Biblical Studies Carnival XVI is online at Novum Testamentum

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Brandon Wason has uploaded Biblical Studies Carnival XVI over at his blog, Novum Testamentum. I particularly appreciate this month’s Carnival since I fell off the blogging world for a couple weeks in March due to being busy teaching, among other things. I can’t believe how much one misses if you don’t check the blogs in a week or two! Brandon has done an excellent job highlighting the best of biblical studies in the blogosphere last month. Of course, one of the main topics is the Jesus/Talpiot Tomb debate that is continuing to dominate some blogs.

Biblical Studies Carnival XVII will be hosted by Christopher Heard over at Higgaion in the first week of May 2007. Look for a call for submissions on his blog mid-month.

As you are reading posts around the blogosphere this month, make sure to nominate appropriate posts for the next Carnival. You can submit/nominate posts via the submission form at BlogCarnival.com or you may email them to biblical_studies_carnival AT hotmail DOT com.

For more information, consult the Biblical Studies Carnival Homepage.


Happy Fool’s Day!

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Ah… April Fool’s Day… I have many fond memories about fooling friends on April Fool’s Day. I think one of my best pranks was giving some friends eviction notices when we were all living in student housing at the University of Toronto. Another prank that I am quite fond of is my blog post from one year ago today: “David King of Judahâ€? Seal Uncovered (April Fool’s Day 2006 Post). Since my actual birthday is on April 1st, I have the advantage of always being aware that April Fool’s day is coming. I don’t have any pranks planned for this year… or do I?

Have a great day!


First Temple Era Wall Uncovered

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It appears that Eilat Mazar’s Jerusalem excavation is turning up more significant finds every year (see here for previous discoveries). The Jerusalem Post has an article in which it is claimed that a wall from the First Temple period was recently uncovered in Jerusalem’s City of David. Here is an excerpt:

A 20-meter-long section of the 7-meter-thick wall has now been uncovered. It indicates that the City of David once served as a major government center, Mazar said.

Mazar estimates less than a quarter of the entire wall has been uncovered so far, and says that it is the largest site from King David’s time ever to have been discovered.

This news piece hasn’t been picked up or expanded on yet. Among bloggers, Jim Davila and Jim West note it but that’s about it.


New Articles in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures

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There are some new articles in the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, as well as a number of book reviews.

The articles are as follows:

Mark Sneed, “‘White Trash’ Wisdom: Proverbs 9 Deconstructed”
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures – Volume 7: Article 5 (2007)

Though Woman Wisdom has often been viewed as a positive figure for feminism, I will show that the picture is much grimmer. The article has two parts. First, I will demonstrate that the personification of wisdom reinscribes the typical ideology of the time along gender, social class, and racial lines. The eroticization of wisdom as female actually excludes the woman from the search for truth and knowledge because it assumes its adherents are male. Woman Wisdom is shown to be upper class, while Folly is poor. And Woman Wisdom is shown to be xenophobic in her preference for Jewish boys. Second, wisdom/folly, the dominant dichotomy of these chapters, will be shown to deconstruct, showing how both Woman Wisdom and Folly are inextricably connected and partake of each other’s identity. The boundary between the two begins to blur.

Scott B. Noegel, “‘Word Play’ in Qoheleth”
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures – Volume 7: Article 4 (2007)

This study offers a comprehensive treatment of the subject of “word play� in the book of Qoheleth. After discussing the problematic nature of the term “word play,� and explaining my preference for the word “punning,� I examine six different types of punning found in Qoheleth. The first, focuses on alliteration, or the repeated use of consonants. The second section collects examples of assonance, or the repeated use of vowel patterns. The third section focuses on illustrations of polysemy; cases in which words bear more than one meaning in a single context. The fourth section, which is related to polysemy, details cases of antanaclasis. Antanaclasis occurs when a word is used multiple times, but with different meanings. In the fifth section, I provide examples of allusive punning, i.e., the use of words or forms that imply by way of similarity of sound another word that does not occur in the text. The sixth section is devoted to instances of numerical punning. After providing the data for each of these devices, I offer some general observations on punning in Qoheleth.

