This semester I will be working on Hosea chapter two for my Minor Prophets class w/ Doug Stuart. I only own a handful of commentaries on this book, and was curious if anyone would suggest another to add to my shelves?

I own:

Stuart’s WBC volume

Anderson & Freedman’s Anchor Bible Commentary

Garrett’s NAC Volume

Morris’ Prophecy, Poetry, and Hosea (JSOTS 219)

Achtemeier’s NIBC

Keil-Delitzsch’ Minor Prophets commentary

Wood in the EBC

Calvin’s commentary on Hosea.

Any suggestions welcomed!

I came across this post today, and it made me chuckle.  It is an interesting piece of Middle Egyptian.  Enjoy

Duane Smith has put together January’s installment of the Biblical Studies Carnival.  Duane has done a nice job of scouring the internet looking for various blog posts related to biblical studies.

Thanks for your hard work, Duane.

To see Biblical Studies Carnival XLX , go here.

My afternoon/late morning latte. This pour is one of my better ones lately in terms of symmetry.

My wife and I recently treated ourselves to a couple of iPhones (of the 3gs variety).  These are the first smart-phones we have owned, and I can’t imagine life without them now.  I never really thought that I needed a piece of technology quite like this, but then Logos had to go out and make an app. that would give me the ability to view many (and I do mean many) of the books that are currently in my digital library.  So my cellular upgrade from a Razr to the iPhone is really Logos’ fault (they should really offer to pick up part of the tab on this, or at the very least throw in some additional digital books).

Below are a few of my thoughts on this app.:

Accessibility:

If you are a user of a base product in version 4, then you are eligible to access many of the books that you currently use through your iPhone now.  If you are still using version 3 of their program or even earlier incarnations, then you will not be able to access the content of your digital library.  I suppose this is another way to encourage folks to upgrade their current package.  However, if you want to use the basic app. (and you don’t fit into the above category) you can download it and get access to several free Bibles anyway.

At the moment, Logos is only working with the iPhone platform, which means if you have a BlackBerry or an Android you are out of luck (although I hear that there will be an alternative option by logging into a Logos’ maintained website, http://library.logos.com). (edited for correction, the previous website was incorrect.  Thanks, Mike.)

The Cost:

Many of the Bible Software apps. cost money and more than I have to spend, especially if I want the ability to search/read original language resources (LXX, BHS, DSS, CAL Targumim and etc.); however, I don’t want to pay additional money to read digital resources that I all ready own.  Logos’ forward thinking has made it possible for me to access my software through another device using the same cloud that currently manages my resources for my p.c.  All of this is accomplished at NO additional cost to the user!

General Impressions:

I literally have access to several hundred resources.  The most important to me are those dealing with the Hebrew language, the BHS and DSS Sectarian literature are among those on this list.  The display of Masoretic pointing (in texts which are pointed) still needs work and at times are jumbled, but in landscape viewing these marks are mostly readable.

If you are reading the Hebrew Bible using Andersen Forbes Analyzed Text (commonly referred to as AFAT), and can’t remember what a Hebrew word means or if a verb is a Qal or a Piel, then just tap and hold your finger down over a word until the parsing information and gloss appears.  This is a fantastic feature for a quick study on the go!

Unfortunately not all of my lexicons (i.e. HALOT or Holladay) are available yet on my iPhone (much of this is due to licensing agreements), but BDB, TLOT, DBL Hebrew and TWOT are all available.  In a pinch, these lexicons are more than enough to get me started.

Hopes for the Future:

Logos promises that in the future there will be a synching feature between the work you maintain on your home computer and the work you do on your iPhone.  What this upcoming feature means is that if you write a text critical note on a passage that you are working on at your home computer, then that note will be available for future reading on your iPhone.  This will greatly, in my opinion, enhance the overall value of this app.

I still have not been entirely enamored with Hebrew morphological searches on Logos 4, at the moment there are a few bugs that need to be worked out.  However, I have been assured that these fixes are coming in the near future as well.

All in All:

This is an amazing app. that packs a huge punch by allowing you to take your theological library anywhere you and your iPhone can go.  What is even more impressive is that Logos has decided not to charge you additionally for this service.  I would highly recommend that iPhone users give this app a try.  Now if Logos would only pick up the cost of buying a new iPhone, or at the very least a new mug.  How about it guys, what do you think?

Does anyone know of a vocab card program for Biblical Aramiac that can be put on an iPhone (preferably keyed to John’s grammar)?   I really don’t want to make paper ones this semester.

