Programme

Collingwood College, Durham
6th–8th JANUARY 2014
Under the presidency of Professor John Day

Printable Version of the programme
The booking form for the  meeting
Location and Directions to Collingwood College

The venue for all sessions is Collingwood College, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LT.
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 6th JANUARY

(2.30 p.m.) [Committee Meeting]
4.30 p.m. Registration
6.00 p.m. Reception
6.45 p.m. Dinner
8.15 p.m. Presidential Address: Professor John Day (Oxford)
“Problems in the Interpretation of the Story of the Garden of Eden”

TUESDAY 7th JANUARY

8.00 a.m. Breakfast
9.15 a.m. Dr David Reimer (Edinburgh) “The Language of Psalm 119”
10.00 a.m. Dr Stuart Weeks (Durham) “Googling Qohelet”
10.45 a.m. Coffee
11.15 a.m. Dr Madhavi Nevader (Oxford) “On Reading Adam Royally”
12.00 noon Dr Sandra Jacobs (King’s College London) “Methodological Paradigms and ‘Parallelomania’ in the Study of Comparative Biblical Law”
1.00 p.m. Lunch
2.30 p.m. Seminar “Research in progress”: PhD students and early career researchers present their work*
4.00 p.m. Tea
4.30 pm Professor John Bartlett (Dublin) “Burchard of Mt Sion: A Thirteenth-century Baedeker”
6.30 p.m. Dinner
8.15 p.m. Professor Peter Machinist (Harvard) “Royal Inscriptions in the Hebrew Bible. A Problem and Its Significance”

WEDNESDAY 8th JANUARY

8.00 a.m. Breakfast
9.15 a.m. Dr Charlotte Hempel (Birmingham) “The Power of Posthumous Leadership in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls”
10.00 a.m. Professor Philip Alexander (Manchester) “The Polemical and Apologetic Context of the Rabbis’ Choice of Text-type for their Scriptures”
10.45 a.m. Coffee
11.15 a.m. Professor Paul Joyce (King’s College London) “Reception and Exegesis in Lamentations”
12.00 noon Business Meeting (Members only)
1.00 p.m. Lunch, followed by departure

*PhD students or early career researchers who would like to present their research at the seminar on Tuesday afternoon are invited to email a short abstract (150 words max.) to the Secretary, Dr Hilary Marlow (hm309@cam.ac.uk) by December 5th 2013.

Domestic Arrangements

The venue for the Meeting is Collingwood College, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LT; the telephone number for the College is 0191 334 5000. Please refer to the enclosed map for information on how to get to the College. There is plenty of parking at the College but we would recommend public transport where possible. 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 Wednesday 13th November (please see the details on the form). There is a subsidized price for those on low incomes or from economically disadvantaged countries. All bookings must be received by 5th December 2013; 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 13th November 2013 (for the discount price) or at the latest by 5th December 2013.

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 741284, e-mail hm309@cam.ac.uk). Applications for a Conference Grant to assist in meeting the costs of attending the Meeting must reach the current Secretary by 13th November. Proposals for new members must reach her by 5th December. Application forms for grants and membership are available on the SOTS website, www.sots.ac.uk.

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 Day (Oxford), “Problems in the Interpretation of the Story of the Garden of Eden” (Presidential Address)

This paper discussed many of the problems of interpretation raised by the Eden story. It was argued that Eden means “delight”, not “steppe, plain”, and that it was understood as a real place located not, as most often supposed, at the flat, southern Persian gulf end of the Tigris and Euphrates, but rather in mountainous Armenia at the northern end of these rivers. This is shown by the fact that a river flowed out of Eden before becoming four headwaters (ra’shim), and the Israelites knew rivers flowed down, not up. (For Eden as set on a mountain see Ezek. 28:14, though here it is probably located in Phoenicia; cf. Ezek. 31:8, 16). The common view that the first man was originally a sexless “earth creature” prior to the creation of Eve is mistaken, since in Gen. 2:23 Eve is stated to have been made “out of man (’ish)”, which clearly means a male. Eve’s being a “helper” to the man involves more than simply being able to procreate, contrary to the claim of one scholar. The humans in Eden are most accurately described neither as mortal, nor immortal, but as potentially immortal, since they are not yet debarred from eating of the tree of life, though they have not got round to doing so. The serpent is possibly a reworking of the serpent in the Gilgamesh epic, tablet 11, which is similarly instrumental in depriving Gigamesh of immortality and is likewise associated with a plant or tree of life. Various explanations of the non-immediate death of the first humans, contrary to God’s threat, were considered, the most likely being that it was an act of grace on God’s part. The knowledge of good and evil does not denote knowledge of everything (Gen. 3 provides an aetiology of the human condition, and human beings are not omniscient). Nor does it denote merely sexual knowledge, but in keeping with its meaning elsewhere in the Old Testament, ethical discernment (Deut. 1:39; cf. Isa. 7:15-16). Such wisdom is spoken of positively elsewhere in the Old Testament; the first humans’ error was in disobeying God’s explicit command instead of seeking wisdom through humble obedience to God (cf. Prov. 1:7; 9:10). There was, however, an alternative view that the first man was omniscient (cf. Ezek. 28:3; Job 15:7-8). The recent view that the story is an allegory of the exile is to be rejected: Eden is not Jerusalem (cf. Gen. 2.10-14) and seeking after the knowledge of good and evil does not correspond to the sin of pre-exilic Judah referred to elsewhere in the Old Testament.

