Occasionally (when I haven’t been bogged down with other responsibilities), I post a Sumerian Proverb from Bendt Alster title, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer.

“If the scribe does not know how to grasp the meaning, how will the translator succeed”

A bonus Proverb:

“The man who lifts does not fart”

Thigpen, J. Michael, and David M. Hoffeditz. iVocab Biblical Hebrew 2.0: Vocabulary for Eight Beginning Grammars. Kregel Academic & Professional. 2008.

As readers of this blog are most likely aware, I am concerned with vocabulary acquisition, especially as it relates to Classical Hebrew.  Therefore, I am glad the fine people at Kregel have given me an opportunity to review one of their newest products, iVocab Biblical Hebrew 2.0.  This program, with the help of an iPod, will make your standard run of the mill homemade (or store bought) vocabulary cards obsolete.

I have sadly made thousands of standard[1] vocabulary cards keyed to various grammars (Seow, Lambdin, and Pratico &Van Pelt), and have even bought a slick professional set (created by the late Raymond Dillard), but I will never use those clunky awkward index cards again.  Traditional vocabulary cards don’t travel well, meaning it is hard to whip out a set of 50 cards on a crowded subway car.  Also it is easy to either mess up the order of those cards or simply lose a random word (my dog is notorious for jumping up on my desk and eating my index cards.  I keep telling her that “vocabulary acquisition does not work that way”, but that statement does nothing to curb her desire for ingesting my cards). With iVocab 2.0, those issues are a thing of the past, because students will have access to over 1000 Hebrew words on their MP3 player, keyed to the most common modern introductory Hebrew grammars on the market (such as Kittel, Hoffer, & Wright, Seow, Pratico & Van Pelt, Kelly, and more).  A student will no longer have to carefully balance a tall stack of cards, but solely hold onto their iPod or cell phone.

This product surpasses traditional vocabulary cards, because it pairs the visual with the auditory.  When a student reads a vocabulary word off of their MP3 player, a reader pronounces that word in Hebrew, followed by the display of an English gloss and a reading of that gloss.  Such an approach is a proven method that helps students memorize a word more quickly.  This is something that a traditional paper based vocabulary card simply can’t do.

Another surprise benefit of this product[2] is the ability to create a series of review lists to help you work through the vocabulary terms more efficiently.  This was accomplished with paper flashcards by creating a series of stacks (such as: words you know really well, words you barely know, and words that you don’t know at all), but with this program you can digitally categorize these words with ease without maintaining ever growing piles of index cards.

One of the few negative critiques I have for this product is the pronunciation of Hebrew words.  While I personally prefer a Modern Hebrew pronunciation, many of the grammars that are keyed to this product do not advocate such a vocalization.  Christian seminaries and Bible colleges tend to use another method to vocalize various Hebrew radicals (for example a ו is pronounced with a “w” sound instead of a “v” sound); such a variation may cause confusion to a beginning student retarding the process of acquisition.   It seems to me that this product could reach a larger audience if one had the ability to choose between hearing one of the two different styles of vocalization.

The only other negative critique I have with this product is that it takes a bit too long to install all of the files onto your computer (esp. the individual pre-created vocabulary lists).  Copying individual folders into iTunes does get a bit tedious, but the outcome is well worth the inconvenience.

If using “standard” paper vocabulary cards are the way that you personally review your Hebrew, then I think that this product will be an ideal fit for your needs.  By allowing students to both see and hear their vocabulary in a convenient format, Kregel has a true winner on their hands.

---

[1] I am using the word “standard” to mean: Hebrew on one side with English glosses on the other side.

[2] Only when paired with an iPod or viewed through your computer using iTunes.

Last Sunday, I taught my 1^st Hebrew Class as a Sunday School option at my church.  I have 6 students who will be taking the plunge into classical Hebrew (The youngest student that I have will be entering the 7^th grade this coming September, which is pretty cool). The purpose of this summer class is to provide a basic primer to this ancient language.  We will be learning the Aleph bet, vowels, syllabification, nouns (singular, plural, and with pronominal suffixes), some Qal verbs, and doing tons of vocab.  The pace will be slow, but I think I will be able to provide a nice foundation to the language this way.  Hopefully most of the students will want to continue learning Hebrew at the end of the summer, so that we can really begin to work through an actual introductory grammar come this fall.  I am currently planning on using Bonnie Kittel’s text.  I am really looking forward to working with this class!!!

