maybe through reviews on blogs like this, since I assume that my readers are "intelligent, explorative and imformed" ;)
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, isaiah
¶ 8:45 AM
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Stephen L. Cook, Conversations with Scripture : 2 Isaiah (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Pub., 2008).
It arrived yesterday, all nicely wrapped in Christmas paper. Thank you!
The arrangement is that I'll review the book here, since this is a blog and not a journal, I'll not compose one terse magisterial review but will post from time to time as I examine and reflect on the book...
So, First Impressions:
The book is a manageable-sized paper back, 150 pages of largish print, so suggests an easy read rather than a tome to plough. It belongs to a series Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars Study Series, and the blurb claims it offers a "uniquely Anglican Bible Study". That already grabs my attention, because I have been increasingly, recently, asking myself what might be distinctive about "Baptist" biblical hermeneutics (by which I mean not what real particular Baptists actually do, which is often just like what similar real Lutherans or Presbyterians actually do) but as an "ideal", so it may be interesting if I can capture from Stephen's study of 2 Isaiah something that is distinctly "Anglican".
Opening the work, the first thing I notice is a number of small sidebar explanations. Sometimes two per page are needed, sometimes several pages pass with none. They are usually only one sentence in length. This is a useful way to explain terms, introduce people... that mimics one property of hypertext - I'm a great fan of sidebars!
The chapter titles too, on the contents page, have me hooked:
- Second Isaiah and the Theology of Reverence
- The Inscrutability of God in 2 Isaiah
- Reverence and the Collapse of Pride and Ignorance
- Servanthood and the Exuberance of the Holy
- Atonement and Exuberance
- The Majesty of Servanthood
There are endnotes (works aimed at a broader readership eschew footnotes) but only a dozen or so per chapter (so looking them up will not be a great hardship).
Stephen's writing is clear and uses mainly short sentences, and I quickly (while dipping here and there) found examples that provoke:
- "The poem presents a scandalous God. This God is out to disorient people, defy their logic, and make their knees shake". (29) Don't you want to know which poem? Or do you, without looking at Stephen's book, know already?
- "We simply cannot revere that which is enslaved to our interests, a puppet-god that we manipulate through our prayers and our behavior." (20, sidebar) Nice terse phrasing presents an old truth in a fresh way.
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, book, hypertext, isaiah
¶ 8:51 AM
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Phil writes:
The word for “land” is the fourth most common word in the Hebrew Bible, appearing several thousand times. On the other hand there are less than one hundred occurrences of the Greek word for “land” in the New Testament, and very few of these refer to the Land of Israel. The competing claims of the State of Israel and the Palestinian people to the “Land” depends in part on the biblical understanding of the notion of the Land of Promise, and calls for a biblical and theological response.The keynote speaker is Dr Peter W.L. Walker (Tutor in New Testament & Biblical Theology) @ Wycliffe Hall, Oxford who "has written and lectured extensively on the questions of the Temple, the City of Jerusalem and the Land in the NT. He will give the keynote address and sum up at the end of the Day."
I suspect this is too far for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere to travel, though I am sure we could arrange hosting if you did ;)
PS: If any of you, especially any of you in the South Pacific region would like to post about this on your blogs you would not only make Phil happy (and so me happy) but you might help convince LCGS that it was time to uprgade their web presence now that we have entered the century of the Fruit Bat * ;)
Labels: biblical.studies
¶ 3:45 PM
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Very interesting! I hope I'm around! :)
I am a kitten, not a Kerr. Without scholarship, where the careful and systematic study is lacking, all sorts of weird and wild ideas flourish (just look at the average American "Evangelical" website - or see the summaries offered by John Hobbins in The Poisoning of the Evangelical Mind: Antidotes or follow his links to the series of fundagelical posts by Michael Pahl). It may look as if we kittens are merely tangling balls of wool, but the tangling and untangling helps those who pay attention to avoid a worse tangling of the very ideas by which they live!
So - to David, I'll sound like Jim (scholarship is the governor which holds back our faith from the worst extremes of which it is capable) and to Jim, I'll sound like David (any biblical study which does not begin and end in the community of believers is vanity).
Labels: baptist, bible, biblical.studies
¶ 10:22 AM
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For misspelling my name and rhyming it with cur I am going to have to get ugly.
