Out

Former Caedmon’s Call-er, Derek Webb, has a new album out. We don’t and won’t normally do music reviews. But we’ve always considered Derek Webb’s music important.

Stockholm Syndrome is available for download now, but won’t be physically released until September. And now, Derek Webb joins the ranks of Dr. Dre, Marilyn Manson, and the Wu-Tang Clan as this “Christian” artist’s album will have an explicit lyrics sticker on it. The CD will be offered in a ‘clean’ version and ‘explicit’ version. We highly encourage the explicit version. Sounds more Christian. (There’s a few shits and hells and damns, but you’ll live.)

As to our last question, the answer is- not totally. While Webb’s music is moving in a digital direction, it still sounds like Derek Webb music. Mainly because of the lyrics. Clearly polemicizing against his evangelical culture, Webb condemns highlighting homosexuality as the epitome of sin, even sexual sin, in this day with the song What Matters More. And we see Webb’s theological poetry deepen in Becoming A Slave. And we get kind-of an acoustic track with Heaven.

Musically, Derek Webb’s interest in different sounds is fully enjoyed on this album. If you want another 10 tracks of Derek Webb playing his Martin and signing by himself, this is not the album for you. But if you’ve enjoyed the musical development of I See Things Upside Down and The Ringing Bell, then you’ll understand Stockholm Syndrome as the next logical step.

Lyrically, Derek is becoming very comfortable (or at least finally public) with his words. He does not have to withhold what he thinks or dilute how he thinks it as he would if he were still in a contemporary Christian music band. His theological poetry is prophetic.

Please take your hands off my brother.

Please take your laws off my lover.

-Derek Webb. American Flag Umbrella

UPDATE: Listen to the Prayer of Jabez story (and why Webb left Caedmon’s Call) here.

Cape Town 4th

Our day in Cape Town with Jamie, Mimi, Josh, and Bri. Tonya drove.

Taking the scenic route to Cape Town via the Strand.

Cape Town’s waterfront.

Heading south to Camps Bay

Five Primary Sources

John Anderson has tagged us on what has now become another five-part meme. This one- “List the 5 primary sources that have most affected your scholarship, thoughts about antiquity, and/or understanding of the NT/OT.” Here goes-

1. Didache – Sheds great light on a early Christian community and is still useful as a confessional text. Not to mention the fun it presents for Greek students. If we had our druthers, every “New Believer” class would be reading the Didache.

2. Kebra Negast – “The Glory of the Kings”. A religious-imperial text of Ethiopia’s old Christian kingdom. The early parts of the text give extra-biblical information to biblical stories that largely serve Tewahedo christology and its larger narrative.

3. Tewahedo Bible – has 88 books, including all 4 Enochs plus other fun stuff. When we started learning Amharic, the first task we attempted was translating Amharic Genesis 1 and a few psalms. It was lots of fun and taught us a lot about (south) Semitic languages. While this Bible and the Kebra Negast are very late documents (9-10th cent CE), they are illuminating for Oriental Orthodox Christians and for those interested, like us.

4. The Republic – Read chapters of this work by Plato with David Adcock at HBU. It was an undergrad philosophy class, so it was taught with an English translation, but Dr. (I think his dissertation is done now) Adcock is very capable in classical Greek and encouraged those of us who could to struggle with the Greek text. He took time after class to answer questions and challenge us with more questions to think about as we (about 4 of us) slowly learned little amounts of classical Greek together. It was my first exposure to classical Greek and I wish I had more.

5. Canaanite Myths – The stories (particularly creation and flood) of El, Baal, Asherah, and friends which the primeval history of Genesis subverts.

We’d like to hear from everyone.

SBL: Rome

Few bibliobloggers are updating us on their experience of this year’s International Meeting as much as Tommy Wasserman here, here, here, and here with photos.

Mark Goodacre also has three posts here.

And apparently, Matthew Malcolm has been groped at the meeting. When in Rome!

