Once again Eisenbrauns is running their annual Valentine’s Day competition inviting original expressions of love in an ancient Near Eastern language. A shame that the entry I’d like to post has already been created by another, as you can see here where the late Ronnie Barker interprets hieroglyphics:
Author: martin
Husband, father, some time Old Testament lecturer, IT consultant, and other things as well...
job’s perfection and paul’s objection
Job, we are told in the opening verses of the book which bears his name, was תם וישר וירא אלהים וסר מרע — “blameless and just, fearing God.” Much of the point of the book rests upon the veracity of this assertion. Job did not deserve to suffer as he did. David Clines claims that…
the verb ברא in genesis 1
It appears that Ellen Van Wolde’s article about the meaning of ברא in Genesis 1 has appeared in JSOT (link to the reference is here). There has already been some discussion over her claim on other blogs, so I’m hoping to get a copy of her article soon (if anyone feels motivated to send me…
the shape of the ark
A recent article in the UK paper The Guardian reports that a newly translated by Irving Finkel (although not, apparently, newly discovered) tablet of Atra-hasis makes reference to the Mesopotamian ark as being “circular” (I assume it means more cylindrical than spherical). Although the provenance of the tablet seems unclear, there has been no doubt…
where’s jim west?
Well, Jim West’s blog appears to have disappeared. Last time this happened it was the result of an attacker, but there are reports that this time it is Jim’s own decision which has led to the closure and deletion of the blog. Perhaps a clue can be found in one of his last posts, his…
junk mail carbon sequestration
Well, Christmas has passed for another year. Has it helped the climate? Well, perhaps it has: in the 8 weeks prior to Christmas we received over 6kg of junk mail. Here is our weekly allotment: How has this helped the climate? Well, assuming that most of the junk mail is paper, and most of the…
lamentable christmas carols
Yes, there are many lamentable Christmas songs and carols (“Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” anyone?). Too many to mention. Nonetheless, since ’tis the season, and we’re subject to carols at every corner, I’m going to avail myself of the opportunity to complain a little. Perhaps my biggest gripe is with the common tendency…
luke 2:14
Jim West has posed a yuletide quest to uncover the “right” translation of Luke 2:14 (does anyone else get a Google ad inserted into that page for the “United Church of God”?). So here I’ll get into the spirit and have a go! First, for reference, Jim suggests the following: Glory to the highest God;…
bible software: what’s missing
OK, I’m not going to give a comprehensive list of what’s missing in the various incarnations of Bible software currently available, but there’s one feature I’d like to see which does not currently exist in any Bible software that I’m aware of — the ability to customise the morphological (and, when/where available, syntactical) tagging of texts….
more numerical fun
John Hobbins points to an article in the Jerusalem Post about a new book purportedly revealing startling new discoveries about truths hidden in the Hebrew text of the Bible by Professor Haim Shore from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. There’s endless fun to be had with such mathematical legerdemain, but for now let’s just look…