Inmate Presence

Tim’s paper at SBL was a treat to hear. He focused on presence in distance learning and made the point that presence is not equal to geography. Being in the same room with someone does not necessarily mean that both of you are present. If you don’t know what that means, you’re probably not married (as Tim also made the point). Anyway, with that in mind, there is great possibility for distance teaching with so many digital tools.

But what about people who can’t get their hands on technology? These folks are not just indigenous peoples of the third-world without access, or poor Africans who simply can’t afford access (though it is available). Some people are prohibited from using technology. In this country, these people are prisoners.

About mid-next year, we’ll begin a project (slowly) developing biblical language material for Texas inmates. The problem we face is the complete lack of regular presence. One can schedule weekly classes (or even a few times a week) with inmates in certain units with certain (open-minded) chaplains. But even then, nothing is consistent. Both prisoners and guards see to that. There are fights, murders, suicides, riots, and like that can regularly disrupt a teaching agenda. To be sure, Texas prisons were not made for education.

On top of that, no computers. A lot inmates have relatively regular access to a CD player, but that’s it. The material for them will have be, in at least a technological sense, very old-school.

So how does one get more presence with prisoners that want to learn? How might we teach to those in an environment that is antithetical to education? We invite your ideas. Our first idea is mail. All prisoners have access to their mail. Of course, their mail will be opened, read, and sometimes “lost”, but it is one of the most consistent ways to communicate with inmates.

Your thoughts?

Student Biblioblogs Update

We haven’t updated the list in quite a while. Well now we have. Enjoy and please let us know of student bibliobloggers not on the list.

Political Agenda or Just Another Bad Translation?

We’ve pointed out some problems with the NLT in the past. Here’s another one.

Qoh 11.5 – Hebrew Text and NLT-SE
כאשר אינך יודע מה־דרך הרוח
כעצמים בבטן המלאה
ככה לא תדע את־מעשה האלהים אשר יעשה את־הכל
Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind
or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb,
so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things.

The issue we take is with the second line of the NLT-SE’s translation of this verse. To our knowledge (which only consists of research from this afternoon), עצם (often translated bones or skeleton) is never used to connote a tiny baby. Neither is מלא used to mean grow (rather, filled; in this case, filled up in the womb). These are interpretive stretches the NLT-SE translators have made that are not supported by BH lexical data. Instead of providing one possible option for translating this verse, the NLT-SE reads more like anti-abortion propaganda.

We have two options for English interpretation. 1) The body parts/bones are formed/made complete in the womb, or 2) The skeletal frame is filled with organs in the womb. The first option is most common; part of translations like the NIV. One of us came up with the second. Can you guess who?

So what’s your verdict? Is this just another case of the NLT doing bad translation work? Or are they doing some inappropriate political preaching through “translation”?

Guest Post: Jack Messarra

The following is a memory of an SBL session our good friend Jack attended. Enjoy.

 

Review of Greek Language & Linguistics Section:
Verbal Aspect in the Synoptics

When I saw the stars-studded lineup for the Greek Language and Linguistics, my inner Greek-nerdiness got really excited. Though I have read only parts of the books of the Fanning and Porter, and do not consider myself an expert on this topic by any means, I offer this review.

Campbell – got there late; helpful hand out; talked of idiolect, genre, and register; the audience was very pleased at the end though
Decker - examined imperfects in Mark 1-8 in an effort to categorize the tense-form based on function only one who prioritized usage over form; helpful, outlined handout
Fanning – talked about present, imperfect and aorist indicatives in the Synoptics; only English translations with a few comments for a some verse chunks; not very helpful for the listener
Porter – suggested verbal aspect as method for comparing the Synoptics; no handout; not helpful, but funny and entertaining.

The debate/Q&A following the presentation of papers was quite entertaining, more so than the papers, as it consisted of the 4 scholars questioning each other and responding to audience questions. Fanning argued that the tense-form, carries time as well as aspect and voice, citing the historical present as his chief-example (though he admitted that sometimes the historical present does not always carry the same semantic function). Porter and Campbell disagreed, regurgitating arguments from their respective books (with Porter reminding the audience that his was the first). Decker did not seek to put forth any rules for understanding time, aspect or aktionsart for any tense. Instead, he stress that the function of various tense-forms should receive greater weight and greater attention. They also went back and forth on mainline & frontline, foreground & background, though their differences had to do more with terminology. Campbell and Decker focused on structure while Fanning emphasized prominence and meaning.

