I have added some links to journals that are helpful for the study of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the ancient Near East. Â Here is the preliminary list; if you have any suggestions for inclusion, please let me know:
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Monthly Archives: November 2007
Conference Presentations Post-Mortem(s)
Throughout the post-SBL blogosphere there are critiques and suggestions on how to improve conference presentations. Duane Smith says that boring readings of papers wouldn’t fly in the business community and I’d have to agree with him. He suggests actually knowing your material well enough that you can talk about it with the audience, not just read from a script. Kevin Wilson gives some helpful technical tips such as avoiding the “air quote marks” and vocalizing abbreviations such as i.e. Finally, Chris Heard gives his advice which includes making sure that your conclusions flow from real data and are logically supported (if you think this advice is superfluous, you’ve never heard papers read at the conferences).
I think all of the above posts are very helpful and would be worth your read. Let me just throw in a couple tips of my own:
- Be provocative–the best and most memorable papers that I heard at the conferences were those that caused me to think. Philip Marshall did this with his presentation on the “exceptions” within the Old Testament and Niek Veldhuis got me thinking with his comments on the concept of oral tradition (this was not part of his paper, but in the Q&A time). I think there is a deep sense of fear within the academy of being wrong. This in turn causes people to pick very obscure topics and directly read from their paper. We need to collectively get over this fear. You’re human, you will be wrong sometimes and when you are the guild will still respect you.
- Choose your topics with care for an aural audience–the audience is not reading your paper in the quiet solitude of an office or library, therefore, you need to pick topics that are appropriate for aural audiences who are exposed to your ideas for the first time. There are many ideas that might make perfect dissertations, monographs, or articles but they will never be appropriate for an SBL session. Avoid overly tedious, focused, complex or obscure topics.
- Don’t use SBL as resume padding–If you don’t have an idea or presentation that has potential to spark a beneficial scholarly conversation or clarifies or deepens our understanding of something, then don’t give a presentation. Also, don’t slice up your dissertation into pieces and dribble it out over several SBLs. If your ideas are good they will get published and publications look far better than SBL presentations. SBL is a good forum for testing out your ideas and (hopefully!) receiving knowledgeable feedback–use the opportunity for this purpose.
- Be humble–no one likes hearing an arrogant jerk talk about themselves for half an hour.
- Practice your paper before you give it–if you do this you won’t wind up in a situation in which you have 1 minute left of time but have only presented half your paper; there is really no excuse for this situation except for laziness.
SBL Recap
I’m back from SBL and getting ready to leave this evening for Austin where my wife and I will spend Thanksgiving with my family. I had a great time at the conference. Most importantly, I saw great friends and made new ones. This is the real reason why I go to conferences–you can eventually read the papers that were presented as they filter out in articles and are integrated into books. However, there is no substitute to meeting fellow scholars in person.
As an added bonus, there were some particularly good sessions that I attended. The two highlights for me were the sessions on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and Karel van der Toorn’s book, Scribal Culture. I was particularly happy to hear that all of the CAD should be in pdf format within one year. I have been scratching my head at the fact that the Oriental Institute has been digitizing archeology volumes and such while the single most helpful resource that they produce, the CAD, has been languishing of late. The van der Toorn session was quite interesting as well, especially Niek Velduis’ bombastic statement that oral tradition didn’t/doesn’t exist.
Lastly, I hit the book tables. I primarily focus upon purchasing primary texts and reference works. Here’s a selection of the books that I purchased or ordered:
Edwin Yamauchi gave me his personal edition of KAI, however, it was a previous edition and I felt like I should have the updated texts.
The AHw was my prize of this year’s book purchases. It was interesting to hear the varied ways in which people in the CAD session at SBL referred to this work. I have always referred to it with the German names for the three letters in the abbreviation, however others in the session said the three English letters while others just said A-H. Also, I think Steven Holloway mispronounced about half of the names of the people who worked on the CAD.
I’m very interested in ancient scholars and scribal education.
I finally picked this up–long overdue.
This book is a pretty basic intro to Ugaritic, but I thought that it might make a good textbook for teaching non-PhD students Ugaritic. It also includes a nice intro to Ugarit and the language as well as texts along with an overview of Ugaritic grammar.
I read this book on the plane ride home. I liked it quite a bit and would probably use it in an OT intro class.
Here are some forthcoming books that I ordered:
This fits into my interest of ancient perceptions of communication between humans and deities.
Volumes that give you access to quality bibliography and primary texts are invaluable.
I have not formally studied Hittite, but I would like to at least have some familiarity with it.
Finally, Biblical Hebrew Phonology and Morphology
To all my friends old and new, it was great seeing you. For everyone that I was not able to meet, there is always next year!
Resources for Students of Akkadian
In honor of the upcoming the book sales at SBL I have compiled a list of resources for students who are interested in learning Akkadian. I have broken this list into three categories that correspond with the years of learning. This is a somewhat artificial stratification since all of these resources are helpful, however, some of the more detailed resources are best utilized after previous study (I haven not included the two major dictionaries, AHw & CAD since they are very expensive, but if you have the cash they are worth it; I have not included Akkadian texts that you could read since this depends on your particular interests, but I might start with the Code of Hammurapi). Eisenbrauns carries all of these books and at the end of the post I have included a .doc file that you can download and take to James Spinti of Eisenbrauns–all you have to do is tell him what level of Akkadian you are at (or would like to attain).
