This past week I listened to Karen Armstrong's The Bible: A Biography in audiobook format. And, I must say, I'm not sure if I have ever read a more poorly titled book. Overall, the information in the book was okay; however, there was a glaring issue that I simply could not get past. It was the lack of specificity in Armstrong's use of the phrase "the Bible," which could be extended to a lack of specificity in terminology in general. Certainly, this text was intended for a general audience; however, I do not think this problem stems from trying to make matters accessible. Read More...

Tags: Reviews

I realize that I posted about Charles Grebe's website AnimatedHebrew.com only the other day; however, I spent a bit more time over there yesterday. And, I must say that the Jonah Comic is absolutely phenomenal. There are not many Biblical Hebrew learning products that I get very excited about since most of them seem to be a perpetuation of the same tired methods. It is simply that every publishing company has to have their own grammar, vocabulary resource, etc. Read More...

Tags: Biblical Hebrew

I came across a blog post about my supervising professor Christo van der Merwe yesterday through my friend Karyn's blog (which I mistakenly labeled as "new" in one of my previous posts). She linked into a Hebrew and Greek reader blog post entitled The Bruce Lee of Biblical Hebrew. Apparently, my supervising professor is like Bruce Lee. Read the post for details, but to boil it down it is because of his "use whatever works approach" in terms of linguistics. I have met Christo on several occasions when he has come to deliver papers at academic meetings, and my guess is that he would find it amusing to be compared to Bruce Lee, but be very modest about it. Read More...

Tags: Personal, Biblical Hebrew

Up to this point, I have only included on this site courses on the Old Testament, Old Testament history, Old Testament manuscripts, etc. However, this morning I found a free video course on Biblical Hebrew. I have looked around a significant amount for a good free Biblical Hebrew course and this is the first one I thought would be worthy of a post. The course is on the site AnimatedHebrew.com. In addition, to the free Hebrew course, there is also a Jonah comic (very cool) in Hebrew and an audio recording of the exercises in Introducing Biblical Hebrew by Allen Ross. Thanks to Charles Grebe for putting together what looks like a very helpful site for those wanting to learn Biblical Hebrew, especially through self-study. Read More...

Tags: Biblical Hebrew

When it comes to Old Testament courses online, some readers may wish to study more specialized or advanced topics. However, many of the online courses that are available, particularly on this site, are directed toward more general learners. Yet there is a possible avenue for those that wish to study more advanced topics. The Society of Biblical Literature has published example course syllabi for a significant number of topics related to the Old Testament, New Testament and beyond. As far as I know, no membership to SBL is necessary since I was able to view the syllabi without logging in. These syllabi can be useful for those wanting to study particular topics on their own because there are often book recommendations, a reading schedule, course handouts and more. Read More...

Tags: Old Testament Study

Some time ago I posted a link to a course by John Strong called Literature and World of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible on the courses page of this site. I was browsing YouTube a bit and found that there is a video preview to the course. So, if you want to find out if this course would interest you before going through the process of downloading everything from iTunes U, check out this video. Read More...

Tags: Old Testament Study

I apologize for linking to the same blog two days in a row, but Dr. Brady has noticed a Neo-Marcionite trend among current comic strips. And, I find this tendency very interesting. Marcionism was a movement related to early Christianity that saw a dichotomy between the Old Testament and New Testament, going so far as to say the deities of the Old Testament and New Testament were not the same. The God of the Old Testament was vicious and terrible, whereas the God of the New Testament was gracious and merciful. Dr. Brady has posted a recent Doonesbury comic and a comic called Watch Your Head that demonstrate the tendency within modern culture to recognize the same dichotomy that Marcion did. Read More...

Tags: Popular Culture