June 2007

Genesis 2:18-19: NVI vs. NIV

One of my pet peeves about the New International Version of the Bible is that I perceive the translators to play fast and loose with Hebrew grammar and syntax when it suits a conservative theological purpose to do so. Genesis 2:18–19 provides an illustration (and since Genesis is my primary scholarly “stomping grounds,” one particularly near and dear to my heart).

ויאמר יהוה אלהים לא טוב היות האדם לבדו אעשה לו עזר כנגדו ויצר יהוה אלהים מן האדמה כל חית השדה ואת כל עוף השמים ויבא אל האדם לראות מה יקרא לו וכל אשר יקרא לו האדם נפש חיה הוא שמו

The narrative is formed according to typical Hebrew patterns, in a series of clauses or sentences that begin with wayyiqtol forms (you might know this form as the imperfect with ו consecutive/conversive). The plain sense of the text is that God said, and then God formed, and then God brought. Now it’s clear enough that this sequence does not match that in Genesis 1, where the birds are created on “day five” and terrestrial animals, finally including humans, on “day six.” I do not know that this tension is what drives the NIV translation of Genesis 2:18–19, but I cannot come up with any better explanation:

“The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.” (Genesis 2:18-19 NIV)

Notice how the NIV translators have rendered the two wayyiqtol forms ויאמר and ויבא using the simple English past tense, which is probably our best way to represent a narrative wayyiqtol sequence in English. However, the NIV translators have rendered the other wayyiqtol form, ויצר, using the English past perfect: “the LORD God had formed …” This isn’t ruled out by Hebrew grammar and syntax, as far as I know, but I can see no grammatical or syntactical justification for rendering a series of three wayyiqtol forms in a narrative using the English simple past / past perfect / simple past. The motive seems to be theological, not linguistic.

For the last few weeks, my family and I have been in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The little church we’ve attended here uses the Nuevo Versión Internacional, which from the name you might expect to be a Spanish translation of the New International Version. However, the NVI is a fresh translation into Spanish, “following the NIV tranlation principles” according to the IBS. Yet the results in Genesis 2:18–19 are different.

Luego Dios el SEÑOR dijo: «No es bueno el hobre esté solo. Voy a hacerle una ayuda adecuada.» Entonces Dios el SEÑOR formó de la tierra toda ave del cielo y todo animal del campo, y se los llevó al hombre para ver qué nombre les pondría. El hombre les puso nombre a todos los seres vivos, y con ese nombre se les conoce. (Génesis 2:18–19, NVI)

For those of you who don’t read Spanish:

Then the LORD God said: “It is not good that the man is alone. I am going to make for him a fitting helper.” Therefore the LORD God formed from the ground every bird of the sky and animal of the field, and he brought them to the man in order to see what name he would give them. The man gave names to all the living things, and by this name they were known.

Somehow, when going from Hebrew to Spanish, the “NIV translation principles” resulted in a series of three Spanish preterites to represent three Hebrew wayyiqtol verbs—exactly the right thing to do, grammatically—while ostensibly the same principles resulted in a past/past perfect/past sequence when going from Hebrew to English. This has the potential to be really confusing to someone using a parallel NVI/NIV Bible. In this passage, the Nuevo Versión Internacional serves its readers better than the New International Version (and Today’s New International Version, which does not differ from the older NIV here) serves its readers.

Trust no one

Perhaps you remember this post’s tag line as a motto from one of my favorite television series, The X-Files. However, this post is not about alien bounty hunters or body-snatching hybrids. Rather, this post comes in response to a student (elsewhere than Pepperdine) who wrote asking whether he could trust “scholar X” to deliver good scholarship. My advice is, “Trust no one.”