UPDATE: Tommy and Mark’s last posts.

Comparing Acts 10.34-35

Text and Translations
34 Ἀνοίξας δὲ Πέτρος τὸ στόμα εἶπεν, Ἐπ’ ἀληθείας καταλαμβάνομαι ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν προσωπολήμπτης ὁ θεός, 35 ἀλλ’ ἐν παντὶ ἔθνει ὁ φοβούμενος αὐτὸν καὶ ἐργαζόμενος δικαιοσύνην δεκτὸς αὐτῷ ἐστιν.
CEV – Peter then said: “Now I am certain that God treats all people alike. God is pleased with everyone who worships him and does right, no matter what nation they come from.”
ESV – So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and hdoes what is right is acceptable to him.”
HCSB – Then Peter began to speak: “In truth, I understand that God doesn’t show favoritism, but in every nation the person who fears Him and does righteousness is acceptable to Him.”
NET – Then Peter started speaking: “I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism in dealing with people, but in every nation the person who fears him and does what is right is welcomed before him.”
NIV – Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”
NLT – Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God doesn’t show partiality. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right.”
D&T – Then, opening his mouth, Peter said, “In accordance with reality, I grasp the notion that God is not one who shows favoritism, rather, in every people group, the person who profoundly respects God and who engages justice is acceptable (to God).”

Notes
1. Some translations try to hammer out this more formal speech introduction (”opening the mouth”), most do not. Why is it that the NET Bible can have awful translations and fantastic notes?

2. The prepositional phrase Ἐπ’ ἀληθείας complements the following verb καταλαμβάνομαι. BDAG p43 offers, under the heading “3. an actual event or state, reality“, “επ’ ἀληθείας in accordance w. the truth“.

3. The verb καταλαμβάνο(μαι) is only used 15x in the GNT. Other uses with the preposition επι include  Jn 8.3, 4 and Phil 3.12. This use of the verb with the PP επ ἀληθείας refers to a mental process of having come to an understanding about the way God is in reality. Most translations present a different, muddled picture in English wherein Peter really realizes something. Our reading and translation does not understand Peter as saying that he truly understands (or really realizes) God’s relationship with gentiles, but rather understands God’s relationship with gentiles according to what is true/reality. Peter was previously not totally operating in God’s reality, but in his racist ethnocentrism.

4. Some translations go plural (God accepts men/those who…) as opposed to representing the singular Greek participles (the one who fears and the one who does justice).

5. Our translation of φοβούμενος is meant to weed out scared as an option to an English reader (BDAG p1061).

6. “He who does what is right” is a very weak translation of ἐργαζόμενος δικαιοσύνην. Right lacks the judicial connection to δικαιοσύνην.

UPDATE: Mike Aubrey has more info on whether or not (not) the speech introduction is formal. Thanks to Mike for his further inquiry.

Accordance at ETS/SBL

Helen Brown updates Accordance users who will be in New Orleans Friday Nov 20 to a “a superb, in-depth training seminar”. Always good to learn new tricks.

Syllabus – Vol. 4

Vols. 1, 2, and 3 and the hypothetical class.

Of course, we start with review of last week. Fill in the holes. Answer questions. Go over a bit of homework. Make sure they caught the dual inflections and can recognize it. Moving on…

Most of today’s info is lexical (vocab). This means the bulk of the “learning/memorizing” done by students will be done outside of class. The gist of today’s lesson will be introduction to new, relevant lexical items (prepositions and adjectives… duh). The new “grammatical” info is simple- some prepositions are affixed to their object, some are maqeffed, some are independent morphemes. The newest grammar info about prepositions they’ll learn is to identify determinedness difference between a-type vowels or vocal shevas under the affixed prepositions- ב and ל and כ. The BBH textbook does a quick and clean job of explaining this. Once more, its not so important that the students learn all this info right now. They need to hear it and know where to find the information in their textbook. It will sink in with time as they work on their own and with classmates. It will not sink in by you repeating it over and over.

