In specifically New Testament terms, my top favorites are:
In terms of the Hebrew Bible, my top favorites are:
Favorite associated extra-biblical texts are:
I thought this was a pretty cool animation that could be representative of the pillar of cloud and fire that went before and after the Israelites in the wilderness…
I am no Republican. I have never voted Republican. But Ron Paul has my support. If you Republicans can get him on the next ballot, he will get my vote.
He who cherishes the value of culture cannot fail to be a pacifist.
Albert Einstein, 1914, Jeremy Bernstein’sEinstein
But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you…then you will be sons of the Most High.
Luke 6:27-8, 35 NET
I do think Jesus one-ups poor Albert… After all, what is doing good instead of harm for the love of culture compared to doing good instead of harm for the love of God and human life? And as far as I know, Albert never offered up his own life to destruction rather than destroy someone else’s as an example of how we should live.
Beware any person who claims to speak truth and carries a sword.
Well, I thought I’d end 2007 with a doom and gloom prophecy for the U.S. economy. If you aren’t aware of what’s being going on, you’ve been living in a hole in Pakistan. The biggest housing bubble in U.S. history has popped. The banking system is going down in flames. The Fed is trying desperately to bail banks out by injecting billions into the system and lowering interest rates. This is devaluating the U.S. dollar at an incredible rate and sending inflation soaring. And since all this destruction of the dollar hasn’t helped a bit, the Fed has now promised to unload $40 billion more and will probably lower interest rates further. California had a large hand in boosting the economy as the center of the housing bubble buildup. But now California is the center of the mortgage and housing meltdown and is facing a projected $14 billion dollar budget shortfall next year because of it. The Governator recently said he will declare a fiscal emergency
in January. California, the biggest economic player in the U.S. economy, will bring down the rest of the nation’s economy just as it propped it up previously. The transportation industry is facing a crisis. Oil prices have shot to astronomical levels. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars more than we ever have before in the history of our nation to police and wage war against other countries. Foreign nations who might have otherwise helped support our economy from outside are being scared away as the dollar decreases in value and interest rates fall.
If this continues, I predict a stock market crash and an economic recession sometime between 2008 and 2011 that will make the dot-com fallout seem like a sniffle and the Great Depression like a bit of a cough. Peter Spence, a leading economist in Britain agrees with me: The Government must suspend a set of key banking regulations at the heart of the current financial crisis or risk seeing the economy spiral towards a future that could make 1929 look like a walk in the park.
The economist Ludwig von Mises has this to say: There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought on by credit expansion. The question is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
My advice: Invest whatever money you’d like to keep in foreign currencies and stocks ASAP. Not only will it be there when the economy rights itself, but it will yield returns you couldn’t dream of. And don’t even think about purchasing a home in the next three years.
This is a hot topic in evangelical Christian faith and politics. Personally, I don’t believe abortion can be successfully legislated and prohibited any more than alcohol or drugs. As a Libertarian, I hold to the golden rule that governmental/legislative interference causes more problems than it solves and that the best solution is almost always the one which doesn’t include an oppressive, controlling Uncle Sam, but requires instead a free, contract-abiding, self-government. However, because I am a follower of Yeshua and an adopted member of Israel, I also believe human life is sacred. This sacredness is demonstrated in Genesis 9:6 when it proclaims that whatever value there is in one’s own human life is the same as the value of another’s by making equivalent the status of one who takes a human life with the human life that has been taken. We have in this statute a respect of human life so profound that it dissolves all prejudice, all partiality, all segregation, all racism, and all sexism. Herein, the life of a female is neither lesser nor greater than the life of a male. Herein, the life of a vigorous and healthy child is neither lesser nor greater than that of an invalid. Herein, the life of a poor laborer is as worthy and dignified as the life of a king. Because human life exists in the image of YHWH.
When it comes to abortion then, the question is when is the foetus, child, or whatever you want to call it, considered human life? My perspective has been that just as science has not determined the point at which life enters the seed of a plant, so it may never determine at which point life enters a seed of humanity. I have, therefore, seen in the process from fertilization to formation and to birth not many possible points for the beginning of human life, but a continuum of two former human lives in a unity of one.
Although I have begun my inquiry with a supposed admiration for the ancient Hebrew perspective, it has begun to occur to me that my Modern mind conceives of human life altogether differently. Genesis 2:7 speaks of a human becoming living (or having life in it) through the imposition of breath. This concept of life being conditional upon breath is actually fundamental to the definition of the words translated living being
throughout Genesis. The Hebrew word nefesh,
although traditionally translated soul, refers biologically to the neck or throat in order to give concrete expression to the idea of the passage of breath into and out of a person. Thus without a neck or breath to go through it, there is no nefesh, no living being, no human life.
