This one at least had most of the letters in mostly the right order, if left to right. When I got to the 11th floor and looked at the elevator door, well, see for yourself.

 

What a great set of posts and resources! Thanks for sharing this, it is very useful and I wish I had some guidance like this 20 years ago when I started reading manuscripts.

So You Want to Read Handwritten Hebrew Manuscripts, part II.

This post is a continuation of two earlier blog entries here and here.  Its purpose is to help facilitate the reading of handwritten Hebrew manuscripts for intermediate students of the language.  Psalm 113 serves as the subject of this comparison.

Read them all here: משלי אדם.

 

PhD position Hebrew Bible, early Judaism and Dead Sea Scrolls

The Qumran Institute of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen offers a four-year PhD position (0,9 fte) in Hebrew Bible, early Judaism and Dead Sea Scrolls as of the next academic year. This PhD position is financed by a grant of the SNS/Reaal Fund.

Research proposals should fit the research profile of the Faculty and of the Qumran Institute, which is aimed at studying the Hebrew Bible, early Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective within their ancient cultural contexts (ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman). For examples of the Institute’s research profile, see the two conferences in 2008 (Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism) and 2010 (The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives).

Candidates with a degree in Biblical Studies, early Jewish Studies, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, or Ancient History are encouraged to apply.

Contact:

In case you have any questions about the compatibility of your prospected research with the Faculty’s and Institute’s research profile and for further information, please contact the Institute’s director: Mladen Popović (m.popovic@rug.nl)

Deadline: May 22th, 2012

Please include with your application:

 - a curriculum vitae, including academic qualifications, grades, a list of publications (if applicable), two letters of academic recommendation from professors who can write knowledgeably about your personal and academic qualifications and your suitability for the chosen field of study

- a letter explaining your motivation, your interest in the project, and your competence in the research field

- a proposal of max 4 pages describing how you intend to conduct the project you are applying for

- your MA thesis

Send your application by email before May 22th, 2012 to:

gradschool.thrs@rug.nl

Additional information

Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies

Qumran Institute

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Mladen Popovic

Old Testament and Early Judaism

Director Qumran Institute

 

Until recently, iPad-using Hebraists had no good options for typing Hebrew with vowels on the aforementioned iPads. Apple provides a Hebrew keyboard for the iPad, but it does not include the נְקֻדּוֹת. Recently, however, third-party developer Žiga Kranjec released Unicode Maps, an app with an unattractive name but a very attractive function. Unicode Maps allows you to look up and copy any Unicode glyph available on the iPad. Even better, you can create your own customized keyboard and type—but only on a notepad within Unicode Maps—using that keyboard.

 

With “Sacred Techs” we wanted to bring together information focused upon using technology in the real of biblical and ancient studies. It will be periodically updated, on a monthly basis at the least, with articles and interviews on various topics around this general theme. We are very hopeful that others will be willing to contribute to the site, there are many within the world of online ancient studies who are very (and more) adept in these areas, many who are creating the very technology that we will be reviewing, citing, and discussing. This is particularly true if you use something other than Apple products and MacOS, iOS, or Android software. It is not that we are prejudiced against other platforms, but the reality is that Robert and I both tend to use those products and platforms. If you are interested in contributing please drop us a line or leave a comment!

So welcome to Sacred Techs and stay tuned for what we hope will be a great year. First up on the podcast (see below!) is an introductory discussion and then we will follow up with a few interviews from 2011 SBL. Be sure to let us know whom you would like to hear us interview and what products you would like reviewed or compared.

@Targuman @sacredtechs @xkv8r Here’s one. How can Bible software help non-experts evaluate translations as never before? Long term effects?

 

Be sure to pick it up at SBL!

 

needs to know not only Hellenistic Greek, but more than a smattering of Aramaic, Hebrew (including Rabbinic Hebrew), Syriac, Coptic and Latin.

And if you are interested in Hebrew Bible, well let’s just say you better put your linguistic cap on.