The adjective info is easy. If you learned nouns, you know adjectives. The new grammar info to learn is the basic three ways adjectives modify nouns (simple description, predication, and substantive adjectives) and how the definite article ה fits in. Won’t take long. Introduce the info. Do some examples together. Then turn em loose on the workbook. The translation exercises are most relevant.

By next week, they should be able to translate and identify parts-of-speech in a phrase like הַמֶלֶך וְהָעַם בַּעִיר.

Now’s a good time to give them a speech on vocab and offer tools. The best tool, in our experience, is modern Hebrew. It is the fastest and cleanest way to get Hebrew vocab in your head with respect to the polysemous nuances that activate Hebrew morphemes. But, there are many words in the Bible that you need to know that aren’t in modern Hebrew. Other helpful tools for biblical Hebrew vocab are everywhere. Talk to your students and ask what suits them best. Some do well with digital help. Some just want audio help. Some want it all and will ask how to get in on doing some modern Hebrew. There’s not a right way to do vocab (yet, perhaps ever) so its best for each student to do what works for them. Whatever they do, they need to do it.

Next time- pronouns and pronominal suffices.

#6

No, no apocalyptic number symbolism here. That’s where we fall in June’s Top 50. Jim West still dominates the #1 slot, but how can you not in a pimp suit?

Sounds like a Philosophy Prof

Ah the humor of philosophers. Our favorite argument as to why one ought not tweet is the Kantian Argument-

Kantian Argument

(1) Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

(2) I can will that it should become a universal law that no one Twitters; indeed, I can do so with ease and without the slightest whiff of self-contradiction.

(3) Therefore, no one should Twitter.

HT: Phillip Marshall

Tewahedo Story: Simeon

We left our Amharic books and Amharic Bible in Houston. But we miss studying this Ethiopian language and (periodically) attending the Tewahedo Church in Houston, so to compensate, we will periodically share extra-biblical stories from the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church tradition. Here’s one such story about Simeon and how the controversial translation of παρθενος in OG/LXX Isaiah 7.14 came to be.

According to one priest in Houston (pretty sure this is not a documented story), Simeon of Luke 2 was a translator of the Hebrew Bible’s book of Isaiah into Greek. One day, when he happened to be wrestling with Isaiah 7, specifically how to translate העלמה. Mary and Joseph bring the young Jesus to Simeon in the temple and the narrative of Luke 2 happens. The Tewahedo story goes that Mary told Simeon their story and after that (and their exchange in the temple as recorded by Lk 2), he knew what to do. He would translate העלמה as παρθενος. Clearly a christological translation, if the story’s true.

While Matt 1.23 is the traditional re-appropriation of Isa 7.14, lets take a closer look at OG Isa 7 and Lk 2. Perhaps there’s a connection.

OG Isa 7.14 – Text and Translation
14 δια τουτο δωεσι κυριος αυτος υμιν σημειον. ιδου η παρθενος εν γαστρι εξει και τεξεται υιον, και καλεσεις το ονομα αυτου Εμμανουηλ.
14 Because of this, (the) Lord will give you a sign. Look, the virgin will become pregnant (lit. the virgin in womb will have) and give birth to a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.

GNT Lk 2.34 – Text and Translation
34 και ευλογησεν αυτους Συμεων και ειπεν προς Μαριαμ την μητερα αυτου, ιδου ουτος κειται εις πτωσιν και αναστασιν πολλων εν τω Ισραηλ και εις σημειον αντιλεγομενον-
34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Listen, this one is destined to be the fall and rise of many in Israel and (he is destined) to be a refused sign.”

Next time(s), we’ll take a fuller look at Isaiah and Simeon, but for now, we’ll focus on the above verses that offer a connection from Isaiah’s prophecy to Simeon’s. And that connection is- σημειον. Unlike the Matthean re-appropriation which focuses on the new significance of the name of this child, Simeon (allegedly) re-appropriates the child as a σημειον, a sign. And, just like Ahaz rejected his sign in Isaiah’s time, Simeon knew this human sign, Jesus, would also be rejected as of sign in his own time.

