Hebrew Bible Research Articles

Taking God to court: job’s deconstruction and resistance of dominant ideology

ABSTRACT Using poststructural criticism, we explore how the book of Job deconstructs the deed/consequence nexus that stands at the core of the Hebrew Bible’s theological framework – i.e. the doctrine of reward and punishment. Building on both Derridean deconstruction and Foucauldian resistance, we show that the book of Job refuses to comply with the opposite binary of reward and punishment. First, we demonstrate how the friends in their speeches enforce the binary and, thereby, exercise power over Job. Secondly, we consider Job’s resistance and deconstruction of this binary through both his lived experience and desire to argue with God. Finally, we argue how Job’s desire to argue with God challenges God to defend themself in court. In God’s answer, however, one is introduced to a different God than as portrayed by Job’s friends. Moreover, God’s boastful reply, which lacks any justification for Job’s suffering, makes God appear fragile and weak. As such, this article argues that the book of Job may not merely deconstruct dominant ideology, but also God itself.

Biblical Hebrew Personal Names in Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1–2 Samuel

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Book Review: More Than a Womb: Childfree Women in the Hebrew Bible as Agents of the Holy by Lisa Wilson Davison

Book Review: <i>More Than a Womb: Childfree Women in the Hebrew Bible as Agents of the Holy</i> by Lisa Wilson Davison

“Treacherous as Water”(Gen 49.4)? The Stem פחז‎ in the Hebrew Bible

In the “blessing” of Gen 49.3-4, Reuben is censured for having violated his father Jacob’s concubine Bilhah. In this rebuke, the Hebrew uses a rare word, פחז‎, in an additionally awkward comparison: “like water.” Over the centuries the word פחז‎ appears to have been difficult to translate and therefore the simile “like water” is also difficult to understand. This is reflected in many Bible translations, but in the last decades a solution has been provided to solve this problem. In this contribution, the cultural significance of Reuben’s offence is discussed since it is not “just” a sexual offense. In addition, the meaning of the word פחז‎ in the other biblical texts is analysed, followed by a discussion of the comparison “as water.” The discussion not only clarifies the text of Gen 49.4, but also the background of several other texts in the Bible.

Book Review: The Textual Basis of English Translations of the Hebrew Bible by S. C. Daley

Book Review: <i>The Textual Basis of English Translations of the Hebrew Bible</i> by S. C. Daley

Balaam’s God(s): Divine Designations in Num 22–24

The biblical figure of Balaam is ambivalent in many ways, including his religious affiliation. In the attestations of the Balaam tradition within the Hebrew Bible, different conceptions of this literary character are sometimes blended, sometimes unconnected. In the prose of Num 22–24, he is portrayed as a worshipper of YHWH and even confers with him nightly, albeit being a stranger from far away. In the oracles, a variety of divine designations is used without apparent reason, while the prose alternates between YHWH and Elohim only. The article focuses on the third and fourth oracles (Num 24:3–9, 15–19) and explores their use of divine designations against the backdrop of Num 22–24. The variation can be interpreted as a stylistic feature, literary conception, spoil from different religious traditions, and/or theological statement.

Die Erzählung vom Kampf am Jabbok als Knotenpunkt der Genesis

Abstract This article outlines some intertextual connections between Jacob and Moses, taking Gen 32:23–33 as a starting point. In this way it becomes apparent that the Jacob narratives carry traces of the Moses narrative – and vice versa. Jacob and Moses are brought together in Hos 12, which underscores these observations and further demonstrates that the textual fabric of the Hebrew Bible has become increasingly dense as well as interwoven through the ages, according to the logic of the midrash.

Janling Fu, Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, and Carol Meyers, eds. The T&amp;T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel

Janling Fu, Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, and Carol Meyers, eds. <i>The T&amp;T Clark Handbook of Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel</i>

Jewish Women and Sacred Text(ure)s

This article argues that the concept of “sacred texture” is a necessary supplement to standard understandings of sacred texts in Jewish religion to capture lay people’s, especially women’s, material-embodied acts as aspects of sacred text use. Such acts may include spoken or performed fragments or sequences from a sacred text that activate associations to it and thereby make the acts intelligible as representations of the sacred text, be it up close or at a distance. The article draws upon, but also expands perspectives on sacred texts as material objects (Malley, Watts, and Schleicher) by including theories by Halliday and Hasan, and Ricoeur on texture, by Deleuze and Guattari on processes of becoming, and by Butler on identity as something emerging from engagements in a culture’s iterative acts. The theoretical underpinnings beg the question of who has access when and where to which particular iterative acts that involve sacred texts and textures? The analysis begins with the Hebrew Bible to find out when texts were conceived as sacred in the first place and when and in what way access to them became regulated. The analysis continues into early Jewish sources, rabbinic literature, and Ashkenazic Jewish sources from the Middle Ages to reflect on Jewish women’s involvement with sacred texts and textures in ways that broaden our knowledge of how they made their religious identity intelligible.

Theological Language in Crisis? The Importance of Trauma Hermeneutics for Exploring Gendered Metaphors for God in the Book of Jeremiah

In this article that explores male and female metaphors for God in the Hebrew Bible, I argue with specific reference to the book of Jeremiah that the intersection of trauma and gender is particularly important in considering how tumultuous times inevitably impact the way people spoke and continue to speak about God. In this regard, recent developments in terms of gender theory including queer biblical interpretation and masculinity studies help us to engage critically with the gendered metaphors used for God in the Hebrew Bible. For instance, it will be shown how important it is to trouble binary constructions, i.e., in terms of male metaphors for God, to break the cycle of toxic masculinity that leads to further violence in an endless cycle of humiliation, shame and retaliation. And also, to, when it comes to female metaphors for God, move beyond a romanticised understanding of motherhood that is rooted in a prescriptive, essentialising understanding of gender.

Disjunctive Questions in Biblical Hebrew: A Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Analysis

A disjunctive question presents an alternative to a previously-expressed state of affairs. Biblical Hebrew has four constructions for forming disjunctive questions. After an initial hă-question, the second can be introduced with hă, ʾim, wəʾim, or ʾô. While Hebrew reference grammars simply acknowledge the variation, this paper systematically addresses these constructions and distinguishes them on syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic grounds. The key results are a finer distinction between conjunction and disjunction and a recognition of how ellipsis discriminates between polar and alternative questions.

A Woman with Multiple Identities: Reading the Ruth Character in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Our varied identities as Old Testament scholars located on the African continent need to shape our reading processes as well as our scholarship. The Ruth character in the Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible carries multiple identities. If the character is engaged within the intersection of foreignness, migration, gender, and economic survival, which reading may emerge? How would such a reading impact the theory and praxis of South African Old Testament scholarship in present-day South Africa?

Why a Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint?

Abstract Since 2010, an international team has been working on the first comprehensive lexicon dedicated to Septuagint Greek, which aims to fill an important gap in the fields of ancient philology and religious studies. The entries include all the relevant word groups used in the translation of the Hebrew Bible, Greek glosses that captured central concepts from classical Hebrew terms and sought to establish suitable expression for certain Realien. This lexicon aims to give a wide perspective on selected lemmas, taking the legacy of classical Greek literature as a starting point and subsequently analyzing the diffusion and usage of the word up through early Christian Literature. This paper will address some of the questions that are being faced by the team and will explore the innovative approach of this lexicographical project through the presentation of samples.

Greece and Yehud in the Achaemenid Period: The Background of Cultural Transfer

ABSTRACT The paper aims to analyze the circumstances of cultural transfer between the Southern Levant and Greece in the Achaemenid period in order to assess the plausibility of Greek influences on the Hebrew Bible. First, the article addresses the theoretical question of possible “contact zones” between Greek and Levantine cultures. Second, it presents evidence of Greek presence in the Ancient Near East in that epoch. Third, it tries to estimate the possible extent of Greek influence in the Southern Levant. The next question to discuss is the presence of Levantines in Mainland Greece and the meaning of this phenomenon for understanding the situation in Yehud. Finally, the paper deals with the question of the mobility of the inhabitants of Yehud. In conclusion, the authors wonder whether the collected data allow for the creation of a coherent model of intercultural exchange between Greece and Yehud, as postulated by some scholars.

Iconic, Aniconic Expressions and the Hebrew Bible

This paper presents a critical evaluation of the assumption in Brazilian Protestant reading about issues involving iconic versus aniconic debate in the Hebrew Bible grounded on an external and internal evidence to trace the development towards formless Yahwism. It is argued that the understanding of this process contributes to a better understanding of the Christian reception of this literary corpus and the formulation of incarnation theology.

Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena by Reed Carlson (review)

Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena by Reed Carlson (review)

What If God is a ‘Pagan Amalgam’: Marilynne Robinson and Historical Bible Scholarship

Abstract Marilynne Robinson is one of the most influential Christian writers and public intellectuals alive today, and her views on a range of topics should be taken seriously. In her 2015 essay entitled ‘Memory’, she argues that the ‘liberal side’ of American Christianity has retreated from scriptural theology under pressure from academic biblical criticism. Her dismissal of Hebrew Bible scholarship is centred on two primary and interrelated ideas. First is the idea that Israelite religion was embedded in a broader context of Ancient Near East (ANE) religious cultures, such that biblical stories and characters sometimes borrow from other ancient sources. Second is the problem that the scholarly understanding of ancient Israelite polytheism threatens to make God into a ‘pagan amalgam’. The interrelated problem, that is, is the uniqueness and transcendence of the Hebrew Bible, and the God who is its main character. In this article, I review the scholarship on ancient Israelite religion and Robinson’s complaints about it. I argue that Robinson treats the critical scholarship only at a distance, allusively, (mis)representing it and sometimes (mis)understanding it in superficial ways, but that her theological anxiety is warranted.

Sans érasure

Abstract A curious phenomenon that is attested in the Ugaritic texts, elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, medieval texts, and beyond is a scribal practice I call sans érasure, a case in which a scribe leaves an error uncorrected and proceeds to write or copy the correct letter, word, line, or verse following the error. In this article, a number of rather clear examples are adduced from the Ugaritic texts, and a number of examples from the Hebrew Bible are proposed. Several of these cases would seem to be recognized in the Masoretic tradition in instances of ‮לא קרי‬‎ (written but not read). Some of the biblical examples resolve longstanding philological cruxes. Among the examples are several from the book of Job and the last verse in Lamentations. An explanation for the practice is suggested.

Biblical Languages: Challenges for postgraduate supervision in Old and New Testament Studies

In South Africa and in many other countries in Africa and around the globe, the demand for more Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) candidates has increased. With such a demand, a number of challenges also arise. In the discipline of Theology, these challenges are becoming apparent in Old and New Testament Studies, where these fields are experiencing a declining number of students enrolling for biblical languages. This problem is enhanced as the current inherent requirement to study for a PhD in Old Testament is that one must have a knowledge of Biblical Hebrew (and Aramaic), and for New Testament, one needs Greek at an advanced level. Supervisors are challenged more and more to defend these requirements that are complicated by the developmental goals of institutions that require that the number of PhD candidates be increased. In this article, the challenges faced by PhD supervisors (and candidates) in respect of students wanting to enrol for PhDs in Old and New Testament without the necessary requirements are considered, and a case is made as to why it is essential that these students have a background in biblical languages. If students do not take the biblical languages as part of their (undergraduate) studies, immediate concerns for the future of Old and New Testament research and biblical translations (and ministry) are raised. The article concludes with possible suggestions for addressing some of these concerns.Contribution: This article makes an interdisciplinary contribution based on current challenges experienced in the education and supervision of postgraduate studies in the fields of Old Testament and New Testament and on the development and training of postgraduate supervisors in practical education as to contribute to the relevance and practice of theological education today and the future.

Voice Markers in Septuagint Greek in the Light of Hebrew Interference: A Corpus‐Based Study on the Aorist System of the Book of Genesis*

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the behaviour of so‐called passive and middle aorist forms in the Greek reflected in the Genesis of the Septuagint. The Septuagint, and Biblical Greek more generally, displays a considerable aberration with respect to other varieties of Ancient Greek regarding the relative frequency of passive vis‐à‐vis middle aorist forms. Here, we explore this feature of Septuagint Greek in some detail, showing that there is a more or less consistent, binary system at this stage, where the passive aorist is the preferred expression of monoargumental detransitive clauses, while the middle primarily appears in biargumental detransitive clauses. A comparison with the original text in Biblical Hebrew suggests that its binyanim system, with systematic distinction between transitive and detransitivising stems, may have played a key role in accelerating this process, which was already present in earlier stages of Greek. This process resulted in a general ousting of the aorist middle, which essentially became a lexically restricted variant of the active voice.