The concluding chapter is short, and to the point. It’s a rattling good read, not only nicely summing up the more exciting ideas that have been presented and argued in the preceding chapters, but also pulling them together into a more coherent whole. Like most good conclusions there is a tendency to over-simplify, so probably [...]
Browsing Posts in Biblical
Chapter 4 discusses matters of most direct concern to biblical scholars (as such). It contains a wealth of material to bring non-specialists (like me) more up to date on Hebrew and other North West Semitic epigraphy from the Iron age. There are continually intriguing glimpses of this ancient world and its adopting, and adapting, of [...]
Previous posts in this review: The Invention of Hebrew: First impressions The Invention of Hebrew: first and last paragraphs The Invention of Hebrew: Chapter One The Invention of Hebrew: Chapter 2: What was the alphabet for? My reading of this chapter was rather interrupted. It has taken me weeks, which is a shame as this [...]
This post is stimulated by two things: last night I was interviewed before I preached on the Song of Songs, and was asked the interesting question of how experience crossing cultures (which has been a feature of my life into Congo, then New Zealand and more recently the Karen people in the refugee camp in [...]
My daughter (in Glasgow as an exchange student) has been posting recently on Facebook about procrastination (it’s nearly the exam season there, and revision does not beckon like she thinks it should. Shopping, cooking, buying tickets… her list of procrastinatory activities are different from mine. But today I am procrastinating too! I’m supposed to be [...]
No, not old photographs, that’s easy – just scan them in, but all the times when something seems missing, and the absence seems to us to make sense… For a book I am helping edit, on Land and Gospel, one a couple of authors want to make bricks from absent straws. That is they notice [...]
Aristotle’s Feminist Subject has a post in which various translationsof Psalm 90 are compared. As always I’m astounded by the way most treat verse 2: בְּטֶרֶם׀ הָרִים יֻלָּדוּ וַתְּחֹולֵל אֶרֶץ וְתֵבֵל וּמֵעֹולָם עַד־עֹולָם אַתָּה אֵל׃ Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you [...]
In NZ we’ve just started doing the E100. This is 100 readings selected to give a good overview of the Bible. I’m hoping – if life and work don’t get in the way – to podcast on 5 Minute Bible on all these 100 passages. The first reading is Genesis 1 & 2, I am [...]
To follow up the previous post, and demonstrate that I am taking a short break from the day of Yhwh in Amos by reading the publishing and digital culture blogs I subscribe to, here’s another post about a post. Books and Publishing, after a faltering start when it seemed they were doomed to merely fetishise [...]
It is a long time since I have mentioned TanakhML, but it is one of the few online resources I use almost daily for reading the (Hebrew) Bible. The Interface is neat and attractive, it is fairly easy to browse the text, you can turn various elements like vowels and accents on or off, but [...]
