Ninth Annual Ralphies, Better Late Than Never

This year's Ralphies will be a bit different, as I'm introducing some new categories:

Worst Computer Company: Apple. Every time I upgrade the operating system, some of the software stops working. Plus, Unicode still does not work that great on many Mac applications. Plus, Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, was kind of a jerk. (Wait, aren't all the 1% jerks? Well, Bill Gates at least is a philanthropist.)

Best Summer (or Winter) Blockbuster: I saw several major motion pictures, including Lincoln, The Hunger Games, and The Avengers. The Avengers was the most enjoyable, although I deeply regretted that they did not include Kang the Conqueror. (Also, let me get this off my chest: Lincoln was clearly conceived as a play, not a movie [the screenplay was by Tony Kushner! Hello!], and the acting was hammy and theatrical. I'm looking at you, Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field.) But my summer blockbuster was not a movie, but a book: Planesrunner, by Ian MacDonald. Exciting, original, and the special effects were awesome. Can't wait to read the sequel, Be My Enemy, which just came out.

Goodbye, Television: Pretty lousy. Fringe, the only show I watched faithfully, has ended. It was always worth watching. Olivia and Walter, I will miss you. Peter, not so much. Joshua Jackson did an adequate job, but only just. Plus, chemistry between him and Anna Torv? Zero. What will replace this show? So far, nothing.

Favorite Sports Team: The last time I rooted for a baseball team, it was 1988, and the Dodgers were winning an improbable World Series with Orel Hershiser and Kurt Gibson. Then we moved and baseball entered a dark age of strikes and steroids. Then came the miraculous summer of 2012, and the Washington Nationals reignited my interest in baseball and made me care again. Thanks, Nats.

Live Music: For me, I rediscovered concerts in 2012. DC has some nice small venues for the kinds of music I like. I saw Tennis and Real Estate at the Black Cat, and WIld Flag and Sufjan Stevens at the 9:30 Club. Wild Flag in particular showed themselves to be a superb live act. For at least a month after the concert (here's a clip), all I wanted to listen to was WIld Flag or music that reminded me of Wild Flag (and that means lots of punk and indie rock). I hope that Carrie Brownstein, one of the leading members, doesn't let her TV stardom put a damper on her musical creativity.

Books : I already mentioned Planesrunner (which would also make a great TV series; hello, BBC?). Also recommended on the fiction list is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, dealing with the English Reformation from Thomas Cromwell's point of view. Although her perspective is quietly secularist (and clearly anti-Catholic), she paints a vivid picture of that time, and her dry and austere style fits the subject matter. I read a lot of non-fiction last year, although at the moment nothing stands out. But here's one I'm dying to read.

Pie: Lemon meringue, and it's not even close.

A Suggestion About I Enoch 90:15

"And I saw until the owner of the sheep came against them in wrath and all who saw him fled and they fell away from him into his shadow."

—Enoch 90:15

This verse from the "Animal Apocalypse" of I Enoch has been taken to be corrupt, especially the words "into his shadow." Patrick Tiller says "the phrase is peculiar." In his translation, R. H. Charles places it between brackets.

Nevertheless, I think the phrase may have originated in an overly literal translation of Aramaic בטלל, bitlal. This phrase, literally "in the shadow," comes to mean "because of, on account of," in the Aramaic of Qumran, as in these phrases from the Genesis Apocryphon:

שביק ארזא בטלל תמרתא, "the cedar was spared because of the date-palm" (19:16)

ואחי בטליכי, "I will live because of you" (19:20)

Therefore the original of Ethiopic wa-wadqu kwellomu westa selalotu would be something like ונפלו כלהון בטללה, "they all fell because of him."

Deconstructing Dylan's Rant

All the world knows by now that the following exchange between Mikal Gilmore and Bob Dylan is soon to appear in Rolling Stone:

Gilmore: I want to ask about the controversy over your quotations in your songs from the works of other writers, such as Japanese author Junichi Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza, and the Civil War poetry of Henry Timrod. In folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition, but some critics say that you didn't cite your sources clearly. What's your response to those kinds of charges?
Dylan: [Laughs.] Yes, I have gotten inspiration from these sources and re-used words from them in my songs. But I didn't feel the need to cite the sources. As you say, it's part of tradition to freely borrow words from others. I don't really see a problem with that, do you? I don't think people should be disturbed by it.

Ha ha! Just kidding. What Dylan actually said was the following. I've provided a speech-act translation for each section so that his thought patterns can be clearly seen.

Dylan: Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It's true for everybody, but me. There are different rules for me.[Everybody does it, why not me?] And as far as Henry Timrod is concerned, have you even heard of him? Who's been reading him lately? [Besides me.] And who's pushed him to the forefront? [Me, that's who.] Who's been making you read him? [Me again.] And ask his descendants what they think of the hoopla. [If Henry Timrod were alive today, he woud thank me for getting him some press time, even if I never actually mentioned him.] And if you think it's so easy to quote him and it can help your work, do it yourself and see how far you can get. Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. [It's just as hard to borrow somebody else's words as it is to write your own. Seriously. I mean it.] It's an old thing – it's part of the tradition. It goes way back. [Everybody does it, why not  me?] These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you've been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. [If you really want to know, all my enemies have always been anti-Semites.] All those evil motherfuckers can rot in Hell. [Golly, am I mad!]

Wow. So, you think maybe Bob is just little bit touchy about people noticing his habit of using the work of others without attribution? Yikes. Nobody will ever say "chillin' like Dylan" again.

"Please" and "thank you" in Biblical Hebrew

In a paper delivered last November at the SBL meeting, Jan Joosten mentioned that the Biblical Hebrew expression "to find favor in someone's eyes" often has the effect of expressing gratitude, an insight he attributes to Arnold Ehrlich. I don't think I had ever noticed this before, but this pragmatic expression of politeness makes more sense in many contexts than the literal translation (which most English translations still favor).

A quick look (via Accordance) at the occurrences of this expression shows that there are basically three uses for it: (1) the literal use, as in, for example, Gen. 6:8, "Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord," meaning simply that God was well disposed towards Noah. This usage is common in narrative. (2) When uttered as part of a request ("if I have found favor," etc.) it functions as a politeness strategy underlining the social distance between asker and the askee: an extremely polite "please" or even more "if you would be so kind" or "if you would indulge me." (3) If a request is granted, it is used as an expression of gratitude ("I would find favor"), for the same reasons of deference as no. 2: an extremely polite "thank you" or even more "I am in your debt" or "I am very much obliged."

