The Real First Day, RBoC

Classes start a week from tomorrow. But as of today, summer is officially over.

Today begins our 2-day faculty retreat. Then, the rest of the week is new-student orientation. Then, a relatively joyless Labor Day weekend filled with the last-minute labors of course preparation. Then finally, "Good morning, eager young minds."

Here are my start-of-term Random Bullets of Crap:

• Try to chill out and enjoy faculty retreat for two days;
• Prepare for student orientation session on online coursework and our Bible Content course;
• Get advisees safely settled into their sockets for the term;
• Finish planning, syllabus, and LMS build for online course Intro to Old Testament;
• Complete last set of Flickr slides for face-to-face course Elementary Biblical Hebrew;
• Make progress in home stretch of online course in online pedagogy;
• Make long-postponed repairs to my suits: buttons, hems;
• Office housekeeping: get plant out of water pitcher into planter, and swap out cafeteria plastic tableware for a couple of sets of proper, if cheap, table settings.

Where are you in the start of the term? What are your own random bullets?

---

[The Real First Day, RBoC was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/08/27. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Making Better Ancient-Language Reading Exams

Some modern-language "reading exams" reflect a sound pedagogy that 1) reflects communicative learning of the target language, 2) offers clarity of expectations for assessment. I would love to see graduate reading exams in Hebrew and Greek achieve that same pedagogical footing, incorporating an extemporaneous oral component and rubrics made available to the learner.

The "reading exam" is well known to many graduate students. Because introductory and intermediate foreign-langauge courses vary from school to school, most Ph.D. programs will ask applicants to take a reading exam to show their proficiency in a given "research language" (often German, French, Italian). In some cases, a program might ask for a similar examination for an ancient ("dead") language: in my field, for example, Hellenistic Greek or Biblical Hebrew.

Reading exams tend to vary with the idiosyncracies of the examining instructor. A departmental guideline might offer expectations or options regarding format: our own offers the student a choice of having two "unseen" texts to translate, or else having to answer comprehension questions (posed in English) on both an "unseen" text and a set of short "seen" texts. Beyond the formatting guidelines, though, expectations are usually pretty opaque. How long will it be? Will the content be related to the learner's field of study? What kinds of errors are important? Is it better to turn in an incomplete exam that is error-free in what it accomplishes, or is it better to finish with some parts left really rough? "Only the Shadow knows."

Some modern language reading exams reflect an expectation that the student has really learned to communicate extemporaneously in the target language, for example by an oral component with "Q and A" conducted in that language. To my knowledge, exams in Hebrew and Greek never include this, because so very few seminaries or divinity schools teach biblical languages using communicative-language/second-language-acquisitions methods. (The overwhelmingly common model is to teach the elementary linguistics of the target language; believe it or not, in many courses, the target material is not even read out loud by the learner.)

Here's what I would like to see in ancient language reading exams:

1. Extemporaneous, oral component: This could be small or large. At minimum, the exam itself could be simple translation, but preceded by a "social" exchange in the target language (welcoming the student, pleasantries, getting settled). At most, the entire exam could be a discussion, in the target language, of readings that have been accomplished ahead of time by the student. I might like to see an exam that splits the difference:
   • a brief social exchange in the target language;
   • simple translation of a reading not seen before by the learner;
   • a handful of comprehension questions, in the target language, concerning a reading that the learner has pre-read.
2. Rubrics for assessment: The truth is, not every mistake counts equally in assessment, and (depending on the assessor) some mistakes won't count at all. For example, an assessor might not detract from the student's score if she appears to transform a passive form into an active form while preserving the correct meaning. These matters should be agreed upon within a department, and made available to the student in a rubric.
3. Word count expectations: In a timed exam, how many words/minute can the student expect to be asked to translate? This needn't be the same for all languages and all programs, but again should be made clear in the rubric. From the very few examples I have been able to put my hand to, I think that 4+ words/minute (250/hour) is reasonable for modern research languages; for ancient languages (Latin, Hebrew, Greek) I would like to think that the same expectation is within reach, while about half that (2-3 words/minute) is usual.

