OK, so I set up the mouse traps yesterday (see here) and we went out to a friend’s house in the evening (a mouse free house) and when we came back we found two mice caught in traps (my four-year-old son exclaimed, “wow, cool” and was going around today saying that we’re mouse killers!).

Two down and who knows how many to go!

So, while I have been trying to “think like a mouse” I decided to do some more research. This time, however, I decided to do some biblical research! Did you know that mice occur in the Hebrew Bible? There are actually six places were we find our furry little friends: Lev 11:29, 1Sam 6:4, 5, 11, 18, and Isa 66:17. The first instance includes mice among various unclean “swarming things that swarm on the earth,” along with weasels and lizards. The references in 1 Samuel are to the gold mice that the Philistines made and sent back with the Ark, while the Isaiah reference also includes them with other unclean animals. What I find interesting is the way the various translations render the Hebrew term for mouse (עַכְבָּר). Almost all translations consistently render the word as mouse. The NIV, however, always translates it as “rat”, while the NLT renders it was mouse in Leviticus and Isaiah, but rat in 1 Samuel. I’m not sure if there is really enough data to go on to know how exactly to render it, though I wonder if the NIV’s translation is more to vilify the animal?

Stay tuned to see what tomorrow may bring…

P.S. Make sure to read the comments to my original posts (here) — Joe Cathey provides an interesting Texan approach to dealing with mice infestation!

Time Magazine has announced its “Persons of the Year” and Bono gets the nod, along with Melinda and Bill Gates. Here is the introduction from the article:

The Good Samaritans

By Nancy Gibbs
For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME’s Persons of the Year.

Read the full article here (log-in required).

My dear wife just informed me that when she left for her workout this morning that she saw a mouse. No, I am not talking about a computer mouse, nor am I talking about Mickey Mouse. I am talking about a house mouse — the dreaded mus musculus!

This said mouse was seen trespassING on our garage — our attached garage — of our new home. Then she informed me that she had noticed some holes in our garbage bags (in the garage) the last couple weeks.

Well, mice can be cute. I’ve always liked the mice in Disney’s Cinderella (though they should have went for speech therapy as a kids like I did!), and who hasn’t been amused by the three blind mice or Roquefort the Mouse in the Aristocats?

That being said, I prefer my mice to be animated or connected to my computer. The first thing I did when informed about our possible infestation is research (I’m an academic, what can I say?!). The web is an excellent resource for the budding exterminators. One of the most valuable pieces of advice I came across for far is the following:

To control mice, you must “think like a mouse”

If only I had some Mickey Mouse ears… I would be wearing them now! Another web site recommended the “shock and awe” approach:

It’s better to trap intensively for a few days than to set only a few traps for a long time. Place the traps within travel routes, in corners, or near holes or nests. Traps set in pairs are more effective than single traps. A dab of crunchy peanut butter on the trigger is an enticing lure.

OK, I’m off to HomeDepot to pick up some “expandable trigger” mouse traps (did you know research has demonstrated they are more effective than traditional mouse traps?) and then to the grocery store for some crunchy peanut butter! (Maybe I’ll get some bananas too… I’m in the mood for a peanut butter and banana sandwich).

The game’s afoot… I will keep you updated!

Just after I started my blog last April, Joel Ng hosted the first ever “Biblical Studies Carnival” at Ebla Logs. After that things went omniously silent at Ebla Logs… the last post was on April 7, 2005. Then in August 2005 Peter Kirby at Christian Origins blog announced the “Biblical Studies Carnival 2” and accepted submissions, but nothing ever materialized.

At any rate, I’m wondering what people think about establishing a regular “Biblical Studies Carnival”?

