Category Archives: Fun!

Sometimes sarcasm

Well, how about that?

By the skin of my teeth, I’ve made it into the Top 50 Biblical Studies Blogs. I didn’t even know about this until seeing it on Rick Brannon’s Ricoblog, where he kindly mentions that he thinks my blog and the excellent Thoughts on Antiquity should rank higher. Modestly, I agree.

Apparently, one votes by clicking the little arrow that points upward next to the blog’s name, if one is so inclined.

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Those Philistines!

Adding to Jim Davila’s post on the Philistines, among others, there’s another interesting tidbit to add.

The online Oxford English Dictionary’s etymology for Philistine refers us to the etymology for philister:

The use of the word in this sense is said to have originated at Jena in 1693, in a sermon from the text Philister über dir, Simson! ‘The Philistines are upon you, Samson!’ (Judges 16:9, 12, 14, 20) preached by Pastor Götze at the funeral of one of the students who had been killed in a quarrel between townspeople and students, but it was apt. in fact already in use in Jena in 1687.

The definition for philister is “An unenlightened or uncultured person; = PHILISTINE n. 3; (spec. in German universities) a townsperson, a non-student.” The earliest usages included in both entries date to the 1820s, however, so Pastor Götze is not to receive credit for introducing the connotation of Philistine as boor to the English. The Hebrew Bible itself also cannot be held accountable for this usage, as there’s no trace of the derogatory reuse of פלשתי in reference to those who are not ethnic Philistines. It’s not too surprising that later familiarity with the Old Testament along with some extrabiblical supersessionist ideas about Israel’s ancient neighbors led to this connotation among Europeans who considered themselves several rungs further up the ladder than even the Israelites. Fun stuff!

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The one book meme

1. One book that changed your life.
The Orthodox Church, Bishop Kallistos (Ware)

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Vladimir Lossky

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:
The Bible, with all the apocrypha

4. One book that made you laugh:
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

5. One book that made you cry:
The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, Bat Ye’or

6. One book that you wish had been written:
A Commentary on the Scriptures, Jesus of Nazareth
[Oops. I just noticed I had originally misread that as “One book that you wish you had written. That’s why I answered with Introducing the Apocrypha, David deSilva, because I’d actually been putting together almost an identical book when his came out!]

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
The Qur’an (see 5, above)

8. One book you’re currently reading:
Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church, Fr John Breck

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Unseen Warfare, St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain

10. Now tag five people:
Mike Aquilina, Claude Mariottini, Fr John Whiteford, and the last two people on the web who haven’t yet done it, whoever they may be.

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Kooky, Kooky, lend me your trowel

So yesterday, Saturday, I stopped by a local shop to pick up some magazines for a nice sunny day’s reading in the sun. Those glossy pics and pages and the relatively simple English writing style is refreshing, even recreational, after my recent slogging through barbaric Latin. Anyhow, the shop had changed hands and all the magazines got moved around. So, while I was looking particularly for KMT (which I think is absolutley the bestest and beautifullest magazine in the whole wide world), he happened to be out, so I got a Biblical Archaeology Review (if only for pretty pictures; it’s got a fairly good story in there about ancient circumcision, and an okay one about the Dome of the Rock, which I’ll have more to say about later), a copy of Archaeology (including, inter alia, a fairly short but also fairly stupid piece on the Gospel of Judas, and a large one on that Bosnian pyramid guy—free publicity, or maybe they paid him—it’ll be a long time before I buy another Archaeology), and then I saw this other cover right next to it, listing as stories along the left column, among others which I didn’t read, “Phoenician Grapes in Virginia” (I thought, “How interesting; they must be able to tell by genetic sequencing.”), “Canada’s Serpent Mounds” (“Ooo, I love mounds! They must be like the Ohio serpent mound we walked around when I was a kid!”) and some other stuff, which I was too hurried to read. Of course, one has to know that I’m a very rapid shopper, generally despising or uncomfortable to be in anything except a musty bookstore, and I was also chatting with the new owner, an Egyptian I think, and I had two iced coffees rather rapidly losing their iciness, so I didn’t take the time to read anything else on the cover of this magazine, Ancient American (and you all read the name and start laughing!). I thought it was a new magazine devoted to moundbuilders and ancient American cultures and all that truly nifty stuff. Once I got out into the sun with my magazines, my two pints of iced Illy coffee, and even a new copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, sitting by a reflecting pool on the Berkeley campus, I opened the supposed moundbuilder mag and it turned out to be one of those ghastly “Phoenicians in America” things. I can’t even describe how vastly disappointed I was to be deprived of what I thought I was about to read, though the faint undercurrent of disgust is probably understandable, with a slight overtone of embarassment, because on the cover, lower right, in letters nearly as large as the title, it says “Ecuador’s Phoenician Artififacts.” All in all, a distinctly unenjoyable flavor. I’ll, um, er, definitely be taking the whole two seconds to pause and read the entire cover of any magazines I’ll be buying in future.

