Abnormal Interests

May 8, 2008

Four Stone Hearth at 40

Four Stone Hearth, the anthropology blog carnival, is up at Remote Central. Tim Jones has done a great job. There's something for everyone. Give it a look. I normally check out Hot Cup of Joe every day but somehow I missed "Religion and the Imagination - Cue a John Lennon Song." Bringing missed posts to our attention is one of the functions of blog carnivals. It's hard to beat a post that combines John Lennon, neuroscience, Neanderthals and religion. Just imagine.

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Posted by Duane on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 7:06 AM (UTC-08:00)
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May 7, 2008

Problems Are on the Horizon

But what problems?

The last of the four missing Claremont Ras Shamra tablets that I have been discussing is RS 1957.2. I've waited so long to post on this tablet because I couldn't make up my mind on an important place name in line 5. How one reads this name is key to understanding this tablet. I'm still not sure how to read it but I thought, enough is enough. So, depending on how you see it; I settled on the best reading possible as supported by another likely related tablet; I ignored the few traces on the tablet that might point to something else (but what?); I succumbed to my own unwarranted understanding of the relationship between this tablet and another one; or just I got tired trying to figure it out and took a stab in the dark. A photo of a case of the obverse of RS 1957.2 is to the right. The actual tablet is brown. Here is my tentative reading of the text and my translation. The tablet was first publisher by Astour in Fisher, 1971.

[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]

Obverse
1) [a-na LUGA]L EN-ia
2) [qi-bi-ma um-ma ^md]UTU.LUGAL ÌR-ka
3) [a-na] GÌR.MEŠ EN-ia am-qut
------------------------------------
4) [an]-ni ^ma-gi₅-^dIM DUMU.KIN-ia
5) LÚ ˹^UR˺[^U] ˹ar-ma-na˺
6) it-t[i-ia] ù it-ti ^mta-te-ia
7) i-na ^URU˹ba-ṣi-ri˺ in-nam-mar
8) ù ṭe₄-ma ki-ia-am
9) ˹a-na pa˺-ni ^m˹ta-te-ia˺ iq-ta-bi
10) DUMU. MEŠ ^KUR[ X X ]-ka a-kán-na
11) [iq-bu a-na DUMU.MEŠ] ^URU[GEŠTIN(?)]-na

Reverse
1) [          ] UD
2) [          ] it-ti
3) [   ]it-˹ti˺ [          ]
4) it-ti ú?[          ]it-ri it-it
5) a-bi[          ]
6) ? [          ]šu
7) [          ] ˹qa˺ šu
8) [          ] na ka nu
9) [          ] ^dUTU X
10) [          ]UD^? ia

Left Edge
1) [      ^URU]na-ni-i
2) [      ^U]^RUni-i X
3) [          ] LUGAL

1) [To the kin]g, my lord
2) [say, thus says] Šapaš-milku, your servant:
3) [at] the feet of my lord I fall down.
------------------------------------
4) [N]ow Agi-Teššub, my messenger (or envoy),
5) a man of the city of Armāna (ʿrmy?),
6) met with me and with Tateya,
7) in the city of Baṣiri
8) and the following news
9) was reported in the presents of Tateya.
10) "The people of the land of [??]-ka have thus
11) [said to the people of the] city of [Yē]nā (?),

The reverse is basically unreadable but a couple of the place names on the left edge are interesting. I will discuss them below.

As you can see, just when the story gets interesting the tablet becomes harder and harder to read. But subject to all the concerns expressed in the boring notes below, I have an idea about how this tablet and another one provide the beginning and part of the ending of a story we otherwise know nothing about. The other tablet is RS 19.78. RS 19.78 is a legal document attesting that "the commander of a thousand and his sons are free from the hands of Agi-Teššub, the man of Armānu." Actually, Agi-Teššub frees the commander from some unspecified obligations under an oath. Our tablet, RS 1957.2, seems to indicate that Agi-Teššub knows of something bad that is about to happen in the Lower Mountains district of the Kingdom of Ugarit. On the basis of RS 19.78, Agi-Teššub may well be part of the plot but is keeping his options open by reporting to Šapaš-milku who then reports what he has heard to the king of Ugarit. Intrigue is in the air. The exact nature of that intrigue is hard to say. On the Assumption that RS 1957.2 and RS 19.78 are pieces in the same puzzle, it is hard to know which of them came first. My best guess is that RS 1957.2 was written before whatever the issue might have been came to a head and RS 19.78 was part of the resolution of that issue. But his is only a guess. I've already written on RS 19.78.

