So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities?
Following on the heels of the chipper chart from yesterday, here’s a clip for those thinking of a PhD in the humanities:
N.b. I don’t know if I agree with all of this, but it works well as a whole.
Theology, Science and Philosophy: A Chart
From SMBC
A New Breakthrough in Information Technology
Courtesy of Jim Watts, I give you the “book”:
Don’t get me wrong, I look up my fellow commuters with a slight tinge of envy as they sit with their gleaming iPad or their subdued Kindle and read in chic literary bliss. However, I know myself. I can’t even keep my dang iPod charged. I beat my reading material into submission with sticky notes, dog-eared pages, and even random pieces of detritus from the morning commute (tickets, pamphlets, bits of the Metro, even a subway token if necessary). All of these would leave a more technologically advanced conduit for literature in a ruinous state.
Most Boring Book Title EVER!
Douglas Magnum has declared a contest to discover the most boring book title ever. Eisenbrauns has sweetened the deal by offering a $50 gift certificate to the winner. Doug has set the baseline for this contest with The Exchange of Goods and Services in Pre-Sargonic Lagash. A fine first salvo.
But, I think that an even more boring title—and one more deserving of this ignoble honorific—is James Barr’s Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible (Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1986). I would provide a link, but the books is strangely out of print at Amazon and omitted entirely from Eisenbrauns (these data, of course, help prove my point).
A Review of Note
RBL has posted a review by Jeremy Hutton of Dennis Pardee and Pierre Bordreuil, A Manuel of Ugaritic, (Eisenbrauns, 2009). The review is outstanding in its veracity and attention to detail. Those currently using Pardee and Bordreuil’s work should definitely read this review.
Moabite Temple Finds
Steven L Cook has a post on a recently excavated Moabite Temple at Khirbat ‘Ataroz. The post is based on an AP article back on September 1st that slipped past my notice at the time. The article is brief and doesn’t answer many of the questions I have due to my interests in Levantine ritual texts, such as the size of the temple, orientation of the axis, location of altar(s), demarcation of the sacred, etc. However one line the article did pique my interest:
Among the items on display Wednesday, there was a four-legged animal god Hadad, as well as delicate circular clay vessels used in holy rites.
I had to take a moment to parse this. Hadad is Ba‘al (the latter is a title of the former). Ba‘al is known to have been associated with/as a bull (perhaps as a means of transportation; e.g. Yazılıkaya). The four-legged animal depicted my be a bull. So, QED. I can see some why this is posited as an identification. (Pictures of the finds available here.)
However, two things confuse me. First, why call the god Hadad and not Ba‘al? Especially for a popular piece, Ba‘al makes more sense. Second, what about Chemosh? From Moabite epigraphic finds Chemosh seems to have been the major god of the pantheon. Is it possible that the four-legged animal is Chemosh?
I’m looking forward to perusing more scholarly articles on these finds. Maybe then my curiosity will be assuaged.
Genesis as Ritual?
I’ve been kicking around a new pedagogical method for the general humanities class I teach at Temple. Most of the texts in the class were originally performed. A few other texts could be swapped out to replace with a more performance-friendly choice. The major problem that I have been left with is the book of Genesis. How can I teach Genesis as a performative text?
If this were a class at a confessional school, I could address the issue of personal devotion to the text. In what ritual context(s) do students read the text? (devotionally, liturgically, etc.) But, in the sort of class I am teaching, this is not an option.
Thoughts?
Philistine Cuisine
After yesterday’s post on beer I thought it best to follow up with notice of a new paper on Philistine cuisine by Yael Mahler-Slasky and Mordechai E. Kislev entitled “Lathyrus Consumption in Late Bronze and Iron Age Sites in Israel: An Aegean Affinity” (Journal of Archaeological Science 37/10 [Oct 2010] 2477–85), the abstract to the paper states:
This paper presents new evidence, together with previous findings, for the appearance of charred seeds of Lathyrus sativus(grass pea)/Lathyrus cicera. This grain legume was a food staple in ancient times, principally in the Aegean region, but also appeared sporadically and in a limited way in the archaeological record of the southern Levant. It is encountered there first in the Late Bronze Age but disappears in the record at the end of the Iron Age. Although a palatable, nutritious plant adapted for growing under adverse conditions, its seeds can be toxic when consumed in large quantities. Apparently L. sativus/cicera made its way to the lowlands of the southern Levant, either by trade or with Philistine immigrants. It is absent at other south Levantine Bronze Age (i.e., Canaanite) and Iron Age sites and it remained a food component in the southern coastal region (i.e., Philistia, the region associated with the biblical Philistines) up to the end of Iron Age II, suggesting a possible ethnic association. Evidence of L. sativus/cicera joins that of another Aegean archaeobotanical import from an earlier, Middle Bronze Age II context, Lathyrus clymenum, found at Tel Nami, a coastal site farther to the north of the region.
A few years back I became very interested on how ancient culinary recipes from Mesopotamia could inform our reading of the Bible (what I wound up dubbing “Culinary Criticism”). This paper adds exciting new vistas to such research. Yummy.
(HT Dr. Platypus)
Beer in Ancient Israel
Michael Homan has an article up over at Biblical Archaeological Review entitled Did the Ancient Israelites Drink Beer? Obviously, such a title gives the answer away; and Horman does assert that, yes, the Israelites drank beer (Heb: shekhar, שכר).
A key piece of his argument is his treatment of Numbers 6:2-4 where YHWH commands:
Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘If a man or a woman makes a vow of the Nazirite to become a Nazirite of YHWH, from wine and beer one must separate one’s self. One must not drink wine vinegar or beer vinegar, and any juice of the grape one must not drink. One must not eat grapes, either fresh or dried. All the days of one‖s consecration one must not eat anything that is made from the grapevine – from the seeds to the skins.
In discussing this passage, Homan writes that because Num 6 (and similarly Judg 13) elaborates on the grapes and their products and constituent parts,
some have contended that shekhar must be grape-based. Yet nowhere does the text state that shekhar is produced from grapes. The issue here is that the Nazirite and a woman pregnant with a child destined to be a Nazirite (such as Samson and his mother) must not come in contact with alcoholic beverages. The Biblical texts elaborate on grapes because a single grape contains the ingredients necessary to ferment and produce alcohol: sugars, liquid and even yeast. Barley, however, cannot ferment on its own and therefore no elaboration is necessary in the Biblical text as to shekhar.
I dealt with this text in my dissertation and independently came to the same conclusion as Homan. The issue in Num 6:2-4 is a temporary ban on all possible intoxicants (Judg 13 seems to be interpreting Samson as a special kind of Nazirite due to his unique paternal ancestry). Beer needs an emulsified mixture to activate the fermentation process for the grain involved. Grapes (and other fruits such as dates and what not) can begin fermenting much earlier and lingering traces can be tasted if the drying process begins too late. Hence, the biblical proscription of these items is more elaborate.
For a more detailed study designed for a scholarly audience, I recommend Homan’s earlier treatment of this material:
Michael M. Homan, “Beer, Barley and שכר in the Hebrew Bible,” in Le-David Maskil: A Birthday Tribute for David Noel Freedman (ed. Richard E. Friedman and William H. Propp; BJS 9; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 25-38.
(HT: PaleoJudaica and Dr. Platypus)
Doctoral Liminality
It is possible to look at the doctoral experience as a rite of passage. According to Arnold van Gennep’s classic work
However, there seems to be further gradations in the doctoral process, as Jorge Cham has been exploring over at PHD Comics. The best of these gradations is what to do with people who are particularly in my situation: the dissertation is defended, revised and filed, but the degree has yet to clear.
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 