Hoffman, Joel. In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York: NYU Press, 2006.

Hoffman traces the history of the Hebrew language from its antiquity to modern times. This book filled in some gaps in my knowledge of the language especially as it pertains to the differences in spelling, grammar and pronunciation of Hebrew in its different stages of development. People who have studied biblical Hebrew will benefit from his chapters on the Masoretes since most students are familiar with the Tiberian tradition but most likely never heard of the Babylonian or Palestinian families. Hoffman walks the reader through what we can learn from the Dead Sea scrolls followed by a tour of the different dialects in the Hebrew Bible and post-biblical Hebrew. I especially appreciated his chapter on Modern Hebrew with the fascinating story of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who brought Hebrew back to life. Some readers may find some portions of the book a bit tedious, especially his discussion on spelling. But people like me who can’t get enough of Hebrew will appreciate the balance between a popular treatment of the subject and his attention to the details of the language.

Rachel is weeping for her children
She refuses to be comforted by her children
Because they are gone

“Jeremiah could not have known that he was right in writing down his thoughts to ensure their preservation. Along with Psalm 122 and the rest of the Jewish canon, they would later be translated into Greek, buried in caves in Qumran, translated into Latin, analyzed by medieval grammarians who sought (and failed) to preserve their ancient sounds, and preserved for the future in a codex kept in Leningrad, eventually to be used as the foundation for a modern spoken language of Hebrew” (Hoffman 2004: 212-3).

Wright, N. T. The New Testament and the People of God. 1st ed. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1992.

Superb! What a great introduction to 2nd Temple Judaism and 1st century Christianity! N. T. Wright first lays out his epistemological presuppositions and then works through different elements of Israel’s worldview in order to understand Christianity’s self-understanding.  He maps out the worldview of first-century Judaism (or Judaisms), considering its symbols: Temple, Land, Torah, and racial identity. This worldview is explained in terms  of creational monotheism, election, and eschatology. The result is a highly enjoyable and challenging read that lays the foundation for his other volumes.

“The great story of the Hebrew scriptures was… inevitably read in the second-temple period as a story in search of a conclusion. This ending would have to incorporate the full liberation and redemption of Israel, an event which had not happened as long as Israel was being oppressed, a prisoner in her own land. And this ending would have to be appropriate: it should correspond to the rest of the story, and grow out of it in obvious continuity and conformity” (Wright 1992: 217).

Listening to debates can be quite entertaining. Every once in a while you hear a good argument, learn something new, find out what different authors or scholars allegedly think, and even enjoy a nice come-back to a rebuttal or a timely joke at the expense of the opposition. But sometimes listening to debates may create more work for you because it is hard to believe everything you hear—are the debaters putting forth their best arguments or just trying to get the upper hand?—and a topic may arise that you just have to roll up your sleeves and check the facts out for yourself. In this post, within the context of a debate between Dan Barker and Mike Licona on the resurrection of Jesus¹, I will look at a particularly interesting syntactical phenomenon in Greek where ακόυω (hear) takes different cases for its object, and the role it may play in two different accounts of Paul’s conversion in Acts.

Referring to Paul’s Damascus experience when he saw Jesus, Barker asks Licona what kind of body Jesus had. After answering that he believed Jesus had a changed body, Licona asks Barker if “he grants him Acts”; that is, does Barker admit that Paul had such an encounter with the resurrected Jesus as narrated in Acts? That’s when both go off on a tangent, and it is this tangent I want to talk about (which starts at about 1:03:46 into the debate). Barker does not grant Acts as a reliable account because he says that Luke’s telling of Paul’s conversion is contradictory.  In Acts 9:7, it says that the men who were with Paul heard the voice, and in 22:9 it says that the men did not hear the voice.

Licona does not think this is a contradiction, and it is interesting that at this point he asks Barker—who said that he had checked the contradiction in the original Greek—how much Greek Barker had studied. Barker says he had two years of college Greek, and Licona in turn says that he took five years of Greek and has been studying it for 20 years. I wanted to highlight this “authority check” by Licona  because that becomes an important issue when discussing who is right when people holding two opposing views read the same Greek text (or any other ancient text for that matter) and come to different conclusions. Who is to believe whom, especially when the audience most likely knows no Greek?  Licona says that ακόυω can mean ‘hear’ or ‘understand’ and that most translations rightly translate ακόυω in 9:7 as ‘hear’ and in 22:7 as ‘understand’; the people in the first century, he claims, would not have any problems understanding the distinction. Then he says that Daniel Wallace points out that “given the field of use of ακόυω and φωνη, the fact that in chapter 9 is ακόυω plus the genitive and chapter 22 is ακόυω plus the accusative… certainly harmonizes.” When Barker disagrees, Licona says, “so you are saying that you with two years Greek experience, you are right, and Daniel Wallace, who is a very prominent, respected Greek grammarian, is wrong?”