Notes on names and other abnormal things:

First, a note of the geography of the place names on this tablet: Two places with indisputable names on this tablet, Baṣiri and Nanu'u, can be located with reasonable certainty in what van Soldt, 98, calls Group 3: The Lower Mountains. This region is roughly equivalent to what Astour, 1981, 12, calls the North Western district and the most northern part of what he calls the Peidmont district of Ugarit. As will be seen in the notes below, I have given preference to identifying towns as being in this district when readings or locations are in dispute and one reasonable choose is van Soldt's Lower Mountains group 3 north and northeast of the city of Ugarit but west of Nahr Zegharo were it runs from north to south.

Ob 2. ^mdUTU.LUGAL, Šapaš-milku might be the scribe known in Ugaritic as špšmlk who worked during the reigns of Arḫalbu and Niqmepa. But as Astour, 1971, 24, points out, there was more than one person of that name. The text has an unusual spelling and a possible West Semitism that likely preclude this Šapaš-milku from being the famous scribe. By the way, while I doubt it, perhaps we should read this name Šapaš-šarru as if it were an East Semitic name rather than a West Semitic name.

Ob 4. ^ma-gi₅ -^dIM, "Agi-Teššub:" a person with a similar (same?) name is known from RS 17.340:3 and elsewhere to be the king of Ni'i. But see below. Ni'i may be is mentioned on the left edge of our tablet. But it's hard to believe this is Agi-Teššub king of Ni'i because he is called here DUMU.KIN-ia, mar šipri-ya, "my messenger." Agi-Teššub is a common Hurrian name, well known from all over the general area. I believe the more common spelling of this name at Ugarit was ^ma-gít-^dIM. An Agi-Teššub LÚ ^URUAr-ma-na written the same way as on our tablet appears in RS 19.78. RS 19.78 has the impression of Agi-Teššub's Hieroglyphic Hittite seal. The sign that I read as KIN, Astour, 1971, 24, reads as two signs ZU WA. And would have us understand the line "Now Agi-Teššub, brother of Zuwaya" He is correct that zuwa is an element in several Hittite names. But I think we are on firmer ground reading DUMU.KIN-ia, mar šipriya, "my messenger." See my tracing, imposed on the photograph on the left. I worked from the photograph but with reference to the cast. The wedges in the photograph to the right of the last wedge I traced are the first wedges in the indisputable IA sign. To be sure, the KIN sign is not perfectly formed but it is also on the curved right edge of the tablet. One might expect a LÚ determinative before DUMU but EA 45:19, a letter from Ammistramru, king of Ugarit, to the Pharaoh, also lacks the determinative in the same phrase. And while some examples like EA 45:19 and EA 47:12 use a phonetic determinative, ri, others like RS 19:70 do not.

Ob 5. LÚ ˹^UR˺[^U] ˹ar-ma-na˺, man of the city of Armana: As noted above Agi-Teššub LÚ ^URUAr-ma-na can be read on RS 19.78:11-12. While Astour, 1971, 25, is aware of this Agi-Teššub, he preferred to read the city name ^URUdu-˹un˺-na citing Mesopotamia and Anatolia possible identifications. I've discussed various problems this proposal earlier. However, after careful study of the cast and the published photograph, I believe Astour underrepresented the difficulty of the reading. Van Soldt, suggests that this name be understood as equivalent to the place whose name written in Ugaritic ʿrm(y/n), "ʿArmu." The -na in the Akkadian and the y or n in Ugaritic are likely gentilic. See, for example, ʿrmn in the phrase bn ʿrmn in KTU 4.93 II:13. While a Dunna is unknown in Syria, ʿArmu is in the same district as are the other cities mentioned on this tablet that can be identified with reasonable certainty. Astour reading what I read as DUMU.KIN-ia as DUMU zu-wa-ya, "brother of Zuwaya," in line 5, may have discouraged him from reading Armana here. For the sake of completeness, I should note that Huehnergard, 1987, 723, identified the URU˹ar˺-ma-na of RS 19.78 as Ḥarmānu to the south of Ugaritic about midway from Ugarit to Siyannu rather than in the Low Mountain area northwest of Ugarit. The real problem with my reading ˹^UR˺[^U] ˹ar-ma-na˺ is that the traces on the tablet do not clearly support it. But I don't see that they support Astour's reading either or any other coherent understanding for that matter. Your results may vary. RS 19.78 is a legal document attesting that "the commander of a thousand and his sons are free from the hands of Agi-Teššub, the man of Armānu." RS 19.78 is impressed with the hieroglyphic Hittite seal of Ag/kitešub.

