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Charles Halton

Authorial Intent, Multiple Authors, Canon and the Formation of Meaning

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But the fact that it can be read apart from these larger contexts is no argument that it ought to be or that interpreting it only according to its ancient authors’ intentions yields the best reading. Indeed, the very question of authorial intention is enormously complicated when the text has many authors, has been repeatedly redacted, and now forms an integral part of a completed set of books to which many more authors and redactors have contributed. Considering Genesis in isolation inevitably impedes our understanding of the importance of the scriptural canon by which it comes to us.

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Ronald Hendel leaves the impression that nowadays the book of Genesis can be handled credibly only by artists, activists, and antiquarians. A fuller study would have to take account of its role in modern Jewish and Christian religious thought, where those who have pondered themes central to Genesis—creation, election, promise and the baffling workings of providence, for example—have made rich and productive use of the book. It would also have to take account of the fact that throughout the world, Genesis is read and expounded in synagogues and churches by and to educated, scientifically literate people. On the question of how we are to understand that important reality, The Book of Genesis: A Biography, illuminating on so many other things, needed to say more.

–Jon Levenson

Charles Halton

Monkey Gone to Heaven on the HBU Blog

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I have short piece up on the School of Christian Thought’s blog. Here’s the first paragraph to whet you appetite, click here for the whole thing.

The first time I heard the song must have been as I was weaving in and out of traffic. I was too impatient to wait for the DJ to name to title so with one eye on the road and the other on my phone I shazam’ed it. “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by The Pixies. By far my favorite song from them. Their music is a mix of discordant sound, screaming, and catchy loops; normally not my cup of tea. But anytime someone mixes environmentalism, a great hook, and esoteric Hebrew numerology they’ve won my heart…wait, hold up–do monkeys really go to heaven?

Charles Halton

New Stuff at Marginalia

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Marginalia: A Review of Books in History, Theology & Religion releases new reviews on the last Tuesday of the month but in between these times we release interviews or essays as well. So, you might want to check the site periodically to see if anything is new or you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter where we announce new stuff.

Today we released two stellar pieces that you will want to read:

David H. Aaron, Professor of Hebrew Bible & History of Interpretation at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, writes on the art of the review essay. He gives very helpful advice to anyone who is thinking about writing this kind of piece.

Brennan Breed, Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, examines the reception history of Genesis 3:22-24 in a completely fascinating review essay.

Enjoy.

Charles Halton

Introducing Marginalia: A Review of Books in History, Theology & Religion

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This is one of the coolest projects that I’ve been a part of. We launch on Tuesday. Get ready.

Mail-Sig
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Marginalia Review of Books

http://themarginaliareview.com

Contact: Timothy Michael Law (Publisher and Editor-in-Chief)
Phone: +49-151-504-70298 (Germany)
Email: tmlaw@themarginaliareview.com
Twitter: @MarginaliaROB
Facebook ID: themarginaliareview

The Marginalia Review of Books (http://themarginaliareview.com), a new international publication in the disciplines along the nexus of history, theology and religion, launches Tuesday, January 29.

Marginalia aims to correct what its Publisher and Editor-in-Chief believes to be a downward spiral. “We want to rehabilitate the ailing book review,” said Timothy Michael Law, currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the Georg-August Universität, Göttingen (Germany). “We are hoping to create a new standard that puts a premium on quality in both style and substance. Penetrating analysis and engaging prose should be held together.”

Law says the review is often the genre of academic writing that suffers the most neglect, but that it should receive more attention. “The review is functional as a service to each discipline of the academic community by separating the wheat from the chaff. But it is also an art worth recovering, since it can be the only vehicle that communicates our research to those outside of our specialized societies.”

Managing Editors Charles Halton and Anthony Apodaca are also hoping to test the limits of what is possible in academic publishing. Halton said, “Our creativity as scholars should not be limited to the construction of our ideas but should also include the forms of their expression. The web presents us with an opportunity to re-conceptualize the ways in which we package, mediate, and analyze our thoughts.” Marginalia will provide space for readers and authors to interact, create digital panel discussions on the most pivotal publications, and publish long form and peer-reviewed essays.