Nos. 2 and 3 are differentiated in two ways: no. 2 appears before the request and is framed in the perfective (suffix) conjugation, while no. 3 usually appears in response to a granted request and is framed in the imperfective (prefix) conjugation. Most of the English translations, in my opinion, obscure this; the only one that often gets it right is the Jewish Publication Society version. Here are some examples:

Gen 18:3 (Abraham to the angel): "My lord, if I find favor with you ( מצאתי חן בעיניך), do not pass by your servant" (NRSV). JPS is better: "My lords, if it please you, do not go on past your servant.." (no. 2)

Gen 30:27 (Laban to Jacob): "If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you" (NIV). The words "please stay" are not found in the Hebrew text. JPS again is better: "f you will indulge me, I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me on your account." (no. 2)

Gen 47:25 (Jacob's sons to Pharaoh): NIV: "May we find favor in the eyes of our lord ( נמצא חן בעיני אדני); we will be in bondage to Pharaoh." JPS: "We are grateful to my lord, and we shall be serfs to Pharaoh." Even more functionally equivalent would be something like "We are most humbly obliged to my lord, and will be forever in his debt." Of course the latter phrase must also be understood as an ironic foreshadowing of the Egyptian bondage. (no. 3)

Num. 11:15 (Moses to God): A literal translation sounds rather odd. The NIV has "put me to death right now — if I have found favor in your eyes." JPS has "kill me rather, I beg You." There may be a touch of irony here; if we translate as follows, we can see it: "Just kill me, if you would be so kind!" (no. 2)

In 1 Sam 1:18, after Eli tells Hanna to go in peace, and that God will grant her petition, Hanna says, according to NIV: "May your servant find favor in your eyes." This makes little sense literally. Better is JPS's "You are most kind to your handmaid." (no. 3)

Similar is 2 Sam 16:4. After David gives Ziba all the property of Mephibosheth, Ziba says (NIV), "May I find favor in your eyes, my lord the king." Not appropriate; better is JPS's "Your Majesty is most gracious to me." (no. 3)

Joosten remarked that this expression was used only in Classical Biblical Hebrew, specifically in Genesis, Samuel, and Ruth, but was not used in Late Biblical Hebrew. However, it is also found (by imitation?) in Esther.

There are some cases that are ambiguous, such as Ex. 33:13 (Moses to God), which JPS translates as "Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor." One could possibly translate "Now, if you would be so kind, let me know your ways, that I may know you, and that I may be most humbly grateful to you." Nevertheless, so much is made in this chapter of God's favor to Moses and to Israel, that it seems likely that the literal meaning (no. 1) is uppermost in the author's mind.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jan Joosten, "Hebrew Thought and Greek Thought in the Septuagint Fifty Years after Barr's Semantics," Biblical Hebrew Lexicography session, Society of Biblical Literature, November 2011; see also the Wikipedia entry on Politeness Theory.

Eighth Annual Ralphies

Before I begin the long-awaited Ralphies, I would like to congratulate myself on keeping "Ralph" going. Way to go, buddy! By the way, if anyone is interested in knowing how many hits are produced by a mention in the New York Times -- the answer is zero. Not one. This is because the clueless NYT doesn't provide click-through links for blogs mentioned in its august pages (on-line edition), and its readers don't really think about looking anything up for themselves. Thanks a lot, Gray Lady.

All right, enough self-serving patter. The question is, Who gets the awards? As in past years, the answers don't come easily.

Music: This year I paid a bit more attention to music than in the past, partly due to the Sirius satellite radio installed in the new car. This provides not only a steady stream of old favorites (like the Electric Prunes), but also an introduction to new (Real Estate) and semi-newish (Metric) bands. Hello, world! The Song of the Year Ralphie goes, as it did last year, to the one song that annoyingly got stuck on repeat play in my brain and wouldn't go away for weeks: Pumped-Up Kicks by Foster the People. The Album of the Year goes to a group who returned after a long hiatus, and were still awesome: Gillian Welch, with The Harrow and the Harvest.

Books (FIction): I actually read a couple of fairly new books in the fiction category this year. Unfortunately, they won't get a Ralphie. I read Anthony Horowitz's House of Silk, based on a rave review in the Washington Post. It was a reasonably good read, but not really in the same league as Conan Doyle. I also read Tana French's Faithful Place. One of these day, she is going to write a great novel -- she's got it in her -- but she hasn't yet. All of her books are page-turners, but have some fatal flaw. In the Woods neglects to tie up a big loose end; The premise of The Likeness is just too unbelievable; and now Faithful Place telegraphs the ending from a mile away. No, the best fiction I read this year was graphic: David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp, Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, and Brian Michael Bendis's Alias series. The Ralphie goes to the last named, by a hair.

Books (Non-fiction): Wow, I don't even know where to begin. I read a lot of stuff this year. I'm going to give the Ralphie to Nick Riemer's Introducing Semantics, for getting a whole lot of ideas going in my brain, although as a textbook I'm not sure that John Saeed's Semantics is not better for students than Riemer.

Television: Television took a big back seat this year, as did Movies. The only show I consistently have to watch is Fringe. which is still the best thing out there, although it has yet to catch fire in Season 4. I also found myself watching, although not compulsively, Game of Thrones and Homeland. The latter was enjoyable, but suffered in comparison with the similar but much superior series on AMC, the much-lamented Rubicon. But Fringe gets the Ralphie.

Movies: Didn't see that many. We went to see the last Harry Potter movie, and my reaction was the same one that I had for all the others: OK, but so what? Much better was Super 8, which gets the Ralphie. But I'm sure there were good movies out there; I just didn't see them.

All right kids, be sure and write in to tell me what your favorites are! The best response gets a free lifetime subscription to "Ralph." Cheers!

Swarming in Hebrew

For about the past year, I've been preoccupied with the question of "argument alternations" or "diathesis alternations" in Biblical Hebrew, just because I think they're interesting and also because I think they've been neglected in the lexicography and grammar of Biblical Hebrew. I've been trying both to understand them in a general way, and also to identify them in Hebrew.

Very briefly: What I mean by "argument alternation" is an alternation in the syntactic or semantic arguments of a verb that leave the form of the verb unchanged. For instance in English we can say "John broke the window" and also "the window broke." The object of the first sentence has become the subject of the second sentence, but the verb is unchanged. Another example is "Water filled the tank" and "The tank filled with water." The object of sentence 1 becomes the subject of sentence 2, while the subject of sentence 1 is placed in a prepositional phrase in sentence 2, but there is no change to the verb filled. Such phenomena have been the object of intense scrutiny, for instance in Beth Levin's English Verb Classes and Alternations (1993).

It seems to me that in Biblical Hebrew, alternations like this are rarer than in English, because typically in Hebrew when the semantic arguments change their syntactic mapping from, say, Patient/Object to Patient/Subject (as in the "broke" example), the verb stem or binyan also changes, so that, for instance, shavar (Qal) "he broke (something", would change to nishbar (Niphal), "(something) broke."

However, this is not always the case, and there is actually a fair number of alternating verbs in Biblical Hebrew. One small group that I have just run across has to do with the verbs meaning swarm or teem. For English, verbs of this type were studied at length in an article by Maurice Solkoff, "Bees are swarming in the garden" (1983). Briefly, verbs of this type (and it is larger than just the verb swarm and its synonyms), display an alternation in which the semantic Agent may switch syntactic Subject slots with the Location word, so that one may say "Bees are swarming in the garden" (agent subject) or "The garden is swarming with bees" (location subject). This type of alternation occurs, it seems, only with intransitive verbs.

