Category Archives: Biblical Studies

Myth, Legend, Folklore

As may or may not be well-known, folklorists have very particular ways in which they use the terms myth and legend. Here are some:

myth: Myths are prose narratives which, in the society in which they are told, are considered to be truthful accounts of what happened in the remote past.

legend: Legends are prose narratives which, like myths, are regarded as true by the narrator and his audience, but they are set in a period considered less remote, when the world was much as it is today.
(both p.9, William Bascom, “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives.” 5-29 in Alan Dundes, ed., Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1984)

myth: A myth is a sacred narrative which describes how the world or mankind became as it is. (Alan Dundes, class notes [yes, I’m a packrat], 2 November 1992).
or
myth: A myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and man came to be in their present form (p.1, Sacred Narrative)

A defining characteristic in common to both myth and legend, as noted in Bascom’s article noted above, is that both are considered true in their originating groups (note particularly the usage of “sacred” in Dundes’ definitions of myth, which also connotes this). While legends are considered true and either sacred or secular (“It happened to someone my friend knows”; the original usage of legend was explicitly religious, the legenda, reading, of the story of a saint on that particular saint’s feast), folktales are considered fictional and secular (“Once upon a time…”). The primary distinction between myth and legend is the age/world in which they are set. Whereas myth is set in the the far distant past, in the age and world of pre-creation with the primary characters being divine (or at least non-human) beings of some sort, legend is set amongst humans (though divine beings may also play a part) in a world substantially as it is, in a much less remote past. Bascom describes this in tabular format thus (9, Sacred Narrative):

Form

Belief

Time

Place

Attitude

Principal Characters
Myth Fact Remote past Different world: other or earlier Sacred Non-human
Legend Fact Recent past World of today Sacred or secular Human
Folktale Fiction Any time Any place Secular Human or non-human

Based upon the above, and in keeping with the shorter definition of myth favored by Dundes, I would suggest a working definition for legend as: A legend is a narrative, considered true, which is set in the relatively recent past of this world. We might also simply gloss myths as narratives dealing with origins, while legends are those dealing with events.

Note the particularity involved in the various definitions, especially in their reduction in Bascom’s chart form. The myth, legend, and folktale of the folklorist’s definition are hardly in mind when we colloquially use all three for something patently untrue, generally with negative connotations. The Oxford English dictionary dates the earliest attestation of this usage of myth to 1849, and of legend to 1613, so this colloquially negative usage is hardly new. Yet myth or its adjectival forms is currently often used for something or someone larger-than-life (“…of mythic proportions…”), as also is legend (“He’s a legend;” “Her cooking is legendary”), in such cases with very positive connotations. Resulting from life in a post-mythic, post-legendary world, this negative redefinition of myth and legend as false has led to only some ossified adjectival forms bearing the evidence that both myth and legend were formerly considered truthful narratives, dealing with larger than life issues of great import. There is perhaps even an unconsciously wistful regret connoted by statements such as “That basketball player is a living legend!” See now what paltry things your culture now considers a legend.

Relatedly, I’ve noticed that in biblical studies there’s a loose usage of both myth and legend, not generally adhering to these quite precise definitions of the folklorists, but informed more by colloquial use. This is even the case when, as in most commentaries on Tobit, “folklore” is extensively, yet only superficially, referred to as the source of the stories, even going so far as to utilize Stith Thompson’s Motif Index, which actually also indexes the elements of all biblical stories, as proof for the origins of Tobit as folklore! The Motif Index is a tool for indexing, not an exhaustive record of the histor
ical development of a given item. (This naive use of folklorists’ work in commentaries on Tobit is something I intend to address in more depth another time.) I think this is likely to be categorized as a shared (mis)conception of some kind of Jungian archetypal basis for folklore, founded in some “psychic unity” or other such thing. Folklore is simply any item found in common in any folk group, with folk group defined as a group of people united by even a single common factor. Folklore need not be narrative (myths, legends, proverbs, folktales), or even language-based at all. It may be material (evil eye amulets) or situational (start a journey with the right foot). All these are folklore.

It would be good to see biblical studies utilizing some of the extensive work done by folklorists, in a manner which is better representative of their work. For an approach from the other direction, see Dundes’ own recent Holy Writ as Oral Lit: the Bible as Folklore (Rowan & Littlefield, 1999) for an example of this great folklorist’s application of the methods of folklore studies to the texts of the Bible. Dundes lived just around the corner from me, and we’re both near the Graduate Theological Union Library, where I remember often running into him while he was working on this book, hogging the only good-working copying machine! Two other indispensible books on folklore are the aforementioned Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth and Dundes, ed., The Study of Folklore (Prentice Hall, 1965). Especially the latter will provide a solid introduction which should prevent any further naive use of folklore studies in biblical studies.

Call it a pet peeve of mine.

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Progress on Bīt-PN research

I’ve completed going through Andreas Fuchs’ Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad for information relevant to the Bīt-PN study in progress. The information has been added to my pdf file of the raw data, here. I’ve also taken a quick first stab at organizing the data in another file, here. The important thing to notice is that there is a trend in usage in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions in the case of many of the newer Aramaean states in which the personal name of the geographic name “Bīt-PN” is explicitly (through the use of determinatives) or implicitly (through mention as a progenitor) personal, showing the understanding of the Assyrians that a real person, in many cases, lay behind the name. As noted in Hélène Sader’s Les États Araméens de Syrie: depuis leur Fondation jusqu’à leur Transformation en Provinces Assyriennes (Beiruter Texte und Studien 36. Beirut, 1987), these states were formed early in the first millennium by various personages for which a large number of territories were named, some examples of which being Bīt-Abdadāni, Bīt-Adini, and Bīt-Agūsi. The Assyrians, in referring to later rulers of these territories, typically recognized these rulers as descendants of the founders, and explicitly referred to them not as “king of Bīt-PN” but as “son of PN.” The geographic name thus also doubles in this kind of usage as a dynastic name: the place Bīt-Adini, the House of Adinu, is ruled by the descndants of Adinu, his ‘house’, and a ruler is referred to as “son of Adinu.” Whether these rulers were actually descended from the eponymous founders of their kingdoms is unknown, but the Assyrian scribes, presumably based upon Aramaean practice, treated the situation thus. The Assyrians themselves maintained a longstanding tradition of having their own single dynasty of rulers (however fictional this was), which may have influenced their understanding of other states for which they were not completely aware of the internal workings.

In any case, my further investigation into this subject will entail: looking into the origins of these “new” Aramaean states themselves; their relation to the ahlamu Aramaeans of the second (and third?) millennium; Aramaean influence on Neo-Assyrian Akkadian in some of the names of these states and others (it looks like in some cases, the Aramaic emphatic suffix is used); and last, but not least, the connection of all this to the Tel Dan Stela and the usage there of BYTDWD and its links to the phrase “House of David” and its equivalents in the Old Testament.

Some earlier postings here dealing with this subject are:
“House of David” and BYTDWD
Further on “House of …” usage
Further on Bīt-PN usage
Corrections/additions

Joe Cathey has also been keeping track of various postings on the Tel Dan BYTDWD subject, one of his summaries of which is Tel Dan – A Response. Look through the available links there (Jim West’s blog no longer exists, unfortunately, so those posts are all gone).

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The Face of the Deep

If thou canst dive, bring up pearls. If thou canst not dive, collect amber. Though I fail to identify Paradisiacal “bdellium,” I still may hope to search out beauties of the “onyx stone.”

A dear saint—I speak under correction of the Judgment of the Great Day, yet think not then to have my word corrected—this dear person once pointed out to me Patience as our lesson in the Book of Revelations.

Following the clue thus afforded me, I seek and hope to find Patience in this Book of awful import. Patience, at the least: and along with that grace whatever treasures beside God may vouchsafe me. Bearing meanwhile in mind how “to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

Now if any deign to seek Patience in my company, I pray them to remember that One high above me in the Kingdom of Heaven heads our pilgrim caravan.

O, ye who love to-day,
Turn away
From Patience with her silver ray :
For Patience shows a twilight face,
Like a half-lighted moon
When daylight dies apace.

