SBL 2009 Presentation

In this movie, I record the content of the presentation I gave to the section, “Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies,” at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (New Orleans, 2009).

The title of the presentation is, “‘…Even Bearing Gifts’: The Contribution of Distance Learning Strategies to the Brick-and-Mortar Classroom.”

The movie runs about 28 minutes. A list of the resources that I mention, including links to some of Michael Wesch’s content, can be found here: /educators/resources-from-presentation/

[wpvideo iBvX5H18]

Biblical Studies Carnival XLVIII

Biblical Studies Carnival XLVIII (“48” to the Arabists out there) is up, hosted by Doug Chaplin at Clayboy. And, it starts with a section on media resources! A great carnival: take a look.

SBLogging: Sunday Morning RBoC

• At some point, I am going to have to eat a dinner that I can afford. Not here in NOLA, of course, but at some point.


• Had the great pleasure of meeting Julia O’Brian yesterday.


• The sessions “Warfare in Ancient Israel” and “Disability Studies and Healthcare in the Bible and Near East” sections held a joint session yesterday: very cool. Nice paper by Bryan Bibb about (in part) how, just as prophetic texts will seek to demean their male audience by casting them as women, they will demean their able-bodied audience by casting them as disabled (sometimes by describing their enemies as preternaturally able-bodied).


• Giving my own paper today, in the Distance Learning session.


• Finding great value in the Twittering on SBL: keep it up, everyone.

SBLogging: Friday

This is what else it takes to find time to blog: getting out of town and going to NOLA.

Any conference weekend that begins with seeing no fewer than six of your favorite people can’t be all bad. Also, if you’re going to overspend on dinner, 1) it’s okay if it’s the first night, and 2) it may as well be somewhere with amazing etouffé.

It's a Sign of the Times

So this is what it takes for me to have a moment to blog: my students taking a one-hour exam. What do I want to say in this golden moment?

This: When I think of the spring term, in which my teaching load will be greatly reduced from the lunatic schedule I’m on now, I most look forward to writing on the Bible. Right now, I'm teaching all the time, so in my brain it’s all-pedagogy-all-the-time. Great, but by now there’s an imbalance in the Force: after a summer and fall of thinking and writing about teaching, I have a yen for wide-open Bible spaces. (And maybe brush off my Egyptian. Wide open Bible and Egyptian spaces.)

Will next term be different for you in some way? And how will it?

RSS Survivor

With 478 blogfeeds waiting to be read, I had to pull the trigger on them all at once. So, if you’ve blogged in the last 7–10 days or so, I’m afraid I’ve missed it. Sorry, friends, it’s just that kind of semester.

But, while glancing at headlines, I did see one item that I simply must keep up on: Peter’s series on definiteness in biblical Hebrew (links are to main page and to first post in series, respectively).

Yeah, I know this means something’s wrong with me. Yesterday’s news. :^)

The Catskills Bible: Misdirection and Humor

It’s a basic building block of comedy: you lead the hearer in one direction, then suddenly “go the other way.” “I don’t know what I’d do without you, baby…but I’d rather!” (drummer does a rimshot here)

Reading the story of David and Bathsheba last evening, I found myself dwelling on what looks to me like a similar bit of humor on the part of the narrator. (It’s likely that this has been picked up in the commentaries, but I haven’t looked into them yet. I mean, you folks are right here.)

David has impregnated Bathsheba the wife of Uriah, and David is trying to trick Uriah into having sex with Bathsheba so that Uriah will think the child his own. However, Uriah keep piously avoids going home to his wife, remaining celibate in the company of, and in solidarity with, his active military unit. David’s final ploy is to invite Uriah to his room and get him good and drunk (2 Sam 11:13, my translation):

“David summoned him, and he ate before him and drank, and he made him drunk, and he went out in the evening to lie in his bed with…the servants of his lord! To his own house he did not go.”

The sentence begins to convince the reader that David has succeeded: Uriah, besotted, goes out into the evening to lie in his bed. But then the penny drops: it’s not his wife’s bed, but his billet with his unit. David is foiled again.

I am reminded (and I don’t recall who to credit here) of that bit in Genesis 19:19-20, where the men of the town have threatened Lot with rape for protecting his visitors:

“And they pressed hard against the man Lot, and they approached to ‘break the door,’ and the men reached out their hands and brought Lot to themselves…home! And shut the door.”

