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.

The first day of meetings of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies were held on Sunday. Here are some highlights.

Hebrew Bible Session Highlights
The papers in this first session were excellent, IMHO. Here are my thoughts on select papers:

Keith Bodner (who is leaving Tyndale University College and heading out east this summer to join the faculty of Atlantic Baptist University) presented a witty and engaging paper entitled, “The Fellowship of the King: Some Remarks on a Formative Interaction.” I couldn’t think of a better way to start the day! Keith always gives entertaining and informative papers. Based on a close rereading of 1 Samuel 9, Keith highlighted the narrative conflict between Prophet and King (Samuel and Saul) in this early passage — a conflict that would characterize Saul’s turbulent reign. One of the points that I appreciated was his characterization of the girls’ speech in 1 Sam 9:11-13 as confused language (following Rendsburg’s article, “Confused Language as a Deliberate Literary Device in Biblical Hebrew Narrative,” JHS 2:6 [1999]). In addition, Keith argued that Saul’s inability to follow the girls’ instructions (in that he didn’t just go up and find the seer, but he asked where the seer’s house was even though the girls told him he was visiting) foreshadows his inability to follow directions. Marie-France Dion from Concordia University read a paper on the same passage entitled “Who was Samuel to Saul.” In contrast to Keith’s literary approach, Dion presented a source-critical analysis of the passage, arguing that 9:1-2a, 13a, 15-16, 17b, 20-21, 27b; 10:5b-6, 8-9, 10b-13 are secondary additions to the ur-text.

Gary N. Knoppers , from Pennsylvania State University, read a paper entitled, “‘Give Me that Old-time Religion’: The Revival of Israelite Religion in Postexilic Samaria.” While Gary didn’t break out into song, he did highlight the multi-vocal nature of the passage describing the end of the northern kingdom of Israel in 2 Kings 17. On the one hand, this passage presents the cultis of the remaining and imported inhabitants of the northern kingdom positively, when after being punished by Yahweh with the lion attacks (v. 25), they are instructed in “old-time (northern) religion” by a repatriated priest so that the lion attacks stop (vv. 26-28). Thus, the very sins that condemn the original northerners, saves the new settlers! On the other hand, the passage goes on in the rest of the chapter to criticize the same people for their abandonment of Yahweh as if they were the original covenant people (but they — or at least the majority of them — are not). Gary takes these differing perspectives to suggest that the DtrH is not the product of a monolithic school, but preserves diverse perspectives on the northern kingdom. Thus this passage is not quite the anti-Samaritan polemic that many scholars think it is.

The last paper in the morning session was from my good friend (hmm… I also consider Gary to be a good friend) Mark Boda of McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton. He presented on “Freeing the Burden of Prophecy:‏מַשָּׂא(massa’) and the Legitimacy of Prophecy in Zechariah 9-14.” In this paper Mark debunked the notion that the Hebrew term ‏מַשָּׂא (massa’) is best understood as “burden” since it doesn’t only introduce negative prophecies. The term is also not a genre tag that introduces an exposition of a previously communicated expression of the divine will as Richard Weis suggests in his 1986 Claremont dissertation. In contrast, Mark demonstrated that the term can introduce and type of prophetic oracle and its use in Zechariah 9:1, 12:1 and Malachi 1:1 represents a renewal of prophecy in response to Jeremiah’s earlier prohibition in Jer 23:33-40.

Knoppers’ 1 Chronicles Commentary Honoured
At the annual banquet Sunday night Dr. Gary Knoppers won the R.B.Y. Scott Book Award for his Anchor Bible Commentary on 1 Chronicles. This award is for an outstanding book in the area of Hebrew Bible or Ancient Near Eastern studies by a member of the CSBS. I couldn’t think of a better book or person to receive this prestigious award. Well done, Gary!

I highly recommend Gary’s commentary on 1 Chronicles:

• Knoppers, Gary N. I Chronicles 1-9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible. Doubleday, 2004. Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com
• Knoppers, Gary N. I Chronicles 10-29: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible. Doubleday, 2004. Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com

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:

Sunday Morning Sessions

• Keith Bodner (Tyndale University College) “The Fellowship of the King: Some Remarks on a Formative Interaction”
• Marie-France Dion (Concordia University) “Who was Samuel to Saul? A Critical Analysis of I Sam 9:1-10:16; 10:17-27: 11:1-15”
• Gord Oeste (Wycliffe College) “Legitimation and Delegitimation in Judges 9: Abimelech’s Rise and Demise”
• Gary N. Knoppers (Pennsylvania State University) “‘Give Me that Old-time Religion’: The Revival of Israelite Religion in Postexilic Samaria”
• Mark Boda (McMaster Divinity College) “Freeing the Burden of Prophecy: maśśa and the Legitimacy of Prophecy in Zechariah 9-14”

Monday Morning Sessions

• Tim Goltz (McGill University) “Two Rhetorical Methods for Two Historical Audiences: Reading and Hearing Texts in Ancient Israel”
• Ken Ristau (Pennsylvania State University) “Of Prophets and Monarchs: The Death of Josiah in Chronicles”
• Christine Mitchell (St. Andrew’s College) “Temperance, Temples and Colonies: Reading the Book of Haggai in Saskatoon”
• Robert Culley (McGill University) “Reading the Complaints of the Individual”
• James Linville (University of Lethbridge) “Bugs Through the Looking Glass: The Infestation of Meaning in Joel”
• R. Glenn Wooden (Acadia Divinity College) “Daniel against the wise-men: the nuanced use of wisdom terms in Daniel 1-2”

Tuesday Morning Sessions

• Arthur Walker-Jones (University of Winnipeg) “Myth Criticism of the Psalms”
• Tyler F. Williams (Taylor University College) “The Psalm Superscriptions and the Composition of the Book of Psalms”
• Ehud Ben Zvi (University of Alberta) “The Account of Amaziah in 2 Chronicles 25”
• David Shepherd (Briercrest College) “‘Strike his bone and his flesh’: Reading Job 2 from the Beginning”
• Derek Suderman (Emmanuel College) “Towards an Improved Description of Biblical Prayer: Form-Critical Approaches to Direct Address in Psalm 55”
• John Van Seters (Waterloo, ON) “The Myth of the ‘Final Form’ of the Biblical Text”

It looks like a good slate of papers (I hear the one by Tyler Williams is awesome!). I may blog a few reports for papers which I find particularly interesting.

A full programme with abstracts is available from the CSBS website here.