John Hobbins recently published a post with the following title: Claims about the Bible work best if you actually read it. To be certain, the title is somewhat lengthy, but one can hardly fault John for that. In fact, much of what he says is spot on. Too often people who read the Bible (I primarily speak here of people reading it from a faith perspective, though this is by no means the only subset of people who make claims about the Bible but fail to read it) do so with a preconceived notion of what it says. They then conveniently skip the parts that don’t fit, or they ignore what those parts actually say and reimagine them as something which they most certainly aren’t.

John’s post is worth reading, and I encourage you to do that. I have only one thing to add: I’m really not sure how how might go about changing this. How does one impact the “popular” reading of the Bible in order to bring it around to something that takes the text itself more seriously?¹ A further challenge is that often certain readings of the Bible, which might be “mosquito netting” as John puts it, are part of the special doctrine of a particular church, denomination, cult or other group. This is an area in which, perhaps, pastors and other religious leaders need to take part in the discussion. But alas, many pastors read the Bible with the thickest mosquito netting possible.

Disclaimer: This review is on the 1st edition. I have not as of yet had the opportunity (or extra cash) to buy the 2nd edition. However, from what I’ve seen briefly of the 2nd edition, I don’t think too much of what I say below would change.

I was asked in a blog post to share my thoughts on Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook, by Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Victoria Hoffer, & Rebecca Abts Wright, and my comment just became too long, so I figured I’d post about it.

I used Kittel for first year Hebrew as a student in my undergrad and also use it as a teacher (laypeople, at the moment). One of the reasons I decided to use it when teaching is that I loved it as a student. In case you’re confused about the title of my post, we affectionately called the book “Bonnie” in my undergrad (a practice I continue with my students).

The book is very much what the subtitle says: “text and workbook.” It’s not a grammar, and it can’t really be used as one, so if the student wanted a beginning reference grammar he or she would require a supplemental book. However, for first year students I don’t really think that’s necessary. She does have a sizable and easy to read section in the back with all the verbal paradigms, which is nice for reference.

One of the reasons I love Bonnie is because it’s so inductive. Literally, lesson one (after learning the aleph-bet) starts you reading the Hebrew text. While I’ve not looked at every first-year Hebrew textbook out there, so far, Kittel’s is the only one I’ve found that does such a great job of getting you into the text quickly and easily. She accomplishes this by teaching what she feels are the most common elements of Hebrew first, and going on from there.

Now, some who have learned a little bit less inductively (which is most) might find the book to be a bit “disorganized,” but to some extent that is the nature of inductive study. She uses an example text (usually a phrase or sentence) for each lesson which exemplifies the aspects of Hebrew she wants to teach. Lesson One starts with ויאמר יהוה. Yes, she starts with the wayyiqtol 3ms, which is literally EVERYWHERE in the Hebrew Bible. The student doesn’t learn another PGN until several lessons later, and that’s the 3mp – finally, quite a few lessons later she springs the whole prefix paradigm on you. Intermingled are other new aspects – the qatal form, the Pi’el, singular and plural masculine nouns, etc. She almost always introduces a new form, stem, etc in part before she introduces it in full, using only elements the student already knows. Therefore, she might seem to “skip around” a lot – but once again, this isn’t a grammar, it’s a textbook.

It is also very much a workbook. She guides the student step by step through the lesson verse – asking key questions to nudge them in the right direction, making him or her fill in blanks along the way, and introducing new elements as one comes to them in the verse. As the student masters new concepts, she starts saying things like, “of course, you know by now that ….. means/is a _____:” and moves on quickly. Each lesson usually ends with some supplemental grammatical information, exercises (translation, as well as other types) that hammer on the new concepts learned that lesson, and instructions to memorize some more vocab (out of her list found at the back of the book).