I have dropped out of ranking since March, but apprarently I made it back in (which is odd being that I only wrote 4 posts this month).  Well for all those who have taken the time to read the same post over and over again…thank you for making me the 45th most popular biblioblog.

Because of a recent book meme, I thought about writing how Charles Dickens has had an impact on the way I read scripture.  My favorite Dickens novel is Great Expectations.  I try to read it once a semester, and am greatly moved by each reading.  This impact is probably most evident in my understanding of Proverbs 1-9.

Originally Great Expectations was written as a serial novel, which appeared as weekly installments in a magazine, All Year Round.  Each week a reader was treated to two chapters of Dickens’ story, until the story finally came to completion.  The closest parallel is two think of serial novels as a Victorian soap opera in print form.  In order to hook readers, these chapters had to provide something an audience had to look forward to; this was accomplished by a series of cliff-hangers.  This type of writing also makes putting down this story, in a singularly bound volume, difficult.

In Great Expectations, we meet a young boy by the name of Pip.  The story begins with Pip as a poor, but content boy; who would eventually be apprenticed to the town’s blacksmith.  His station in life is to be “common” in every way.  As the story progresses, Pip has an encounter with a beautiful young girl, Estella.  Her life is the antithesis of Pip’s life.  Estella is wealthy, well educated, and is meant to be a part of high society.  This girl becomes a mirror to Pip, in which he sees in her all of his commonness on display.  She despises Pip’s commonness, and the once content child begins to also see his boots, his family, his education, and his future as something that should be loathed.  For Estella’s sake, Pip begins a quest to improve himself.  Informally, Estella and her reproof becomes Pip’s earliest teacher.

The following is a quote that illustrates the informal pedagogy that has molded Pip.  In this quote a distraught Pip confronts the object of his love:

`Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of my- self. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since — on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, pad of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!’ (Great Expectation, Chapter 44)

The reoccurring character, Lady Wisdom, is everywhere within Proverbs 1-9, and her presence, as a metaphorical instructor is something that needs to be considered.  If Proverbs 1-9 is concerned with character formation, than Lady Wisdom is but one tool at the sage’s disposal to accomplish this goal.  The literary son is told to call wisdom his sister[1] (Prov. 7:4) and he is told to seek her as silver and as hidden treasures (Prov.2:4).  The father wants there to be a preoccupation with this feminine figure.  She is to be an indivisible part of the son’s character.

The author of Proverbs 1-9 is creating a literary drama where wisdom is personified, not as any woman, but as woman that is supposed to captivate his son, and effect every decision that this young man will make.  In Lady Wisdom, I see Estella and the effect that she had on each and every one of Pip’s decisions.

---

[1] As Garrett has correctly noted, the word “Sister” is a term of endearment.  Duane A Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of songs (vol. 14, electronic ed.; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 102

Roland Murphy is one of my favorite commentators.  He wrote with such a clarity and generally with a sense of restraint.  I would like to highlight his take on the many  interpretations of the seven pillars that support Lady Wisdom’s house in chapter 9 of Proverbs.  This restraint is evident with the following hilarious quote, “A discussion of various theories is like walking through a cemetery; one should leave them all in peace”.1  I would have loved to study with him.  Ultimately, I don’t buy his interpretation of the 7 pillars, but you have to love his style.

1. Murphy, Roland E. Proverbs . Vol. 22. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco, TX: Thomas Nelson, 1998.  58.

I was tagged by Daniel and Tonya over at the Hebrew and Greek Reader to complete a book meme.  The originator of this meme is Ken Brown.  The idea is that you have to either share your top five most influential books or the top five scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible.  Here is my list:

Perdue, Leo G. Wisdom and Cult: A Critical Analysis of the Views of Cult in Wisdom Literatures of Israel and Near East. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series. Missoula, MT.: Scholars Press, 1977.  This book brilliantly challenges the notion that wisdom was a secular enterprise and only later within its redactional history was it then baptized into cultic waters.  Perdue, in my opinion, shatters this presupposition; showing that the sage, in his quest to gain a mastery over order, would not and could not avoid the cultic sphere.  This book has greatly shaped my understanding of the wisdom tradition in profound ways, and I reference it often.

