Barack Hussein Obama Anti-Christ Video Debunked. Sigh.

Debunking dishonest Bible-woo is tiresome (but not hard: this post took me less than 75 minutes from conception to Publish), but has to be done. Let's be clear: the maker of this video starts with the conclusion he wishes to reach (that the President is the “antichrist” [whatever that is, which is a topic for another day]). He then commits whatever sleight-of-hand and misdirection is necessary to work backward from that conclusion to an impressive-sounding biblical basis. We'll link the video, then take it step by step.

[Update, 2011/01/18: the original poster has removed the video. You can still find a version of it here, with some attempts at bolstering the video’s claims.]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXMAnlMmEPw]

“I will report the facts.” Nearly of these “facts” are false:

“Jesus spoke these words originally in Aramaic…” This is not known. It may be that Jesus preached both in Aramaic and in the Greek of the New Testament. If he did preach in Aramaic, there is no reason to be optimistic about our ability to retrovert the Greek of the gospels into that alleged Aramaic original. Imagine giving an English translation of Don Qixote to twelve English-speaking scholars who had never heard Spanish spoken by a native, and having them all retrovert the English translation to the original Spanish. Know how many completely different “originals” you’d get? That’s right: twelve.

“…which is the oldest form of Hebrew.” No, it isn’t. Aramaic doesn’t precede Hebrew. They are sibling languages, with significant differences in vocabulary, morphology, and grammar. So, speaking in Hebrew is not “much the same way” as the way Jesus would have spoken Aramaic.

“…from the heights, or from the heavens.” Nice try: the speaker has substituted “heights” (in order to get to bamah, the word he wants to use) for “heavens” (shamayim, a word he wants to get away from because shamayim sounds nothing like “Barack Obama”). The argument from this point is not based on Jesus’ words (in any language), but on a paraphrase that the speaker finds convenient.

(We could stop here: Now that we see that the groundwork comprises crippling falsehoods, it is clear that anything built on it is pointless. We’ll continue anyway, just for the exercise.)

“…from Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary.” As Bryan mentioned on Facebook, When someone grounds their argument in the use of Strong’s concordance/dictionary, they are saying, “I do not know any Hebrew. Do not trust anything I say on the topic.” Strong’s is a tool designed for people who do not know Hebrew.

Baraq is the Hebrew word for lightning: this is a fact. It has nothing to do with the name of our President, but baraq does mean “lightning.” Barack, our President’s name, is Swahili, and related to Hebrew Berekh, “to bless.” (Think of the better known form, Barukh, “blessed.”) In other words, why would a speaker of Hebrew (or Aramaic, or Greek) would use the word “lightning” to evoke the Swahili (or Arabic) name, Barak = “blessed/blessing”?

Isaiah 14: No mention of Satan here: Isaiah is plainly talking about the king of Babylon, whom he compares to the mythic “Daystar, son of Dawn.” He says so [ref. added: Isa 14:4]. But, the Jesus of the gospel Luke may be evoking Isaiah when he says that he “saw Satan falling as lightning from the heavens,” so I’ll give this a pass.

Isa 14:14: “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.” That’s right: the word “heights” (which, you’ll recall, Jesus does not use anyway) is not associated with the falling of the Daystar, but with his (planned but not certainly achieved) ascent. Also, the “heights” are plural: the phrase is bamotê-ʿab, “the heights of the cloud.” Hear it? Not bamah, but bamotê.

“Some scholars use the O [to transliterate the conjunction waw].” No, they don’t, because it is never, never pronounced “O.” The prefixed conjunction we- or wa- becomes u- in biblical Hebrew when it precedes a bilabial consonant (b, m, p) or any consonant followed by the shewa, or half vowel (Cĕ-; think of the first vowel in a casual pronunciation of “America” or “aloof”). It is never o-. Sorry, but never.

“…or, ‘lightning from the heights.’” Okay, in the second place, the conjunction never means “from.” Hebrew (or Aramaic) has a preposition for that. The phrase baraq u-bamah (not o-bamah) will mean, “lightning and a height” (whatever the heck that is; also remember that baraq has nothing to do with “Barack”). The phrase will never, never mean “lightning from the heights.” Sorry, but never. (And in the first place, remember, Jesus never even said, “lightning from the heights.” He said, “lightning from the heavens,” which is why all this stuff about “heights” is pointless.)

Conclusion: if a Jewish rabbi today, influenced by Isaiah, were to say the words of Jesus in Luke 10:18 (seriously: why would our rabbi do this?), he would not say, “Barakh Obama.” He would not even say, baraq u-bama. Or baraq u-bamoth (lightning and heights). If he means to use Jesus’ words, he would not even say, baraq min-habbamoth (lightning from the heights). I suppose he might (might) say, baraq min-hashamayim (lightning from the heavens). So now you know why our secret Muslim president’s Arabic Kenyan birth certificate remains hidden in a clandestine madrassah in the Lincoln Bedroom: because on it, you will indeed find the true name of the antichrist…

(oh, wait, neither Isaiah, Luke, or even Revelation [or Daniel, if you care] use the word “antichrist”: it is used in the letters of John as a generic term for “unbelievers”)

…Baraq Min-Hashamayim.

