_awakening

Ancient Israel and the Afterlife.

Stephen L. Cook, professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Virginia Theological University, posted an essay on his blog, entitled Funerary Practices and Afterlife Expectations in Ancient Israel. It was an article that first appeared in the online journal Religion Compass last year.

As the title implies, it is an exploration of the funeral practices of the Ancient Israelites and what kind of light they shed on the concept and expectations they held about the afterlife. Here is the abstract from the essay:

Ancient Israel was thoroughly familiar with existence beyond death. Individual personalities survived the death of the body, most Israelites believed, albeit in a considerably weakened and vulnerable state. The ensnaring tentacles of Sheol constantly threatened the living-dead, but the fortunate among them were able to use the power of kinship bonds to keep Sheol’s threats at bay. The traditional ties of lineage and kin-bonding, according to biblical Yahwism, were an actual way for the living-dead to pull themselves back from death’s devouring suction. Ancient Israel’s funerary practices and afterlife expectations are greatly illumined by recent archaeological studies and by a new comparative model that draws on data gleaned from African ethnography.

This fascinating essay is a good introduction to the scholarly debate surrounding the ideology of the resurrection and the afterlife in Ancient Israel. Well worth the time to read and digest...

Speaking of the Canon...

Here's a useful interactive "Canon Comparison Chart" from Vincent Setterholm of Logos [click on image]. It's an easy way of seeing what is and is not in each of the major canonizations of the scriptures. Included are the canons of the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Hebrew Bible, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Protestant. One major learning here is that even when you are talking about the scriptures, not everyone is following the same canon.

[HT: Biblical Studies and Technological Tools]

What are the Scriptures?

One of the best classes I took in grad school was a course entitled Scripture and Canon. It was a course surveying the issues surrounding the collection, development, and canonization of the scriptures. One of the discussions we had in class centered on various church statements of belief about the nature of the scriptures. It was fascinating to see the variety of ideas captured in such statements. We were struck with not only the diversity found in these statements, but also the views of what the scriptures are expressed in many of them.

A few weeks back a friend of mine pointed out this statement about the scriptures made by a church local to us:

We believe the Bible is the most important book anyone could ever read or study. No other book can successfully take a person into the heart of God. We affirm this based on our belief that the Bible, consisting of all 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, is the inspired, authoritative and inerrant Word of God. It is, down to the finest detail, everything God intended to say as He inspired men to write it. As such, the Bible is the final word on relating to God, living with each other, and enjoying the life He intends. We preach and teach God's Word with complete confidence in its historic, scientific, and spiritual reliability (Psalm 19:7-11; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:20, 21; John 8:30-31; Hebrews 4:12).

Now perhaps maybe I'm too much the inquisitive type, but this particular statement made me ask a few questions:

Is the Bible the only place where we find truth? Are the scriptures the only way to the heart of God?

How do we know that the scriptures are exactly the way God intended them to be written? Is this an interpretation of something stated in the text, is this something external to the text that we bring to it as a way of elevating them? [Dare I say much like the term "inerrancy"...]

What do we mean by "God's Word?" Is everything written in the scriptures "God's Word," even the words attributed to pagans?

What do we make out about the historic reliability of the text? What does it mean that we see the text as being reliable in all things historic? What happens when historical portrayals are conflicting? And what about scientific reliability? Are to take the scientific world view of the scriptures as an accurate portrayal of the cosmos, as an example?

These questions are not asked as a skeptic. They are asked out of a desire to see us be more clear about the writings we call the scriptures. We tend to say a lot of things that perhaps make sense to those inside a particular Christian culture, but forget that those statements can often be quite unclear, or even easily dismissed, by those without a frame of reference. Additionally, I wonder if we always understand the implications of what we say we believe.

Any thoughts? What strikes you about this particular statement or others you have read?

Khirbet Qeiyafa Slideshow.

Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor have posted the slideshow from their 2008 ASOR presentation on Khirbet Qeiyafa [HT: Chris Heard]. If you are wondering what the interest is all about, Heard summarizes it nicely:

The identification of the site as Sha‘arayim seems quite likely now, completely independent of anything learned from the ostracon. (Or maybe not; see Todd Bolen’s take on the issue.) The site’s occupation in the first half of the ninth century also seems quite likely. Reports of the “low chronology’s” death may be greatly exaggerated, or premature, but Khirbet Qeiyafa must surely influence our picture of 10th-century Judah. Let us not overstate the case: what we (the interested public) know of Khirbet Qeiyafa at this point hardly “proves that David killed Goliath” or anything of that sort. However, Khirbet Qeiyafa does counterbalance the increasingly common portrayal of 10th-century Judah as a cultural backwater.

Online Helps.

Recently a few new search engines directly related to academics and scholarly research have appeared on the web.If you are looking for research in the area of biblical studies, these sites might be of some help. RefSeek is fully functioning at this point, while RefEx is still in the development phase. Below are the descriptions from each of the websites.

RefSeek (rĕf-sēk) is a web search engine for students and researchers. RefSeek aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone. RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.

Reference Extract is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extracts will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland, and over 1,400 libraries worldwide. This grant will support planning for Reference Extract and building the foundation necessary to implement it as a large-scale, general user service.

[HT: Mark Hoffman at Biblical Studies and Technological Tools]

Readings and More.

Here's a collection of essays, articles, and lectures recently posted here and there on the web. Enjoy.