As important as quality and creativity are to Marginalia, General Editor David Lincicum, University Lecturer in New Testament in Oxford, insists that the editors are just as committed to making reviews more discoverable than those in traditional print journals. Joining the open-access movement, Marginalia will publish all content without charging the reader, directly challenging traditional publications that require readers to login from a university network or pay a hefty subscription.

Marginalia’s Advisory Board consists of more than thirty of the world’s leading scholars in the fields of history, theology and religion, and nearly forty early career scholars serve as Review Editors for the publication.

Editorial Board

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief: Timothy Michael Law (Göttingen)

General Editor: David Lincicum (Oxford)

Managing Editor: Charles Halton (Houston)

Managing Editor: Anthony Apodaca (New York)

Secretary: Daniel Picus (Brown)

Advisory Board

Marc Van De Mieroop (Professor of History, Columbia University)

Gebhard J. Selz (Chair of Old Semitic Languages and Oriental Archaeology, Vienna)

Anthony Sagona (Professor of Classics and Archaeology, Melbourne)

James Rives (Kenan Eminent Professor of Classics, Chapel Hill)

Jan Joosten (Professeur d’Ancien Testament, Strasbourg)

John Barton (Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford)

Athalya Brenner (Professor Emerita of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Amsterdam)

Reinhard Kratz (Professor of Old Testament, Göttingen)

Anna Passoni dell’Acqua (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan)

Maren Niehoff (Associate Professor of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Charlotte Hempel (Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, Birmingham)

Markus Bockmuehl (Professor of Biblical and Early Christian Studies, Oxford)

Mark Goodacre (Associate Professor in New Testament, Duke)

Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (Directeur d’Études, École Pratique des Hautes Études Paris)

Willem Smelik (Senior Lecturer in Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, London)

Joanna Weinberg (James Mew Lecturer in Rabbinical Hebrew, Oxford)

Andrew Louth (Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, Durham)

Sarah Foot (Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Oxford)

Susan Boynton (Professor of Music, Columbia)

David J. Wasserstein (Professor of History, Jewish Studies, and Classics, Vanderbilt)

Adam Silverstein (Reader in Jewish Studies and the Abrahamic Religions, King’s College, London)

Anthony Grafton (Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton)

Diarmaid MacCulloch (Professor of the History of the Church, Oxford)

Mona Siddiqui (Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, Edinburgh)

Sholeh Quinn (Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, California Merced)

Ellen T. Charry (Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology,Princeton)

Joel Rasmussen (University Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, Oxford)

Aaron Rosen (Lecturer in Sacred Traditions and the Arts, King’s College London)

Nathan Abrams (Director of Graduate Studies and Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Bangor)

Jeremy Begbie (Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology, Duke)

Alan J. Torrance (Professor of Systematic Theology, St. Andrews)

Murray Rae (Head of Department of Theology, Otago)

David Rechter (University Research Lecturer in Modern Jewish History, Oxford)

Shmuel Feiner (Professor of Modern Jewish History, Bar-Ilan)

Charles Jones (Head Librarian, ISAW, New York)

Review Editors

History

Ancient Near East & Semitics

Jonathan Stökl, Leiden;
Ola Wikander, Lund

Graeco-Roman Religions

Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Columbia;
Ivana Petrovic, Durham

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

Angela Roskop Erisman, Xavier;
Ingrid Lilly, W. Kentucky;
Jonathan Stökl, Leiden

New Testament

Jane Heath, Durham;
Michael Thate, Yale

Theological Interpretation and Reception of the Bible

Brennan Breed, Columbia, Atlanta

Qur’anic Studies

Asad Q. Ahmed, Berkeley;
Rachel Friedman, Berkeley

Early Jewish History

Alison Schofield, Denver;
Sharon Weisser, Jerusalem

Rabbinic and Late Antique Jewish History

Holger Zellentin, Nottingham;
Shai Secunda, Jerusalem

Medieval Jewish History

vacant

Modern Jewish History

Simon Rabinovitch, Boston;
Adam Mendelsohn, Charleston

Early Christianity

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Loyola Chicago;
Mark DelCogliano, St. Thomas

