I'm off to SBL Rome

Blogging will cease for the next two weeks as I try and make the most of the Society of Biblical Literature's international meeting in Rome. I wrestled with the question of whether it would be worth going or not. On the one hand, listening to lectures is not something I particularly enjoy (I'm told it's ADHD ... Give me a book any day!), on the other hand, I may well meet some important dialogue partners and make connections for the future (I plan to get this doctorate finished by July 2010). The thing that sold me on the idea is a paper by Phil J. Botha of the University of Pretoria. Check out the abstract and you will see that a Psalm 24 junky couldn't wish for more:

Answers Disguised as Questions: Rhetoric and Reasoning in Psalm 24

Psalm 24 seems to be a post-exilic composition comprising of mostly pre-exilic material: a hymnic introduction (vv.1-2), a so-called entrance Torah (vv.3-5), and a liturgical piece once used at the temple gates (vv.7-10) to which a post-exilic identification of the true Israel was added (v.6). One aspect of its exegesis which has possibly been neglected thus far concerns the rhetorical techniques it employs and the argumentative objectives its composer(s) and editors pursued. The questions used in two of its four distinct sections possibly had a different function in their contexts of origin, but the exegete of the Psalter is confronted with the effect and impact of these questions (as well as other tropes employed) in the present composition and literary setting of the psalm. In this paper, the stichometric and poetic structure of Ps 24 is analysed and the possible argumentative objective of the choice of poetic stratagems is discussed.

How interesting is that!

The second paper that I will have to visit is this one:

Ida Zatelli, University of Florence

Biblical Origins of the Ritual Practice of Pilgrimage

The ritual and popular practice of the pilgrimage is widespread in various cultures and religions. In the present work the Biblical links of the rite are examined especially from a linguistic approach. The use of the verb gur, "to wander", "to roam” and that of the noun ger, "wanderer", "foreigner” or even “refugee”, prevalent in the epic narratives of ancient Israel (cfr. for ex. Gen 47,9) convey to the Jewish population the awareness of being “errant”, “itinerant”. Another key word is hag, “feast”, which in many cases involves rites of circumambulation. It is applied to the three principal Jewish celebrations: Sukkot, Pesah, Shavuot; particularly interesting is the analysis of the festival of Sukkot. A specific attention is dedicated to the frequent use of the verb 'ala, "to ascend" (the noun 'aliyya comes to mean "ascent" in post-biblical Hebrew). One ascends to the sacred mountains, to the sanctuaries, and finally 'ala becomes the technical verb that indicates the ascent to the Temple in Jerusalem or to Zion. This verb and yasa, "to exit" appear in Exodus where they describe the journey from Egypt to Canaan and in some post-exilic texts 'ala also refers to the return of the people of Israel. In conclusion, a detailed analysis is devoted to the expression lir'ot (et) pne yhwh , "to see the face of the Lord". (cfr. for ex. Is 1,12), which shows clearly the ultimate aim of the ascension to the Temple, very frequently not appropriately rendered in translation. The analysis of the above mentioned terminology allows us to define the origin of the rite of 'aliyya leregel, "pilgrimage" in post-biblical texts and to throw light on a very popular and widespread ritual in those religions that are based on the Bible.

Unfortunately, the timing of the various papers is not ideal. From my perspective, all of the most interesting subjects are on the first day at take place at the same time, which means I will have to miss a bunch. The two papers above back on to each other, meaning I will have to rush from one room to the other in order to make it on time, missing another interesting paper on the reception history of Psalm 1 (though luckily Gillingham is coming to Bonn soon, where I believe she will be repeating the paper). Oh well, one of my favourite activities is reading in cafés with a cigar and decent cappuccino, and where can one do that better than in Rome (really, the cappuccino there is in a class of its own)?

Ingrid (my wife) will be flying out on the Saturday, so we'll be spending another week in the city doing the regular tourist stuff (though I intend to thoroughly explore the Jewish quarter, probably the most interesting thing Rome has to offer).

Anyway, I wish who ever is reading this a enjoyable and erholsamer (restorative) summer break. :)

Questions to ask a Biblical poem

As anyone who follows this blog will have noticed by now, I am working on an interpretation of Psalm 24, trying to take into account its textual, poetic, historical, literary, and theological dimensions (have I missed a dimension? For posts to date go here). One "means of entry" to the Psalm that I have been using is a list of questions that the Dutch Hebrew scholar Jan Fokkelman believes we ought to pose any example of Biblical poetry (I've got to question 11 so far; the most fruitful for Ps 24 was question 1). I thought I'd share them here and ask if anyone thinks an important question has been left out, or whether a question posed ought to be fine tuned:

1.Who is speaking, an “I” or a “we”? Can we picture this lyrical subject? Does it change in the course of the poem?

2.Whom is the lyrical subject addressing? Is the addressee visible in the text, or can we put a face to him/her? Does the addressee change? Do we encounter apostrophe?

3.How long are the sentences? Check every time whether the syntactic unit coincides with the colon, the verse, or even a strophe. In other words: does enjambment occur?