By David Ker, at
December 8, 2008 12:33 PM
presumably it is safer in the dead centre than crossing a lane from one side to the other. I've grown very attached to the flush meridians the Kiwis put everywhere, and a good safe centre space allows many more pedestrians to safely cross eitherway. Lets keep the ivory tower and the babble tower but make more room for hanging out between them.
By Jonathan Robinson, at
December 8, 2008 4:28 PM
@ David Ker: For spelling your name wrongly (yet again, and demonstrating my inability to learn again) I am deeply sorry. On your personal beauty I cannot comment - since we have never met face to face - "I am going to have to get ugly" you might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment ;)
@ others: sorry I am just home after a day away from home and off to bed soon, I'll respond tomorrow, but thank you for the helpful comments!
By Tim, at
December 8, 2008 9:09 PM
Thanks, Tim,
for a sage reply.
What I found abnormally interesting though were some details from Duane's listing of the biblical Gedaliahs, I'll cite the relevant section (bold highlighting added):
There is evidently an informal, and unacknowledged hierarchy of probability at work here. The Gedaliah from David's time is merely "said to be" - so biblical texts telling earlier events are less likely to be accurate. The semi-royal is also dubious - claims to distinction render a character less plausible. (Actually on this Gedaliah I am not sure whether Duane is dubious of his existence or merely that he was Zephaniah's grandad, but somehow his royal connection renders him a doubtful character ;)
- 2 Kings: 25:22-26: Gedalyahu son of Ahikam, exilic governor of Judah under Nebuchadnezzar. He didn't last long.
- I Chronicles 25:3: Gedalyahu, a prophetic musician said to be from the time of David
- Ezra 10:18: Gedalyahu, a postexilic priest married to a foreign
woman. He had to send her away and provide a guilt offering. Can't have
any of that marriage to a foreign woman stuff, at least not at that
time.- Jeremiah 38:1-6: Gedalyahu son of Pashhur, an official of King
Zedekiah, who along with other officials, thought someone should kill
Jeremiah because he was demoralizing the troops. Can't have any of that
demoralizing of troops stuff going on. Oh, no, I forgot Jeremiah was a
good guy, a prophet of God. A eunuch Cushite finally rescued Jeremiah
but not before Jeremiah did some quality time in a royal cistern.- Zephaniah 1:1: Gedalyahu son of Amariah, grandson of King Hezekiah
and grandfather of Zephaniah, or so it says Zephaniah. Being in a royal
line is always a good thing.
But the other Gedaliahs all squeak in, some of them I suspect simply because they had already provided a nice opportunity for humor.
Similar (usually partly unconscious) prejudice operates in most assessments of the likelihood of the existence of biblical characters in more serious writings. With maximalists more likely to doubt "minor characters" and minimalists more likely to doubt religiously significant ones perhaps ;-)
Labels: biblical.studies
¶ 6:47 AM
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Tim,
There have been all kinds of reactions about the contribution this discovery makes to biblical studies. I believe that the finding is significant because it is directly related to historical events in the book of Jeremiah. The discovery does not prove the Bible but it shows that Gedaliah was not an invented character in an invented history.
Claude Mariottini
By Dr. Claude Mariottini, at
August 5, 2008 7:53 AM
Claude, I largely agree with you. I did not intend to imply that this is not a really interesting find. It is also another that suggests that an extreme minimalist position is not well founded in archaeological evidence. Though I do not think it quite "shows that Gedaliah was not an invented character in an invented history" it does make this position less convincing!
By Tim, at
August 5, 2008 9:19 AM
When I wrote that, I new I was in dangerous territory. Wait tell you see my post that I'm currently working on! You may be correct and if so, I exposed a significant underlying prejudice. At the conscious level, I thought I was just messing around. On the other hand, over a larger selection of subjects, I doubt that any minimalist worthy of his salt would think me a minimalist. I also doubt that any good maximalist would think me a maximalist. It's hard for me to believe that those two terms are much other than theological invectives with little real meaning beyond, "I don't agree with you about the usefulness of this or that text for the reconstruction of history."
As to my view of Zephaniah and his granddad, I not sure which of your to options, if either, applies. A genealogy to a royal line, even a short one, tends to raise a flag. Once raised, I need to take that flag into consideration in further study. I have not studied this enough to have even a low probability opinion. I only see a flag.
By Duane Smith, at
August 5, 2008 10:59 AM
While pure max or min -imalists are rare and most of us occupy the spacious and varied (if mythical) "middle ground" the caricatures are a helpful shorthand in describing tendencies. Though in this post I was certainly not intending to label either you or Claude. What interested my was simply a nice example of the way in which our assumptions impact the way we talk and therefore think about these issues. Tendencies that are obscured when we are being more serious than you were!
