Consecration vs. holiness

Readers of the Hebrew text will note that the verbal form of the root qdš does often take a human subject (commonly translated “consecrate”). However, the verb qdš does not describe the process by which a thing acquires the status represented by the adjective qādôš. For example, priests are consecrated and priests are also holy, but a person can be consecrated without either becoming holy or becoming a priest (e.g., 1 Sam 16:5). The act of consecrating ritual objects for use in the temple (e.g., Ex 30:29) actually describes a two-stage process, consecrate it (and) it will be holy; the NIV mistranslates the connecting particle as “so that,” collapsing two processes into one. We see a similar two-stage process in Jonah 1:12, “throw me into the sea” and “[the sea] will become calm.” The two events are related, but the one does not mechanically cause the other; humans do the first, and God does the second. This is similar to the way construction of sacred objects worked throughout the ancient Near East. The final image is the product of both humans and gods; the humans built the statue and “consecrated” it (Sumerian KU₃, an adjective with a similar range of objects to the Hebrew verb qdš; see discussion in E. Ian Wilson, “Holiness” and “Parity" in Mesopotamia, Alter Orient und Altes Testament 237 [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Verlag Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer, 1994], 13–35), but the process by which it becomes holy (Sumerian DINGIR), described by the metaphor of birth, is a different process, performed by the gods; see Christopher Walker and Michael B. Dick, “The Mesopotamian mis pi Ritual,” in Born in Heaven, Made on Earth, ed. Michael B. Dick (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 55–122, esp. 114–17.— The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, 106 n. 7

<idle musing>
The book, Born in Heaven, Made on Earth is an excellent book if you are interested in these kinds of things. For that matter, you might find The Image of God in the Garden of Eden interesting also. (No, I don't work for Eisenbrauns anymore, but I do recommend books that I think you might find useful—wherever they are!)
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Syncretism at work

Gideon and Joash showed some awareness of YHWH and his cult (see 6:7, 13) but obviously combined those beliefs and practices with those of the surrounding Canaanites. Joash’s challenge to Baal and his followers after Gideon’s destruction of Baal’s altar (6:31) may have signaled a turning point in their religious loyalties but did not necessarily erase the influence of years of syncretistic worship. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that even though Gideon’s moment of self-discovery has shown him that he has been appropriating the honor and loyalty due to YHWH alone, he would misguidedly and pathetically try to restore that honor to God by making a golden ephod for use in his worship.—Judging the Judges, 145

<idle musing>
Sounds only too familiar, doesn't it? Only difference is that the modern version substitutes a political party or cultural stance (right or left, doesn't matter). The end is still an attempt to "misguidedly and pathetically try to restore that honor to God."

Good book by the way. I finished it over the weekend (I'd been wanting to read it for a couple of years) and learned a good bit. The 150(!) pages of tables at the end are really interesting. I wonder if anyone else will use her model on other narratives?
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The function of הנה

Bar-Efrat points out that a significant function of the Hebrew term הנה (behold), especially after a verb of seeing, is to point out that the scene is being viewed from the perspective of one of the characters (35–36).—Judging the Judges, 31

<idle musing>
I'm too lazy to type in the Bar-Efrat reference; you'll have to either buy the book, access it through JSTOR, or borrow it from a library. Or just accept it on Mary Conway's word : )
</idle musing>

