Yearly Archives: 2007

Banning Books and Blogs – Jim West’s Imprimatur

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Gee, you turn away from the computer for a second and a firestorm breaks out! Michael Bird started the “kerfuffle” (using Chris Heard‘s description of the controversy) when he listed as one of his “pet hates” when his students cite Matthew Henry’s biblical commentary in an academic paper.

It was the ever affable Jim West, however, who really got the controversy going when he made his own list of books and people not to cite in an academic paper. The last two on his list are “anything published by InterVarsity Press” and “William Dever.” While Jim claims the latter was meant tongue firmly planted in cheek (although knowing about Jim’s membership in the “Copenhagen Fan Club” makes me wonder how truly in jest the comment was!), the former has elicited a significant amount of controversy — and rightly so. You can see the able responses by Charles Halton, Chris Heard (parts 1, 2, and 3), Mike Aubrey, Daniel Clark, James Spinti (here and here) – to name only a few.  I won’t enter the fray except to say that I think InterVarsity Press is a fine publisher and am surprised that Jim associated it with fundamentalism. I especially think some of InterVarsity’s recent dictionaries are top notch reference works for all students of the Bible (if any InterVarsity Press representatives are reading this blog I’d be happy to point out how great and unfundamentalistic your books are in some reviews if you send me some samples!).

Jim has also made a list of who [sic] to cite; but alas I am not on his list, so you better stop reading now.

This whole brouhaha has got me thinking that what we need is an official imprimatur from Jim West for blogs which may be read with confidence. Then when coming to a blog all you have to do is look for the imprimatur and you know it is safe to read. Even though my blog hasn’t received such a stamp of approval from Jim West, I took it upon myself to design such a seal with the hope that Jim will approve my blog. Here is what I came up with:

jim-west-seal.jpg

(Some of you may recognize this as an adaption of the “biblioblogger seal of approval“; I recall Jim West thought the chap beside the seal looked kind of like him)


“The LXX says…” – Taking Septuagint Criticism Seriously

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Shawn Flynn over at Palimpsest has some interesting thoughts on Septuagint criticism and its use in biblical studies, particularly in the study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

One of the primary issues that he raises at the beginning of his post is the distinction between “interpretive” translations and “faithful” translations. While I understand what he’s getting at (and the theoretical model underlying his perspective), I’m not sure that such a distinction is always easy to maintain. Nevertheless, the distinction does underscore the important first step of assessing the nature of the Greek text you are dealing with.

Shawn further highlights six steps/questions that should be considered while determining the nature of the LXX text:

  1. First, textual criticism of the LXX must be conducted.
  2. With a tentative LXX/OG text, consider the possible Vorlage of the LXX.
  3. When there is a likely equivalent between the Vorlage and the LXX, other questions must still be considered before equivalence (in terms of equivalent meaning) is assumed.
  4. When there is a divergence between the likely Vorlage and the LXX, what is the reason?
  5. Is there enough information to make a decision?
  6. Did the LXX translator just misunderstand their [sic] Vorlage?

These are all good questions and they represent sound method.

The question that his post raises for me is the high expectations often places on biblical scholars. I personally have read enough NT or OT scholarship to know that scholars often use the LXX uncritically. In fact, even when I was reading some articles for my posts on Psalm 2:12 I was surprised by the way the LXX was appealed to by scholars — some of whom should certainly know better.  The problem is that it is hard enough to keep up in your own field of studies, let alone someone elses field!  Should the NT scholar have to be a LXX scholar in order to use the LXX? These unrealistic expectations plague scholarship in general. Archaeologists look with contempt at biblical scholars who attempt to engage archaeological data; biblical scholars roll their eyes at theologians when they appeal to the Bible. I could list many more examples, but you get my point.

In my opinion, while any biblical scholar who appeals to the Septuagint in a scholarly context should use the best critical texts available and employ sound method, that does not mean she or he has to become a Septuagint scholar. Of course, the degree to which an argument depends on the LXX, the more expertise is required. Thus, a NT scholar who is investigating the quotations of the Old Testament in the New better have a good grip on Septuagintal scholarship! It is the responsibility of Septuagint scholars to disseminate the results of their research to others and produce tools for others to use without having to re-invent them, so to speak.

So while I agree in principle with Shawn’s post, I wonder if he is being too idealistic?  What do my readers think?