If it were a competition based on applause, Campbell would have won as his paper received the most resounding applause. But, in terms of strength of argument in the papers and the discussion which followed, Decker’s was the strongest because it is the simplest, has the fewest problems and is most helpful. However, it requires more work from the reader, evaluating how tense forms are used on a discourse level as well as in specific contexts. Slackers and procrastinators beware!

Re-cap

We had a blast at SBL! Our most favorite thing was making new friends and spending time with old ones. We posted on a few things we saw and heard, but lost blogging steam the last two days. Too many good things to do.
A few more sessions we greatly enjoyed…
The children’s bibles section – Unfortunately, we missed Roland’s paper, but learned a lot about children’s bible story books that edit down bible stories, and many consistently edit out woman in the creation stories. Hmm…
ANE archaeology – Learned a lot on iconography and how Asherah, in particular, sheds light on BH metaphor.
The pedagogy sessions – on distance learning (which had a blogger trifecta, unfortunately Brooke Lester went last and we missed it) and teaching biblical languages (ever thought of using inscriptions to teach Hebrew or Greek? or completely dropping parsing exercises from language tests?)
And David Clines’ presidential address. Our first! We’re normally out at a pub when the SBL president speaks. Glad we changed that tradition.

We also had a great time eating with bloggers and kindred spirits at Giovanni’s and the Deutsches Haus. In fact, we’re still full from eating Chris Meyer’s food! Thanks to Jim West and John Hobbins for their work in organizing the respecitve events. And much thanks to fellow Matie Jerermy Thompson for taking us to Maspero’s and introducing us to the wonderful world of Abita beer. We hope to one day host all you bloggers in either Houston or Cape Town, or both!

Here’s one story that will make you laugh…
I was walking to my room to get a bag of Dorito’s and the maid’s cleaning cart happened to be by the door. A prominent NT Greek and text-critical scholar walked out of his room, a few doors down, heading to the elevator and said, “Excuse me, miss. We’re ready for our room to be cleaned. Room 1766.” (You know who you are!) To which I replied, “I’m just getting something from my room”. Then a very embarrassed scholar offered his apologies as he rushed quickly to the elevator.

More Linguistics and BH-Sun@9

Stayed for two papers (after that the drowsiness sets in)- Tamar Zewi on translating הנה and Steve Runge on redundancy. I enjoyed both papers equally (despite the fact that anyone would sound like goy butchering Hebrew if you read after Tamar… tough vocalization act to follow Steve!) and plan on using their research. Steve’s paper on redundancy, in particular, has great explanatory power. Perhaps we’ll post on one of his examples later.

Linguistics and BH-Sat@1

The Linguistics and BH section had their theme session this afternoon: Word Order in BH. If you read this blog regularly, you know that’s right up our alley. Here are the presenters, shorter paper titles, and our brief reaction.

Christo van der Merwe – Word Order in Joel – Heard it (helped write a bit of it!) in Stellenbosch.

Randall Buth – Multiple Frontings in Poetry – Didn’t hear about much poetry. Randy used a few examples from the Psalter but most were in Genesis. His word order model only superfically differs from Christo’s: What Christo called topicalization, Randy calls contextualization (simply to get away from the topic=subject oversimplification… a helpful distinction)

Eep Talstra – Word Order in His Syntactic Database – I’m excited about using Talstra’s database in the future. I’m not so excited about hearing him present another paper. Almost fell asleep.

Pierre van Hecke – Word Order in היה Clauses – It was great to hear someone offer some thoughts on this issue that has been a lacuna in BH word order studies. He also had a very nice slideshow which made following along much easier. Rather than describing every היה clause (which he should do… 3,000 occurences is not all that much), Pierre attempted to differentiate between copulative and existential forms of היה.

Ros Clarke – Structure of Song of Songs 7.11-13 – Ros by far had the best presentation (though we are biased toward bloggers) of the session. She offered her own internal structure of the poetic passage (which was very innovative!) which illuminated semantic connections between the song’s hypothetical garden and the woman’s body… So THAT’S where John Mayer got his song from (or should it be, Your Body is a Gardenland?). Also, Ros’ paper was the only one that dealt exclusively with poetry

Jeremy Thompson – Afterwards, we ate lunch at Maspero’s with this local blogger and talked about his project on BH vocabulary. Thanks for showing us your hometown Jeremy!