Interestingly, the root שׁרץ in Biblical Hebrew apparently displays just such an alternation. The agent-subject type is attested; e.g. Gen 7:21 ha-sheretz ha-shoretz al ha-aretz, "the swarm that swarms on the earth"; or, e.g., Gen 9:7 "swarm (shirtzu) in the earth and multiply in it." But the location-subject is also attested: Gen 1:20 "let the waters swarm (yishretzu) with a swarm of creatures"; or, Exod 7:28 "the river will swarm (ve-sharatz) with frogs." A concordance will turn up all the examples, but if you want to track them down the references are Gen 1:20-21; 7:21; 8:17; 9:7; Exod 1:7; 7:28; Lev 11:29, 41-43, 46; Ezek 47:9; Ps 105:30. The synonymous verb רמש displays the same behavior, although the location-subject examples are few: Gen 9:2, Lev 20:25, both tirmos ha-adamah, "(all the creatures that) the soil teems with."

What is not immediately clear to me is whether the location-subject type has the same entailments in Hebrew as it does in English. It has been observed that in English the location-subject type has a "holistic" effect, and entails that the Location is more affected, more filled up, than with the agent-subject type; "the garden is swarming with bees" entails that every part of the garden has bees swarming in it, while "bees are swarming in the garden" does not have the same entailment. But in Hebrew I'm not sure that the waters in Gen 1:20 (location subject) will be more full of swarming creatures than the earth will be in the apparently similar Gen 9:7 (agent subject). This needs to be looked at in greater depth.

It is also not clear to me (yet) whether the core of the Hebrew verb has to do with motion (crawl, creep) or with numerical increase (abound, teem). It would be nice if the agent types would line up with the motion idea and the location types with the idea of increase, but they don't.

In fact, it is possible that this is another type of alternation altogether: the location-subject types do not have the look of intransitives at all. I've translated them that way (as do most English Bibles), but the complements in fact could be construed as accusative direct objects: not "the river swarmed with frogs" but "the river swarmed frogs" (i.e. produced them in swarms); "let the waters swarm a swarm of creatures," etc. This is in fact the way the LXX construes these instances. This, then, would be an example of the so-called Causative-Inchoative alternation, consisting of an intransitive verb and a transitive alternation meaning "to cause to (intransitive meaning)." In this case, the agent-subject would be intransitive and the location-subject would be transitive.

So we have, as it were, alternative alternations. Which is it? I'll have to think about it some more, but I'd be happy to receive the views of others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: See also David Dowty, The Semantic Assymetry of Argument Alternations (and why it matters) (2001), at his personal webpage; Maurice Salkoff, "Bees Are Swarming in the Garden," Language 59 (1983): 288-346.

Dylan and Plagiarism

The discussion of Bob Dylan and his "borrowing" habit goes on (especially on the Internet), but not usually at a high level of sophistication. Part of the problem is that people in general are not working with a clear notion of what plagiarism is. I would like to submit some criteria for understanding the notion of plagiarism and the conditions under which it can be identified.

The minimal necessary condition for plagiarism is the uncredited use of someone else's work. I think everyone can agree that if this condition is not present, then plagiarism is not present. However, note that this is a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition. By itself, uncredited use is not plagiarism. One might allude to another's well-known work, without a citation and without plagiarism. Faulkner did not need to credit Shakespeare for the title of The Sound and the Fury; he could assume that the allusion would be recognized. We can sing the song "Happy Birthday" without crediting Patty and Mildred Hill every time. We might also unconsciously or forgetfully incorporate someone else's words into our own composition; when someone is accused of plagiarism, this is usually the first line of defense.

The last point leads to an addition to our first necessary condition. There must also be an intention to present the uncredited work as your own work. That's why an effective defense can be "I forgot to give credit" or "I used this unconsciously"; it denies that the use was intentional. Every teacher has heard this defense from students accused of plagiarism, and sometimes it might even be true. It was George Harrison's (unsuccessful) defense against his plagiarism of "He's So Fine" for "My Sweet Lord."

It might seem that these two necessary conditions, uncredited use and intention to mislead, are jointly sufficient criteria for plagiarism. Nevertheless, I want to add one more condition. The question is often raised whether older authors, like Chaucer or Shakespeare, were guilty of plagiarism. Chaucer, for instance, used extensively Boccaccio's Il Filostrato in composing Troilus and Criseyde. Many of Shakespeare's plots come from Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. Going even farther back, the gospels Matthew and Luke made use of passages taken almost verbatim from the Gospel of Mark. Are all these writers plagiarists? I think we feel intuitively that the answer is no, although our definition as currently constructed would imply that the answer is yes.

Therefore we need to add the further condition making reference to a presumption of originality. During the time of Chaucer, or Shakespeare, or the gospels, there was no overarching presumption that a book or play contained only original work. The cultural norms were different; but at some point between Shakespeare's time and our time (indeed, already in the 18th century) a new assumption of authorial originality became normative, at least for written compositions.

So our concept of plagiarism has these three components: (1) uncredited use that is (2) intentional (3) within a presumption of originality.

The problem with Dylan's borrowing habit is complicated. He and others have often made reference to a "folk process" in the arena of folk music or popular music, wherein the older, pre-modern, practice of free borrowing and re-use of older work was still normative. Hence the many tunes and lyrics derived from other artists found in his catalog are widely felt (possibly correctly) to be non-problematic (although Dylan is unwilling to extend this permissiveness to artists borrowing his work). In other words, there is no strong presumption of originality in folk music — or possibly in music in general (although there has to be at least a weak presumption of originality in order to copyright anything).

However, there is a much stronger presumption of originality in written work published under one's own name. That's why, in the many passages in Chronicles, Volume 1 where Dylan has lifted from other authors, without credit or credible expectation of a recognizable allusion, he is arguably guilty of plagiarism.

I'm not trying to tear down the whole body of Dylan's work. I don't want to—I'm a fan—and I couldn't even if I did want to. However, I do think that in the last 10 years or so he has compensated for the waning of his creative powers by over-indulging in this borrowing habit, which reaches a high point in his own autobiography. It's not pernicious in the sense that any living person is harmed by it, but it should be acknowledged for what it is.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Besides the links given above, see Scott Warmuth's Goon Talk (passim). See also the relevant chapter in David Yaffe, Like a Complete Unknown. Their take is different than mine.

Notes on the Structure of the Hebrew Verbal System

These really are just notes, not a full-fledged think piece.

The issue with the Hebrew (I mean Biblical Hebrew prose here) verbal system (HVS) is accounting for the different uses of qatal and yiqtol at the appropriate level of generalization. It's not that difficult to list all the different functions of these verbal forms, but finding a way to characterize the whole thing has proved controversial.

