In Ugaritic this week we discussed our vocalization and translation of KTU 2.16. At lines four and five we ran into an issue that produced a good fifteen minutes of conversation on the various possibilities. I should make a disclaimer at this point that I have less than one semester of Ugaritic under my belt, so it is entirely possible that I will make some painfully stupid and unlearned remark in this post–I beg your forgiveness in advance. For those who don’t have the Ugaritic text handy, I’ve reproduced the two lines in question below:

2.16:4 – yšlm . lk . ily
2.16:5 – ugrt . tǵrk

The issue basically revolves around ily. In class we came up with a variety of possibilities on how to put these two lines together. It seems obvious that lines 1-3 are the introduction, and so we don’t need to worry about finding the subject of line four in line three. It also seemed plain to everyone in class that line six began a new clause. The question is, how should one take ily? That is, should it be vocalized as a plural or singular? What is the final y? Is it actually in construct with ugrt in line 5? Here are some of the possibilities we came up with:

1. The y is gentilic – I’m not sure how a gentilic makes sense in reference to the gods, but someone threw it out as a possibility.
2. The y is a mater – This would make sense, except that my understanding is that there is no agreement among scholars on whether or not mater letters exist in Ugaritic (I’m actually inclined to say that a majority say that Ugaritic does not have them, but I could be completely off base there).
3. The y is a textual corruption – This just seems like throwing ones hands up and saying “I don’t know!” but it is certainly a possibility, I suppose.
4. Enclitic y on analogy with enclitic m – Professor Kline actually proposed this as a possibility, though I don’t know enough about Ugaritic yet to make a judgment on the likelihood.
5. The y is the 1cs personal pronoun – This was actually how I had taken it in the first place, and others had done the same.

The majority of the class favored one of the first four explanations and translated: “May it be well to you. May the gods of Ugarit guard you.” A small minority favored the fifth option and translated “May my god grant welfare/health/wellness to you. May Ugarit guard you.” This second option obviously only works if Ugarit is grammatically feminine.

I know many of you who read The Floppy Hat are far more knowledgeable of Ugaritic than I am. I’d love your thoughts on this section of text. How would you explain ily? What would your rough translation look like?

As I’m sure everyone is well aware, but in case you live under a rock or perhaps just don’t follow the same fields I do, various news outlets have been running stories about the 10th Century BCE proto-Canaanite inscription found recently (with speculation here). Now, I’m not a very patient person, and so I want photos. I’m tentatively scheduled for a directed study in Epigraphic Hebrew next semester, and this inscription sounds highly interesting.

A few of my thoughts:

1. Finkelstein (quoted in the Haaretz piece) is right–there is no need for a revival of the Biblical Archeology craze. This inscription will probably prove to be absolutely fascinating, but unless its a letter about David slaying Goliath, it isn’t going to “prove” the Biblical account. Even if it is a letter about David slaying Goliath, it wouldn’t “prove” the Biblical version of things.

2. Did the teenager who found this shard know what he was handling? I’d have peed my pants.

3. Have I mentioned yet that I’m quite impatient and want pictures or a transcription? This simply doesn’t count.

4. I’m certainly not trying to make Duane’s life any harder–but such interesting finds (which would take far to long to link to, but see here and here) are abounding this month and we bibliobloggers are like a pack of ravenous hounds. Only 36ish more hours Duane!

N.T. Wrong just posted a helpful piece clarifying the reasoning behind each label. As I guessed, it seems to be based mainly on one’s view of and approach to the Bible. After reading over the list, I can agree that both Calvin and I (and thus The Floppy Hat) would fall under “Fairly Conservative” under this criteria at least.

I would like to point out, however, that our bookshelves contain books by FF Bruce, N.T. Wright and James Dunn, books with chapters by Marcus Borg…and a plethora of other books that span the entire liberal/conservative spectrum whose authors weren’t specifically mentioned. Since we went to a very conservative Bible college, naturally our bookshelves have many relics from that period of time. Our library has been expanding quickly to the left as we collect more books. Either way, we like to be well read outside our own theological persuasion in both directions.

Conceding that labels can at the least be helpful in understanding how one is viewed by those outside of one’s own perspective, I am in the end mostly relieved that we didn’t fall under very conservative (rightly so).

