Monthly Archives: December 2011

Charles Halton

The Role of Academic Theology for the Life of Faith

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On the advice of Joseph Kelly I purchased Feldmeier and Spieckermann’s God of the Living: A Biblical Theology and so far I’m glad I did. I’ve barely cracked the spine but on page eight they make a profound statement that will certainly be controversial to some but it is one with which I fully agree:

If the biblical doctrine of God also seeks to communicate knowledge of God with the goal of knowing him, it is marked by the awareness that the craft of exegesis developed in academic theology is not the only path to knowledge of God, but is, indeed the indispensable path for the intellectual responsibility of faith. The doctrine of God presented here is defined by the convictions that appropriate understanding of the voices of the biblical witness without scholarship in the history of literature and religion is deficient and that the appreciation of its binding character for a given moment is not sustainable without carefully reconstructing history and without exploring the logic of the biblical understanding of God. Other paths to understanding, if they wish to avoid the path trod here, must be based solely on intuitively obscuring the difference between past and present or on claims that one possesses the Spirit. Both paths have limited authority but underestimate the pertinent distinction between divine word and human word and, furthermore, by repressing theological discourse, standing in danger of failing to distinguish the Spirit from the spirits.

As I said, I strongly agree with this statement. If people of faith and religious movements cut themselves off from academic theology and biblical studies I don’t think that there is a viable intellectual future for them. And, without an intellectual future, the movements as a whole will eventually sputter.

So far I’ve only gotten through the first ten pages or so but I am really enjoying this book. But don’t take it from me; here is the conclusion from Larry Hurtado’s assessment and he’s read the whole thing:

This is a book that one must read slowly and carefully (rather the way that really fine single-malt should be inbibed!). There is a wealth of scholarly work and profound thought provided in its pages, which will sometimes require re-reading to ensure full absorption. Scholars who share the authors’ concern for theological reflection that involves serious grappling with biblical texts will find in this book a treasure trove to occupy them for some time, and from which they will derive much stimulus. There is the danger that the book might be confined to scholars, however, and that would be a shame. Despite the unavoidable demands that it makes on readers, I hope that it will be taken up also among students, aspiring scholars, and that invisible but real larger body of serious “general readers” who appreciate access to the sort of excellent minds that produced this volume.

Charles Halton

Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational | Wired.com

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Time is eternal, but methods of tracking it are not — and so a Johns Hopkins University astronomer wants to replace the Gregorian calendar, with its leap years and floating dates and 15th-century effluvia, with a sleek and standardized system for the world.

According to Richard Conn Henry’s calendar, eight months would each have 30 days. Every third month would have 31 days. Every so often, to account for the leftover time, a whole extra week would be added.

The upshot: Years would proceed with clockwork regularity, with no annual re-jiggering of schedules required. Each day would occupy the same position as it had the previous year and would in the next. Were this 364-day calendar, known officially as the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar, adopted on the first day of 2012, both Christmas and New Year’s Day would forever fall on Sunday.

via Proposed New Calendar Would Make Time Rational | Wired Science | Wired.com.

If ancients had used a system like this it would have made biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies infinitely less painful.

Charles Halton

Do the Classics Have a Future? by Mary Beard | NYRB

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The truth is that the classics are by definition in decline; even in what we now call the “Renaissance,” the humanists were not celebrating the “rebirth” of the classics; rather like Harrison’s “trackers,” they were for the most part engaged in a desperate last-ditch attempt to save the fleeting and fragile traces of the classics from oblivion. There has been no generation since at least the second century AD that has imagined that it was fostering the classical tradition better than its predecessors. But there is of course an up-side here. The sense of imminent loss, the perennial fear that we might just be on the verge of losing the classics entirely, is one very important thing that gives them—whether in professional study or creative reengagement—the energy and edginess that I think they still have.

via Do the Classics Have a Future? by Mary Beard | The New York Review of Books.