She teaches parsing (and everything else) VERY diagnostically, so you could, theoretically, get away without ever memorizingverbal or noun paradigms when using her book (though she does recommend learning some of them throughout the book, she does such a great job there is very little that is required to be memorized). To some extent, how much needs to be memorized depends on the teacher. Nevertheless, her key word is recognize, not memorize. This last bit is one of the reasons I like using it for teaching the layperson: memorizing a ton of paradigms can be very daunting and a major stumbling block, and for just a 1st year reading knowledge of Hebrew, frankly, isn’t necessary.

Finally, at the end of the book she provides notes on reading and translating several handfuls of prolonged biblical texts (mostly narrative, some poetry at the end) that are meant to be worked through when the student reaches a particular lesson and has certain concepts under their belt (they start somewhere between lessons 12 and 19). I didn’t do this in my undergrad, as it’s optional, until after the fact, when I worked through several on my own. These help the student to begin working through longer texts using the knowledge they’ve learned, with some help from Bonnie.

This is not to say that the book doesn’t have it’s faults. There are things that I would change if I were writing a similar textbook (as I hope to do someday, geared for lay people, specifically). But, all-in-all, I still to this day (even though I’ve been shown other books that claim to be inductive) have yet to find a 1st year Hebrew textbook that does quite the job she does of getting a beginning student reading Hebrew quickly, and does it in an enjoyable way.

This post is a review of Matthew Anstey’s “The Biblical Hebrew qatal verb: a functional discourse grammar analysis,” Linguistics 47 (2009) 824-844. John Hobbins has already reviewed the article at length, beginning here, but I wanted to add my two cents.

First, some helpful definitions for those not necessarily in the know. Qatal is what I call the variously titled affix, suffix and perfect conjugation. Yiqtol is what I call the variously titled prefix and imperfect conjugation. Wayyiqtol is what I call the prefix/imperfect + vav conversive (or consecutive) construction. Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is “a theory with a rich descriptive apparatus, facilitating the modeling of language data that takes into account the several levels of interdependent information that are present in any utterance,” (Anstey 825). FDG is, to say the least, comprehensive.

It is important to note that Anstey does not set out to prove anything in particular about the Biblical Hebrew verbal system. His stated goal is simply to show that FDG provides a “descriptively robust” if somewhat “problematic” analysis of the qatal verb type.

Anstey’s article succeeds in doing exactly what he sets out to do. His discussion of qatal in narrative vs. narration (ie, direct speech), as well as the function of qatal vs. wayyiqtol in narrative is spot on. Ultimately his conclusion is that qatal and wayyiqtol differ in how they are used in the narrative, not with regard to tense (cf. Anstey 831).

One of the most refreshing things about Anstey’s article is his honesty in regards to the theoretical problems of FDG in regards to analyzing qatal. In his conclusion Anstey writes, “Hence FDG clearly o¤ers a robust descriptive apparatus, capable of modeling the multiple interpersonal and representational contributing
factors to each distinct QV function. But this raises the dilemma discussed in Section 3.2,” (Anstey 840). The dilemma discussed in Section 3.2 of the article is highly technical, but boils down to the following: FDG “strongly prefers a tenseless interpretation [of qatal verbs],” (Anstey 837). Though it might be better to say that it prefers a “monofunctional” interpretation, as Anstey does just a few paragraphs later. One could, of course, treat BH qatal as a tenseless verb, but that does not fit in with Anstey’s own opinion that qatal is a past-tense verb, as he readily admits.

Ultimately this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the article. It is also, sadly, the part that is most quickly glossed over, primarily because it is not the focus of the article. This is, of course, an inevitability. I do not ultimately find that past-tense is the best description of qatal. In my own opinion the BH verbal system has to do with aspect primarily, and tense(ie, time) only secondarily; though in truth the situation is more complex than that. That, however, is neither here nor there since–if I understand FDG correctly–similar problems would arise in any interpretation of the qatal. It would have been fascinating if Anstey had shown how these other understandings of qatal still arrive at the same problematic analysis for FDG. I think it may have added additional weight to his conclusion.