Position of power

These episodes [between Ruth and Naomi] demonstrate the way of indicating the speaker that is characteristic for the rhetoric of biblical narrative: the participant whose request, proposal or command prevails is mentioned by name or title, whereas the identity of the participant who complies is not indicated explicitly. In other words, the narrator uses the reference to the different parties in the exchange in order to point to their position in the interaction. This aspect of reference reflects “positioning,” which in social psychology and discourse analysis indicates “the assignment, shaping and negotiations of reciprocal relations between all parties involved in the interaction” (Weizman 2008: 16), in particular with regard to the social and emotional stances that individuals take vis-a-vis real or imagined others (Harré and van Langenhove 1999; Harré et al. 2009; Du Bois 2007). This concept has been introduced into narrative theory by Michael Bamberg (1997) and David Herman (2009: 55-63); in biblical context it has been used by Victor Matthews (2008: 101-7). For narrative theory this means the molding of internal “qualities” and “place in society” of the various characters by the narrator, through the interaction as it is shaped. The narrator marks the position he grants to the parties in the negotiation process, as successful and persuasive, or as doing concessions, as obeying and as failing to achieve intended aims.—Frank Polak, "Postioning, and the Pragmatics of Biblical Narrative," in Advances in Biblical Hebrew Linguistics, 161–62

New blog!

Jim Eisenbrauns has started a blog! It's called The Almond Branch. The first post is a review of the first two chapters of the book that I'm reading right now and posting excerpts from (and he's the one who gave me the book).

Add it to your RSS feeder or subscribe via email. Having know Jim for nearly twenty years now, I know it will be worth your time.

It's official!

I announced in Ancient News that I would be leaving Eisenbrauns/PSU Press at the end of November. Today, it was officially announced that I have begun working for Lockwood Press. Below is the announcement that was posted to the Agade list via Jack Sasson.

The ANE is more timely than ever

From chapter 6 of the forthcoming Eisenbrauns book, Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Held at Ghent, Belgium, 14–19 July 2013:

“It is a commonly accepted idea that law was introduced in human societies as a shield against revenge and retaliation, both expressions of disorder.[1] It is assumed that order depends on rigorous respect for the law issued by political authorities or local communities.[2] This is true up to a certain point, inasmuch as a legal rule usually meets the implicit requirement of justice, in other words when it does not contradict the notions of fairness, honesty, and rectitude.

“But the assumption that the rule of law is necessarily and always just is far from self-evident. Examples of unjust laws are numerous nowadays, and lead to popular revolts when the brink of acceptance is reached. Law then reveals itself unable to maintain order. What brings peace and stability is basically justice. A rule of law is just a tool, a technical instrument framing the relationship between individuals or institutions. The purpose of the rule is to follow justice, namely the ethical and moral values that are supposed to underlie it. If not, law becomes nothing but a hollow sham or even worse, a means of oppression.”

[1] This opinion is summarized in the following statement by Francis Bacon (1625): “Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”

[2] One of the best modern examples is probably the law and order movement that developed by the middle of the 1960s in America, both as a social ideal and a political slogan. See Flamm (2005) [Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s. Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University Press.]

<idle musing>
Who knew when she wrote those words in 2013 how timely they would be in describing our world today! We can still learn much from the ancient world!
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SBL Press publishes surprise Fs for Jim Eisenbraun

Entitled He Inscribed upon a Stone, it was supposed to be presented at the AOS meeting this week, but a pandemic intervened. You can download the volume here. Below is a screenshot of the announcement, which you can read here.

Social Justice in the heavenly realm

One of the clearest and most interesting is Psalm 82, highly mythological in character. Its setting is the divine council with the gods seated all about. In some obvious ways the psalm looks as if it could have come straight out of Canaanite mythology—the heavenly assembly, the technical language, the casual acknowledgment of the gods, the theme of conflict in the cosmic realm. But in significant ways it departs from that typical mythological context. There are no other named deities here, no battle between Baal and Yamm, Marduk and Tiamat. The gods are nameless, colorless, silent. They have no autonomy and independence apart from Yahweh. In the midst of this assembly, according to the psalm, Yahweh rises and in explicit and, to my knowledge, unprecedented fashion condemns all the other deities to death for their failure to carry out justice in the social realm. Justice in the human realm is a concern of all Near Eastern religions, but here it is claimed that the cosmic realm also depends upon justice in the social order. This psalm is therefore a story of the death of the gods. The immortals are condemned to mortality. Only Yahweh has any power in the divine realm. —Patrick D. Miller in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, pp. 24–25

History of religion

History of religion appears at times to be an embarrassment to the theologian, whether biblical or systematic. It may seem to undermine the basis for faith by relativizing it. The awareness of commonality with the “pagan religions” of the ancient Near East raises disturbing questions about the absoluteness and revelatory character of Israel’s faith.—Patrick D. Miller in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 15. Forthcoming from Eisenbrauns.