I don’t mean to suggest that, when reading archaeological, biblical, or historical scholarship, one ought to be hyper-suspicious. My interlocutor noted, for example, that scholars leaning toward the “maximalist” end of the spectrum (a very high confidence in the historical accuracy of biblical narratives that look historiographical) and those that lean toward the “minimalist” end of the spectrum (a very high skepticism about the historical accuracy of biblical narratives that look historiographical) tend to throw not-especially-useful accusations back and forth. Maximalist-leaning scholars (and no, that’s not a contradiction in terms, though I don’t think the evidence for this position is strong) characterize minimalist-leaning scholars as ideologically driven to a hyper-critical approach, while minimalist-leaning scholars paint maximalist-leaning scholars in broad strokes as beholden to biblical fundamentalism. All the name-calling and armchair psychoanalyzing, though, doesn’t actually help anyone sort through the issues (unless one is particularly impressed by one side’s name-calling over against the other’s). Countering someone’s arguments by impugning their motives is a time-honored tradition, and it may be politically useful, but it doesn’t really advance the discourse toward any useful cognitive ends. Thus, when I advise students to “trust no one” when doing academic research, I don’t wish for those students to slink around looking for ulterior motives under every scholarly rock.

Rather, my advice—”trust no one”—is meant to get students thinking critically rather than “taking scholar X’s word for it.” In my opinion, having a list of scholars that you “trust” and others that you “distrust” to deliver good scholarship actually short-circuits the scholarly process. Judge scholarship by the arguments presented, not by the personalities presenting the arguments.

This cannot mean that personalities or track records are totally divorced from the critical thinking process. The character of the person presenting the arguments has been, from the days of classical rhetoric and even before, a key component of persuasion. If you know someone to be an incorrigible boor, or an irredeemable buffoon, it’s hard to take their arguments with dispassionate seriousness. Nevertheless, I suggest that doing so is in fact to be desired. It’s also true that scholars will develop, over time, track records. I have read enough of the work of, for example, Israel Finkelstein and Bill Dever to know that in a debate between those two, I’m almost sure to conclude that Finkelstein toes the line of the evidence more tightly than Dever. In a debate between, shall we say, Niels Peter Lemche and Iain Provan, I’m almost guaranteed to be closer to Lemche than Provan. However, if I took these trends that I notice in myself and set them up as lists of scholars to be trusted and not trusted—perhaps in the mold of “Finkelstein is always right; Dever is always wrong”—I would be doing myself and all of my audiences a grave disservice. Instead, having recognized these trends and biases, I should try to correct for them and try to grant the likes of Dever and Provan (who are not all that close together, mind you) an even more sympathetic hearing since I know I am biased in the opposite direction.

Ultimately, it is not a matter of identifying “trustworthy” sources, but of evaluating arguments on their merits. And you have to dig, sometimes deep, to find the bases and merits of scholarly arguments. For example, if Dever says that such-and-such a structure dates to the 10th century, and Finkelstein says it dates to the 9th century, then before you believe either one, you need to know why each dates that structure to that century. One or the other will prove to be more convincing to you (and you need to ask why about that, too), or you will find it impossible to decide, which probably is an indication that you need still more data.

Buying fake antiquities

No, no, I’m not talking about getting suckered on the black market. I’m talking about intentionally buying replicas of antiquities. Last year at the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago, I purchased a resin replica of the laws of Lipit-Ishtar, mostly for the purposes of showing my students what a cuneiform tablet might look like. The other day, I decided to take the plunge and order a few replicas from two different suppliers who do business online.

First, I ordered a couple of items from the LMLK Shop. From LMLK, I ordered replicas of the Gezer Calendar and Lachish Ostracon #3. My main interest in purchasing these items is to be able to enhance my Hebrew class in 2007–2008 with some amateur paleography. (The Gezer Calendar may really be Phoenician rather than Hebrew, but functionally this makes no difference to reading the text.) I chose Lachish Ostracon #3 rather than one of the other Lachish ostraca, or the Yavneh Yam Ostracon, because of its author’s reference to his own literacy, which is an interesting piece of the puzzle in constructing a picture late 7th-century/early 6th-century Judean society. When I placed my order, I did not realize the happy coincidence that the LMLK Shop is run by G. M. Grena, who reads Higgaion on comments occasionally on my posts.

G. M. referred me to another online replica shop, at the Institute for Bible & Scientific Studies. Exactly what approach this Institute takes to the Bible and scientific studies I don’t know, and I didn’t spend a lot of time poking around to find out. I just went to the replicas shop. From IBSS, I purchased two sets of bullae replicas and a replica of the Nash Papyrus. Again, my intention for these is primarily to use them as visual aids in Hebrew 330–331 and Hebrew 502 this coming fall, spring, and summer.