Paul's Understanding of the Death of Jesus by James D.G. Dunn
[from BiblicalStudies.org.uk]

How Christian is the Book of Revelation? by G.R. Beasley-Murray
[from BiblicalStudies.org.uk]

Khirbet Qeiyafa: Sha'arayim by Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor
[from the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures]

In Search of the Ancient Name of Khirbet Qeiyafa by Nadav Na'aman
[from the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures]

Reconstructing Hope [a series of three lectures given by Tom Wright at the Harvard Graduate School Christian Fellowship]

Highly Recommended.

Jim West just finished a chapter by chapter review of Hanan Eshel's The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hasmonean State. After reading the book I have to concur with West in saying that it is perhaps one of the best treatments of the historical references found in various DSS texts available. The book is carefully constructed and solidly argued. If you are at all interested in the field of current research on the scrolls, this is a must read volume.

Reviews and More Reviews.

If you're looking for book reviews in he broad area of Biblical studies, Review of Biblical Literature is perhaps one of the best clearing houses out there. Every month they peer review some 40-50 works, posting them as PDF downloads. It is well worth subscribing to their email reminder...

Here are a few that have recently caught my eye. Enjoy.

Edward Adams
The Stars Will Fall from Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and Its World
Reviewed by Lorenzo DiTommaso

Hector Avalos
The End of Biblical Studies
Reviewed by Ulrich H. J. Körtner

Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem
Reviewed by Craig L. Blomberg

Stephen K. Catto
Reconstructing the First-Century Synagogue: A Critical Analysis of Current Research
Reviewed by Birger Olsson

Alec Gilmore
A Concise Dictionary of Bible Origins and Interpretation
Reviewed by Jan G. van der Watt

Richard A. Horsley
Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea
Reviewed by Lester L. Grabbe

Thomas L. Leclerc
Introduction to the Prophets: Their Stories, Sayings, and Scrolls
Reviewed by Bo H. Lim

Grant Macaskill
Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
Reviewed by Brian Han Gregg

Alexander Samely
Forms of Rabbinic Literature and Thought: An Introduction
Reviewed by Joshua Schwartz

David E. S. Stein, ed.
The Contemporary Torah: A Gender-Sensitive Adaptation of the JPS Translation
Reviewed by Linda S. Schearing

Ben Zion Wacholder
The New Damascus Document: The Midrash on the Eschatological Torah of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Reconstruction, Translation and Commentary
Reviewed by Gregory L. Doudna

[Now if only I had the money to buy more books... perhaps there should be some "academic bailout" package.]

Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Late this last week, various news sources began picking up a story about the discovery of a ostracon, or an inscribed piece of of pottery, found an archaeological dig at Kirbet Qeiyafa, which appears to date from around the 10th century BCE. This from the New York Times article:

Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archaeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old fortified city that could reshape views of the period when David ruled over the Israelites. Five lines on pottery uncovered here appear to be the oldest Hebrew text ever found and are likely to have a major impact on knowledge about the history of literacy and alphabet development.

The five-acre site, with its fortifications, dwellings and multi-chambered entry gate, will also be a weapon in the contentious and often politicized debate over whether David and his capital, Jerusalem, were an important kingdom or a minor tribe, an issue that divides not only scholars but those seeking to support or delegitimize Zionism.

Only a tiny portion of the site has been excavated, and none of the findings have yet been published or fully scrutinized. But the dig, led by Yosef Garfinkel of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is already causing a stir among his colleagues as well as excitement from those who seek to use the Bible as a guide to history and confirmation of their faith.

“This is a new type of site that suddenly opens a window on an area where we have had almost nothing and requires us to rethink what was going on at that period,” said Aren M. Maeir, professor of archaeology at Bar-Ilan University and the director of a major Philistine dig not far from here. “This is not a run-of-the-mill find.”

And this little a bit further in...

A specialist in ancient Semitic languages at Hebrew University, Haggai Misgav, says the writing, on pottery using charcoal and animal fat for ink, is in so-called proto-Canaanite script and appears to be a letter or document in Hebrew, suggesting that literacy may have been more widespread than is generally assumed. That could play a role in the larger dispute over the Bible, since if more writing turns up it suggests a means by which events could have been recorded and passed down several centuries before the Bible was likely to have been written.

I highly recommend that you read the article in its entirety. While at this time the dating seem promising, the extrapolation of what this all could mean for the scholarly discussion of the historicity of Israel, as well as the form in which traditions were passed along, will be interesting to follow. If you want to read more, and see some photos of the pottery find, here you go.

'Oldest Hebrew writing found near J'lem' [Jerusalem Post]

Have Israeli archaeologists found world's oldest Hebrew inscription? [AP/Haaretz.com]

'Oldest Hebrew script' is found [BBC]

Archeologist finds 3,000-year old Hebrew text [CNN.com]

You can also find a few additional links, including some nice photos of the ostracon and the excavation site at BiblePlaces Blog here, here, and here.

The History of Israel.

The latest edition of Biblical Archaeology Review is on its way, but until then BAR has posted a few of the lead articles, written by Israeli scholar Anson Rainey, on their website in their entirety:

Inside, Outside: Where Did the Early Israelites Come From?

Shasu or Habiru: Who Were the Early Israelites?

If you're interested in having your thinking stretched a bit about the historicity of the nation of Israel, these articles may be a good starting point for study. If you're looking for something a bit deeper, you may want to check out Philip R. Davies' newest work, Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History - Ancient and Modern. [The book just showed up at my house today, so I'm looking forward to diving into it soon. Perhaps more to come...]