I think this applies to other areas of ancient studies as well.

Charles Halton

In Memoriam, Richard Caplice, S.J. (1931-2011)

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His work helped me learn Akkadian and his editing of Orientalia has impacted everyone who does Assyriology.

Here is the obit that circulated on Agade:

Obituary of Richard I. Caplice, S.J.
Rev. Peter Schineller, S.J.

Fr. Richard Ignatius Caplice, age 80, died on 12 December, 2011 in the
Bronx, New York.   He was born on 10 October 1931,  the son of Michael
and Mary (Mahony) Caplice. He is survived by a sister,  Sr. Mary
Caplice, CND  and a brother, Br. Stephen Caplice, FSC, who served many
years in Africa.   He is predeceased by his brother Cornelius.

After graduation from Regis High School, he entered the Society of
Jesus at St. Andrew-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, NY on 7 September 1949.
After two years of Novitiate (and first vows on 8 September, 1951) he
continued there for two years in the collegiate program (1949-53).  He
began his study of philosophy at  Bellarmine College, Plattsburg, NY
(1953-55), and  completed these studies at Loyola Seminary, Shrub Oak,
NY,  receiving the  Licentiate in Philosophy  Summa Cum Laude.
Additional degrees include the A.B. from Fordham University in 1955
and the M.A. from Fordham in 1957.

As a Jesuit seminarian, his  first  year of Regency was at Xavier HS,
NY teaching Latin, Greek and English (1956-57). Then began his long
career in the study and teaching of ancient languages.  He proceeded
to study at the Johns Hopkins University (1957-8) under Dr.  William
Foxwell Albright.   He  completed his doctoral studies at the
University of Chicago (1958-61)  in the Oriental Institute, their
research center for Near-Eastern Studies and Oriental Languages.

His theological studies in preparation for priesthood were at
Woodstock College, MD, from 1961-65.  He received the Licentiate of
Sacred Theology degree in 1965  Magna Cum Laude.  He was ordained to
the priesthood at the Fordham University Chapel on 18 June, 1964  and
pronounced his final vows in the Society of Jesus in Rome on 2
February, 1967  after completing the year of Tertianship at Drogen,
Belgiu (1965-66).

He began his long scholarly career  in Rome  in 1966,  first as a
student of theology and Scripture at the  Pontifical Biblical
Institute,  and then teacher of languages especially Assyriology and
Akkadian until 1989.    He also served there as editor of Orientalia,
a periodical of the Institute,  and as dean of our Oriental Faculty
from 1979 to 1987.

On two occasions he taught elsewhere,  first at the University of
Chicago  (1971-2) and then,  living at the Jesuit School of Theology
in Berkeley, CA  as visiting Professor in the Department of Near
Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1973-77).
His major contributions to the field of Assyriology included his
Introduction to Akkadian a grammar (1980) and his edition of The
Akkadian Namburbi Texts. In 1985 he returned to Chicago to continue
his research and contribution to the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, a
21 volume work. Fr. Caplice contributed to Vol. 12, P  and  Vol. 18,
T.

After many years in the classroom and libraries, he returned to the
United States and began parish ministry at Resurrection Parish, Jersey
City (1989-98)  The ancient languages took second place to the modern
as he reached out liturgically and pastorally to the Hispanic and
Latino communities in Jersey City.  Then he continued with his
priestly ministry  in the more rural setting of  St. Thomas of
Canterbury Parish, Cornwall, NY (1998-2009).

Due to failing health, he was assigned to the Jesuit infirmary  in the
Bronx, Murray-Weigel Hall, in 2009.  The Mass of Christian Burial was
held at the chapel in Murray-Weigel Hall on 16 December, and the
burial was at the Jesuit Cemetery, Auriesville, NY.

Charles Halton

Tips for Biblical Scholars Who Use ANE ‘Background’ Material

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Interpreting the Hebrew Bible in light of ancient Near Eastern material is one of the hallmark elements of historical-criticial methodologies yet I think that it is a very difficult thing to do and it is rarely done well.

