panic . . .

There is a glaring difference between a good teacher and a not-so-good teacher . . . and I am unfortunately in a desperate situation regarding the latter.

I am now through two weeks of a three week course . . . and I have no idea what the course is about, because I don't comprehend the theory that is the bloody title of the course! So I ask, how is one supposed to write a paper (in less than a week) utilizing a theory that one does not understand? I'm about to find out . . .

And in case anyone's wondering whether it's just my own stupidity, I asked my wife to read the introductory chapter of this professor's book on this theory with the hope that she could then explain it to me . . . my wife (who is monumentally smarter than I, especially when it comes to things of a more psychological, philosophical nature) also could not understand the concept. In addition, I am rather familiar with the glazed-over expression on some of the other students' faces . . .

cibh . . .

Several months ago, I posted on Brian Webster's Cambridge Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. After seemingly endless delays, it has finally been published (received my copy a few days ago). Rob Kashow provides a nice review of the grammar from the perspective of a student who has actually used it.

And as a bit of comment on Rob's post, perhaps negative thought on the complex learning of syllable structure in only the second chapter had more to do with Rob's own experience with it and the failure of his teacher to properly communicate it (and trust me when I say that said teacher cannot possibly be offended at that comment) . . . on the other hand, maybe Rob was being completely objective on the point . . .

UPDATE: Daniel and Tonya did an interview with Brian over at their blog and allow him to explain his approach in his own words. It's definitely worth checking out. Be sure to follow their links to several other reviews of the grammar/TekScroll . . .

influenced . . .

Jim Spinti has tagged me to list the 5 primary sources most influential on my scholarship meme (started by Kevin Scull). The meme has the following caveats:

1.) List the 5 primary sources that have most affected your scholarship, thoughts about antiquity, and/or understanding of the NT/OT.

2.) Books from the Bible are off limits unless you really want to list one, I certainly will not chastise you for it.

3.) Finally, choose individual works if you can. This will be more interesting than listing the entire corpus of Cicero as one of your choices.

I'd honestly have a very difficult time listing "individual works" rather than corpi . . . for the most part, I work with large bodies of texts . . . I can't very well list, say, YBC 09862 . . . that's just one small piece of a larger collection . . . but if I can, I certainly will.

1. The corpus of lamentations out of CLAM (Canonical Lamentations of Ancient Mesopotamia . . . a collection of balaĝ laments), Sumerian Hymnology: The Eršemma, and the 5 primary City Laments (Ur, Sumer and Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Nippur). This was my first extended foray into Sumerian literature and what cemented my desire to work in Assyriology.
   
2. The collection of Inana-Dumuzi songs in Love Songs in Sumerian Literature. This was actually my first major attempt at reading Sumerian literature for a research purpose. I was doing an analysis of a particular metaphor (love like alcoholic drink) in ANE love songs and was most engrossed with these songs of the shepherd and the woman/goddess he woos (of course, I got even more of the Inana-Dumuzi story once I started reading the eršemmas).
3. Schooldays . . . I first read this in Sam Kramer's History Begins at Sumer . . . I think it's one of the very first texts he discusses. I realize that book is woefully outdated and written for a broader audience, but when I read it, I was that broader audience . . . I was a student of the Hebrew Bible trying to dip into the wider cultural milleau . . . reading Kramer's book made me want to learn more about Sumer and Mesopotamia in general. This text was the hook that I remember. Even more, it gave me a nice glimpse into scribal education (or at least one view on it) . . . an interest which has yet to leave me.
4. The Tetrad . . . of the works on this list, this is the one I've worked on the latest. The Tetrad--Lipit-Ishtar B, Iddin-Dagan B, Enlil-Bani A, Nisaba A--was a scribe's first exposure to literary texts (following the phase of elementary education including lexical lists, sign lists, proverbs, and model contracts). These four hymns have a wonderful myriad of grammatical forms and constructions utilized in educating Akkadian-speaking scribes in Sumerian grammar . . . they're pretty useful for English(and other modern languages)-speaking students as well.
5. The corpus of legal texts from Hellenistic Uruk (found on HBTIN) . . . I'll admit it's strange that I would count this on this list (after all, I thought that Mesopotamian history stops at 330 BCE . . . [at least according to most major history books]). However, prior to my exposure to these texts, my research was almost exclusively linguistic and literary in nature . . . never really historical. Moreover, I've always loathed reading legal texts (for reasons related to my noted research interests). But being a part of this project has made me appreciate the value of administrative texts for historical reconstruction as well as the use and craftsmanship of seals. Furthermore, it's working on these texts that's shown me the value of computational linguistics on a particular corpus. Yes, it's still somewhat painful to read about prebend sales or quitclaims, but now that I actually perceive value . . .

