Monthly Archives: December 2010

Charles Halton

Do Only Losers End Up Teaching?

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You know that saying: “Those who can’t do, teach.”  Well, us teachers don’t like that too much and we had to have someone to kick to the curb so we could feel better about ourselves so we came up with our own retort: “Those who can’t teach are administrators.”

Seriously though, the United States has a real problem attracting good teachers–only 23% of entering teachers come from the top third of their graduating class.  The McKinsey Quarterly has a chart that describes the many reasons why the top students do not want to teach.  The money quote:

The world’s top-performing systems—in Finland, Singapore, and South Korea—recruit 100 percent of their teaching corps from students in the top third of their classes.

A McKinsey survey of nearly 1,500 top-third US college students confirms that a major effort would be needed to attract them to teaching. Among top-third students not planning to enter the profession, for example, only 33 percent believe that they would be able to support a family if they did.

Wow, that is sobering.  Yet, good quality teachers make a huge difference in the lives of individual students and the economic health of the nation.  For instance, The Atlantic has a rundown of stories that discuss the economic benefit of a good teacher versus a bad one on the future earning potential of a class of 20 students.  Some studies have pegged the dollar amount at $400,000.  Now, I am not someone who thinks that we should measure the value of learning and teachers in merely economic terms.  Nonetheless, if this figure is it at all in the ballpark it is hard to ignore.

However, I think it will be difficult to attract the top students to the teaching profession in the present job market–particularly within higher education since there is a huge queue of people with earned PhD that have yet to land a teaching job.  The McKinsey Quarterly has their own ideas of how to do this but what do you think is the key to attracting great teachers?

Charles Halton

The Eclipse in Mesopotamian and Biblical Thought

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Last night (or early morning depending upon where you live) many people stayed up to observe the rare occurrence of a total lunar eclipse (here are some pics in case you missed it).  While for most of us these kinds of events are regarded as amusements or scientific curiosities, within the ancient world people thought about eclipses on a much deeper level.

The Babylonians believed that the gods communicated through astral events and since eclipses occurred fairly rarely, combined with the fact that the moon took on a reddish color during a total eclipse, the gods were thought to communicate something very significant at these points.  Specifically, lunar eclipses were thought to portend death and/or defeat in battle.  For more on this topic see Francesca Rochberg’s many works, she is the foremost scholar on Mesopotamian astronomy and divination; she discusses lunar eclipses in particular starting on page 71 in The Heavenly Writing which you can view in Google Books.

It is no surprise that biblical writers also regarded eclipses as signs that YHWH was working anew in the world.  For instance, in Joel 2:28-32 the prophet says:

28 Then afterwards
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
29 Even on the male and female slaves,
in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

30 I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. 32Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls (NRSV).

To be sure, this passage fuses together a lot of imagery and alludes to many religious concepts but what is interesting for our purposes is that there is a recognition that YHWH communicates through astral events.  Specifically, the “great and terrible day of the Lord” is said to be marked by the “the sun turning into darkness and moon turning into blood”–obviously this refers to lunar and solar eclipses.

This verse was significant for early Christians as well and Luke reports a sermon given by the Apostle Peter on the first Pentecost.  In Acts 2 Peter links the passage in Joel with the phenomena–such as “sons and daughters prophesying”–surrounding the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that others mistook for early morning drunkenness.  Interestingly, Peter links the events of his day with the “great and terrible day of the Lord” in Joel.  Furthermore, he includes the part of Joel that mentions “the moon turning into blood.”  Now, we never have a record within the New Testament that a lunar eclipse happened in conjunction with Peter’s sermon so what are we to make of this?

I think that what Peter is doing is interpreting the lunar eclipse reference in Joel in a symbolic manner.  That is, the “moon turning to blood” is apocalyptic language signifying the fact that YHWH is working afresh and overturning the normal order of things.  In other words, I am interpreting this along the lines of N. T. Wright’s “earth shattering event” discussion in his treatment of apocalyptic literature (download the selection here: Wright “Apocalyptic” in NTPG).  This link is quite appropriate once we inhabit a Second Temple mindset–there was an expectation that Messiah would come and set the world to rights.  This involved vindicating the people of God which necessarily entailed destroying their enemies.  Peter is saying that the work of the Spirit in his midst signals the beginning of this day.

Now, all this makes perfect sense when we read the apocalyptic language used by Joel and Peter within an ancient Near Eastern perspective.  Mesopotamians viewed eclipses as signals that the gods were about to enact their judgment upon an individual or a nation.  As we see, this thought is still linked with lunar eclipses even up to the New Testament period.

Charles Halton

Maybe I Picked the Wrong Fight

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In an earlier post I compared Bob Cargill’s takedown to Nolan Ryan’s manhandling of Robin Ventura.  Well, maybe Bob is really Darryl Strawberry cold cocking an opponent in his own dugout (I couldn’t find the video of this but I’ll never forget it; you can read about it here, it is #3).  A friend of mine emailed me after my post and pointed out some aspects of Bob’s presentation that weren’t exactly right.  Then, my friend emailed me again and told me that Ed Cook posted similar thoughts as comments on Bob’s blog.  My favorite line from Ed was when he and Bob were going back and forth on how to interpret a segment of the Aramaic text as presented by Accordance and finally Ed pulled out the trump card:

I prepared, tagged, and glossed the Accordance targum modules of which you post a screenshot, so I know what I’m talking about.

Personally, with what little sense I have I know that when Ed Cook talks about Aramaic I stop talking, listen, and nod in agreement—resistance is futile; you will be assimilated.  However, why am I talking about Aramaic, it is at least a millennium after all the stuff I’m interested in…

Charles Halton

Additions to the Pursiful List of Online Resources for Ancient Names

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Lance Allred offered some helpful additions to the Pursiful List of Online Resources for Ancient Names (PLORAN; soon to come out in hardback by Brill for $250):

For Akkadian, one could add Stamm’s old but still useful Die akkadische Namengebung from 1939. One could add Hess’ Amarna Personal Names, which is on Google Books.

For Amorite, one could add Gelb’s Computer Aided Analysis of Amorite.

For Sumerian, the key book is still Limet’s L’anthroponymie sumérienne dans les documents de la 3e Dynastie d’Ur.

And, I’d like to add one more as well–the searchable onomastic database that is a part of the Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts.

Charles Halton

Scholars (and everyone else) Should Know Their Limitations

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As most everyone in the blogosphere knows, Bob Cargill, gave Mark Driscoll one heck of a beat-down over Driscoll’s mangled mess of a discussion of Targum Neofiti.  This was a good, ‘ole fashioned, meet you out back of the bar and smack you in the face with a broken beer bottle kind of take down.  Mind you, Driscoll certainly had it coming to him.  The whole incident reminded me when Robin Ventura charged the mound and then was promptly put into a headlock and pounded in the face by Nolan Ryan (this fracas starts at 2:02):

But, Bob’s hit job should serve as a warning to all of us.  Scholars, pastors, and everyone else who desires to seek after knowledge, should understand their own limitations.  You don’t know everything.  Before you start to opine on a subject that you are completely ignorant about, pause just a minute and maybe run your idea past someone who does know what they are talking about.  Interdisciplinary scholarship is great and I am a huge supporter of it but before you broadcast it to the world it might be good to give it a vetting.

One last thing.  When you don’t know something it is never a bad idea to tell your audience, “I don’t know.”

See also the reflections by Tyler Williams, John Meade, and Joseph Kelly.