4.Which verb tenses are used? Are the various tenses (present, past, future) distributed over the strophes?

5.a.Which modes are used besides the indicative?1 Wishes, commands, exclamations?
b. Are there actions, or descriptions of qualities?

6.How do space and time function in the lyrical world?

7.Can a diagram be drawn of the relations between the lyrical characters—for instance, a triangle such as me-God-enemy?

8.How long are cola and verses, generally?

9.a. How much parallelism (both semantic and morphological) is there between half-verses? Ask yourself regularly if the “A, what's more, B” rule applies.
b. How much parallelism exists between the verses? And between the strophes?

10.Try to find the demarcation of strophes and stanzas. What devices does the poet use to create these units? Are there any boundary markers?

11.Is the cohesion of the strophe internal or external? Try to indicate the nature of the internal cohesion.

12.a. Does the poet use simile?
b. Metaphors?
c. Metonymy? Synechdoche? Symbols?

13.How are the verses related in regard to meaning?

14.And the strophes? Are they steps in a line of argument?

15.How does the theme develop? Is a specific line of thought followed?

16.What are the keywords?

17.Be sensitive to contrasts, oppositions, and transitions.

18.Try to make the most of various forms of repetition by listening for it and testing the function of variation-in-repetition.

What is the syntax of Ps 24:3-5?

For the Hebrew of this ... sentence ... go here.

All translations of Ps 24:5 that I know of (including commentaries) treat v. 5 as starting a new clause: "He will receive ... ." Andersen-Forbes, however, analyse this differently. They see vv. 4-5a as being one sentence, with the whole of v. 4 being the subject of the verb יִשָּׂא in v. 5. This would render the translation: "One clean of hands ... who has not lifted ... will receive."

My question is: What makes this a better reading then the typical one?

Here are the pros and cons of A-F's suggestion that I can think of:

Cons:

- The question in v. 3 is only indirectly answered, which is odd. Having said that, the answer is clarified once more in v. 6, so perhaps this is intentional ... . The indirectness of the answer may relate to the function of the section within the context of the whole Psalm.

- Though subject and verb are part of one clause, poetically they cross a strophe boundary (vv. 3-4//5-6), which may be unusual.

Pros:

These become particularly clear when we compare the Psalm to Psalm 15, its close relative:

- Ps 15 also has noun-phrases followed by qatal verbs in the section describing qualifications for temple entrance (vv. 2-5). The difference is, the qatals in Ps 24 are preceded by אֲשֶׁר, which A-F consider to be a "nominalizer." That means that the following two qatal clauses, in contrast to Ps 15, "function [syntactically] as a noun." (I have to say, however, that this is an odd concept for me ... I don't see, for example, how Deut 13.7 is "nominalized." Hay anyone heard of this concept?).

- Ps 15:5c, like Ps 24:5, is a promise of the benefits such a righteous person would receive. The difference is that in Ps 15 an extra subject is added beforehand: עֹשֵׂה־אֵלֶּה. In Psalm 24, there is no extra subject before the verb. Admittedly, this happens elsewhere in the Bible (cf. Isa 3:7), but not only is the entire preceding verse nominalized (unlike in Isa 3:6), the subject of the verb is repeated afterwards in v. 6, as if one wanted to clarify the answer to the question in v. 3.

- V. 4 as subject is syntactically possible (i.e. noun-phrase+relative clause). It occurs 4 times in poetic books: Pss 24:4-5; 35:8; 41:10; 86:9 and c. 67 times in the rest of the Bible. A good example of a very similar construction with a long subject is Deut 28:56. The first noun-phrase consists of two elements and the relative clause consists of two further subclauses (and this isn't even poetry, so there's no parallelism!). Cf. also Num 9:13; Josh 1:18; and Ezra 6:5 (in Aramaic), which have especially similar structures.

Dear Logos

Dear Logos,

I've just spent the past four days tinkering around with your Andersen-Forbes syntactically tagged Hebrew Bible and I have to say: I love it. Honestly, I'm such a geek I have to force myself to take a day off on Sundays. This programme is seriously enriching the way I understand Biblical Hebrew and the way I deal with difficulties in exegesis. I couldn't imagine owning a Bible software programme without it ...

There are two things I'd love to see come out at some point in the future:

1. The database could do with having its semantic tags refined. I think if I had a sophisticatedly tagged semantic database I'd run the risk of never getting off my computer. And I used to hate computers at school! Oh, and given the subjectivity involved in all things semantic and syntactical, perhaps you could get different scholars to make their own contributions. You could then further refine your search engine by adding a button for toggling between different search modes, depending on what scholar we like best.
2. And while we're at it, why not create a poetically tagged database? Again, you could just ask someone like Fokkelman and a few of his competitors to tag the Bible according to colon, strophe, and stanza length, metrical counts, assonance, cases of metonymy and various types of parallelism. Then we could do things like search for cases where subjects and objects cross strophe boundaries, or where particular types of parallelism tend to accumulate. Ooh, I tremble at the thought of it ...

