Programme

St Hilda’s College, Oxford
21st–24th July 2014, followed by a one-day conference on 24th July
Under the presidency of Professor John Day

Printable Version of the SOTS programme
The Booking form for the SOTS meeting
Travel information and directions to St. Hilda’s College

The venue for all sessions is the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford, OX4 1DY.
Publishers are invited to display books for sale during the Meeting.
Members who have had books published recently are also invited to display copies.

MONDAY 21st JULY

[2.00 p.m. Committee Meeting]
4.30 p.m. Registration
6.00 p.m. Reception sponsored by Oxford University Press
6.45 p.m. Dinner
8.15 p.m. Professor John J. Collins (Yale) “Torah and Jewish Identity in the Second Temple Period”

TUESDAY 22nd JULY

8.00 a.m. Breakfast
9.15 a.m. Professor Kevin Cathcart (Dublin) “‘The Rainbringers’: Weather-God Imagery in the Psalms and Semitic Inscriptions”
10.00 a.m. Dr Helen Jacobus (London) “Noah’s Flood Calendar (Gen 7.10-8.19) in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q252 and 4Q254a)”
10.45 a.m. Coffee
11.15 a.m. Dr Alison Gray (Cambridge) “Psalm 144: A New Song?”
12.00 noon Dr Charlie Hadjiev (Belfast) “The Bad King, the Good liar, and the Dead Man of God: Role models for the exilic readership of 1 Kings 13”
1.00 p.m. Lunch
2.00 p.m. OUTING to Ashmolean Museum
4.30 pm President’s Tea (in the Ashmolean rooftop restaurant)
7.00 p.m. Dinner
8.15 p.m. Professor Anthony Frendo (Malta) “Burning Issues: mlk revisited”

WEDNESDAY 23rd JULY

8.00 a.m. Breakfast
9.15 a.m. Professor Hugh Williamson (Oxford) “In the Shadow of S. R. Driver: A Centennial Appreciation”
10.00 a.m. Dr Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (Aberdeen) “Zechariah 1-6: Between Redaction Criticism and Form Criticism”
10.45 a.m. Coffee
11.15 a.m. Dr Hywel Clifford (Oxford) “Biblical Monotheism and Early Greek Philosophy”
12.00 noon Business Meeting (Members only)
1.00 p.m. Lunch, followed by departure
2.30 pm Workshop for PhD students
4.00 pm Tea
4.30 pm Professor Johannes de Moor (Kampen) / Dr Marjo Korpel (Utrecht) “Adam, Eve and the Devil: A New Beginning”
6.45 pm Dinner
8.15 pm Professor Ronald Hendel (Berkeley) “Toward a Plural Poetics of Genesis: Style, Source, and Intertextuality”

THURSDAY 24th JULY
8.00 a.m. Breakfast

On July 24th a special day conference took place in honour of John Day at the Simpkins Lee Lecture Theatre, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

THURSDAY 24^th JULY 2014

8.00 am   Breakfast  [for SOTS delegates only, at St Hilda’s College]
9.30 am    Introduction – Dr Stuart Weeks
9.45 am    Professor John Barton (Oxford), “Rational Obedience to God in the Old Testament”
10.30 am    Coffee / Tea
11.00 am    Dr Adam Carlill (Reading), “Snakes and Ladders: Step changes in Isaiah’s saraph oracles”
11.45 am    Dr Stuart Weeks (Durham), “Human and Divine, in Genesis and the Wisdom Literature”
12.45 am    Lunch
2.00 pm    Professor Hugh Williamson (Oxford), “Who Spent the Night at Geba? The who, what, when, and where of Isaiah 10:27–32”
2.45 pm    Dr Molly Zahn (University of Kansas), “Scribal Exegesis in the Second Temple Period: Not just for biblical texts!”
3.30 pm    Coffee / Tea
4.00 pm    Professor Graham Davies (Cambridge), “The Passover as the New Year Festival in P”
4.45 pm    Conclusion – Professor John Barton, followed by departure

Domestic Arrangements

The venue for the Meeting is the Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Cowley Place, Oxford, OX4 1DY and the telephone number for the Conference Office is 01865 276888. Please refer to the enclosed map for information on how to get to the College and possible parking locations. There are only 5 parking places available on site and they will be allocated to those most in need. Please indicate on the booking form if you would like to be considered for one of these. Please use public transport if you are able.