We are both looking forward to N.T. Wrong’s mysterious Nov. 1 post which will shed light on the reason behind his original post.

There have been some posts spawned by N.T. Wrong’s recent list of bibliobloggers, which sorts various biblioblogs based on specialization and rates them on the liberal/conservative scale. So, I thought I’d speculate on our label: “Fairly Conservative.”

As others have already done for their respective labels, I immediately began speculating as to what we have written that could have garnered The Floppy Hat to be labeled “fairly conservative.” My initial reaction was to be affronted, as “conservative” has very negative baggage attached to it in my mind. But as Jay already mentioned, labels are subjective. I rather like to think of myself as falling somewhere in a nice middle location (perhaps the conservative liberal?). Of course, who doesn’t want to believe that they fall in the middle?

So, after my knee-jerk reaction, I realized that perhaps the very fact that we call ourselves Christians, affirm the Apostle’s Creed, and believe that Scripture is sacred places us more on the conservative side. If those are the criteria, I can’t disagree. However, I know of many, especially within the circles in which we run, who would disagree with the assertion that we are conservative. I would say I have a “high view of Scripture,” which Calvin says is a rather ambiguous statement, to which I say…exactly! Which, in my mind, makes me a little less conservative and a little more liberal. On the other hand, the very fact that I can still worm my way into saying that, to many others, makes me conservative. (Or maybe it’s just that we go to a conservative seminary.)

This just goes to show that labels, in the long run, are really mostly useless except to those who already share your definitions, as they are all in the eye of the beholder.

This post almost received the title “We’re not dead yet!” and indeed, neither Mandy or I are anywhere near death. Ugaritic exams simply cut into one’s blogging time. Regardless, Earl has a question on writing a Master’s Thesis. His thinking was generated by Dr. Stackhouse’s recent post. There are a few comments on Stackhouse’s blog, and Earl mentions one in particular. To be fair, Earl is into that theology stuff, so his is hardly a biblical studies degree–but I doubt that the fields are so different that the question doesn’t apply to those of us in biblical studies.

I’m certainly no expert on such things. All of the Hebrew Bible faculty here at Gordon-Conwell are of the opinion that it doesn’t help you get into a PhD program, and that further course work is probably more valuable to the majority of students. At this point, I seriously doubt that I will write a thesis (though I can’t speak for Mandy) for my Master’s work. I can certainly see the value of it, and I’d love to write one, but it is an issue of time; at this point I simply think additional course work would be more beneficial to me.

There have been a couple recent posts around the blogosphere on free or open scholarship. First, Charles at Awilum started way back in July with this post; which was recently picked up by Tim Bulkeley, to which Charles also linked. Alan Lenzi has, in an apparently unrelated post, linked to an open-source peer-reviewed journal. David Hymes also has some thoughts on the topic, which appear to be inspired by this article.

The concept of open teaching is a fascinating one. For my purposes in this post I’d like to limit the discussion to a more general view of scholarship. By this I mean not only teaching, but also the research that comes before teaching (or publication) of material. As Charles pointed out in his first post, someone pays for scholarship, regardless of whether or not we can download it as a PDF. As someone who plans to have a career teaching, I would prefer to be paid for it. This of course means that students will be required to pay for my courses…regardless of how much I may dislike such a system.

In the midst of this discussion, I think it can be helpful to have the distinction that is often made in the Open Source software world; there is free as in beer, and there is free as in liberty. It seems to me that in many ways scholarship is already free as in liberty. At any library I can gain access to various books and articles, read them, and even include ideas from them in my own research–provided they are properly cited. This is not that dissimilar to Open Source software that is licensed under something like the GNU GPL or similar license. Biblical scholarship is often quite transparent and “open.”

I believe the real issue that everyone in these discussions is speaking of is not Open Source scholarship per se; but rather open access scholarship. As students/researches, we all want access to material at a price we don’t consider extortion. But how do we realistically accomplish this? Charles has already pointed out the fact that it costs money to produce scholarship, and so someone wants to recoup that cost (whether the scholar who produced it, the publisher, the university, etc). Tim thinks scholarship should be funded in a transparent manner and open to the entire public. I certainly see a number of good points with this, but being a realist I don’t see it happening.

In the open source software world the recent trend has been for companies to sell support for a freely available software package which they develop. I can’t think of anything analogous to this in scholarship–outside of fully funded research universities.