But ye who love to-morrow,
Beg or borrow
To-day some bitterness of sorrow :
For Patience shows a lustrous face
In depth of night her noon ;
Then to her the sun gives place

Thus writes Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) in the “Prefatory Note” to her verse-by-verse commentary, the first ever such from the pen of a woman (so I’ve read, though I’m not entirely sure this is so), on the Book of Revelation, titled The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on The Apocalypse (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1892). Christina was the sister (and often the model for) her perhaps more well-known brother, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, also no mean shakes at the pen. Something that is often neglected in appreciation of the Pre-Raphaelites is their deep Christian faith, which found expression in their artworks. Christina was the most devout of the bunch. Throughout her life, she suffered from various illnesses, including Grave’s Disease, and eventually succumbed to cancer. Yet from the midst of such lifelong suffering came some of the finest poetry in the English language. Would we have had the same poetry had she been healthy all her life? I doubt it. For those faithful Christians who have suffered and who do suffer from life-threatening illnesses can tell you of the astonishing efficacy of such a furnace as deathly illness in refining one’s perceptions and intentions, in burning away the dross of concern for unimportant matters and in stoking a faith to burn fully aflame that in health was only an expiring ember in ash.

I intend to present here the entirety of Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on The Apocalypse, section by section, perhaps one per week. Most are on a single verse, so this will be a long-term serial presentation. I’ll present the first section, covering Apoc 1.1-2 sometime later this week.

I very much enjoy Christina’s poetry, as readers might have realized from my earlier presentation of one of her poems. Reading her, I hear my own voice as often as not, which is peculiar and comforting at the same time, and which is something that really only the very best of poetry can do to us. It’s hard to describe! Anyhow, she created quite a number of short poems as part of this commentary, where it works with her prose to illuminate the text of the Apocalypse. Her prose and poetry are organically intertwined here, just as you see in the preface above: who would understand the crucial referent of “Patience” in the poem once it were ripped from its moorings there in the Prefatory Note? Christina was also quite well aware of the importance of the imagery of “the face of the deep” particularly in reference to the Apocalypse and the text’s “surface” and “depth.” See particularly Kevin Mills, “Pearl-Divers of the Apocalypse—Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep.” Literature and Theology 2001 15.1:25-39. This is the article which led me to hunt down my copy of The Face of the Deep, which happily for me turned out to be a first edition, though a somewhat battered copy. The Face of the Deep has only recently been reprinted as volume four of Prose Works of Christina Rossetti (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Continuum, 2003).

Christina Georgina Rossetti has accomplished with this work, The Face of the Deep, something that I would like to see more of from the hands of truly great artists: a work of great Christian faith, of impeccable artistic quality, with a focus on the devotional rather than the academic or worldly. Sadly, these days, it seems none of these three are often accomplished in tandem.

If thou canst dive, bring up pearls. If thou canst not dive, collect amber.

Wow.

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Daniel 2 and the Empires

Typically Nebuchadnezzar’s dream image of the statue in Daniel 2 has been looked at in a four kingdom framework, beginning with the neo-Babylonian, followed by the Median, the Persian, and then the Greek empires (see John Collins’ excursus on The Four Kingdoms in his Hermeneia commentary, pp 166-170). The problem with this interpretation is that it is based not upon the understanding of history held by the author of Daniel, but on that of Greek sources, in which the schema is the Assyrian empire followed by the Median, followed by the Persian, followed by the Greek. The Greek evidence is interesting, but irrelevant. We have examples of the historical understanding of the author of Daniel from other parts of the book, namely chapters 7 and 11, which in conjunction with chapter 2, indicate a different solution to the interpretation of the procession of empire as depicted by the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.

Firstly, in chapter 7, we have a creature with ten horns, three of which are plucked out and replaced by another horn. Here are the historical characters involved here:
          1.) Seleucus I Nicator 305-281
          2.) Antiochus I Soter 281-261
          3.) Antiochus II Theos 261-246
          4.) Seleucus II Callinicus 246-226
          5.) Seleucus III Soter Ceraunos 226-223
          6.) Antiochus III the Great 223-187
          7.) Seleucus IV Philopator 187-175
1/      8.) Antiochus, younger son of Sel.IV
                 (killed by Antiochus IV)
2/     9.) Demetrius I, prisoner in Rome, displaced by Ant.IV
3/    10.) Heliodorus killed Sel.IV and thought to rule through
                his son Antiochus (8, above); H. was killed by Ant.IV
          Little horn: Antiochus IV Epiphanes 175-164
Notice that the three horns (indicated by 1/, 2/, 3/) represented three persons, two of whom were killed and one of whom was kept from the throne for a time, by the “little horn” Antiochus IV Epiphanes. We see here that the author is quite well informed not only of the regicide and attempted usurpation by Heliodorus at the Seleucid court, but quite succinctly summarized the intrigues at this point in Seleucid history with his uprooted horns metaphor.