Everyone agrees at this point that the HVS is not a tense-only system. This can be demonstrated with one fact:

(1) If HVS were tense-only, then yiqtol could never receive a past interpretation. But it can receive a past interpretation in prose (with the past habitual use).

There is much less unanimity that HVS is not an aspect-only system. In fact, my impression is that this view is held by the majority. Nevertheless, this approach also fails, for the following reason:

(2) If HVS were aspect-only (e.g., perfective/imperfective), then qatal could receive a future interpretation. But in fact, it does not receive a future interpretation in prose.

Hence it seems that HVS is a combined tense-aspect system, with qatal being both past and perfective, and yiqtol being past imperfective (habitual), future (either perfective or imperfective), present (general, not actual) and modal.  Many languages of the world combine tense and aspect (e.g., Greek and English) so there's nothing weird or unwelcome about this. Nevertheless, there is still a hankering (in me, at least) to find some feature of the qatal/yiqtol opposition that licenses its several interpretations without any appeal to the arbitrary.

To me the most important clue lies in an argument made by Jan Joosten (in this JANES article), that yiqtol never indicates the actual present (similar to English present progressive), only the general present (gnomic or habitual). I find Joosten's argument convincing, although you can still find statements in the grammars to the effect that yiqtol can function to indicate the actual present. If Joosten is right, then there are not any functions of yiqtol where it refers to an actual, instantiated verbal action (event, state, or process); that is, it is non-referential in that there is no particular action that it picks out.

Here, then, I think is the opposition. Qatal is referential, yiqtol non-referential; again, by referential, I mean that it points to or picks out a particular instantiated action. If qatal is referential, then that entails past tense. The entailments of yiqtol are not as constrained as those of qatal; not having referentiality means that it can be used for a typical action in the past (habitual) or the present (general present) or for a non-instantiated action (such as the future or modal). Hence the wider range of interpretations or readings (in the semantic sense) that are available for yiqtol.

"Referentiality" is usually discussed in terms of nouns and noun phrases, and verbs are not considered in that context. Nevertheless, I think one can argue that verbs can be referential (like a definite noun phrase) or non-referential (like an adjective or an indefinite noun phrase).

This doesn't explain the workings of what I call the "secondary" HVS, that of wayyiqtol and we-qatal.  I'll discuss those at a later time. Also it leaves open the use of qatal and yiqtol in poetry, where some possible counter-examples to (1) and (2) above can be found. I don't believe that they are true "defeaters" of my proposal, because quite often, in my view, what seem to qatal and yiqtol in poetry are actually forms of we-qatal and wayyiqtol that vary because of the peculiar modes of coordination (and conjunction reduction) available in Hebrew poetry. Again, I'll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say that in the final analysis I think the HVS is ultimately uniform in prose and poetry.

Wow, the New York Times

Well, if that don't beat everything. "Ralph" is mentioned in the New York TImes, in connection with Bob Dylan, natch.

If you are interested in the posts about Dylan, then go here and here and here.

What's next? Osservatore Romano? The Sacramento Bee? Cool.

Fun with Popes and Presidents

One of the most obscure areas of human knowledge is the comparison in ages and terms of office between Popes and Presidents. It is arguably of no value whatsoever, and therefore eminently suited for scholarly research. Based on the studies of myself and my former colleague Matthew Jaffe, I offer the following tidbits in handy question-and-answer format:

Q. How many times in history has a president been inaugurated at an older age than the currently reigning pope?

A. Three times: In 1849, when Zachary Taylor was 64 and Pius IX was 57; in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was 70 and John Paul II was 61; and Reagan again, in 1985, when he was 74 and John Paul II was 65.

Q. Have the president and pope ever been the same age at inauguration time?

A. Yes, once when James Buchanan was 65 and so was Pius IX.

Q. What pope reigned through more presidential administrations?

A. Pius IX, through the terms of Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Grant, and Hayes.

Q. When was the youngest inaugurated president juxtaposed with the oldest reigning pope?

A. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated at age 42. Leo XIII was then 91, 49 years older.

Q. What president has served through more papal reigns regardless of duration?

A. Jackson and Carter served through three each. Jackson: Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI; Carter: Paul VI, John Paul I, and the start of John Paul II.

"Loving This Book": Stative and Progressive

This semester our Hebrew seminar is considering the semantics of the Hebrew verb, and, as a foil to other treatments of verbal semantics, we are reading Waltke & O'Connor's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax with a view to assessing how they dealt with semantic notions.

The last time we met, our agenda was to discuss IBHS ch. 22 (on the Qal) in the light of current thinking about situation aspect, especially stativity. During the discussion, we got held up for a moment by an English example that they use:

[S]tative verbs in English do not occur in progressive forms. ... [For example], one cannot freely say 'I am loving this book.' Since 'love' describes a stative situation (in this case, a psychological state), one freely says 'I love this book.' (IBHS 22.2.1e).

The students unanimously felt that the example was poorly chosen, since in fact one can say "I am loving this book," or the like, as in the following example: "You know that book you gave me for Christmas? Well, I'm really loving it!" Or, "Dr. Cook, I'm really loving this class!" One of them suggested that the language was changing to allow statives to violate the aspectual rule. I suggested this was probably not the case, but was unable, on the fly, to satisfactorily account for the progressive use of "love" except by vaguely saying that it was being used in a different sense in these cases. We had to move on, and there we left it.

I kept thinking about the case, however, and have come to some further conclusions. First of all, I do think the example in IBHS was poorly chosen. A better example of stative+progressive illformedness might be something like *I am knowing the multiplication table or *I am having a new computer or *I am now owning my own home. These usages are indeed incompatible with progressivity, since these statives are not events and denote no action that can "progress" in terms of having some kind of internal temporal structure (like "I am walking the dog").

Second, the situation that IBHS likely envisaged in their sample sentence I am loving this book must have been like the sentences in the previous paragraph, indicating a non-event. For example, if someone pointed to a book on their shelves and said, "See that book with the red cover? Well, I am loving this book," that would be an example of the same kind of illformedness as "*I am owning this book."

Whence, then, the "event" reading of "loving" in I am loving this book? Under that reading, "this book" cannot mean "this object"; it has be taken as "the current process of reading this book." It can't even mean "this book that I finished last week." "Love" can only receive a non-stative reading, and be used in the progressive, when it has for its object (either explicitly or implicitly) another currently ongoing process that is itself progressive. Yet another example: consider the sentence "I am loving this week's episode of Glee." It can only be used of watching this week's episode of Glee (let's say you are on the phone with your friend), and not of the script or performances or plot. Not every stative can participate in this alternation, however.

The fact that Waltke & O'Connor say that the sample sentence cannot be "freely" uttered is unclear. It could mean that they were aware of counter-usages like the one discussed here (in which case they should have chosen a better example).

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The original description of stativity as incompatible with the progressive can be found in Zeno Vendler's classic article, "Verbs and Times," The Philosophical Review, Vol. 66, No. 2. (Apr., 1957), pp. 143-160. By the way, this is not cited in IBHS.

