One of my favorite questions as a Bible-scholar-lady is “So, what’s the best translation?” I love this question not only because it opens the door to substantive discussion that can last for the better part of a class period… no matter how long the meeting. But I also love it because we get to talk …
I was just thinking: wouldn’t it be fun to have a spot to feature artifacts, documents, persons, architecture, anything concrete related to my historical fiction set in ancient Babylon and Persia? Perhaps provide a wee bit of commentary, maybe how the things fit into the story,…? In the absence of any nay-sayers (admittedly none nearby …
There is a long-standing tradition that no person, no mere mortal, should presume to possess the name of God. The Name, as the reasoning goes, is a holy thing, a handle on the divine not to be trifled with. We hear concern about its misuse in the ancient biblical commandment, “Thou shalt not take the …
Wow, just when I thought: enough with KJV’s bday, “66 Books” comes along. A dramatic project launching the new Bush theater in London, it’s 66 short plays based on the books of the King James Bible. How I wish I could be there! Jeanette Winterson on Genesis. Full creative license. Imagine the possibilities. What a …
“Did you know,” a bright-eyed young woman breathlessly exclaimed to me, “that when King James wrote the Bible, he didn’t actually put everything in?!” I was riding the DC Metro a few weeks ago when she sat down beside me with this information. Since people don’t normally talk on the train (unless it’s a first …
Had a great time at Chop Suey Tuey bookstore in Richmond’s Carytown yesterday for Bible Babel‘s paperback debut. In the midst of the excitement of VCU’s big basketball game (on to the Final Four! wow) and the ever-amazing French Film Festival at the historic Byrd Theater, just across the street from Chop Suey Tuey, we filled the …
“What does your book say about evil?,” an attendee posed to panelists at the VA Fest of the Book event that I moderated. It was a lively event, not least because the composition of the panel led inevitably to passionate disagreement. As the psychiatrist who wrote of religion as a product purely of human physiology …
“The language of God,” Biblical Hebrew. I’m off soon to teach our third week’s class, and we’re in the thick of it now. The alphabet (or aleph-bet) is kind of fun — little ditties, the novelty of recognizing letters completely different from what we see in English, of reading from right to left. But the …
The Particular Exasperations of Learning Biblical Hebrew Read More »
I attended a funeral recently — “untimely,” one might say, because the man who died did so at his own hand. There was so much about it that defied expectation, defied logic. There’s the suicide itself, of course, an act that makes sense only to the person killed, if at all. But there was …
Enjoyed a fun conversation about Bible Babel with radio host Faith Ranoli yesterday. Listen live in a week or so. We talked for about an hour about all things Bible — where it came from, what’s the best translation, how people use the Bible to argue different sides of the same issue, why the Bible says …