<idle musing>
This essay is actually a reprint of an essay that was originally published in 1973! Sure there are spots where it hasn't aged so well, but the majority of it is very good. I'm reading through the whole book now, which is currently in press and should be out in the next few weeks. Tag along with me as we discover the wonders of this book, which originally was going to be called God among the gods. Note the lower case "g" on the second one.
</idle musing>

Is this a legitimate reading?

Recall here John MacArthur’s condemnation of his very first sermon, based on the text “And the angel rolled the stone away,” in which he preached about the stone of doubt, the stone of fear, and the stone of anger.“ MacArthur condemned the sermon because he believes that in doing this he had betrayed the historical referent—“That is not what that verse is talking about; it’s talking about a real stone.” The emphasis on the “rea1 stone” has kept MacArthur anchored in the past, the horizontal plane, and thus maintains the distance and gaps that he emphasizes throughout his entire book. But a vertical reading seeks to eradicate those gaps by inviting the interpreter to be a participant. I dare say that the Alexandrians would have actually commended MacArthur’s reading of the text in his first sermon. Surely this example is not making the Bible into a fairy-tale book from which we get “all kinds of crazy interpretations."—Early Christian Readings of Genesis One, pages 141–42

<idle musing>
What do you think? Is this a legitimate reading of the text? My seminary training tells me that it isn't. But, 1600 years of church tradition begs to differ with me. Have we lost something by throwing away more figurative readings of the text? Can we get more from a text by allowing what he calls the "vertical reading" back in?

I'm in the process of revisiting my hermeneutical assumptions, and I'm leaning toward allowing the vertical back in. I've always said that the Holy Spirit can take a text and make it real to a person in a way that isn't necessarily the "original author's intention." For that matter, the entire New Testament and early Christian literature is an exercise in that! As I recently heard Richard Hays say, "The New Testament writers would have flunked out of a seminary hermeneutics class!" Indeed, his books are an exercise in exploring the vertical reading of scripture, as is the Eisenbrauns series JTI Supplements, which I generally really like.
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Back again

I've been neglecting this blog terribly as of late. I can't promise that will change, but I will try to post a bit more regularly. Part of the problem is adjusting to a new schedule. A little over a year ago, Eisenbrauns became an imprint of Penn State University Press. They asked me to work for them, doing pretty much the same things I was doing at Eisenbrauns.

But, they wanted me to do the same for the Press's own titles. So, for the past year I have been developing an email marketing program for PSU Press to try to match the reach that we had at Eisenbrauns. And, I've transitioned all the Eisenbrauns marketing to the new platform.

All of that has taken a chunk of time. Further, almost 12 months ago, we purchased a small house in Red Wing, MN, moving from Grand Marais on December 19—just in time for Christmas. The house is in good shape, so there weren't a lot of projects, but I did need to put in a garden : ) Maybe someday I'll post a picture of it. But, that took a good bit of time, too. We are loving living here, though. It's closer to parents and children (and grandchildren) and a beautiful part of the state, right along the Mississippi River.

Add to the preceding a heavy editing schedule. I freelance, so it's my own fault! But, when someone offers such marvelous books for me to edit, how can I say no? Among the items I edited this year was the Aramaic volume of the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. That was a monster project! But lots of fun, too. Another real joy was a second-year Hebrew grammar by Eric Reymond for SBL Press: Intermediate Biblical Hebrew Grammar: A Student's Guide to Phonology and Morphology. I also managed to edit a first-year Greek grammar and a first-year Hebrew grammar, a Festschrift, a collection of LXX essays by Rösel, an Egyptology archaeology volume, a volume on John's letters in Greek, a still-forthcoming NICOT volume, a LXX monograph on Esther, a geographical commentary on Acts–Revelation, a monograph on life and mortality at Ugarit, a collection of essays on hermeneutics, and a collection of essays on textual criticism. And I'll be wrapping up the year with a collection of essays on senses in the ANE.