A serious student will know Hebrew, Aramaic, Hellenistic Greek, Akkadian including peripheral Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Classical Greek. I think they also need know Hittite.

All of this glossolalia got me thinking about the fact that none of the authors of the NT or the HB knew all or likely even more than three of these languages. Most likely only knew a couple, which is still more than most people today, I will grant you that. But does Duane or any of us really think that the author of Ruth, for example, Akkadian or Ugaritic or Phoenician? Do we really think they knew historical grammar and the development of Northwest Semitic languages? Of course not.

I understand that for us as literary scholars, historians, theologians, archaeologists and the like we need to know a far greater breadth and depth than the author’s whose works we study. Often they are influenced in ways they were unaware of and that is often grist for our scholarly mill. Each scholar takes a different tack based upon our interests and training, some linguistic and others theological, and to investigate those niches we need specialized tools.

But it might just be worthwhile sometimes to remember the original context and the limitations and expectations of the author and his/her audience.

 

Two recent articles from well-respected news agencies have included fallacious details about the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic. The first described the Aramaic dialect spoken in the first century of the Common Era as “a language which developed from the classical Hebrew of the scriptures, a few hundred years earlier,” and the second claimed that Aramaic is “the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.”

So which one is it? Is Aramaic the root of Hebrew or did Aramaic develop from Hebrew? The answer, of course, is neither. Although they may be related by a shared lineage, there is not a direct genetic relationship between the two. That is to say, one did not derive from the other. Pete Bekins irascibly assimilates these two absurd statements with the tongue-in-check proposal that “Classical Hebrew developed into Aramaic which then morphed back into Modern Hebrew and Arabic.

via DailyHebrew.com » The Genetic Relationship of Aramaic & Hebrew.

 

Ruth 4:13
‏וַיִּקַּח בֹּעַז אֶת־רוּת וַתְּהִי־לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה וַיָּבֹא אֵלֶיה
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together…

Really? Yes, it was consensual and I firmly read the Book of Ruth as having strong female roles, but they don’t need the help of the translator.

 

This morning I awoke to find my good friend John Hobbins, who is an excellent linguist, writing about Translation. My translation of TgRuth should be done later today. Look for it here!

Turning now to the languages of the Bible: the bulk of the Bible is written in a vernacular: ancient Hebrew. Never mind that standard biblical Hebrew in particular was also, quite probably, a lingua franca relative to spoken dialects of Hebrew, regional or otherwise, in the late First through Second Temple periods, in the land of Israel and (as time went on, very importantly) in the diasporas of the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic periods. The point here: at the same time, and of utmost importance relative to the cultural confrontation of which ethnoi then and now are vehicles, standard biblical Hebrew was a vernacular.

Not just the content expressed in “classical” Hebrew, but the written language per se, form part of an anti-colonial project, in opposition to the culture and propaganda of which (the neo-Assyrian version of) “standard Babylonian” was the vehicle – assuming that (some of) the scribes who gave us the Bible were literate in that language and the “course” or curriculum to which it gave expression (the thesis of people like David Wright and Bernard M. Levinson); in opposition to (content expressed in) the more pervasive (and perhaps less insidious, though one should never forget Jeremiah 10:11, to be read in strict conjunction with Ps 82) the more widely used (and still often unknown, or poorly known) lingua franca of the Assyrian empire, Aramaic. These facts form part of the background of a comment like that found in Isaiah 36:11 and the style-switching that Gary Rendsburg has noted.1 On “the invention of Hebrew,” on Hebrew as a vernacular and vehicle for culture expressive of oppositional political theory (a theology), see the volume by Seth Sanders of that title, introduced here.

Still don’t understand why the difference between a lingua franca and a vernacular is a big deal? Try this article on for size, by Tim Parks (HT Charles Halton for the link). The title alone is worth the price of admission: “Your English is Showing.”

via Why biblical literature resists translation – Ancient Hebrew Poetry.