As a brief aside, the fact that Scripture is written in a language means that it is culturally conditioned since all languages are–by nature–culturally conditioned.

Hurtado’s brief post is well worth the few moments it will take to read.

As some readers may know, I am interested in the Hebrew verbal system. That being the case it should come as no surprise that I find Andrason’s article extremely interesting. However, I would like to withhold any substantive comments until I’ve had a chance to process through his points in a more thorough manner.

Let me give an example. A conservative evangelical Christian might read any number of prophecies in the Hebrew Bible and automatically apply that prophecy to Jesus Christ, because she has been predisposed to do so. Whether formally or not, she has been taught to read biblical prophecy in a certain way. Similar things take place when a reader fails to understand when metaphor is being used and when it is not. Conservative evangelicals are regularly taught that the Bible is a history book. As a result, they expect it to conform to the norms of modern history books–much like I automatically expected Charles’ map image to conform to my modern idea of what a map is for.

One could look at this from another direction. I have often heard pastors declare that the Bible is God’s love letter to each individual in a congregation. Pastors often mean well when they say this, but I think that it again leads to a misunderstanding of exactly what the Bible is. This in turn leads to a misreading of the text because the reader expects one thing but encounters something that is, in actuality, something quite different. This is, of course, at the heart of the evangelical debates about inerrancy, creationism, etc. Charles points out that looking at cognate texts can help us understand the Bible. He’s absolutely right. Looking at other ancient near eastern texts helps the modern reader to approach the Bible in the proper light so that when it does not conform to a modern ideal of a love letter, or history book, or whatever else, we are able to understand why and interpret it properly.

As it turns out, the map that Charles displayed wasn’t inaccurate at all. My expectations of it were what was inaccurate.

The most recent review that Lenzi complains about may be found here. When I read this review I was taken aback by the following statement (also quoted by Lenzi):

Those who believe that the Bible is the literary product of divine revelation will agree that Oswalt has shown that the Bible is different from the other religious writings from the ancient Near East. Those who reject the notion that God has revealed himself in the history of Israel will remain unpersuaded that the Bible is a unique book containing divine revelation and that the religion of Israel is different from the other religions in the ancient Near East.

Why was I taken aback? Simple–I believe the Bible is a literary product of divine revelation, but based on the review I seriously doubt that I would agree that Oswalt had shown that the Bible is different from other documents in the ANE and thus divine revelation. I imagine I would come to the conclusion that Oswalt merely wanted to believe that to be the case, and so strung together a rather lengthy list of assertions to that end and called it a book. This is the kind of either-or thinking among Evangelicals that frustrates me. The thinking is that either the Bible must be entirely unique and unlike any human document or it is not divine revelation. I don’t understand why the Bible can not be quite similar to other ANE documents and still be divine revelation. Apart from this, the idea that one can prove that something is divine revelation is silly at best.

So, on the one hand I think that RBL needs to demand that reviews not simply summarize what is in a book, but rather offer thoughtful critiques of the good and bad within a book. On the other hand, I have no problem with RBL publishing a review of a book such as The Bible Among the Myths. I don’t even have a problem with the author of the review saying that in his or her opinion the book would be a good fit for some confessional schools (no matter how much I might disagree). However, there needs to be some critical engagement with the material. There needs to be a reason for why the reviewer concludes that the book might be a good fit for confessional schools. There needs to be some acknowledgment that the book steps outside the bounds of history, literary criticism, source criticism or anything else and enters into the realm of theology. My primary concern is that if one goes too far to the other extreme, any book written by a confessional scholar would simply be deemed “theology” and disregarded (e.g., Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Prophets by J. Gordon McConville is published by IVP, and certainly comes at things from a confessional perspective. However, it interacts with critical scholarship and would be, in my opinion, an excellent introductory text for use at confessional schools). In other words, I think there is a place for scholarship that has a confessional audience in mind, but having a confessional audience in mind does not absolve it from the requirement that it be scholarly.

Balance is needed in this, as in all things.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 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!