I feel bad for the psalms, that collection in the Bible called psalmoi, “songs.” Their music, the tunes supposed to accompany them, has been lost to us. Melodies such as “The Lilies,” Doe of the Morning,” and “Do Not Destroy,” affixed to the introduction of individual psalms are mysteries to us. We have no idea …
“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 »
Stephen Dunn, poet extraordinaire. Among my favorites, a riff on the Leviticus scapegoat. It’s a prose poem in which God sympathizes with the goat and calls this method of atonement yet another human sin. I’d love to write it out for you here but haven’t asked permission. Do check it out yourself (I bought What Goes On, …
Job and Proverbs. Texts from those (very different) biblical books launch the two movies that I’ve seen most recently — Secretariat and True Grit. Stories about determination and perseverance, success in the face of misfortune and seemingly impossibilities. But this wee post isn’t about the movies so much as to note how they begin — with biblical texts, …
If you have a chance to check out the Sept. 21 issue of the Christian Century, I hope you’ll have a look at my “Living by the Word” essays. Ironically, one of them pushes the idea of “living by the Word” to include actually challenging that Word. The other concerns a particular word that I’d like to see more of these …
“Enough” and Challenging the Bible in The Christian Century Read More »
Ah, the power of the written word. Did you know that this phrase comes from the Bible? This phrase, which we use to tell that something’s sure to happen, comes from Daniel, one of the latest books of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Today’s RefDesk.com quote of the day puts a new spin on it. Here’s …
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 …
Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court got me thinking about Jewish traditions of justice, at least as the Bible suggests and reflects. Near as I can tell, it bodes well for the work she’d be doing. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that justice is a major preoccupation of the Hebrew Bible …
Our neighbors across the Atlantic are typically less Bible-happy in political discourse than we in the States. So Gordon Brown made news by (mis)quoting the Good Book recently. The British Prime Minister, facing attacks from political rivals, asked his church audience to recall “the great story of Micah in the Gospel.” But Micah is an Old Testament, …
