I was browsing through the blog of Dr. Chris Brady this morning and came across a post from back in February of 2009. He deals with the issue of whether or not the material in the Bible can be or ought to be systematized. The post is quite interesting because he is writing in response to one of his students who "took him to task" after asking a question in class. This is a good post to introduce one to the problems involved in systematizing the Biblical material and demonstrates how people from two different viewpoints approach the issue. I hope you enjoy the post and consider following Dr. Brady's feed as the site often includes posts helpful for those interested in the academic study of the Bible. Read More...

Tags: Old Testament Study

As an academic, I am well aware of the difficulties involved in using the terminology "Old Testament." The technical term for the problem presented by this terminology is Supersessionism, roughly the idea that the "New" Testament has done away with the need for the "Old." I am also well aware that other terminology is available, such as Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Scriptures, and TaNaKh. It should be pointed out that each of these terms have their own sets of difficulties, e.g. the whole of the corpus is not written in Hebrew and Law, Prophets, and Writings (TaNaKh) reflect a particular ordering that is not shared by the Greek (which was used by Jews for some time) and subsequently Christian versions of the corpus. Read More...

Tags: Terminology

I wanted to let everyone know about a new blog related to Biblical Hebrew. This blog is by one of my friends and peers through the University of Stellenbosch Karyn Traphagen, who is doing doctoral work in Biblical Hebrew Pedagogy. On her blog she gives some helpful resources for learning Biblical Hebrew, discusses methodology, and lets you in on some of the goings on in her personal life. She has taught Biblical Hebrew at Westminster Theological Seminary in PA and like me is doing her doctoral work under Prof. Christo van der Merwe at Stellenbosch.

I'm quite impressed with the blog so far and hope you will link over there and check it out. The site is http://boulders2bits.com/. Read More...

Tags: Biblical Hebrew

In my recent reading, I have come across a commonly occurring mistranslation of the Hebrew of the Old Testament. It involves the word ספר (sorry, have not figured out how to add vowels without creating problems). This word is commonly translated "book" as in the NRSV, ESV, NASB, NIV, and KJV renderings of Deut. 30.10, i.e. "book of the law." The problem is that this word does not mean "book"; it means "scroll." Read More...

Tags: Old Testament Study

If you are looking for a good site for learning the Hebrew Aleph Bet, I would recommend the Hebrew site of the University of Texas at Austin. Esther Raizen has put together a number of helpful tutorials for learning the Aleph Bet (though these are for Modern Hebrew) all in flash format. The tutorials are especially helpful for those trying to learn through self-study because several of the tutorials include a native speaker pronouncing the names of the consonants. In addition, there is a puzzle game that will help one to learn the order of the consonants.
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Tags: Biblical Hebrew

Bryan over at Hevel.org has started and intermittently adds to an introduction to the Old Testament prophets. These posts are helpful as they are written for the general reader and they are succinct. If you are looking for a more thorough introduction to the prophets I have linked to a couple of texts below that might be helpful. Or, you may want to check out the Yale Open Course introduction to the Old Testament which I have a link to on the courses page of this site and which is free. However, if you are looking for a good succinct introduction check out Bryan's blog and make sure to sign up for his feed, so you will know when he adds future posts on the topic. Read More...

Tags: Prophets, Old Testament Study

Recently, I have posted a number of YouTube videos on this site and the experience of searching YouTube has reawakened me to the problem of just how much nonsense there is online when it comes to the study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (as well as the New Testament). Other places that make this apparent abound, like Yahoo Answers, where people who are clueless about the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (=HB/OT) answer questions about it as if they know what they are talking about (e.g. some of them think the HB/OT was originally written in Greek). This makes study of the HB/OT online very difficult, dare I say dangerous. Read More...

Tags: Old Testament Study