Daniel 11 presents us with quite a nice summary of relations between the Seleucids and Ptolemids. The below identifies the various personages:
11.1: First year of Darius the Mede=first year of Cyrus the Great
11.2: Three more kings: Cambyses (530-522), Bardiya (522), Darius I (521-486); fourth king: Xerxes (486-465) [the rest of the Achaemenids are ignored, as they are irrelevant]
11.3: Mighty king: Alexander (336-323); split to the four winds: the Diadochoi
11.5-6a: King of the South: Ptolemy I Soter (323-282); Commander: Seleucus I Nicator (312-281) [Notice that Antiochus I Soter is passed over here]
11.6b: King of South: Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246); King of North: Antiochus II Theos (261-246)
11.7: Woman’s offspring: Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221); King of North: Seleucus II Callinicus (246-225)
11.10: Sons: Seleucus III Soter (225-223) and Antiochus III
11.11: King of North: Antiochus III the Great(223-187); King of South: Ptolemy IV Philopator (221-204)
11.14: King of South: Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204-180)
11.17: Woman: Cleopatra
11.18: Commander: Lucius Cornelius Scipio
11.20: One to arise: Seleucus IV Philopator (187-175); official: Heliodorus
11.21: contemptible person: Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164)
11.30: ships of Kittim: under the command of the Roman Popilius Laenas
Following the flow of chapter 11 and focusing on those who are depicted explicitly as ruling, we end up with twelve rulers total depicted here, six from the Seleucids and six from the Ptolemids, interestingly enough, which are depicted as either strong or weak.

Taking the information above, I suggest the following interpretation of the Nebuchadnezzar dream statue in Daniel 2:
Head of gold: Nebuchadnezzar [the rest of the neo-Babylonians are ignored]
Chest/arms of Silver: The Medes and Persians, as there are two arms
Belly/thighs of bronze: Alexander the Great, who strode across west and east
Iron legs: Ptolemy I Soter and Seleucus I Nicator, one per leg
Feet of mixed clay and iron: Specifically I think the imagery is related to the ten toes, some of which are intended to be iron and some clay:
One foot, Kings of the South:
     Ptolemy II Philadelphus: clay
     Ptolemy III Euergetes: iron
     Ptolemy IV Philopator: iron
     Ptolemy V Epiphanes: clay
     Ptolemy VI Philometor: clay
The other foot, Kings of the North:
     Antiochus II Theos: clay
     Seleucus II Callinicus: clay
     Antiochus III the Great: iron
     Seleucus IV Philopator: clay
     Antiochus IV Epiphanes: iron

There are several implications here. Firstly, this interpretation, which fits so well with the evidence, would indicate that the materials in Daniel chapter 2 and chapter 11 are obviously related and belong to the same time period. Secondly, we find important evidence concerning the different mindset regarding history held by the author of these depictions: when one or another ruler is omitted, this shows us that the historical information is being selectively utilized in order to fit the particular prophetic structure being depicted. Thirdly, and I think most interestingly, the depiction of sometimes kings and sometimes empires in the image (see 2.38) shows that the consistency which we expect as moderns (which has previously always led us to read all the elements as empires) was not something shared by the ancients. Lastly, the sophistication of detail in combining the utilization of the various metals and clay with the various body parts of the image as a presentation of unfolding history and the quality of kings is, so far as I know, unique. It is certainly quite striking.

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Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Let us regard the biblical account itself as a conceptual model of Israel’s genesis. It is as if the Israelites themselves formulated an articulate portrayal of their distant past, much as modern scholarship does. Such a paradigm for a description of Israel’s emergence is feasible. This projection embedded within the biblical text has certain clear advantages over modern speculation: being much closer to the actual events—by thousands of years—and being a product of the locale itself, it inherently draws upon a much greater intimacy with the land, its topography, demography, military situation, ecology, and the like.

Such a working hypothesis enables us to avoid the extremes which have all too often left their imprint upon modern historiography in our field. By conceding that the biblical tradition could be a reflective, “theorizing” account—rather than strictly factual, “Wie es eigentlich gewesen” (Ranke)—we sidestep the pitfall of neofundamentalism. And by spurning the view of Israel’s proto-history as a deliberately fabricated tradition, we keep from being swept into the other, radical—and now more fashionable—extreme. This paves the way, on an operative plane, to a dialectical approach to the biblical text, one which retains the option that the tradition represents an admixture of ancient, reliable, historical components and late, untrustworthy, anachronistic elements.