Lisbeth S. Fried, “Did Second Temple High Priests Possess the Urim and Thummim?”
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures – Volume 7: Article 3 (2007)

According to TB Yoma 21b, the urim and the thummim and the spirit of prophecy were among the things missing from the Second Temple. According to Ezra 2:61-63 (Neh.7:63-65), they were missing from the time of the return. Josephus suggests, however, that the urim and thummim stopped shining, that is they ceased to function, only around 104 BCE, about the time of John Hyrcanus’ death. According to Josephus, then, second temple high priests consulted urim and thummim. To decide between these two claims, we examine second temple texts dated to the period before Hyrcanus’ death. These texts confirm Josephus and suggest that the contemporary high priest may have used urim and thummim as an oracular device.

The book reviews may be accessed here.


Neo-Babylonian Creation Texts (Creation in Ancient Mesopotamia, Part 3)

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This is the third post in the series “Ideas of Origins and Creation in Ancient Mesopotamia.â€? The first post in the series detailed some methodological issues and highlighted some bibliographical resources, while the second post surveyed creation texts from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000 – 1600 BCE). This post will discuss a number of Neo-Bablylonian creation texts, while the fourth post in the series will synthesize the findings and relate them to our understanding of the biblical creation texts.

Neo-Babylonian Sources (ca. 1000–500 BCE)

Some of the more familiar “creation texts” from the ANE are found in the Neo-Babylonian period. The compositions are presented in random order and quotations are taken from the most recent scholarly translation of the text, usually The Context of Scripture. Once again, it should be noted that this section is by no means exhaustive.

enuma_elish.jpg1. Enuma elish / The Epic of Creation
[Texts come from three primary sources: (1) excavations at Nineveh by the British, published in CT XIII (1901); L. W. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation (2 vols.; London: 1902); (2) British-American excavations at Kish, found in S. Langdon, Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts VI (1923); and (3) German excavations at Ashur, printed in E. Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts (Leipzig, 1919, 1923). A composite cuneiform text was published by W. G. Lambert and Simon B. Parker, Enuma elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). Translations: Context of Scripture, 1.111; ANET 60-72, 501-503; Jacobsen, Treasures, 167-191; Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: the Story of Creation (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 1-60; Dalley, Myths, 228-77. Online: Sacred Texts; GatewaysToBabylon.com]

This poem, often called after its opening words Enuma elish (“When above…�), is usually dated around 1100 BCE. Its Akkadian seems to be a bit older than that date, suggesting that it could have been composed earlier. Jacobsen proposes that it could derive from the middle of the latter half of the second millennium BCE (Treasures, 167). Assuming that the Babylonian version is primary, it clearly could not have been written before the reign of Sumula-el (1936–1901 BCE), during whose reign Marduk came to supremacy. Hammurapi, Agum-Kakrime, Nebuchadnezzar I, among others, have all been suggested as possible reigns under which the epic could have been composed. Dalley favours an Amoritic setting for the composition of the tale (Myths, 229-230).

Referring to this work as “The Epic of Creation� is somewhat of a misnomer. While some of its contents certainly deal with questions of origins, its primary concern is with exalting Marduk and the establishment of permanent kingship. As such, it would be more accurate to consider it a panegyric in honour of the god Marduk (cf. the last line of the epic: “The song about Marduk, who vanquished Tiamat and assumed kingship.�). The epic also had a cultic function. A ritual text is extant that gives directions that the Epic of Creation was to be read (or enacted) on the fourth day of the New Year Festival in Babylon.

The epic itself consists of seven tablets which trace the advances towards and challenges against attaining the goal of Monarchy. The story can roughly be divided into two sections: a brief one dealing with the foundations of the universe (tablet one), and a much longer section narrating how the present world order was established (tablets two through seven). Only the portions of the epic which especially pertain to this series will be highlighted. The narrative poem begins:

When on high no name was given to heaven,
Nor below was the netherworld called by name,
Primeval Apsu was their progenitor,
And matrix–Tiamat was she who bore them all.