If you are wondering what a blog “carnival” is, first things first I should clarify that a “carnival” in the blogosphere has no clowns (well, at least literal clowns!) nor is it related to Mardi Gras. The way I would envision it, the Biblical Studies carnival would be a regular (once a month? every two weeks?) rotating carnival where one blogger sums up the best blog articles in the area of academic biblical studies in the given period of time. Blog articles may be submitted by their authors or be nominated by someone else. Then the host blogger would evaluate the submitted posts and write a post describing and interacting with the entries (with links). Some carnivals will group entries following different themes, while others go through the entries in order of submission (I personally find the ones that try to organize them around topics or themes more interesting).

In regards to the focus of the carnival, I would think the blog entries would have to be:

• Academic. Not that the posts have to be written by an academic, PhD, or professor, just that they represent an academic approach to the discipline rather than, for instance, a devotional approach.
• Broadly focused on discipline of biblical studies and cognate disciplines. I would envision this to include Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Christian Origins/New Testament, Intertestamental/Second Temple literature (e.g., LXX, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, etc.), Patristics, among other things.

If you want to look at a couple examples of other carnivals, see the History Carnival XXI or Christian Carnival 100.

I would be happy to help organize it and perhaps do the first one to get it going again — unless , of course, there are other volunteers.

So what do you all think? If we could get a number of people committed for the next six months, then we could get it well established. Please either email me your thoughts or comment on this post.

Today’s Globe and Mail has an op/ed piece by Dan Falk entitled, “Did spin doctors write the Bible?” While it has a catchy title, the article does nothing more than rehash the typical “minimalists say this, maximalists say this” sort of argument while drawing some modern political implications.

Here is an excerpt:

It wasn’t long ago that the Bible was read not just as an inspirational and remarkable collection of stories, but as history — if not a literal account of the Israelite people, then at least a somewhat reliable dramatization.

But that confidence has eroded over the past century, and in the past decade it has nearly been destroyed. Abraham and Moses, it now seems, probably never lived at all. David and Solomon may have been tribal leaders with good PR, not great kings presiding over a vast empire.

The debate has become sharply polarized. On one side are “minimalists,” who dismiss the biblical narrative as a fiction constructed for political and ideological reasons many centuries after the events they claim to describe. Opposing them are “maximalists,” who assert that much of the narrative should be read as real history. And frequently, the fight really seems to be about present-day politics in the Middle East.

What I find interesting is that the “maximalists” are described as maintaining that “much of the narrative should be read as real history.” Is this really the case? What does “real history” mean? While there are definitely some who would want to read the historical accounts in the Bible as straightforward historical accounts of what actually happened, most if not all of the scholars active on both sides of the debate would not agree. It seems to me that it is more a matter of degree. While virtually everyone agrees that the biblical texts can be valuable historigraphic sources for the period in which they were purportedly written (e.g., Persian period or later), the question is whether or not they can be used to reconstruct earlier periods.

Lemche, Davies, and others would argue that they are not reliable as such (even though they would both agree that biblical texts like Samuel and Kings preserve some vaild pre-exilic historical information), while others would argue that the biblical historical books should not be relegated to the status of “secondary” historical sources (contra Lemche) but may be used critically and judicisouly as a source for reconstructing the history of Israel. Few “maximalist” scholars would maintain that the biblical texts “should be read as real history” — at least if one is to assume that by “real history” Falk means a straightforward play-by-play of what actually happened, i.e., the objective “scientific” history.

At any rate, the article is worth a read.

Jim West has decided to rub my nose in the fact that his blog is worth $77,341.98, while my blog is worthless — at least according to those mean people over at “How Much is My Blog Worth?” (Actually Jim was nice enough to note that my value — or lack thereof — “makes no sense at all to me”).

But, alas, a far superior authority thinks my blog is worth something! (and no, I’m not talking about my Mom — if I told her I had a blog, she would probably insist I go to the doctor!). Blogshares values my blog at $10,695.63 — and that is US dollars, which is like gold up here in Canada (actually the conversion rate isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still more!).

Yipee… now my kids will have Christmas presents after all!

“May I present my wife, Asherah?”