What Licona is saying is that because ακόυω takes φωνη as a genitive in 9:7, it should be translated as ‘hear’ and that φωνη, as an accusative in 22:9, should be translated as ‘understand.’ And, what is more important, a prominent, respected Greek grammarian backs this up.
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These are just a few books that I’ve read recently that have helped me get a little beyond the basics of Biblical Hebrew.

Arnold, Bill T., and John H. Choi. A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Bilingual. Cambridge University Press, 2003. This is a great book for a quick review of Biblical Hebrew syntax, and the wealth of examples makes it an enjoyable reading. Although it was written to be used as a reference, I recommend reading through the whole book at least once as it may help you get a general sense of syntactical issues and exegetical possibilities. This might be a good book to read before working through An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax by Bruce Waltke and M. O’Connor which is a much larger work and also highly recommended.

Garrett, Duane A. Amos: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text. Baylor University Press, 2008. Tucker, W. Dennis. Jonah: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text. Baylor University Press, 2006. These volumes are useful for those familiar with the basics of Hebrew syntax. The quality varies from book to book, and some passages are more insightful than others. There is some (unnecessary) repetition, so the reader may find himself skipping some sections if he is working his way through a volume. I found the handbook on Amos to be more helpful than the one on Jonah, but that may be due to the book’s genre and size. I recommend that the reader work on the Hebrew text first on their own and then work through the handbook (most will probably just use it as a reference). Often times the authors will point things out in the text that you may have missed in your first reading or will provide some much needed background on the passage. Let me give you an example from a small part in Jonah 1:3 (in red). וַיָּקָם יוֹנָה לִבְרֹחַ תַּרְשִׁישָׁה מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה וַיֵּרֶד יָפוֹ וַיִּמְצָא אֳנִיָּה בָּאָה תַרְשִׁישׁ וַיִּתֵּן שְׂכָרָהּ וַיֵּרֶד בָּהּ לָבוֹא עִמָּהֶם תַּרְשִׁישָׁה מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָה Tucker points out that בָּאָה is a participle instead of a Qal qatal 3rd femine singular because the accent (which is not in the text above) is on the final syllable. Students familiar with the pronunciation of verbs like בוא will not be surprised by this observation, but it may take a trip to a commentary or article to know that some translators assume this to be a future predicate particle yielding the translation “about to go to Tarshish.” However, Tucker also says that הנה usually appears when impending action is indicated so this reading may not be justified (see NIV). He then talks about Sasson’s contention that בוא “typically directs the movement toward the narrator of the story.” After observing that Tarshish does not have the directive he, this may well imply that the ship has returned from that city. Tucker does not decide on the correct reading, and the student is responsible to evaluate what makes sense. Although this is a small example (and not all comments may be contain this much information), it gives you a flavor of what the handbook does. As you can see, it is more than a parsing guide. Although I think these handbooks can be very helpful if used properly, I still wish something could be written with the same goal of helping students get into the text, but that would also follow the format and approach in Readings in Biblical Hebrew (see below). Update: There is a scathing review by John Engle in the Review of Biblical Literature on Garrett’s Amos. He concludes “that it offers only limited guidance to its readers due to its large number of errors and uncertain methodologies.” My suggestion is that you read the review, mark his observations and then enjoy the rest of the book. That Engle could hardly find anything good to say about a 300+ page book may indicate that his concerns, though legitimate they may be, ignore the usefulness of this resource of which there are not many.

Ehud Ben Zvi, Maxine Hancock, and Richard A. Beinert. Readings in Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Textbook. Yale University Press, 1993. This is an intermediate level Hebrew reader that inductively introduces the student to passages in the historical, legal, prophetic and wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. This textbook is sort of a continuation of the introductory grammar by Kittel. You will be exposed to lots of genres and the notes are fantastic. Because the textbook inductively introduces the student to Hebrew syntax, A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax may be a good complement. You may be wondering how this book may differ from the Baylor handbook series. If we take the same example from Jonah, which is not covered in this book, Zvi and Beinert may start by asking the reader what the function of the accent is in determining how one parses בָּאָה and whom or what this verb is modifying. They may include notes (which may contain different translations of the verse) and a “For Further Thought” section with background information and questions. The main difference is that the handbook is designed to be a reference whereas Readings is like a professor walking you through the passage without giving all the answers but enough to orient the student. Sadly, I think this is the only one there is. I am a bit surprised that nobody has seen fit to write other volumes.

