Sunday, December 31, 2017

Fourteenth Annual Ralphies

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It was the best of times, it was ... nope.  It was not the best of times. Only time will tell if A.D. 2017 was the worst, or simply the begi...
Tuesday, December 19, 2017

What is an Evangelical? (II)

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A long time ago, I wrote in this space about " What is an Evangelical ?" Reading it today, I am amazed at my own perspicacity, an...
Monday, December 19, 2016

Annual Ralphies: Lucky 13th

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My, what an inactive year for Ralph.  This reflects what an active year it was outside of Ralph.  The first half of the year was devoted to...
Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Twelfth Annual Ralphies

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It’s time for the Twelfth Annual Ralphies.  Once again, I can’t believe I’ve been blogging this long.  When I started, blogging was a cutti...
1 comment:
Sunday, August 23, 2015

A View of DFW From Israel: Assaf Gavron on David Foster Wallace

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I’ve been thinking about David Foster Wallace a lot lately -- catalyzed by the release of the movie End of the Tour , reading David Lipsky’...
Sunday, July 26, 2015

The grammar of "Dylan goes electric"

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As many have noted, this past week saw the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's famed electric set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, pre...
Friday, July 03, 2015

A Response to Kaufman's Review of DQA

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S. A. Kaufman has taken in hand to offer some critiques and corrections to my recently published Dictionary of Qumran Aramaic .  Some of h...
1 comment:
Saturday, December 27, 2014

Eleventh (!) Annual Ralphies

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It has been a quiet year for Ralph, as has become usual.  Because of things originally written in this space, I found myself co-featured in...
Monday, May 26, 2014

Chewing the Quail

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In Numbers 11, we have the story of God's miraculous provision of quail for the children of Israel, who were tired of eating manna all t...
Monday, March 10, 2014

You Won't Believe These Unbelievable Aramaic Expressions!!

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As an Aramaist, I'm always interested to see what people think about Aramaic, which seems to have become a symbol of different things ...
4 comments:
Sunday, December 29, 2013

2013 Ralphies: The Grumpy Edition

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No other year in recent memory has so much brought to mind Hemingway's 1923 couplet (originating as a parody of Ezra Pound): And in th...
3 comments:
Thursday, September 05, 2013

Levita Meets the Maronites

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One of the most interesting encounters in the history of Aramaic studies occurred in the course of the Fifth Lateran Council (1513-1515). Th...
Sunday, August 11, 2013

Reza Aslan's "Zealot": Poor

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I am usually glad to see a book about Jesus in the news. Even if the book is controversial or erroneous, it still might lead the curious to ...
2 comments:
Saturday, August 03, 2013

Wierzbicka on Jesus

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I've recently enjoyed reading Anna Wierzbicka's What Did Jesus Mean? (Oxford, 2001). I hadn't realized that Wierzbicka, who is ...