Ob 6. Tateya, also mentioned line 9, is not otherwise known.

Ob 7. ^URU˹ba-ṣi-ri˺: the city of Baṣiri is very well documented in both Ugaritic and Akkadian texts from Ugarit. It is worth noting that is comes immediately after ʿArmu in the city lists KTU 4.610:16-17 (van Soldt's, 98, reading), 4.693:40-41, 4.621:3:4 and 9.338 (RS 92.2001). It is likely that the two towns were very near each other.

Ob. 8. The ṭe₄ in ṭe₄-ma ki-ia-am is somewhat unusually. The verb is usually written with ṭe, ṭè or ṭé at Ugarit. See Huehnergard, 1989, 372, 393.

Ob 10. Astour, 1971, 25, speculates that ^KUR[ X X ]-ka might be the land of Lâka known from Alalach. I would add to the speculation by suggesting either [ma-lu-]ka (see RS 17.150:8) or [na-ba-]ka (RS 17.150:35). Nothing excludes Nabaku from being in the Lower Mountains region of Ugarit but nothing requires that it be there either. We just don't know where it is. Malukku is likely in van Soldt's, 113, Group 8, south of Ugarit along the coast.

Ob. 11. [iq-bu a-na DUMU.MEŠ] ^URU[GEŠTIN(?)]-na: As Astour, 1971, 25, correctly points line 10 ends with akanna introducing direct speech, the reconstruction of iq-bu a-na is logically justified. See Astour's, 1971, 25, discussion of the syntactical anomaly. "One would except the predicative at the end." As he says, West Semitic interference may be in play. My reading ^URU[GEŠTIN(?)]-na, is an extrapolation that assumes that -na is a phonemic determinative following an ideogram. The only town commonly written this way is Yēnā, also in van Soldt's Lower Mountains region. Along with Yēnā (Yana), Astour, 1971, 25, also suggests Qaṭna, Pana, and Šamna. Of these, Šamna is also in the Lower Mountains region of the kingdom of Ugarit and has equal claim with Yēnā to be restored here.

Edge 1. ^URU]na-ni-i (Nanu'u) is a town in the Lower Mountains region. Based on the town list cited in the discussion of line 7, Nanu'u is very near ʿArmu and Baṣiri.

Edge 2. ^U]^RUni-i X: Astour, 1971, 26, reads this as the well known city Nii, likely on the boarder of the Kingdom of Ugarit in the Orontes Valley. But he seems to ignore the function of the final, difficult to read, sign that he indicates with an X. I've tried unsuccessfully to read something other than Nii. The broken sign may be the beginning of a UR sign that at Ugarit and elsewhere can stand for lig/k/q and there may have been room for one additional sign. It is tempting to read this last or next to last sign KA but the wedge traces do not support such a reading.

Final Remarks:

This badly broken letter brought news that some intrigue was brewing. Whatever it was, it was important enough to bring to the attention of the King of Ugarit. An interesting possibility based on an unusual spelling and a likely but somewhat ungrammatical reconstruction is that the scribe who drafted this letter was not in the same tradition as most of the scribes who served the city of Ugarit.

At some time, I should take up the two tablets from the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets that are not missing. As I've said, they are now part of the Martin Schøyen Collection. Both of these tablets inform two quite different but significant bodies of secondary literature. Both are abnormally interesting in very different ways. A good post on either will take a lot of work and neither obviously informs my own current research directions. So, it may be a while before I get around to them.

References:

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Posted by Duane on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at 7:07 PM (UTC-08:00)
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May 6, 2008

The Schøyen Collection for Sale

Over the last few weeks, I've written about three of the four missing tablets from Ugarit that were once housed at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont, California and known as the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets. I'll be doing a post on the fourth missing tablet very soon. This collection, no doubt looted for Ugarit, contained two other tablets that are not missing. They are in the Martin Schøyen Collection of manuscripts and other antiquities relating to writing. I've written about all this before. We now hear from Newsfinder that the Schøyen Collection is for sale. The preferred buyer is the Norwegian government for its National Library. There are many complications, some of which involve final ownership rights to a large group of Buddhist manuscripts removed from Afghanistan soon after the Taliban took over. But who should really control many of the other items in the collection including the two tablets from Ugarit?