In the end, Anstey’s article is worth reading for those interested in the Biblical Hebrew verbal system. One must note, however, that the article is more about discussing the ability of FDG to provide a “robust analysis” of the BH qatal as opposed to discussing issues specifically about the qatal. To be sure, those issues are touched upon, but it is not the focus of the article. I imagine the article will be of most use to those interested in the BH verbal system as well as functional discourse grammar analysis.

The title of this post seems better suited to my friend Earl’s blog than my own. I don’t mean anything philosophical or metaphysical or whatever else theologians mean by questions like this. I simply mean, what is God like? Who is he in terms of his identity and his relationship with creation. I don’t normally post about my own faith and religious experience on this blog, for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, I’m making an exception in this case because I believe that Jay brings up some good points. Also, I know exactly how Jay feels.

Although I attend church (and very much love my present church context) I do, at times, find myself wondering if I believe in the same God in which much of Evangelical Christianity believes. The answer is often “no.” This was a pretty scary realization when I originally…realized it.¹ Soon after this, however, I figured that I believed in the God of the Bible, and I’d take him over the theological construct to which much of Evangelicalism clings.

In short, John Anderson pretty much sums up who God is, “God is . . . . a paradox. Vulnerable yet powerful. Tricky yet faithful. Present yet absent.” My God is a paradox, I’m okay with that. I understand that for many people God being a paradox is an uncomfortable thought. I’m sensitive to that, but if one claims to have a high view of Scripture, how can one dismiss the Scriptures’ view of God?

Rob has opened a can of worms. So, for a bit of weekend fun, head over to the link above and chime in. To be fair, this conversation was already hashed out once at Jim Getz’ blog.

Basically, the issue is that the Biblioblog Top 50 is calculated using Alexa statistics. Alexa tracks hits via their toolbar (which anyone may install, free of charge). Truth be told, there is a rather small number of people who use the Alexa toolbar. In addition, the people who install the toolbar are normally those who have some reason to do so (eg, webmasters, geeks, etc). Thus the sample which Alexa works with is not representative of the internet “population” at large.

All of this means that the Biblioblog Top 50 is not a very accurate indication of the number of hits which various biblioblog receive. It is an accurate representation of which blogs Alexa toolbar users are viewing. My guess is that very few biblioblog readers have the Alexa toolbar installed, resulting in a heavily skewed result–though that is only my conjecture, I could be entirely wrong.

So, what to do? My vote is to continue on as is. The Biblioblog Top 50 is mostly for fun, and Alexa allows us to have some fun and see blogs moving on the charts. The movements may not be accurate. One option would be to investigate better (ie, more accurate) way of tracking statistics. I have a feeling, however, that such a thing won’t be easy. The best way would be for one of the more technologically inclined among us (read: a computer geek) to write a stat program which people could then opt into by inserting a small amount of code (similar to Google Analytics) on their blog. The problem with this, as Jim Getz has already pointed out, is that there is such a wide variety of blog software in use by those in the Biblioblog community that making a package that worked with all of them (especially hosted blogs on wordpress.com, blogger or typepad) would probably be impossible.

What do you think?

It seems several people throughout the blogosphere are very confused today. As it happens today is not my birthday. My birthday is on the other side of the year, you’d be hard pressed to be further off the mark than July 10.

It seems that a great many people have begun following my teachings. I, of course, cannot discern my teaching within what they claim to believe, but I suppose that is neither here nor there. Besides, I really wouldn’t want to take glory away from God by having people celebrate my birthday with conferences and the like.

Also, we really need to get something out in the open: I am nowhere near 500 years old, and I find it somehow insulting that you all think I am. I’ve been told I was mature for my age, but really–500? If I was 500, I’d know far more languages than I do at present.

And for the last time, my first name is not John!

There have been a number of posts over the past several weeks with which I have wanted to interact. Various distractions of kept me from fulfilling this desire, however. At this point, since some of the trails are a bit cold, it seems best to lump several of these posts into a single post of my own with brief comments.

