סלה: a ritual or musical term?
Acting on a request by Rick Brannan, both Christopher Heard and John Hobbins have trolled into the deep and chaotic waters to ponder the meaning of the Hebrew term סלה. While not claiming by any measure the acumen of Christopher and John in regards to Hebrew poetry, a comment by Duane Smith on Christopher’s post got me thinking in my decidedly ritual way:
Biblical Studies Carnival XIX
Dr. Steven L. Cook has posted the Biblical Studies Carnival XIX over at his blog Biblische Ausbildung.
Ras Ibn Hani Rumination
As of late I have been working through the Ugaritic texts CAT 1.90; 1.164 and 1.168 — three ritual texts that use the formula ỉd ydbḥ / yph mlk.
The latter two are from Ras Ibn Hani, forcing me to acquaint myself with the dig there, in addition to that of Ras Shamra. (Call me crazy, but I think that having a good understanding of find spots and whatnot are useful in the philological enterprise, even when it turns out the texts were actually found in a fill.)
Read more…
Great Review at RBL
Jonathan L. Reed has a wonderful review of Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino’s book The Jesus Family Tomb over at Review of Biblical Literature. Reed is a careful scholar whose works include Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, as well as Excavating Jesus and In Search of Paul with John Dominic Crossan. While I don’t usually post links to RBL reviews, this one is quite nice; and I highly recommend it for a quick summation (especially for those of us who would rather be spending our time Before the Common Era).
, as well as A Thought on Inerrancy
Reading Chris Tilling’s two recent posts on inerrancy (here and here) piqued my interest in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
I have read and disagreed with it for various reasons over the years. Most of my disagreement stems from the statement’s lack of clarity on how words like “true” and its invocation of mythical orignals autographs. However, rereading the statement today I was struck by Article XVIII: Read more…
A New Hi-Tech Bible Option
Over the past month I’ve blogged on my travails in picking the right Bibles and textbooks for a freshman class on introducing the Hebrew Bible. It seems that at least half of my problem could be solved.
More Thoughts on Canon
In so far as I’m currently planning out my fall intro to the Hebrew Bible class, I’ve been finding the general discussion of canon around the blogosphere quite interesting and potentially useful from a pedagogical perspective. Whether one is teaching an introductory class to undergrads or preaching to those in the pew, we all are forced to deal with the fact that there is a thing called “the Bible” — a canon of texts written over centuries but somehow seen as a unified whole by most people.
The most recent development in the discussion of canon comes from John Hobbins over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry. A few days back, John sent out a forty page(!) pdf laying out his agenda for a series of posts So far he has three posts on the subject. His most recent post in this series is here.
Near the end of this latest discussion he makes an interesting distinction:
The scripture-truth correlation is more fundamental – in the sense of foundational – than the church-truth or tradition-truth correlation.
As will be evident to those who read this blog, I tend to find a disconnect between tradition and text. When there starts to be a distinction between text and tradition with the former being given more weight, I balk. Tradition gave rise to canon. It is from tradition that various communities affirmed their canons. More so, tradition gave rise to the texts at the outset. All along the process from text to canon, tradition is in control. Granted, faith communities view this tradition in different ways, from those who would sing with Tevye to those in evangelical circles who would prefer to couch the language in terms of sovereignty; but the fact remains that tradition is the key.
Text vs. Tradition
There’s been a slew of posts as of late on what to call that canonical thing that some of us study (see Claude Mariottini, Christopher Heard, Tyler Williams, Patrick McCullough, and a recap of the discussion at the Biblical Studies Carnival 18). Personally, I go with calling it the “Hebrew Bible” in most academic situations, the “Old Testament” when I’m in a church setting and the “Tanakh” when I’m in a synagogal setting. What is of more interest to me is what the effects of thinking of this thing as canon has on our understanding of the amalgamation rather than the name in and of itself.
Biblical Studies Carnival 18 over at Deinde
I haven’t had time to post this past week, but I figured I should at least note that the Biblical Studies Carnival is up at Deinde.
There’s a lot of good insights this month, including quite a bit on canon — a subject near and dear to my heart. In particular, John F. Hobbins’ excellent post Canon Inspiration and Authority some how slipped under my radar, and I’m glad to have it to mull over. My own ramblings On Translations and Teaching and the subsequent “roundtable” discussion on Psalm 2 made the list as well.
Many thanks to Danny Zacharias for his excellent compilation and annotation of the month’s musings.
Looking for an Introduction
As of late I’ve been looking for a good introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Since my search for a silver bullet translation was rightly decried earlier this month, let me say at the outset that I know that I’ll never find a perfect introduction. But, there should at least be an acceptable compromise out there. In the past few weeks I’ve been reviewing several introductions and thought I’d share my findings with the world at large and those who frequent this blog in particular.
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 