If you want to see some other debunking, go see Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math Bad Math, Michael Heiser at PaleoBabble, Bryan at Hevel, and James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix. Each of them adds some additional arguments that I don't make here.

A Game: “Roman Candle”

I made up this teaching game while washing dishes one night. Tell me what you think, and what happens if you use in in class.

The name of the game is “Roman Candle.” Roman Candle is a fast-paced game of courage and skill, and is played for bragging rights (and probably a few participation points). The game can be used as a time-filler, lasting as few as five minutes, or as exam preparation with games lasting as many as 15-20 minutes. If possible, it should be introduced early in the term, so that the rules are learned and the game can be played on short notice or spontaneously.

The game begins when one student agrees to be the first Roman Candle. A second student volunteers to “light the fuse.” The fuse-lighter shouts out a figure or topic relating to a critical issue (“Priestly writer!” “Ezra!” “722 B.C.E.!” More challenging examples might be “Outline of Deuteronomy!” “The genre Novella!” “Double redaction of the DtrH!”). The Roman Candle then has sixty seconds to rattle off, as coherently as possible, as much information as she can on that figure or topic. For broader topics, the challenge will be to get as much out there as possible before running out of time (selecting priorities). For narrower topics, the challenge will be to fill the time with relevant connections to other figures or topics (creative synthesis).

Immediately after that Roman Candle is finished, her fuse-lighter becomes the next Roman Candle. So, it takes courage to be a fuse-lighter! The game goes on until the professor says that it is time to stop. The last fuse-lighter is now “on deck” to start whenever the class plays again.

If the Roman Candle has nothing to say on the figure or topic picked by the fuse-lighter, she may say, “Another!” The fuse-lighter will offer a second figure or topic. The Roman Candle may say “Another!” a second time, but then must choose from among the three topics at her disposal.

If the Roman Candle threatens to “sputter out” before her sixty seconds are up, any students may “lob crackers”: toss one- or two-word hints to help the Roman Candle keep it going.

If no student will volunteer to be a fuse-lighter, then the Roman Candle may select a topic or figure from a hat kept by the professor. Then, she may select for herself the next Roman Candle!

After the game, the professor should plan a few minutes to correct any misunderstandings and to take questions of clarification. For the purposes of this game, questions about the exam are not permitted (how many essays? how much are IDs worth?); for this game, all questions must be about the subject matter.

Suggestions for revision or for variants? Other teaching games?

Being a Student: Crazy, Mentoring, and Office Hours

Everyone who has taught first-year students in higher education knows it: besides teaching the subject matter of the course (“Introduction to X”), we are also triage nurses in the task of academic formation: writing skills, critical thinking, academic integrity, time management, methods in collaboration and mutual support, and so on. In short, being a student. All of this depends in part on soliciting the students’ trust so that they’ll hear our sage advice. Some of my recent reading has me considering all this under the umbrella of “mentorship.”

Sparked by a post about faculty mentoring in Inside Higher Ed, there has been a conversation in the academic blogs about mentoring in grad school. In the final link below, Dr. Crazy writes about her strategies for forcing students to accept mentoring.

1. Historiann: Mentors and mentoring: whose responsibility?


2. Sisyphus: Lessons for Girls: Don’t Just Ask, Insist on Help (even if it makes you feel weird)


3. Dr. Crazy: How to Force Students to Let You Be Their Mentor

In a nutshell (and in my own words), Crazy wants to say two words to you, Ben. Just two words. Are you listening? “Office hours.” Face-time is the necessary-though-not-sufficient ground for a protegé/mentor relationship. This accords pretty well with my own experience, though “office” for many adjuncts will often and awkwardly mean the library, a quiet corner of cafeteria, or an unused classroom.

Like “extra credit,” the “office hours” strategy has a common drawback: the students who take advantage of it are almost always the ones who are already going to earn top marks in the course. So how does one draw in the students who need it most?

Crazy’s strategy is to frighten them early and often, while wearing a sandwich board sign saying, “This way to my office.” For example, she describes the tactic of responding to a written assignment with “see me” and holding back on other feedback until the students shows up to meet.

This probably sounds controlling to some, but in my experience, students who are struggling with the course really resist interaction with the prof: it’s just that natural, poisonous impulse to “get one’s act together” before meeting with the powerful authority figure. It often takes a trigger incident of some kind to prod the student out of the slow freeze of inchoate anxiety and into motion toward the office-hours sign-up sheet.

This term, I also have a plan for driving students to my door. I am starting our first-year students off a very short written assignment that a mean to be enjoyable and low-stakes (graded only as done/not done). After it’s finished, we will discuss it during a brief office appointment. If nothing else, it will help me learn their names, and it will show them the way to my office with a suggestion that I don’t mind company as long as an appointment is made in my available hours. As Crazy writes, students who have found the office once will tend to come back again.

If you are a student, what sorts of “carrots and sticks” drive you to a professor’s office? If you teach, do office hours have a role in your efforts to offer mentorship, and if so, what experience can you offer to other teachers or to students?

“Defacing” the Bible? Art and Religion

As a teacher of seminarians, I have enough trouble getting some of them even to annotate the margins of their Bibles with Hebrew parsing notes. So I was glad to see that The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow…

…has invited art lovers to write their thoughts down in an open Bible on display as part of its Made in God's Image exhibition.