Hebrew Prepositions
Several of us had a bit of fun discussing Hebrew prepositions, how they work, and how they ought to be translated over at Daniel and Tonya’s blog. See here and here for the gist of the discussion. As Mandy pointed out in one of the comment threads, this is an excellent example of why one really ought to learn Hebrew.

Pastors and PhD
I have mentioned this topic before, but Doug Mangum brought it up again. His second post was interacting with a post by Brian (of συνεσταύρωμαι). I agree with both Doug and Brian, having more clergy with PhDs would be a wonderful thing. However, at least within conservative Evangelical circles, I’m not entirely convinced that churches are ready for this. I would love to see more pastors with PhDs, but I would also love to see professors who spend time in their local congregations not only teaching Sunday school, but teaching some kind of “course” on the Bible generally, or their specialization in particular (ie, ritual studies, wisdom literature, former prophets, Psalms, Hebrew poetry, Hebrew narrative, etc, etc, etc). Such professors might find that lay people are more interested in esoteric topics than one might expect.

Inerrancy
Art Boulet has a long running series on the topic of inerrancy. This series is well worth reading, the most recent of them can be found here. A listing of the entire series can be had here. There isn’t much more that needs saying in regards to this, other than that I think Art is right on target.

Peter Enns has also been blogging on this topic in a series of posts in which in responds to Bruce Waltke. Each post in the series is helpful and informative. The most recent may be found here. Other posts in the series are easily found on Dr. Enns’ blog.

Bryan supplied several good reasons for pastors to learn Hebrew in the form of verses from Hosea. For those who are regular readers of this blog it should come as no surprise that I think pastors ought to know Hebrew and Greek, and know them well. I also think that laity ought to learn the original languages as a matter of course. I think someone’s religious experience can only benefit from learning the original languages.

So, since Bryan was nice enough to provide some reasons for learning Hebrew, I thought I might provide an example as well. The Hebrew Bible is filled with various word plays. These commonly occur in the poetic sections of the canon, though they are not uncommon in the prose sections as well. In particular I direct your attention to 1 Samuel 6.5 which reads:

ועשיתם צלמי עפליכם וצלמי עצבריכם המשחיתם את־הארץ ונתתם לאלהי ישראל כבוד אולי יקל את־ידו מעליכם ומעל אלהיכם ומעל ארצכם

English: You shall make images of your tumors and images of your rats, the ones destroying the land. Also you shall give glory to the God of Israel, perhaps he will lighten his hand from upon you and from upon your gods and from upon your land.

Some background to this verse is necessary. The Ark of the Covenant had recently been lost to the Philistines. The circumstances surrounding that event, although interesting, have no direct bearing on the point of this post. Suffice it to say that the Philistines got more than they bargained for. First they put the Ark in Dagon’s temple. Apparently YHVH didn’t like sharing a house because within a couple days Dagon’s idol had been pretty well demolished. After this, the Ark gets passed around the Philistine cities, and wherever it is the Philistines are afflicted with tumors (and…uh…rats?). As you might imagine it doesn’t take them long to figure out they want nothing to do with Israel’s God, and so they ask their religious leaders what they ought to do. Verse five, above, is part of the instructions which they are given.

The really fun bit is a wordplay that simply doesn’t come through in English. The Philistines are told to give glory (כבוד) to the God of Israel. The idea being that if they do so, maybe YHVH will “lighten (יקל) his hand.” In other words, maybe YHVH will stop afflicting them. The fun thing here is that the basic meaning of כבוד has to do with being heavy. The juxtaposition of the two words creates a subtle, or perhaps not so subtle, wordplay. The Philistines ought to make God heavy, and perhaps he will lighten his hand.¹

One would never notice the wordplay in an English translation since our word “glory” has no relation to our word “heavy.” Limiting oneself to reading the Bible in English ensures that one will never be exposed to the plethora of brilliant literary features within the text. Learning Biblical Hebrew is an activity in which all serious students of the Bible ought to be engaged.

