Volume X (Summer 2005) of the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture is online. The volume has a number of interesting articles, including articles on South Park, Dr. Phil, as well as the portrayal of Islam in popular culture. Check it out.
There are also a number of book reviews. Especially worth noting is the review of Bryan Stone’s Faith and Film: Theological Themes at the Cinema by someone called Tyler F. Williams.
In his most recent installment of his must-read “NT Apocrypha” series, Phil Harland explores Jesus’ attitude toward children. Most are familiar with Jesus’ positive attitude toward children presented in the synoptics in Mark 10:13-16, Matthew 19:13-15, and Luke 18:15-17 (“Let the little children come…”).
In contrast to this kid-friendly Jesus, Phil brings up a passage from the Acts of Thomas in which the risen Jesus provides some advice for the newly married. Jesus tells a newly married couple to avoid “filthy intercourse” so that you won’t “be weighed down by cares… for children, the end of which is destruction.”
Since I have three kids (and I enjoyed the process of contributing to their conception), I guess I’ll stick with the biblical Jesus!
The latest edition of the Review of Biblical Literature has a number of Hebrew Bible related reviews, as well as some other relevant reviews in the area of hermeneutics and Septuagint studies. Noteworthy are the two reviews of M. Christine Tetley’s The Reconstructed Chronology of the Divided Kingdom. The eight-page review by Andrew Steinmann is quite thorough and uncovers a number of faulty assumptions in Tetley’s work, while Jennifer Singletary’s review also highlights some methodological problems. It appears that the mysterious numbers of the Hebrew kings are still a mystery!
The Da Vinci Code received its highest honour to date when it was featured on Sunday’s episode of Family Guy. The baby, Stewie, stayed up all night and read it — I figured they were going to make more of it, but that was about it! (I was researching my religion & popular culture course while watching, of course!)
The latest edition of the ever-serious online Christian news source Larknews has a “news” story on how Bruce Wilkerson’s little book, The Prayer of Jabez, has devastated China’s house church movement. You can read it for yourself and snicker here.
If you want to listen to a more sober and somewhat academic response to Wilkerson’s Prayer of Jabez (as well as The Bible Code), you can listen to the MP3 of the public lecture I gave at Taylor University College entitled, “Jabez and the Hidden Codes of the Bible: The Use of the Old Testament in Popular Culture” October 24, 2002. The lecture is available on the Public Lecture Archive page.
I am relieved to report that biblioblogger Michael Homan is safe and sound. His personal report on his experiences riding out hurricane Katrina and its aftermath is a must read. In another blog entry he also appeals for financial donations to some less-known but worthy charities.
As I mentioned in a previous blog entry (“Theological Reflection on Hurricane Katrina“), Canadians can donate to the World Vision Hurricane Katrina response by calling 1 (800) 268-5528 or donating online here, or to the Canadian Red Cross by going here.
The latest Review of Biblical Literature has come out; here are the reviews related to the study of the Hebrew Bible:
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz has a story that reports on a discovery of a mystrious pendant among the refuse from the Temple Mount that for a fertile imagination could lead to a best-selling novel… oh, wait, Dan Brown already wrote one like that called the Da Vinci Code.
At any rate, here are some excerpts from the article:
Mysterious Temple Mount artifact evokes ‘Da Vinci Code’
By Amiram Barkat
When Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkai and his assistant Tzachi Zweig began the painstaking task of sifting through mounds of Temple Mount rubble, they hoped to find artifacts dating from the period of the First or Second Temple.They never dreamed of finding a mysterious artifact that looks like something straight out of the world of controversial theories propounded by “The Da Vinci Code.”
…
Barkai, an expert on biblical archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, and Zweig, a master’s student there, have spent 10 months examining rubble from the Solomon’s Stables area of the Temple Mount. This dirt dates from the Crusades, when Muslim rulers apparently blocked up the spaces along the periphery of Solomon’s Stables.Barkai and Zweig discovered in the rubble a cross-shaped bronze pendant measuring a square centimeter. The pendant, which was originally gold-plated, bears mysterious symbols: on one side are a hammer, pincers and nails; the flip side has what looks like a sun, as well as an altar. But the main symbol, which immediately grabs the attention, is the Holy Grail lying on a crown of thorns.
According to Barkai, some of the people who saw the pendant suggested that this was an artifact that related to “The Da Vinci Code,” but Barkai was dismissive. “I heard several interesting explanations along those lines,” he said, “but in my opinion there is here nothing more than a coincidence that ignites the imagination.”
Zweig decided to examine the pendant thoroughly. He supposed that it dated from the 19th century, since Christians had been barred from visiting the Temple Mount from the end of the Crusades until 1840. Based on the symbols, and particularly the work tools, he assumed the pendant was related to the Freemasons, a semi-secret fraternity that was founded in 18th-century England and established branches, or lodges, in nearly all Western countries.