I haven’t yet received these items, and I haven’t returned to Malibu from Buenos Aires anyway. After I do, I’ll comment on the quality of the reproductions.

Oh! Oh, Selah!

In a recent post, Rick Brannan expressed a desire to read what John Hobbins, Tyler Williams, and I might have to say about the somewhat mysterious word סלה selah, which appears some 71 times in the psalms, plus three more occurrences in Habakkuk 3. I do not pretend to any special knowledge about this word, but in keeping with Rick’s request, I will share some observations.

First, etymology, which I think is not much help. Lexicographers recognize two verbs spelled סלה. One is translated “to value” and the other “to reject.” There is also a verb סלל “to build up.” I have no idea whether any of these are related etymologically to the mystery word סלה.

Now, for the function of סלה. When asking questions like this, I prefer to work inductively, so here’s what I notice about how סלה is used in the psalms.

Sometimes, סלה seems to occur in a position where the psalm content seems to shift mood, or to break up “contrasting” content. For example (all quotations are NRSV, and the English verse numbering is used; the Hebrew verse numbering will often differ by one verse, since English versions don’t number the superscriptions, while the Hebrew text treats these as separate verses):

Ps 3:2–3 …many are saying to me,
“There is no help for you in God.”
סלה
But you, O LORD, are a shield around me …

Ps 4:2–3 How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame?
How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies?
סלה
But know that the LORD has set apart the faithful for himself,
the LORD hears when I call to him.

See also Ps 4:4–5; 7:3–8; 32:4–5, 5–6; 39:11–12; 44:8–9; 46:3–4 (?), 7–8 (?); 52:5–6; 54:3–4; 57:6–7; 62:4–5; 89:37–38 (praise/סלה/lament).

Other times, סלה seems to occur in a position between distinct but consistent thoughts. Some of these could be seen as סלה standing between a more specific statement and a more general statement, but this pattern is not evident in all of these examples:

Ps 3:4–5 I cry aloud to the LORD,
and he answers me from his holy hill.
סלה
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, for the LORD sustains me.
(I.e., God answered my prayer on a specific occasion / סלה / I trust God in general.)

Hab 3:3 God came from Teman,
the Holy One from Mount Paran.
סלה
His glory covered the heavens,
and the earth was full of his praise.
(I.e., God was made manifest in a specific location / סלה / God was made manifest in general.)

Hab 3:9 You brandished your naked bow,
sated were the arrows at your command.
סלה
You split the earth with rivers.

Hab 3:13–14 You crushed the head of the wicked house,
laying it bare from foundation to roof.
סלה
You pierced with his own arrows the head of his warriors …

See also Ps 9:16–17 (where you will also find another interesting term); 20:3–4; 21:2–3; 39:5–6; 49:13–14; 52:3–4; 55:7–8; 57:3; 60:4–5; 61:4–5 (desire/סלה/rationale?); 62:8–9; 67:4–5; 68:7 (chronological setting/סלה/events), 19–20, 32–33; 75:3–4; 76:9–10 (?); 77:9–10, 15–16; 81:7–8; 82:2–3; 83:8–9 (complaint/סלה/plea); 84:4–5, 8–9; 85:2–3; 87:6–7; 88:7–8, 10–11; 89:45–46 (complaint/לסה/plea), 48–49 (complaint/סלה/plea); 140:3–4 (complaint/סלה/plea); 8–9; 6–7.

At still other times, סלה is the last word in the psalm (see Ps 3:8; 9:20; 24:10; 46:11).

One could pretty easily mount an argument that סלה separates stanzas or liturgical “movements” in Psalm 24. However, “exporting” that understanding to other psalms doesn’t work so well, and requires a great deal of speculation. The same explanation might work for Ps 32:7–8, where סלה stands between address to God and address to the human audience, and Ps 47:4–5; 48:8–9; 49:15–16 (change of addressee?); 50:6–7 (change of speaker); 66:4–5 (change of addressee), 7–8 (change of addressee), 15–16 (change of addressee); 67:1–2 (change of addressee); 76:3–9 (change of addressee); 77:3–4 (change of addressee); 87:3–4 (change of speaker); 89:4–5 (change of speaker). In Ps 59:5–6 and 59:13–14, סלה stands at the end of a verse, positioned just before the Psalm’s refrain.

