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).