By Charles Halton on Wednesday, 31 December 2008 at 8:39 am
Duane Smith has a nice post in which he advises those with “abnormal interests” to read both Carr and van der Toorn’s books on ancient scribes. I have read both of these books as well and I agree with Duane–if you are interested in the topics of ancient scribes, biblical transmission, standardization, etc. you should definitely pick up these volumes. Along with Duane I also favor Carr’s treatment–each book has its strengths and weaknesses but Carr’s approach is a bit more solid while van der Toorn is more quirky at points.
David Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart.
Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
by Karel Van der Toorn
Harvard University Press, 2007
401 pages, English
Cloth with dustjacket, 6.25 x 9.25
ISBN: 0674024370
Your Price: $35.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~VANSCRIBA
Category: Uncategorized
By Charles Halton on Monday, 29 December 2008 at 9:10 am
McGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology at the University of Chicago, has piece in the London Review of Books on his interaction with the military regarding the war and the Iraq Museum.
Category: All,Archaeology,In the News
By Charles Halton on Thursday, 18 December 2008 at 5:55 pm
Jean-Marie Durand invited Simo Parpola to deliver two presentations at the Collège de France on the deities Aššur and Ištar on December 9 and 16, 2008. You can find French translations of his lectures at the Digital Orient blog.
Category: All,Mesopotamia
By Charles Halton on Tuesday, 16 December 2008 at 3:51 pm
We often get the false perception that the fall of an empire is a moment of instantaneous change for an entire people group. In most cases the situation is far more complicated than this.
Simo Parpola corrects this notion in an article about the Assyrians after the fall of Assyria. He notes that even though the major Assyrian cities likely saw significant change such as heavy looting, turnover of administrators, and the death of many individuals, life probably went on as usual for residents of outlying communities and small towns.
Parpola also comments that most history books perpetuate a mistaken notion of change by ending the discussion of people groups at the moment of a new regime:
In 612 BC, after a prolonged civil war, Assyria’s two former vassals, the Babylonians and the Medes, conquered and destroyed Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The great city went up in flames, never to regain its former status. Three years later the same rebels razed Assyria’s Western metropolis, Harran, crushing the last-ditch resistance of Assyria’s last king,Ashur-uballit II. This event sealed the fate of the Assyrian Empire, and that is where the story of Assyria usually ends in history books.
What happened to the Assyrians after the fall of Assyria?
One book that attempts a more nuanced discussion of this issue within ancient Israel and Judah is Jill Middlemas’ The Templeless Age: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the “Exile.â€Â Middlemas corrects a deeply ingrained perception within biblical studies regarding the “exilic period.” She gives five reasons for her call to redesignate the “exile†as the “templeless ageâ€: 1) there were three separate Judean exiles, 2) some people chose to flee, 3) “exilic†represents only the Babylonian perspective while there were diverse communities, 4) the “exilic†perspective uncritically adopts the “myth of the empty land,†and 5) the “exile†falsely represents a period with a clear beginning and end (3-5).
Here’s the lowdown on Middlemas’ book (and take a look at Parpola’s article while you’re at it–let me know what you think):
The Templeless Age
An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the Exile
by Jill Middlemas
Westminster / John Knox Press, 2007
176 pages, English
Paper, 6 x 9
ISBN: 0664231306
List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $22.46
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~MIDTEMPLE
Category: All,Mesopotamia
By Charles Halton on Thursday, 11 December 2008 at 1:00 pm
 This looks like a fascinating conference; here are the details:
Call for Papers: Genesis and Christian Theology
14-18 July 2009
St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews
The University of St Andrews is pleased to announce its third conference on
Scripture and Christian Theology. Since the first conference on the Gospel
of John in 2003, the St Andrews conferences have been recognized as one of
the most important occasions when biblical scholars and systematic
theologians are brought together in conversation about a biblical text. The
conferences aim to cut through the megaphone diplomacy or the sheer
incomprehension that so often marks attempts to communicate across our
disciplines. We invite you then to join us and some of the best theological
and biblical minds in careful and often lively interaction about one of the
most theologically generative of biblical books: the book of Genesis.
We are now calling for papers that integrate close readings of Genesis with
Christian theology. While we are particularly interested in explorations of
the dynamic relationship between Genesis and Christian doctrine, we also
welcome proposals that combine careful reading of the text of Genesis with
theological attention to art, creativity, ecology, ethics, the history of
interpretation, or Jewish and Christian dialogue.
The call for paper proposals closes on 15 March 2009. Please visit our
website for further details or to submit a proposal:
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/divinity/rt/conf/genesis09/.
Category: All,Hebrew Bible,In the News
By Charles Halton on Thursday, 11 December 2008 at 8:16 am
Does God put a premium on ignorance in the ministry? We know the he has no use for the pride of learning, but neither does he care for the arrogance of ignorance.
If a numbskull comes to the seminary and comes away a numbskull, do not blame the seminary.
A.T. Robertson’s 1890 inaugural lecture at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. (HT: Between Two Worlds)
Category: All,Fun Quotes
By Charles Halton on Tuesday, 9 December 2008 at 11:46 pm
For a lengthy obituary see the SBL site. Here is the first paragraph:
This past Thursday, December 4, 2008, the community of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars and, more widely, the world of biblical and early Judaic Studies scholars, suffered the loss of a great colleague and a close friend. Professor Joseph M. Baumgarten left this world for the academy on high after succumbing to a long and difficult bout with cancer. He was buried on the following Sunday in his beloved city of Jerusalem where he and his late wife had maintained an apartment. Professor Baumgarten was a major scholar whose contributions to the study of Jewish law (halakhah) in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other aspects of scrolls research were pioneering and central to the development of Qumran Studies as we know it today.
Category: All,In the News
By Charles Halton on Tuesday, 9 December 2008 at 9:55 pm
Category: All,In the News
By Charles Halton on Tuesday, 9 December 2008 at 6:44 pm
I used Kidner’s book on wisdom literature, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, for an OT survey course this past summer. For a short description of positions he held in his life, see Between Two Worlds blog.
Category: All,In the News