How could I turn them down?! Obviously, I didn't. So, I've had little time for recreational reading—although I have managed to read about 10–15 books, I just haven't been extracting from them as I usually do. But, I can encourage you to read a couple of them:

Honoring the Son, by Larry Hurtado. I picked this one up at AAR/SBL last week and read it on the way home. Great little read, based on a series of lectures he gave at some seminary somewhere.

The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations by Robert Miller. Great big-picture overview of the ways the myth of the dragon is utilized in various ANE and biblical texts (and an Eisenbrauns title).

I did get to read a prerelease proof of a forthcoming title from Carta while I was at AAR/SBL (thanks to Hendrickson for letting me borrow it for a day!), Ada Yardeni's final book: The National Hebrew Script: Up To The Babylonian Exile. It is currently in-press, so they didn't have actual copies available. But, it is excellent; just what you would expect from Carta and Yardeni. I can't wait to see the actual book next year at AAR/SBL in San Diego!

I'm currently reading a couple of other books; hopefully excerpts will find their way onto this blog...but this has gone on long enough and I need to get back to work!

The silence is deafening

I've been a bit busy the last month or so. We bought a house in December and moved—to Red Wing. I also have started working for Penn State Press after they bought Eisenbrauns and the learning curve has taken a good bit of my time. In addition, I took on two editing projects that are taking a huge chunk out of the remainder of my time.

Given all that, there isn't a lot of time for reading and writing! Please bear with me for a bit. Things should calm down after January (famous last words!).

Eisenbrauns to Continue Under Penn State University Press

The news of the week:

Good review

Just read a very good review (of an Eisenbrauns book) over at Jesus Creed. I gotta read the book now—and the Greek novella Ephesiaca, too (here's a link to the Greek text on Perseus).

Ephesiaca gives us a window into Ephesian life, the cult of Artemis, the function of the Artemisium, codes of shame and honor, attitudes to wealth, women, slaves, and benefaction. Word studies reveal significant overlap in the use of certain words in both 1 Timothy and Ephesiaca. Through his study, Hoag demonstrates six fixtures or social institutions that embody the cultural norms and rules that governed life and society for rich Ephesians: honor/shame, identity, kinship, exchange/benefaction, envy, and purity. He spells out the following: (1) rich people were expected to behave honorably and with modesty; (2) relationships (i.e. who you were related to and how), and not wealth, determined identity; (3) kinship ties were strong, protective, and paternalistic. Female honor was embedded in the honor of a male. He concludes that honorable wealthy Ephesians valued kinship over wealth, whereas the greedy in antiquity placed gaining wealth over kinship ties, and envy was regarded as the ‘most insidious evil to threaten human relationships’. (p.56) One of his key points is that Artemis ‘not only owned the rich and expected their support, but they, in turn, owned Artemis.’ (p.32) The link is inextricable.

It is into this context that Paul’s gospel was first preached, and the context that Timothy will minister in, with Paul’s advice ringing in his ears. I would really recommend reading this book for yourself, but here are some of Hoag’s key conclusions.

Grab the book and let me know what you think. I'll (hopefully!) get to reading it myself soon and post sections of it here...meanwhile, here's the skinny:

Wealth in Ancient Ephesus and the First Letter to Timothy
Fresh Insights from Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus
Bulletin for Biblical Research Supplement - BBRSup 11
by Gary G. Hoag
Eisenbrauns, 2015
Pp. xii + 258, English
Cloth
ISBN: 9781575068299
List Price: $49.50
Your Price: $44.55
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/HOAWEALTH

The road to Atlanta is paved with . . . delays!