So, here’s to junk archaeology putting a damper on an otherwise beautiful weekend reading session!

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biblical or Biblical?

shakespearean or Shakespearean? homeric or Homeric? Now both of those adjectives are based on personal names, but there is also a specific corpus in mind in the case of each, as in the case of biblical or Biblical. I usually see the former, but quite often the latter occurs.

The SBL Handbook prefers lowercase biblical (App. A, p. 154), following the Chicago Manual of Style, where we find recommended “Bible; biblical” (14th ed. §7.87; p. 269). Here’s what the CMS says about capitalization of religious names and terms:

In few areas is an author more tempted to overcapitalize or an editor more loath to urge a lowercase style than in religion. That this is probably due to unanalyzed acceptance of the pious customs of an earlier age, to an unconscious feeling about words as in themselves numinous, or to fear of offending religious persons is suggested by the fact that overcapitalization is seldom seen in texts on the religions of antiquity or more recent localized, relatively unsophisticated religions. Is is in the contexts of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism that we go too far. The editors of the University of Chicago Press urge a spare, down style in this field as in others: capitalize what are clearly proper nouns and adjectives, and lowecase everything else except to avoid ambiguity (CMS 14, §7.77, p. 265; emphasis theirs).

Now as far as these prescriptive sources go, they’re fine. There are a couple of reasons, however, that I’m coming out in favor of uppercase Biblical, despite my purely aesthetic typographical preference for the title of this blog! Note the confused recommended “Bible; biblical” of CMS. Why this mix of cases? We all recognize with CMS that uppercase “Bible,” as the title of a particularly well-known book that is itself a collection of smaller books, is valid. And yet, illogically, the recommended adjective is the lowercase “biblical.” My issue with this particular “down style” is related to my discomfort with the neologism “biblioblog.” To my eye, “biblical” is too close to the generic “bibli-” usage, as in bibliophilia, bibliography, etc, implying a connection to books in general, while “Biblical” is quite a bit more obviously referring to that compendium “the Bible.” Similarly, in the above quotation, the CMS recommends “capitalize what are clearly proper nouns and adjectives.” Is “biblical” not an adjective in Chicago?

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Forty

Adam and Eve had forty fingers and toes between them. God sent rain for forty days and forty nights to flood the world. There weren’t even forty righteous people in Sodom. Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah. Esau was forty years old when he married his two wives. The Egyptians took forty days to embalm Jacob. The Israelites ate manna for forty years. Moses stayed on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights without food or water, receiving the words of the covenant. The Israelite spies infiltrated Canaan for forty days. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years. Their clothes and shoes didn’t wear out for forty years. Caleb was forty years old when he was sent as a spy into Canaan. Under Othniel, the Israelites had forty years of peace. After Deborah and Baraq defeated Sisera, the Israelites had peace for forty years. During Gideon’s time, the Israelites had peace for forty years. Abdon had forty sons. The Philistines oppressed the Israelites for forty years. Eli led Israel for forty years. Goliath the Philistine challenged the Israelites to single combat for forty days, until David took him up. Saul was forty years old when he became king of Israel. David reigned over Israel for forty years. The central hall of Solomon’s Temple was forty cubits long. Each of Solomon’s mobile basins held forty baths. Solomon reigned over Israel for forty years. It took Elijah forty days and forty nights to reach Mount Horeb. Hazael brought forty camels loaded with gifts for Elishah. Joash reigned over Judah for forty years. The governors preceding Nehemiah charged a tax of forty shekels per man. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God threatened to make Egypt a ruin and exile its people for forty years. The central hall of Ezekiel’s Temple was forty cubits long. Jesus was in the desert, fasting for forty days and forty nights, and being tempted by Satan. After His resurrection, Jesus remained among His disciples for forty days, and then ascended to heaven. The Apostle Paul says Saul ruled Israel for forty years. And I am forty years old today. Happy birthday to me!

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