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In order to make paperback edition of the book (just released last month!) more attractive for course adaptation, I have prepared a modifiable (.docx) syllabus structured around the course.  It can be downloaded here or from this page, which also contains other resources that would facilitate using the book as a teaching resource.

Centrifugal force, entropy, call it what you will, but life has a way of drifting.  All those good habits and intentions slowly, subtly, but inexorably begin to crumble, like the masonry on my porch.  Three times a year I usually find enough energy and mental space to step back, take stock of the widening gap between what I set out for myself and where I am, and then recalibrate: the Jewish High Holidays; the secular New Year; and the end of the academic year.  This year, for a variety of reasons, I was unable to do this effectively in January and now at the end of May I find myself with a bigger gap, and a bit more work to do, than usual.

If you are reading this, you would know that one of the things that has fallen through the cracks much of this year has been updating this blog.  I doubt that you’ve lost any sleep over this, but I have felt the absence.  In part, this is because my posts here (at least the ones that are not self-promoting) are generated by original but not fully developed ideas that excite me, which in turn are generated by having some mental space to think them and at least some time to get them down in minimally presentable form.  Both have been in short supply this year but that is not really an excuse.  I enjoy writing for this blog and one of the reasons that I have not done as much as I would like is simply sloppiness and I let my daily routines dissolve in the wake of crises and deadlines.

I’ve been taking stock recently with the help of Mason Currey’s fun book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.  Umberto Eco’s reflection about not being “master of my own time – there is always somebody else deciding what I should do” (p. 119) during term-time resonates.  In the summer, though, academics have the incredible opportunity to be master of their own time and set to at least some degree a workable routine that enables creative thought.  I’ve long been attracted to Ernest Hemingway’s routine (without the suicidal depression): rise early; write until empty until around noon; answer correspondence; and use the rest of the day to engage in some physical activity and recharge (although I might not pick the same ways of doing so as Hemingway).  I aim, as I move more toward fashioning my summer routine, to build in weekly or bi-weekly times for updating this blog.

Finally, a housekeeping item.  A few reviews of How the Bible Became Holy have appeared that I do not think I’ve mentioned here.  In no particular order, they are (and apologies if I did not get them all and that some might be behind pay walls):

K.N. Dalton in Religion 45:2 (2015)

Chad Spigel in Review of Biblical Literature

Mark Smith in AJS Review 39:1 (2015): 164-167

James Rosenberg in the Jewish Voice and Herald May 22 (2015)

P. Davies in Theology 118:3 (May/June, 2015): 219-20 (I cannot figure out how to link to this, but the doi is 10.1177/0040571X14566762j)

 

Prophets, according to the Hebrew Bible, cannot really afford to be wrong.  Deuteronomy 18:20 in fact singles out accurate prediction of the future as a necessary characteristic of the future.  Yet several of the prophets of ancient Israel – the very ones preserved in the Hebrew Bible (not to mention what must be assumed to be scores more who did not make it that far) – in fact made such incorrect predictions.  Later interpreters throughout antiquity would assume the authority of these prophets and seek to reinterpret their predictions, but how did such prophecies, and prophets, gain authority to begin with?

I don’t have a complete answer to this problem, but I will be using the Book of Daniel (which of all books of the Hebrew Scripture might hold the prize for incorrect prophecies) as a test case to explore this problem in a conference paper that I will be giving in Edinburgh on May 6.  The conference title is “Power, Authority, and Canon,” and details can be found here.

Last semester I taught a graduate seminar on Race, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean (see here).  As a class project we began to compile a relevant bibliography and provide some minimal annotations.  That bibliography is on Zotero (as a public group) under the title RaceReligionEthnicityAntiquity (link here).  This is the first time I have done anything like this, so I invite you to add to, improve, or otherwise comment on it.