Well, I finally got into Warsaw, coming via South Bend airport. But my luggage went to Fort Wayne! I'll have to pick it up tomorrow on my way through to Atlanta.

For those of you just joining us, I am on my way to the annual AAR/SBL meeting in Atlanta. I'm going via Warsaw, IN, because I'm picking up a van full of Eisenbrauns books for the show. I started this morning (well, actually yesterday now) at 7:00 AM from Grand Marais, MN. I drove to Duluth through rain, and as I got near the Duluth airport, the fog got extremely thick. Not good, I thought. My flight might get delayed.

Well, it was delayed, but not because of fog in Duluth, but because of wind in Chicago. The plane I was supposed to board was still grounded at O'Hare! It finally arrived around 2:00 and it looked like we might get a fast track for me to catch my connecting flight to Fort Wayne. Nope. We sat on the tarmac for an hour before they sent us back to the terminal. Then it looked like we might not get out at all. Just about the time I was weighing my options—drive home and try again Thursday, drive to Indiana, or just stay in Duluth—they said that Chicago had cleared them to come on down. So, we loaded up the plane and headed south. This was about 5:00. We got into O'Hare around 6:30 and deplaned. I headed to the customer service counter, hoping to catch the last flight into Fort Wayne, but it was already full...so much for that! Maybe I'd be spending the night in Chicago.

They asked if I had an alternate destination. I said, South Bend. It's about an hour from Warsaw, about the same as Fort Wayne. There was a flight leaving in 20 minutes and there was one seat left. I took it and headed to the gate. I got to the gate just in time for them to announce that there was a mechanical problem on the plane and they were switching planes. We should be leaving around 7:30. And then around 8:00. And then around 8:15. We finally left at about 9:00, which is actually 10:00 South Bend time. We landed in South Bend at 11:00.

Dan (the business manager at Eisenbrauns) had driven up to get me. As I was landing, I got a text message from the airline saying that my baggage had missed my flight and I needed to talk to a customer service rep. Fine, except there was no one there. They were unloading the cargo, running a short staff in the evening. He finally made it to the customer service counter around 11:45. Sure enough, my baggage was on another flight—it was waiting for me in Fort Wayne!

So, we headed toward Warsaw. We got in around 1:00, but Dan needed to show me how to run all the point-of-sale computers. And then we loaded it all into the truck and here I am, almost 2:00 AM and I'm hitting the road for Atlanta in the morning, with a detour through Fort Wayne, where hopefully my baggage awaits me! And then on to Atlanta!

Isn't travel fun? : )

Musings on ten years of blogging

I've been blogging for over 10 years now; I started in October, 2005. In those days, blogs were still considered controversial for academics and I wasn't sure how well my blogging would be received by Eisenbrauns' customers. Because of that, I just put it up under my initials, jps. It's been that way for 10 years now and blogs are now passé, but I've still been musing along, putting up excerpts from stuff I'm reading, commenting on the book industry, reflecting on gardening, bicycling, sharing the joys and frustrations of being a cabin caretaker on the North Shore.

All that to say, I looked over the sidebar of my blog today for the first time in ages. I'm amazed at how many of the blogs on my blogroll have fallen silent. I'm sure there are many new ones, and I've added some of them to my newsreader periodically. But I've been less than diligent about keeping the blogroll current. I think part of it is that I keep hoping some of the old standbys will start blogging again. Maybe they will, but probably not. I suppose I should update the blogroll this winter, once AAR/SBL is over.

While I was looking at the sidebar, I noticed the pattern of my posting. I'll bet you can't guess which month(s) were the busiest for me, between the cabins, Eisenbrauns, and editing. Here's the graphic for those of you who read this in an RSS newsreader

Augustine had it right!