The first item could only be used, of course, with a learner whose instruction has prepared her for it. The second and third items, however, should be incorporated into every program's guidelines for foreign-language reading exams.

What is your experience with "reading exams"? Does your experience with them give you grounds to critically assess my observations or suggestions?

---

[Making Better Ancient-Language Reading Exams was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/08/22. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Frequency Lists: Quizzes

My earlier post about biblical Hebrew and Greek frequency lists has attracted a decent amount of interest since I posted it. In this follow-up, I offer biblical Hebrew quizzes based on the Hebrew frequency list.

I very much like being able to offer my vocabulary quizzes in a series tied to attested frequency. By doing so, I know students are getting as much possible "bang for their buck," learning the most frequently-attested biblical vocabulary first.

These twenty quizzes progress from the most common biblical Hebrew vocabulary (Quiz 01) to words that are used only 50 times or more (Quiz 20). I deploy these quizzes over the course of a full academic year. Most quizzes include four categories: verbs; nouns; adjectives; and "particles," including prepositions. I used my beloved Accordance Bible software to generate the original frequency lists.

I say "quizzes," but perhaps I should say "quiz banks": each of the twenty "quizzes" is in fact a list of about 30-35 words. For my part, I have dumped each "bank" into our Learning Management System (Moodle), and for each quiz, a randomized sample of each category is placed into a quiz of ten (10) questions. Students are given the Hebrew, and need to write in an English translation. You can, of course, use these "banks" to create paper or electronic quizzes, and can include as many or as few words out of each "bank" as you like in a given quiz.

Verbs are written without Masoretic pointing (nikkud); all other parts of speech are written with pointing.

In the "11-20" file, I follow every word in each "bank" with a numeral showing how many times it is attested. So, you always know where you are in overall frequency. (I like the idea, but not enough to go back and put those numerals into the 01-10 file!) For example, in Quiz 12, most words are attested 100-125 times, with the particles attested 133-140 times. (I allow the categories to fall slightly out of synch with each other, in order that each quiz can include all four categories of words.)

---

Technical notes on download files:

• I offer files in name.rtf and name.txt formats.
• Word for Windows seems to handle the name.rtf files well, and Notepad does well with the name.rtf files.
• On the Macintosh, Word for Mac is a disaster with nikkud, and TextEdit works only fairly well, representing the nikkud well but changing word order. I recommend Mac users open either file in Pages, Nisus Writer, Mellel, or almost any word processor except Word. I also had good luck opening the name.txt file in the free text editor TextWrangler.

---

Downloads:

Quiz banks 01-10 in name.txt format
Quiz banks 01-10 in name.rtf format
Quiz banks 11-20 in name.txt format
Quiz banks 11-20 in name.rtf format

I hope readers find these helpful! Let me know if you use them, and whether you have any suggesions for improvement.

---

[Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Frequency Lists: Quizzes was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2012/04/07. Except as noted, it is © 2012 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

If You're Happy and You Know It (biblical Hebrew songs, cont'd)

So, mostly what I've been doing is supporting my faculty colleagues in their transition from Blackboard to our new Moodle learning management system.

But, partly what I've been doing is continuing with the biblical Hebrew resources in my series, "A Foundation for Biblical Hebrew," a series that uses communicative learning tools as a supplement to an elementary biblical Hebrew curriculum.

This is, "If You're Happy and You Know It." Some points I had to work through, and on which I welcome feedback:

• I decided that being happy and knowing it was best expressed with perfect verbs joined by we-gam.


• I decided to use the masculine plural pronoun suffixes; sorry, but there's just no room in the song for a more up-to-date solution to the problem of gender inclusivity. In English, I usually use the feminine singular as the "representative human" ("each student must see to her own work").


• "Let your lives show it": going with the jussive here, naturally, verb-subject.


• For the commands, I abandon personal pronouns: "clap a palm"; "stomp a foot"; etc. Again, only so much room in the scansion. This—leaving pronominal suffixes off of body parts where they are the objects of verbs—accords well enough with biblical usage (Psa 47:1; cf. Isa 37:22; but Ezek 6:11).