The Fort Wayne News Sentinel has a brief article on William Dever’s recent book, Does God have a Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Eerdmans, 2005; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). Actually, the report was more on his SBL session of the same topic. I particularly liked the quote from Dever which concluded the article:

After quoting a number of feminist scholars arguing for a female deity, Dever then quotes his five-year-old stepdaughter explaining why God must be both “a man and a woman.”

It’s because, she said, “half the people in the world are women and God has to be for everybody.”

God’s Big Toe

I came across what looks like a delightful children’s book by Rabbi Marc Gellman and Oscar de Mejo (Illustrator), called Does God Have a Big Toe?: Stories About Stories in the Bible (HarperTrophy, 1993; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). This book has been around for a while (it won a number of children book prizes when it was first published in 1989), but I had never heard of it. The back cover describes the book this:

Reflecting Mr. Gellman’s lifelong love for his subject, this witty collection of midrashim provides a wonderful way to learn about and to share the stories of the Bible.

While I can’t recommend it without seeing it; it sure looks like it would be a great Christmas/Hanukkah gift!

After a short hiatus, the Review of Biblical Literature Newsleter is back up and running. Today’s issue notes a number of reviews relating to the Hebrew Bible and the Second Temple period. The Campbell Festschrift looks like it has a number of interesting chapters from the likes of Peckham, Lohfink, Sweeney, McEvenue, Knierim, among others. In particular, the chapter by Steven McKenzie on Jonah looks like it is worth a read.

• Martin Kessler, ed., Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence. Reviewed by Else Holt.
• Kenneth Mathews, The New American Commentary: Genesis 11:27-50:26. Reviewed by Thomas Hieke
• Mark O’Brien and Howard Wallace, eds., Seeing Signals, Reading Signs: The Art of Exegesis: Studies in Honour of Antony F. Campbell, SJ for his Seventieth Birthday. Reviewed by Mark Christian
• Noel Weeks, Admonition and Curse: The Ancient Near Eastern Treaty/Covenant Form as a Problem in Inter-Cultural Relationships. Reviewed by John Engle

Second Temple

• David R. Jackson, Enochic Judaism: Three Defining Paradigm Exemplars. Reviewed by Eric Noffke

Other

• BibleWorks 6. Reviewed by Jan Van Der Watt
• Anne-Marie Pelletier, ed., Bibles en Français: Traduction et Tradition: Actes du Colloque des 5-6 décembre 2003. Reviewed by Sabrina Inowlocki

My good friend Bob Derrenbacker — or is should that be Rev. Dr. Robert Derrenbacker, Jr.? — has entered the blogosphere with his new eponymous blog, “Bob’s Blog” (Gee, I think that was the first time I used “eponymous” outside biblical studies!).

I first got to know Bob during my Toronto days. He is an avid U2 fan, a Macintosh enthusiast, an amateur film critic (Hey Bob, remember the day my wife informed your wife that we went to a film that afternoon? If they only knew… that was only one of many!), and a very good friend!

While Bob has a somewhat distinguished picture of himself on his first blog entry, I dug out a picture taken of Bob some ten years ago. Here he is holding my oldest daughter (who was only eight months old at the time).

Oh yeah… Bob is also a great scholar. He is Assistant Professor of New Testament Studies at Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. His University of St. Michael’s College doctoral dissertation, completed under Dr. John Kloppenborg, was entitled “Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem.”” It is soon to be published in the series Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium (It was supposed to be available at SBL). Bob is also the author of a number of essays and articles in periodicals including Journal of Biblical Literature and Toronto Journal of Theology, and is currently working on a book for Paulist Press, What Are They Saying About Q? His academic interests include the composition of the Gospels, Pauline literature and theology, the Historical Jesus, the social, economic and political backgrounds of the New Testament, ancient literacy and book production, and the portrayal of Jesus in modern film.

In his new blog — which you should add to your blog aggregator and blogroll — Bob promises to give us his musings on biblical studies, politics, faith and culture. I look forward to being a regular reader!

Once again, welcome!

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