There are several others that I really wanted to put on this list, so these quick notes are bonuses: Ba'al Cycle (you mean Yahweh isn't the only god who does this stuff?), Laws of Hammurapi (where I cut my Akkadian teeth), Enuma Elish (where I sharpened my Akkadian teeth and converted to Mardukism . . . ), ŠÀ.ZI.GA incantations (how can you not like ancient Viagra?), OB Izbu (divination isn't all about the inner eye and reading tea leaves . . . after reading Izbu, I actually found I loved omens), Amarna letters (cheers for West Semitic Akkadian!), Nanše and the Birds (er . . . actually listing this would just be for sucking up . . . I've never actually read the whole text), Psalms and Lamentations (my two favorite biblical books for many many reasons), Ammon Citadel inscription (I'm not sure why, but I really enjoyed this text), Curse of Agade (there's nothing like finding someone to blame for a fall from power), 1Q Pesher Hab, 1QM (War Scroll), and I've never read a letter from any ANE culture or period I didn't like (er . . . nevermind . . . some of the OB letters in UCP 9 are a major pain . . . but only because they're a mess . . . for the most part they're fascinating).

And to prove I don't only read stuff from the ANE, First Enoch (the first non-canonical [depending on one's tradition, I suppose] biblical text I ever read . . . and a thrillride to boot), Judith, The Illiad, Thucydides, The Aeneid, Augustine's Confessions and City of God, Martyrdom of Ignatius, Against Heresies, Caesar's Gallic Wars, and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

dccmt . . .

I didn't mention it in my previous post on maths (I was waiting for it to appear on the CDL portal), but the Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Mathematical Texts is now open for viewing. Beyond the texts themselves, Robson has a nice summary of Metrology (including charts) . . . this may mean I don't have to carry a copy of Powell's "Masse und Gewichte" RlA article or Huehnergard's summary with me anymore . . .

poetic . . .

It's been a while since I've posted anything on Hebrew, but I thought I'd return to the subject in order to discuss an issue I've been thinking about lately regarding the syntax of Hebrew poetry (as opposed to narrative).

Now to begin, this entire question is built upon the acceptance of the theory that biblical Hebrew poetry and direct speech are syntactically comparable as opposed to narrative. Most obviously, word order in narrative is typically VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) whereas in speech and poetry it is typically SVO.

A second assumption driving this question is that VSO is the unmarked word order for Hebrew. All Semitic languages other than Akkadian and Amharic appear to be VSO languages. Akkadian and Amharic are SOV languages due to the interference of other languages (Sumerian and Cushitic languages respectively).

My question then is what drives this similarity? Typologically, poetic language is a high literary language with its own unique characteristics and grammatical rules including variation in syntax, rhythm, and vocabulary. Speech, of course, is normally highly informal, often "breaking" "formal" grammatical "rules." Thus, in most languages, poetic language is heavily differentiated from speech.

Why then is the most informal of discourses very similar to a highly formal discourse in biblical Hebrew? As near as I can tell (which is difficult given the nature of the evidence), this similarity is unique to Hebrew among the Semitic languages.

I've already discussed this at length with a friend of mine who does a lot of work in Hebrew poetry and linguistics, and she's given me her working idea. I also know that this issue has been discussed in a very few places (though I can't say I've actually read them all). However, I'd like to put this out there for broader discussion to hear your thoughts on the issue.