This excellent pair of paragraphs is found on pages 13-14 of Malamat’s History of Biblical Israel. His terminology of reflection is earlier described on pages 9-10: “Rudimentary ancient descriptions were recontemplated in the current intellectual and theological terms, yielding new appraisals and motivations for past events.” That sounds an awful lot like modern historiography, doesn’t it?

My only quibble in the extended quote above, comes with the statement at the very end: “late, untrustworthy, anachronistic elements.” An anachronistic element isn’t necessarily untrustworthy, but simply misplaced. Typically, anachronisms are recognized precisely because of reliable testimony placing them in an age that is later than the period described in the text. This marks an anachronism as, actually, a trustworthy witness of its own age.

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In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel

I’ve just finished reading In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel, edited by John Day. For a fine-grained review of the book with summaries of the articles, see Joe Cathey’s review at RBL. These are just a few comments from off the top of my head.

Firstly, I have to admit that I was just a tad, a tiny little bit, disappointed by this book. Perhaps I was, entirely unrealistically I admit, expecting a bit more consistency than I should expect from a series of reworked papers originally delivered in a conference. This is a subject that really should be dealt with in detail, and which would benefit from the kind of consistency in approach that is really only possible in a work written by one author. That evenness of approach is lacking here, but, of course, is only to be expected due to the origins of the papers. If one of the authors of the works contained herein were to write such a book, based on the performances contained in this one, I would nominate, second, and inaugurate John Day for the duty.

In any case, I did find several of the chapters/papers to be especially outstanding in content as well as presentation: those of Ernest Nicholson “Current ‘Revisionism’ and the Literature of the Old Testament”, John Day “How Many Pre-Exilic Psalms are there?”, and W. G. Lambert “Mesopotamian Sources and Pre-Exilic Israel.” Day’s chapter is the prize of the book, I think. It is succint, well-argued, and, perhaps most importantly, not overburdened by too much unnecessary recapitulation of the secondary literature, a common problem in this book. Others that stand out in the Not-As-Stellar-But-Still-Pretty-Nifty Category were Graham Davies “Was there an Exodus?”, William Dever “Histories and Non-Histories of Ancient Israel: the Question of the United Monarchy”, and Katherine Dell “How much Wisdom Literature has its Roots in the Pre-Exilic Period?”

And then there are the rest of the articles, of which I only want to deal with a few in any detail. André Lemaire “Hebrew and West Semitic Inscriptions and Pre-Exilic Israel” suffers from the inclusion of non-provenanced materials from the antiquities market as “evidence.” That’s just tacky. Terry Fenton “Hebrew Poetic Structure as a Basis for Dating” suffers from a non-poet’s approach to poetry: fit the material into the appropriate pattern, everything else is extraneous. B. A. Mastin “Yahweh’s Asherah, Inclusive Monotheism and the Question of Dating” suffers from trying to avoid the explicit connotation in the pronominal suffix attached to Asherah in the Kuntillet `Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom marking it as a noun, not a name. Gary Knoppers “In Search of Post-Exilic Israel: Samaria After the Fall of the Northern Kingdom” is a mixed bag, describing the mass depopulation of most of the northern kingdom, but somehow also trying to ameliorate it for some unknown and unstated reason. Perhaps most egregiously, Bernard Levinson “Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition? A Response to John van Seters” takes 54 pages to say “no”. I suppose it’s rather a pet peeve of mine that we are on occasion subjected to the odious original of a thing and then recapitulation of it ad nauseam whenever a response addresses it. Once is enough!

Overall however, the volume is certainly valuable, and I’m glad I’ve read it. I’ve found much of it to be of value, though definitely not as much as I expected. I recommend it to anyone interested or involved in the “maximalist” versus “minimalist” controversy. This book weighs in, a welterweight, in the maximalist corner.

A consistent drawback I’ve noticed shared by this volume with others is that unusual theories, in this case of extraordinarily, unrealistically late datings of the biblical texts, are given validation by interaction, even by refutation. Stupid ideas stupidly posed should rather be ignored. Has anyone taken the time to write a refutation of Velikovsky’s fantasies? Why should some of these other equally unlikely peculiarities be priveleged with response? It’s a waste of preciously valuable time, and original, creative research is thereby left undone because of this dead-ending of attention on second-rate foolishness. It would be refreshing to see the main tendency in biblical studies in general return to study of the primary texts involved, that is, the actual biblical books, rather than an absurd fascination with secondary/tertiary/quaternary texts. The two are not to be equated.