Seventh Annual Ralphies

Here we go ...

Best TV Show: First, I have to say a few words about Lost, which has won this award for several years. By the time the last minute of the show ticked off, the method of the creators had become clear: for five seasons, go as far out on a limb as you possibly can, and then, in the sixth season, cut the limb off. Then, as we watch you drop out of sight, call out "It's better to travel hopefully than it is to arriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!" Um, no, it's not. This was not a year for successful TV. Not only did Lost end with a whimper, but Flashforward and Rubicon, both great and fun shows, were cancelled after one season. However, Fringe had a great year, and has already succeeded where Lost, Heroes, and X-Files all failed. The Ralphie goes to Fringe, with enthusiasm.

Best Movie: Didn't see that many, just the biggest of the big, viz., Toy Story 3 and Inception. Neither one of these highly praised movies stuck in my mind for even 5 minutes after viewing, which is kind of a test I have for a good movie. The only movie that really did that for me was one I viewed on pay-per-view, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It gets the Ralphie.

Best Record: A better year than last year, for sure. Although I didn't buy many records, thanks to YouTube, I heard a fair amount of new and good music. The Black Keys are great; the new Sufjan Stevens; a fictional group called Sex Bob-Omb (music by Beck) that was awesome. But the Ralphie goes to a song that, for 2 weeks this summer, I literally couldn't get out of my mind, namely Fireflies by Owl City. It was even there when I was dreaming, which just shows you that the music module of your brain is separate from the other modules. It took me a while before I finally figured out the song was actually about insomnia.

Best Non-Fiction Book: As you know, I read a truckload of linguistics books and articles; there's a lot of good stuff out there. I would have to put Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature at the top because of its accessibility and generally jaunty style.

Best Fiction Book: The award goes to Lev Grossman's The Magicians. The book is a compulsively readable fantasy that attempts to undermine the worlds of both Harry Potter and Narnia. Me, I love Narnia, but The Magicians is a tremendously fun read on its own terms (unlike, say, the works of the King of Boredom, Philip Pullman).

Now We Are Six

On November 30, 2004, the first post of this blog appeared. The first year or so was quite active, and coincided approximately with the birth of biblioblogging, of which this blog was one of the first. But "Ralph" has never sought, or received, any factitious badge of approval or value-ranking from the world of biblioblogging (now firmly part of the Establishment) and I now question whether my blog is a part of that increasingly self-conscious and contentious world.

The last few years have been less active, as other activities have crowded out daily, or even weekly, blogging. Most particularly, I consciously decided a while back to devote most of the time I had for writing to preparing scholarly books and articles; and, this, I think, was a wise choice.

Still, writing for "Ralph" is always one of my greatest pleasures. Looking back, I see plenty of ephemeral matter, but nothing that embarrasses me. Several of the posts have in the past developed into lectures, presentations, or articles, and some may still do so. And, as far as I know, "Ralph" is still the only blog ever to be cited in a scholarly footnote in Revue de Qumran.

This year especially has been quiet for "Ralph," although the most famous post in Ralph's history was cited in two books about Bob Dylan. One of them is Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America (Doubleday, 2010), pp. 303ff. Wilentz, professor of American Studies at Princeton, cites "Ralph," without giving the URL (how rude!) or the author (how clueless!). Indeed, he appears to believe that the name "Ralph" is my pseudonym, apparently without noticing that my name and email appear (and have always appeared) right there on the blog.

The other citation is in Alessandro Carrera, "Oh, the Streets of Rome: Dylan in Italy," which appeared in Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World (ed. C. J. Sheehy & T. Swiss; Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2009), where the author refers to me as "very puzzled." Sure, if by puzzled you mean outraged. I also was interviewed by phone by yet another author who is writing a book about Dylan. Not bad for a philologist whose expertise is in a wholly different area.

"Ralph" will continue, probably at the same slow pace. And yes, the Ralphies for 2010 will shortly appear. Watch this space.

Scenes and Observations from SBL Atlanta 2010

In no particular order ...


Two huge ballrooms were assigned to a session attended by about 15 people.

My room, thankfully, was in a tower (Hyatt) where I didn't have to go up in one of those glass elevators.

Best meal: Atlanta Grill, with Marty Abegg and James Bowley. We planned the next volume of the Dead Sea Scrolls Concordance.

I bought two books: The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism by Adele Berlin and the Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis.

The good people at Accordance updated me and fixed me up with a ton of awesome software.

The most crowded session I attended was the one on Biblioblogging. I listened to Jim Davila's and Chris Brady's excellent papers on the state of the art, then had to go to another session. Chris suggested (as you can read here) that there be an SBL committee to provide peer-review insight on the tenure-relevant research found in online sources. I agree if the sources are research resources, but not if they are blogs. Blogs should resist "sivilizin'".

Jim Davila is still watching Lost.

Against all probability, the guy I sat next to at the Bloggers lunch lives only a few blocks away from me.

John Hobbins is really tall.

The HUC grad school survives.

I enjoyed discussing syntax with fellow UCLA alums Kirk Lowery and Randy Buth.

There will never be a time when most people know how to deliver a paper at SBL.

I met a man who had taken Hebrew from me over 20 years ago.

I enjoyed talking about Amazon's Kindle with Dean Forbes.

The number of religious books being published every year is inversely proportional to the number of actual Christians.

I worked on my paper the night before I gave it. At least I didn't write my paper the night before I gave it.

Air Tran advertises free Wi-Fi in their terminal. It's only free if you want to check your flight information. For anything else, you have to pay.

I enjoyed seeing some of my students at their first SBL.

The memorial service for Hanan Eshel was moving, with most major Qumran scholars in attendance.

MARTA is better than Metro. Cheaper, too.

The Brill reception was awesome, and the view from the 49th floor of the Peachtree Tower was spectacular.

The Fuller breakfast was great, but it's a little sobering to realize that I am now among the oldest attendees.

I'll add more as I recall more....

Old Dog, New Trees

Summers, for academics, are empty vessels waiting to be filled; not like the academic year, whose content is largely determined by others. During summer, to a certain extent, free will returns; and therefore each summer takes on a character of its own.

This summer for me was the summer of trees, in two senses. The first is the literal sense of our vegetable friends and neighbors. It was inevitable that trees should attract my attention, since the DC area has one of the largest tree canopies in the nation. Sooner or later I had to take some account of them. Probably it was on walks with the dachshund, whose interest in trees is of long standing, that I first said to myself "What about these trees?" I don't remember the moment, but there must have been one in which trees presented themselves to me as objects of worthy curiosity, and I found myself getting some books about trees, and how to identify them, and what was the nature of their leaves, bark, flowers, overall shape, and usefulness. I started taking note, and the diversity amazed me. In our neighborhood are many lindens (or basswoods) planted for shade, as well as many varieties of that handsome genus Acer, the maple. Silver, red, striped, goosefoot, the delicate little Japanese maple. Very common is the Eastern white pine, and kinds of spruce and fir that I have not yet gotten to. The great elms. The mighty oak — best of all. Near us the common type is the pin oak, but near the Capitol you can find the awesomely large Northern Red Oak. The cherry trees — of course! Lots of those. Two dogwoods in our back yard. The gorgeous and immense yellow poplar, with its tulip-shaped leaves. From the Metro you can see the catalpa, or indian bean, with huge leaves and long seed pods. On the CUA campus are many other varieties, including a cedar of Lebanon. Sycamores, ash, willow — where have you been all my life?

