Author Archives: Karyn

Another vocabulary resource: Davar

A few weeks ago I reviewed some Hebrew vocabulary resources (Part One, Part Two) that readers submitted for my first B2B contest. There are a few vocabulary resources that were not mentioned, but which I want to draw attention to. The first one is a project from The University of Auckland (that’s in New Zealand, folks). Davar is a “dynamic illustrated vocabulary resource” for Biblical Hebrew. The academic leadership for the project is Dr Tim Bulkeley and Dr Lynne Wall (I’m looking forward to hopefully meeting Tim at the upcoming SBL meeting in New Orleans). This project has been designed with a great deal of thought. Their design rationale can be found here. Basically, Davar is a database of web “cards” for Hebrew vocabulary. Each card has animation showing the word being typed from right to left, audio to hear the word, visual images illustrating the meaning, mnemonics to trigger a gloss, parsing, a verse with the word in context, and a semantic field (based on the domains found in the Louw-Nida Greek Lexicon).

Students can access the vocabularies online without registering (actually, anyone can access them). Teachers can register to gain access to the vocabularies in order to provide customized lists to their own students. The next step of participation is as a “contributor.” This level of access allows you to add or change information in the vocabulary database. A peer review process is in place to make sure all changes are appropriate before they go “live.”

So, what does it look like? Here are some screen shots from my MacBook Pro running OS X version 10.6.1 (and using Foxfire 3.5.5), the Hebrew vowel pointing is not quite lined up with the consonants. I’d be interested to hear how other people are viewing this resource.

This first image is the opening splash.
Davar

Here we have the vocabularies navigation page.
Davar

This final shot is an individual vocabulary window.
Davar

As far as I can tell, there are 554 vocabulary entries (so far). This is a work in progress, and they are definitely willing to have people come on board with them to help out. They also acknowledge that no project is perfect and that there is always a different way to do things–but this is somewhere to start!

Take a look, let me know your thoughts. Or, better yet, if you see Tim at SBL, talk to him about the project!
Here’s who to look for:
Tim Bulkeley

Ugaritic Transliteration Bookmark

Ugaritic Font Bookmark
Working in ancient languages requires patience when working on a computer. This little bookmark is a handy reminder of the keyboard map for inputting cuneiform and transliteration using the Durham font set. I created and used this bookmark frequently when typing up papers for our Ugaritic class. You can download a PDF with two copies of the bookmark on it here.

The top line is the cuneiform (which, I really think students should learn and continue to use rather than just transliteration), the second line is the transliteration for that character, and the bottom line (greyed out) is the US English keyboard equivalent. Even if you are not trying to type up translation worksheets or charts, the bookmark is a handy reminder of the cuneiform transliteration.

As I said, I think students should not learn the cuneiform solely to know the alphabet, but to be able to actually read/analyze/vocalize texts. With the ability to access high resolution texts (the Inscriptifact database, for instance), knowing the cuneiform is rewarded.

The voice behind the online Tanakh

Many of you are familiar with the MP3 files of the Tanakh that are available online at Mechon Mamre (if you are not aware of them, stop reading this and go to the site right now and start downloading some Hebrew to listen to!). Mechon Mamre links to the files made available at the Israeli Snunit Kodesh site. You can download individual chapters or entire books. Explore around the site for many more resources. The Academy of Ancient Languages also makes the readings available. But I digress.

Abraham Schmuelof
Anyone who has listened to these audio files will forever be able to remember the cadence and pronunciation of the reader. But do you know who that reader is? His name is Abraham Shmueloff and he has quite a story! I found a short biography online a few years ago and I quote it below (the full bio can be accessed here). In classes, we referred to the reader as the “rabbi,” but as you can see from his story, it’s a little more complicated than that! Continue reading →

Pete Enns on Science and an Incarnational Approach to the Bible

Pete Enns is the Friday “guest voice” in the science and religion dialogue over at Science and the Sacred (the BioLogos blog).
Science and the Sacred blog

He says this post is the first of several. Should be interesting! Check out what he has to say about Science and an Incarnational Approach to the Bible. In this first post, he sets out the problem as he sees it, then in subsequent posts he will define what he means by “incarnational model” and then will look at specific implications for reading the bible with this model in mind.

Technology in the Classroom: Not always what you think

A.K.M. Adam (on his blog AKMA) pointed out the article from Inside Higher Education which reported a study about technology in the classroom.

Campus Technology, likewise, has an article discussing the report. Read their summary here.

The surprising (really??) result is that faculty think they do a great job and students don’t think their profs do such a great job. That is not the only disparate pair. IT departments and faculty don’t see eye to eye about how the other handles their role in technology in the classroom.

But as LeVar Burton might say, “you don’t have to take my word for it.” Go read the report yourself.

To download the actual report and draw your own conclusions, go here.

Theological “training” outside the box (way outside)

If you read Fred Putnam’s piece about teaching/learning that I mentioned the other day, then you would probably be interested in looking over his very detailed proposal for The New School of Theology.

Here’s a snippet from the proposal, which gives a a basic overview of the vision (later in the proposal are more details):

This paper proposes the creation of a unique graduate school that will prepare Christians to minister and to live in light of their faith by becoming thoughtful, reflective men and women. Its curriculum and pedagogy reflect the conviction that fundamental to good ministry and leadership is the ability to listen to and understand three voices: (1) the voice of the author in whatever text is at hand, especially the text of Scripture; (2) voices that express the opinions, fears, hopes, and concerns of others, and the ideas of their culture; and (3) the voice of their own hearts.

The program has three primary aspects, any one of which would make this program unique: (1) all courses are required/prescribed conversational seminars without testing, grades, or lectures (lectures are public supplements to the overall curriculum); (2) all class texts are primary texts, not textbooks (except in Hebrew I, Greek I, and Music I); (3) music is integral to the program.

The goal of this program is to foster an ongoing conversation, an intellectual and spiritual community of maturing learners—in other words, a place where students and faculty together read, think, converse, and thus learn to live and minister by pondering the most important ideas—the permanent ideas—as they are found in the great texts of the Western world.

His ideas are very intriguing to me and I wonder what others think of this kind of education (both content and methodology). I do wonder what other texts could be included that are not Western (although that might be difficult unless you work with translations). I understand prioritizing Western texts because we live in the Western world, but I would not want to exclude studying other texts and worldviews and would be careful about privileging Western texts as the primary source of important, permanent ideas.

Anyone know someone with a few million dollars to get it started?

New Contest: What Hebrew Textbook did you learn with?

UPDATE: We have our winners–Bob MacDonald, John Murphy, Rick, and Sytze van der Laan. Congratulations!

Time for another B2B contest. This time I want to know what Biblical Hebrew textbook you used when you first learned Hebrew. Leave a comment and tell me the name of the textbook and a little bit about whether you thought it was helpful. What did you like/dislike about the book?

Also, if you have taught Biblical Hebrew to other people, let me know what textbook you chose to use and why.

Your reward for your comments? I’m giving away some Og the Terrible comic books. I’ll put everyone who has contributed a comment into a random generator to select the winners! You can enter more than once by describing your experiences with different textbooks.

    

Get your comments in by October November 10th!

Using and Abusing Scripture

In light of some of the recent discussions on illegitimate word studies, this post by Scot McKnight seems appropriate to point out. McKnight highlights Manfred Brauch’s book, Abusing Scripture: The Consequences of Misreading the Bible, which Scot does not think is getting enough discussion. McKnight quotes 5 common ways that Christians abuse Scripture and then asks, “Which of these abuses do you see the most? Do you see others that concern you?”