Pardee on Ugaritic Rituals
Searching around for articles on Ugaritic ritual texts today I ran across an article by Dennis Pardee, fittingly entitled “Ugaritic Ritual Texts.” It appeared originally in The Oriental Institute News and Notes, No. 172, Winter 2002 and was only put online this past February.
As someone who has actually slept with Pardee’s Les Textes Rituels under his pillow, it doesn’t provide much new information. However, it does help in negotiating Pardee’s evolving perspective on Ugaritic rituals, and for that alone it deserves a nod.
On Bloggings and Book Sales
There has been a mini firestorm set off in the biblioblogosphere over Dr Jim West’s post on who not to cite. Among those not to be cited in academic papers, he states:
Anything Published by InterVarsity Press. Nothing really need be said here. When you open an InterVarsity publication you’ve opened the door to the dank and dark halls of fundamentalism. And fundamentalism just makes for very poor exegesis and theology.
While the issue is obviously his problems with fundamentalism in general rather than InterVaristy Press in particular (I personally see IVP as more Evangelical than fundamentalist), the post has generated responses from Mike Aubrey at εν εφέσω and Charles Halton at Awilum, the latter drawing a response from Dr Jim West. This maelstrom of activity is worthy of note, however, because it prompted Jim Spinti to offer a sale on the IVP’s Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture over at Eisenbrauns.
Now if we can just get the blogosphere riled enough to get Jim to offer a sale on the Handbook of Oriental Studies, Part One, I’d be a happy man.
Update (5/18): Christopher Heard has a three part series on the whole thing over at Higgaion. Good stuff. Also, I have to say the derision with which Jim West treats IVP is all the more odd considering his recommendation of Hendrickson Publishers (and dare I say Thompson’s footnote free works as well?). Me thinks he doth protest too much!
Antiquated Ramblings
I’ve read several interesting pieces as of late on archeology, antiquities, and smuggling. Given my academic pursuits and interests this is nothing out of the ordinary. What is interesting is that several of these articles are from the New Yorker.
In light of recent discussions of Herod’s tomb by Dr Jim West (on whether the discovery was a robbery and the politics of archaeology) and Chris Heard’s ongoing review of Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism by Terje Oestigaard (chapter 1 and chapter 2a), some of thoughts from the wider field of archeology might prove helpful.
Read more…
On Translations and Teaching Part II
The problem with writing posts while working double shifts during finals is that you often wind up leaving a point unstated. Alas, that was the case with my first post On Teaching and Translation.
Namely, I misspoke (miswrote?) when I jumped from the problems positing an Aramacism for בר, to simply taking it as “foot” — while missing the obvious middle step of noting the reconstructed text (see note b-b in BHS at location). I have personally found the first reconstruction more persuasive over the years, the one taken by the NRSV. So, I’m here eating my virtual crow and want to give props to Christopher Heard at Higgaion who sets me straight: בר doesn’t mean “foot” all by itself — it exists merely in the bizarre mind of an overworked grad student.
On Translations and Teaching
It is a standard axiom in biblical studies that “all translation is interpretation.” However, this axiom does not go far enough. The choice of a translation — or even the decision not to use a translation — amounts to a theological and ideological statement that will provide the lens whereby you read the text of Scripture. In the end, as Bob Dylan famously said: you’ve got to serve somebody.
Most of us in the guild know this and try our best to avoid the trap by consulting everything — the MT, DSS, LXX, Peshitta, Vulgate, modern translations, you name it. But this is not the an option for most of those we teach. While we have the time — and duty — to try and get above and below the ideology of a specific textual tradition, our students have neither the time nor the resources to do the same. Further, those going into the ministry absolutely must align themselves with a certain textual tradition in order to do their work. (If a pastor or rabbi is spending have their time explaining why they think a word is translated wrong or is a later gloss, they aren’t really doing their job.) Hence, I’m finding myself writing on translations.
Gladiators’ graveyard discovered
BBC News reports:
Scientists believe they have for the first time identified an ancient graveyard for gladiators. Analysis of their bones and injuries has given new insight into how they lived, fought and died. [More here]
While I am not a classics scholar and the time of the gladiators is outside my personal field of study, this is none the less an interesting piece and an interesting find. The gladiators of the Roman Hellenistic world are the best understood example of ceremonial fighting we have from early Western Civilization.The idea of bread-and-circus, the creation of ritual spectacle for the aggrandizement of the elites is of course as real today as it was in the classical world or the ancient Near East.
The strict rules of ritual killing attested in the mortal wounds of the gladiator graves may provide better anthropological model for other forms of ritual killing in contiguous cultures. I have often wondered if there was some ritual component to the Assyrian’s brutality as attested in both reliefs and texts from ancient Mesopotamia and beyond. If only such a find could be made in one of the towns that Tiglath Pileser III destroyed! Some times I envy my classicist colleagues.
As a parting thought: while the article doesn’t provide firm dates, the graveyard was discovered in Ephesus. There’s surely a paper here examining Paul’s letter to Ephesus in light of this new archaeological discovery.
Interesting Incantations
Somehow in my rush to finish a chapter, I forsook reading National Geographic. Back in February they covered an interesting story that just recently came to my attention: Ancient Semitic Snake Spells Deciphered in Egyptian Pyramid. In Pyramid texts dated 3000-2400BCE proto-Canaanite forms for “mother snake” have been discovered. The article is tantalizing but too brief.
Two Conferences in One Week: Part 3
This is part three of my thoughts on the two conferences I attended last week. After spending time with the Emergent Village for the first half of last week, I attended the Society of Biblical Literature New England Regional Meeting on Friday (April 20, 2007). The differences were — as to be expected — pronounced. However, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Two Conferences in One Week: Part 2
This is part two of my thoughts on the two conferences I attended last week. Up first: the The 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation at Eastern University.
Two Conferences in One Week: Part I
This past week I attended two conferences: 1) The 2007 Emergent Theological Philosophical Conversation Monday through Wednesday (April 16-18, 2007) and 2) the Society of Biblical Literature New England Regional Meeting on Friday (April 20, 2007). Over the next few posts I hope to reflect on thoughts from both conferences.
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 