The use in Ps 55:19, where סלה seems to interrupt the sentence, is utterly opaque to me.

So, I perceive several different positions in which סלה appears:

  • Topic A / סלה / topic B (contrastive)
  • Topic A / סלה / topic A’ (consistent)
  • Speaker A / סלה / speaker B (change of speaker)
  • Addressee A / סלה / addressee B (change of addressee)
  • סלה before refrain
  • סלה at end of psalm
  • סלה at change of liturgical action

I cannot really see any particular “common thread” that unites all these uses. In short, I’m baffled. I know of no better explanation than those that place סלה in the company of words like משכיל , שגיון, הגיון, etc.; that is, mysterious words that probably have some kind of liturgical or musical significance that is now all but lost to us.

Sorry, Rick. It’s not very satisfying. But it’s the best I can do just working with the Hebrew text. I’m unaware of any use of סלה in any inscription or whether it appears in the “sectarian” poetry from Qumran, and I’m not in a position (geographically) to check at the moment.

Sunday is for the birds

Or rather, we spent a substantial portion of this past Sunday watching birds at the Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur, with a small group of students taking a biology field course with Pepperdine professors Lee Kats and Rodney Honeycutt. I’m not much of a birdwatcher, but it was a fun outing. For me, one of the highlights was getting a pretty good, fairly close look at a pair of caracaras.

Is the Bible history or theology?

The question seems to pop up repeatedly in the various overlapping online discourses on the Bible, most recently on the Biblical Studies Discussion List. I thought that some Higgaion readers who don’t subscribe to that list might be interested in the following item that I posted to the list today.

In my estimation, the debate reaches its shrillest, and least helpful, when the matter is placed in stark either/or terms, such as, “Is the Bible history or theology?” or “Are the Bible’s historiographical writings true or false?” We’d get a lot farther in terms of productive discourse if we’d break out of such binary modes. Ancient theologians were not hermetically sealed away from real history any more than are modern theologians, and the “theology OR history” bifurcation just doesn’t work very well for biblical literature.

It’s clear enough, for example, that many of the places mentioned in the biblical narratives were real places: Jerusalem, Jericho, Gezer, Hazor, and so on. Please do not misunderstand this claim. The fact that the narratives reference real places does not mean that those places were in fact as the writers imagined them to be in the writers’ pasts. It could be that many of the biblical narratives are completely fictional creations set in the real world (in fact, I think the book of Jonah falls precisely into this category). However, this observation does entail that the biblical writers were reasonably well aware of the geopolitical world they inhabited, and perhaps somewhat well aware of the geopolitical world their forebears inhabited.

To go further, the biblical “theo-historiographers,” so to speak, certainly were aware that various cultural conventions had changed over time. Recall, for example, the reference in 1 Samuel 9:9 to an “archaic” way of referring to prophets, or the way the narrator of 4:7 feels the need to explain a “passé” custom. Again, the fact that the narratives inject such explanations does not ensure that their explanations are correct; they could be fanciful or outright fictitious. However, these injected explanations do entail that the biblical writers had to some greater or lesser degree an “historical sensibility” and knew good and well that things were not always the way they were in the writers’ present days.

On occasion, the biblical writers write about events that scribes from other kingdoms also wrote about. For example, the author of 2 Kings claims that Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem; coincidentally, Sennacherib’s PR machine also claims that he besieged Jerusalem. The details differ, and perhaps neither account gets at quite the sober truth of the matter, but we cannot simply write off the “Deuteronomistic Historian’s” narrative as “theology” that has not a lick of “history” in it. Clearly, that writer was aware that Sennacherib had besieged Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah. There may be very good reasons to doubt some of the details of the biblical version, or of Sennacherib’s version, but with two completely independent (as far as we know) sources making the same basic claim, we cannot possibly deny that the “Deuteronomistic Historian” had some accurate knowledge of history. Also, quite frankly, the farther down we push the date of composition for 2 Kings (or its constituent part that contains this story), the more impressive this historical knowledge becomes; a Hellenistic “theo-historiographer” who knows about Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem could be judged a “better historian” than a Hezekian-era “theo-historiographer” who knows about Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem.