On (one of) the more serious notes in your comment, my take on royal connections is that (a) they are more likely to be invented or falsely remembered but that (b) there is also more likely to have been some documentary or "authoritative" oral genealogy available and so less likely to be invented out of nothing. Either way I'd think that the claim makes little diffference to the likelihood of this Gedaliah being a real person, so my own prejudice would be to accept his probable existence while being more cautious about his royal descent ;) At least that is my take IF we first accept that his grandson might be a real person - I have not studied Zephaniah, so I make no assessment of that prior question here!
By Tim, at
August 5, 2008 11:39 AM
I agree with your thought process with regard to Zephaniah's granddad. That is certainly very likely in the case of rather short genealogies, perhaps longer ones also. All most nothing was woven from whole cloth. And I don't actually disagree with your first comment if I'm allowed to put my own nuance on the issue.
I am getting some interesting comments from students, so tomorrow I plan to show the class these.
Genesis 1-11:
Genesis 12-50:
What do you think? Do these begin to capture some of the distinctives of the two sections of the book? Or do they rather reinforce the common themes of the whole work?
It would also be interesting to look at the different strands (at least P and J) so does anyone know how I can get hold of electronic copies of P Genesis and J Genesis in English translation?
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, genesis
¶ 4:26 PM
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Sione Havea is a well-established Tongan biblical scholar, now at Charles Sturt University. His paper "Displacing Bible, Drifting Homes, Restless Tellings" was a lively repeat of the usual post-colonial warnings about the ways in which the (Western) missionary enterprise of the 19th and 20th centuries left the Bible as a problematic book. It was engagingly delivered, and even the jibes at "Western Men" did not seem to hurt the Western males in the audience ;-)
The words were enlivened by "works by artists from Oceania who expose the partnership of the Christian mission with Western colonization"). I somehow missed the argument of the second part, where he spoke about "how and why the Western bible [failed to] function as 'home' for the natives (for whom 'stories give home'). The third part, spoke of "the power of telling" this was a passionate plea, but sadly the example based on the "witch of Endor" (which was promised in the abstract) did not feature in the paper as presented.
Nasili Vaka'uta, a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland (declaration of interest: I have co-supervised his thesis for the last few years) belongs to the next generation of Pacific scholarship. Nasili spoke on "Myth of (Im)Purity and Peoples of the (Is)Lands: A Tongan Reading of Ezra 9-10" To me Nasili's great achievement is to have prodcued a reading of his text which uses Tomgan vocabulary and culture as the categories that shape the reading. His "Tongan reading" is not merely a Western reading in Tongan clothes therefore, but more genuinely Tongan. I remember encouraging my Congolese students in the 80s to begin, trying to achieve this task, of discovering the thought patterns and processes that would lead to African readings that were African in their intellectual framework as well as their appearance! Back then we made little progress, but I think Nasili's paper represents a strong beginning to such a process for Tongan Tu'a readers. Here is his abstract:
Ezra 9-10 is narrated with a gaze. It gazes at the “peoples of the lands” not merely to identify, but also to belittle and discriminate against. In this paper, I offer a Tongan reading of Ezra 9-10 with attention to objects of deriding gazes, and the myth/ideology behind the gaze vis-à-vis the colonial construction of the Oceanic island 'natives.' This reading is situated in the social location of Tongan commoners (tu'a), and theorized with the Tongan notion of fonua (land, place, sea, and people). Methodologically, it weaves together insights from various methods and categories from Tongan culture. This interpretive framework provides the lenses for enga[g/z]ing (gaze back at) the text.