Besides the apparent wordplay for male-on-male rape (“break the door”), the reader is persuaded to think that “the men” grabbing Lot are the men of the town, until the sentence ends and we find that it is the visiting men who have grabbed him, to pull him to safety.

My question to you, O readers: is this a motif that comes under discussion in a general way? Are comparisons made to other biblical texts, or do you know of any? My interest is in narrative or poetic sentences that seem to mislead the reader for a time, only to set right the misdirection at the end.

RBoC: "Endless October" Edition

The calendar has turned, and the weather gone from  “all rain all the time” to “all chilly rain all the time,” but plus ça change, plus c'est toujours l'October.


On my plate:

• apply for work (’tis the season)


• prepare SBL presentation


• write overdue report for distance-learning committee


• hey, I preach next week


• grade midterms for Intro to OT


• grade midterms for Hebrew


• write midterm feedback for Intro to OT blogging


• get caught up podcasting lectures for Intro to OT


• oversee peer review of midterm papers in Intro to OT

Plus the usual stuff in the personal sphere, including but not limited to:

• keep the Boy involved in Cub Scout achievements


• help the Boy prepare for his next Taekwon-do promotion test

The next time I look up, I’ll be on a plane for New Orleans. Then I’ll blink, and be grading final exams. Should I just start humming Advent tunes now?

Student Hebrew/ Greek Reading Groups

From time to time, some of my “Elementary Hebrew” or “Elementary Greek” alums will put together a reading group to try to retain (or get back) their hard-earned skills. The besetting challenge is, of course, time: most of them are either still taking classes or have graduated into demanding jobs. Last evening, some of us met to begin another swat at a Hebrew reading group. As usual, it was fun and fruitful. Students who elect to take biblical languages are, on average, a fun crowd (in my admittedly idiosyncratic view).

Typically, we won’t expect any preparation, and plan to meet weekly with the understanding that anyone might have to bail on any given week. Sometimes groups plan to meet during the day, perhaps in the cafeteria or a faculty office (lunches are often the best time). This group is meeting in the evenings, which makes it more entertainingly social—a plus, I’d say—but also means that more folks are having to commit to a drive in (rather than simply walking from one campus building to another).

I love student reading groups. The mere fact that students want to carve a bit of time from their lunatic schedules to improve their reading brings joy to an educator’s heart. Also, there’s that sense of application: I saw how hard they’ve worked to learn the stuff, and they deserve the reward of putting it to some use. Finally, it’s a chance for me also to be involved in reading that’s done just for its own sake: especially when I’m teaching introductory classes, I mostly read the Bible for the narrow tasks associated with prepping and teaching those courses.

Have you had experience with student reading groups in Hebrew or Greek (or any other languages, for that matter)? What has worked for you, what hasn’t, and what do you enjoy most about them?

"A Diploma-less Monkey"?

Really, it makes me wonder why I took up evil, er, I mean Bible, in the first place. I guess academic PTSD never really goes away.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqtAyNGcPiY] (update: disabled)

(And yes, I really enjoy watching Phineas and Ferb. My wife calls it “This generation’s Rocky and Bullwinkle.” As Disney programs go, it’s not about dating, kissing, and the objectification of girls. Oh, and no Selena Gomez.)

"And What Was I Doing All Those Years?"

I see that Gary Manning at Eutychus joins me in appreciating Rowley’s quote about preaching and biblical languages.

Prowling around Gary’s site, I’m happy to find also some pointed words that Wesley had to say on the subject. Seminarians and preachers, take note! If you must preach or teach, then either learn your biblical languages or endure Wesley’s scornful wrath.

What Would You Be Doing…

…if it weren’t October and you weren’t snowed under by emails, grading, advising, letters of reference, and committee obligations?

(Perhaps it’s some other set of circumstances bogging you down: just fill that in here and continue.)

Indoors: I’d be learning my way into Mesopotamian and Egyptian astrological texts to find out more about Orion in the ancient night sky (self link).

Outdoors: I’d help the Boy get more practice at his pitching for fall baseball (44 feet from rubber to plate): we are getting out, but not enough.

How about you? What would you be doing, indoors or outdoors?

Student Hebrew Bible Wiki (in progress)

One of my introductory Hebrew Bible classes has been producing a wiki at Wetpaint.com. The wiki is meant to be a resource in Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and in the study of the Hebrew Bible.