The charges for hospitality are shown on the enclosed Booking Form. Members are requested to pay their accounts in full when returning the form but, if necessary, a non-returnable booking fee of £30 will be accepted and the balance will be payable on arrival at the Meeting. A discounted price is available to those whose bookings are received by Thursday 29th May 2014 (please see the details on the form). There is a subsidised price for those on low incomes or from economically disadvantaged countries. All bookings must be received by Thursday 26th June 2014; no bookings can be accepted after that date. Bookings can be made by email to sotshospitality@gmail.com with cheques to follow by post. Please note that in making a booking, members render themselves liable for payment of the full cost of that booking, a liability that will be waived only in the light of extenuating circumstances and only when the final conference accounts permit a refund. You may wish to consider taking out insurance on your booking (or check that your annual travel insurance is applicable) to cover the possibility of you having to cancel your booking. You are advised to make a copy of your completed Booking Form for your own records.

Members wishing to attend the Meeting should send the enclosed Booking Form to the Hospitality Secretary, Mr James Patrick, Mansfield College, Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TF (email: sotshospitality@gmail.com) so as to arrive by 29th May 2014 (for the discount price) or at the latest by 26th June 2014.

Correspondence concerning the affairs of the Society should be sent to the Secretary, Dr Hilary Marlow, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, West Road, Cambridge CB3 9BS (tel. 01223 741281, email hm309@cam.ac.uk). Applications for a Conference Grant to assist in meeting the costs of attending the Meeting must reach the Secretary by 29th May. Proposals for new members must reach her by 26th June. Application forms for grants and membership are available on the SOTS website.

Changes of address should be sent to the Membership Secretary, Mrs Vivienne Rowett, 3 Newhouse Close, Wardle, Rochdale, Lancs OL12 9LW (e-mail vivrowett@aol.com).

Abstracts

Prof. John J. Collins (Yale) “Torah and Jewish Identity in the Second Temple Period”

According to Second Maccabees, the decrees of Antiochus Epiphanes made it impossible to keep the Sabbath, to observe the ancestral festivals, or openly confess oneself to be a Ioudaios. For the author, to be a Ioudaios was not only a matter of ethnic descent but was defined by “the ancestral laws,” which included observance of the Sabbath and the festivals, and the practice of circumcision. These laws had been recognized as the expression of a distinctive way of life already by the Persians, and had been explicitly recognized by Antiochus III at the beginning of the second century. The reforms of Jason undermined the status of those laws by changing the constitution of Jerusalem, but did not try to suppress them. Antiochus Epiphanes attempted to put an end to the distinctive Judean way of life. The reaction by the Maccabees and Hasmoneans led to reaffirmation of the ancestral laws, but also to much greater attention to the details of the written laws than had been in evidence prior to the revolt.

Prof. Kevin Cathcart (Dublin) “‘The Rainbringers’: Weather-God Imagery in the Psalms and Semitic Inscriptions”