Revelance?

I thought I would be hearing papers on Relevance Theory. But the SBL program book was insistent that it is in fact Revelance Theory.

Gutt’s paper was well worth the standing (full room). If you’ve read his book on Relevance Theory, you didn’t miss much. The gist of it is that we need new goals (and ways of measuring those goals) in translation as equivalence does not exist and communicating what Scripture says (via a translation) doesn’t happen… or at least is not comprehended by hearers. .

By the way, this year’s tote bag is lame. It looks recycled and will break with one good trip to a South African grocery store.

Where’s Waldo?… Waldo is David Lang

So we left Houston at 6AM. Arrived in NOLA about 1PM. Then I ventured to the 5th floor of the Marriott’s River Tower to partake in the Accordance Seminar (Audubon room according to the program book), and no one was there. Where they all on lunch break… still? Hmmm.

We’ll go have another look and see if we woke up early in vain. If so, David Lang owes me some sleep.

UPDATE: Found it. Room change. You can stop worrying.

How Many ANE Languages Do I Need?

If you’ve studied the OT and/or BH for any length of time, you are no doubt aware of other ancient languages that illuminate the ANE world or sometimes even explain grammar issues of BH. Of course to read Scripture in full, Aramaic must be a part of one’s study at some point. But how much more knowledge is needed for the BH student? And to what depth of expertise should one shoot for? Is a basic knowledge of the literature and some relevant grammar factoids enough?

Obviously there are some things that every serious student should know, like that the primeval stories in Genesis 1 are not one-of-a-kind, for example. But should one have read those other stories? in their original languages?

Christo’s answer is practical. If there’s an issue in a BH text that cannot be explained without an appeal to another language, then do it. Otherwise, only venture into the larger world of Semitics and ANE languages if you intend to spend as much time on them as you do BH.

Your thoughts?

And if you haven’t read Kaltner and McKenzie’s Beyond Babel: A Handbook for BH and Related Languages, then read it.

Bloggers at SBL Update

We’ve updated the list of bibliobloggers reading at SBL in New Orleans. A few things have been fixed and room assignments have been added. We hope you find it useful!

 

Now on to other updates.

You’re Not Paul…

… so please stop proof-texting Scripture. He’s the only one who can get away with that!

If during a theological discussion you’ve ever told someone that they are leaning on their own understanding with that twinkle of contempt in your eye (assuming you’re both believers), thinking you’ve won the argument by a poor invocation of Proverbs, then this post is for you. Let’s read a bit of Proverbs 3 before we go around quoting it.

Prov 3.1-5 Text, a Messy Translation, and Some Thoughts
בְּנִי תוֹרָתִי אַל־תִּשְׁכָּח וּמִצְוֹתַי יִצֹּר לִבֶּךָ
כִּי אֹרֶךְ יָמִים וּשְׁנוֹת חַיִים וְשָׁלוֹם יוֹסִיפוּ לָךְ
חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת אַל־יַעַזְבֻךָ קָשְׁרֵם עַל־גַּרְגְּרוֹתֶיךָ כָּתְבֵם עַל־לוּחַ לִבֶּךָ
וּמְצָא־חֵן וְשֵׂכֶל־טוֹב בְּעֵינֵי אֱלֹהִים וְאָדָם
בְּטַח אֶל־יהוה בְּכָל־לִבֶּךָ וְאֶל־בִּינָתְךָ אַל־תִּשָּׁעֵן

1 My child, may my teaching never be forgotten by you and may my commands be observed by your heart!
Our translation has clearly rendered the two Hebrew negated volitional verbs as passives. We’ve sacrificed “accuracy” in this regard to be more accurate about the information structure of the verse. Teaching and commands are parallel, fronted topics (each in their respective clause) in this verse, something obscured in most English translations. Thus, as we read it, those constituents are the most salient.

2 For longs days and years of life and peace will they add to you.
Why is the final לך marked as feminine? A masculine suffix ך was used in v1, in addition to the masculine vocative בני. Why is the grammatical gender changed here? And why do commentaries ignore this sort of thing?