The exchange between Jacob Milgrom and Roy Gane on the proper meaning of the preposition מן (usually translated in its privative sense from) in some passages of Leviticus gives us an opportunity to take a look at the semantic possibilities of מן that may escape the notice of a  student beginning to learn Hebrew.

To be more specific, the question is whether the meaning of מן in the חטאת pericopes in Leviticus– passages concerning purification offerings (traditionally translated as sin offerings)–should be translated as from (privative) or as for, on account of, because of (causitive). My goal in this post is not to summarize the arguments for and against the position of each scholar, but to show how important the right understanding of מן, and prepositions in general, may be for reconstructing whole systems or even getting behind the theology of a book.

But, before we talk about Leviticus, let’s take a look at an example from HALOT where מן is causitive:

וַיָּנֻעוּ אַמּוֹת הַסִּפִּים מִקּוֹל הַקּוֹרֵא וְהַבַּיִת יִמָּלֵא עָשָׁן

The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke. (Isaiah 6:4 JPS)

In this verse, מִקּוֹל is translated as at the the sound (voice), and the reason why this translation is possible is because it essentially says that the doorposts (or whatever this means) would shake because of (מן) the voice of the one who called.
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Wilson, Marvin R. Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

This is a balanced look at the Jewish roots of Christianity (the best I have read so far) and an excellent book for someone who knows little about Judaism and is wondering what it means to say that Christianity has Jewish roots. He traces the history of the synagogue and the Church touching on their theological conflicts. Wilson also takes some time to talk about Hebrew thought and why it is foundational. A few selected studies cover subjects like marriage, Passover and the last supper, the land and learning.  This would be a great book to read before Levine’s The Misunderstood Jew. Both books will show different perspectives and concerns and will raise important questions for both Jews and Christians.

“The Protestant tradition, especially Lutheranism, has tended to see the leitmotif for Paul’s understanding of the Gospel in the emphasis on justification by faith as opposed to the works of the law. Though this theme is certainly important to Paul, we are in essential agreement with Davies, who finds the locus of Paul elsewhere, namely, in his ‘subordination of the Law to Christ as in Himself a new Torah—new not in the sense that He contravened the Old but that He revealed its true character, or put it in a new light.’” (Wilson 1989: 28-9, quoting W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, p. xxxiv).

There is at least one thing in common between Christianity and Judaism: monotheism. However, not everyone will agree with that. To many, Christianity’s claim that it is a monotheistic religion is at the very least a mix-up of categories. You cannot say that you worship only one God, but then define it in such a way that strains the definition to the max. The doctrine of the Trinity seems to be a way that Christians found to have their cake and eat it too.

But when we talk about monotheism, what are we really referring to? Are we certain that the way we’ve come to understand monotheism is the same way Jews and Christians understood it in the 1st century? That’s the main question James McGrath, associate professor of Religion at Butler University (see his blog Exploring our Matrix), poses to us in his book The Only True God. Simply assuming that the way we define monotheism today and the way it was defined two thousand years ago is a huge fallacy. We need to set aside our understanding of monotheism and let the texts that we have from that period define the term for us.

At first, I thought this was going to be a defense of Christian monotheism, showing that what people thought about the one true God was in line with later Christian doctrine. But what McGrath wants to remind us is that the worldview of the Jews and early Christians allowed for certain things that were later extrapolated (my word, not McGrath’s) in Christianity and suppressed in Judaism as a way to contain its new definition of monotheism. The result is that neither quite formulated its understanding of the oneness of God as was perceived early on.
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Levine, Amy-jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus. HarperOne, 2006.

To me, the main value of this book is seeing the perspective of someone who is committed to Judaism but also  happens to be a New Testament scholar.  She begins by drawing an analogy—a tad strained, she admits—that, I believe, shapes the way she writes the book: “the Torah functions for the synagogue as Jesus does for the church: it is the ‘word’ of the divine present in the congregation” (Levine 2006: 17). Therefore, looking carefully at the worldview of each community is important if one is to understand the relationship between the two.  She has many things to say about the interaction between Jews and Christians throughout history and the different ways that each misunderstands the New Testament. Although some will quibble about Levine’s exegesis of some passages, she does challenge Christians to take a closer look at those passages more critically, and I personally found her discussion of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax-collector to be illuminating. All in all, it is a fascinating read even when there are points of disagreement.