The choice of topic for this paper arose from a closer study of the first part of the Tell Fakhariyah bilingual inscription, which is dedicated to the storm-god known as Addu or Adad in Akkadian and as Hadad in Aramaic. The paper noted that Daniel Schwemer’s Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen (Wiesbaden, 2001) provided scholars with an exhaustive presentation of all that has been discovered about storm-gods in the ancient Near East and this work should be consulted before describing a deity as a ‘weather-god’ or a ‘storm-god’. In ancient Israel agriculture relied to a large extent on rainfall. Unlike Adad, Hadad and Baal, Yahweh was not a weather-god. The first five lines of the Tell Fakhariyah inscription merit comparison with weather-god imagery found in the Bible, especially in Job and Psalms. In this paper particular attention was given to Psalms 29, 65, 68, 104 and 147. Psalm 29, which is well known for its storm-god imagery, does not mention rain, though qôl, ‘voice’ or ‘thunder’ occurs frequently. The view that Psalm 29 was originally a Canaanite hymn to Baal (Ginsberg, Cross) must be rejected. Much of the psalm’s vocabulary (including h^adarah, ‘vision’) is not even attested in Ugaritic or Phoenician. Psalm 68, which describes Yahweh as ‘Rider of the Clouds’ (v. 5) and ‘Rider in the Ancient Heavens’ (v. 13), speaks of his pouring out rain in abundance upon the land of his inheritance. Psalm 65, which begins with a prayer to God on Zion (vv. 2-5) has a description of God the creator in vv. 6-9, and speaks of God as the bringer or giver of rain in vv. 10-14. Verses 10-11 should be compared with lines 2-3 of the Tell Fakhariyah inscription: ‘who sends down abundance and provides pasture and watering-place for all the lands’, and with lines 4-5, ‘who makes all the lands luxuriant, merciful god to whom it is good to pray’. Psalms 104 and 147 both present the attributes of Yahweh as creator and provider. The paper concluded that the picture of ancient Israel’s God as ‘rainbringer’ was a Hebrew one which shares some characteristics with portrayals in Semitic literature generally and with West Semitic literature in particular.

Dr Helen Jacobus (London) “Noah’s Flood Calendar (Gen 7.10-8.19) in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q252 and 4Q254a)”

This paper set our to demonstrate that the biblical Flood calendar and chronology in the 4Q252 (4QCommentary on Genesis A) that exegetes Gen 7–8 does not precisely fit the calendrical paradigm proposed by Annie Jaubert in 1953 although it is very close. The paper further explored why the flood calendar of 4Q252 omits the raven and only uses the flights of the dove. It argued that the raven narrative in 4Q254a (4QCommentary on Genesis D) is exegeting the Septuagint version of the raven’s story and may be a form of interpretation at Qumran. It concluded that the Deluge calendar of 4Q252 and the narrative of the raven in 4Q254a are probably influenced by ancient Near East narratives and contain particular intertextual elements that do not exist in the Hebrew and Greek biblical versions of the story.

Dr Alison Gray (Cambridge) “Psalm 144: A New Song?”

The paper began by noting that Psalm 144 is frequently described as a ‘patchwork’ or ‘anthology’. It draws its ideas and phrases predominantly from Psalm 18, but reverberates with discernible echoes from Psalms 8, 33, 39 and 104. The interpretation of the psalm is complicated by its unusual form: it divides into two unequal sections of a very different character, style and form, leading to strong doubts about its original unity. A closer look at the relationships between the words, pictures and their conceptual associations would not only shed light on the author’s message but would also suggest an explanation for the psalm’s current structure. The paper went on to demonstrate the ways in which the author’s re-use of words and pictures from other psalms reveals his reflection on his current situation, and how a blend of modified ‘word-pictures’ from the past has been re-framed to form a unique, distinctive and compelling message of hope. Finally, the paper explored how the flexibility of metaphors within the psalm facilitate multiple interpretations according to different ‘frames’ and readers.

Dr Charlie Hadjiev (Belfast) “The Bad King, the Good liar, and the Dead Man of God: Role models for the exilic readership of 1 Kings 13”

This paper looked at 1 Kings 13 from the standpoint of the exilic audience of the book of Kings. It argued that the main characters in the story were meant to be taken as types embodying different aspects of the experience of its first readership. The death of the man of God symbolised the Babylonian exile, whilst king Jeroboam stood for the idolatry and rejection of the prophetic word in the past. The paper suggested that the most important character was the old prophet from Bethel who outlived his Judean ‘brother’ and took over his message of doom against Bethel. By doing this, and in spite of his earlier shortcomings, he was able to affect some limited form of ‘salvation’ for himself (when the punishment upon Bethel was unleashed his bones were not desecrated by Josiah). The old prophet stood for the possible future of the exilic readership of Kings. By means of this character the readers were challenged to accept the message of judgement of the book of Kings.