Also, be sure to read Peter Bekins's ongoing series of posts on the verb in BH poetry as a review of Alviero Niccacci's work on the BH verb.

maths . . .

For some reason, I've never liked maths. Never. In fact, the last time I had a course in maths was my junior year of high school. I refreshed myself for the GRE, but did so very unwillingly. Most of the time I feel that I would rather have my wisdom teeth pulled again than do maths. One of the reasons I'm in the humanities is because I can't do equations and algorithms or what not . . . and most importantly, it's not required that I do any sort of math . . .

Yet, my research future has apparently decided that it is imperative that I pick up a bit of advanced math in order to do statistics and a bit of computer science and programming (for linguistics research, corpus linguistics, natural language processing, etc.) . . . my high school teacher is probably giggling evilly (how one can giggle evilly, I'm not too sure . . . ).
EDIT: Check out Duane's post on the importance of statistics in everyday life. Please also note my comment there . . . I suppose it's not clear here that I think maths are important . . . it's merely an area that I've chosen to avoid till now to save myself the migraines of a discipline I, frankly, don't understand and often don't like.

Of course, complicated equations and algorithms are nothing new. Mathematical tablets look about as foreign to a cuneiformist as calculus does to the average English reader. So, again, math comes back into my research as a part of the advanced scribal curriculum.

If maths are your thing, check out Eleanor Robson's (one of the if not the foremost scholar on Mesopotamian mathematics) faculty page where she has several articles available for download.

bilinguals . . .

I've come across an interesting thought regarding specializations and the unfolding of modern education in certain fields. It occurs to me that there are certain areas of the ancient humanities in which given two related subfields of a discipline, one requires more language work than another.

Allow me to elaborate. Assyriology is often divided into two different areas of expertise: Sumerologists and Akkadologists (or rather, those who work more with one of these two languages than another). What occurs to me, however, is that those who focus more on Sumerian are required to be just as competent in Akkadian, but those who focus more on Akkadian need not have much competence in Sumerian. Those whose work on Akkadian texts typically need only take a year or two of Sumerian (if that) whereas those who work on Sumerian texts must have several years of Akkadian, often more than Sumerian. For example, Chris Woods, Assoc. Professor of Sumerology at Chicago talks about how until recently he was more comfortable in Akkadian than Sumerian. (In my own case, my Akkadian and Sumerian . . . and also my Hebrew . . . are equally bad).

This same process typically holds true for biblicists who specialize in Hebrew Bible (especially, but not exclusively, in the Christian tradition): typically, these scholars have just as much, if not more training in Greek than in Hebrew. Aramaicists often have more training in Hebrew than Aramaic (despite Aramaic having a much larger corpus). On a sidenote (and if you know better, please correct me if I'm wrong), this does not seem to hold true for Classical studies--a Classicist is knowledgeable of Latin or Greek regardless of her own specialization and one does not necessarily supercede the other.

Now this is not to say that Sumerologists are better or even more specialized than Akkadologists or Hebrew biblicists than New Testamentologists (I realize I'm making up terms now . . .) or Aramaicists than Hebraists. Obviously, the latters in these lists receive more extensive training in their own languages and areas. However, it is true that the formers more often comment on the latters' works than vice versa. I just find it an interesting commentary on our modern approaches to these disciplines of ancient humanities that one subfield essentially requires a more general character than its sister subfield. Obviously in each of these cases there is good reason for the multiplication of work: for Sumerologists, much of our understanding of Sumerian is due to Akkadian; for Hebrew biblicists, Greek is essential for studying the LXX; for Aramaicists, the Hebrew Bible is often the venue through which one embarks on Aramaic studies.

Once again, this is not to say that those who must learn multiple languages are better scholars or anything of that nature. This is merely an observation brought out for thought and perhaps discussion.

midway . . .

I'm sitting in the terminal at Midway airport in Chicago on my way to Philadelphia. As promised, since I'm in the neighborhood, shout out to my peeps at U of C.