3 May chesed and emet never leave you! Tie them around your throat! Engrave them on the tablet of your heart.
When not sure how best to translate, its okay not to and explain why. In this case there’s the obvious need to alert John Anderson that his blog is in the Bible. Apparently, the wise will heed to Anderson.
Then there’s the issue of the 14 other instances of the exact same phrase (which we think John should post on! Gn 24.49; 47.29; Ex 34.6; Jos 2.14; 2Sam 2.6; 15.20; Ps 25.10; 61.8, 85.11; 86.15; 89.15; Prov 14.22; 16.6; 20.28) plus others that are close but not exact (like Gn 32.11) which is why the NET Bible calls it a nominal hendiadys. A hendiadys is English for a Greek compund meaning one-through-two, in case you didn’t know. Its like saying rock-and-roll. Rock-and-roll is one thing but we use two words (plus a conjunction) to say it. But what exactly does it, chesed ve-emet, mean? We’d like to hear John’s answer.

4 So obtain favor and good esteem in the eyes of God and man.
מצא here has clearly been semantically extended from a simple sense of find. Favor and good esteem were not lost and now the Sage commands them be found. Rather they are goals taught for the child to pursue.

5 Trust to Yahweh with all your heart, and to your own insight do not place confidence.
What’s up with אֶל? Trust to Yahweh? Why not trust ביהוה in Yahweh (as most translations would have you think) like Isa 26.4, Jer 17.7, Ps 21.8; 37.3; or 40.4? What’s the difference, if any, between בטח ביהוה and בטח אל־יהוה? How much semantic overlap is there between ב and אל?
There’s a small chiasm of VP+PP//PP+VP.

To be continued…

Back

We’ve been home in Texas now for about 2 weeks. Half of us are working and half of us are visiting family. Neither of us have been posting.

Here are a few things we don’t miss about South Africa…
Waiting until later when people say ‘now’.
The appaling lack of Mexican food.
The bus drivers.
South African beer.
Shoeless undergrads roaming the streets and classrooms of Stellenbosch.

That being said, we will miss the time to just study, the slower pace of life, our church, the mountains, and all the wine.

We are glad to see there has been no shortage of posts in our absence. Our friends Kris and Jayna Lyle are also blogging now (Kris most recently on Psalm 37). They studied with us at HBU and are also trying to make their way to South Africa.

We are also happy to report that this blog has now been up for one year (on Halloween). For those interested, here are some 1-year anniversary stats, of course given in the form of Top 10 lists.

Top 10 posts

The Death of Johnny Cash
Adam the Artist
BSC XLVI
20 Qs with Traphagen
20 Qs with Heiser
SA Election Results Online
Bloggers at SBL
Psalm 136 – Vol. 1
20 Qs with Brown
More on Vocab

Top 10 Referrers

Christian Colleges
Jared Calaway
Top50
Hobbins
Calvin and Mandy
Doug Magnum
John Anderson
Karyn Traphagen
Accordance Blog
Biblioblogs

Thank you!

Top 10 Search Engine Terms

johnny cash
waynes world
human anatomy
romeo and juliet
hebrew and greek reader
yhwh in hebrew
is lost good
robert rezetko
bum fights
wu tang

Top 10 Clicks

Karyn
Cook-Holmsted Textbook
Adam’s Resources
Josh and Bri
Phillip Marshall
Danny Zacharias
Charles Grebe
Heiser
Mike Aubrey
Cambridge Ulpan

We Want More For Our Money

We’ve been happy to hear the wonderful podcasts by bibliobloggers. But we have one request from us and the rest of the so-called third world who listens: please make smaller MP3 files. That would make your podcasts more accessible to people with limited funds and internet access.

There is no such thing as a free wireless hotspot in South Africa (though that is suppose to change in the next two years) and most people who use the internet do not have a monthly contract. Rather, we pay for data. So the bigger your MP3 file is (or the bigger your webpage is), the more your podcast costs.

To date, the most expensive podcast we’ve downloaded is Mark Goodacre’s first glimpse at Thomas, which comes in at around 11 mb and is only 12 minutes long. We can download Democracy Now from KPFT for 10mb and that, as all you informed listeners know, is an hour long. So please dear bibliopodders, sacrifice a bit of audio quality (if you’re just talking, you won’t notice a thing… we promise) and give us more affordable podcasts!