So, that’s just shy of 500 words spent saying that I acknowledge the need for open access scholarship, but I’m unclear as to how we get to that point. For now, libraries will have to fulfill the need, and all scholars will simply have to live near a decent research library.

Yesterday I posted on N.T. Wright’s assertion in his book, The New Testament and the People of God, that Biblical studies and theology need one another as disciplines. Today, I want to interact with his reasons and give some thoughts. From the outset I’ll say that I’m disinclined to agree with Wright, as you can read about here.

Wright’s first two reasons had to do with understanding the worldview of the author(s) and understanding one’s own presuppositions, respectively. I agree wholeheartedly with Wright on the subject of being sure to understand where the authors/editors/redactors/what-have-you are coming from. Normally I don’t consider such a task “theology,” though under Wright’s somewhat broad definition it does seem to fit.

Wright appears to define theology, and specifically “Christian theology” as the worldview which Christians hold generally. I don’t have a problem with this per se. In fact, I’d rather like it if Christian theology could stop at the broad strokes that Wright paints. However, it doesn’t–which is why I don’t find Christian theology, and here we might say Christian systematic theology, all that helpful in ascertaining either my own presuppositions or the presuppositions of the authors of the text. To imagine that the authors of the New Testament held anything remotely as developed as our own present day Christian theology is, I think, entirely incorrect. I’m quite sure, based on other things that Wright has written, that he would more or less agree with me on this, though obviously I cannot speak for him.

As to Wright’s third reason–that theology needs Biblical studies, I wholeheartedly agree. However, since theology is completely separated from Biblical studies (how many MTS students do you know who are learning the same number of languages and spending the same amount of time in the text as the Biblical studies majors?) it is, at present, merely wishful thinking. Systematic theology cannot exist without proof-texting. All systematic theologians create a system which seeks equilibrium within itself and, for this reason, is forced to discard much of the Biblical narrative; albeit in a variety of creative ways.

Now, to be fair, I believe that my disagreement with Wright comes down to one of semantics. When he says “theology,” I believe he means the broad strokes of Christian theology (ie, that there is a creator God who is interested in his creation; that human sin/rebellion has somehow hindered that interest; but that this creator God has intervened in creation and provided some type of correction to the world). In some ways, it is as if Wright holds a view of the world that I wish were real, but that simply does not exist in reality. That is to say, “theology” means those broad strokes of Christian faith; in which case I agree with his arguments. However, in reality theology is a very highly developed and specialized field that spends more time studying philosophy than the Bible, and more time reading Barth than Qoheleth.

So, at the end of the day I agree with Wright if we limit ourselves quite severely in our definition of theology. If we do this, than I think that he is correct in saying that Biblical studies and theology need one another, because it would, in this case, help to reveal the presuppositions of the authors as well as the readers (assuming for the moment that those readers consider themselves part of the Christian community). However, if we accept a more broad, and I believe more realistic, definition of theology I believe that Wright’s arguments quickly fall apart and that we are left with theology being more philosophy than Biblical studies, and as such something that is quite helpful in determining current beliefs of certain sects as well as various leanings of theologians, but not so helpful in determining the presuppositions of the authors.

Would that reality might conform to my desires in this case.

I’ve been reading The New Testament and the People of God for my New Testament Interpretation class. I’ve found the reading to be engaging all around. Wright has a certain style of writing whereby he is able to engage the reader when lesser writers simply bore.

As I was reading today I came across a section where Wright discusses Christian Theology as a worldview. As part of this section, he makes the (in my opinion, rather bold) assertion that Biblical studies and theology need one another. Below, I summarize his arguments (which can be found on pp. 137-138 of the aforementioned title) and in a subsequent post I hope to interact with them to a greater or lesser extent.

Wright’s arguments for why theology and Biblical studies need each other:

1. Biblical studies needs theology because the original authors wrote with a theological worldview in mind. In order to understand this worldview, one must be engaged in the theological discussion.

2. Biblical studies needs theology because one needs to be aware of one’s own presuppositions, and this is only possible through a “theological analysis of contemporary culture.”

3. Theology needs Biblical studies since theology must needs interact with the stories of the Bible. This goes doubly for Christian theology which must include the stories of the Bible or risk falling into “ad hoc use of the Bible,” (ie, proof-texting, etc).