Methodological Shift
Perhaps I’ve been in the Ivory Tower of graduate life and funding grants for too long, but I’ve had a crashing realization in the last few weeks: undergrads really don’t know how to read.
The Sotah and MRI’s
This morning’s (10/30/07) Morning Edition on NPR contained a piece entitled Neuroscientist Uses Brain Scan to See Lies Form. Essentially, by using MRI’s, neuroscientists can look into one’s brain and see if one is lying. While the application might not seem readily apparent, the piece actually provides a nice way to teach the Sotah as recounted in Num 5.
Happy Islamo-fascism Awareness Week
Yesterday I started teaching the Qur’an in my Intellectual Heritage class at Temple University. Given the awkwardness that the class has collectively felt when dealing with texts from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, I have begun to dread teaching the last two religious texts in this section of the course: portions of the Qur’an and the whole of the Bhagavad Gita. I had been ruminating over a discussion-starter for this material when what should fall from the sky (and into my RSS reader) than this beauty: Islamo-fascism Awareness Week. I think this will succeed in spicing up our discussion.
Realpolitik in David
Enemy sighted, enemy met, I’m addressing the realpolitik
Look who bought the myth, by jingo, buy America — REM
The similarities between the account of David’s rise to power in 1 Samuel and the Apology of Hattusili informs many scholars’ discussions of the biblical material. I have found that having the students create smear-tactic campaign adds from an imaginary opposition candidate for king of Israel helps to focus students on just how much smut David hangs out there. However, the real question always alludes me: why include all these sordid tales?
I’ve played with a few standard reasons: it has to be included because this is “history;” the Davidic hierarchy is trying to put a positive spin on what his detractors are saying (a la Hattusili); etc. However, I’ve been wondering as of late if the real answer is closer to what Barack Obama did in publishing his biography the other year: if you put all the dirt out there before they do, you disarm its power for your opponents.
Now, to be sure I don’t think that DtrH or even the material of 1 Sam stems from the time of David. However, the account and acknowledgment of these uncomfortable bits from before David’s coronation seem less apologetic than Hattusili and this makes me wonder if the realpolitik function is the same. Is the story to answer questions posed by opposition, or to disarm opposition by denying them their scandals?
The Kind of Reader I am
| What Kind of Reader Are You?
Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people’s grammatical mistakes make you insane. |
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| Book Snob | |
| Dedicated Reader | |
| Literate Good Citizen | |
| Non-Reader | |
| Fad Reader | |
| What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz |
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I think what really did it was my answering that my floors are sagging….
(HT: Random Bloggings)
Teh Holiez Bibul
OK, I’ll admit it. Aye luv the lolcatz. Eef u doo 2, l00k at dis wibsayt: Teh Holiez Bibul, “a new translation wiki to get the entire Bible translated into kitty pidgin (the language of lolcats).” Enjoy!
(BTW: if you want to help, I recommend first reading LOL-Kitteh as a Second Language (LKSL-101) in Five Easy Steps.)
Why Can’t Folks Follow Directions?
I just hand an interesting experience that you all can try at home. Do a google image search on the Tabernacle. Most of the hits are grossly inadequate in their scale, size and orientation. How hard is it to follow directions?
All I wanted was a nice, public domain image of the Tabernacle to drop into a slide to tomorrow morning’s class. Now, however I’ll either need to photocopy and then scan an image from a commentary, or have to draw the Tabernacle on the board. I’m leaning towards the second option….
BTW, there are actually some great diagrams here, but they are sadly (for my class) all in Hebrew.
Think of the hyphens!
Reuters reports that thousands of hyphens are being dumped from the English language:
About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
Speed Dating with Moses
Over at Temple, I have been accused of “speed dating” with both Homer (we read and discussed the Illiasd in a week) and with Plato (we’re tackling the Republic in nine days). However, neither of these causes me the vexation of having to speed through the legal material in Exod 16-50, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy at Eastern. In particular, I am worried about the Exodus section which I will try to cover on Monday.
On the Use and Abuse of the Enuma Elish
Over and again these past few weeks I’ve been struck by how often folks bring up the Enuma Elish in connection to the biblical creation accounts (see recent discussions by Daniel Kirk here and here, as well as the recent comment by Jake McCary here). While the text is undoubtedly important for our understanding of Mesopotamian culture in the first millennium BCE, I think that seeing a direct relationship is a bit overstated.
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 