In a statement, the Schoyen Library points out that the Buddhist manuscripts are the only ones that do not come from old collections, “but were acquired to prevent destruction, after requests from Buddhists and scholars.” The statement goes on to address the question of whether these manuscripts should be returned to Afghanistan, “after they have been published, and if peace, order, religious tolerance and safe conditions have been established in that country.” But after analyzing the history of Afghanistan, the Schoyen Library concludes that it is “not the right and safe home for these manuscripts in the future.” [Newsfinder, Emphasis added]

But exactly what is an "old collection" and is it even relevant? As a collection, the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets are no older than 1957, the year that, according to the official story, they looted from Ugarit. It is arguable that they didn't exist as a collection until 1970 when a consortium of academic institutions put together by Loren Fisher purchased them. And how about the five Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Schøyen Collection? Are they from a sufficiently "old collection" as to confuse ethical questions of ownership rights to looted antiquities?

Via PaleoJudaica and Evangelical Textual Criticism

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Posted by Duane on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 10:08 AM (UTC-08:00)
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May 5, 2008

The Toxicologist and Her Coronet

This time of year concerts at colleges come in bunches and bands, and choirs and orchestras too. During the semester, these concerts come at a rate of two or three a month but at the end of the semester and particularly at the end of the year, they come at the rate of several a week. Each group seeks to show off the fruits of its labor. Last night Shirley and I went to hear the Pomona College Band. The only down side was that the audience was small, not much larger than the band. Too bad! Wonderful music and free. A very high value. Like most concert band performances of this type, the program was extremely varied in content and style. It ranged from two Bach Chorales to a 2003 work, Sunday Scherzo, by Philip Sparke.

Even though it is hard to put Sousa's Washington Post March in second place to anything, I think we enjoyed the Sparke piece best of all. The program told us that Sparke wrote Sunday Scherzo for Sergeant Major Woodrow English, solo trumpeter and bugler for the United States Army Band. Sparke's desire was to "demonstrate both the lyrical and technical abilities of this outstanding player." In other words, the piece is extremely challenging. While we didn't hear Sergeant Major English last night, the Pomona band did have a guest cornetist who played the solo part.

Here's what the program (slightly edited) said about guest soloist, Christine Moore.

Christine Moore, PhD, grew up playing the cornet in the British brass band tradition . . . she has performed in Belgium, Holland, Germany, Luxembourg and Norway, predominantly with the Young Ambassadors and the Scottish Brass Band Champions, CWS Glasgow. She has played at the National Brass Band Championships in the Royal Albert Hall in London, England and at the European Band Championships in Cardiff, Wales. In 1989 Christine was the guest soloist with the Tokyo Brass Concorde and in 1990 performed with the Nagoya Directors Band at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan.

After moving to the USA she became Assistant Principal cornet with Prairie Brass, competing in the North American Brass Band Association contests for several years, and toured the United Kingdom with the North American Champion Band, Illinois Brass. She has played with the Pomona College Band since moving to Southern California in 2004.

Since music is only a hobby, Christine is currently the Vice President of Toxicology Research and Development for Immunalysis Corporation in Pomona. Dr. Moore has a Ph.D. in Forensic Toxicology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and is Board Certified in Toxicological Chemistry by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry (DABCC). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences; is currently President of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists and Vice-President of the Society of Hair Testing. She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Analytical Toxicology and has over 80 scientific publications.

So how did the forensic toxicologist do? It was a virtuosa performance. Wow, can that hair tester ever play the cornet.

When I read a biography like hers its hard to know how she spends her spare time.

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Posted by Duane on Monday, May 5, 2008 at 3:13 PM (UTC-08:00)
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May 4, 2008

On Being Educated

Jay Crisostomo at MU-PÀD-DA is both bemoaning and cerebrating the number of languages he thinks he "need(s) to control for (his) own eventual research." He comes up with 16 with another 10 that are on his wish list. This is a formidable challenge to both Jay and most the rest of us.

A number of years ago, I was discussing the definition of "educated" with a philosopher of my acquaintance. The real question was, "When is it okay to think of oneself as educated?" His short answer was, never. His longer answer, obviously from a western perspective, went something like this.