As noted above, the first tablet of the epic deals with the origins of the basic powers of the universe. The theogony of the gods begins with the older intransitive gods Apsu and Tiamat (representing sweet water and salt water respectively). Then the tablets go on to describe the discontent between the older gods — Apsu and Tiamat — and the younger, more boisterous and dynamic gods. Apsu and Tiamat are disturbed by the noise that the younger gods make to the extent that Apsu decides to respond destructively. The younger gods hear of the plot against them and through their appointed champion Marduk, the older gods are vanquished. After Marduk’s victory, he splits Tiamat’s body and fashions the heaven and the earth from it, and also creates the constellations, sun, and the moon.

The next creative act, which is told of on the sixth tablet, is the creation of humankind. After victory, Marduk spared the lives of the gods who had sided with Apsu and Tiamat, and they in turn pledged their allegiance to Marduk and vowed to build him a royal palace. The work proved to be too burdensome for them, and in order to relieve them from their toil Marduk decides to create humankind. The text reads:

“I shall compact blood, I shall cause bones to be,
I shall make stand a human being, let ‘Man’ be its name.
I shall create humankind,
They shall bear the gods’ burden that those may rest.
I shall artfully double the ways of the gods:
(10) Let them be honored as one but divided in twain.�

Marduk, on the advice of his father Ea, calls for an assembly of the gods during which Kingu (or Qingu), the god who incited Tiamat and started the war, was killed and from his blood Ea fashioned humankind. The tale continues to tell of the building of Babylon and ends with the Igigi gods praising Marduk by his fifty names.

2. Chaldean Cosmogony / Bilingual Creation Story
[Texts published in L. W. King, CT XIII (1901) 35-38. Translations: R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (NY and Cincinnati, 1926), 47-50; Heidel, Babylonian, 61-63; S. G. F. Brandon, Creation Legends of the Ancient Near East (London, 1963), 70.]

This bilingual text (Sumerian and Akkadian) comes from the sixth century, but most likely originates from earlier sources. Like the above myth, the central theme and objective of its creation story is to provide justification and support for Marduk’s position as supreme monarch among the Babylonian pantheon. It begins when “all the lands were sea,� and then tells how Eridu and its temple arose in Apsu, along with Babylon and Marduk. Marduk, with the help of the goddess Aruru, then created humankind, “in order to settle the gods in the dwelling of (their) heart’s delight� (Heidel, Babylonian, 63, line 19).

3. The Theogony of Dunnu / Babylonian Theogony
[Published by A. R. Millard, CT XLVI 43. Translations: W. G. Lambert and P. Walcot, “A New Babylonian Theogony and Hesiod,� Kadmos 4 (1965) 64-72; Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Harab Myth,� Studies in the Ancient Near East 2/3 (Malibu; 1984); Context of Scripture, 1.112; ANET 517-518; Dalley, Myths, 278-281.]

This brief story in Akkadian about the begetting of the gods is a Late Babylonian copy of a theogony from the early second millennium when Dunnu was a town of distinction. Unfortunately, a large part of the text is missing, so a proper analysis cannot yet be made. The text depicts the Plough and the Earth as being the source of creation and genitors of the Sea, unlike the stories that have Apsu and Tiamat as the primeval forces in creation. The composition continues to narrate the begetting of other gods, with the motif of incest, patricide and matricide being especially prominent.

4. Atra-hasis
[Full publication data can be found in W. G. Lambert and Alan R. Millard, Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (New ed.; Winnona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com), 31-41. Translations: Context of Scripture, 1.130; ANET 104-106, {512-514}; Jacobsen, Treasures, 116-121; Dalley, Myths, 1-38; W. L. Moran, “The Creation of Man in Atrahasis I 192-248,� Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 200 (1970): 48-56; ibid., “Some Considerations of Form and Interpretation in Atrahasis,� in Language, Literature and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner (ed. F. Rochberg-Halton; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 245-256; ibid., “Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood,� Biblica 52 (1971): 51-61; A. Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Concept of Overpopulation and Its Solution as Reflected in the Mythology,� Orientalia, n.s. 41 (1972): 160-177. Online: GatewaysToBabylon.com]

This Akkadian creation story provides the background for the early history of humankind that leads to the disastrous great flood. The myth is named after its main hero, Atra-hasis (which means “extra-wise�), who built and ark and saved humanity from the destruction of the great flood. The earliest surviving manuscripts come from the seventeenth century BCE, though the composite nature of the work makes any conclusive statements beyond this impossible.