The placard next to the Bible instructs visitors thusly:

"If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it".

The linked article takes a decidedly negative view of the display. It is titled, “Gallery Invites Visitors to Deface the Bible”: this presupposes that any writing in a Bible is inappropriate. Further, the article cites only comments that it considers offensive or provocative.

Let’s look at the article’s first examples of so-called “abuse and obscenity”:

"This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all," one message read.

And:

"I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this".

See that the writer of the article chose the feminist and LGBT comments as the flagship examples of “abuse and obscenity.” These are strongly worded, to be sure, but for my part, I do not find them abusive or obscene (and as a straight male, I am not at all convinced that I am in a position to judge the appropriateness of these expressions of complaint). Some other visitors were more obviously mocking or obscene in their comments.

What is your view, O reader? Tell me in a comment: In what ways do you find the exhibit exciting or problematic, both in its conception and in how visitors have responded? Would you feel differently if it were some other sacred text instead of the Bible? (The Quran? A Torah scroll? The Constitution or Declaration of Independence, or Bill of Rights?) What do you think of public art exhibits that challenge sectarian sensibilities in this way?

Student Surveys: Suggestions and Resources?

Many teachers give their incoming students some kind of start-of-term survey. Goals for such a survey might include:

• Establishing a provisional set of major questions that the course is designed to help students address;


• Getting a sense of what the term is going to be like, what sort of unique character this incoming class brings with them;


• Getting a sense of how students are prepared for the kinds of work demanded of them in the course (for example, what their previous education looks like or what sorts of careers lie in their backgrounds).

I am teaching three different courses this fall, but the one I have in mind right now is “Introduction to the Old Testament.” As most of my readers will know, this course involves (among other things) the study of history, and the study of literary criticism (broadly conceived). Importantly, the academic study of the Bible involves dealing with questions in an evidentiary way. For students who have only read the Bible in a devotional or expository way, this is an adjustment: we bring such questions to the Bible as can be worked out using shared evidence and a communicable line of reasoning. So, some of the things I wonder about my incoming students are:

• How many of them are avid readers of narrative fiction? How many are familiar with the experience of being changed and moved by an encounter with fictional characters, lives, worlds?


• How many are avid readers of poetry? How many believe in the truth-telling power of figurative speech?


• How many have a background in the use of evidence and reasoning to answer questions? How many have been physical scientists, lawyers, judges, mathematicians, plumbers, electricians, medical professionals?


• How many have had sustained or varied cross-cultural experiences? How many have learned to bring open-ended questions to a person who is “Other”?


• How many have worked full-time jobs, in or out of the home? How many are accustomed to budgeting their time in an organized way?

I could add others.

Here are my questions for you:

1. Have you used start-of-term surveys, and if so, what are they like? What sorts of questions do you go at in such surveys?


2. Do you know of any resources for finding samples of start-of-term surveys. Can you recommend resources or suggestions for their creation?

Thank you!

Modern Hebrew Vocabulary Videos

Jacob Richman offers a series of YouTube videos that teach modern (Israeli) Hebrew vocabulary. He organizes the videos by topic: for example, there is one on fun and entertainment, another on clothing and accessories, and so on.

Jacob’s YouTube channel includes other language vocab videos as well, including Spanish and English. As with any YouTube user channel, you can enter a search term in Jacob’s video box to narrow the selection: when I enter the term, “Hebrew,” I get a page with only the Hebrew videos (more or less).

The videos show still pictures and pointed (vocalized) Hebrew script, along with general-use transliteration and English translation, with the Hebrew word being read aloud. The format is clear and consistent. The videos focus only on vocabulary: they do not teach phrases, syntax, or plural forms.

You can find an index of the Hebrew videos on Jacob’s web site. The web site also includes other approaches to the vocabulary.

Let’s Play Woo: Hebrew and Physics

I have reason to take things easy this week, so let’s keep it light. Here is a YouTube video that I have designated as woo: it includes the trappings and language of reasoned argument, but uses various smoke and mirrors to dupe the gullible with that sweet-tasting, pseudoscientific woo.

Use the comments to play! Find as many problems as you can with the claims made by the video. Go for the details. Find more than your friends and taunt them with your bragging rights. Have fun!

Think broadly: not just about the Hebrew, but logic and fallacy, scientific inquiry, and so on.

Without further ado:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIQQX13FX3E (update: removed by user)

The Literal and Figurative as Subsets of Religious Speech

I am working up a longer post on this topic, but for now, consider this statement attributed to Francis Collins, Obama’s nominee for Director of the National Institute for Health National Institutes of Health:

…he thinks the presence of the divine can be directly observed, even if it cannot be measured and tested…

Now, I would prefer a direct quote, and know that Collins’ words may have been slightly different, but I’m going to provisionally take it as stated.

When a scientist says that something is “directly observable,” but nonetheless “cannot be measured or tested,” I am inclined to think that they are not using the word “observe” in a literal way. At least they are not using it to mean, “available to the five human senses or to instruments designed to extend the human senses beyond their normal reach.”

