Calvin and I have registered for the SBL New England Regional Meeting held this April at Andover-Newton. This will be our first official meeting of this sort as members. I’m excited!

I’m trying to decide among the following sessions (already a narrowed down list, of course):

Morning Session

• “The Nature and Identity of ‘Satan’ in 1 Chronicles 21:1” or
• “Oral Background of the Binding of Isaac” or
• “What to Do When YHWH Attacks: Three Targumic Treatments of Exodus 4:24-26”

Afternoon Session

• “The Literary Sophistication of the Deuteronomistic History” or
• “Navigating ‘Deuteronomistic History’ as Cultural Memory” or
• “Araunah’s Threshing Boards (2 Samuel 24:16-25)”

Also, John J. Collins from Yale will be giving the Presidential address. I’m looking forward to hearing him speak, because as I’ve mentioned before, Yale is one of the schools I’m considering.

I think I figured out why I’m a little nervous about this scholarship thing. It’s because of my reasons for wanting to “be a scholar.” I want to be a scholar so that I can take what my field is doing and make it useful for laypeople. No, more than just useful - I want it to make a difference to the way they interpret the Bible, and thus to their beliefs, faith, and ultimately their lives.

Maybe that seems like a high and lofty goal, and I know I’m only one person, but I want to be one small bridge between the ivory towers and everyone else. I don’t have to be well known, or known at all, but if a well known scholar was to read something I wrote, or hear me speak, I’d want to know that I could be considered respectable, i.e. a “real scholar.” Right now, I see that the layperson has very few people to look to whom they can trust for good scholarship. The result is a lot of popular theological rubbish that most scholars scoff at - but the layperson never even knows there’s another way of looking at it, because the same scholars that scoff really aren’t interested in enlightening anyone - most certainly not Christians!

This all stems from my faith - I care about laypeople because I care about the Church. I guess I feel like that makes me a bit of a weirdo in the scholarly world. But, as Calvin reminded me, for every person who writes books and articles and yaks about this or that, there are who knows how many who are just out there teaching, maybe writing an article here or there, but they just care about the students. I go a little further than that - I care about the students, but I also care about the people they will affect with what they learn. (At a Bible college, I could be teaching future pastors, for instance.) So maybe I’m not as much of a weirdo as I think; there are most certainly others with similar passions out there. I guess I just feel a lot of pressure to “perform” correctly.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m really cut out to do this whole Ph.D. thing. I know that I love Hebrew, I love the Old Testament, I love the Bible, and I wouldn’t want to do anything other with my career than teaching other people to love the Bible as well. Yet, sometimes I just don’t feel like a scholar.

For instance: I’d be lying if I called myself a “biblioblogger” - I hardly ever blog about the Bible anymore - I did more “biblioblogging” when I was in undergrad. To some extent that’s because I really don’t want to take the time it takes me to put together what I feel is a good post on the Bible - I have so much else to do, and when I have free time, I’ll be honest: I play video games or read a novel. I think of things to blog all the time, but I just don’t take the time. But shouldn’t I want to take that time? Another instance: there are many things that really excite me. I want to study dead languages, and the Old Testament. I have certain subjects that fascinate me and I could talk about indefinitely, but I don’t like having to read books written by scholars who are boring when they write, even on those subjects. I like engaging writing. Yet many of those books are “required reading.” Shouldn’t I want to read boring books? Isn’t that part of being a scholar? In fact, if I were a real scholar, would I really think they were boring? I feel like I’m not serious enough. I’m whimsical. Silly. Passionate. I don’t like the hoops I’m required to jump through. I don’t like the stifling mold I feel like I’m being forced into.

Maybe I just need to interact with more scholars on a personal level. Maybe my perceptions are just wrong. Maybe there’s someone kinda like me out there. Or maybe I’m just a square peg trying to fit myself into a triangle hole.

Recently we’ve started buying “Cage-Free” eggs at the grocery store. This had led me to notice that all the “organic” or “natural” or “cage-free” eggs are brown. There are also a good mix of brown eggs in with the standard eggs as well. This is new to me, as in both VA and NY, brown eggs were a bit of a rarity. The eggs for sale were almost exclusively white. In England, the eggs were almost exclusively brown - they only brought the white out around Easter. But, here in New England, apparently brown eggs are also popular.

So I said to myself today, “I wonder what the difference between brown and white eggs is?” It’s just not a question I’ve ever pursued before, so I really didn’t know. Me being me, I can’t let a matter such as this lay for long, and so I pulled up my handy-dandy web browser and did a little research.