The epic begins at a period in time, before the creation of humanity, when the lower deities had to provide the labour necessary to provide sustenance for the higher gods. The first two lines of the composition reads:

When the gods instead of man [or perhaps: “When the gods were man”]
Did the work, bore the loads . . .

At that time the responsibility for the universe was divided between the great triad of ruling gods: Anu controlled heaven, Enlil ruled on earth, and Enki in the fresh waters below the earth and the sea. In due time the gods found their labour intolerable and began to grumble and ultimately they revolt and refuse to work anymore. The always diplomatic Enki proposes a solution to the quandary: create humankind to do the menial work. This recommendation is approved by the gods, who then enlist the help of the mother goddess Mami (Nintur). The actual description of the creation of humankind is told in two successive parallel accounts. In the first Mami, with the help of Enki, produces humankind from clay made from the flesh and blood of a god named Geshtu-e (We-e), who was obviously the leader of the rebellion (lines 5-245). The second, and more concrete, account notes how Enki and Mami come to the “room of fate� and create seven pairs of people by snipping off clay from a mud brick (lines 249-351).

The epic goes on to tell how humanity proliferates and becomes too noisy; and how, at the insistence of Enlil, the population is reduced respectively by plague, then twice by famine and drought. Finally Enlil sends a great flood to wipe out humanity once and for all, but Enki conspires with Atra-hasis, who is saved from the flood.

5. Trilingual Creation Story
[Printed in E. Ebeling, Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts (Leipzig, 1919, 1923) no. 4. Translations: Ebeling, Zeitschrift der deutschen morganländischen Gesellschaft LXX (1916): 532-38; Heidel, Babylonian, 68-71. Cf. Jacobsen, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 5 (1946): 143, n. 24 ]

This composition discovered at German excavations at Ashur dates from ca. 800 BCE provides another rendition of the creation of humanity. In this text the blood of two craftsman deities is used to make humankind. It reads:

When heaven had been separated from the earth, . . .
(and) the mother goddess had been brought into being; . . .
[Then] the great gods, . . .
Seated themselves in the exalted sanctuary
And recounted among themselves what had been created. . . .
What (else) shall we do? . . .
“Let us slay (two) Lamga gods.
With their blood let us create mankind.
The service of the gods be their portion,
For all times. . . .�

As with many other texts, humankind was created in order that they might serve the gods. Significantly, for the first time in any Babylonian literature the first two humans are given names: Ulligara and Zalgarra, which probably mean “the establisher of abundance� and “the establisher of plenty,� respectively.

6. When Anu Had Created the Heavens
[Printed in The text is published and translated by F. H. Weissbach, Babylonische Miscellen (Leipzig, 1903), pl. 12, 32-34. Translations: Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels, 44-46; Heidel, Babylonian, 65-66]

This text is a brief cosmological story found in Babylon. The creation account in it is employed as an incantation — a magic ritual for the restoration of the temple. The text recites an ancestry of the gods, that begins with Anu, and then recounts the creation of humankind. In this composition Ea pinches off some clay in the Apsu and creates humankind “for the do[ing of the service of the gods(?)].�

7. The Worm and the Toothache
[Published by Thompson, CT XVII (London, 1903) pl. 50. Translations: Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels, 52-53.; Heidel, Babylonian, 72-73; ANET 100-101. Online: GatewaysToBabylon.com]

This manuscript is one of the best incantations that contains cosmological material. It dates from Neo-Babylon times, though a colophon indicates that it originates from an earlier date. The incantation is to relieve a toothache, which evidently was associated with the worm. The cosmological data starts with the creation of heaven by Anu and then goes on to record how Anu created the Earth (Ki), and the Earth created the rivers, and so on all the way down to the worm.