Prof. Anthony Frendo (Malta) “Burning Issues: mlk revisited”

The paper began by noting that, basing themselves on Otto Eissfeldt’s 1935 work on the Phoenician-Punic sacrifice known as molk, many biblical scholars had followed in his footsteps and opted to substitute the biblical deity Mōlek in the Hebrew Bible with this sacrificial term. However there had always been other scholars who disagreed with this position. Recently there had been a renewed surge of interest in the problem as to whether the Carthaginians had literally burnt their children in sacrifice to their gods. Since this problem touches on related issues found in the Hebrew Bible, the paper suggested that it was necessary to look again at some biblical texts to see whether children in ancient Israel were indeed sacrificed by burning. When the various ways of vocalizing the Semitic word “mlk” with its basic meaning of “king” were taken into account alongside the fact that in west Semitic there are words which can be used either as the names of deities or simply as their epithets, it became more plausible to uphold that, although the biblical word “Mōlek” does indeed refer to a deity, in a number of texts it was most probably originally vocalized as melek and used as an epithet with reference to different gods including Baal and Yahweh himself. The paper went on to note that, furthermore, composite divine names could be encountered, one component of which functioned as an epithet. Often it was idolatrous child sacrifice that was condemned in the Hebrew Bible and not the sacrifice of children made to Yahweh. However it seemed that there was also a non-Tophet group in Israel, which condemned the sacrifice of children tout court, whether offered to Yahweh or to foreign deities, and this was reflected in certain texts, such as Deuteronomy.

Prof. Hugh Williamson (Oxford) “In the Shadow of S. R. Driver: A Centennial Appreciation”

S. R. Driver died on 26 February 1914, having been Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and a canon of Christ Church since 1883.  In addition to some general biographical details, party culled from unpublished letters, the paper focused in particular on his early career.  Although his first degree was in Classics and mathematics, he already knew Hebrew when he arrived at New College, Oxford. Becoming a tutor in Classics there after graduation, it was clear from his earliest publications as well as from other correspondence that his main teacher was Adolf Neubauer, who worked in the Bodleian Library. Three of Driver’s first four books related to rabbinical Hebrew, the fourth being his book on Hebrew Tenses, which was initially prepared for teaching purposes. His only publication relating directly to the Old Testament during those years was an article to refute the suggestion that the late date of P could be proved on linguistic grounds.  It was several years after Gladstone nominated him for the chair over three other possible candidates that his Introduction first appeared, showing that he had taken a long time carefully to work through the arguments for and against a fully ‘critical’ position (of which Gladstone would not have approved). Other evidence showed that he was a shy and nervous person, so that his honesty in publishing the results of his careful weighing of the academic evidence stands out the more clearly.

Dr Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (Aberdeen) “Zechariah 1-6: Between Redaction Criticism and Form Criticism”

The paper explored the genre category of vision report, with focus on the textual relationship within a periscope between the account of the visual impression and the accompanying divine oracles. The present investigation was limited to Amos 7:1–3; 7:4–6; 7:7–9; 8:1–3, and 9:1–4, and to Zech 1:8–6:8. The paper noted that several scholars have argued that the form of Amos’ vision report informs on the redaction-critical formation of Zechariah’s vision report. As each of Amos’ vision account ends with a divine word, the argument goes, so should Zechariah’s. It follows, these same scholars maintain, that the oracular material within Zech 1–6 is the natural and integral continuation of the preceding vision account, without which the vision account cannot be understood properly. The paper went on to demonstrate that this type of comparison was partly flawed. Form-critical and redaction-critical considerations must go hand-in-hand when seeking to determine the textual development of a given text. Furthermore, the paper maintained that the two sets of vision reports in Amos and Zechariah display the same type of relationship between vision report and oracle. In both cases, the oracular material constitutes a later addition that interprets and in some cases also redefines the message of the earlier account of the vision.