Labels: biblical.studies, pacific, sbl
¶ 5:53 AM
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There's glory for you!'There's what I think is a fine example of Humpty Dumpty theology quoted on Mary's blog - I can't comment there as to stop the dreaded spammers she has comments set so that only people with a login to her blog can comment :(`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master - - that's all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs, they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
See Lewis Carrol, Through the Looking Glass, "Humpty Dumpty" here
It comes from a wonderful small book called The Practice of Communicative Theology, by Matthias Scharer and Bernd Jochen Hilberath. On page 38 of that book they write:Whatever the Latin ad gradere meant - and although no Latin scholar I suspect that (or perhaps even more relevant what the range of meaning of agressus was the English "aggression" simply does not mean what these authors want to make it mean - no dictionary I have consulted permits it, and even the recent usage in phrases like "an aggressive advertising campaign" permit it either. Aggression means attack, whatever the Humpty Dumpty theologians wish. The etymological fallacy is still a fallacy, even as we near the half-centenary beyond the publication of Barr, James. The Semantics of Biblical Language. London: OUP, 1961.The word “aggression,” from the Latin ad gradere
(”moving toward”) has a positive as well as a negative meaning. It includes no only the life-destroying forces of exclusion but also that force which can find expression in a living, loving relationship. All-encompassing peace and harmony among all creatures without doing away with their differences are ideals corresponding to the transformation of life that God promises for God’s future…
Labels: biblical.studies, semantics, theology
¶ 7:38 AM
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Dude! Do we really need to skip over Faith, Truth and Freedom to find a word theologists have twisted beyond all comprehension?
By Scott Ferguson, at
July 3, 2008 7:55 AM
Hi, Scott, it sounds as if you have been hurt by some theologians, but I don't agree if you are saying that as a matter of course theologians misuse any or all of the words you mention - though evidently some do.
Why should anyone expect theologians to be better than anyone else?
People (of whom theologians are merely a sub-set ;) regularly stuff up. We often do the wrong thing for the right reasons, and sometimes the wrong things for the wrong reasons, just occasionally we do the right thing - that's life.
In theology as elsewhere one job of scholars is to try to improve the balance, which is what my post seeks to do, in pointing out this example of (what I take to be) wishful thinking.
By Tim, at
July 3, 2008 8:10 AM
The Hebrew word for foot is רגל (regel). Like "hand," most of the time regel means exactly what you think it should mean, the things at the lower end of your legs that you put in shoes and stand on. For the record, at least in Rabbinic Hebrew, regel sometimes also means "leg."And begins his case with Ezekiel 16:25. Now, evidently this verse is concerned with sex, so obviously "feet" here do not mean what is at the bottom of ones legs, but rather what is between them ;-0
Or does it... If instead of assuming a euphemistic use of רגל why not just assume that רגל means "leg" here, as it does in 1 Sam 17:6 and as Rashi, and various later translators and commentators have thought it does here?
Having failed to convince me that his first example requires a euphemistic reading Duane passes on to Judges 3:24. I discussed this at some length in my first post, now I would just add that (as Rashi again noted) "Targum Jonathan renders עָבִיד צוֹרְכֵיה (doing his needs), i. e., moving his bowels" this does not require an equation of feet with anything other than "feet", but does seem to me to suggest possibly anachronistic forms of clothing. Actually, the more I look at this passage the more puzzled I become. Everyone seems agreed that the mention of "covering his feet" is a reference either to urination or to defecation. Yet the location in which Eglon is "covering his feet" is the (same?) "upper room" in which in v.20 he received Ehud - was the Moabite king in the habit of inviting guests into his toilet?
Duane's example from 2 Kings 18:27 is thoroughly convincing. Here the Hebrew text of the Bible reads that the besieged Judeans will be doomed:
לֶאֱכֹ֣ל אֶת חֲרֵיהֶם וְלִשְׁתּ֛וֹת אֶת־שֵׁינֵיהֶם
The Masoretic scribes found this a little too explicit, so for both terms they suggested alternative "readings":
"to eat their own dirt, and drink the water of their feet"
The trouble with this for my purposes is that all it demonstrates is that by the time of the Masoretes "feet" had possibly come to have a euphemistic meaning of the sort proposed. There is according to Duane no clear cut example in Ugaritic (which anyway uses a word that is not a cognate of רגל. And: "I was unable to find and did not look too diligently for examples in Akkadian or Egyptian."
It still seems to me that the case for a common euphemism רגל = sexual organs is simply unproven. Biblical scholars should stop appealing to this supposed euphemistic use until there is better evidence to support it for biblical Hebrew. (That it existed later I do not dispute. The example above is (almost) enough to convince me ;-)
Labels: 1 Kings, bible, biblical.studies, ezekiel, isaiah, judges
¶ 7:26 PM
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Tim
Thanks for the engaging discussion. If I were to write those posts again, I would no doubt see them differently in some details, but I do remain convened that feet/legs sometimes means something other than feet/legs. You have convinced me that my Ezekiel 16:25 example is weaker than I had thought at the time. And I'm a little more confused about what "covering his feet" means than I once was. As you might guess, I object to the use of the word "unproven." Rather, I take it that you think it unlikely that רגל was regularly used as a euphemism in Biblical Hebrew. I no doubt think that it is more likely that it was than you do. These days, I would much rather speak in terms of probability and synthesis of evidence and let the logicians and the mathematicians have their "proofs." I sometimes wonder if there is purposeful ambiguity in some of these passages. The Ruth example comes to mind. Anyway, one thing that you and Sean-the-Baptist will likely find, as I have, is that these post will become among the most often linked to from Google searches.