You may also want to watch a video of her lecture entitled Reassessing Jewish-Christian Relations, 2008.

“When Jesus is located within the world of Judaism, the ethical implications of his teachings take on renewed and heightened meaning; their power is restored and their challenge sharpened. Jews as well as Christians should be able to agree on a number of these teachings today, just as in the first century Jesus’s followers and even those Jews who chose not to follow him would have agreed with such basic assertions as that God is our father, that his name should hallowed, and that the divine kingdom is something ardently to be desired. Conversely, the failure to understand the Jewish Jesus within his Jewish context has resulted in the creation and perpetuation of millennia of distrust, and worse, between church and synagogue” (Levine 2006: 20).

A discussion panel entitled N.T. Wright and the Doctrine of Justification just came to my attention. The panelists are Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Dr. Denny Burk, Dr. Tom Schreiner, Dr. Mark Seifrid and Dr. Brian Vickers. I have expressed before frustration with the tone of such panels and surprise that people of the caliber of these scholars keep making distorted statements about what N. T. Wright has to say about justification. But, what I found particularly interesting was the quote below by Dr. Mohler which probably says a lot about the way some Evangelicals perceive N. T. Wright:

“In reading through his [Wright’s] work, listening to his lectures, having met him and having heard him, engaging in discussion with him, I think of the British meaning of the word “clever.” He is extremely clever. And, in this sense, I dare say that this cleverness is a real issue because it also comes hand in hand with an incredible, almost unspeakable, audacity because his claim is no less than that the protestant reformers and their heirs have misunderstood not only Paul and not only first century Judaism, but the doctrine of justification and thus the gospel.”

I wonder what the British meaning of the word “clever” is.

James Kugel intends his book How to Read the Bible to be a guide to, and a tour through, the Hebrew Bible. With over eight hundred pages, the book showcases most of what professor Kugel knows about the Bible—and that is a lot! It was a little daunting for me to get through book as I found it almost impossible not to stop here and there to digest its content and to get better acquainted with some ancient interpreter, or conversant with a particular hypothesis of biblical scholarship. This is what the book does: it shows you how the Hebrew Bible was interpreted in the past by both Jews and Christians, and how biblical scholars understand the meaning of the same biblical texts today. Kugel also has a website dedicated to the book worth checking out. And, if you want to know how the book is being received by the public at large, you will probably appreciate the article by David Plotz in the New York Times entitled Reading Is Believing, or Not.

To understand why the “interpretation” of ancient interpreters and modern scholars are almost always divergent, it would be helpful to outline the assumptions that, according to Kugel, ancient interpreters brought to the text:

1) They assume that the Bible was a fundamentally cryptic text: that is, when it said A, often it might really mean B.

4) Lastly, they believe that the entire Bible is essentially a divinely given text, a book in which God speaks directly or through his prophets

The assumption that the Bible is essentially a divinely given text came last because Kugel did not want to give the impression that the other 3 assumptions were just a by-product of it (for example, there is no need to assume that a divinely given text be cryptic). Kugel’s lecture Can the Torah Make Its Peace with Modern Biblical Scholarship? is also helpful in showing the dynamics between tradition and biblical scholarship. In this particular lecture, delivered at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he talks about the reference in the Mishnah to Rosh Hashanah as the “day of judgment” which is not found anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. How this belief came about, and how it became an unquestioned tradition in the Jewish community shows that interpreters were doing much more than just reading the Bible. Kugel says that although the Jewish people are known as the people of the Book, a much better title would be “the people of the interpretation of the Book.” And, I would venture to say, this is no less true of Christians.

Let me show you an example of Kugel’s approach in the book. The passage is Numbers 20:2-13 which recounts the events at Kadesh where the people of Israel once more complained about the lack of resources, and God tells Moses to get water from a rock. At first glance, the account seems to be about a similar miracle as the one back at Meribah in Rephidim. But, what is puzzling about it is that Moses says “these are the waters of Meribah.” Of course, we could look at this assertion theologically and say that Moses is just using a metaphor; in other words, he might be just making an allusion to the waters at Meribah to remind the people that their lack of faith is the same even forty years later. But, how did the ancient interpreters handle this, especially when we keep in mind the four assumptions above? And there is one more thing: there had not been a word about the Israelites lacking water since the book of Exodus.
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