During my bed time reading, I came across this gem from Michael Fox:

” For a comparable process of idealization through selective vision, consider the way Norman Rockwell promulgated a sentimentalized, heavily didactic ideal of white, middle-class, small-town America, with its family values and love for honest work and self reliance, an America where tolerance means recognizing homogeneity beneath the surface rather than in accepting true variance.  This not unworthy — but certainly subjective — vision was created not by distortion but by selection.  It is not a vision imposed from above; farmers and small-town shopkeepers might share it as a flattering self-image and others enjoy its sentiments.  Anyone of Rockwell’s pictures could be a reality, but as a corpus they convey a message that is grossly idealized and didactic.  This is not to say bad; ideals hold valid lessons and useful encouragement.  But they are not a mirror of reality” 1

I think Fox is universalizing the content of Proverbs a bit too much.  Ideologically competing discourse can be seen in Proverbs (an example Prov. 11:4 and 10:15).  Despite the fact that I think Fox is over generalizing, his point is spot on!    The Book of Proverbs on the whole shows a world where the bad guys get what they deserve and the righteous get their rewards.  This is not a consistent reality, but it does happen.  Proverbs are situationally applied literary/oral units of communication.  They are visions created by selection.

1.  Fox, Michael V. “The Social Location of the Book of Proverbs.”  in Texts, Temples and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran. Edited by Michael V. Fox, Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Avi Hurvitz, Michael L. Klein, Baruch J. Schwartz, and Nili Shupak. Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 1996.   238-239.

Quotations:

The pericope which forms the subject of this post can be found, at least in part, in the mouth of Jesus within the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 21:33; Mark 12:1; Luke 20:9).  The quotation of Isaiah 5:2 within this synoptic parable is helpful and would likely have made the original audience recall the famous Isaianic parable.  This recollection serves to carry the symbols (with their referents) from one context into a new context in the minds of Jesus’ audience. The vineyard is the Israel of Jesus’ social context, and the owner of this vineyard (as it was in Isaiah 5) is God.  However, Jesus offers a new twist on this parable, by creating additional actors for this repurposed scene.[1] These new actors are the caretakers or tenants who are maintaining this vineyard.  The emphasis on this parable shifts to these new characters, opposed to focus of Isaiah 5, which was on the quality of fruit that the vineyard produced at harvest time.

The master of the vineyard has created a place that has all of the accouterments that would make for a successful vineyard (walled fortifications, a winepress and an observation tower).  There is no reason to think that the vineyard within this new context would not yield sweet grapes.  The problem in this parable is not the vineyard, but its tenants.

The owner of the vineyard sends his servants to collect some of his fruit, but the servants are rebuffed by the tenants.  These individuals behave like thugs to the owner’s servants by beating them, throwing stones at them, treating them shamefully and even killing one of these dutiful servants (Mark 12:2-4; Luke 20:10-11; Matthew 21:35).

The likely “tenant” was the ruling Jewish powers, the Sadducees, Pharisees, and the Herodians (Mark 12:13).[2] Judgment is not extended to the vineyard in Jesus’ retelling, but to those who maintain the vineyard.  The nation is not being condemned, but only those who lead the nation.  This judgment is because these rulers did not walk in equity or justice, but in depravity.   In the Isaianic parable, the sour grapes of the vineyard were bloodshed and unrighteousness.  The tenants in Jesus’ parable were marked by the fruits of their actions – bloodshed and unrighteousness.

Possible Echoes:

A common theme in the New Testament is to equate fruit with an individual’s deeds or actions.  As mentioned in numerous places within these posts, Isaiah has assigned the value of sour grapes to bad behavior, while intimating that good behavior is equal to sweet grapes.  Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew (7:16-20), that individuals will be known by their fruits.  In other words, those who are apart of the people of God reflect that reality in tangible and discernible ways (Matthew 7:21-23).

Paul, also, employs this symbolic system in his discussion of the fruits of the Spirit and acts of the flesh in his epistle to the Galatians (5:19-23).  For Paul the one who lives by the Spirit or the flesh will “grow” fruits in kind with that which governs their life.

---

[1] This addition may have been a rhetorical trick used by Jesus to keep the contents of this story fresh, thus allowing the parable to do what parables do best – reveal truth by concealing the intent until the last possible moment.