The consensus? There is no difference other than the breed of chicken that lays the eggs. Apparently (especially with commercially produced eggs) there is no difference in taste or nutritional value. Generally speaking, brown eggs are laid by chickens with red feathers and earlobes (!), and white eggs by chickens with white feathers and earlobes. I even found one source that said there is a breed that lays blue eggs!

So, the next time you go to the grocery store, take a moment to appreciate our red-feathered chicken friends and their brown eggs, and the variety they bring to our refrigerator shelves.

Now if only we could get some of those blue eggs in the mix!

This message made possible by The American Egg Board, and brought to you in time for Easter by Mandy’s Random Brain and the Letter E.

Though I realize I shouldn’t get too attached to a program or school just yet, I thought I would make a list of the schools top on my list as of this date (these aren’t in any particular order):

Penn State
Brandeis University
University of Wisconsin
Harvard
Johns Hopkins
University of Pennsylvania

All of these schools have faculty or a faculty member who has research interests somewhere in the ballpark of my own, though of course I haven’t narrowed those completely yet.

I’ll be honest. The idea of staying in the Boston area for either Harvard or Brandeis is not a pleasant one. I don’t like this area, and I’ll be glad when we can move out of it. Besides that, it’s so far from both of our families. But, I’m not ruling them out just yet.

I’ve also looked at Yale - they no longer have an actual ANE department, but they do have what looks to be a good Hebrew Bible program under their Religious Studies department (in the University, not the Divinity School). To boot, they also have several faculty that look promising. I’m not sure where a Ph.D from Yale in the Religious Studies department would fall on the “tier” list though. I’m told for my career aspirations of teaching in a Bible or Christian college, I need to shoot for top tier, or at the lowest, second tier schools.

I’ll have to find out more about this “tier” stuff. What’s the criteria? I obviously know certain schools are “top tier” for my field - Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Chicago…but it’d be nice to know where the others fall. I suppose I’ll figure it out eventually, but if anyone has any thoughts, feel free to chime in.

Okay, so another one of those quizzes is circulating…this is kinda scarily right if you apply it to my conflict between my conservative upbringing and where I am now…

You’re The Giver!
by Lois Lowry
While you grew up with a sheltered childhood, you’re pretty sure everyone around you is even more sheltered. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, you were tapped on the shoulder and transported to the real world. This made you horrified by your prior upbringing and now you’re tormented by how to reconcile these two lives. Ultimately, the struggle comes down to that old free will issue. Choose wisely.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

I love taking personality tests. It’s even better when they’re “official.” I’ve taken the Meyers-Briggs type indicator test 4 times in my life now. Once when I was in elementary school, once in high school, once in college, and I just took it again now. What’s interesting is that I was an INFP the first three times I took it, but I’ve now changed a letter! I now score an INFJ - from Perceiving to Judging. I think the basic difference is that Judging is more organized and scheduled vs. spontaneous. Maybe it’s a result of my having been through college and now in grad school, and needing to be organized to survive. But, INFP still sounds like me in a lot of ways as well, so I have no doubt that give it a couple years and I’ll flip back.

I’ll spare you detailing the INFJ personality type, as there are plenty of sites you could look it up on if you really wanted to.

We just finished taking our Aramaic mid-term. *phew* I’m fairly certain that I’ll score at least an A-, which is saying something considering 2 weeks ago I was positive I’d get no better than a C. Now that we’re done with this, no more reproducing paradigms! The final is just translation. Calvin suggested having a little ceremony out on the lawn in front of the Academic building where we could burn the paradigms note cards we made, one by one, but I vetoed that idea!

Though I disagree pedagogically with how the class is being taught, I have to say that I feel like I have learned Aramaic, which is definitely a good thing. Next semester….Ugaritic!

In the past three posts I’ve reviewed where I’ve been and how I got where I am now, and two of my big passions (Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible). However, all of that ought to seem obvious considering that I’m in the MAOT here at GCTS. Eventually, I’m going to have to narrow down the field to specific areas within or relating to the Hebrew Bible that interest me the most. This is where the fun really begins, as while I have a vague idea of topics that I’m interested in, I haven’t quite pinpointed my list of so-called “research interests” yet. Identifying these, of course, will be of great help on a Ph.D application, thinking about what I might want to do a dissertation, choosing schools to apply to that have faculty that may best line up with my interests, and even for the here and now, knowing what books I should focus on and hey - even what seminars to attend at the national SBL conference this fall!