• Main learning points: body parts, the masculine plural imperative, the masculine plural pronominal suffixes -tem and -kem; the conditional particle ʾim.

Feedback encourages, as always.



[If You're Happy and You Know It (biblical Hebrew songs, cont'd) was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/09/12. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock (Biblical Hebrew)

I’ve worked into biblical Hebrew the children’s song, “The Wise Man Built His House upon a Rock.” I happened to hear the Boy singing it one morning, and I found myself putting most of it into Hebrew while shaving. [update: the following version updated from original posting.]

I like it as an exercise for my students because it’s simple, and because the vocabulary is so well attested biblically: build, descend, ascend, fall; wise, house, rock. The choices I made about verb patterns could give rise to fruitful conversation about the qatal, yiqtol, and wayyiqtol. It’s good for me, too: I had initially been drawn to the Infinitive Absolute for the concurrent action of rain falling and floods rising, until my search for biblical parallels suggested I was on a wrong track. (I’d be on firmer ground if the two verbs shared a single agent.)

Another song I plan to put into biblical Hebrew is a version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” While not all of this vocabulary is biblically well-attested, it has value for communicative teaching of Hebrew: it uses words that have high “pay off” for daily usage. (So, I’d be open to songs that use body parts, colors, numbers up to thirty, and everyday objects.)

A third song I have planned is “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” A fourth is a surprise.

How about some revision of “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,” with all biblically-attested animals? More advanced would be a revision of, “Hush, Little Baby (the Mockingbird song).”

What other simple children’s songs can you think of that might be put into biblical Hebrew? The song should be fairly short and simple. Ideally, they should EITHER 1) feature vocabulary that is biblically well-attested, OR 2) feature vocabulary that has high pay-off in terms of everyday nouns and concepts like body parts, colors, numerals, and so on.

[The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock (Biblical Hebrew) was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/07/05. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Closed Captioning for User-Generated Video (via ProfHacker)

[Changed title, but not URL, to reflect distinction between subtitles and closed-captioning.]

Yesterday, ProfHacker posted a blog entry about how to produce closed-captioning for your videos using the site Universal Subtitles. As ProfHacker points out, when you have created the subtitles, they exist only at the Universal Subtitles web site; but, you can download the subtitles as a file and upload that file to your video on YouTube. ProfHacker shows the process, step by step.

Embedded below is my first effort at closed captioning. The main glitch is that my videos often already have subtitles of varying kinds, because they are often language-learning videos. And, you cannot (I think) change where the closed-captioning sits: it is always at the bottom of the screen. Now, if your already-existing subtitles are YouTube “annotations,” you can always go into YouTube and move them around. But, if your subtitles were created with the video itself (as in iMovie or whatever), then you would have to actually go back and re-edit the video and upload the revised version (which would have a new URL on YouTube).

The take-away on this for me is that, when I produce subtitles in my videos (that is, subtitles that are not closed-captioning), I will want to keep them at the top or sides of the screen, so that there is room reserved at the bottom for closed-captioning. As you can imagine, the screen “real estate” will really be filling in at that point.

This is my video on how to sing Happy Birthday in Hebrew. In the few places where my subtitles and my closed-captioning collide, I have not tried to fix it (yet). Obviously, you will need to click the "cc" (closed captioning) button at the bottom of the video screen.



What experience do you have with closed captioning, whether needing it or producing it? What issues should I know about as I continue to closed-caption my videos?

[Subtitles for User-Generated Video was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/03/11. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Frequency Lists for NT Greek and Biblical Hebrew

(Welcome, ad hoc Christianity readers and listeners! I was just hearing from a colleague who notes that vocab-failure is the main cause of flunking a reading competency exam. Hope you find these helpful.)

I have created a pair of “frequency lists” for New Testament Greek and Biblical Hebrew: words are listed from most-frequent to least-frequent, according to parts of speech. I stop the lists at words occurring less than ten times. Proper nouns are excluded.