Dunn, James D. G. The Epistle to the Galatians. Black’s New Testament Commentaries. Peabody, MA.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993.  This commentary opened up my understanding to the Pauline Corpus, by introducing me to the N.P.P.  Also, this book is indirectly responsible for my desire to obtain a MA in Old Testament studies.  I can honestly say that this book was also responsible for the single greatest paradigm shift in my own theology.

Fox, Michael V. Proverbs 1-9. Anchor Bible Commentary. New York, NY: Doubleday, 2000.  This is probably one of the best commentaries that I own (and I own a decent number of commentaries).  Fox is a master interpreter and his work has greatly influenced my understanding of this book (which is also my favorite biblical book).  Fox’s book is the first title I pick up when I am beginning to study a particular passage in Proverbs 1-9 (outside of my BHS).  I also debated putting any of Claudia Camp’s books in this space.  She is one of my favorite O.T. scholars, but I decided to pick a title that covered the book of Proverbs more systematically, hence Fox’s title won out.

Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York, NY.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.  This book is not a book about biblical studies, but it has shaped my reading of the bible none the less.  Postman employs an ecological model to the advent of new technologies.  These technologies impact and ultimately alter one’s cultural environment in powerful ways.  This model has helped me to better understand a slew of technological changes that occur over time within the biblical history, while causing me to think about the ramifications of these changes.

Dickens, Charles.  Great Expectations.  The last title isn’t theological, but it is one of the best works of fiction.  I read this book once a semester, and with each reading I catch something that I missed.  This book has helped clarify for me the human experience, and in many ways has helped me to better understand the possibility of character formation through the pedagogy of love.  Someday, I will have to make a post about this subject.

UPDATE:

Oddly enough, I did not read the original post issuing this meme until I was finished writing my own.  Apparently Ken Brown and I have been shaped by some similar authors (Dickens) and concepts (N.P.P)…very interesting.

Tag your it (Calvin and Mandy Park, Jim Getz, Phillip Marshall, Richard), unless you have all ready been tagged.

I just learned about this new website (Virtual Museum of Iraq) from Charles Halton over at Awilum.  Wow!  What a well put togeither site that has lots of great information.  If you would like to learn about the Babylonians, Sumerians, or Assyrians this is a nice place to go and get your bearings.

Enjoy!

The other day my friend, Calvin, and I were chatting about the form of the instruction, as it pertains to the book of Proverbs.  The impetus of this particular discussion arose from a post on a blog that Calvin co-authors with his wife, Mandy (follow the post here).  I told Calvin that I would post some of my thoughts about the instruction form on my blog.

Form analysis is fairly arbitrary, and what follows is simply another way to conceptualize the instruction form on a macro-level.  By no means do I think that this is the only way to think about this form, but the following idea has helped me to understand how these texts function on a literary and on a pedagogical level.

Firstly, I don’t believe the conversation(s)/monologue(s)[1] actually took place.  It seems to me that this form (instruction) is an imaginary literary construct[2].  The father, the barely mentioned mother, and the son(s) are figments of the author’s imagination.  Secondly, if the above mentioned characters are literary inventions, then the world that is created by the author is also fictitious.  This means that the gang of murderous thieves and even the strange/foreign woman are works of fiction.  These literary characters and their social interactions are there only to serve the greater pedagogical task of the sage, which is to encourage those on the path of wisdom while discouraging “the way” of competing discourses.

The implications of such an approach, to an extent, sheds light on my views of authorship and the sitz im leben of this type of text.  I will try to flush this out a bit more in the next post or in the comments of this post.

To illustrate this concept I have created the following diagram:

---

[1] Weeks has speculated that Proverbs 1-9 is not an anthology of instructions, but a singular instruction.  Part of his reasoning is that we don’t have such an anthology known to us from antiquity.  Stuart Weeks, Instruction and Imagery in Proverbs 1-9 (New York, NY.: Oxford University Press, 2007).

[2] The term imaginary does not suggest that the scenarios established by the author don’t portray likely or even common societal interactions, but that their employment within this textual block is nothing more than an element of fiction, despite it true-to-life details.

Another series of Hebrew language resources that I have been creating is designed to help students identify verbal stems correctly.  I am not a big fan of memorizing paradigm charts, so this is an alternative to that method (while diagnostics can never be full proof, I believe they are extremely helpful).   The first one I am posting (as alluded to by the title of the post) is for the Piel stem.

If you have any suggestions, corrections, or comments please send them my way.