I'm sure that none if this would be particularly difficult to do. After all, Andersen and Forbes have only been working on their project since the '70s. In fact, if you ever do get these projects off the ground, I generously offer to receive a review copy of each programme.

Yours sincerely,

Phil.

More words of wisdom for Biblical exegetes

... though of a different sort. Provided via Tim Furry. This is explicated somewhat here. I must remember that name ... John David Dawson ...

Words of wisdom for budding Biblical scholars

Important words of wisdom from גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב today.

Is Ps 24:3-6 subjunctive?

I posted yesterday that I thought it wasn't. I've now had second thoughts.

Here's the text:

מִי־יַעֲלֶה בְהַר־יהוה

וּמִי־יָקוּם בִּמְקוֹם קָדְשׁו׃

4 נְקִי כַפַּיִם וּבַר־לֵבָב

אֲשֶׁר לֹא־נָשָׂא לַשָּׁוְא נַפְשִׁי

וְלֹא נִשְׁבַּע לְמִרְמָה׃
5 יִשָּׂא בְרָכָה מֵאֵת יהוה

וּצְדָקָה מֵאֱלֹהֵי יִשְׁעֹו׃
6 זֶה דּוֹר דֹּרְשָׁו

מְבַקְשֵׁי פָּנֶיךָ יַעֲקֹב סֶלָה׃

Here's my interpretation:

If modality “refers to (the orientation of a speaker concerning) the actuality of a process" (van der Merwe), do the questions in v. 3 refer to a fact (i.e. indicative: “who is allowed to ascend”) or to a “wish, expectation, possibility or uncertainty about the actuality of a matter” (i.e. subjunctive: “who may ascend”). The answer seems to depend upon exegesis: is the question a dispassionate one about a matter of fact or does it imply desire on the part of the speaker? Again, the characteristics listed in v. 4 sounds like a string of indicatives, statements of fact ("one who has not done such and such"). But the context is one of non-factual possibilities, not an actual description of a person. This is strengthened by the fact that the subject of the verb comes in v. 5: יִשָּׂא. Given the parallel with the yiqtol verbs in the question in v.3, the verb indicates will receive a blessing if he ascends (this is the "first conditional" form). The demonstrative זֶה of v. 6, then, refers to this hypothetical entity (whether it actually exists or not is beside the point). Thus, given the context, v. 6 would also be a subjunctive.

Who may ascend Yhwh's hill?

and who may stand in his sanctuary?

One of innocent hands and a pure heart -

who hasn't lifted up my soul to nothing

nor sworn falsley -

will receive a blessing from Yhwh

and vindication from his saving God.

This one would be a genration that seeks him,

that searche out your face, O Jacob.

Does this work?

The "may" expresses the personal benefits of ascending (rather than "shall" or "will"). The answer to the question is indirect. It is like a conditional sentence (the "1st conditional"): "if he is this, he will do this."

I have other reasons for wanting to emphasise the subjunctivity of the section.

Verb modes in Ps 24

What is the mood (or mode) of the the verbs in Ps 24:3 and 7/8? Here are the relevant bits of verses 3 and 7:

מִי־יַעֲלֶה בְהַר־יהוה (v. 3)

שְׂאוּ שְׁעָרִים רָאשֵׁיכֶם וְהִנָּשְׂאוּ פִּתְחֵי עוֹלָם וְיָבוֹא מֶלֶךְ הַכָּבוֹד׃ (v. 7).

In v. 3 I would have thought indicative rather than subjunctive, as the psalmist is not interested in theoretical possibilities but in actual facts. He is interested in "who is allowed to" and not "who might be allowed to." Or is there an implicit wish here, transforming the indicative to a subjunctive?

In v. 7 we have two imperatives and then a jussive. Is the jussive indicative or subjunctive? I associate jussives with the expression of wishes, and thus a subjunctive mood. It would seem, however, that the jussive here (following an imperative verb sequence) has the function of expressing either the purpose or the consequence of the previous imperatives. In that case it would seem to be indicative.

In short, there seems to be ambiguity in the Psalm concerning its modality, which is ironic given its dramatic tenor. Is there a note of personal yearning present, or are these just didactic/liturgical statements meant to communicate a theological point? Is the poverty of the conjugation system a hindrance to communication, or is the ambiguity intentional?

Those Hasidim ...

"He is a remarkable man," my father murmured. "They are remarkable people. There is so much about them that is distasteful to me. But they are remarkable people."

"I wish they weren't so afraid of new ideas."

"You want a great deal, Reuven. The Messiah has not yet come. Will new ideas enable them to go on singing and dancing?"

"We can't ignore the truth, abba."

"No," he said. "We cannot ignore the truth. At the same time, we cannot quite sing and dance as they do." He was silent a moment. "That is the dilemma of our time, Reuven. I do not know what the answer is."

Chaim Potok, The Promise (Anchor Books, 1969; 1997), 312.