By the way, we’ve been busy packing (and not posting) as we are coming home this week to see family, make some money, and buy books at SBL. We’ll be back in Africa next year for thesis-writing. So fortunately, we only have to deal with this limited internet access for a few more days.

Hobbins on Accordance

We’ve created an Accordance user tool compiling many of John Hobbins‘ posts on biblical Hebrew and translations of various passages of the Hebrew Bible. We hope you find it useful. As of now, its only up through 2007. We’ll apprise you of updates. We’ve also created a user tool of some articles by Dan Wallace on textual criticism. Both user tools are available here.

Still waiting on approval from the Accordance exchange and hoping that one day WordPress will allow us to upload zip files.

UPDATE: Karyn is hosting the files. Who needs WordPress?

Biblical Studies Carnival XLVI

Welcome to the 46th Biblical Studies Carnival and the first BSC to be hosted from Africa.

Big Deals

Three things were big deals this month: the NIV 2011, gender, and the SBL affiliation with bibliobloggers.

Rick Mansfield announced the coming revision of the NIV, the NIV 2011 (and hence the discontinuation of the TNIV). There were many interesting responses to this news, the funniest of which had to be Danny Zacharias. Other bloggers responded, some even with suggestions.

Doug Magnum, Matthew Montonini, More from Rick, Peter Kirk, Michael Metts, Wayne Leman, Jim Getz, Jason Staples, Rick Brannan, and John Hobbins

April DeConick asked why there are so many male bibliobloggers and so few females and in so doing created the discussion for the month. Some of the resulting conversation was productive. Some of it was not. Here’s a handful.

Deidre Good, More from April, Julia O’Brien, Loren Rosson III, Stephen Carlson, Jim Linville, Sue McCarthy, Judy Redman, James Crossley, Kevin Scull, Brenda Heyink, Claude Mariottini, Bryan Bibb, and Rachel Marszalek.

Jim West announced (well, Kent Richards announced it, but he ain’t a blogger) the new affiliated status that bibliobloggers have with SBL. Reactions to the news were mixed. Daniel McClellan created the list of reactions.

Book Reviews and Interviews

Ben Blackwell continued his interview with Mike Gorman. Jared Calaway reviewed Mark George’s Israel’s Tabernacle as Social Space. Adam the Artist reviewed Garrett and DeRouchie’s Modern Grammar for Biblical Hebrew. Mandy thoroughly reviewed the first edition of Kittel and Hoffer. Matt broadcast his interviews with Robert Yarbrough and Richard Bauckham. Nevada reviewed Horton’s book on Wright/Dunn NPP. Calvin reviewed Leslie Wilson’s The Book of Job: Judaism in the 2nd Century BCE. And Skinner interviewed Thomas scholar Nicholas Perrin.

General

Dutch Bible bloggers launched BiblioblogNED, so now we’ve got a regular job for the Google translator. Perhaps anticipating all the affiliation hub-bub, Nijay Gupta asked what the conferences are for anyway. Charles Halton released a pre-publication of his article in ANES. A number of bloggers attended the British New Testament Conference. Simon Holloway shared beautiful Bible pics. Scott Bailey whined his way onto our blogroll. Mike Kok started the popular Top 5 Female Biblical Scholars meme, results here. Loren Rosson III collected memorable moments from the heretic preacher Steven Anderson. Jared Calaway told us what pathos is. We all learned of the origins of biblioblogging. Bloggers remembered where they were on 9-11-01. JK Gayle combined the book and female scholar meme lists. Mark Goodacre held online office hours. Tony Siew encountered a very cool blogger related issue with a student. Matthew Thiesen offered his complete paper Luther and the Jews. More of us need to put our formal work online. Much thanks to him and Charles for doing so. Brandon Wason discussed what to do about blogs and CVs. Roland Boer pointed out some facts about SBL. McGrath halted the perpetuation of bullshit on the Butler campus. Gupta posted on the Wright conference (Chaplin responded with 10 Wrightian talking points). Wiggins wigged over The Boss… or at least his tight jeans.

