Nothing new under the sun

Indeed, rural abandonment has often been a serious and significant consequence of urban agglomeration throughout human history.… This decline in rural lifeways may have critically affected agricultural production, diminishing returns, placing further stress on an inflexible multitiered settlement system, which then ultimately collapsed under its own overmilitarized weight and a deteriorating natural environment.—Melissa Kennedy, "Horizons of Cultural Connectivity: North-South Interactions During the Early Bronze Age IV," in New Horizons in the Study of the Early Bronze III and Early Bronze IV of the Levant, edited by Suzanne Richard (Eisenbrauns, forthcoming).

<idle musing>
Nope. It's not describing Rome, although it could be. And it's not describing the Hittite Empire, although it could be. And, it's not a prophecy about the United States, although it could be. It's describing the decline of urban life in the southern Levant in the Early Bronze Age—wich predates all of those by at least a thousand years.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. And those of us who do, are doomed to watch others repeat it while we watch on, trying vainly to warn others of their folly. No wonder Qohelet (the preacher in Ecclesiastes) said all is vanity. : (
</idle musing>

An archaeological tidbit

Since most people are right-handed with shields held by the left hand, making a right-hand turn into the city from the central gate axis created an initial contact moment in which the nonshielded side of the body was exposed.—Steven Collins, footnote in ch. 15 in New Horizons in the Study of the Early Bronze III and Early Bronze IV of the Levant, edited by Suzanne Richard, Eisenbrauns, forthcoming.

Why the two-week silence

We were gone for two weeks, visiting family. Debbie's dad fell and is in rehab. We went to see him and to help her mom. He's doing better and probably will be able to go home again on the eleventh. He's 89 and not very strong anymore.

I've been neglecting this blog terribly this summer, but maybe with the advent of fall I'll be able to spend more time reading—and therefore blogging.

I've been working on some interesting projects, though. I just finished up the NICOT 2 Samuel volume (not on the Eerdmans website yet), which should see the light of day early next year. Before that I did the final volume of the TDOT, covering the Aramaic. That was pretty intense because they were trying to keep consistency with the other volumes, going all the way back to 1974. Needless to say, typography has come a long way since then and standards have changed. It was a challenge, but a lot of fun. I also did an Eisenbrauns Festschrift The Unfolding of Your Words Gives Light, and three SBL books, two of them on the LXX. The collection of essays by Rosel, Tradition and Innovation:English and German Studies on the Septuagint is really good; you should buy it when it comes out—or pick it up at AAR/SBL. Somehow I managed to crowd in The Abu Bakr Cemetery at Giza for B.J. at Lockwood Press, and Biblical Greek Made Simple: All the Basics in One Semester. All while creating a garden (which is doing wonderful! I'll try to post some pictures…), working for PSU Press part-time, and walking 5–8 miles a day.

I'm currently working on the Lexham Geographical Commentary on the New Testament, Acts–Revelation and an Eisenbrauns book in the EANEC series: Life and Mortality in Ugaritic, which should be out next spring or summer (also not on the web yet).

No wonder the blog has suffered!

Tomb-robbing, ancient style

From a new, forthcoming volume on the Abu Bakr Cemetery, published by Lockwood Press:

A secondary burial was found lying on a bedrock shelf about halfway down the shaft. The undertakers had evidently used the occasion to plunder the original burial chamber at the bottom of the shaft. Since there are no portcullis slots the robbers were able to pull the portcullis back enough for a child or a small man to squeeze behind the portcullis and penetrate the brick blocking to enter the chamber itself. All that remained of the contents are a flint blade and a fragment of a copper tool.

<idle musing>
Some things never change! : (
</idle musing>

Judean Pillar Figurines and their function

"Of course, the general domestic context can only be used to support such assertions [that figurines were used by females or for 'female' concerns, like eroticism, procreation, and lactation] if one concludes that men did not live in Israelite houses, that men were unconcerned with the needs of their families, or that the only thing going on in Israelite houses was sex."—Erin Darby in Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice in Ancient Mediterranean Religion, ed. Sandra Blakely, SAMR 1 (Atlanta: Lockwood Press, forthcoming)

<idle musing>
I don't know why, but that struck me as humorous—probably because it reveals so much about the presuppositions we bring to bear in our interpretation of the data. Great book, by the way. You should get it when it becomes available.
</idle musing>

Too true

From the ASOR Program Abstracts:

If a terracotta figurine has a head, however schematically rendered, combined with a pair of circular protrusions, however small, or widely or narrowly spaced, and wherever located on a fictive torso, however flat or oddly shaped, we are, apparently, culturally conditioned to see a female in spite of the fact that the form has no real feminine qualities, no curves or marked genitalia.

<idle musing>
Yep, and everything we don't understand is a cult object, too... (as Jim Eisenbraun quipped to me)
</idle musing>