The Pharisees, who wanted to build a fence around the Torah
(Mishnah Aboth 1:1), established a host of conservative principles meant to restrict someone from coming close to destroying human life. I have no idea how old the concept is, but the Pharisees and fathers of Rabbinicism accepted a terminus a quo for human life at the 41st day after conception. When the rights of the first-born are discussed in the Oral Law, we find it said that nothing which might come from the womb of a woman during the first 40 days of pregnancy can be considered life (Mishnah Bekoroth 8:1). The Rabbis elaborated on this idea in their commentary on the Oral Law, saying:
if she is found pregnant, the semen, until the fortieth day, is only a mere fluid.
Babylonian Gemara, Yebamoth 69b
However, in the case of a woman whose life or well-being was endangered by an unborn child, because the child was not technically a living human being until breath, the Pharisees allowed an abortion up until emergence of the head. An arm or even a foot could come out momentarily, but until the head through which breath enters had left the woman’s body, the baby had no claim to human life.
If a woman was in hard travail, the child must be cut up while it is in the womb and brought out member by member, since the life of the mother has priority over the life of the child; but if the greater part [the head] of it has already been born, it [the baby] may not be touched, since the claim of one life cannot override the claim of another life.
Mishnah, Oholoth, 7:6
Such authoritative religious knowledge from those whose scriptures we adore should have some impact on how we approach the issue.
There is a verse that gave me pause. Amos 1:3. The traditional text states that YHWH will bring judgment upon Syria because she threshed Gilead with threshing tools of iron.
The LXX adds something here.
…they were sawing pregnant women of those in Galaad asunder with iron saws.
New English Translation of the Septuagint, pre-publication version (italics added)
The Dead Sea Scrolls as represented by 5QAmos and 4QXIIg support the additional words pregnant women
against the Masoretic Texts. So it seems that the sin of Syria that incurred the wrath of YHWH was more specific than general murder. It was the threshing of pregnant women. However, from historical context, I think that it is not abortion itself that is being condemned—it is the use of cruel and violent means against the innocent (and chosen people of YHWH) by political enemies whose aim is not simple abortion of babies, but complete genocide. The very idea of one using iron threshing tools on a pregnant woman cannot reasonably be equated with the will to abort a child any more than speaking of shoving screwdrivers in an ear can be equated with trying to pick at earwax.
Friday November 16:
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
AM16-123 (Room: Ford AB – GH)
Mennonite Scholars and Friends Reception
Saturday November 17:
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
S17-29 (Room: Madeleine B – GH)
Theological Perspectives on the Book of Ezekiel
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
S17-63 (Room: Manchester F – GH)
Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
S17-119 (Room: Del Mar A – GH)
Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
San Diego Natural History Museum
Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition
9:30 PM to 11:30 PM
S17-137 (Room: MM Salon 5)
Student Members Reception
Sunday November 18:
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
S18-17 (Room: Manchester 1 – MM)
Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
S18-76 (Room: 24 A – CC)
Pentateuch
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
S18-107 (Room: Santa Rosa – HI)
Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Monday November 19:
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
S19-32 (Room: Ford C – GH)
Qumran
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
S19-76 (Room: Manchester C – GH)
Pentateuch
4:00 PM to 7:00 PM
S19-128 (Room: 25 A – CC)
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
S19-138 (Room: Santa Rosa – MM)
Book Review Session: Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets
9:00 PM to 11:00 PM
(Room: Marriott Hotel and Marina, Salon 1)
CGU/CST Faculty and Student Reception
The hardest part is ditching one incredible event to attend another. But unless you’re a quantum particle or a dead cat, you can’t be in two places at the same time.