My purpose in creating them is to have a resource for drawing up vocabulary quizzes and varying kinds of audio-visual helps. I am posting them here in the event that anybody finds them useful.

Biblical Hebrew frequency list

NT Greek frequency list

​

[Update 2012-10-03: I have also broken down the Biblical Hebrew list ​into 20 sections, suitable for creating vocabulary quizzes based on frequency.]

Past a certain point, the elementary student is learning vocabulary from reading texts more than from vocabulary lists. Once that begins to happen, the vocabulary “sticks” better because it is associated with a lively context. Still, readers at any skill level can benefit from a check-in with vocabulary. And, as I say, I find such helps really valuable when, say, trying to create in-class dialogues that reinforce essential lexica.

To what sorts of uses might you put a frequency list?

[Frequency Lists for NT Greek and Biblical Hebrew was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/03/10. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Modern Hebrew Sketch Comedy

The post I had written for today has been relegated to the back burner to reduce for a while: the broth is still too thin.

So in it’s place, I invite you to see what you are able to make of some Modern Hebrew sketch comedy. You’ll probably get the gist of it without any Hebrew whatsoever. For my part, I was able to get the gist and most of the detail (thanks largely to the Hebrew subtitles: dude’s talking fast). A little work with a dictionary did the rest…you might also consider Google Translate if you are able to type Hebrew characters.

Have fun, it’s a nice bit.



[Modern Hebrew Sketch Comedy was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/02/23. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Modern Israeli Music in Hebrew Class

Second-semester Hebrew is always a pleasure to teach. Sure, the students have usually blunted their edge in the 5-6 weeks since fall session. But they get it back quickly, and things quickly assume the character of an advanced-level course. Any attrition has already taken place earlier in the first term, so there’s a “lean and mean” quality to the student population. And while there are enough new syntactical concepts coming down the pipe to keep them on their toes, morphology has somehow become “no big deal”: Oh, so that’s how we do the Niphal? And guttural still do their thing, and III-hê still gets bumped of by a suffix? Nûn still assimilating? ’Kay, whatevs.

For the first time, I’m helping the students work through a piece of modern Israeli Hebrew rock music: Rona Kenan, ’לחיות נחון.' (First semester we spent time on some common prayers and the Torah blessings from the Sabbath liturgy.) We began this week, and I was happy to see that the students were enjoying it.

I had distributed this to them a week or two before, inviting them to give it a listen and to jot down anything they thought they recognized. Here’s Rona Kenan:



Between them, students teased out a lot more than I thought they might. They had already noted:

• Lots of זה and לא


• Lots of forms beginning with ל (not having yet learned the infinitive, but correctly equating it with some infinitive forms that I had used informally in earlier sessions)


• Words and roots like טוב, אהב, אכל, מאוד.


• Phrases like מִכֹּל, אני רוֹצָה, ביום, בלילה.

Together this week, we took time to work completely through to the 0:21 marker:

זה חשוב לאהוב

ולמדוד את הטוב מזמן לזמן

לא לבקש מה שאי אפשר לקבל

One of the students had earlier gotten turned onto some other pieces (like Shrek and a little Les Mis), and she shared these links with her colleagues.

So, thanks, Rona! The students got a heads-up on the infinitive, and we all got a timely mid-winter change of pace.

How are your classes this term? Are you doing anything to mix it up a little this February?

[Modern Israeli Music in Hebrew Class was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/02/18. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Biblical Hebrew Aleph-Bet Series: Complete!

I will certainly re-draft the series at some point in the future, probably after using it once in Fall 2011. But as a first draft, the entire series is now complete. The seven-part series comes to a total of about eighty (80) minutes. At the series’ end, the student not only will have discovered, through reading, the Aleph-bet and vowels, but will already be reading Hebrew with a considerable degree of fluency.

In the series, the entire Biblical Hebrew Aleph-Bet, with vowels, has been taught strictly through use: the student learns by reading and speaking real Hebrew words from the beginning. Hebrew characters have been taught in “clumps” organized phonetically: gutturals, labials, sibilants, and so on. Along the way, the learner also begins to use “weak” and “strong” dagesh, and the shewa.