First Year Resources:
A Grammar of Akkadian
Second Edition
Harvard Semitic Studies – HSS 45
by John Huehnergard
Harvard Semitic Museum / Eisenbrauns, 2005
xl + 648 pages, English
Cloth, 6 x 9
ISBN: 1575069229
List Price: $49.95
Your Price: $44.96
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~HUEGRAMMA
Key to A Grammar of Akkadian
Second Edition
Harvard Semitic Studies – HSS 46
by John Huehnergard
Harvard Semitic Museum / Eisenbrauns, 2005
x + 137 pages, English
Cloth, 6 x 9
ISBN: 1575069245
List Price: $27.95
Your Price: $25.16
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~HUEKEYTO
An Akkadian Handbook
Paradigms, Helps, Logograms, and Sign Lists
by Douglas B. Miller and R. Mark Shipp
Eisenbrauns, 1996
viii + 163 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 0931464862
List Price: $18.95
Your Price: $17.06
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~MILAKKADI
Second Year Resources:
Manuel d’epigraphie akkadienne
Signes, Syllabaire, ideogrammes
6th edition
by Rene Labat and Florence Malbran-Labat
Geuthner (Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A.), 1988
xvi + 346 pages + 2 maps, French
Paper
ISBN: 2705335838
Your Price: $108.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~LABMANUEL
Akkadian Grammar
5th edition
by Arthur Ungnad
Translated by Harry A. Hoffner Jr.
Scholars Press, 1992
xix + 185 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 155540801X
List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $23.20
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~UNGAKKADI
A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian
Second corrected printing
Edited by Jeremy A. Black, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate
Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000
xxiv + 450 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 3447042648
Your Price: $46.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~BLACONCIS
Third Year Resources:
Das akkadische Syllabar
Analecta Orientalia – AO 42
by W. von Soden
Biblical Institute Press / Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1976
xli + 76 pages, German
Paper
ISBN: 8876532579
Your Price: $39.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~SODAKKADI
Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik
3d edition
Analecta Orientalia – AO 33
by W. von Soden
Biblical Institute Press / Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1995
xxxi + 327 + 55* pages, German
Paper
ISBN: 8876532587
Your Price: $90.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~SODGRUNDR
L’Ecriture Cuneiforme
Syllabaire sumerien, babylonien et assyrien
Geuthner Manuels – GM
by Lucien-Jean Bord and Remo Mugnaioni
Geuthner (Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner S.A.), 2002
253 pages, French
Paper
ISBN: 2705336826
Your Price: $63.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~BORECRITU
Resources for Students of Akkadian .doc file
New Cuneiform Unicode Fonts
There are some new cuneiform fonts now available that are compliant with Unicode 5.0.
You can find the Hittite font here and the Sumerian font from Steve Tinney which he describes thusly: “This is a composite font which is based on Ur III forms but which ranges from Fara to Neo-Assyrian in its outliers.” Right up my alley!
English-Assyrian Dictionary
Eisenbrauns has just added a forthcoming publication to their website:
Assyrian-English-Assyrian Dictionary
Edited by Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project – NATCP, Forthcoming January 2008
xxii + 289 pages, English and Akkadian
Paper
ISBN: 9789521013324
Your Price: $0.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~PARASSYRI
The price isn’t set yet, but this definitely looks like a good reference. As I understand it, it is basically a compiled version of all of the glossaries included in each SAA volume. This should be a nice compliment to CDA (A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian) which has a bent towards older, Babylonian forms than later, Assyrian forms. James Spinti will have proofs of this volume at the Eisenbrauns booth at SBL and I’m excited about checking it out and in all likelihood I’ll be placing an order for the book.
While we’re at it, Eisenbrauns has some order forms up on the web, but as usual, there will be even better deals at the conference.
How the Brain Learns-John Medina
This week I listened to a lecture given at Seattle Pacific University that I found in iTunes. The speaker was John Medina and the title of his lecture was How the Brain Learns. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist who heads the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University and he also teaches bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
In his lecture, How the Brain Learns, Medina discusses how an understanding of the biological development of the brain can help educators teach more effectively. In a rather tongue-in-cheek style he says that our understanding of the brain is presently too limited to be of help in this area, but he then goes on to give some very good insights on effective teaching. If you do any teaching or public speaking, I would recommend that you listen to his lecture. Just go to iTunes and search for either the title of the lecture or for John Medina. Here are some points that I found particularly helpful:
- Medina states that from scientific observation of brain function, humans have an average capability of 10 minutes of sustained high levels of focused attention. Therefore, if you are speaking or teaching you need to “chunk” your material into 10 minute sections and give your audience mental breaks between each chunk. These mental breaks can be physical breaks in which people get up and stretch for a minute or two, or you can provide a story, illustration, or other way for the audience to refresh their brains for the next chunk of material.
- The brain is able to best process, assimilate, and remember information if it receives meaning before details. This means that you should give the meaning or significance of your lecture right from the start and then unpack the details afterwards.
- While there are many factors that affect attention span such as the quality and duration of the previous night’s sleep, proper nutrition, and emotional state of the listener, there is one proven variable that can substantially improve an audience’s attention span and ability for their brains to focus and retain information–the interest level and passion of the speaker for the subject matter at hand. In experiments, the speaker’s level of passion is very often infectious and if the speaker deeply cares about the material the audience learns better and retains the information longer.
I hope these points will help your teaching and speaking. Check out John Medina’s lecture for more helpful insights on how to be a more effective educator.
What are your tips on excellent teaching?