Monthly Archives: October 2008

Charles Halton

The Results are in…I’m Average

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Top 50

In N.T. Wrong’s ranking of biblioblogs, I come in at number 25 in the top 50–dead on average.

While this middling designation is certainly nice, it shows that I have a lot more work to do–believe it or not, I’ve made this blog too accessible.  From the keyboard of N.T. Wrong (and it’s pretty darn accurate for academic publishing):

In Biblical Studies the ability to write meaningful pieces that only you and, maybe, one other person in the world understand is the zenith of achievement.

I’m in a race to the bottom of the list–the less readers I have the more scholarly my blog.  I guess I need to start posting in Sumerian.

Charles Halton

SBL Survival Guide

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Most people think that conferences are about the papers. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

You can get the papers and read them after the conference–the reason why you spend so much time and money going to a conference is: 1) to build, develop and maintain personal relationships and 2) to have fun.  I’ve included a couple things to help you accomplish these goals. 

Click here for the pdf document, Conference Commando, from Keith Ferrazzi to help you make the most out of establishing relationships at the conference.  Secondly, here is a map I’ve created to help you get started in identifying some places to have fun and also grab some coffee or food with a colleague.  Do some advance prep work and establish yourself as the go-to-guy/girl when colleagues want to know where to grab a bite to eat, get some coffee, or where they can buy an extra shirt that they forgot to pack–you’d be surprised how little things like this can greatly expand your network…

If you’re going to SBL I’d love to meet you in person.  But, contact me quickly because my schedule is filling up fast.


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Charles Halton

The Revival (or Invention) of (Modern) Hebrew

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Have you ever wondered how modern Hebrew came about?  While there are differing perspectives on the degree to which Hebrew was revived in the modern period (I happen to believe that modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language since it has more syntactical affinities to Indo-European rather than Semitic languages and therefore I don’t think that modern Hebrew is a “resurrected” form of Hebrew), the flourishing of Hebrew as a spoken language is a very interesting story.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a helpful review of a new book that chronicles aspects of Resurrecting Hebrew (Ilan Stavans, Nextbook/Schocken. 219 pp. $23).  The book is not purely a historical recounting of the rise of spoken Hebrew–Stavans has blended this historical account with his own personal reflections and mystical/dream experiences.  In any case, the Inquirer review will give you a very quick overview of the invention revival of (modern) Hebrew.

Charles Halton

New York and London; the New Babylon?

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The Daily Mail has an interesting story reflecting upon the timing of the new exhibit at the British Museum on the city of Babylon.  (It is actually in the “femail” section of their website–I don’t normally read this; I case anyone is wondering, the link appeared in Google News.)  Here are the first two paragraphs:

Throughout history, the city of Babylon has served as a salutary reminder that even the most affluent, powerful civilisations can, when the tides turn, be reduced to rubble.
It is perhaps rather fitting, then, that at a time when some of the world’s wealthiest nations appear to be edging towards economic collapse, the British Museum has decided to launch an exhibition on the fallen capital of ancient Mesopotamia

Irving Finkel, assistant keeper (ancient Mesopotamia) of at the British Museum, has a great quote that I entirely agree with:

The extraordinary thing about studying the ancient world is that you discover that, despite the fact that these people were alive 2,500 years ago, they were just like us. Babylon is a salutary reminder of the ever-shifting sands upon which civilisations are built.

Charles Halton

Scot McKnight’s Fallacy on Abortion in “Biblical Times”

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I wrote an op-ed piece that I submitted to the Wall Street Journal last week in which I address two misconceptions surrounding the contemporary debate over abortion.  I haven’t heard yet if they have decided to run it or not, but reading a post today by Scot McKnight reminded me once again why I wrote the essay.

I’m not trying to pick on McKnight, but his post illustrates one of the two fallacies that I addressed.  He wrote:

I’m with you and our method is fine until we come to something — like abortion or prolonging life indefinitely with drugs or with machines or prolonging life through heart transplants and blood transfusions or the threat to God’s good world with nuclear war — that clearly isn’t discussed in the Bible because it was a document of its times (the point of my book Blue Parakeet). The Bible doesn’t address your issue directly because the biblical times didn’t have that kind of sophistication about this kind of issue.

I’m not interested in discussing all the various issues that he brings up–what I am interested in is his assumption that “biblical times didn’t have that kind of sophistication about [abortion].”

I have found that this assumption is quite pervasive, that is, ancient peoples were not as technologically savvy as we are and therefore they did even contemplate many of the moral, cultural, and ethical issues that we face today.  While there might be isolated instances in which this is true, ancient peoples dealt with a surprising breath of complicated issues–at their core, humans really aren’t that different, even when a few years separate them.

As a matter of fact, abortion was known and practiced in the ancient world.  I go into this in more detail in my essay but let me give a quick example.  Middle Assyrian documents  give a recipe for a drinkable substance that would cause an abortion.  It was made from eight plants (one of which was likely saffron which does have an abortifacient quality) that were crushed together, mixed with wine, and then drunk on an empty stomach.  Furthermore, Middle Assyrian laws prohibited a woman from unilaterally initiating an abortion: “If a woman has caused an abortion at her own initiative and they have established the truth about her, they shall impale her on stakes, they shall not bury her.  If she has died in aborting, they shall impale her on stakes, they shall not bury her.”  Also, Sumerian laws outlaw a man purposefully causing an abortion by striking a woman.1

While McKnight’s post contains some very thoughtful and helpful reflections, his assumption that ancient peoples “didn’t have that kind of sophistication about this kind of issue” does not cohere with the historical record (neither is this statement fully factual but that might be for another post: “Since these authors had no idea how humans formed, their words are metaphorical to some degree”).


  1. For more on this topic see M. Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible (Brill/Styx, 2000), 39-48. [back]
Charles Halton

How to Pack for SBL

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It’s one month until SBL Boston. This means that it’s not too late to start thinking about how to pack most efficiently so that you can bring back all the books you buy without breaking your back or having to pay extra airline luggage fees. Here is a site that I have found helpful–onebag.com. If you’re going to be in Boston, I hope to see you there. But now, I’ve got to get back to packing strategy…