Not an explicit connection, but its a cool story.

Kata Ta Carnival

The next biblical studies carnival is coming up. Be sure to submit a post.

More on Exodus 6.3

We have a kind-of-related post here on Hebrew prepositions, and the notion of preps marking definite objects, which they don’t. Anyway… We’ve been discussing the prepositional phrase באל שדי in Ex 6.3. Here are more thoughts.

Following Karyn’s advice, we did an Accordance search (ראה in Nifal stem followed by prep ב within 10 words). As we’re limited to searching within word proximity, perhaps someone with the Andersen-Forbes database can do a similar search and post their results. The search yields 26 verses (4, perhaps 5, are false hits). The relevant ones are Gen 18.1; 35.1, 9; 48.3; Ex 3.2; 6.3; 13.7; 34.3; Lev 13.14; Num 14.10; Dt 16.4; 31.15; Jdg 5.8; 1 Sam 3.21; 1 Kin 3.5; 9.2; 2 Kin 23.24; Ezk 19.11; 21.29; (Ps 84.8); Ps 102.17; 2 Chr 9.11.  We argue that all but two ב prepositional phrases (Gen 35.1 and 9. ב + inf cnstr, obviously temporal) are locatives. Some locatives are physical, some are metaphorical, but they are locatives nonetheless. It seems that the most prototypical usage of ראה in the Nifal plus a ב prepositional phrase is to localize where the “appearing” takes places. In Gen 18.1, Yahweh’s “appearing” is localized to the oaks of Mamre. In Gen 48.3, God’s appearing is localized to a place called Luz. In Ex 3.2, the angel of Yahweh’s appearing is localized to a flame. And in Ex 6.3, Yahweh tells Moses that his appearing to the patriarchs was localized to the highest god of the Canaanite pantheon. That’s where the appearing happened.

While bet essentiae might very well be a use of bet, it seems (thus far by what the data says) that bet essentiaes do not follow ראה in the Nifal.

Cultures of Rape and Politics in SA

Sapa provides new info on the recent finding that a quarter of South Africa’s male population has raped someone-

Denise Robinson [of the Democratic Alliance party] said a Medical Research Council report released this week that found that one in four South African men had raped a woman or girl was “deeply disturbing”.

“Of equal concern is that roughly 10% of these men forced themselves on a victim before the age of ten.

“Appropriate attitudes and positions need to be taken by those in leadership positions,” Robinson said.

Robinson said respect for women had to be instilled in all men from an early age as one way of rectifying the “appalling” situation.

While Robinson’s statement and the proof that backs it up must be heard and responded to, as an outsider, we can’t help but see the DA’s political maneuvering. True, the ANC (national ruling party) isn’t doing much about the situation and maybe this is what it’ll take. But if the DA was first concerned about potential rape victims, maybe they’d take some steps to begin correcting the problem (like in the Western Cape where they can pretty much do as they please) instead of blaming the ANC government.

Unfortunately this is not a political problem but a cultural one. All parts of this continent still live under dogmas of male supremecy. Some take it so far that rape is legitimized within (enough of) the males of the culture, and no one has a place to stand against it except as being counter-cultural. But if an African does that, then they’re not a good, respectful, reverent African who obeys tradition. This is certainly not all cases and things are changing, but slowly.

Still, the government and judicial system, in particular, can and should do more- Like not granting teacher-rapists bail!

Productive Protest

Sapa reports-

A protest by Zimbabwean refugees at the Home Affairs office in Durban on Friday ended in a meeting with department officials.

“The meeting between the two parties was held in a cordial atmosphere and was very constructive,” said Home Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa in a statement.

“Leaders of the picketers were given an opportunity to present their grievances to the regional management of Home Affairs.”

Nice. Wish more protests worldwide were organized in this fashion.

Syllabus – Vol. 3

Vols. 1 and 2 and the syllabus.