Dr Hywel Clifford (Oxford) “Biblical Monotheism and Early Greek Philosophy”

This paper suggested that early Greek Philosophy (EGP) had been deployed in traditional ‘diffusionary’ and modern ‘developmental’ accounts of biblical monotheism. The traditional narrative grew out of ancient Jewish and Christian apologetic that defended the universal truth, to which EGP bore witness, of the one God versus other gods or idols. The famous fragments of Xenophanes (‘one God, greatest among gods and men’) in Clement’s Stromata (late 2^nd Century), in a list of fourteen Greek poets and philosophers on divine incomparability, are quoted after a question from Isaiah (‘To whom then will you compare me? says the LORD’) to show that the one God is known by all, albeit in a ‘true periphrasis’ by the Greeks. The paper went on to note that the modern narrative is dominated by ANE evidence, but scholars continue to quote EGP with similar intent. Xenophanes’ fragments are compared to near-contemporary biblical texts in Halpern’s essay ‘Late Israelite Astronomies and the Early Greeks’ (2003), which, influenced by Jasper’s Axial Age hypothesis, proposes that Xenophanes and Deutero-Isaiah were both ‘self-conscious monotheists’. The paper suggested that similarities between their ideas, especially their rejection of polytheistic conceptions, showed an ‘international conversation’ at work. The weaknesses of these two narratives were a lack of detailed engagement with EGP (it is not obvious Xenophanes was a ‘monotheist’ – whether or not that category describes Deutero-Isaiah) and conceptual latitude: they work only because the comparative bar is set sufficiently low. The paper concluded that it is thus important to examine EGP on its own terms, to pursue comparative studies with greater care, and to open up both diffusionary and developmental accounts of biblical monotheism to ideological critique.

Prof. Johannes de Moor (Kampen) / Dr Marjo Korpel (Utrecht) “Adam, Eve and the Devil: A New Beginning”

The paper noted that it has long been recognized that certain passages in e.g. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 reflect what has been dubbed an ‘Adamic Myth’ that is older than the biblical creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2{3. However, thus far no convincing parallels for this ‘Adamic Myth’ had been adduced from the ancient Near East. In the opinion of the presenters, some poorly understood Ugaritic tablets provide this lacking background. Originally Adammu, the divine prototype of humanity, was an androgynous deity. Far from being the first to sin, the Ugaritic myth reveals that he was the victim of a decision of the divine council to send him to the vineyard of the great gods on the earth with the assignment to undo the damage inflicted by Ḥorrrānu, a rebel god who had been thrown out of heaven. The rebel’s revenge seems to have been the destruction of the tree of life in the vineyard of the great gods. As a result immortality was lost and the whole cosmos suffered. The paper suggested that the serpent he instructed to guard the tree was the Leviathan, one of many indications that the primordial history of humankind should be viewed as a macrocosmic chain of events. As for Eve, the Ugaritic myth intimates that through her the immortality of the human race was guaranteed by the process of continuous procreation. This started with the mother goddess, consort of Adammu, and was set forth by all mothers afterwards. Since the Ugaritic texts involved do not contain any indication that she was blamed for the first sin, the presenters raised the question why the Hebrew Bible in its canonical form hanged the first transgression on Eve. The paper went on to suggest that many elements in the primordial history as related in the Bible and parabiblical literature appear in a totally fresh light as a result of what they had found which had emboldened them to append the subtitle ‘A New Beginning’ to their book ‘Adam, Eve, and the Devil’ which had appeared recently in the Swiss series Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. The presenters explained that the reason for the choice for this series was that they wanted to honour Othmar and Hildi Keel for their groundbreaking work on iconography and the Bible because they believed they had identified the first second millennium BCE pictures of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’.

Prof. Ronald Hendel (Berkeley) “Toward a Plural Poetics of Genesis: Style, Source, and Intertextuality”

There is currently a bifurcation in the field between those who practice source criticism and those who practice literary criticism. This paper argued that these two practices are logically inseparable, and that it is necessary to synthesize the two practices in order more fully to achieve their goals.  The examples given were the Tamar story in the context of the Joseph story, and the journeys of Abraham in Genesis 12-13.  The literary features of the sources (J and P) in the latter case could also elucidate the large-scale structure of the sources and the composite Pentateuch.

[index of past meetings]