For those of you who are inclined to weigh in on such issues, a small argument (of sorts) has developed around an article that I wrote for Galus Australis. It’s a frivolous article, but it seems to have struck a vein with a few people and, having felt obliged to defend it, I found that the ensuing argument struck a vein with me as well. All are welcome to leave opinions of their own on the thread, and I invite anybody with an interest in the issue to do so.
Scribal Errors
5 08 2009Having recently acquired a facsimile edition of the Aleppo Codex, I decided to do a little research on its origins and development. The first place that I chose to look was The Aleppo Codex: a website developed by the Ben-Zvi Institute of Jerusalem. The site is old news now, but certainly worth checking out if you haven’t seen it already.
I mention this because, while the English of the site is less than perfect, one particular passage is most illuminating. It is strangely fitting that it should occur in a section that describes the precise copying of the Masoretic Text, and the nature of the errors that crept in. Interested parties may access the page in question here, and scroll down to section §1.10:
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Categories : Bible
Bookish
4 08 2009The problem with being a book collector (of sorts) in a city like Jerusalem, is that desirable tomes are practically falling off the shelves and there are only so many that I can possibly seize. Rather than leave the country with innumerable books at bargain prices, I decided to set myself a $500AUS budget and pick a few really good ones. That would have worked fine, had I the willpower to wait until right before leaving and then grab some books. Instead, having started the trip by buying some really good books straight away, I am already well over budget and have still not scratched my itch.
So far, the only book that is really worth writing home about is the Hebrew University’s (utterly gorgeous) facsimile publication of the Aleppo Codex (the כתר ארם צובה). For that little beauty, I had to pay 2600NIS (including shipping), which came to $800AUS. Needless to say, that has pushed me well over my proposed budget and is an excellent indication as to why I cannot be trusted with money. In the meantime, I have also found a very beautiful 1400NIS ($430AUS) Biblia Hebraica from the middle of the 18th century, and I am currently working out whether or not I can conceivably afford it.
To the accumulation of books, there is no end.
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Categories : Personal Reflections
Observations from Jerusalem
4 08 2009On busy King George St, in the centre of town, stands a wide arch with a prominent clock as its centrepiece. Israelis gather in the shade beneath this arch, waiting for one of the many buses that come by. A little bit of research revealed to me that it is the sole remaining edifice of a Christian girls’ orphanage that was established in the middle of the 19th century and demolished almost thirty years ago. While many Israelis are undoubtedly aware of its provenance, I wonder how many are aware of the provenance of its message?
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Categories : Language, Random Musings
On Messianism and Sectarianism
27 07 2009My new article is up, over at Galus Australis. My concern has been with the rise in messianism and sectarianism in the contemporary Hassidic group, Chabad-Lubavitch. The article is presented along with the article of a fellow who is attempting to justify the group, by claiming that the situation is not as widespread as I’ve suggested. I expect the comments to get fairly feisty on this one!
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Categories : Random Musings
More Confusion, which me does not as one bit.
26 07 2009In a rather humorous new post, Mark Liberman comments on the functional confusion engendered by clauses that present a choice between “as” and “like”, as well as those that ask us for a first-person singular pronoun (“I” or “me”). I can identify! Being a terrible pedant, there has been many a sentence that I have had to tiptoe my way through (which is to say, “through which I have had to tiptoe”) in order to speak in a manner commensurate with my own (admittedly, ridiculous) preconceptions of “correct English”. I was aware that “like” had become substitutable for “as”, but was unaware that it required the accusative pronoun. Goddamit! Just when you think you have attained linguistic superiority…
In other news, Miſiſippi Fred has an interesting post on the diſappearance of the ſ. Not to be confuſed with the f, of courſe.
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Categories : Random Musings
15th World Congress of Jewish Studies
23 07 2009ManuscriptBoy, at Hagahot, has just gushed a little, regarding some of the exciting papers that are going to be presented at the upcoming World Congress of Jewish Studies. I know where he’s coming from! You can download the 217-page program yourselves, from here. Truly amazing! There are a number of sessions that have me almost clapping my hands with excitement, but by far the most amazing are the seven sessions on synchronic and diachronic approaches to Biblical Hebrew. What is one to do! In the interests of sharing my schedule (and possibly boring several of you to tears – although nobody is making you read it), the following papers constitute highlights for me:
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Categories : Bible, Hebrew, Jewish Tradition, Language, Literature, Semitic Languages
Galus Australis
23 07 2009As of this week, I am now going to be a regular contributor at “Galus Australis”, the link to which can be found among my other links on the right-hand side of the page. Rather than cross-post to Davar Akher, I thought that I might provide people with the opportunity to read the articles at “Galus Australis”, and possibly comment upon them, in situ. My first article, which was uploaded yesterday evening, is on same-sex marriage. My question: do our prejudices derive from the Bible, or are they something that we have been taught to read into the Bible?
I recently met a homosexual man who was opposed to gay marriage and whose opinions on the topic I found most interesting. He recently uploaded a rather touching exploration of his feelings for his friend, and he mentions his objections to the institution of marriage there. It’s well worth a read.
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Categories : Random Musings
The Numbers Game
19 07 2009This is a very interesting article, isn’t it? It was written in 2004 and it concerns the frequency of various types of “tag questions”, which are defined as interrogative clauses appended to the ends of declarative statements. Mark’s two examples are:
1. You were missing last week, weren’t you?
2. Thorpe’s away, is he?
The specific issue that Mark is investigating is whether men and women are more likely to favour these terms of speech and he comes to the conclusion that, rather than being necessarily gender-based, certain types of tag questions are favoured by people in positions of power (doctors, teachers, etc), while being virtually eschewed – in fact, in the data that Mark presents, completely eschewed by the corresponding powerless: patients, students and so forth.
Mark’s most recent post (which can be found here) concerns the prevalence of first-person pronouns in different texts, and he likewise asks whether or not such usage may be based around issues of gender or power. I found this latest article to be of especial interest, given one point in particular that he makes:
To learn more about these questions requires counting how pronouns are used, not just how many of which are where. [My emphasis]
In a world in which data is so often tabulated based on frequency alone, there are many scholars out there who should be taking Mark’s advice.
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Categories : Language
The Vanishing Bible
18 07 2009I recently had an interesting article drawn to my attention by Jack Sasson, via his “Agade” mailing list. The article is by Philip Davies, author of (amongst other things) Whose Bible is it Anyway?. In that book, first published in 1995, Davies argued against the “confessional” approach to Biblical scholarship and suggested that the Bible belongs to the general population and not to the religious alone. As he notes in this new article (aptly titled, “Whose Bible? Anyone’s?”), there is a tremendous irony here. Secular academics can rant for all they like about the Bible not being a religious text but if religious people stop caring about it, we’ll all be out of a job.
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Categories : Bible
Echoes from the Ether: