John Rayner – A Personal Note

Visual receptions of the Eden serpent throughout the history of Western art have reflected various interpretive attempts to understand the nature of this creature. In the investigation of these receptions, five iconographic categories emerge: the female-headed serpent, the demonic serpent, the dragon-like serpent, the etiological serpent, and the zoological serpent. Of these categories, all but the female-headed serpent survives in modern children’s Bible illustration. Due to the cultural prevalence of children’s Bibles and the tendency of images to inform later readings of texts, these visual receptions of the Eden serpent hold significant interpretive power for the child. Survivals of demonic, dragon-like, and etiological iconographic categories in modern children’s Bibles limit the interpretive possibilities of the child’s subsequent reading of the biblical text. The child is predisposed to regard the serpent as a demonic figure or a fantastical creature, or to regard Genesis 3 as a purely etiological tale, proscribing other interpretive possibilities. In contrast, the survival of the zoological serpent in modern children’s Bibles highlights the interpretive tensions within the Hebrew text of Genesis 3. Rather than proscribing certain interpretations of the Eden serpent, the survival of the zoological serpent in modern children’s Bibles invites the child to interact with the interpretive gaps and ambiguities in both text and image.

This replacement volume in the Tyndale commentary series by V. Philips Long offers a much lengthier (by nearly 200 pages) and more advanced scholarly treatment of 1–2 Samuel replacing Joyce Baldwin’s 1988 320-page earlier contribution, which was an excellent volume itself, albeit perhaps overly brief as per the previous approach of the Tyndale series. Long shows his penchant for close readings of the narrative texts of Samuel throughout this volume, including his approach to characters and characterizations as is seen in his treatments, for example, of characters such as Samuel, Saul, David, and Yahweh. While Long provides only transliterations of the Hebrew text (along with translations of such), these are far more extensive than the previous edition and could challenge readers not trained in Hebrew, even in transliterated form. The use of transliterations is a curious feature of many OT commentaries seeking a mediating position between usability and critical discussions.One of the helpful features that Long provides in his reading of 1–2 Samuel is tracing his proposed central theological theme across the books of Samuel: kbd “glory, weightiness, honor” (pp. 27–29). This thematic element helps to stitch together the many stories in the ways they are told, extending and integrating the lexical range of kbd. While there may be quibbles about potential theological themes that are in focus across these books, this approach still takes seriously the ways in which the final form of the text makes use of this element without suggesting it is the only one (p. 23). It provides a helpful, fresh reading of the texts as Long notes ways it informs the shape of the stories.Further, Long’s careful attention to notions of character and characterization assists his readings of these texts beginning with an introduction to some of the issues in the introduction (pp. 13–23). This approach allows for a contrastive reading against and benefiting from other such readings that may, for instance, depict Saul as either undone by Samuel despite his best efforts or a witless buffoon who can never seem to do anything correctly according to the editor. Long sees such readings as “revisionist” (pp. 16–17) and proposes a more complex characterization, suggesting the text is “at best, ambivalent” about the character of Saul through many of the early stories of Saul (pp. 127–28).Various critical discussions are offered throughout the commentary that have likely contributed to this much longer replacement volume. While the primary base text for the commentary is the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT), Long follows many other commentators in allowing for each individual text critical issue to be dealt with on its own basis of external and internal criteria for evaluation and proposed reading (see pp. 23–25 for his brief explanation of this.) As part of these processes, Long proposes and engages a number of textual emendations to the MT, which is not surprising given the state of the MT for 1–2 Samuel (e.g., pp. 45, 126–27, 152–53, 158–59, 176–78, 274).Another of his contributions to critical discussions of 1–2 Samuel pertains to attenuation to proposed literary structures and cues as a means of hearing the texts in relation to one another. While he notes ways, for instance, that Mephibosheth’s claims in support of David seem more likely than the counterclaims of Ziba (2 Sam 19:24–30), Long seems to miss the canonical shaping which allows the reader to hear this incident backward in light of the revealing decision of Solomon’s wisdom (1 Kgs 3), though only the later narrative voice indicates the right choice, and the Samuel narrative voice does not (pp. 425–28).This contribution to the Tyndale series points in a more nuanced and critical direction than the earlier volumes of the Tyndale series. Long provides depth of engagement in numerous critical examinations of the text and the history relative to the text of 1–2 Samuel. This work may move some parts beyond usefulness for the less educated pastor and layperson but will certainly help students and more academically geared ministers and laypersons toward understanding the text and its many nuanced complications. But this volume is still a welcome update as a potential replacement volume for the earlier Baldwin contribution. The expanded nature of Long’s contribution and the constructive and critical readings throughout provide the interpreter a welcome hearing overall of the texts of 1–2 Samuel that will provide useful tools for a more advanced study of the texts in preaching, teaching, and writing.

We tested the effects of orthography on text reading by comparing reading measures in Arabic and Hebrew-speaking adults. The languages are typologically very similar, but use different orthographies. We measured naming speed of single letters, words and nonwords, and visual processing. Arabic-speakers also performed some of the tasks in Hebrew. We measured silent and oral reading speed of simpler and complex texts and their relationships with component abilities. Results show that Arabic-speakers read complex texts in Arabic more slowly than Hebrew-speakers read in Hebrew. Arabic-speakers read texts in Hebrew more slowly than in Arabic, even though they performed the letter naming and visual tasks equivalently in the two languages. For both groups, the best predictor of oral reading speed is speed of reading single words, with speed of letter naming adding to the prediction in Hebrew, but not in Arabic. No variable had a significant contribution to the prediction of speed of silent reading. The results suggest that even though lower level processes such as letter and word identification may be simpler to perform in Hebrew than in Arabic, higher level processes required to comprehend a complex text, are always faster in the first language of the participants. Both the characteristics of the text, its structural and semantic complexity, and the characteristics of the orthography play roles in the quality of reading. Relationships between the top-down and bottom-up components of reading are dynamic, and specific to orthographic factors and the sociolinguistic environment of the readers (e.g., the diglossia of Arabic).

The claim of this research, Hebrew Text in Praxis: Shaping Stories of Significance, is that textual narrative, discourse sentences or even single words disclose inner ideational sparks which shape stories of significance. This thesis will show, firstly that in keeping with the idea of Hebrew text in praxis, the entire act of carrying out modern midrash sits well within the traditions and history of the midrashic impulse, and secondly that for the midrashist the telling and retelling of Scripture is about perspective, the relativity of context, and above all an audience. Chapter One, presents an historical and literary discussion of the relationship between Buber's dialogical hermeneutic and rabbinic midrash. It is the contention of this research that Buber was deeply influenced by midrashic thought and intimately understood the worldview of the Rabbis which led him to incorporate aspects of their hermeneutic treasury to his own reading of the Hebrew text. Chapter Two, explores textual and scholarly evidence of the Hebrew text as an aggadic trope, focusing in the main on the way this process manifests in the methods of parshanut (interpretation) and darshanut (transvaluation). Two areas of concern are explored in this chapter: the origins of making midrash aggada in the Hebrew text itself, and a focus on the pinnacles of development in the extra biblical midrashic recordings of the Rabbis. Chapter Three, attempts to show that the meeting of co-text and situation in equal partnership pact with the Hebrew text projects a cascade of meaning that drives the midrashic impulse and fulfils the midrashic moment. The purpose of this chapter is to contemporize traditional midrashic processes through two midrash models. The rabbinic midrash model and Buber's leitwort model, incorporate simple and complex ways that embrace the exegetical and imaginative aspects of midrash.

Obstacles to access: An investigation into the perceptual strategies of the non-native learner of english

This article attempts to trace the literary genealogy of a unique Zionist Israeli masculinity through a reading of the biblical story of Samson as portrayed by prominent Israeli figures. Through a close reading of the biblical text in Hebrew, this article posits that the figure of Samson represents a 2-prong individuation process of malehood: one the “everyman” and the other “a man among man.” This slight difference in the Hebrew phraseology, usually assumed to reflect a singular meaning, actually represents an enormous gap between the 2 prongs. A reading of a poem by a female Jewish poet who, in the early 20th century read Samson through the eyes of Delilah, offers a new construction of manhood that could save the Israeli Jewish male from its colonialist ideology and its denial.

This article concerns the relation between the Septuagint and the targums. Although they evidence certain similarities as regards interpretation and translation technique, the explicating additions to a more literally translated Hebrew text typical for the Babylonian targums and the extremely free and paraphrastic translation with an allegorical interpretation typical for the targums of the ketuvim are not representative for the Septuagint. The Septuagint is often the initiator of, rather than the medium for, Jewish interpretive tradition. Thus the LXX and the targums have had different functions; the targums were always directly related to the Hebrew original, while the Septuagint, at least in the Pentateuch, replaced the Hebrew text in the public reading of the Holy Scriptures.

Purpose We compare right-to-left and left-to-right orthographies to test the theory, derived from studying the latter, that small temporal asynchronies between the two eyes at the beginning and end of every fixation favor ocular prevalence for the left eye in the left hemifield and the right eye in the right hemifield. Ocular prevalence is the prioritizing of one eye’s input in the conscious, fused binocular percept. Method We analyze binocular eye-tracking data from the reading of multiline Arabic and Hebrew text by 28 Arabic (M = 28.7, SD = 7.2 years, 71% female) and 16 Hebrew (M = 30.1, SD = 7.9 years, 50% female) native speakers, respectively. Results Critically, the complex pattern of asynchronies in Arabic and Hebrew resembles that reported for the left-to-right orthographies, English and Chinese, but with some particular differences that we attribute to left hemisphere specialization in word recognition. Conclusion We conclude, first, that the oculomotor musculature plays an embodied role in the perception and cognition associated with reading. We further discuss how the evident hemispheric asymmetries in parafoveal lookahead may be reflected in the nature of the conventions of right-to-left scripts. We articulate the claim that the orthographic conventions of a language tend to reflect reading direction and hemispheric differences.

Reviewed by: Iberian Moorings: Al-Andalus, Sefarad, and the Tropes of Exceptionalism by Ross Brann Michelle M. Hamilton Iberian Moorings: Al-Andalus, Sefarad, and the Tropes of Exceptionalism. By Ross Brann. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. In this study Brann explores how Muslims and Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula between the sixth and thirteenth centuries defined themselves and the place they were from as culturally and religiously exceptional. When 'Abd al-Rahmān III declared himself caliph in tenth-century Córdoba, which Brann describes as "Al-Andalus's moment of self-discovery," we witness not only "the origins of the idea of al-Andalus as a legitimate and ambitious Islamic state" but also "the historical moment in which a distinctive Andalusiness was conceived, articulated, and promulgated in the service of country" (24). Brann details what elements tenth-century Andalusi politicians and authors considered essential in making al-Andalus unique as well as the intellectual origins of these elements. In the introduction he gives a list of four themes that elites in both the Muslim and Jewish communities used to represent al-Andalus and Sefarad as unique (7). These include the idea that the peninsula is an agricultural, Edenic land of bounty, that it is a site of religious orthodoxy, and that its people are noble and excel at intellectual and religious pursuits as well as possess refined manners (adab). These themes constitute what Brann calls the trope of exceptionalism, which, as this study shows, has been articulated in various contexts from the tenth century to the present. The author argues that both the construction of Sefarad and al-Andalus "followed a similar trajectory" and, "without al-Andalus, there would have been no Sefarad" (10). Exploring the deep connection between Andalusi and Sefardi cultural production has been the subject of several of Brann's previous studies, including The Compunctious Poet (Johns Hopkins, 1991) and Power in the Portrayal (Princeton, 2009). As in his previous scholarship, in Iberian Moorings he does an excellent job of contextualizing detailed close readings of medieval Arabic and Hebrew texts in their larger historical and social contexts. In chapter 1, Brann focuses on the origins of the idea of al-Andalus and its peoples as exceptional and favored. Andalusi historians and geographers such as 'Abd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb and Abū Bakr Aḥmad al-Rāzī developed narratives of al-Andalus, adopting to Islamic eschatology Isidore's seventh-century portrayal of Iberia as a land of [End Page 211] unique agricultural bounty, ideal clime, and favored by God. In al-Rāzī and ibn Ḥabībs accounts, the peninsula not only compared favorably to the Islamic East as a land of wonders ('ajā'ib) but also attracted religious scholars and leaders, who embodied "Islamic nobility, authenticity, and legitimacy" (33). Brann explores how the Mālikī 'ulamā' (religious authorities), in tandem with the Umayyad rulers, depicted themselves and their culture, including such material manifestation as the Great Mosque of Córdoba, as the rightful inheritors and embodiment of the Prophet Muhammad's thought and traditions. He contextualizes this self-fashioning of Andalusi orthopraxy in the Umayyads' struggles with the Fatimids in Egypt and the Abbasids in Baghdad. In chapter 2, Brann turns to tenth-century Andalusi Jewish thinkers such as Abraham ibn Daud, Dunāsh ben Labrāt, and Ḥasdai ibn Shaprūṭ and outlines how they, like the Muslim Andalusi thinkers he studies in chapter 1, began to craft their own unique identity as the Jews of Sefarad. Brann shows how tensions between the growing spiritual authority of western Jewish communities (al Andalus and, importantly, North Africa) and the waning centers of the East, riven between Karaite and rabbinic authority, as well as the growing focus on Jerusalem as the focus of Jewish identity, worked to shape the particular forms Sephardi exceptionalism took and how it came to be expressed. He highlights how this identity both originates from and operates against the rabbinates of the East, which had long served as the intellectual and religious authority for Jewish communities in the diaspora. An important contribution of this chapter is Brann's foregrounding of the important role that intellectuals from the Maghrib, including...

This study considers whether and in what ways graphic novel adaptations of traditional Jewish Hebrew texts can encourage adolescent Modern Orthodox girls to adopt autonomous critical responses when encountering narratives that present women in unequal roles vis a vis men. According to scholars, Jewish literacy should teach students to read traditional Hebrew texts reverently while forming autonomous interpretations and opinions. Instead, Jewish educators teach normative readings posed by approved rabbinic authorities. This is particularly the case when teaching issues relating to gender among Modern Orthodox Jews, a conservative Jewish denomination, strives to synthesize tradition with the values of modern, secular society. I therefore explore through think-alouds and semi-structured interviews to explore graphic novel adaptations of Jewish texts’ potential to give adolescents opportunities to voice autonomous, critical interpretations. Findings show that adolescents, through graphic novel adaptations of traditional Jewish texts are able to engage in critical readings of the source material. Participants admitted that while they inherently imagined scenes to unfold in a certain way, they never spent time deeply considering the assumptions such imagined details led them to make. Thus, reading graphic novel adaptations did not lead participants to uniformly challenge their understood rabbinic metanarratives, but instead generally made them question their own personal imaged narratives.

The Road to Kingship: 1–2 Samuel

The article revisits the collaborative project of two early missionaries to China, Robert Morrison and William Milne, who overcame the ‘practical impossibility’ of translating the Protestant Bible into Chinese in 1823. The issues of the doctrinal constraints, the influence of the contemporary English translations, faithfulness to the Hebrew text and cultural sensitivity to the target language will be raised with reference to concrete examples cited from their joint translation version. The creation account of Genesis and passages on the rendering of the biblical ‘sea monsters’ into Chinese will be selected for focused study in order to show how Morrison and Milne were influenced by the KJV but at times departed from it in their reading of the original Hebrew text. Furthermore, it is also noted that they have shown a certain degree of sensitivity to the Chinese cultural context in their choice of terminology in translating the biblical text into Chinese.

There is an unusual phrase that occurs only fourteen times in the Hebrew Bible. Those fourteen occurrences mark the accounts of ten highly consequential days. The essential messages of those ten accounts, when taken together, create and convey a unified and coherent communication. The presence of the phrase, its uniqueness to those days, and the message it creates, are hidden in translations. Readers of the biblical text in English, Greek, Latin, and German versions have no reason to associate the ten marked days. The phrase and its message are effectively hidden even from those who use the Hebrew text; having been obscured by the tradition of interpretation extending through rabbinic literature and commentary. The message created by reference to those ten marked days is representative of early Jewish apocalypse literature. This paper identifies and analyses the marker phrase, identifies the days that it marks, interprets the message created, demonstrates the hiddenness of that message, and argues its character as an apocalypse. Keywords: Hebrew Bible, Apocalypse, Bible Translation, Early Rabbinic Literature, Rabbinic Commentary

The article shows the ways in which an idiom of marriage became normative in early modern English translations of the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on successive biblical versions (especially from Tyndale's translation, published in 1530/1 and the first based on the Hebrew original, to the Authorized Version published in 1611), it shows how Hebrew terms relating to a variety of domestic and sexual union were rendered in English biblical versions in a language pertaining to monogamous matrimony. This was further amplified in adjacent textual commentaries and notes. The use of a contemporary language of marriage in early modern biblical translations was not unlike the ways in which early modern commentator perceived social relations in other remote cultures and filtered them through their own world view. Translators and readers were also relying on long-standing and strong traditions which anchored Christian notions of matrimony in the ancient Hebrew text. However the early modern English biblical idiom of marriage should also be seen in the context of contemporary efforts on behalf of both religious and secular authorities to regulate the institution of marriage. Textual readings and social history are brought together to suggest links between histories of marriage, the church, print culture, and the English bible.

The present research examined the effect of nature of orthography on the development of reading acquisition among children acquiring Arabic and Hebrew. Speed and accuracy measures were examined in reading texts in Arabic and in Hebrew. It was found that Arabic speakers showed an almost equal control in reading both languages. Furthermore, it was found that the speed of read- ing texts in Arabic among Arabic speakers was 3 times slower than reading Hebrew texts among Hebrew readers. These findings confirm that there is difficulty in identifying and decoding visual stimuli in Arabic. Furthermore, findings of the present research paper emphasizes that reading in Hebrew is faster and more precise than reading in Arabic, beyond mother tongue groups (Arab and Hebrew speakers). In addition, Hebrew readers showed a significant difference in reading in favor of reading in their mother tongue (both in accuracy and speed). In conclusion, findings of the present research suggest that there is an objective difficulty in acquiring reading of the Arabic language, and there is need for systematic intervention among those who face difficulties in the learning process.