[2] James A Brooks, Mark (vol. 23, electronic ed.; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 190

Agricultural Practices in the Levant

As discussed previously, viticulture was an important flourishing industry in the Levant.  According to Oswalt, cultivating a vineyard from scratch would take a minimum of three years.[1] Following the narrative sequence in Isaiah 5:2, the first phrase would begin with basic preparation of the land: clearing out weeds and other plants and de-stoning the property.  According to Oswalt, “the finest vines that one can afford must be purchased and carefully set out.”[2] This would most likely include the creation of a lattice that would keep the precious vine suspended in air, so that the vine doesn’t rest on the ground to rot.[3] The stones and rocks that were collected in the first year would then become the materials used for creating walled fortifications and watchtowers during the second year.[4] In the third year, the viticulturalist would be able to finally enjoy the fruits of his long labor.

The time, commitment and the amount of work that the owner of this vineyard has put into his land wouldn’t have been lost on the original audience of this passage.  Keeping this process in mind, allows the reader to appreciate the obvious frustration the vineyard’s master would be feeling.  This would then allow the reader the ability to sympathize with the master’s complaint in verse four.

---

[1] John N. Oswalt, Isaiah (NIVAC; Grand Rapids, MI.: Zondervan, 2003), 112; Keener suggests that it would take a minimum of four years for a vineyard to turn a profit.  Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 511

[2] Oswalt, Isaiah, 112

[3] It is interesting to note that the word for vineyard in Middle Egyptian is represented by the ideogram of vineyard’s lattice.

[4] This concept may be behind the proverbial saying in Qoheleth 3:5, “A time to cast stones, and a time of gathering stones;”.  cf.  Choon-Leon Seow, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation with Introduction (vol. 18, 1st ed.; Anchor Bible Commentary; New York, NY: Doubleday, 1997), 161-162

The word ענב is a “smooth-skinned fruit of the grape plant.” ^[1] Grapes were an important part of Israel’s economy, and they grew well within this environment.[2] In this pericope, ענב is a metaphor for just behavior and righteousness.  Grapes are often associated with divine blessings (for example: Deuteronomy 32:14).  The symbolic currency of this word is positive especially given the fact that this fruit was the outcome the viticulturalist had anticipated would come from his hard work.

This word באשׁ has been translated in various ways by several commentators.  BDB suggests that באשׁ could mean wild grapes.  However, in my yard I have several wild grape vines and I can attest that wild vines don’t have to be bad; in fact the fruit they produce can be quite tasty.  This word can also mean stench caused by rot, as it does Exodus 7:18.  This has lead some to believe that these were rotten grapes that the vineyard’s owner has found.  However, this too seems unlikely, because this would seem to suggest that the master of the vineyard was negligent in harvesting his crop at the right time.  Following Holiday and Dictionary of Biblical Languages: Hebrew, I believe that this word should be translated sour grape(s).  The sense is that these grapes are bad, meaning most unfit for consumption or at the very least unpalatable.

The symbolic currency of this word is negative given that this grape is the exact opposite of what the vineyard’s owner had anticipated.  באשׁ stands as a metaphor within this pericope for bloodshed and unrighteousness (vs. 7).

בָּתָה only appears once in the Hebrew Bible, in Isaiah 5:6.  As discussed previously, its cognate usage in Akkadian (batu) would suggest a wasteland or a place of devastation.[3] The symbolic currency of this word is chaos, a place of judgment.  This is not a positive place, but a place that is lamentable.

Given that the words שָׁמִיר and שַׁיִת are forming a parallel unit within the text, it makes sense to examine these words together. [4] שׁמיר only appears in Isaiah and unfortunately the data available makes it near impossible to identify which plant the author had in mind.  According to HALOT the following identifying suggestions include: “Christ’s horn, wild carrot or perhaps a thorny bush.”[5] Sadly, the identification of שַׁיִת is also a mystery.  However, it has been suggested by HALOT that it may be some sort of “thorny undergrowth or a type of achillea.”[6]

Regardless of one’s ability to correctly identify the species שָׁמִיר and שַׁיִת, the symbolic currency of these words can be established by seeing how these words function in several contexts.  By surveying the usage of the words שָׁמִיר and וָשָׁיִת, what becomes apparent is that these words carry a negative connotation because of their frequent association with God’s judgment and specifically as a curse upon the land, as in Isaiah 10:17 or 27:4.[7]

---

^[1] James Swanson, “עֵנָב,” DBL: Hebrew.

[2] Hopkins, “Agriculture.”

[3] “בָּתָה”, HALOT, 165.

[4] It is interesting to note that these two words are often linked together in Isaiah see: 5:6, 7:23, 7:24, 7:25, 9:17, 27:4.

[5] ” שׁמיר,” HALOT, 1562

[6] “שַׁיִת” HALOT,1486

[7] While the words in Genesis 3:18 are different, weeds in general are often a sign of God’s judgment.