Before one could even begin to consider oneself educated one need be fluent, reading, writing and speaking, in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. One should be able to read and write Latin and Greek. One should be able to read Arabic and Mandrean with high comprehension. In addition, one should be able to read two other Indo-European languages and one other what he called "foreign," meaning non-Indo-European, language with ease. Then, one needs to understand and be able to explain mathematics through at least partial differential equations, assuming that things like statistics and probability, victor analysis, set theory and multi-dimensional geometry are prerequisites. And of course, one should be able to outline in considerable detail most contemporary scientific theories and the long history of all the major countries and regions in the world and recent history of all the current countries. To be sure, one needs to have read and have working recall of much of the world's great literature and a solid grounding in the arts and art history including music. Knowing some philosophy might be a good thing too.

The bottom line, in his view an educated person should be able to read with over 90% comprehension and be able to meaningfully critique anything written in any of the requisite languages on any subject.

Well, I know that this person, by his own standards, is not educated. I surely am not educated. But the person who made these formidable claims is a lot closer to being educated than I will ever be. And I know at least one person who is educated, or nearly so, by these standards. Frightening!

But there are other ways of getting at this issue. My teacher, Loren Fisher, told us that one of his teachers, it may have been Cyrus Gordon but I'm not sure, said that an educated person should read the equivalent of four books a week, a fat one and a skinny one in one's field and a fat one and a skinny one from outside one's field. One of these books should be in a language other than one's own. Loren may well have come close to this goal. He may still come close to this goal. I do not.

Finally, there is the story of a heated conversation between two great scholars. At one point, one says to the other, "You may speak thirty languages but the only thing scholarly about you is that you speak them all with an accent!"

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Posted by Duane on Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 1:28 PM (UTC-08:00)
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May 2, 2008

Isaiah 38:9-20: An Abnormal View

Warning: Please don't take this post too seriously. It is little more than a thought experiment. Like many things I do here, I am playing around with an idea. As such, you will see even more than my usual amount of equivocation. On the one hand, with a lot more work, this idea may prove fruitful. On the other hand, no amount of work may save this idea from being yet another example of the most natural form of fertilizer. Most likely, my bright idea will go nowhere because it may reflect a low probability solution to a severely underdetermined problem. While major parts of it are not really original to me and certain scholarly interests may be supportive, my abnormal idea is not well aligned with other current scholarly trajectories.

John Hobbins, of Ancient Hebrew Poetry fame, has a series on Isaiah 38:9-20. He uses this text primarily as a foil for a discussion of "Silent Emendations" in translations. He seeks to show where and how various translations deviate from the Masoretic Text (MT) and how well or poorly they document those deviations. Finally, he provides an example of how he thinks translations should do this. Some of the discussion in comments to a few of his posts has been rather acrimonious, particularly regarding John's efforts to defend certain aspects and uses of the ESV (English Standard Version) translation. So please read all of John's posts and the comments that follow them if you are interested in the details of this controversy. You may want to look at Iyov and Suzanne McCarthy's sites also. This discussion is significant and I do have an opinion on the general subject of translations but that opinion is not the subject of this post. The subject of this post is the genre of Isaiah 38:9-20 and some abnormally interesting implications of that genre. Also, to understand fully this, my current post, it will be necessary to read at least two of John's posts where he has done a lot of the heavy lifting some of which I purloin in what follows.

With that prolonged introduction, I'd like to suggest something abnormal. In it's most radical and likely irresponsible form my suggestion goes like this. A semiliterate King Hezekiah wrote Isaiah 38:10-20 himself and in his own hand. If the overwhelming force and pristine clarity of this statement doesn't convince you, perhaps a few more words will be of help.

First, I agree with John that the MT has more than a few problematic readings including a probable error in not reflecting an "archaic spelling," הַמְחַיֵּי, in verse 16 (within a letter string whose division into words was misunderstood) and a very high density of hapax legomenon and dis legomenon words and expressions and confused letters. It likely also uses עלי as a divine appellative. There are, of course, other texts in the Hebrew Bible that have many just plain weird things in them. But in these twelve verses, the density of weird things is unusually high. Some of John's emendations are supportive of my modest proposal; others, while understandable enough on their own, may not help in the recovery of the earliest stratum of the textual tradition. See my sixth point below.