I don't have any desire to be an arborologist and my interest in the industrial use of trees is nil. I am only a watcher of trees, and this summer I have learned to take in my surroundings with more discernment. That's one feature of the summer of 2010.

The other kind of trees is the figurative, linguistic type. Originally I planned to do a not very intensive review of Greek, and duly began working through some grammars. It was not long, though, before I began to be distracted by the unsatisfactory way in which the grammars (which shall remain nameless) approached syntax — even in some cases, using the old grammar-school sentence diagrams. I gradually found myself searching for a better approach and abandoned Greek for technical linguistics, in fact, the severe formalities of the Chomskyan generative school. I devoured a good many textbooks of this approach, even reading Chomsky himself, and had the sensation of a keen intellectual pleasure as I delved into the system, which is powerful and elegant (although not perfect, which is the topic for another post). I filled many sheets of paper with trees, i.e., tree diagrams — and not your dull flat structures either, but the beautiful binary structures of the X-bar theory and its various epicycles. If I can, I will keep up this exploration into the fall, as time permits. But even with just a few short weeks of study, I feel braced by the austere rigor of the system. That's the second benefit of Summer 2010.

On Monday classes begin, and free will has to be put on a leash again. I don't really mind. The trees, all of them, will continue to be there, summer's gift, as duty returns.

Bob Dylan, Carl Sandburg, and the "Borrowing" Problem

One of the oddest things (among many odd things) in Bob Dylan's memoir Chronicles is his narration of a conversation with poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish, who had commissioned him to write some music for a play. According to Dylan, MacLeish said that he, MacLeish, had been a classmate of Douglas Macarthur at West Point (Chronicles, p. 112). In fact, MacLeish, although he served in the Army, never went to West Point. So how did this misinformation get into Dylan's book?

It has already been established that Dylan incorporated expressions, phrases and entire sentences from other authors in the book. A little research reveals that the same practice underlies parts of the MacLeish conversation and is responsible for the misattribution of certain statements to MacLeish. In this case, the source is the preliminary material to the Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, (2002). This book has an introduction by Archibald MacLeish, and a preface (called "Notes for a Preface") by Sandburg himself. The remark about West Point comes in the Sandburg preface, not the MacLeish introduction:

Sandburg, p. xxx:
"At twenty-one I [Sandburg] went to West Point, being a classmate of Douglas MacArthur and Ulysses S. Grant III ..."

Chronicles, p. 112:
"MacLeish had been a classmate of Douglas MacArthur at West Point ..."

Confirmation of Dylan's borrowing comes from elsewhere in Sandburg's preface, such as this remark:

Sandburg, p. xxx:
"A few masterpieces last across the years. ... Perhaps no wrong is done and no temple of human justice violated in pointing out that each authentic poet makes a style of his own. ... I have forgotten the meaning of twenty or thirty of my poems written thirty or forty years ago."

Chronicles, p. 113:
"He said that he'd forgotten the meaning of a lot of his earlier poems and that an authentic poet makes a style of his own, a few masterpieces last across the years."

Sandburg (Preface, p. xxviii) also alludes to "Michelangelo saying in 1509, 'I have no friends of any kind and I do not want any,' and forty years later writing, 'I am always alone and I speak to no one.' " This too is picked up in Chronicles: "He also talked about Michelangelo, said that Michelangelo had no friends of any kind and didn't want any, spoke to no one" (p. 112).

Another possible allusion lies on p. xxvii of Sandburg's preface, where he says (italics added): "A well done world history of poetry would tell us of the beginnings and the continuing tradition of blank verse, rhymed verse, ballads, ballades, sonnets, triolets, rondeaus, villanelles, the sestina, the pantoum, the hokku; also odes, elegiacs, idylls, lyrics, hymns, quatrains, couplets, ditties, limericks, and all the other forms," and Dylan quotes MacLeish to the same effect: "Archie spoke about blank verse, rhyme verse, elegiacs, ballads, limericks and sonnets" (Chronicles, p. 112).

One final parallel: Sandburg writes of Stephen VIncent Benet (p. xxvi): "He knew the distinction between pure art and propaganda in the written or spoken word." Dylan says of MacLeish: "He also told me that there's a difference between art and propaganda and he told me the difference between the effects" (p. 112).

However, Dylan also attributes to MacLeish some expressions found in MacLeish's introduction to Sandburg, such as on p. xx, where the poet alludes to "... the comparative dimensions of ... Sappho and Sophocles, of Dante and Donne," which Dylan turns into this: "He asked me if I had read Sappho or Socrates. I said, nope, that I hadn't, and then he asked me the same about Dante and Donne." (Note the miscopying of "Socrates" for "Sophocles.") (I owe this observation to Scott Warmuth.)

It is now apparent what happened. Dylan, in the course of concocting (or reconstructing) a conversation with MacLeish, pulled from his shelves a copy of Sandburg's Complete Poems, Introduction by Archibald MacLeish, to get some ideas. However, he confused MacLeish's short introduction with Sandburg's long preface, and as a result wound up making MacLeish say a number of things that actually were said by Sandburg.

No doubt many Dylan-worshippers will now argue that this confusion is a sign of Dylan's genius. I think Bob just got his sources mixed up. It happens, especially when you're "borrowing" a lot from other writers.

Shoddy-Wall-Builders

When translating the Damascus Document for the Dead Sea Scrolls book I co-authored with MIke Wise and Martin Abegg, I took some pains not simply to translate mechanically the Hebrew words of the text, but to make explicit the nuances of certain enigmatic expressions that were important for a better understanding. One of these expressions is "Shoddy-Wall-Builders," which occurs four times in the Damascus Document (4:19; 8:12, 18; 19:31), and which is a rendition of Hebrew בוני החיץ.

Peter Flint and James VanderKam make generous use of our translation in their popular textbook The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2002). Nevertheless, in their discussion of Qumran history, they refer to this translation of mine as "curious," and they prefer to translate the phrase as "Builders of the Wall." I now want to make explicit the reasoning behind the choice of words I used, and suggest that it is not curious at all, but demanded by the context.

The persons designated as "builders of the wall" in the Document are portrayed as followers of a false teacher and a false law, and as such have earned the displeasure of God. But why are they called "builders of the wall"? It is agreed by all that the phrase is taken from Ezekiel 13:10: "Because, yes, because they have misled my people, saying, Peace, when there is no peace; and because, when one builds a wall (בנה חיץ), they smear whitewash on it." In the original context, the prophet is denouncing false prophets who give as a divine message something out of their own imaginations. Their message is false and unreliable.