Rather, I suspect that the word “observe” is being used as figurative speech: a metaphor, a figure, a kind of poetry. I should add that I do not consider figurative speech to be a kind of window-dressing to literal speech: a figurative utterance has cognitive uniqueness; it signifies in a way not reducible to literal speech. For example, the figurative utterance

The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower

is not simply reducible to some literal paraphrase like, “There are many stars out, and the moon has waxed to full.” The figurative speech (Tolkien, by way, from the final chapter of The Hobbit) means uniquely: it signifies something that no other utterance can quite match. That something is not “testable or measureable,” but it is something private, a something that unfolds between the text and the individual hearer. Therefore, it is not ultimately shareable, though productive conversation on the work might be shared.

I want to say that religious claims should be divisible into two kinds: literal claims that submit to “testing and measurement” (this would include religious claims about the age of the earth, the nature of sexuality,  and so on), and figurative claims that have the status of works of art (which might also mean to effect public opinion and policy, but after the fashion of Huckleberry Finn or the Corporate American Flag rather than in the way of a scientific discovery or a poll). When we say, “God is love,” or “God answers prayer,” or “God acts in history,” we should be able to make a clear accounting as to the literalness or figurativeness of our speech, submitting the former to “testing and measurement” and the latter to the rather different critical norms of art.

Ultimately, I have hopes that this line of thinking may help introductory students in religious studies to systematize and clarify the claims they make in collaborative discussion.

Thoughts on these reflections in progress?

Teaching Biblical Studies Like Steve Jobs

This weekend I read Carmine Gallo’s piece called, “Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs” (h/t to Akma). On the basis of the presentations by Jobs that he has reviewed, Gallo offers ten examples of the kinds of practices that make Jobs’ presentations so compelling.

We bibliobloggers usually wait until Thanksgiving weekend to gripe talk about what…makes…unsuccessful…presentations. But “presenting” is just a more palatable word for “lecturing,” and summer is a fine time to reflect on the teaching practices that we’ll be taking up in the fall.

Here, I copy the names of the practices Gallo lists (the bold-face phrases), but I describe them in terms of my experience with lecturing on topics in Hebrew Bible.

1. Set the Theme: Often, but not always, at the start. Don’t make the mistake of keeping it under wraps until it’s unveiled at the end: whatever ties the presentation together, whatever big idea I mean my students to go away with, I want to bring it in clearly and early, and reinforce it often.


2. Demonstrate Enthusiasm: Risk informality and the possibility of being ridiculed behind your back. It’s cool (and as infectious as hell) to be in love with an idea, or a text, or a discovery. For example, I love how features of El and Baal in Ugaritic religious texts help illuminate religio-political conflicts throughout the monarchical period in Israel and Judah. If you think what you’re saying is exciting, go ahead and bubble over a bit. No, a bit more: burn some calories. There, that’s it.


3. Provide an Outline: I give a written outline with lectures, though I am inclined to make it briefer and more spare this year than I have in the past. In any case, students have told me how much they depend on my giving clear indicators during the lecture about where we are in our itinerary.


4. Make Numbers Meaningful: To illustrate: does it matter whether Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in the 1950s or the 1850s? Or the 1650s? Does a social context of fire-hoses, Jim Crow, and “strange fruit” matter or no (over against Shadrach Minkins and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, or “perpetual servitude” and partvs seqvitvr ventram)? Insofar as you think it matters for Dr. King, then how might the differences between the 8th, 6th, and 5th centuries matter as social contexts for particular words of the book of Isaiah, and how can those differences be made meaningful?


5. Try for an Unforgettable Moment: This may, but needn’t, correspond to the climax of the presentation. In your search for unforgettable moments, pay attention to student feedback. I remember learning that students were impersonating (behind my back, of course) my imitation of Israelite refugees fleeing southward in 722 B.C.E., frantically waving their copies of E, Hosea, the Elijah and Elisha narratives, and Exodus and Moses traditions. If they were impersonating it, then they were “getting it”: this may be a point in the presentation that I could sharpen into a planned unforgettable moment. Think big: could a colleague or student come in as a “special guest”? (Wellhausen? The Priestly writer?)


6. Create Visual Slides: Text shouldn't dominate: I use just enough text to show where I am in my outline, or to tick off Big Ideas. Often images alone are the way to go. Even with images, don’t feel tied to a literal or prosaic correspondence between the image and what you’re saying: abstract images or landscapes working in the background can create the desired atmosphere just fine. The idea is to create an imaginative space within which to arrange the spoken words.


7. Give ’em a Show: Entertainment has a structure, a flow: setting the scene; problem or conflict; rising tension; climax and resolution; denouement. A presentation may comprise one long arc, or a series of related arcs, but remember your hearers are sitting in chairs: for heaven’s sake, try to take them at least on an intellectual and emotional journey or journeys. (For example, a journey from the conventional wisdom of Proverbs or creation psalms, to the way Qohelet uses such conventional proverbs as a foil for his dissenting wisdom, to the guns-a’blazing blaspheming wisdom of Job 9 and 19, to a denouement reflecting on the pastoral goods of affirming the “blasphemous” anger that good people have against God in times of tragedy.)


8. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: For Gallo, the “small stuff” means technical glitches, and every teacher has her share of those. But there are other kinds of glitches: the student question that comes from far out in left field or that tries to hijack the thread; the total misunderstanding arising from a piece of wording that you had never realized was confusing; the quiz that runs late and that sets you fifteen minutes behind on the Most Important Lecture Evah. Students have been learning for centuries under the most preposterous of conditions, and ours will too.