The work is in progress, and is weighted toward Writings and Latter Prophets. (This is all they've learned yet: in fact, they were learning the wiki during the Writings, and so Job, for example, never got in). This is the first time almost any of the students have been involved in a wiki of any kind, and they have picked it up admirably.

Anybody may view the wiki, but only members of the class may contribute to it.

Go and have a look if you like!

Be My Bible-Blogging Filter

I know I am not alone in this, but: October is crunch time for teachers in higher ed, and my RSS feeds on my NetVibes page are getting out of hand: 165 blog posts to read, and rising steadily.

Be my filter: what current or recent blog posts in biblical studies must I simply not miss?

Remember too that these might be likely candidates for nomination to the next Biblical Studies Carnival. But tell me first!

Podcast Ideas in Hebrew Bible

Not very long ago, Chris Heard canvassed his readers for suggestions about short podcasts on topics in Hebrew Bible: you can see the results for yourself. Mark Goodacre’s NT Pod continues to be well-received (and no surprise).

I have a lecture series in progress, geared toward my introductory students and designed to accompany a traditional course in Hebrew Bible. Each lecture is a podcast episode comprising a pair of 25–30-minute halves. The podcasts are slide-enhanced, and in *.m4a format, playable by iTunes, iPod, or QuickTime, and with some help from Blackboard can be viewed on a web browser as well. In their current revision, I consider them as still in “beta,” and I don’t plan to publish them to public directories until I’ve done some clean-up on them.

I would like, though, to plan a different kind of series, more after the pattern being laid down by Mark and Chris: 5–12-minute episodes, audio only, on manageable critical issues in biblical studies. I wouldn’t begin until Spring 2010, but I would like to begin thinking of ideas. Chris got good results on his query, so I am asking the same: what topics would you like to see addressed in such a format? Some ideas I already like are:

• What are Old Testament Pseudepigrapha?


• What is Apocalyptic?


• Emergence of Israel in the Land, in four parts: chronology, rapid conquest model, gradual infiltration model, revolt model


• DtrH and Redaction Criticism


• Walls of Jericho


• Finkelstein’s “Low Chronology”


• “Satan” in the OT


• YHWH, El, and Baal


• YHWH and “his Asherah”


• Who is Job’s “redeemer”?


• What is the Exile?


• ?

The audience would be about the same as that (apparently) envisioned by Mark: the intellectually curious layperson or the scholar outside of his own fields of expertise.

What would you like to see in a series of short podcasts in the academic study of the Hebrew Bible?

Disrespect in the Classroom

Dr. Crazy writes a post on dealing with disrespect from students, whether from individuals or a group. Her main point is that male professors come across blatant disrespect in the classroom more occasionally, while for women it’s more like a predictable, quarterly grind.

Both the post and comments include testimony on kinds of in-class disrespect and ways of addressing it. As usual, I appreciate Crazy’s hard-earned judgments. In her experience, calling the behavior out explicitly and rejecting it as inappropriate is the only way to nip it in the bud, whereas a policy of appeasement ends up serving nobody.

Go read the post and comments if the subject is of interest, whether you are a teacher or student.

What sorts of disrespect have you seen in the classroom—anything from teacher-directed stuff like challenging the syllabus, to killing one’s peer’s right to a collaborative classroom by refusing to engage the material in discussion? Any stories, with or without resolutions?

The Bible’s Night Sky

I was lamenting this morning that, with a crushing teaching load this term, I am not reading enough Hebrew Bible or other ancient lit. For me, things get stale—rapidly—if I’m not reading primary texts. From where is my help to come? From an unexpected quarter, as it turns out: The Night Sky.

The Night Sky (hat tip to Americablog) is a brief tutorial on locating three major constellations: Orion, the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia (and with them, Betelgeuse and Polaris). After working through the tutorial (city boy, no night sky), I did what any Bible scholar would have done: I said, “Where’s that part in Job and such where we hear about Orion?”

Turns out that the word translated in the NRSV “Orion” (כסיל: Job 9:9; 38:31; Amos 5:8) is elsewhere translated “fool, dullard” (Psa 92:6 and tons of places in Proverbs, e.g.). It is the immediate literary context that suggests the difference in translation: in Job 9:9, for example, we get “Pleides and _”; in Job 38:31, “chains of Pleides, or cords of _.” In Psa 92:6, by contrast, it’s “The stupid man doesn’t know, the _ doesn’t understand.” In Isa 13:10 the word is plural, and context suggests “constellations.”