This final video unveils the system of matres lectionis, and also—finally—the names of the already-learned vowels and consonants.

The Aleph-Bet series is part of a larger series, which I call “A Foundation for Biblical Hebrew.” The other items in this larger series will be two: one is a series of videos that teach communicative domains (greetings, talking about weather and seasons, classroom coping phrases, colors, numerals, describing things, adverbs of time, dining out, and so on). The other will be a series that includes some 400 pictures depicting biblical Hebrew nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The point is to establish a strong foundation for communicative learning of Biblical Hebrew.

As always, I welcome feedback. Especially, if you are able to put the videos in front of learners who do not already know the Hebrew Aleph-Bet, or who learned it a zillion years ago and have forgotten, I would love to hear about their experience with the video series.



[Biblical Hebrew Aleph-Bet Series: Complete! was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/02/09. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Aleph-Bet Learning Video 6: י, ל, נ, ר

The remaining letters of the Biblical Hebrew aleph-bet are covered in this sixth learning video. By this time, the learner is quite familiar with

• vowels and consonants


• composite shewa with gutturals


• simple shewa, including “vocal shewa”


• final forms


• “begadkepat” letters

The learner is also reading a great many Hebrew words with a considerable degree of fluency.

At this point—the moment the entire series means to prepare—the learner is ready to learn an “Aleph-Bet song” and actually understand what she is learning.

A seventh, final video will introduce the system of matres lectionis, and will also teach an Aleph-Bet song.



[Aleph-Bet Learning Video 6: י, ל, נ, ר was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/02/01. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Fifth Aleph-Bet Learning Video: ז, ס, צ, שׂ, שׁ

The fifth Biblical Hebrew learning video is available. Beside the sibilants, it introduces the “strong” (or doubling) dagesh.

The sixth video will finish the aleph-bet with י, ל, נ, ר. It will also include the simple shewa (the first video, on the guttural consonants, covered vocal shewa). A follow-up seventh video will explain matres lectionis, and also teach the ordering of the Hebrew consonants with song.



[Fifth Aleph-Bet Learning Video: ז, ס, צ, שׂ, שׁ was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/01/31. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Fourth Aleph-Bet Learning Video

Okay, the fourth video is up. It includes the letters דּ/ד, ט, תּ/ת, and also summarizes the “weak dagesh.”

This one had room for many more of the “Some Hebrew words” at the end. I also began ordering the words from short to long.

The next one, besides adding the sibilant consonants, will also introduce the “strong dagesh.”



[Fourth Aleph-Bet Learning Video was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/01/25. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Third Aleph-Bet Learning Video (גּ/ג, כּ, כ, ק)

The third video in my Hebrew Aleph-Bet series is up. This series teaches the Aleph-Bet by leading the learner through active use, beginning immediately by pronouncing open syllables with all of the biblical Hebrew inventory of vowels (and composite shewas). Consonants are not learned in order, but according to their place of articulation:

• א, ה, ח, ע (“pronounced in the throat,” i.e., glottals and pharyngeals);


• בּ, ב, ו, מ, פּ, פ (“pronounced at the lips,” i.e., labials and modern waw);


• גּ/ג, כּ, כ, ק (“pronounced at back of hard palate,” i.e., velar and not-careful-uvular);


• דּ/ד, ט, תּ/ת (“pronounced behind upper teeth,” i.e., dentals except sibilants and sonorant/liquids); also weak dagesh;


• ז, ס, צ, שׂ, שׁ (“sibilants”); also strong dagesh;


• י, ל, נ, ר (“sonorant grab-bag,” i.e., all that remains); also simple shewa;


• use of ה, ו, י as matres lectionis.

Each video concludes with a series of biblical Hebrew words, using only the consonants learned to that point.

Thank you for checking them out, and let me know what suggestions you have for improvement.