MR HBRW WTHT VWLS (More Hebrew without Vowels)

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John Davies, Principal of the Presbyterian Theological Centre in Sydney, Australia sent me this poetic response to Jessica Shaver’s poem:

TH MTRS LCTNS

T’s NT s bd s y mght thnk;
“vwl-lttrs� hlp y swm, NT snk!
Jst whn y mght chck n th twl,
y’r rscd by tht smy-vwl!
Fr ww nd yd nd fnl h
r grt t hlp y fnd yr wy.
Thgh smll, wht nxpcd bns!
Blssd mtrs lctns!

I wonder how many students of biblical Hebrew have exclaimed, “blessed matres lectionis!”? See here for the vowel-less post that started this thread.


Seven Deadly Sins in Writing

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On the topic of writing in biblical studies, Loren Rosson over at The Busybody has a thoughtful post on the “Seven Deadly Sins in Writing.” The deadly sins are taken from Constance Hale’s book, Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose (Broadway, 2001; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). Based on the comments on Amazon, this book looks both entertaining and provocative.

Goat Skin DNA, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Tehillim

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Goats and Scrolls
While it is not odd to see the Dead Sea Scrolls in the news — especially with the scroll exhibit touring the United States — there is an interesting article by Judy Siegel-Itzkovic in the Jerusalem Post today about how DNA evidece from the goat skins used to make the parchment for the Scrolls helped piece together some of the Scroll fragments. The article, “How goat skin DNA solved a mystery of the Dead Sea scrolls,” doesn’t really say anything new, but is interesting nonetheless. Here are some relevant excerpts:

Scientists at the Hebrew University’s Koret School for Veterinary Science near Rishon Lezion are helping to piece together some of the 10,000 fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls found decades ago in Qumran by examining the DNA profiles of the goats whose skin was used to make the parchment and reducing the number of possible matches.

Dr. Galia Kahila Bar-Gal said during a journalists’ tour at the nearby Hebrew University Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where students learn and treat animals, that she and colleagues were looking at genetic forms from each fragment to know which came from specific animals. Once they know that two pieces came from the skin of the same animal, it is easier to piece them together, she said.

Scrolls and Tehillim
The Dead Sea Scrolls also made the headlines in the Jewish Tribune, according to the blogger with the coolest moniker, Mississippi Fred MacDowell. He recounts how he was sent a clipping of a letter to the editor of the London-based Agudist newspaper that claimed “Secular and non-Jewish scholars have to admit that the Tenach scrolls are word-for-word identical with our texts and not with those of Samaritans (Kusim) and early translators (Septuagint – Greek, Targumim in various Aramaic dialects, et al). But the spelling is often different, in many vavs, yuds and alephs.” MacDowell responds to this claim with an interesting discusision of the view of the Dead Sea Scrolls in many orthodox Jewish communities and his response to such claims. In particular he talks about the various textual tradtions found among the scrolls, let alone the high number of unaligned texts. You can read his discussion on his blog, On the Main Line, in his post “A threat to Tehillim? Dead Sea Scrolls in the Jewish Tribune.”

The only beef I would have with MacDowell’s post is found in this paragraph:

In fact three or four kinds of Hebrew texts were found at Qumran (depending on how you divide it). The first are Bible texts that are much like the masoretic text (and comprise about 60% of the material), the second seems to be a type of Hebrew text that the Septuagint was translated from (only about 5%), the third is like the Samaritan Pentateuch, lacking only the ideological changes that are present in the Samaritan version (also about 5%). A fourth type are texts that can’t be placed into any of these categories (about 105), and finally there are non-Biblical Hebrew texts which are unique to Qumran, comprising about 20% of the total. In other words, exactly the opposite of what the writer claimed.

Some of the numbers didn’t quite ring true, and I believe may be based on Tov’s older estimates (there are also some issues with breaking down the scrolls in this manner, but I won’t get into that for now). The most recent figures I have seen break down the biblical scrolls found at Qumran as follows:

  • Proto-Masoretic (forerunners of the text that forms the basis of our versions of the OT) (47%)
  • Texts like the “Samaritan Pentateuchâ€? (2.5%)
  • Texts like the Septuagint (3.3%)
  • Unique Texts (47%)

Either way, MacDowell’s point remains valid. Despite the variety found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, MacDowell is correct to point out the following:

And the Dead Sea Scrolls proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the massoretic text is not late, it is at least as old as the Samaritan and the Hebrew Septuagint. Conversely, it also proves that 2000 years ago “the Bible” was not exclusively massoretic.

That’s the good news, if indeed this is good news. But its important to understand that these massoretic Dead Sea texts are actually massoretic-like, not identical with our own text. This means that many words as spelled differently in ways that don’t matter, as the letter writer notes, but also that many words are not the same at all.

It’s a good read; make sure to peruse it for yourself.