Papers

Upcoming Presentations at ETS & SBL ’14 – San Diego

Balboa Park, San Diego. Museum of Man pictured right.

One of the things I have been trying to do over the past year and a half or so is to attend and participate in more biblical studies conferences. Some of this I have written about previously (here). It’s a lot of fun, if occasionally overwhelming and often expensive. But it’s also worthwhile. I’m working on a post right now for aspiring doctoral students of biblical studies that will be a kind of “how-to” (and a “why”) for the conference scene, which can be tremendously beneficial to the student. So look for that in a few weeks.

SBL National Conference

The upcoming annual Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference will be held from November 22nd-25th in San Diego, CA. The location will be a welcome change compared to the prior two years’ frigid locales, Baltimore and Chicago, respectively. Information about the meeting, including registration, transportation, and housing are on the annual meeting page.

Rumor has it the book exhibit will be on the beach.

I am excited to have the opportunity to participate by presenting a paper this year. I will read it at the IOSCS program unit (here), which usually meets at least twice during the conference. My paper will be an extension of the research I presented at the 2013 IOSOT Congress in Munich, which dealt with Septuagint lexicography in the double-text of LXX-Judges.

In the congress paper I took a brief foray into verifying research done almost fifty years ago now by John A. L. Lee in LXX lexicography. Lee’s work was decisive in demonstrating that LXX Greek is in fact simply the vernacular Koine of its time, not a special “Jewish Greek” that some scholars had posited (for more on the language of LXX, see this post). Lee also dipped into historical linguistics using documentary evidence to establish a terminus ante quem for the translation of the Greek Pentateuch. His dissertation is in print (and quite affordable, here). An abstract of my previous congress paper and its appendix are available here.

My SBL presentation will focus again on LXX lexicography and the Greek texts of Judges. This time I will be considering the translational renderings of the prevalent battle language throughout the book. Words like לחם and  מלחמה are translated in interestingly divergent ways in the A text as opposed to the B text. The question I will be asking then is simply, “Hmm… why?” I don’t have a clear answer yet! But I have my suspicions. Lee’s methodology of lexical inquiry in documentary evidence will be a primary avenue of inquiry for this paper (using papyri.info, which I have reviewed in part here). Hopefully come November I will have something cogent to offer in terms of an answer.

A full abstract is available here.

ETS National Conference

I will also participate in the ETS conference, also held in San Diego just prior to SBL, presenting a paper in the Psalms & Hebrew Poetry section. I have not been as active in ETS as I have in SBL in the past few years, so I’m looking forward to being a part of this conference. Although it’s a smaller event by far, it is still a great way to see what is happening academically within the purview of evangelicalism. 

My paper is a product of a longer study I did a few years ago in Nahum 1 (here and here). I presented a paper at a regional ETS a year ago that was less extensive (and sparsely attended!), so I’m looking forward to presenting this more in-depth analysis. 

The basic issue at hand is the question of the presence (or absence) of an acrostic in chapter 1. Especially in vv. 2-8 there is what appears as a partial, or “broken,” acrostic spanning the first half of the alep-bet. Ever since F. Delitsch mentioned it in his Psalms commentary there have been innumerable attempts to reconstruct it to either a full acrostic (older commentators mostly), or a complete half-acrostic (most current approaches). Although some are content to take the text as is, either as a coincidence or literary device, the majority opinion still leans towards textual emendation, to the extent that even BHS lays out the verses as an acrostic. 

My paper considers the warrant for emending the Hebrew text on the basis of a translation analysis of the Greek version, which is ordinarily the primary witness to which those who would emend the text appeal. Without giving too much away, my paper is entitled “There is No Spoon: Text-Critical Question Begging in the ‘Acrostic’ of Nahum 1 .” An abstract is available here.

IOSCS Munich Review & Application Season

Although it has been almost two months now, I wanted to write a brief review of the IOSCS subcongress this past August 1-3, held just before the IOSOT Congress. The program can still be found here, and the abstracts here as of today. The Congress was well attended, but still tiny by contrast to, say, the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting. I would estimate about seventy five attendees, most of which presented a paper. Lectures were held on Thursday evening, all day Friday into the evening, and part of Saturday, with three sessions occurring at once organized by theme (roughly). The venue, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, was stunning and far more space than our small group needed, although it was nice to be doted on by the servers at the tea breaks, and I’m certain it was the right size for the much larger IOSOT Congress which immediately followed IOSCS.

My own lecture went well, at least from my perspective. An abstract of my paper is available here, and the appendix here. I would make the paper itself available, but it will be submitted for inclusion in the published proceedings from the congress, so I had better wait. Overall, the paper was well received, although I have some misgivings about the extent to which my proposal for historical linguistic lexicography applied to LXX studies was understood by some. That probably reflects on me more than anything. Still, it was a fantastic time that I will remember fondly.

2013-08-02 09.51.50

Now that the Congress is over, I have moved into doctoral applications. These are proving quite time consuming, particularly the task of repeatedly stating my personal brilliance (or the brilliance of the institution) in various ways on each application. Far more interesting is the task of dissertation proposals. I am considering two broad topics within the (narrow) field of LXX studies. First, that of eschatology/messianism in translation, particularly in the books of Exodus and the Twelve. Secondly, lexicography in light of Koine documentary evidence, which is along the lines of my Congress paper, applied particularly to Judges. I currently am waiting to hear from two universities across the pond, which should respond in the next few weeks. One further application was made today, and likely a last will come within a few weeks. When the dust settles, I will post again, if not sooner.

WAR

Spring ’13 Papers

I thought I would post the two papers I wrote this past spring semester.

One was for my Old Testament Poetry and Wisdom class, for which I wrote an exegetical paper on Psalm 115, which engages in a so-called Christological “second reading,” (a hermeneutical methodology which some at Westminster find objectionable for reasons too arcane to get into here). Find the paper here: Psalm 115: The Resurrected Remnant as a Smouldering Stump.

The second paper is an exploration of Paul’s uses of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17 from text-historical and exegetical perspectives. This I wrote for an elective in Biblical Translation, and which also ended up winning an award entitled the Thomas E. Welmers Memorial Prize in Biblical Languages and Exegesis (here). The paper, which is rather uncreatively titled, can be found here: Paul’s Use of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17.

WAR