Second, the genre of Isaiah 38:10-20 is a vow and not necessarily a prayer; or perhaps better, not only a prayer. John's genre definition is a little longer, "not prayer per se, but the account of a prayer and of an answer to the prayer, and of a commitment to praise God forever in response to divine healing." That sounds like a vow to me. And I agree that if we start with Isaiah 38:9 it is an account of a vow, specifically the vow that follows in verses 10-20. On verses 10-20 being a vow: see particularly verse 20, "The Lord is ready to save me, and my songs we will sing all the days of our lives before the temple of the Lord." I use John's "straight-up translation of" this verse in the "MT warts and all." The vow seems to begin with a lament followed by a plea for help and finally a promise. The vow is addressed to Yahweh and is in the first person. See for comparison the vow in Jonah 2:2-10. Here in the Jonah's vow, also addressed to Yahweh in the first person, the elements of lament and plea are more entangled than they are in Isaiah 38:10-20. In addition, compare Psalms 56, 57, 58, and 59. All are vows with a heading that tells us that they are written (מכתם) and three of them command us not to destroy (the text? the stele?). Because of the command not to destroy, all appear to have been written for a public audience and in a place where they might be destroyed. See Altaman, 71-72, for an interesting example of an inscription from Carthage that seeks to impost a fine for destroying or removing the inscription. Psalm 16, like Psalms 56, 57, 58, 59 and 60, is also called a מכתם. I think Psalm 16 and 60 both contain enough elements of a vow to be identified with that genre also. Following Altman, 48, passim and table 1, I take Isaiah 38:10-20 to be a type 1 ("a prayer for aid of some sort"), private, inscribed on something we know not what, commemorative vow. In commemoration of Hezekiah's (impending) recovery from sickness, "we will sing all the days of our lives before the temple of the Lord."

Third, Altman, 44 and elsewhere, argues, that the person making a written vow must write it in their own hand. The Siloam Tunnel Inscription provides an example of a dedicatory-victory vow, in this case written in the hand of an educated and literate person, not a scribe, but perhaps the project engineer. It may be significant for the topic of this post that the Siloam Tunnel Inscription is from the time of Hezekiah.

Fourth, the likely use of the divine name עלי and the use of the equally likely archaic form, הַמְחַיֵּי, point to a pre-exilic composition.

Fifth, the idea that Isaiah 38:10-20 and other "Psalms and Inscriptions of Petition and Acknowledgment" were public documents, even stelae, goes back to at least H. L. Ginsberg's 1945 paper. As Zevit, 356, points out, Ginsberg made his suggestion well before the discovery of inscriptions like those found at Khirbet el-Qôm and elsewhere. The first line of 8th/7th century BCE el-Qôm 3 tomb inscription is instructive: עריהו העשר כתבה, which Zevit, 361, renders, "Uryahu, the prosperous, his inscription (or an inscription)" but Zevit admits that the syntax is strange and other interpretations are possible. What is not possible is to read this line as other than a reference to the writing that follows it. And that text is a vow of the dedicatory memorial sub-genre. The hand of the inscription is, how to say it politely, not that of a trained scribe. There remains controversy about literacy among the ruling class even in places where there is considerable evidence for it. For example, on the question of the literacy of Ashurbanipal, see the recent paper by Alasdair Livingstone referenced below. You may remember that I tentatively suggested the possibility that a King of Ugarit wrote his own vow. Schniedewind's review article, also referenced below, provides a good survey of fairly recent discussion of literacy of in ancient Israel and Judah. However, there can no longer be any real doubt that by Hezekiah's time certain professionals and some military officers could both read and write.

Sixth, it may be better to consider several of the difficult readings in the MT as pointing to the work of a semiliterate rather than a learned scribe or even a literate professional whose words became garbled in transmission. I would propose that where John sees "א/נ confusion," " י/ו confusion," " פ/ב confusion", "aural errors," and perhaps even metathesis, one might see the hand of a semiliterate and not some later textual tradition (yeah, everything but the " י/ו confusion," is reaching for it). (I'm not so sure about "ו/פ confusion," "כ/ד confusion." If this happened, it likely happened in postexilic times or later.) Who might that semiliterate be? Well given that this text is a vow; contains some archaic forms and words; that the introduction says, "An inscription of Hezekiah, king of Judah," and there is some evidence that professionals did write and that even kings may have been able to write, it might just be none other than Hezekiah himself who wrote Isaiah 38:10-20. Is there any other evidence that Hezekiah might have been semiliterate? None that I know of, but if one is not willing to proclaim him fully literate and one thinks he may have written Isaiah 38:10-20 then semiliterate is a kind of compromise however lame. A couple of the "textual errors" mentioned above may support the validly of this compromise but then they may not.

Some might think I have just presented a circular argument. I prefer to look at it as a bootstrapping argument.