[Edit: Here are videos one and two]



[Third Aleph-Bet Learning Video (גּ/ג, כּ, כ, ק) was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/01/20. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Second Aleph-Bet Learning Video

I have made available the second video in my series on learning the Aleph-Bet through active use. The first video covered א, ה, ח, ע, and all of the vowels. This second video covers בּ, ב, ו, מ, פּ, פ.

I plan to edit them at least once when they are all finished, so please offer any feedback that you think would be helpful. להתראות!



[Second Aleph-Bet Learning Video was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/01/19. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Reading the Hebrew Bible—Aloud—over Two Years

As Charles and Daniel had made known, the Miqra Group plans to read the Hebrew Bible over a two-year period. So, you‘ll find me blogging and commenting over there as well as here.

My own “twist” on the reading program is to read the entire^[note] Hebrew Bible aloud in two years. Despite years of teaching, and despite my continuing efforts to shape my teaching of biblical languages into an immersive mode, my reading fluency is not yet of a quality to satisfy my harshest critic (me). At some point, maybe I will add the Greek New Testament into the mix.

Anybody want to read the Bible aloud?

BACK TO POST And by “entire,” I mean, “except when grading, administrative emergencies, or urgent opportunities for professional development intervene.” Let she who is not a junior instructor cast the first stone.

[Reading the Hebrew Bible—Aloud—over Two Years was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/01/18. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Aleph Bet Learning Video

Next year, I will be teaching Hebrew using an almost completely immersive approach. Preparing for that, I have begun recording and editing a series called, “A Foundation for Biblical Hebrew.” This series will include:

• A handful of short videos introducing the Aleph-Bet through usage;


• Eight or nine short videos each introducing words that can be used in daily life (greetings and pleasantries; coping phrases; classroom words; useful adjectives; adverbs of time; body parts; numerals; colors; seasons and weather);


• About 350 slides showing photographs or clip art of biblical Hebrew words (nouns, adjectives, verbs) that are very common in the Bible, or that are very useful for daily modern conversation.

Production values will be, er, moderate, but the videos will be freely available on my YouTube channel (“AnummaBrooke”), and the slides—in whatever format I decide to produce them—will be “open access.”

If you are able to take ten minutes to view my efforts, thank you, and I welcome feedback!



[Aleph Bet Learning Video was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2011/01/17. Except as noted, it is © 2011 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

"Good Morning, Eager Young Minds."

This is the first day of the new term. My classes this time around are:

• “Introduction to the Old Testament”: yes, we are reading backwards again. We’ll also continue with viewing lectures as pre-recorded downloads outside of class. New this term is the Wikipedia assignment, in which students will make a series of course-related edits to relevant Wikipedia articles. Also new is a plan to prepare for in-class discussion with threaded, asynchronous, online discussion between sessions.


• “Elementary Hebrew 1”: as in recent years, we’ll be starting with about ten hours of oral/aural exercises, using no texts of any kind. I’ve got a small surprise planned for today, if I can manage to walk to a store between classes.


• “The Old Testament in the New Testament”: a new seminar, beginning in tee minus 150 minutes. The meat and potatoes of the course will be student presentations, with each student presenting a “method” article on some aspect of literary allusion as well as a “content” article on NT allusions to the OT. Something new: all presentations will be offered from a standing position and must have some A/V (multimedia) component. The idea is to raise the energy level up from “somnambulant rap session” to…I don’t know, something where blood continues to flow to brains.

And, yes, each of these meets today! The seminar meets once each week, the Intro course twice, and Hebrew thrice, so Tuesday is the big day of the week this term.

How about you (both profs and students): what’s on the menu for Fall 2010? What’s new, and what’s old?

["Good Morning, Eager Young Minds." was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/09/07. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Fifty Years

To what course work do these fifty-year seminary alums attribute some of their most important preparation for ministry? Read and see (*cough*…Bible… *cough*).

Last night was our annual, commencement-week reception and dinner for the trustees. As usual, we had also invited our “fifty year” alumni: in this case, members of the class of 1960. Part of the program was for two of these “fifty year alums” to speak briefly on the subject of how seminary prepared them for their ministries.