9. Sell the Benefit: What are they going to be able to do that they couldn’t before? Will Brueggemann’s approach to “orientation and disorientation” in the Psalms allow them to integrate the imprecatory psalms into their pastoral ministry so that they quit telling people in pain to stop being angry? Will a frank recognition that Gen 1 and 2 order the creation of humans and beasts differently allow them to see that all texts (including the primeval story) invite certain kinds questions about God and the world while rebuffing others? Will quizzes and outlines on Bible content allow them not to look like total yutzes when their parishioners say, “I heard something weird about that one biblical story, where is that again?”


10. Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse: Surely we’ve all noticed that we are better the second time we lecture on a topic, and even better the third time. So, for a new presentation, why punish the first hearers with an unrehearsed draft?

A couple of bonus links: Dr. Crazy’s reflections on writing an article are written with an eye on conference papers; probably too focused on lit review for most teaching lectures, though. Also, here are Ten PowerPoint (or Keynote) Tips for Preparing a Successful Presentation.

What tips would you offer for creating presentations or lectures worthy of a Steve Jobs?

The B-L “YKWI…” Effect

Back at PTS, my friend Bryan took his comprehensive exams a year ahead of me. When I set myself to “going to school” on his preparation, he gave me a heads-up on an experience to try to cultivate: that thing that happens when your head is processing several streams of facts at once, all the time, probably under terrific pressure, and semi-random creative syntheses are taking shape, until everything seems to be connected in significant ways to everything else. Elements of your subject matter combine unpredictably, not only with one another, but with your life: with cereal boxes, with street names, with chess, with love, with birdsong. In this mystic, calorie-consuming, emotionally precarious state of exam preparation (you're probably taking a lot of long walks), you find yourself constantly turning to the poor people in your life who are not your classmates and saying, “You know what’s interesting…” (It’s not, of course, but this is the least of the collatoral damage that they’ll suffer at your hands before you graduate.) I would later come to think of this synthesis-producing state of mind as the Bibb-Lester “You Know What’s Interesting…” Effect, or B–L “YKWI…” You know: it combines percolation, simmering, marinading, pressure-cooking, and that cooking that kids do together when they stir a little of everything into a bowl and dare one another to take big bites.

In my own exam preparation, I worked towards this B–L “YKWI…” state of mind, mostly by overlapping and staggering my topics for study. I tried to create conditions for the unpredictable joining-up of random bits of understanding, including the time to follow them up and sift the serendipitous wheat from the delusional chaff. Although individual elements of my written exams came under some fire at my orals, I earned praise for several examples of creative synthesis.

This all came to my mind while I read this piece (h/t Akma), featuring a study that shows some better learning outcomes for online students than for traditional in-classroom students. The study pointed out that students report spending more time on an online course than on a traditional course (I see that Targuman also took a special interest in this bit).

I would like to see the details on the questions and answers about time, because I have my own untested hypothesis about time spent on an online course. In a traditional course, students tend to “chunk” their study time into a small number of large pieces, and the course itself already encourages this by meeting for a small number of large blocks of time. Study time is starkly isolated from life-time, from the rest of life. But if the course and its homework are taking place on discussion boards, blogs, Chat, YouTube, Wikis, and perhaps Twitter and Facebook, then it’s possible that students will find themselves addressing the subject matter the way they address their other social, collaborative undertakings: they may assimilate their study time into the whole of their life-time. If so, then maybe—this is my untested hypothesis—maybe they will be more prone to synthesize the subject matter with the thinking they are already doing about politics, about religion, about church, about nutrition, about dog training, about diaper-changing, about whatever. Maybe they’ll be more susceptible to the rigorous delights of the B-L “YKWI…” Effect.

Not that I celebrate the fragmentation of attention. Okay, yes, actually, it is that I am tempted to celebrate the fragmentation of attention. After all, haven’t I told my students a hundred times, “Don’t try to do your reading and writing in four-hour marathons the night before class. Break it up into littler chunks, give yourself time to reflect, to simmer, to percolate.” What I am saying at those times is, “Fragment your attention a little, why don’t you?”

What do you think? Have you your own experience with the B-L “YKWI Effect? Have you found your own ways of acheiving or encouraging the unpredictable synthesis of your course’s subject matter with the random constellation of one’s interests and concerns? Do you think that the fragmentation of attention encouraged by social learning marks the end of attentive student work as we know it, or that it might have the balancing potential goods that I find myself hoping it does?

Academic Blogs Not in Bible

Readers may notice that I have added a second blogroll to my right sidebar. This new blogroll is for academic blogs that are not related to biblical studies (the main blogroll will stick with Bible-related blogs).

This near-double-handful are among my favorites. They stay at least as well on topic as your average biblioblog. Usual fare includes practices and experiments in teaching, as well as (for the pseudonymous blogs) some anecdotes and a bit of faculty-lounge venting. A couple of them are more political than the others; I include them because Bitch regularly writes about teaching and P.Z. frequently hammers on sloppy reasoning in an instructive (not to say caustic, expletive-bespangled) manner.