Archaeology/Culture/History

ANE

Mike Heiser babbled about Genesis, Sumeria, and Akkad. Jared Calaway announced the horde of Bar-Kochba coins more. Theophyle broke down ancient Israel’s divided monarchy under the Assyrian Empire. Jim Getz turned into a zombie. Daniel McClellan decoupled Yahweh and El. Duane got punny in Akkadian. Claude Mariottini and others posted on the Egyptian “Joseph” coins.

1st cent

Benji Overcash said that the baby Jesus had a star on his head… me too! Ken Schenck posted part 2 of Paul’s Unknown Years. Julie Clawson looked at Jesus in the temple. Deidre Richardson posted on women deacons in the east. Josh Mann flushed the toilet in his first century apartment next to his household idol. Todd Bolen and others posted on the synagogue found at Magdala.

Theology/Reception

Rachel Barenblat enjoyed a bit of divinity as she entered the third trimester of her pregnancy. R Joseph Hoffman got philosophical and coined the phrase Pharisaic Humanism. Michael Carden theologically howled at the moon. Peter Enns thought out loud on the new atheism. Rachel Marszalek jumped in the comp/egal conversation. Mike Heiser performed some naked baptisms. Ben Byerly mixed in some African theology. James Pate read Neusner on messiah. Loren Rosson III preferred a Sanders/Esler approach to Paul rather than a Wright/Dunn approach. Julie Clawson discussed implications of Kingdom of God theology. Art Boulet got started on the literal Adam  (also James Anderson and Nick Norelli). Sue McCarthy said we are slaves to one another and offered a list of those in the feminine language for God conversation. Colin reflected on one of O’Brien’s posts, part of which became a quote of the day. Wiggins offered us two choices: religion or death? And Elizabeth Young provided a family tree for understanding dispensationalisits (which we plan on using).

HB/GNT Studies and Bible Translation

Sue McCarthy compared Ryken vs Köstenberger on translation. JK discussed sheep and ανθρωποι and consolidated the ανηρ posts (at the bottom of his post). More here.

HB

Brady and others went back-and-forth on Genesis 1. Here’s a roundup of relevant posts. There’s a good response to Peter Lopez’s reading of Genesis 1 from newcomer Seth the Biker.  Deane Gailbraith posted on how innovative the satan is in Job. George dropped science on the ten commandments. Simon Holloway criticized a translation of JRR Tolkien (response here). John thought she-ass was a word people use in English (guess they do in the vast farm wilderness of Wisconsin),  and he offered a few good translations, focusing on the particle כי. Julia O’Brien asked if Jacob, or anyone for that matter, changed. Colin blogged on animal apocalypse in Daniel and Enoch. Roland critiqued the criqiute of idolatry from Isaiah 44.9-20. His critique is critiqued here.

GNT

Alan Bandy revisited TNIV issues. He must be trying to squeeze it in until the TNIV is no more. Stephen Carlson posted on the ending of Mark. Ken Brown introduced the gospel of John. Mike Bird blogged on Paul’s speech in Acts 13. Mark Goodacre offered a fantastic podcast on Junia mentioned in Romans 16 (with follow up here). McGrath asked if Matthew used Luke, Goodacre answered and Carlson also jumped in. Then McGrath asked if Jesus claimed to be God (He’s quite the explorer!) and Chaplin and Brennon answered. Peter Head got text critical on Hebrews 2.8 in the NA27. William Varner proposed Jude as the author of Hebrews. David Miller on Romans 2. And Joel compared AIDS to leprosy in Bible translation.

Linguistics

Steve Runge examined historical presents in the synoptics. Rod Decker explained the function of tense switch in the imperatives of Mark 8.34. We noted that substitution is a more frequent use of תחת than the spatial sense of ‘under’. DLC explained some Hebrew etymology. Mike offered his linguistic wisdom with a  sweet post on language change. Finally, Duane knew how to use a lexicon (and Answers in Genesis didn’t).

Pedagogy

J Brian Tucker posted a lesson on the NT Greek writing system. Eutychus listed ten things to do while learning Greek and the value of quotes. Matt Malcolm recounted story-telling methods of teaching Greek. John Anderson continued to muse on why he loves teaching. Brooke Lester offered help for students writing papers. Just who is their audience? Karyn noted some fun items she uses to teach Hebrew. A subsequent contest with a prize for one of the items is now underway. Nijay Gupta decided to blog through teaching Greek for the first time, more here. Brenda Heyink talked PhD programs.