So how did I, a space nut (city sky notwithstanding) and lay-science-dork who works in Bible professionally, never get around to doing an investigation into the Bible’s night sky? What a כסיל! No time this morning to do more than blog briefly on it, but it is nice to have a list of biblical texts that I can investigate in the few odd corners of time allowed me by this term’s teaching schedule. Thank you, Night Sky.

Follow-Up: Lecturing Like Steve Jobs

I posted once before on the ways lecturers can learn from accomplished presenters; the prompt was an essay by Carmine Gallo about making presentations like Steve Jobs does.

Gallo’s book on the subject has become available: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs (Amazon). The book is inductive and practical: always beginning with specific examples of Jobs’ successes, Gallo names the strategies he sees working for Jobs and generalizes them for popular use. For example, Apple’s 1984 advertisement provides an antagonist against which to establish one’s product as the heroic protagonist. The principles isolated by Gallo are arranged into three “acts”: 1) Create the Story; 2) Deliver the Experience; 3) Rehearse and Refine.

This is not a become-interesting-quick manual. There is no five-step or 12-step program offered. Instead, 18 principles culled from Jobs’ most successful presentations are sensibly arranged for long-term study, experimentation, and practice.

As with the earlier weblink (which only scratches the surface of the content of the book), I find application to academic lecturing everywhere in the book. I will leave to a later post the question of whether teaching involves “selling” a subject matter. (Among the problems I see in that idea is the error-ridden notion that, if the prof fails to “sell” the student on the course material, then the student has the right not to “buy into” the course expectations.) I will provisionally claim, though, that lecturing includes an irreducible element of selling.

As we know, many Bible-bloggers are presenting at SBL/AAR New Orleans (thanks, Daniel and Tonya). In December, we’ll see a slough of posts about bad practices in academic presentations. Don’t let yours be among those examples! Instead, ask yourself now how Steve Jobs would present deuteronomistic editing in Jeremiah…or stratum 5a/4b at Megiddo…or gender-bending in the Joseph novella…or materes in late pre-exilic Hebrew inscriptions…or misogyny in military taunt genres…or…or….

Blackboard Rant

I’ve taken hours of training in Blackboard. According to the level of instruction I’ve had, I am an “expert.” I like software, and am accustomed to learning new interfaces.

Yet: I cannot understand Blackboard-ese, I cannot make it do two-thirds of what its documentation promises me it can do, and when I can, I hate how it’s done.

Reading the Textbook with an Open Bible

Typically, in an “Introduction to Bible” or “Introduction to Old/New Testament” sort of class, the student is expected to read weekly in a textbook and also in the Bible. However, some students find themselves reading through a chapter of the textbook without the content seeming to “stick,” or gain traction, with them. Others will find themselves getting bogged down in confusing biblical material, blowing a lot of time on (say) the Book of Jeremiah, without much payoff in their understanding of critical issues in that material.

I regularly suggest that students read the textbook with an open Bible. The textbook will regularly cite the biblical texts, usually in the context of making some critical point. “In Jeremiah 7:4-14, we can see the prophet’s attack on his opponents, who are convinced of the Temple’s inviolability and therefore unimpressed by the Babylonian threat on the horizon.” At this point, the student should read Jeremiah 7:4-14, checking to see 1) that the textbook is reading the Bible correctly, and 2) whether the student is understanding the textbook correctly. The student should do this with all of the Bible references in the textbook.

In the above example, the student may also find that related aspects of the course work are reinforced: the fall of Israel (where Shiloh is) to the Assyrians, for example.

“But reading the textbook already takes so long: now it will take longer!” Will it really? Perhaps, but with a net gain in time. By the time a student has read the textbook on, say, the last years of the first Temple, she will not only have already “skimmed” the whole book of Jeremiah, but will have done so with attention to critically significant texts, in the context of an informed discussion (with the textbook) about those critical issues. So, there’s the main part of the assignment to read Jeremiah, checked off the “to do” list.

Also, the words of the textbook are now gaining traction for the reader: by “checking up” on the textbook’s claims about the Bible, the student is out of a purely passive, receptive mode of reading, and into a dialogic, critical, active mode of reading. Additionally, related critical issues are being brought into synthesis with the material at hand (“where is Shiloh? why is it destroyed?”). This kind of active learning is what makes material “stick.”

Have you tried “reading the textbook with an open Bible”?