I’ve been tagged by Adam, and so has Mandy–so presumably she will also post on this topic. I find these types of memes somewhat fascinating since its interesting to see how people have been influence and shaped in various ways. The idea is that you have to either share your top five most influential books or the top five scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible.

1. Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns. This book, hands down, has been one of the biggest influences in my study of the Hebrew Bible. Enns put in writing much of what I was already thinking regarding critical Biblical scholarship and the Hebrew Bible. In this way I was able to maintain my Christian faith (albeit in a different form from what it once was) and still deal in an intellectually honest manner with the vast amounts of scholarship on the Hebrew Bible. This is a book I recommend to everyone who wants to study the Hebrew Bible.

2. The Psalms and the Life of Faith by Walter Brueggemann, edited by Patrick Miller. If Enns’ book shaped the way I deal with critical Biblical scholarship, this book shaped the way in which I appropriate the plethora of lament literature within the Bible. This book is a collect of Brueggemann’s essays on the Psalms. The most important of these, in my opinion, is “The Costly Loss of Lament.” That essay influenced how I communicate with God to a very large extent.

3. Biblical Hebrew by Kittel, Hoffer and Wright. This is the book from which I learned Biblical Hebrew. Although my love of Hebrew is due in no small part to my undergrad Hebrew professor, it is also due to Kittel’s excellent text. I really can’t recommend her approach enough. The book isn’t perfect, by any means, but is much closer to perfect than any other first year grammar I’ve had the opportunity to look at. If not for this book, I probably would not be an aspiring scholar of the Hebrew Bible.

4. Proverbs 1-9 Anchor Bible; by Michael V. Fox. This commentary is a large part of the reason that I love the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible. Adam has already said most of what needs to be said about this book, so I will simply quote him:

Fox is a master interpreter and his work has greatly influenced my understanding of this book (which is also my favorite biblical book [well, his not mine–I prefer Job). Fox’s book is the first title I pick up when I am beginning to study a particular passage in Proverbs 1-9 (outside of my BHS).

5. Genesis 1-11 by Claus Westermann. This was one of the first critical commentaries I read. As such, it was my introduction to how various higher critical theories worked out in practice. Aside from being a solid commentary on Genesis and helping me see what it meant to interact with the Bible critically, it was also fun to read and I learned–and still learn–a ton from it.

I won’t tag anyone, since A) many of those I’m most interested in hearing about have already been tagged and B) Mandy still has to go. I’ll give her a few suggestions for who to tag.

Jay, over at mu-pàd-da, has some interesting thoughts on language work within academic sub-disciplines. I found his thoughts worthwhile, and I’d encourage others to visit his blog and comment.

I have noticed something related to Jay’s thoughts in regards to studying the Hebrew Bible. Most students who set out to study the Hebrew Bible will also study another major area in their PhD work. Most of those students will opt for Akkadian, whereas a relatively small number will opt for either Egyptian or intensive work in Northwest Semitic dialects. I’ve also found this fascinating for several reasons. First, when I was an undergrad student, I naively believed that becoming an Old Testament scholar required a sound knowledge of Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic. Greek–I believed–was for those who studied the Jesus Festschrift (HT: Jim Getz). Now, of course, I know better. In fact, by the time I graduate from GCTS I’ll have at least some proficiency in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Ugaritic, Moabite (if you consider this to be separate from Hebrew), Middle Egyptian and Akkadian (if knowing some basic grammar and vocabulary counts as “proficiency”).

This actually brings me to the second reason that I find Jay’s thoughts so fascinating: those of us who work with ancient documents, specifically those from the ancient near east, learn a very large number of languages. I find this to be a helpful and fun pursuit, though I doubt everyone feels that way. I’m not sure what a PhD program in Classics looks like, but I would assume that it does not expect the same number of ancient languages to be mastered.¹ I’m not making a judgment on whether this is good or bad, simply observing that I find it interesting.