Late Antique Christianity

Julia Konstantinovsky, Oxford;
Emilio Bonfiglio, Geneva

Medieval Christianity

Patrick Hornbeck, Fordham;
Helen Foxhall Forbes, Exeter

Modern Christianity

Joseph Williams, Rutgers

Early Islamic History

Asad Q. Ahmed, Berkeley;
Rachel Friedman, Berkeley

Medieval Islamic History

Blain Auer, Lausanne;
Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Oxford

Modern Islamic History

vacant

Theology

Historical Theology

Darren Sarisky, Cambridge

Constructive Theology

Benjamin Myers, Queensland;
Brandon Gallaher, Oxford

Philosophical Theology

Chris Barnett, Villanova

Religion

Religious Studies

Kerry San Chirico, Hawaii;
Phillip Francis, Harvard

Abrahamic Religions

lisha Russ-Fishbane, Wesleyan;
David Shyovitz, Northwestern;
Stephen Burge, Ismaili Institute, London

Dharma Traditions

Philosophy of Religion
Matthew A. Benton, Oxford

Religious Ethics

Religion, Culture, and the Arts
Ayla Lepine, Courtauld London

Language

French and German

Carolyn Rosen, Royal Holloway London; Felix Albrecht, Göttingen

Charles Halton

Learn Genesis through the Sistine Chapel

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I’m trying to rethink the ways in which I teach Old Testament introduction and I came up with an assignment that I hope will interest the students:

The Story of Genesis Through the Sistine Chapel

Using the Vatican’s interactive guide and virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, follow the “Central Stories” which depict Michelangelo’s interpretation of Genesis 1-9. Read Genesis 1-9 for yourself and in a two page, double spaced, essay compare and contrast Michelangelo’s interpretation of Genesis 1-9 with your own reading. Students might find it helpful to consult the class textbook for this assignment as well.

Interactive Guide: http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/CSN/CSN_Volta_StCentr.html

Virtual Tour: http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

I aso made a short video that provides a little introduction to the assignment. Sure it’s cheesy and my dog snores in the background but who says education has be so stuffy? As always, let me know what you think.

Charles Halton

4 Tips for Better Writing in 2013

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It’s January 2. You’ve had some nice time off during the holiday season and you’ve recovered from New Year’s Eve. Now it’s time that we get back to work. I’m the first to admit that my writing needs improvement. With that in mind, here are four tips to help you and me become better writers in 2013.

  1. Sit down and write. There is nothing magical about writing. There are no silver bullets or four tips that will turn you into a great writer. It takes steady, diligent, grinding work and it has to start sometime. If you think that conditions have to be right in order to set the mood then you’ll never get around to forging words into sentences. As Verlyn Klinkenborg said: “Think of all the requirements writers imagine for themselves: A cabin in the woods, A plain wooden table, Absolute silence, A favorite pen, A favorite blank book, A favorite typewriter, A favorite laptop, A favorite writing program, A large advance, A yellow pad, A wastebasket, A shotgun, The early light of morning, The moon at night, A rainy afternoon, A thunderstorm with high winds, The first snow of winter, A cup of coffee in just the right cup, A beer, A mug of green tea, A bourbon, Solitude. Sooner or later the need of any one of these will prevent you from writing. Anything you need in order to write–Or be ‘inspired’ to write or ‘get in the mood’ to write–Becomes a prohibition when it’s lacking. Learn to write anywhere, at any time, in any conditions, With anything, starting from nowhere. All you really need is your head, the one indispensable requirement” (pp. 80-81).
  2. Read good stuff. This is the one thing that almost every writer agrees will actually help your writing.
  3. Get a good editor. We all need a second pair of well-trained eyes to go over our work–I know I sure do.
  4. Write as if you’re dead. Jeffrey Eugenides gave this advice to young writers and I think it is all the more important for people who write on biblical studies and theology. What would it look like if you knew that you would be dead once your book or article was published? It might give you the freedom to write what you really think and not what might impress certain people. It might free you from the fear of being fired or blackballed or ostracized as you speak truth to power. Maybe it would cause you to break free from the implicit expectations within the academic guild of faux objectivity, obscure jargon, and obtuse grammar. Maybe readers would actually enjoy your writing. Maybe your work would challenge them and change them for the better.
Charles Halton