By Duane Smith, at
June 12, 2008 5:45 AM
If one understands it in the sense of mathematical "proofs" then the word was very badly chosen, sorry! I had in mind the image of a law court, which is where I come across the form "unproven" (I think). All I meant was that if instead of doing as generations of biblical scholars have done, and assuming there is a common euphemism feet = sex organs, but rather regards this as a novel reading whose probability has to be demonstrated then the case is (I think) still "unproven", that is there is not enough evidence to convict ;-)
Though if there was such a usage, then in the Ruth example it would certainly add to the general air of innuendo in that chapter!
By Tim, at
June 12, 2008 6:29 AM
The Hebrew has gone out of proper word order (at least on my computer screen).
By N T Wrong, at
June 13, 2008 9:14 AM
Hi, Milord Wrong, at a guess you are using Internet Explorer, at least to reproduce the problem I had to fire IE up as in Firefox everything was fine. At a guess FF is more tollerant and IE stricter or something about Unicode RTL. In any case I have - I hope - got it all orderly in both browsers.
Thanks for pointing it out. I also fixed the quote that had the line breaks as a bonus extra!
Now all it needs is someone using a Mac to still find problems to really make my day ;-) and I thought that Unicode would solve all this "problems with Hebrew on the web" stuff.
It does... BUT only when all the programs play nicely by the (same) rules.
By Tim, at
June 13, 2008 9:48 AM
It all looks good now (and I am using IE). Thanks.
I've just given up on the Aramaic (square script) font, and stick to transliteration. I'm sick of finding that words have changed places when I open up a Word doc that had been saved before. And if I save a Word doc as a pdf, often the Aramaic font flips around again. You don't get those problems with transliteration.
On a more substantial note, my interest was piqued by this topic - not only for the obvious and banal reasons - because I once tried to pursue the idea that one the sources in the David & Goliath story involved Goliath being struck in the goolies - a comic below-the-belt hit that fits well with David's general character in Samuel. I might revisit it.
By N T Wrong, at
June 14, 2008 10:47 AM
Let me be clear on what I am claiming; it is very modest indeed. The strongest thing I want to say is that the "hand" has been used as a euphemism or, perhaps better, metaphor for penis or phallus from time to time in human history. While I think that it was a widespread usage in the Northwest Semitic world, I have not proven that.I think this is a careful and accurate conclusion, each of the examples is a strong one, where almost any reader will suspect that the word is being used euphemistically. But they are too few to demonstrate a regular usage.
The follow-up post A Euphemism for Pudenda deals with the evidence for "feet" as a euphemism. I will return to that post when I next have time for blogging.
Labels: bible, biblical.studies, isaiah
¶ 9:08 AM
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Hi, I saw this on Goodacre's blogroll and thought I'd drop by.
There is a chapter about euphemisms in "Ancient Israel: The Old Testament In Its Social Context", Philip Esler being the editor. I read it many months ago so I can't provide any useful details; I only remember it taking on a couple of ANE laws about crushing testicles.
By J. Archer, at
June 11, 2008 12:49 PM
Thanks, our library doesn't have the book - on order I hope, but perhaps I missed it - so I'll get it on ILL. It is not (as I think I suggest at least in my reply a minute ago to Duane's comment above) that I am quite convinced that there was not such a euphemistic usage, rather that no one has taken the trouble to convince me there was, so I'd rather assume there was not till the case is made!
By Tim, at
June 12, 2008 6:42 AM
On Deut. 11.10: the point is exactly that the Promised Land will be naturally fertile and thus will not require irrigation by other means (of course the language is symbolic, irrigation is as necessary there as in Egypt in reality). Tim asks 'in Egypt is most irrigation done by peeing?' - well no, but neither is there literal milk and honey flowing in Israel-Palestine, and perhaps good deal more irrigation took place by this means than by carrying water on your foot (images of hopping with a bucket attached anyone?)But why interpret the language as "symbolic" whatever that means here, I had assumed that even read as a euphemism the use was intended literally.