For the others: visit Michael Bérubé for issues in academic freedom, bleeding-edge literary theory, and hockey. Dean Dad has the adminstrative beat covered; think of him as your admin-friend who teaches you to deal productively with admins. Read Angry Professor for the laughs, especially her email correspondence. Flavia (Renaissance lit) and Miriam (Victorian lit) are in a quieter, more pensive mode, thoughtful and enlightening. New Kid has left teaching behind and views the classroom from the student’s side again, now in law school. Dr. Crazy digs in on some lengthy, deep-sounding* posts about teaching and professional development, with intervening short bursts of (academic) life-in-progress.

You’ll see that women’s voices dominate the selection; whether that is a reflection of academic blogs generally or my own readerly preferences I don’t know, but it does balance out the rather baritone-to-basso range of the biblioblogging voices.

Are any of these academic blogs already part of your reading? If so, tell me about it. If not, have a read. Tell me about your first impressions, and tell me if any of them take a place among your regularly-read blogs.

* Later: on re-reading, I see this needs clarifying. I mean deep-sounding like how one sounds the depths; not like she “sounds deep, man.”

Reminds me: I have also added Karyn Traphagen to my regular blogroll: run, don’t walk, to give her a read.

Arabic at a Distance

My “Intro to Old Testament” Fall ’09 session will be something of a hybrid course, incorporating many elements of distance learning. My Summer ’10 session will be entirely online. I have heard it said that, if you want to learn to teach online courses, then take a course online. This makes sense, and I’ve decided that if I am going to take an online course, it will be Arabic.

Why Arabic? Well, I’m already walking around with a pocketful of Semitic research languages (biblical and modern Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Syriac), so I have a good foundation for Arabic. A look at the job postings is also persuasive: I don’t plan to change my whole focus to Islam or religious politics overnight or anything, but who in Hebrew Bible is not looking for reasonable means to broaden her appeal?

Searching for a course, it is not easy to navigate past all the commercial software packs masquerading as online courses. And, as usual, navigating school’s websites is useful mostly as an exercise in controlling one’s blood pressure.

I do find that University of California has a program. The timing is unfortunate (I have a really busy autumn term planned), but the course looks good.

Readers: have you taken a course online, and what was your experience? Are you aware of opportunities for online Arabic that I’ve missed? (Accredited, credit-earning courses only, please.)

Hey Profs, Show Us Your Outcomes!

I am trying to take seriously two thing. First, my own admonishment not to use the academic cliché “take seriously” in any of my writing. But second, the logical need to clarify to myself what learning outcomes I am trying for, before revising the rubrics for my assignments.

The wording of my outcomes is not yet important to me; it’s okay if they are sloppy or a bit rambling. For example, in “Introduction to the Old Testament”:

1. Students will become fearless researchers in the field, getting over the “but I’m not a scholar” mental hump, and also the “but what if I find something that upsets my faith” hump.


2. Students will embrace collaboration, eschewing narrow competitiveness or fearful isolation and growing into the conviction that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” As Harry Tuttle put it, “We’re all in it together, kid.” I do well if we do well, and we do well if I do well.


3. Students will comprehend the difference between “Bible study” (devotional, expository; our theologies about the Bible; not primarily what we’re doing) and “biblical studies” (exegetical, literary and historical; the theologies discerned in the texts; what we are primarily doing).


4. Students will learn the details of the different historical situations in Canaan between the 13th and 2nd centuries B.C.E. They will be able to talk clearly about why those differences matter to how we exegete specific biblical texts.


5. Students will get a sense that, if they ever want to interpret the Bible with anything resembling authority, they are going to have to take Elementary Hebrew 1 and 2 the following year.


6. Student will just love the living bejeezus out of the Hebrew Bible.

[Edit: changed list from bullets to numbered list.]

I have other outcomes taking shape for Elementary Hebrew.

Readers, if you teach any courses at all, what are they and what learning outcomes are essential to you? If you do not teach, what learning outcomes have you experienced as essential, or what outcomes do you wish had been prioritized?

Satlow’s “Between Faith and Reason”

Listening to the first of Michael Satlow’s podcasts (“From Israelite to Jew 1: Between Faith and Reason”; hat tip to Doug Mangum), I am considering assigning the podcast to my Introduction to Old Testament students in the early days of this year’s term. Satlow makes a clearer-than-usual appeal for the compatibility of religious faith and the reasoned, critical study of the claims and literature of that faith.

You can find the podcast at the link above, or by searching the iTunes Store for “Satlow.”

Word Cloud: “Daniel Evokes Isaiah”

It’s over a year and a half since I defended my dissertation. Is it weird, then, that it was still the first thing that popped into my head when I learned about Wordle.net?

(A heads-up on Wordle.net: I find its implementation of Java to be tediously picky: some browsers work, some do not; I used to be able to print from the Applet, not I cannot; bah.)

[Later: also, I am not crazy about their copyright policy: if you upload a cloud to their gallery, then 1) the image belongs to them, not you; 2) you cannot remove it, since they do not verify accounts; 3) they and anyone else are free to use the cloud image, including commercial use. So, you may prefer to print your image to PDF and save it to your own computer instead of saving it to their gallery.]

