We welcomed a new edition to our family today–Calvin. Appropriately, he is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
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Category: All
A great friend of mine, Adam McCollum, brought to my attention a treasure trove of free pdf downloads of Gary Rendsburg’s writings. Enjoy.
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Category: All,Free Downloads
I’m starting to think I would prefer spending my Sunday nights being bashed repeatedly in the face with a large, leather-bound King James Version.
For the back-story, click here.
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Category: All,Fun Quotes
I am producing a series of short videos in which I will discuss some of my writing projects. First up is my forthcoming article in the Bulletin for Biblical Research 18.2 (2008) entitled, “How Big Was Nineveh? Literal versus Figurative Interpretation of City Size.” This will be a multi-part series–here’s the first one:
P.S. The last word is a bit hard to hear; it’s “idiom.”
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Category: Akkadian Language,All,Ancient Cities/Sites,Hebrew Bible,Mesopotamia,My Publications,Videos
A new documentary titled, The Linguists, is scheduled for release in January (here’s a link that will take you to the trailer). It looks like an interesting film. Here is the synopsis:
Scientists estimate that of 7,000 languages in the world, half will be gone by the end of this century. On average, one language disappears every two weeks. THE LINGUISTS follows David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, scientists racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. David and Greg’s ‘round-the-world journey takes them deep into the heart of the cultures, knowledge, and communities at stake. In Siberia, David and Greg seek to record the Chulym language, which hasn’t been heard by outsiders for more than thirty years. The linguists encounter remnants of the racist Soviet regime that may have silenced Chulym for good. In India, tribal children attend boarding schools, where they learn Hindi and English, a trade, and the pointlessness of their native tongues. Similar boarding schools for tribal children existed in the US through most of the twentieth century. David and Greg travel to the children’s villages, where economic unrest has stirred a violent Maoist insurgency. The linguists witness the fear and poverty that have driven youth from their native communities. In Bolivia, the Kallawaya language has survived for centuries with fewer than one hundred speakers. David and Greg trek high into the Andes to unlock its secret.
I do not think that we need to spend a lot of effort and money to preserve living communities of languages that are dying out–languages constantly change and in general I don’t think we need to impose artificial constraints upon them. However, I do support the kind of work that this documentary depicts. That is, recording and documenting languages that are in peril. I think that we should make great efforts to preserve this kind of data.
What do you think?
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Category: All,In the News,Language Structures
Today a new blog was born–the Biblical Theology blog. One of my SBTS colleagues, Jim Hamilton, is a contributor as well as three others. For a full description, check out their first post.
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Category: All
The Knowledge and Power site has added some new free pdf downloads including:
I am very impressed with Alasdair Livingstone’s scholarship–I think he is doing excellent work. Here are a few other things from him that might be of interest to you:
Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars
EIS – Eisenbrauns
by Alasdair Livingstone
Eisenbrauns, 2007
ix + 270 pages + 7 plates, English
Cloth, 6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 1575061333
List Price: $44.50
Your Price: $40.05
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~LIVMYSTIC
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Category: Akkadian Language,All
Today a student told me about some free downloads of flashcards and practice sheets designed to help students learn the Hebrew alphabet. Very helpful stuff.
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Category: All,Biblical Hebrew Language,Free Downloads
Looking for a commentary? Check out bestcommentaries.com. This blog lists the “2 best” commentaries per biblical book as well as major commentary series and even forthcoming commentaries. The blog is authored by a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary so this certainly colors the commentaries that are grouped in the “2 best” section (the commentaries that make the list are based on a score from other scholars’ bibliographies). However, the list does often include very solid academic commentaries by non-Evangelicals such as those written by Jack Sasson and Michael Fox.
Taking a look at the forthcoming commentaries list has further solidified my desire to not write a commentary. What the heck–who’s not writing a commentary? Check it out.
(H/T: Between Two Worlds)
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Category: All,In the News
I went to my mailbox at the seminary last week and I found a nice note from the dean welcoming me to the school and offering a gift to encourage me–a book with the title, “How to Write More.” My wife was with me and I started laughing, showed her the title and said, “Well, I guess I know what they want me to do here.”
Seriously though, if you’re in academics it is really important that you have a thriving writing life–you benefit and so do your students and the institution. In my first faculty meeting the administration spent a lot of time on the topic of the faculty writing more. But what I found particularly helpful was the fact that they didn’t just tell us to write more and then let us figure out how to do it by ourselves. Instead, they brought in three publishers and had a panel discussion that covered all kinds of things like how to generate ideas, composing prospectuses, how to apportion time to actually write the book, etc. It was a very helpful and inspiring meeting.
If you’re interested in some of the stuff we talked about, you can check out some links on the seminary’s internal blog.
Well, I need to get back to my writing projects…
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Category: All,Engaging Academic Writing
Bible and ancient Near East: teaching + research / causing reflection / moving the field forward