The first talked gratefully about how seminary had not “trained” him to deal with this or that specific pastoral or ecclesiastical emergency, but had rather educated him, so that he could think his way through situations on a solid platform of accurate data and habits of critical thought. The courses he specifically named? Hebrew, and Greek.

The second speaker recalled two professors that, for him, represented the best of the preparation that seminary offered him. The first professor he recalled for having taught him a large number of important facts. A second professor he recalled for having modeled the compassionate application of such facts. Facts without compassion, he had found, were tools without purpose; and compassion without facts, just useless dreaming. The subjects taught by these memorable, representative faculty? Old Testament and New Testament.

From the critical perspective of fifty years of ministry: Hebrew. Greek. Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. New Testament.

I’m not saying. I’m just saying. :^)

[Fifty Years was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/14. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Feeding Curiosity: Snacks for Hebrew Bible Students

“Food is sleep,” as they say. And, “A brain without sugar is no brain at all.” So, on the occasion of their final exam, I brought my Biblical Hebrew students an Old-Testament-correct snack of unleavened barley cakes and date syrup.

Barley Cakes: My son loves these dry, without any topping or spread.

I mix the dough at 70% hydration: this means that the amount of water equals 70% of the amount of flour. For example, if 500 grams of barley flour, then 350 grams of water. I also add about 1 T olive oil for each 200-300 grams flour, and about 1 (scant) t salt for each 500 grams or so of flour.

• Have a pizza stone in the oven on the middle rack. If you don’t have a pizza stone, wash a clean, very large, unglazed terracotta flower pot very well, allow to dry thoroughly (like overnight), and break it carefully so as to preserve one big piece to use as a convex stone. Preheat oven to about 525-550 if it will go there, or else as high as it will go. If your flowerpot piece explodes, it wasn’t dry enough. Allow the stone or pot to absorb heat for a good thirty minutes after the oven reaches temperature.


• Combine ingredients (no worries about adding in the salt right away, because there’s no leaven to kill);


• Mix together, then let the flour absorb the water for about 45 minutes.


• Knead for about 5 minutes. You’re not building gluten here, just evening out the mixture. If it feels really dry, wet your hands with warm water and knead some more. There’s a fine line here: it’s easy to add too much water and get mud pies, but at the same time, you want as much hydration as you can get since a dry barley dough is very crumbly. Allow it to rest again.


• Chop off pieces of about 100 grams (lemon-sized, say). Roll them in your hands, then flatten them. Use a roller (or clean glass jar) to roll them out on the counter top. Lift carefully.


• Lay one patty on your pizza stone or flower pot piece. (If the latter, then press carefully to maximize contact on the convex surface.)
  


• Cook about 2 1/2 minutes per side on the stone, or about 3–5 minutes on one side against the potsherd. Let the first one cool well on a wire rack, and then break it open: then you’ll know if your cooking through okay.


• Eat warm or eat later.

Date Syrup: My boy tells me that this may be the best thing I have ever made. It’s sweet and refreshing. The ingredients are…dates and water. This is probably the “honey” (דבש) most frequently named in the Hebrew Bible.

• Buy a bag of pitted dates. Whole Foods has them bulk where we are. Get enough to fill a saucepan.


• If you have a blender or food processor, chop them up well (or chop by hand).


• Drop them in the saucepan, and add enough water to cover the dates.


• Bring to a boil, and boil for about five minutes. Reduce heat, and simmer partially covered for 30–60 minutes, until well reduced. You have to stir regularly to break up the “skin.”


• The consistency is like a cross between caramel and apple sauce. You can filter out the solids, but if you chopped really well, everything should dissolve nicely, and the fiber is a nice piece of the nutritional value.


• Allow to cool. Store some in the fridge, and freeze anything you won’t eat soon.

To be really scientific, I ought to have allowed only half of the class to eat the barley cakes and date syrup, and then compared their performance. But, I have always been an old softie, and I also have a lot of date syrup to go through.

What Hebrew-Bible-correct snacks would you like to see in the classroom?

[Feeding Curiosity: Snacks for Hebrew Bible Students was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/05/11. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]