Emancipation; 150 Years Old and Still Elusive

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(Image credit: Wikipedia)

In 1688 the first anti-slavery statement was drafted on US soil by Dutch and German Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Then, 150 years ago Abraham Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation that brought to an end legal slavery in the United States. Yet, blacks continued to suffer under many forms of oppression from lynching mobs to Jim Crow laws. While history books typically say that Jim Crow ended in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act which outlawed discriminatory voting laws, in many ways Jim Crow still exists but in different forms.

In The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander outlines how “by targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.”

As we begin the new year, 150 years after the scourge of slavery was officially brought to an end (although by some estimates there are currently 20.9 million worldwide victims of slavery), I think it would be beneficial to reflect on how our perceptions, actions, political positions, and so on serve to create an environment in which all members of our society can flourish or whether we are creating structures that actively suppress and repress significant portions of our society.

It is all the more important that people of religious conviction reflect on these topics. To be sure, religious individuals and communities often were early and strong proponents for ending slavery, righting injustices, and supporting the oppressed. Yet, often times religion was used in efforts to keep blacks enslaved and to spread mortal fear within black communities long after the Emancipation Proclamation. As James Cone has shown in the Cross and the Lynching Tree, whites used the symbol most closely associated with Christianity, and even Jesus himself, the cross, to strike terror in the hearts of black communities as they left crosses burning in yards and limp dark bodies swinging in the trees.

Thankfully, it is now rare indeed to encounter burning crosses but as Michelle Alexander has shown there are structures and policies which work to repress blacks and other minorities. This fact should be abhorrent to anyone who has an interest in the Hebrew Bible. The biblical prophets often saved their most scathing comments for people who participated in and supported structures like this. When the prophets encountered these situations they often called for the wholesale destruction of the present power structures and called upon God and his people to create a new and just order in their place.

One such prophet was Amos. And maybe Amos is a good place for us to begin our reflection this new year. To that end, John Barton has written a nice, brief book on the theology of Amos that would be a helpful complement to our study:

For the biblical prophets, policies that create enslavement are forces of evil in the world. And those who work to perpetuate these policies are complicit in this evil. People who are a part of a religious community that holds the Bible dear do not have the option of keeping quiet in the face of these realities. For instance, the Babylonian Talmud says that if someone remains silent even though they had an ability to speak then they will be punished:

Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of his own family and does not do so is punished [liable, held responsible] for the transgressions of his family. Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of the people of his community and does not do so is punished for the transgressions of his community. Whoever is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not do so is punished for the transgressions of the entire world (Shabbat 54b).

And, Jesus reiterates the Golden Rule to “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31).

I think 2013 presents a strong challenge to the American Christian community in particular. For far to long many of us have used our positions within society to ensure our continued economic and social dominance. We have enjoyed a comfortable life on the backs of others. But, do we care about following the prophetic model that we see in the Hebrew Scriptures of challenging societal structures that oppress and enslave? Do we care about following Jesus’s teachings to love others and work towards systems that will benefit them just as they benefit us? And, how will we vote in 2013 and in the future? Will we continue to support politicians and policies that create a new Jim Crow or will we rediscover a biblical vision of peace and justice for all?