Dr David Reimer (Edinburgh) “The Language of Psalm 119”

Psalm 119 is (in)famous for its relentless acrostic pattern and repeated use of a few ‘key terms’ for the law. This has led to dismissive judgments of the poet’s artistic ability, as well as assertions of his linguistic limitations. But the language of this poet has more to commend it than critics have claimed, whether in the vocabulary generally employed, the choice of ‘acrostic’ words, or the use of the eight ‘key terms’ (tôrâ, dāḇār, mišpāṭ(îm), ‛ēḏōṯ, miṣwōṯ, piqqûḏîm, ḥuqqîm, and ’imrâ). This paper focused on the latter aspect. The leading term is often identifed as tôrâ. However, a close examination of the distribution and relationship of the terms placed a question mark over this common claim. A detour into linguistics returned with useful tools in the concepts of hyponyms and hyperonyms. Assessing the poet’s usage of the key terms in light of the linguistic discussion, the case was made that dāḇār is the more likely to be the superordinate term, even as the poet intentionally blurs the taxonomic boundaries between the key terms. tôrâ may still be a ‘basic’ term, but dāḇār is the more significant structurally. This suggested in turn a shift in perception of Psalm 119’s leading theme.

Dr Stuart Weeks (Durham) “Googling Qohelet”

This paper observed that projects by Google and others had brought unprecedented access in the last few years to early books and articles from libraries around the world. This potentially enabled us not only to understand the history of reception and interpretation much better in general terms, but also to avoid reliance on existing selections and summaries, which tended to project on to the past the agendas and concerns of the period at which they were created: Christian Ginsburg’s influential 1861 survey of scholarship on Ecclesiastes provided an important example of the extent to which modern scholarship can still be shaped in this way by nineteenth-century debates. The paper suggested that amount of information now available also enabled us to look in a more sophisticated way at the history of reception, setting individual works in a broader context, and making a better assessment of their actual influence. All this required us, however, not only to impose order on a great mass of data, but also to have a much greater knowledge and understanding of books and of the early publishing industry, since it was very easy for the uninitiated to be misled. The paper concluded by noting that we have been offered an extraordinary opportunity, but if in order to grasp it we must equip ourselves properly with the bibliographical tools and skills that we shall need.

Dr Madhavi Nevader (Oxford) “On Reading Adam Royally”

[no abstract provided]

Dr Sandra Jacobs (London) “Methodological Paradigms and ‘Parallelomania’ in the Study of Comparative Biblical Law”

This paper set out to indicate why the study of comparative biblical law was one of the most exciting and rewarding areas of scholarly inquiry, and how it could refine our understanding of the development of authoritative, sacred, traditions in early Judean antiquity. While Samuel Sandmel’s charge of “parallelomania,” raised understandably justifiable concerns over the integrity of this method, there were some extremely effective approaches that did successfully avoid the pitfalls he warned against. By applying the methodological process advanced by Jeffrey Tigay to a specific, limited, issue – such as the underlying purpose of female corporal punishment – it was possible to gain new insights into the rationale and pre-history of the relevant biblical laws. This use of the comparative method afforded additional opportunities for breaking new ground in several inter-disciplinary arenas: notably in terms of gender relations, but also (admittedly unexpectedly) in relation to contemporary theories of evolutionary biology.

