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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

… 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…

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’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.

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?