My post yesterday about the Apocrypha reminded me of a mnemonic I conveyed once to a class I was teaching. I told them that the way to remember the apocryphal books was to think of the scholar "T. J. McWeb, D.E." His name forms an acrostic: T = Tobit, J = Judith, Mc = 1 & 2 Maccabees, W = Wisdom of Solomon, E = Ecclesiasticus, B = Baruch, D = additions to Daniel, E = additions to Esther. Works like a charm. I used to use a lot of acrostic mnemonics back in the days when I actually had to take and pass tests, but those links are all dead now. What about the rest of you? What are your favorite mnemonics?
... Happy birthday to Paleojudaica! I always think of Jim Davila's blog, along with Mark Goodacre's NT Gateway Weblog (see the blogroll at the right for their links), as the flagships of Biblioblogdom. Long may they wave!
... If you've been looking for a hilarious send-up of the first few lines of the Bavli, Tractate Berakhot, this post at Yudeline should fill the bill.
favorite mnemonic? easy peasy, EMC. it is: SHAZAM! see the link below for information on this super-deified word.
ReplyDeletehttp://members.ozemail.com.au/~scunge/shazam/#acronym
-KatM
My absolute favorite is cofalamen orpipu, which to my twelve-year old eyes looked like something from the mysterious world of sexuality, but in reality stands for seven Latin words on -is which are masculine rather than feminine. The world of twelve-year olds then was much different from what it is now, even though I am hardly very old. I remember our teacher looking at his watch to see in how many seconds (in any case less than a minute) we could rehearse some 20 difficult Latin verb forms... Jan-Wim Wesselius, Theological University of Kampen
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