We could even point to instances where archaeological discoveries have shed genuine light on biblical narratives, suggesting along the way that the biblical writers might have known more about ancient Israel’s history, or at least its language and customs, than we do, at least on some topics. Consider one of Dever’s favorite examples, the PYM. For years, translators and interpreters had no real idea what to do with the word PYM in 1 Sam 13:21 (a hapax legomenon), and guessed, based on the context, that it was some sort of tool. The guess was contextually reasonable, but flat wrong, as we learned when “biblical archaeologists” discovered (well, Barton bought one from somebody, and Macalister found one in situ), c. 1900, small weights (equal to 2/3 shekel) inscribed with the word PYM. Translators and commentators immediately revised their understanding of PYM in 1 Sam 13:21 from some sort of tool to a unit of weight equal to 2/3 of a shekel. Of course this doesn’t in any way prove that the surrounding narrative has historical veracity, but it does show that the biblical writers were well grounded in reality, or at least, that the *settings* of their narratives enjoy verisimilitude even in some pretty small details.

I am not trying here to “defend the historicity of the Bible,” and still less would I endorse the attitude “If the Bible’s history is false, then my faith is false; but I know my faith is true, so therefore the Bible’s history must be true.” I do not think that every biblical narrative has value for historical reconstruction, nor that a blanket judgment in favor of historicity is at all justified by the examples I’ve given above (others could be given). On the other hand, a blanket judgment against historicity is equally unjustified. A binary bifurcation between “history” and “theology” simply does not do any sort of justice to the complexity of the material. “Is the Bible history or theology?” is a poorly phrased question. “Do the biblical narratives describe historical events accurately, if at all?” is perhaps better phrased, but still too broad. Each text must be interrogated specifically, with an eye toward answering a question more like, “To what extent, if at all, does this particular text yield reliable historical information?” As a matter of epistemology, this question may be extremely difficult to answer, but the answer cannot be presumed in advance by setting up an untenable binary opposition.

The “Jesus tomb” in the Review of Biblical Literature

In today’s Review of Biblical Literature, Jonathan Reed skewers Simcha Jacobovici’s and Charles Pellegrino’s The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History (HarperSanFrancisco, 2007):

Can we prove that this is not the family tomb of Jesus? No. A historian or archaeologist has little chance of absolutely disproving that possibility. Can we prove that it is? No. It is possible that the tomb of Jesus has been found, but this book’s attempt to make the case is an absolute failure.

James Tabor doesn’t fare any better in Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte’s review of The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2006):

Doing history should be something else than picking historical “facts” at random from all kinds of literary traditions and archeological digs. A scholarly publication should not contain the level of speculation that characterizes this book. It is a pity that plotting theories such as Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code are now even entering into the academic arena. Read as an entertaining thriller, The Jesus Dynasty deserves a certain degree of popularity, but preferably not on the nonfiction list.

To understand why each reviewer reaches the conclusions cited, please read both reviews in their entirety.

R.I.P. Brevard Childs

Brevard Childs, famous among biblical scholars especially for his promotion of “canonical criticism,” died yesterday afternoon. He will be sorely missed by his family and friends, and his contributions to biblical studies will be long remembered. I never met Dr. Childs, but several of his books were required reading during my master’s degree program.

Your kids can read my blog

When I found out that Duane’s blog was PG-13, I just had to know

Curiously enough, this rating is provided by an online dating site. I have disabled the click-through above because, well, I don’t really want to promote online dating sites. It might make my blog rating less family-friendly.

Another to-do done

I’ve just finished another item on my to-do list: a review of Eric Christianson, Ecclesiastes through the Centuries (Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). Look for the finished review to be published in an upcoming volume of The Bible and Critical Theory. The short version is that if you are interested in the reception history of Ecclesiastes, this book is indispensable for you. If you are interested in Ecclesiastes but have thought mainly about direct exegesis of the text and not about its reception in Western culture, you should broaden your horizons by reading this book.

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