The metaphor the prophet uses is of someone who builds a wall, which is then covered with white paint to hide its imperfections. For the metaphor to function properly, in fact, it is necessary that the wall be understood as one that is not solid or well-built. Otherwise, what would be wrong with whitewashing a wall? Note that the JPS translates this part of the verse as "daubing with plaster the flimsy wall which the people were building."

The word used for "wall" reinforces this interpretation. The word חיץ is not the ordinary Hebrew word for a city wall (חומה) or a building wall (קיר) or a fence (גדר). It only appears here in the Hebrew Bible, and in post-Biblical Hebrew, it seems to refer to a light temporary partition. Jastrow defines it as "a pile of loose and uneven material, a rough extemporised embankment, opp[osed] to earth-covered and finished." To build such a wall and then to paint it as if it were a dependable finished structure would be highly irresponsible.

The authors of the Damascus Document knew perfectly well the implications of the phrase. Their opponents were in every way comparable to the false prophets of Ezekiel's time; like them they built up an unreliable body of teaching – a "shoddy wall" – and like them they hid its imperfections (in 8:12 the same group is called "Whitewashers"). They were not "builders of the wall" – an expression that conveys little – but they were "Shoddy-Wall Builders."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: VanderKam, James C., and Peter W. Flint. The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity. San Francisco, Calif: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002.

Wise, Michael Owen, Martin G. Abegg, and Edward M. Cook. The Dead Sea scrolls: a new translation. San Francisco: Harper, 1996, rev. ed. 2005.

Olive Pits and Alef-Bets: Notes on the Qeiyafa Ostracon

There seems to be a general feeling that there is something about the Qeiyafa Ostracon that counts against a strong minimalist understanding of the history of the Israelite monarchy. I personally think that a strong minimalist position is highly unlikely even without the evidence of the ostracon, so evidence of this kind would not surprise me. Nevertheless it might be interesting, now that the ostracon has been officially published, to give it a brief assessment of its nature and significance.

One of the key tenets of a minimalist stance is that there is little evidence of a strong state in Israel from the 10th century BCE, the period when the United Monarchy is usually placed. Since Khirbet Qeiyafa is dated to the early 10th century BCE (based on the evidence of pottery and carbon-14 dating of olive pits at the site), this causes any finds from the site to have some bearing on the question of the situation in Judah at the time. Even without the ostracon, the fact that there was a strongly fortified town within the borders of ancient Judah at the time evinces some degree of organized building activity, suggestive of political unity. This is a point that the excavators themselves make.

Another trait of state centralization often said to be lacking during the crucial 10th century is literacy, or at least the evidence of a writing tradition in epigraphic artifacts. Here is where the ostracon comes in. The more the ostracon can be taken as evidence of literacy at some level, or as the product of a scribal culture, the more the idea of a centralized state and its educational system becomes probable. Can it be taken in this way?

The ostracon itself is hard to read because of the faded letters, and even the letters that are clear do not yield a connected text or even hint at a possible genre, at least in the readings contained in the official publication. (The interpretation of Gershon Galil, so far available only in a press release, seems to depend on restoring crucial letters or filling in key lacunae in a way that does not carry conviction.) Although the reading of Misgav and his associates agrees in several points with the alternate reading provided by Ada Yardeni, the two readings also diverge from each other in important ways, and neither reading is conducive to meaningful consecutive translation.

So what do we have?

(1) A text written from left-to-right. Although some may choose to withhold judgment at this point, the fact that the second line swerves upward at the right side of the ostracon confirms the general impression of left-to-right direction: a writer swerves upward when he runs out of room at the end of a line.

(2) A text written in the Old Canaanite form of the alphabet, the form that the letters took before (but more about this later) the evolution of national scripts. The closest analogue among previous discoveries is the Izbet Sartah Ostracon, also written left-to-right. But several of the Qeiyafa letters are still unidentified, and for others there are different opinions about their values. Even for those where there is agreement, there are some violent changes of letter stance within the text, which is more typical of earlier forms of this script but not of later (e.g. Izbet Sartah does not have the same variations in stance). My impression is that this would count against rather than for the idea that there was a widespread scribal culture: surely a guild of national scribes would regularize the letter shapes and stances?

(3) A text whose language, although North-West Semitic, is still undetermined. The key sequence of letters is the first five letters: אלתעש. This has plausibly been interpreted as Hebrew אל תעש, "do not do!" Among the NW Semitic languages, the verbal root עשה 'to do' is diagnostic of Hebrew (and its congeners, such as Moabite). Although HALOT gives a few other languages where the root may appear, in this location at this date, only Hebrew is a viable candidate, if the interpretation is correct.

However, the sequence may be interpreted otherwise, and I will come back to it. Other sequences that have been plausibly read are שפט, line 2, עבד, line 1, בעל, line 3, נקם, line 4, מלך, line 4, and possibly חרם, line 5. The roots give us no help for language identification, since all of them are attested throughout North-West Semitic (although נקם and שפט are less common in Aramaic). The lack of a clear text is a handicap, needless to say.

One key sequence is found at the end of line 4. Misgav et al. read the last few letters as יסד מלך גת, "YSD king of Gath," although the last letter is restored. Yardeni, however, reads it differently. Leaving the yod aside, the last five letters she reads as בדמלך. The letter she reads as bet Misgav et al. take as either samekh or ḥet. But the letter in question, although it does not look like the other bets of the text, does look like the bets of some other Old Canaanite texts. If Yardeni is correct, then this sequence is crucial, because בדמלך is a Phoenician name, Bōd-Milk, and the name element "Bod-" ("in the hand of") is not found in Hebrew.

If this is a Phoenician name, then we might explore, heuristically, whether the other readable sequences also suggest names. In line 1, we can take עבדא as Abda, a name attested in several Phoenician inscriptions (Benz 148), as is Bodmilk (Benz 75). The first three letters of line 2 are שפט and this can be taken as Shaphat, an extremely common Phoenician name (Benz 182-184). In Yardeni's reading, the sequence beginning line 3 is גרבעל which could be "Gerbaal," an attested Phoenician name (Benz 103). The letters נקמי in line 4, while not attested, could be a hypocoristic (shortened) form of a name with the verbal form naqam, "to avenge."

Finally, we may reconsider the form אלתעש in this light. The verbal root עוש has been identified in a number of Semitic names (including Biblical Yeush, Gen 36:5 and elsewhere). If the root does occur in the present sequence of letters, then we might take the letters אלת as the goddess Ilat; the name would mean "Ilat helps" or "Ilat, help!" Ilat is a component of some Phoenician names.

If the names are Phoenician, this might mean that the text is Phoenician, but it doesn't prove it. Phoenician names could be mentioned in a text of another language. But the text as a whole would have to be understood in a convincing way before this could be argued. Unfortunately, we are still far from understanding what kind of text the ostracon is overall.