Prof. John Bartlett (Dublin) “Burchard of Mt Sion: A Thirteenth-century Baedeker”

Burchard was a thirteenth-century Dominican from Magdeburg, whose Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, written c. 1283, was a forerunner of Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria. Burchard was well versed in earlier scholarly writings on the Holy Land. This paper followed Burchard’s description of the land in 4 Quartae and 12 Divisiones, each divisio clearly being based on one of Burchard’s own itineraries from Acco and Jerusalem. Burchard’s concern to identify biblical (especially OT) sites (e.g., his identification of the sites of Jeroboam’s golden calves), his knowledge of the land (Transjordan apart), and his interest in the topography of Jerusalem, and its water supplies, walls and gates, were fully discussed. After the section on Jerusalem, Burchard’s scheme of quartae and divisiones in the south and west is less clearly presented and the arrangement seems disturbed; this paper suggested a reconstructed original scheme. Finally, the paper commented on Burchard’s use of the OT, and compared his work not only with Baedeker’s Palestine and Syria but also with George Adam Smith’s The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, noting that Burchard would have made a good member of SOTS.

Prof. Peter Machinist (Harvard) “Royal Inscriptions in the Hebrew Bible. A Problem and Its Significance”

This paper began by noting that royal inscriptions were among the most prominent manifestations of rulership in the ancient Near East, testifying in rhetorically emphatic ways to the ruler’s achievements as pious devotee of his kingdom’s gods and caregiver of his subjects through his prowess as warrior and builder. Among the earliest texts to be recovered and studied in modern investigation of the ancient Near East, these inscriptions remained a frequent and much debated source on its history. They were found all over the region, but arguably the largest, longest attested, and most diverse collection was from Mesopotamia. But what of ancient Israel? Here the evidence was sparse, both biblical and archaeological, yet that had not impeded discussion of whether and how Israelite and Judean kings employed royal inscriptions, what knowledge of other inscriptional traditions, especially the Mesopotamian, Israel and Judah had, as manifest particularly in the Hebrew Bible, and what role, if any, such inscriptions played as sources for the great works of biblical historiography, namely, the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles. The paper briefly reviewed these issues, and then focused on several biblical texts which, it was proposed, are not simply reflections of inscriptional language, but efforts to play with and polemicize against the very category or genre of royal inscription. The paper then went on to consider a number of central questions: why they should be doing this, what parallels there may be for such play in other inscriptional traditions, and what was the larger significance of this.

Dr Charlotte Hempel (Birmingham) “The Power of Posthumous Leadership in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls”

This paper began by emphasizing that not too much ought to be made of the lack of reference to the figures of Ezra and Nehemiah in the writings of the Qumran movement. Our access to both figures, literary or historical, is marred by a long and complex composition history both in the MT and the LXX and beyond. The complexity of the evidence has given rise to scholarly hypotheses suggesting Ezra material has been added to the Nehemiah material and vice versa of the Nehemiah Memoir deliberately being omitted from the account of 1 Esdras. There is certainly no general agreement on either of these illustrative scenarios. The evidence of the Qumran materials is therefore no more than another ripple in the very choppy compositional and reception history of the literary footprints of Ezra and Nehemiah. If Ezra was a historical figure whose literary record was amplified by subsequent authors and editors it is clear that we have a circle sympathetic to the Ezra materials to thank for this part of the Hebrew Bible. Taking Ezra 7:10 as a focal point, it was suggested that the Ezra tradents share key concerns and interests with seminal groups reflected in the Scrolls, even in some perhaps unexpected places.

Prof. Philip Alexander (Manchester) “The Polemical and Apologetic Context of the Rabbis’ Choice of Text-type for their Scriptures”

Why does rabbinic tradition spread over some 400 years and, emanating from two widely separated geographical regions (Palestine and Babylonia), uniformly reflect only a proto-Masoretic text-type? The paper argued that this remarkable fact cannot be explained by supposing that other forms of the text were unknown to the Rabbis: they knew of textual variants in the LXX, in the Samaritan Pentateuch, and in Sifrei Minim (in the sense of Hebrew Torah scrolls written and used by non-rabbinic Jews). They had, therefore, alternative texts to hand, but chose to go with the MT instead. The reason for this was that the MT was by their day an old and venerable text, probably going back a recension of the Torah produced under Maccabean auspices in Second Temple times. Content-wise it suited their theological position, and its antiquity allowed them to make more easily the case in polemic against Christians, that they had the word of God in its original form, in contrast to the corrupt LXX on which the Christians relied. The success of this polemic is shown by the Hebraica Veritas debate within Christianity, which in effect internalized the Rabbis position within the Church.

Prof. Paul Joyce (London) “Reception and Exegesis in Lamentations”

[no abstract provided]