Irrigating with the feet would then refer to the habit of opening and closing irrigation ditches using the feet. While I cannot really see how the euphemistic reading works, in the promised land water falls from the sky, while in Egypt humans had to pee to water the ground - presumably entailing frequent trips to the irrigation ditch to drink...
On Ruth we basically agree - except whether Boaz' "feet" are literal or euphemistic (I still wonder at the plural euphemism here?).
On Is 6:2 Sean brings up the topic of ANE iconography, as Jim Getz said in a comment on a post: Another "Feet" Euphemism in the Hebrew Bible? on this topic on Shibboleth I think I was convinced by Keel's identification of the Seraphim here with Egyptian uraus snakes, my copy of Keel is at college, so i can't check, but I do not remember these snakes as having prominent phalluses which might need covering to preserve Hebrew modesty! On Is 7:20 I am quite willing to agree thsat ritual humiliation is in view, and that a euphemistic reading is possible. But when the "head to foot" shaving seems to cover that pretty comprehensively I do not see the need to invent a new "euphemistic" reading. (And that is really my point, I believe that those who repeat conventional wisdom and claim a common euphemism in Biblical Hebrew "feet" = "phallus" need to provide some evidence to support this view. And where simply reading "feet" as "those two things we walk on that stop our legs fraying at the ends" works fine then they have NOT provided such evidence EVEN IF "phallus" works just as well.
Result, I am still unconvinced that this particular item of "popular wisdom" has a leg to stand upon! Sometimes in the Bible, when you read "feet" they do simply mean "feet", now on the basis of Ugaritic evidence one might I think (someone could ask Duane about the abnormally interesting uses of "finger" in those texts, and perhaps also look at Hebrew Bible texts like 1 Kings 12:10).
Labels: 1 Kings, 2sam, bible, biblical.studies, isaiah, ruth
¶ 6:08 PM
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That is that the word for feet רַגְלָיו sometimes refers to what we might politely call 'other parts of the (male) anatomy'.I have never really been convinced by the claim. Sean cites the following passages as the best evidence for this supposed usage (the order is mine, as are the comments in straight type):
Exodus 4.25 But Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched Moses’ feet with it, and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!”
Now why on earth would one suppose that "feet" here is a euphemism - after all no euphemism was used for "foreskin" עָרְלַת seems explicit enough.
Deuteronomy 11.10 For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.
In Egypt is most irrigation done by peeing? No wonder they brewed so much beer! Or maybe the small earth dams on irrigation ditches are quite easily broken by foot?
If this one is a euphemism, does it not remove all the tension from the chapter where the most significant "gap" the hearer must fill is: "Did they or didn't they?" there is plenty of other innuendo in the chapter to build up the tension, without this (possible, maybe) one.
Isaiah 6.2: Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.
Really? Now why should face and feet not simply mean face and feet? Please explain!
Isaiah 7.20: On that day the Lord will shave with a razor hired beyond the River—with the king of Assyria—the head and the hair of the feet, and it will take off the beard as well.
Hairy feet or hairy [euphemism]? Which is more plausible? Though I suppose if the euphemism is for the whole genital area, this one might make sense.
Judges 3.24: After he had gone, the servants came. When they saw that the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, “He must be relieving himself (literally 'covering his feet') in the cool chamber.” cf. 1 Sam. 24.3
At first sight, this one is good! In this sample I am almost convinced, there is a good case to answer, though why "covering his feet" should be a euphemism for peeing, and not merely another example of the rather gross schoolboy humour of the passage I am unclear.
2 Samuel 11.8 Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king.
Could be a euphemism, but then it could be that the sentence is euphemistic even if the "feet" are literal. "Wash your feet" = "make yourself at home"...
So, in the end, what evidence is there for this conventionally supposed common euphemism? Two cases where you might argue with some strength that reading euphemistically is the "best" reading, a couple more where it might just be possible but overall I'd say: No case to answer. In the Bible feet are just that. And Eglon as well as excessively fat, and greedy, also was known to his servants as having a poor aim. As the sign in our downstairs loo read for a while (we had teenage boys in the house) "We aim to please. You aim too, please!"
Labels: 2sam, bible, biblical.studies, deuteronomy, exodus, isaiah, judges
¶ 10:35 AM
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