The dissertation was titled, “Daniel Evokes Isaiah: The Rule of the Nations in Apocalyptic Allusion-Narrative.” My thesis was that allusions to Isaiah in Daniel contribute decisively and uniquely to the latter’s narrative depiction of the rule of the foreign nations over the people Israel. So, without further ado:



Have you used Wordle.net? What do you want to make a word cloud of?

Academic Blogs (Wiki) and Networked Blogs (Facebook)

A couple of happy discoveries for me this weekend (unlike the Sunday morning discovery that making cornmeal Johnnycakes is a far more tricky affair than The Joy of Cooking lets on). These are the Academic Blogs Wiki, and the Facebook application Networked Blogs.

Academic Blogs Wiki: As you can see on that main page of the Academic Blogs Wiki, the project developed from a small handful of earlier, more limited academic blogrolls. Because it is a wiki, anybody may make additions or edits. (I won’t list here the Biblioblogs already added to the wiki’s several categories: go look for yourself after you are through here.) First, a blog must be listed in a particular category: as you can see, I added Anumma to the Humanities: Religion/Theology list. Doing this is a simple matter: even if you don’t know the correct mark-up language (brackets and spacing and such), you can just copy what everyone else has done. This step includes creating an internal link to the (as yet non-existent) wiki page for that blog. On this page, the names in red type point to non-existent pages, whereas names in blue type point to pages that have been created. So, second and optionally, you may create that internal wiki page. Here is the page I created for Anumma.

It is unfortunate that a single category must be chosen: this is why tagging is more flexible and accurate (YouTube) than heirarchical categories (this blog, for example, could be tagged with Literature, History, and Education). However, each category at the wiki can be supplemented with a section called, “Other Blogs That Talk About…,” for blogs that have a secondary focus on that category. I created such a section to the Education category page and listed Anumma there.

Networked Blogs: This is a Facebook application, meaning that it is a feature only available as part of the Facebook interface. Users who join Networked Blogs can “follow” one another’s blogs: an attractive RSS feed brings recent posts from all followed blogs to a single page. As with Twitter, “following” in Networked Blogs is asymmetrical: the bloggers I follow won’t necessarily be the bloggers who follow me. On a search page, you can find blogs that suit your interest, for example with such keywords as “Hebrew,” “Bible,” “Testament,” and so on.

The instructions for setting up Networked Blogs are not as clear as they might be, and are spread out over a few too many links. There are optional elements (like having Networked Blogs in a box on your Profile or Boxes pages) that I at first confused with the main setting-up process (“Add a Blog”). Get a cup of tea and plan to give the process your attention, and it will come together.

Some of the Networked Blogs I have added to my feed are Doug’s Biblia Hebraica, Art’s finitum non capax infiniti, Adam’s משלי אדם, Tyler’s Codex: Biblical Studies, Philip’s Narrative and Ontology, and Stephen’s Biblische Ausbildung. (I also added some non-biblical academic blogs about which I will post another time.) This means I have some overlap, because I am already subscribing to some of these at NetVibes. I will be interested to see how I end up adapting my reading habits to this new option.

You do not have to have a blog to subscribe to blogs using Networked Blogs on Facebook.

Are you already on the Academic Blogs Wiki, or have you used it before? If you are on Facebook, are you already using Networked Blogs? What is your experience of these?

Follow-up: Milestone Women in Biblical Studies

A short while back, I asked who you would include in a list of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament scholars who are women. In most cases, readers’ comments concerned the scholar’s landmark contributions to the field. In some cases, a choice was rooted more in the personal experience that a reader has had of a colleague, mentor, or teacher.

I began to annotate the list, but that not only got out of hand (=showed my ignorance), it also became all too controlling and editorial. So instead, I offer one link per figure: a faculty page or Wikipedia where possible, an Amazon or similar page where necessary: whatever is ready to hand that offers some starting information.

(Why do schools’ web sites hide their faculty pages so cleverly? Why do so many faculty lack a web page altogether, being relegated instead to cluttered, pointless, hyperlink-less lists? Why do so many academic sites bubble with enthusiasm for events that are “coming up” in 2006?)

Anyway: If you are aware of a better link for any of these folks, speak up in a comment and I’ll make additions.

• Anneli Aejmelaeus (faculty page)


• Yairah Amit (Amazon: scroll to About the Author)


• Adele Berlin (faculty page)


• Claudia Camp (jwa.org encyclopedia: author)


• Julie Duncan (faculty page)


• Diana Edelman (faculty page)


• J. Cheryl Exum (faculty page)


• Tikva Frymer-Kensky (Wikipedia)


• Kathleen Kenyon (Wikipedia)


• Marjo C.A. Korpel (Brill book: see paragraph about the authors)


• Kwok Pui Lan (faculty page)


• Christl M. Maier (faculty page)


• Cynthia L Miller (CV: *.pdf)


• Susan Niditch (faculty page)


• Carol L. Myers (Amazon) [Later: here’s the faculty page]


• Carol Newsom (faculty page)


• Kirsten Nielsen (faculty page)


• Kathleen O’Connor (faculty page)


• Margaret Odell (faculty page)


• Erica Reiner (Wikipedia)


• Martha Roth (faculty page)


• Katherine Sakenfeld (faculty page)


• Alison Salvesen (faculty page)


• Mary Shields (professional page; formerly of TLS Ohio; see also book)


• Yvonne Sherwood (faculty page)


• Renita Weems (blog and more! also Twitter!)