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Walking the Bible

I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying PBS’s Walking the Bible. Rather than the typical assortment of discordantly talking heads paired with sonorous narrative and anachronistic dramatizations or stock footage, host Bruce Feiler (author of a book also named Walking the Bible and some others) is producing here a new kind of first person biblical travelogue, and it is entirely refreshing. There are gems here: from Turkey’s Mount Ararat, where a tight-lipped Kurdish mountain guide refuses to divulge the secrets of the mountain, to a leisurely row across Egypt’s Lake Timsah in a boat whose fisherman explains that they call a certain fish “the Moses fish” because, when the waters of the sea were split, the fish were split and so on one side they are grey and one side white. Delightful!

Feiler is a fine host, peppering the program with biblical readings and not uninformed scholarly explanations and conjectures, yet still giving the upper hand to the story in its relation to faith. Such an approach is perfectly in keeping with the goals of this blog and its companion email list. So, I recommend to folks that they catch it on their local PBS station, or if you’re outside of the US, purchase the DVD (available here). Either way, it’s informative, fun, and commercial free! And while it appears that there are only three episodes, the overall quality is quite enough to compensate for the lack of quantity.

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Rabbat-Ammon in 1847

“The dreariness of its (Ammon’s) present aspect,” says Lord Lindsay, “is quite indescribable,—it looks like the abode of death,—the valley stinks with dead camels, one of which was rolling in the stream; and though we saw none among the ruins, they were absolutely covered in every direction with their dung. That morning’s ride would have convinced a sceptic; How runs the prophecy? ‘I will make Rabbah a stable for camels.'”

The prophecy to which Lord Lindsay referred is Ezekiel 25.5:
I will make Rabbah a pasture for camels
and Ammon a fold for flocks.
Then you shall know that I am the LORD

The excerpt from Alexander William Crawford Lord Lindsay’s Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy Land (London, 1847) is quoted in Rev. Alexander Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy; Particularly as Illustrated by the History of the Jews, and by the Discoveries of Recent Travellers (phew!), 35th edition [!], Edinburgh, 1854, page 174. I also have a copy of the 39th edition, from 1872. The book’s multiple editions made it a mainstay of popular religion throughout the Victorian Age. He also wrote the entirely fascinating The Signs of the Times, as Denoted by the Fulfillment of Historical Predictions, Traced Down from the Babylonish Captivity to the Present Time (Edinburgh, 1834), in which the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are tied, in the historicist manner, to various events in European history, most notably to Napoleon’s campaigns! The two small volumes are half-calf with marbled covers and marbling on the edges, and include some pullout maps which are fine examples of early nineteenth century mapmaking.

The Rev. Alexander Keith and his son George Skene Keith were also responsible for taking the first ever photographs of the Holy Land in 1844. These photographs, converted into engravings, appear in various editions of the Evidence… book. Rev. Keith (1791-1880) was also one of the many ministers involved in the formation of the Free Church of Scotland.

The primary value to moderns of the Evidence… book is its important picture of the state of the territories of the Holy Land in the years before Jewish settlement in the area and a counteracting/corresponding Ottoman transfer of Muslim populations into those territories. The picture described is one of a beautiful, fertile, productive land which is only sparsely populated by melancholy and oppressed inhabitants. What little settled population lived there was constantly intimidated by bands of marauding bedouin Arabs or the Turkish authorities. Although I would certainly think we can all regret the loss of the unspoiled natural beauty of the region which has since occurred, no one can miss the oppression of people in those days.

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Old Testament Dates

I’ve just added a couple of new web pages to my Bombaxo website, which some may find of interest.

First is the page of Old Testament Dates. This includes a scheme of calendar dates for the rulers of Israel and Judah. It also provides modern dates for various dates mentioned in the prophetic and historical texts. See there for more details.

I’ve also added a page of notes regarding the Dates of the Twelve Minor Prophets, as given in the above-mentioned file. The notes explain my particular reasons for the dates given.

Some may say that such dating schemes are nuts.

To those who would say such, I hereby give, in keeping with this season of giving, perhaps a bit too generously, just as much caring about their opinion as can fit between these two lines: =

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