As with anything, it’s better to start broad and narrow down to the more specific. So, vague areas of interest that I already know about?

1. How ANE mythology and “worldview” is used in/influenced the writing of the HB
2. Lament
3. The latter prophets
4. Some twisted form of canonical criticism

I’ll break these down into subcategories based on the implications of the broad category.

1. The primeval history; the divine council; pagan deities/mythological creatures; Canaanite, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian religious practices, beliefs, and cosmology; ANE literature/genre
2. Lament psalms, Job, Jeremiah, Lamentations, etc. etc…
3. Self-explanatory - but there are of course more than one way to break them down: minor prophets, major prophets, apocalyptic, directed toward Israel/Judah, directed toward gentiles, narrative (Jonah, portions of Isaiah, etc.)
4. Meaning: I care less about source criticism and more about what the final form that the text ended up in. Genre, literary devices, organizational purposes. Why did the final redactor/editors piece the book together in such a way (rather what where did the pieces come from)? Perhaps this might even delve into some Old Testament theology.

So what does all that mean? I can tell you right now: the use of mythology is high on my list. I favor especially the primeval history, appearances of the divine council, and other ANE mythological allusions. I’m interested in other areas of parallel as well, such as law and kingship, but the mythological aspects are especially exciting to me.

Lament: why? It’s a lost art form. It goes hand-in-hand with my love for the Church. Besides that, it can be theologically challenging and very practical.

Prophets: I’m more interested in the prophets who direct their speeches toward Judah and Israel than the others, probably more so the minor prophets than the major, with the exception of Jeremiah, which I just love, and mythological allusions in Ezekiel and Isaiah.

Canonical criticism: what can I say, it’s baggage from the fact that I believe ultimately the Bible is inspired in some fashion. I don’t know what “original autograph” means, so there is nothing left for me but the final form - if we have it like that, why? What was the purpose of the author or editor in putting two contradictory accounts together? We may theorize that the epilogue and prologue to Job may have been added later, but what is the message of the book with those additions? We dip dangerously into theology here: but I’m okay with that as long as it’s not systematic.

So there are some thoughts for today!

Last time I ranted a bit about Hebrew and teaching Hebrew. This time, I’ll move on to my second love: the Hebrew Bible. As I mentioned last time, my interest in the Hebrew Bible began in my undergrad, even before my interest in Hebrew. Initially, I was convinced by my OT and Hebrew prof that the Church has sadly neglected the OT and that all Christians committed to Bible study need to know it, laypersons and pastors alike. I still believe that, and all the more since I’ve studied it further.

The Hebrew Bible is full of the best kind of reading: stories. Once I put together how the various stories go together (something they don’t tend to teach in Sunday School), I realized how dramatic the whole thing is; how incredibly much it tells us about God; and finally how having a knowledge of the OT on its own merit gives us a much better understanding of the NT.

After realizing the great potential for OT study, I began to become more interested in the backgrounds to the Hebrew Bible: i.e., the influences of the ANE on its writers and the mysterious stories that seems to have roots in ANE myth. The most interesting topics to me deal with this issue: the primordial history, sections of Job and Psalms, and more - the fingerprints are all over the place. I’m also fond of the prophetic literature, and am becoming more as time goes by.

Of course, I could not stay in the Hebrew Bible for too long before I realized (as should anyone who is honest with themselves) that it is just plain messy at times - morally and theologically. Everything does not just fit together: there are questions of historicity, theological quandaries, just plain contradictions at times. Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation, which I read sometime in the 2 years between college and grad school, helped me solidify my own bibliology, and the once cryptic statement my OT prof had always made, “The text is inspired, not the event,” finally became clear to me. On the whole, rather than troubling me, I rather enjoy pursuing these types of issues now, and considering how to synthesize them with my faith without doing violence to the text as it stands. My theology, most certainly as a result of my study of the Hebrew Bible, has become much more fluid by necessity - one might say less foundational in nature and more, what’s the lingo on the streets now? Web-like.

And speaking of theology - I enjoy discussing theological issues, but I don’t like systematic theology. As of yet, no one has been able to convince me of its overall worth. Though it’s certainly difficult at times, I much prefer to live with tension rather than construct theological systems. So, though I do get a thrill out of new readings of texts that might shed new light on theological issues, perhaps even turn existing theology upside down, the more this happens the more I realize that God can never be put in a box.

All this to say, while I love Hebrew, I am not a linguist. Similarly, though I love the Bible, especially the former portion, I am not a theologian. I dabble in both areas periodically when it interests me, but I remain unequivocally, a text person.