Oh, I just noticed that Professor Definitive Text Critic has been looking over my shoulder. He now humbly expresses his learned opinion of my discussion so far. "You're nuts! John's readings for Isaiah 38:10-20 are all obviously correct, well supported and only a complete fool would doubt any of them. And only a bigger fool would try to use strange, archaic and unusual forms to support the idea of semiliterate authorship. You can't just go picking and choosing which of John's reading you like and which you don't like on the basis of some cock and bull hypothesis. And who says Hezekiah could write even a little anyway."

"Okay, Okay," I say, "you're the professor and I trust your judgment about Isaiah 38:10-20. But can I have my way with Isaiah 38:9?"

Definitive, we're now on a first name basis, rolls his eyes upward and sarcastically answers, "Why should I?"

Well, even if we assume that John is correct in all his proposed readings for Isaiah 38:10-20, we still have a vow. It's just that we have a vow written by a literate person that got somewhat screwed up in the course of transmission. It's not as clear in John's "fully footnoted translation" as it is in his emended Hebrew text that this is a vow. But it is. And whoever wrote Isaiah 38:9 knew that vows were written in the hand of the person making the vow. So in keeping with that knowledge some editor wrote מִכְתָּב לְחִזְקִיָּהוּ, "a writing of Hezekiah . . ." Sure, he may have placed the vow on Hezekiah's quill (or stylus) for theological or other reasons but that editor knew to associate Isaiah 38:10-20 with a literary, meaning written and likely public, genre. And if not the "first" editor, someone early in the tradition knew a thing or two about vows.

So, my abnormal reader, what do I think of this sketch of an abnormal interpretation of the text? Here is my own evaluation. My argument is weak and must be bolstered (or discredited) by a very detailed discussion of, among other things, the specific indications that the MT reflects here and perhaps elsewhere the work of semiliterates. A special, text based, as opposed to a primarily orthography based, methodology is needed for this chore. Even if one agrees with me that Isaiah 38:10-20 is a vow and the work of a semiliterate or just a vow, it is only in the introductory verse, verse 9, that we learn that the vow is both a written document and attributed to Hezekiah. As such, an editor may have misattributed the vow to Hezekiah. With the number and nature of underdetermined problems that the very text of Isaiah 38:9-20 presents, no understanding may be able to claim even a 50% probability of representing what early editors, readers or copyists of the text thought of it. So, I make no claim for the likelihood of my modest proposal reflecting anything but my own abnormal interests.

Reference:

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Posted by Duane on Friday, May 2, 2008 at 8:46 PM (UTC-08:00)
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May 1, 2008

Biblical Studies Carnivals 29 is Up

At 12:01 AM on May 1, and no later, Jim West posted the May, 2008, Biblical Studies Carnival. It is one of the best so far. Academic study of the Bible is a growing enterprise in the blogosphere and the listosphere too. Jim has done a great job capturing the highlights and a few of the lowlights of last month's activity.

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Posted by Duane on Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 8:30 AM (UTC-08:00)
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April 30, 2008

Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Oh, My!

Get over to MU-PÀD-DA and check out Jay Crisostomo's relatively new blog. He tells us that MU-PÀD-DA is Sumerian connoting "called by name." And his sub-heading reads,

chosen . . . for something . . .
thoughts on life and family in graduate studies
Assyriology, Semitics, Linguistics . . .

He says we are wrong if we read too much into the title of the blog but he likes it and thinks it is "a reminder that there's a reason for the madness I put myself and my family through" even if he isn't quite sure what that reason is.

One can also read MU-PÀD-DA ideographically in Akkadian. In which case, it stands for zakār šumu/i and means "(good) reputation," or "fame" as well as being an invocation of a deity. If Jay continues as he has started, he will certainly have a good reputation if not fame. However, I'm not so sure that the gods will show up.

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Posted by Duane on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 7:47 PM (UTC-08:00)
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April 29, 2008

The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Online

Excepting Volume 20, U/W which is in preparation, the complete set of The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (aka The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, CAD) is online, ready to download and free. I take this as a very good thing. But I am not without worries.

