There was another excellent Hebrew Bible session Monday morning. I had the honor of hearing papers from two former students (Ken Ristau and Tim Goltz) who are both in doctoral programs (Ken at Penn State and Tim at McGill). Here are some highlights:
Tim Goltz (a doctoral student at McGill University) presented a paper entitled “Two Rhetorical Methods for Two Historical Audiences: Reading and Hearing Texts in Ancient Israel” in which he provided an excellent survey of rhetorical approaches to the Hebrew Bible. He organized them in two general approaches: rhetoric as the art of composition (aka the “Muilenberg” school with Lundbom, Trible, and Sternberg) and rhetoric as the art of persuasion (Patrick, Scult, and Duke).
Ken Ristau (a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University) presented a compelling paper on the Chronicler’s Josiah called “Of Prophets and Monarchs: The Death of Josiah in Chronicles.” Ken argued that the presentation of Josiah in Chronicles lacks the typical joy and blessing that one would expect in Chronicles and that his death is presented ironically. Furthermore, while Josiah’s reforms are presented as the consummation of the Davidic promise, his death marks its end. (Perhaps Ken will provide a more detailed summary on his blog?)
There were a couple of rather entertaining papers in the morning that shared a similar intertextual method. Christine Mitchell (St. Andrew’s College, Sask) linked Haggai and Saskatoon in her paper “Temperance, Temples and Colonies: Reading the Book of Haggai in Saskatoon” while James Linville (University of Lethbridge) went down the rabbit hole and explored “Bugs Through the Looking Glass: The Infestation of Meaning in Joel.” Christine’s paper drew some interesting parallels between the founding of Saskatoon as a temperance colony and Persian period Yehud — particularly how they both were “charter groups” supported by outsiders (in Toronto and Persia, respectively).
Rounding out the morning were papers by Robert Culley (McGill University) and R. Glenn Wooden (Acadia Divinity College). Culley’s presentation on the individual laments (“Reading the Complaints of the Individual”) drew from his lifetime of studying the psalms. After discussing his take on genre (which focuses more on Gunkel’s form rather than Sitz im Leben) and traditional language in the psalms, he worked through a number of laments (Psalms 3, 7, 88, and 22). He summed up his paper emphasizing the importance of considering both the generic elements of the psalms (the group) as well as the unique features of any given psalm (the individual). Glen’s paper, “Daniel against the wise-men: the nuanced use of wisdom terms in Daniel 1-2,” argued, among other things, that the term משׂכלים (mskylym) as used in Daniel separates Daniel and his friends from the other wise men.
All in all there were some interesting sessions on Monday.
Knoppers’ 1 Chronicles Commentary Honoured
The Canadian Society of Biblical Studies begins its 2005 annual meetings later this morning in London, Ontario. I am set up in my dorm room with hi-speed internet, so I figured I would highlight some of the upcoming sessions relating to Hebrew Bible/Old Testament:
Then I went over to the dark side. I didn’t want to. I resisted for many years. But my workplace signed a deal with Darth Gates and went all Windows. At first I was able to co-exist with my Mac being the shining beacon of hope on the network, but then a new printer/photocopier was bought that didn’t support Macs. At that point I bought myself a Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop — but I still used my Mac, admittedly less and less as I migrated more software over to Windows. The one primary reason that I kept my Mac running was to use Accordance Bible Software. While I also ran Accordance on my Dell laptop with Basilisk’s emulator, I preferred my Mac. But my old PowerCentre was beginning to show its age.
If money wasn’t an issue, I would buy a brand-spanking new Power Macintosh G5 Dual Processor supercomputer like my friend did. But my wife insists that money is an issue, so I did the next best thing: I bought my friend’s used Power Macintosh G4 Dual Processor computer. Considering that this Mac is really only around so I can use Accordance, it will be more than enough computer. Now I can finally run MacOS X! I can finally use Accordance with MacOS X! And I can finally integrate my Mac with my Windows network seamlessly. So, while I haven’t totally come back from the dark side, I am the proud owner of a “new” G4 PowerMac and am in my own way continuing the resistance!
According to my count there have been a total of nine films based on the book of Esther. Besides the 1916 silent film directed by Maurice Elvey, the French produced three silent films inspired by the biblical character: Gaumont studios produced two films in 1910: Esther and Mordecai directed by Louis Feuillade and The Marriage of Esther, while C.G.P.C. made another movie called Esther directed by Henri Andréani. In addition, the Dutch director-actor Theo Frankel directed Esther: A Biblical Episode in 1911.
As a biblical scholar I found Esther and the King quite interesting — especially how they modified the king’s reason for getting rid of Queen Vashti. In the film they have Vashti cheating on the king and actually showing up at the banquet and performing a striptease (see picture of Daniela Rocca as Vashti above right), while in the biblical account she is dumped because she refused to come at the king’s command (Esther 1:10-12). What is perhaps ironic, is that some scholars (such as Michael Fox in his excellent book, Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther (Eerdmans, 2001; 
I have uploaded a new section on 
As a biblical scholar I have always been fascinated how the screenwriters and directors adapted the biblical narratives and solved some of the critical problems in the biblical text. Many of these films make fascinating hermeneutical studies in and of themselves. It has been a real treat watching some of them for the first time.
I just received my copy of the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible (SESB), and let’s just say that so far I am very impressed.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone blog on this little bit of “news” yet, but it appears that Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman has been studying the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.