As a young student, I shook my head when reading how St. Augustine would interject prayers into his exegetical writings. Is this not bad scholarship? Based on my understanding of the book of Job today I would say: No! This is the very foundation that allows true interaction with the text and the reality contained in it.—Job's Journey, page 99 n. 41

<idle musing>
I've got to read this book! Isn't that a wonderful sentiment? Reminds me of something I read (and posted) back in 2013:

[T]rue theology ought to end in prayer. If theology is the study of God, the knowledge of God, and if God is God, then the end of our study ought to be worship. If it is not, if it has been only a study about a subject and our thoughts on that subject, that is idolatry; I have made God a thing. It does not matter how accurate my thought is; if it does not bring me to Him as a living Person, I have only found a substitute for Him, a knowledge of something other than God. When one comes to know the true God, the only response is, in the language of the Old Testament, fearful worship.— Lectures in Old Testament Theology, pages 15-16

Good stuff, indeed!
</idle musing>

Why is Job praised by God?

Thus I come to the conclusion, based on an analysis of the Masoretic Text and supported by the ancient versions, that God does not praise a specific statement made by Job (neither the patient sufferer of the beginning, the passionate rebel of the middle section, nor the individual who rebukes himself in the end). God does not justify a specific teaching about himself but rather the direction of Job’s speech, his internal stance, his knowledge of the place to which and from which his thoughts proceed. God praises Job’s speech as a speech to God. In contrast, the friends are not scolded for what they have said, but for their attitude toward God. It is their distant stance toward God that incurs God’s wrath: Job’s friends are studious and earnest theologians. They use their full cognitive competence and produce an impressive system of thought. Yet their mistake lies in the foundation of their theology: “You have not spoken well to me, not toward me, not in personal relation to me. Instead, you only spoke of me. In this, all theology is perverted, becomes sinful, and incurs God’s wrath.” Job may speak against God and perhaps even make mistakes, but he speaks to God and thus receives God’s praise. We can describe the paradigmatic form of Job’s speech with a phrase coined by Martin Luther: “contra deum in deum,” to speak against God to God. The friends’ error lies in their objectified speech; they never speak to God! Instead of prayerfully speaking to God and wrestling with God, they practice theology as speech about God. Instead of praying for Job or with Job, they theorize about God. In this manner, they completely miss God, even if they do make theologically correct statements.—Job's Journey, pages 98–99 (emphasis original)

<idle musing>
Isn't that great? He defends the reading in the preceding two pages, based on the MT, LXX, and Vulgate, but you'll have to wait for the book to be published to find out : )

As for me, I can't wait to read it! Jim shared that snippet with me and I can't help sharing it with you. Here are all the details:

Job's Journey
Stations of Suffering
Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible - CSHB 7
by Manfred Oeming and Konrad Schmid
Eisenbrauns, Forthcoming, Nov. 2015
Pp. xiv + 110, English
Paper, 6 x 9
ISBN: 9781575063997
List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $26.96
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/OEMJOBSJO

</idle musing>

I want one of these, and one of these, and...

I've been working on the Eisenbrauns fall catalog lately. It went to press today and is available on the web here (5.3 MB). I see all these great books and I want to read them all! Not that I have the time right now, but come this winter, I'll get a good percentage of them read.

There are two that especially grabbed my attention:

The "Image of God" in the Garden of Eden
The Creation of Humankind in Genesis 2:5-3:24 in Light of the mis pi pit pi and wpt-r Rituals of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures 15
by Catherine McDowell
Eisenbrauns, 2015
Pp. ix + 246, English
Cloth, 6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 9781575063485
List Price: $47.50
Your Price: $38.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/MCDIMAGEO

and

Standing in the Breach
An Old Testament Theology and Spirituality of Intercessory Prayer
Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures 13
by Michael Widmer
Eisenbrauns, 2015
Pp. xiv + 592, English
Cloth
ISBN: 9781575063256
List Price: $64.50
Your Price: $51.60
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/WIDSTANDI

Of course, there are others, but I'll limit myself to two right now...