Hermeneutics/Criticisms

Doug Magnum got tense about retribution. Alan Lenzi’s nerve was struck (Sept 1 South Africa time, Aug 31 in CA) about something Hobbins wrote and he wondered why there aren’t more apostate biblical scholars. Hmm… He must have been reading DeConick’s mind. James Kennedy explained what Russian Formalism has to do with the Bible. Lenzi used the M-word. Targuman responded. Phil Sumpter taught us about proportional exegesis. April got critical on the origins of the gospels of John and Thomas. Christopher Skinner replied to DeConick., and Skinner doesn’t look from nowhere, by the way. April said separating confession from work is the greatest issue for her generation (Responses: Doug Chaplin, Mark Goodacre, Mike Whitenton). Ben Shaw offered truth for students on over-interpretation. James Harding offered a blow-out on historical method and raised more questions. April offered her 10 commandments of historical criticism (Responses: Skinner, Chaplin, JK, April rebuts, Mike DeVries, McGrath, Redman). John Anderson offered a modest proposal on the relationship between science and religion.

Technology

Karyn informed us of iPhone apps for the Hebrew Bible. BibleWorks 8.0 was reviewd by both Greg and Ben. Joel Willitis told us the story of he and Accordance.

Be sure to catch next month’s carnival at Kevin Scull’s Paul of Tarsus!

Carnival Coming

The next BSC to be hosted right here is 4 days away. Submit your posts now. By the way, make sure they have something to do with the Bible.

You can also submit posts by emailing them (biblical_studies_carnival@hotmail.com) or leave submissions in a comment on this post.

Place Your Orders Now

I’ve been knitting and crocheting for about a year now. Here are some pics of things I’ve made.

A shirt for me.

A hat for Daniel.

Baby clothes for a friend’s new niece here in Stellenbosch.

Vocabula 4

We’re busy working on תחת in Reinier de Blois’ new program Vocabula 4 and I thought I’d share. Its a cool program, though it has no (intended) purpose beyond making entries for SDBH.

In the left-hand column is a list of all the Hebrew words that are (or will be) covered in SDBH. FYI, no Aramaic, just Hebrew (this needs changing in the future, though for now goes beyond Reinier’s stated purpose). תחת is not highlighted (sorry), but it is the entry in view. תחת is first from the bottom in the left-hand column.

You click your lexeme (in this case תחת) and the editable entry opens up. I have made three categories for תחת: relationals, nominals, and idiomatic phrases. Each category has some sub-units.

Before we get going, we need data. So, since we’re already in תחת, we click References>Concordance and Vocabula builds a list (far right) of all the occurnces of תחת, according to the Westminster morphology database. Now we can start with the sub-categories.

You click the sub-cateogory you want to view or edit, which opens up the edit window in the middle, right of the entry window and left of the concordance window. Reinier has made room for just about any kind of information you’d like to include with your category: domain, derivation, valency (if applicable), etc. As of now, we have a very general entry for תחת built. In the future, we’ll play around with this more detailed information, where necessary. Anyways…

Arguably, the most important thing for biblical language lexica to include is references. So we’re in the substitution category of תחת and we want to see which verse references fit.

So you click a verse in the concordance window and it pops up in the reference window at the bottom, complete with morphological tags (by hovering over a Hebrew or Greek form) and the option to view translations if you so wish. If the verse is applicable, double click it in the concordance window and the verse is added to sub-category as a reference. This makes it very easy to be exhaustive when doing lexicography. Gone (for us at least) are the days of a few examples. There is no reason why we can’t examine every instance of every lexeme in Scripture. We intend to be thorough with תחת.

Thought for Accordance: let me build my own lexicon!

That’s the long and short of it. There may be three or four others out there reading who actually use this program (maybe a few more who will…Karyn), but if nothing else, you can see how SDBH is made.

UPDATE: Helen Brown answers our request for making our own database. Looks like we’ll be making greater use of Vocabula.

Tech Question

How does one take a screen shot in XP if one does not have a PRINT SCREEN key on one’s keyboard?

Trying to show y’all De Blois’ Vocabula 4 program, but I can’t take a screen shot. Help please.