Zweig could not locate an expert on Masonic symbols in Israel, so he contacted Prof. Andrew Prescott, director of the new Centre for Research into Freemasonry at the University of Sheffield. Prescott studied the photographs of the pendant and replied to Zweig at the beginning of this week that the symbols do, indeed, appear to be connected to the Freemasons, but are not the symbols of Britain’s Masonic Lodge.
Prescott noted, however, that members of the fraternity had visited the Temple Mount area during the 19th century. The mysterious pendant might have belonged to famed archaeologist Charles Warren, who made a documented visit to the Temple Mount in 1867, he said.
If the pendant is Masonic, then there is an indirect connection between it and “The Da Vinci Code” – Brown claims in his book that the Freemasons are the successors of the Knights Templar.
Barkai said that beyond the story itself, the pendant attested to the variety and multitude of artifacts buried over the years on the Temple Mount. “Dirt from the Temple Mount is not ordinary dirt, but rather dirt that portrays the history of this land.”
Barkai and Zweig are studying truckloads of Crusader dirt mixed with modern construction waste that were removed clandestinely in November 1999 and dumped in the Kidron riverbed, east of the Old City. There is controversy among archaeologists regarding the value of studying this rubble, because the admixture makes it hard to date, and it is unclear where the dirt used to plug the holes at Solomon’s Stables originated.
Once again, truth is strangler than fiction. The original Hebrew article may be found here. Thanks to Joseph I. Lauer for the heads up via the ANE list.
I just received my copy of Nava Bergman’s The Cambridge Biblical Hebrew Workbook: Introductory Level (Cambridge University Press, 2005; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com). There are many features of this book that are quite appealing, such as its application of modern language acquisition techniques to make learning biblical Hebrew “an active and inspiring process.” While the Workbook is intended to be used together with an introductory Biblical Hebrew textbook, after examining it, I am not sure how that would work.
The Workbook is actually only one component of an introductory Hebrew “study-kit” written in Swedish that includes this workbook, a textbook, and an audio-CD package with word lists, exercises, texts and biblical songs. It’s too bad that the other components were also not made available in English. The primary problem I see with trying to use this resource with another grammar is that the terminology, explanations, and exercises would almost certainly differ on many points with any other introductory grammar, which would only cause more confusion for your students. (If you have used this work or are planning on using it, I would love some feedback as to how it worked in your class)
On this note, Frederick Greenspahn has an article called, “Why Hebrew Textbooks Are Different From Those For Other Languages” on the latest SBL Forum that is worth a read. Greenspahn rightly, IMHO, takes many of the introductory Hebrew textbooks to task for being far too complicated and out of sync with similar textbooks for learning other foreign languages. He also notes that while there has been a proliferation of introductory grammars in the last decade, “The fact of the matter is that they are all fundamentally alike.” He surmises that “the real reason for this proliferation has less to do with the emergence of new philosophies than with the pressures of the marketplace, whether on faculty who need to publish or on publishers who hope that textbooks will be a lucrative product.”
In his criticism of the technical nature of so many introductory Hebrew grammars, Greenspahn ponders why this is the case. He contends,
The obvious beneficiary of presenting Hebrew and the Bible as too hard for beginners is the guild of “experts,” whose authority is enhanced by emphasizing the difficulty of the material they have mastered. In other words, it is to our advantage to present the language in as difficult a way as possible. The harder it appears, the smarter we must be and the more essential we become for anyone who wants to know what it says. We reinforce that message every time we use a technical term or mention an exotic language, demonstrating our access to information that introductory students cannot hope to match.
I am not so sure I buy his explanation. Most introductory Hebrew teachers want to instill a love of the language in their students, rather than awe them with their amazing knowledge of the Canaanite shift (and no, it isn’t a dance). That being said, I have heard enough horror stories about introductory Hebrew classes to know that there is some truth to his criticism.
Reading Greenspahn’s article confirmed my choice of using Bonnie Kittel’s Biblical Hebrew: Text and Workbook for introductory Hebrew classes. While it is not an ideal textbook, it serves beginning students well by not inudating them with technical explanations and endless paradigms. It’s goal is to enable students to read the biblical text, plain and simple. I wish I could say the second “fully revised” edition of Kittel by Victoria Hoffer appears to be vast improvement of the first edition. While it makes some improvements in its appearance and explanations, the lessons and exercises are essentially the same (I will provide a full evaluation after having used it in my class). That being said, I think it is still one of the best introductory grammars available (even though it doesn’t meet all of Greenspahn’s standards).
For more information about available introductory Hebrew grammars, see my survey here. For resources for using Kittel’s grammar, go here.