While I dabble in Assyriology and try to make sense of Akkadian texts, I am far from an assyriologist. In addition, I'm a little lazy. So if I run across an Akkadian word or phrase I don't understand, and this happens often, I tend to look in Black, George and Postgate's A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. I can reach it without getting out of my chair. If Black et al doesn't satisfy me or, as is often the case, I'd like to see some context or further discussion, I take four or five steps and look at von Soden's Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Up until this morning, if I wanted to learn more or something else about an Akkadian word that didn't begin with the four or five letters of volumes already online, I got in my car and drove a mile of so to the library to look at the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Now I am afraid that I will just stop looking at von Soden. von Soden's dictionary is, as you might guess, in German, a language that often induces obnoxious bouts of involuntary swearing. Seeking to live an upright life, I naturally avoid undue exposure to such risks. But there is another risk in not looking at von Soden. Akkadisches Handwörterbuch often has things that the CAD does not. A couple examples where one should look at both major references and perhaps further are the Akkadian words pillû/billû and šalāṭu II. But there are many examples where these two wonderful tools differ in abnormally interesting ways.

Some may wonder if checking two, occasionally conflicting, tools is a little like the problem faced by the man who has two watches. He's never sure what time it is. But no, an amateur not being sure, when professionals disagree is a good thing.

Pete Bekins at balshanut concisely describes the technology of the online version and one of the main issues.

The volumes are in PDF format and all but the newest are scanned images with a hidden OCR-ed text that allows searching. It is unfortunate that the dictionary will not move the next step to become a true electronic dictionary.

I think what he means by "will not move" is "has no plans or funding to move" and that is indeed unfortunate. But still its very good to be able to access the CAD without getting out of my chair. And because I will likely now go to it ahead of von Soden the overall moral environment of our abnormal household may well improve.

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Posted by Duane on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 1:04 PM (UTC-08:00)
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April 28, 2008

Who Are These People?

And why are they on this list?

I've been tagged by John Hobbins to play a little game with The Top 100 Public Intellectuals as published by Foreign Policy. I view this as a snobbish game but then I'm a kind of a snob about certain things.

It does seem that John has too much time on his hands. Otherwise, his list of public intellectuals he could carry on a conversation with based on things he has read by them wouldn't have been so long. Mine is much shorter.

Al Gore, Alexander de Waal, Ann Applebaum, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Barenboim, Daniel Dennett, Fareed Zakaria, Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Jürgen Habermas, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Peter Singer, Pope Benedict XVI, Richard Dawkins, Salman Rushdee, Sari Nusseibeh, Steven Pinker, Umberto Eco

Yes, I have heard of a some of the others and have even read a few of their works but, to my shame (and relief), I can't remember anything that they said.

Regarding those I have spoken with in person or corresponded with: Because John didn't specify the extent of that contact my list is slightly longer than his.

Al Gore, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker

I do doubt any of them would remember these encounters. I met and chatted very briefly with Al Core at a telecommunications conference when we were both Vice Presidents. He was Vice President of the United States and I was Vice President of Advanced Product Marketing working on the fringes of the telecommunications industry. It was more than a handshake but only a little more. He actually appeared very interested in the issues of common air interface for wireless communications that we were discussing at our table and was knowledgeable enough to ask a fairly technical question or two. I was seated at a front row table and he made the rounds. How I came to be seated at a front row table is another story and not a particularly flattering one. After dinner, Gore spoke on his views of the future telecommunications: good speech, well received by the techies in the audience but he didn't invent the internet, at least not that night. Since then Gore (or his staff) and I have exchanged emails a couple of times on various subjects. These email exchanges do not include the spam that Gore and many politicians send out on a fairly regular basis. The other four "public intellectuals" I spoke with briefly at various presentations they gave. I also had a follow up exchange with Diamond.

Regarding those "authors any self-respecting intellectual must read if she hasn’t already:" In this day of specialization even among intellectuals, it is really hard to say whom I would choose. But I think Jared Diamond and Noam Chomsky paint with the broadest brush.

While the list is dynamic in that a poll is underway, there were too significant disappointments in the list when I prepared this post. First, it had an overabundance of intellectuals who focus on politics. But, considering the source that isn't too suppressing. Second, the list lacked any physicists, cosmologists, or mathematicians. I believe that anyone who would aspire to the company of those on any list of 100 intellectuals should be familiar with the work of Neil deGrasse Tyson (and not just his popular works although I admit they make up most of his work these days) and John Allen Paulos. Real intellectuals may well think of better choices to represent cosmology and mathematics. But, not being a real intellectual, I can't.

Since no one has ticked me off enough lately to earn being tagged with this game, I will pass on the opportunity.

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Posted by Duane on Monday, April 28, 2008 at 7:57 AM (UTC-08:00)
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