• Gale Yee (faculty page)

Thank you all for your input. Don’t be shy about adding others in the comments, and let me know if I can improve the list with better links.

Divine English Pictographs Unveiled!

This post will change your life, and change the way you look at everything and everyone around you. But it will be easy! So chillax and read.

This morning, I had a cup of coffee, pet the dog, and chatted with my wife. If you properly want to understand these figures in my life, you have to attend to the pictographs from which these words derive.

The c in coffee is derived from the Semitic alphabetic character gimel. Now, the gimel is a pictograph of a throwing stick. The o comes from Semitic ayin, which represents an eye. The f is derived from the waw, a hook or a nail. Finally, the e comes from Semitic he, whose pictograph represents some dude waving his arms (“hey!”). Put them together, and you see that “coffee” means “better than a stick in the eye, on which I am totally hooked, and which makes me say Hey, Hey!”

I pause for you to collect yourself.

As for my dog: The d comes from dalet, which represents a door (or a fish, but anyone can see that my dog is not a fish, even though Hebrew dag means “fish”; stay with me here). Then there’s that o from ayin (eye) again. And g, like c, comes from gimel (stick). That is, my dog keeps an eye on the door, for which service I throw him a stick.

Finally, my wife: The i is from Semitic yod (hand, or forearm). Both the w and the f come from that waw (nail, or hook, but my wife is not a hooker, so nail, please). Recall that the e is from he (hey!). So, my wife is the one with two nails in the forearm ZOMG!! MY WIFE IS JESUS!! Which totally makes me say, “Hey!”

It should be clear to you by now that an understanding of the deeper meaning of our English characters opens a window on the plans that God has for our relationships with one another and with our coffee. And that…

What? You say that language ≠ script, that the former precedes the latter, and that no speakers of English ever sat around and said, “So what shall we call this stuff over here? I don’t know, but it’s like a stick in the eye so let’s be sure to use c and o?”

I guess somebody should tell that to all those frauds who teach Hebrew like this guy does (“It’s easy! And happens to support the patriarchy!”):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnJgJsFqI2I

Only Two Days to Catch Up on NBC’s “Kings”

I had posted before about the NBC show, “Kings.” (It is a television series based on the rise of David in Saul’s court, set in a world culturally and technologically similar to our present day.) That first link shows my previous post on the show, and the second links to its Hulu page.

The show was suspended mid-season, and has definitely been cancelled. However, the remaining episodes are to be available on Hulu beginning June 14.

An important point: Hulu only keeps a handful of episodes available at a time: it will drop the pilot episode when it posts Episode 6. So, you have only a couple of days to watch the two-hour premiere if you haven’t already (“Goliath,” parts one and two).

[Later: Robin Abrahams makes me aware that you can also catch full episodes on NBC’s site until September 20. Thanks, Robin!]

If you love biblical studies, especially Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, you owe it to yourself to give the show a look. If you complain (and who does not?) about the lack of thoughtful Bible stuff on the teevee, then it is actually mandatory that you take a look. Whether you end up liking it or not, I can guarantee that the show is not simplistic in its reading or interpretation of the story of David or in its theology.

Have any of you already seen the available five episodes? What are your reactions?

Bible Woo and Easy Answers to Complicated Problems

Bryan Bibb writes today about religious hucksters in the business of getting rich on false promises. There, he compares the marketing of false hopes by religious television with the woo-hawking infomercials run by the same stations. I encourage you to read the whole piece. Here, I just touch briefly on one element noted by Bryan—the promise to solve all or most problems with a single easy solution—and relate it to best practices in biblical studies.

Bryan writes of those who send their money off to the innumerable heirs of Jim Bakker:

They might take a chance on a $25 book, or a $100 donation, or a $500 conference session if they think it will fix what is wrong (without them having to actually do anything about it, if there is anything indeed that can be done).

Dupes send their money to a televangelist in exactly the same way that they send it to a purveyor of quack nostrums, in the same hope of a quick cure-all that will fix what is wrong. The RationalWiki identifies this false promise as one defining characteristic of pseudoscientific woo:

A simple idea that purports to be the one answer to many diseases or problems.

In my developing ideas about “Bible woo,” I am thinking about analogous “quick and easy cure-alls” in the reading of the Bible. A major breeding ground of Bible woo is the reader’s perception of a problem in the text: not in the value-neutral sense of “some odd data that call for explanation,” but rather in the value-laden sense of “some apparent feature that can’t and shouldn’t be there, whose logical explanation is intolerable to me, and that therefore must me explained away.” A ready example is the clear evidence of multiple sources in what are traditionally called the “five books of Moses.” In this context of biblical studies, a part of Bryan’s words above leap out to me:

…if there is anything indeed that can be done…

An axiom of critical inquiry is that data are good: you follow them, and they lead to you unpredictable places that you couldn’t have found unassisted. If the logical explanations of textual data lead you to an understanding of events that makes you uncomfortable, well, nothing to be done: there you are.

The woo-meister crouches in the doorway of that uncomfortable place, promising glib solutions to these and all other uncomfortable facts of life, for a reasonable price, whether a few dollars out of one’ purse or pocket, or only a few tolerable compromises in one’s God-given human capacity to reason.