(4) The most significant fact about the ostracon, in my view, is the date. If the dating of the level it was found in is correct – late 11th/early 10th century BCE – then the use of this Old Canaanite script is surprising. Within a century or less of the ostracon's writing, another inscription would be made in ancient Israel of a very different sort. I refer to the Tell Zayit abecedary, which dates at the latest to the late 10th century BCE. But unlike the Qeiyafa ostracon, the Tell Zayit text is written from right-to-left and already has many of the distinctive letter shapes that would characterize Hebrew inscriptions after that time. It is on the way to becoming the Hebrew national script. If any text by itself indicates the presence of a literate culture or scribal guild, it is not Qeiyafa, but Tell Zayit. The chronological gap between the two epigraphs is not very large, but the contrast is dramatic, and may indicate a correspondingly rapid dramatic change in the cultural situation in 10th century Judah. Was this change caused by the monarchy? That's too big a conclusion from this limited data, but the possibility is tantalizing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Misgav, H., Garfinkel, Y. and Ganor, S., "The Ostracon." In Garfinkel, Y. and Ganor, S., Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 1. Excavation Report 2007-2008 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2009), pp. 243-257; Yardeni, A. 2009. "Further Observations on the Ostracon." In Garfinkel, Y. and Ganor, S. Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 1. Excavation Report 2007-2008, pp. 259-260; Franz Benz, Personal Names in the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions (Rome, 1972).

Is Sin in Aramaic a Commercial Term?

I have not yet read Gary Anderson's Sin: A History, but Bruce Marshall, in discussing the book, attributes the following view to Anderson:

Before the Babylonian exile ... sin was sometimes described as a defiling stain but mainly as a burden to be borne. . . . Part of the reason all this changed after the Babylonian exile was linguistic. Aramaic became the primary tongue of the Persian Empire in which the Jewish people lived during the Second Temple period, and in Aramaic the language for religious transgression comes directly from the world of commerce. The word for a debt owed to a lender is the same as the word for a sin.

The Aramaic word that Anderson (or Marshall) refers to is ḥōb, which can indeed mean in many Aramaic dialects either a debt owed to a lender or a sin. However, this does not mean that Israel's view of sin changed because the nation adopted the Aramaic language.

1. The earliest occurrences of ḥōb in Aramaic sources – in this case, the Elephantine papyri – refer exclusively to commercial debt. The verbal/nominal root for "religious transgression" in the earliest sources is ḥṭʾ, as in Hebrew.

2. The single occurrence of ḥōb in the Hebrew Bible, in Ezek 18:7, also refers to commercial debt (apparently; the text is in some disorder). The post-exilic texts that Anderson (or Marshall) cite (Second Isaiah, Daniel) don't use the term (except Dan 1, which uses the verbal root metaphorically for "making something forfeit"). Therefore the Exile is not the key phase linguistically.

3. The use of the verbal root at Qumran does refer to religious transgression, but is not used very often either in Hebrew (CD 3:10, 4Q266, 4Q276 [?]) or in Aramaic (4Q534, 4Q537, 4Q550, 11QtgJob [2 or 3x]). (Note also the related word ḥōbā in 4Q162 [Hebrew] and 4Q534/4Q536, 4Q542 [Aramaic], which means guilt or obligation). The primary word in both languages is still ḥṭʾ (Hebrew and Aramaic), ʿwn (Hebrew), or pšʿ (Hebrew).

4. The great increase in the attested uses of ḥōb for "religious transgression" happens after the Second Temple period in both Hebrew (see the Mishnah) and in Aramaic (see Targum Onkelos). It is also used in these sources to refer to non-religious obligations or duties.

I infer from these facts that the Babylonian exiles did not encounter a form of Aramaic that used a commercial term for religious transgression, leading to a change in the concept of sin. Instead, the change in the concept of sin occurred first and then the commercial term was gradually adopted to express it. This may have happened to some degree in Second Temple Judaism, but the sources don't suggest a big terminological change at this time.

In fact, the idea of debt and sin are necessarily related, whether terms from commerce are used or not. Sin is necessarily understood as something prohibited; and, if it occurs, there is an obligation to seek a remedy (forgiveness or expiation) if one is available or undergo punishment if not. In any case, something is owed. The semantics of religious obligation are thus very close to the semantics of commercial debt; in both cases, a duty exists to make up for a lack that one is responsible for. It is not surprising or wrong that eventually the language of financial debt should eventually be adopted to express religious or moral obligation. But the idea that Aramaic facilitated this process is incorrect.

I'm not sure that the other conclusions Anderson (via Marshall) draws from this are warranted, but my concern in this post is to establish the philological facts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bruce D. Marshall, "Treasures in Heaven," First Things (January 2010, no. 199), pp. 23-26.

Sixth Annual Ralphies

The Ralphies. "Are they still around?" Yes, they are, VIrginia. And you get to read them.

Most of the year my mind was on my work, for a change, and therefore I kind of lost touch with the outside world – which, as far as I can tell, is not a bad thing. But still, no one can totally cut themselves off. So, without more ado, here are the awards for ...

Best TV Show: It's Lost, OK? Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost! Only one more year to go, and I expect it to be good. I also very much like Fringe, and Walter Bishop is my new role model.

Best Movie: Ummmmmm, didn't see many movies this year. I saw a couple of blockbusters – Harry Potter and (on DVD) Star Trek. Not bad, I guess, but not great. Am I getting too old for this fanboy stuff? Gee, I hope not. But the movie I liked best (although I think it dates to 2008) was Gran Torino.

Best Record: Oh gee, here's another category I've lost touch with. Most of what I hear is unsystematically gleaned from the radio, not from buying records or downloading tracks. Via the radio I have to admit I always tapped my toe, or some other appendage, whenever Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold" came on. Another guilty pleasure was John Mayer, whose "Gravity" I first heard on an episode of House, loved it, and then was red-faced when I found out it was the work of that poseur. But the Ralphie goes to the recordings of a Washington state bluegrass group, Molly & Tenbrooks. Highly recommended.

Best Non-FIction Book: I read a ton of stuff for work, but I don't know what to pick out of that stack for higher praise than anything else. So this will have to lie fallow this year.

Best Fiction Book: Not a lot of new stuff came through; this year, the pleasure reading mostly was confined to old favorites. In London I bought a paperback copy of Stephen King's Under the Dome, which reinforced my impression that, although King knows how to start a story, he doesn't know how to end one. No, the best fiction book I read, though it was not new, was The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown, by G. K. Chesterton, with notes by Martin Gardner. Although Gardner is not completely in sympathy with Chesterton's worldview, he does provide a lot of interesting information in his annotations.

Best Blog: I just wanted to tip my hat to a blog that everyone who is interested in Hebrew studies should read regularly, John Hobbins's Ancient Hebrew Poetry. I bet this guy preaches some interesting sermons.

OK, boys and girls! That's it for this year! Be very, very good and there will be more Ralphies in the years to come!