There are many reasons for this but one of the most prominent is that inter-disciplinary study is always challenging since it requires stepping outside one’s area of primary expertise. A further challenge is that ancient Near Eastern studies is still a relatively young field. For example, Akkadian was only deciphered in the mid-1800′s and there are many important dialects for which reference grammars do not exist and the authoritative dictionary (CAD) was only completed a couple years ago. Ugaritic was discovered in the late 1920′s the Qumran documents in the 1940′s and 50′s and so on. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets remain unpublished and new ones are discovered (or looted) every year. Accordingly, theories, even on basic issues, change and there is still a considerable spectrum of debate regarding many topics that are of interest to biblical scholars. So, in order to provide a tiny modicum of help to those brave biblical scholars who wade into ANE studies here are some quick tips:

  1. Use up-to-date scholarship. Since we are still working out the kinks in our understanding of Akkadian, Sumerian, etc. this means that translations can drastically change over time so use the most current ones you can find. This is all the more true for the studies on ancient texts. Still using Alexander Heidel’s work on Gilgamesh and the Flood from the mid-1900′s (I still see it cited authoritatively all the time)? You shouldn’t except as an interesting piece of the evolving history of interpretation–there are MANY studies far more current than this.
  2. Read the entirety of compositions not just the snippets that are included in the anthologies. Using the Context of Scripture to study texts relating to creation or the flood could lead you far astray. COS only includes a portion of the so-called Mesopotamian creation account, Enuma Elish (it is not about creation; it is about the ascendency of Marduk in the pantheon), and they leave out the most important part–the 50 names of Marduk. To add insult to injury COS selects tablet 11 of the twelve tablet-long (in some versions) Gilgamesh epic that deals with a flood but this tablet was inserted rather late in the composition history of the epic and this must be factored in (since in the Gilgamesh Epic tablet 11 serves merely to advance a previously existing story how important is the flood to this composition anyway, etc).
  3. Understand ANE texts on their own terms. Ancient peoples viewed authorship, literature, and even the universe itself, in ways that are in many respects profoundly different than we do. In order to understand these texts properly, and concomitantly to responsibly employ these ideas in inter-disciplinary studies, we shouldn’t read modern perceptions into them. For instance, if we piggy-back off of point number 2, I think Enuma Elish can be used to discern how ancients viewed creation, however, probably not in the way that most biblical scholars typically think. The ‘creation story’ in Enuma Elish was not an end in and of itself, that is, I don’t think it is intended to explain, in a scientific manner, how ancients thought the earth was created. Rather, it was used to provide a backstory that explained the *contemporary* reality of the ascendency of Marduk in the pantheon. We see this kind of thing in the first biblical creation story which was probably originally centered upon providing a kind of backstory to the sabbath (cf. 2:1-3; however, things get complicated from here as it was repurposed as the intro to the Pentateuch which, in a sense, creates another layer of meaning but I’ll leave that for another day).
  4. *The* ancient Near East did not exist. The ancient Near East was not a monolithic thing. Depending on how people use the term it covers scores of different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups from Iran to Egypt over thousands of years. Throughout these times, places, and peoples there were some commonly shared thoughts, tropes, and texts but to a large extent there were great differences as well. These differences need to be respected, preserved, and accounted for in inter-disciplinary study. If you read a book that says something like, “Kings were thought to be deities in the ancient world,” just put it aside and move on to a more nuanced and more accurate treatment.
These tips are only for starters and I may add a few more, along with a short bibliography that can serve as an entry point for biblical scholars, in the days to come. However, one of the most valuable things that you can do if you are a biblical scholar who is writing on ANE material is to give your work to an ANE expert to look over before you try to publish it. We call can benefit from the feedback of people who are more knowledgable in fields cognate to our own.
What are your tips for this kind of work?