The final post in this series will synthesize the findings and relate them to our understanding of the biblical creation texts.


Hockey Season Over

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No, I’m not talking about the Edmonton Oilers (though I may as well be!); I am talking about my son’s first year of pre-novice hockey. The season ended last weekend, though his team participated in the Tim Horton’s Timbits Jamboree Tournament this weekend (kudos to the organizers). We also had a big end-of-year team party today, so I’m bushed. I’m not sure what we’ll do with our weekends now that hockey is over.

I have to say that I was impressed with the organization of the Confederation Hockey Club (If you live in south-west Edmonton I highly recommend it!). It is very player-oriented and professional. My son’s team had great coaches and an awesome manager (OK, full disclosure, I was the manager!).

My son improved immensely over the year and has developed a love for hockey. I have to admit (and this may sound corny) that taking him to the early morning practices and games made me feel more Canadian. It’s sort of a national rite of passage (that and Tim Horton’s).

Perhaps now I can get back to some academic blogging…


Blogging Lull

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You probably noticed that there has been a bit of a blogging lull! It just seems to be a low energy yet busy time of the semester, so I haven’t had the time nor the inclination to do much blogging. I’m over the hump, so to speak, so I imagine things will pick up here a bit. I have a lot of partially written posts that I hope to finish up, among other things.

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Talpiot in the SBL Forum

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There have been a couple late additions to the Jesus/Talpiot Tomb debate in this month’s SBL Forum (see my previous post here).

First, there is a lengthy response by James Tabor to the articles by Jodi Magness and Christopher Rollston. Tabor’s article, Two Burials of Jesus of Nazareth and The Talpiot Yeshua Tomb, primarily deals with Magness’s criticisms, though he also addresses Rollston’s questions surrounding the identification with the family of Jesus of Nazareth.

Tabor also helpfully offers some comments about the nature of the debate and some suggestions for future research:

The nature of the question, with its theological and emotional overtones, coupled with the way the issue was put before the public and the academy (i.e., through a documentary film and a trade book) has understandably galvanized the responses into “yes” or “no,” (mostly “no”), when reasonable alternatives might be “possible but uncertain,” to even “probable but not certain,” but in any case a call for further investigation. I will make some suggestions at the end of this piece regarding directions for future research.
….
Taken as a whole it seems to me that this tomb and its possible identification with Jesus and Nazareth and his family should not be dismissed. The evidence from the gospels I have surveyed, coupled with the cluster of significant names that fit our hypothetical expectations for a posited pre-70 Jesus family tomb, is strong, and should be further tested. Of course, if the ossuary inscribed “James son of Joseph,” is added to the cluster, and the evidence for that possibility is unresolved at this point, the correspondence would be all the more striking. What is needed is further work on the epigraphy, expanded patina tests, further DNA testing if that is possible, and since the tomb in 1980 had to be excavated so quickly, but now has been located, a fuller archaeological examination of the site itself.

Tabor also has a response to the letter to the editor by Jonathan Reed.

The other article added to the SBL Forum is by Stephen J. Pfann. In his article, “Mary Magdalene is Now Missing: A Corrected Reading of Rahmani Ossuary 701,” Pfann offers an alternative analysis of the “Mariamene the Master” inscription. He argues the inscription reads “Mariame and Mara” and suggests the ossuary contained the bones of at least two different women — neither of being Mary Magdalene.

James Tabor has a response to Pfann’s new reading of the inscription on his Jesus Dynasty blog. Tabor consulted noted epigrapher Leah Di Segni and she writes: “I well remember that, while here and there I had some suggestions about interpretation of a particular form (for instance, Mariamenon being an hypochoristic form of Mariam), I could not but confirm all his readings. I have not changed my mind now.â€? I encourage you to read his whole post, “Leah Di Segni on the Pfann “Correctionâ€? of Rahmani.”

Now that the initial buzz surrounding this “Jesus tomb hypothesis” seems to be dying down a bit, I hope that there will be some more fruitful academic debate surrounding the tomb and ossuaries — and I think that these Forum articles are a good start.


