The tale/tail of Vashti
The tail tale of Vashti in Esther 1 is an enigmatic way to start the book. The story serves as a vehicle for getting Esther into the harem of the king, but the details are so fuzzy that it has plagued enamored interpreters for ages.
The text provides tantalizingly few details on how Vashti falls out of royal favor. On the seventh day of a great banquet, when the king was merry with wine, he called for Vashti to appear before the king and his court in her royal crown. Vashti, for some reason, refused; and this is the interpretive crux of the passage. Read more…
More on Daniʾil’s Kingship
In a previous post, I stated that either mt rpi or mt hrmny could be construed as a royal epithet, that either could indicate that Daniʾil was a king. Look at these epithets more closely, I’m now not as sure. Certainly, if mt rpi is taken as “man of GN [Geographical Name]” then it is indeed a royal epithet. However, the same is not true for mt hrmny.
As is quite evident, the second term (mt hrmny) is a gentilic. While “man of GN” is a shorthand for “king” throughout the Levant and beyond in the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the same is not the case for “man of [gentilic]”. Examples for this more general use of this epithet for non-royal folk can be seen in the Hebrew Bible examples of איש עברי [“a Hebrew man”] and איש יהדי [“a Judahite/Judean man”].
In my earlier discussion, I concluded that either mt rpi or mt hrmny can refer to a geographical locale, but it is impossible for both to do so at the same time. This is still the case, but now it appears that the choice affects no only Daniʾil’s place of origin but his social status as well.
Diversity in the OT (sic!)
Both Philip Sumpter and Chris Tilling are batting around the issue of handling diverse way God is portrayed in the Hebrew Bible.
Chris asks whether Brueggemann, Goldingay or a christologically driven Tomlin provide the best way of the interpreting the diversity. None are my favourites, but I’d have to take Bruggemann over the other two (and that with having studied with Goldingay!). We need to let the diversity be.
Philip’s post is a bit more confusing to me. He critiques the choices posed by Chris and states the following:
The fact that Dogmatic theologians such as Barth, Diem, or Webber have been left out baffles me somewhat and seriously compromises the selection from the outset. Why should we assume that Old Testament theologians are the ones best equipped for handling diversity in the OT?
Generally, I’d say the reason why you’d assume a scholar of the Hebrew Bible would handle the diversity better is that often times they’re the only ones actually taking the text seriously. The only ones reading the text to hear what it is saying in and of itself.
I get suspicious of most New Testament scholars and all theologians who interpret the Hebrew Bible. Too often, they’re using the text as a tool rather than letting it speak for itself.
Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIV is up
Doug Chaplin has Biblical Studies Carnival XXXIV up over at MetaCatholic.
His summary of the month’s blogging runs from Archaeology to Zygotes and includes a little subsection on Ugaritic as well. Very nice.
Review of Rahmouni
My review of Aicha Rahmouni’s Divine Epithets in the Ugaritic Alphabetic Texts is up at Review of Biblical Literature. Check it out.
Heavenly Canines
Targuman (aka Chris Brady) has a humorous post on differing perspectives on animal afterlife. Have a look.
Repetition in Ugaritic Narrative: a Novel Theory
I am currently working on the Ugaritic texts of Kirta (CAT 1.14-16) and Aqhat (1.17-19). Both texts begin with an immense amount of repetition. While one can simply chalk all the repetition up to literary style, I’m wondering if something else lies behind the reiterations. Read more…
Bridging East and West
A few months back, Alan Lenzi mentioned several books on the interaction of Mesopotamia and Classical Greece. Among the books he mentioned was Walter Burkert’s The Orientalizing Revolution
I just ran across another good book by Walter Burkert, Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis
I plan on making my students read at least the introduction before they read the Iliad. Having already read Gilgamesh, this short intro will open their mind to the possible connections between these two texts.
Bible and Politics Conference
For those in the PA area, there’s going to be a nifty little FREE conference Sat Sept 27 9:30-3:30 put together by Society of Biblical Literature and Lancaster Theological Seminary. More details after the jump. Read more…
The Noble Daniʾil
The other day, NTWrong made an interesting comment on my post Was Daniʾil a King?:
Although it’s often not given much attention in these learned scholarly discussions by Margalit, de Moor & co, aren’t there three terms in parallel in the texts, not just two (mt rpi, ǵzr, mt hrnmy)? Does that change things?
Looking around the literature, NTWrong is certainly right on this one. Very little emphasis has been paid to the term ğzr in this text. Read more…
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 