Week 3 – Nouns, Article ה, and the Conjunction ו
Review vowels and go over names assignment in workbook. Vocalize out-loud as a class. Encourage them to make loud mistakes.

On to the lesson-
Students just need the basic frame, the relevant page numbers in the textbook, and some problems to mess up. Our goal is to paint broad strokes and let them see the details as they work.

The basic, stripped-down Biblical Hebrew to American English frame for us will quickly be-
book
the book
and the book

books
the books
and the books

From here, they need to get to (with pointing)-
ספר
הספר
והספר

ספרים
הספרים
והספרים

Then talk about grammatical gender. For brand-newbies, its easiest and fastest to not explain everything, but rather give general rules that aren’t really rules. Here, we say, “Every noun that ends in ה or ת is feminine.” Not true. But it’ll work for now.

Jeff Foxworthy tells a joke about his father stopping his mother from preventing young Jeff from crawling under a TV-dinner-tray-stand that was supporting an actual TV instead of someone’s TV-dinner. His father said, “He’ll learn.”
We don’t want to drop TVs on our students heads, but their Hebrew instruction will hurt at times and that’s actually a good thing. Anyway…

Pick your favorite feminine noun and do an example for them (noun, he + noun, vav+he+noun, then again in plural). Then turn ‘em lose on the parsing exercises in the workbook. The others can be helpful, but are expendable if time is an issue.

Part of their workbook work is not just the exercises, but vocalizing everything they do.

If they aren’t in a coma while they’re working, they’ll realize that there’s another inflection for number (dual) that wasn’t talked about. If they know how to use a book, it won’t be an issue. But we’ll see next class.

Quittin Time

JK Gayle is moving on and will shut down Aristotle’s Feminist Subject and The WOMBman’s Bible tomorrow. So get it while its hot.

JK- Enjoy your digital rest!

More Student Biblioblog List Updates

1. In addition to the list organized by country, now the list is also organized by academic classification.

2. Blogs are now listed in the country of the blogger’s school. So Ken Brown is listed in Canada and Karyn Traphagen is listed in South Africa, even though they both live in the USA.

3. Question, what exactly is a postgrad student? As Americans, we know there are undergrads (BAs), graduate students (MAs), and postgrads (PhDs), which would make us graduate students. However, here in South Africa, we’re referred to as postgrads. The point being… there’s now a category on the Student List by Classification for “postgrad” students, but who are these people? What degrees are they working for? Please postgrad students, let us know if you’re slaving away over a masters degree, a doctorate, or something else.

Student List Update

The Student Biblioblog list has been updated. A few blogs have been deleted, and by popular demand, academic classifications and degree specializations are now a part of the list. More to come.

For Real?

BBC Africa reports that 1 in 4 South African males (in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape, if you read the fine print) have raped someone.

As If

Some translators and translations have agendas, and some are just lazy. Whatever the reason, let’s look at a very simple occurrence of the preposition ב, and how the NIV, ESV, NLT, NET, and even JPS manage to mess it up. Do you see agenda? Do you see carelessness? Or do you think we’re off the wall?

Exodus 6.3
וארא אל־אברהם אל־יצחק ואל־יעקב באל שדי ושמי יהוה לא נודעתי להם

NIV - I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.

ESV – I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.

NLT – I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, though I did not reveal my name, the LORD, to them.

NET – I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name ‘the LORD’ I was not known to them.

JPS – I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name.

WBC – Even John Durham of the WBC translates as, though he footnotes that ב might “literally” be thought of “in the person of”.

For some reason, the translators of these various versions seem to have forgotten some very basic biblical Hebrew- the difference between ב (bet) and כ (kaf). כ is most often understood like or as in English, and while ב has many usages (in or through work best here), as is not one of them.

We translate – I let myself be seen to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob in EL SHADDAI, but my name YHWH I did not make known to them.

Old Related Posts: Mike Heiser and Claude Mariottini.