Preaching the Old Testament

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Ray Pritchard has an interesting post over at CrossWalk.com entitled, “Why Don’t Pastors Preach From the Old Testament?” While most of the churches I have attended have done some preaching from the Old Testament (especially when I am preaching!), I would probably agree that the Old Testament gets preached a lot less than the New Testament.

Pritchard provides six reasons why he thinks this is the case. Here are his six points with my comments in brackets following them:

  1. Many pastors feel more comfortable with Greek than with Hebrew. [I’m sad to say that I think many pastors are most comfortable with English and rarely delve into the biblical languages — though feel free to correct me!]
  2. Most biblical training focuses on New Testament interpretation. [Sad but true]
  3. For some there may be theological reasons why they don’t preach from the Old Testament. Perhaps they view everything before Matthew as “preparation” (which in a sense it is) and therefore not worthy of extended attention from the pulpit (a sad mistake, in my opinion). [I would agree that this is a sad — and costly — mistake.]
  4. But my primary thought was that most seminaries specialize in teaching pastors how to preach the epistles. Our methods work best with Romans, Ephesians and the other Pauline epistles. We feel more comfortable with material that is presented logically and in a point-by-point fashion. Therefore our graduates gravitate more to Colossians than to Hosea. [Perhaps; at the very least most pastors seem to prefer to preach non-narrative and non-poetic passages, which pretty much eliminates the Old Testament! It’s hard — and unnatural — to reduce a narrative to a three-point sermon.]
  5. The flip side is that we aren’t so comfortable with the prophets–major or minor. Or with Job. What do you do with Job? Do you preach four or five sermons and move on? Ecclesiastes is a challenge. So is Song of Solomon in a different sense. Then you’ve got books like Leviticus, which most of us never touch. Or Deuteronomy, where we cherry-pick a passage here and there. [I think this is a valid point in that it is more difficult to preach some passages. Of course, that doesn’t mean you should avoid them. The fact of the matter is that while many pastors may think that the NT is more accessible, that is likely an illusion created by familiarity.]
  6. And how should we preach the great stories of the Bible? I personally have profited greatly from preaching through the lives of Abraham, Jacob, Samson, Elijah, the book of Daniel, and David’s early years. But I confess that preaching biblical narratives challenges and stretches the way many of us were taught in seminary. [I think that sometimes we take too much of an anthropological focus in our preaching. Rather than preaching on the lives of the characters in the Old Testament, it is far more profitable to preach on the God that interacts with them and showers them with his grace.]

As I often say (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) most Christians are practical Marcionites in that while they don’t reject the Old Testament, they tend to ignore it.

What is your experience? Does your church preach a lot from the OT? Do you think they should?


A Comparative Psalter: MT, LXX, and English Translations

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[I announced this back in June 2006; it is just now available]

An interesting resource for the study of the Septuagint has just been published by Oxford University Press:

A Comparative Psalter: Hebrew (Masoretic Text) – Revised Standard Version Bible – The New English Translation of the Septuagint – Greek (Septuagint)
John Kohlenberger (ed)
Oxford, March 2007.

Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com

Here’s the blurb from Oxford: This volume brings together the Psalms in a quartet of versions that is certain to be an invaluable resource for students of this core book of the Bible. The texts featured in A Comparative Psalter represent a progression of the text through time. The ancient Masoretic Hebrew and Revised Standard Version Bible are displayed on one page, while the New English Translation of the Septuagint (by Pietersma) and Greek Septuagint are on the facing page. The same set of verses is displayed for all four texts, making it easy to compare to differences between the MT and LXX. The Modern English versions included in this volume are noteworthy for their fidelity to the ancient texts. The first major translation of the Christian Scriptures from the original languages to be undertaken since the King James Version, the RSV debuted in 1952 to critical acclaim. It dramatically shaped the course of English Bible translation work in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, and remains the Bible of choice for many people. Meanwhile, the New English Translation of the Septuagint is the first work of its kind in a century and a half. This major project brings to the fore a wealth of textual discoveries that help illuminate the Book of Psalms for Twenty-first Century readers.