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
AM16-123 (Room: Ford AB – GH)
Mennonite Scholars and Friends Reception
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
S17-29 (Room: Madeleine B – GH)
Theological Perspectives on the Book of Ezekiel
- Ezekiel’s Theology of Divination and the Authority of Prophetic Speech in Ezekiel 21:26
- A Reassessment of the Different Editions of Ezekiel 7 in the Septuagint and Masoretic Text: Relating Ezekiel’s Composition-History to its Inclusion in the Emerging Scriptural Canon
- The Transformation of Royal Ideology in Ezekiel
- The Imaginative Effects of Ezekiel’s Merkavah Vision: A Day in the Life of Hashmal
- Edwards’ Ezekiel: The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Blank Bible and Notes on Scripture
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
S17-63 (Room: Manchester F – GH)
Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
- Scribal Culture and the Transmission of Cuneiform Texts in Mesopotamia
- Scribal Culture and the Tablet of the Heart
- Israelite and Judahite Scribal Culture in Epigraphical Perspective
- Comments on Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
S17-119 (Room: Del Mar A – GH)
Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
- The Textualisation of Israelite Religion in the Context of the Orality and Literacy
Debate
- The Voiced Text in the Hebrew Bible: From Epic Song to Biblical Narrative and Midrashic Exegesis
- Rethinking Inner-biblical Exegesis and Biblical Criticism in Light of Orality & Textuality
- Implications of the Oral-Scribal Approach to Tanach Studies
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
S18-17 (Room: Manchester 1 – MM)
Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
- The Spoils of War
- The Hebrew Sheol and the Emarite Shuwalu
- He Subdued the Water Monster
: God’s Battle with the Sea according to Egyptian Sources
- Princess as Political Pawn
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
S18-78 (Room: Betsy C – GH)
Qumran
- Refining Sociological Models for Understanding Scribal Practices in the Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls
- Reading the Wiles of the Wicked Woman (4Q184 1) in Its Manuscript Context
- From the Wilderness to a Door of Hope
: Thematic (Re)conceptualization of the Wilderness in Liturgical Texts (4QBarkiNapshi and 4QWords of the Luminaries)
- Qumran Yahad and Rabbinc Havurah: A Comparison Reconsidered
- Ancient Halakhic Homilies in the Writings of the Qumran Sect and of the Tannaim
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
HELP! I CAN’T DECIDE!
either…
S18-107 (Room: Santa Rosa – HI)
Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
- Myth and History in Ezekiel’s Oracle Concerning Tyre (Ezekiel 26-28)
- Ancient Interpretations of the Mythic Structures of Sacred History
- Classical Greek Demythologizing
- Beyond the Dichotomy between Myth and History
or…
S18-123 (Room: Del Mar B – GH)
Midrash
- Derashah as Performative Exegesis in Tosefta and Mishna
- The Origins of the Flood in Second Temple and Rabbinic Interpretation
- Dialogues between Sages and Outsiders to the Tradition
: Creation of Difference as a Literary Method of Religious Polemics in Rabbinic Literature
- The Demise of the School of Shammai
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
S19-32 (Room: Ford C – GH)
Qumran
- In the Second Degree
- 4QApocryphon of Jeremiah C and the Problem of Genre
- Resurrection and Biblical Tradition: The Relation between the Pseudo-Ezekiel Fragments and Ezekiel 37 Reconsidered
- The Centrality of the Temple in 4QMMT
- X and Duqah in Some Calendrical Scrolls: Are We any Closer to an Identification?
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
S19-76 (Room: Gregory B – GH)
Pentateuch
- A New King Arose over Egypt Who Did Not Know Joseph
: The Joseph Novella as Prologue to the Moses Biography
- Is the Joseph Story
a Misnomer for Genesis 37-50?
- Pentateuch and Exile
- YHWH’s Mercy and Wrath: The Contribution of Exodus 34:6-7 to the Canonical Shape of the Torah
- Integrating the Alien
4:00 PM to 7:00 PM
S19-128 (Room: 25 A – CC)
Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
- Masoretic Insights into the Text of Deuteronomy
- Deuteronomy 32:43 and Textual Criticism: New Proposals for an Old Puzzle
- All that Glitters is Not Gold: The Masorah of Spanish Bible Manuscripts and Its Peculiarities
- Conjectural Emendations in Bible Translations: Past, Present, and Future
- II.B.17: A Manuscript Ascribed to the Scribe of the Aleppo Codex
There have been a few instances where I ran across someone who wanted to get a (Biblical) Hebrew tattoo and were hoping for a little assistance in terms of the grammar.
The most common question is how to say beloved
in a Hebrew tattoo. Well, I just happen to be an expert on this one. Beloved:
דָּוִד
Lover is the Qal Active Participle of the verb to love
and looks like this:
אֹהֵב
You can see an example of this word in plene in Deuteronomy 10:18. If you are a woman, however, you may want to go the route of the feminine form:
אֹהֶבֶת
You can see an example of this word in Genesis 25:28.
Perhaps you would rather have the tattoo say One Who Is Loved.
That is the Qal Passive Participle and looks like this:
אָהוּב
You can see an example in Nehemiah 13:26. If you are a woman, however, you may want to go the route of the feminine form:
אֲהוּבָה
You can see an example of this word in Deuteronomy 21:15.