I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak yesterday via Zoom with composer Bruce Adolphe about his violin concerto “I Will Not Remain Silent” which is being released on a new album tomorrow. You can read more about the work on the composer’s website and also on the site of the Milken Archive, the organization which put the two of us into contact with one another for this conversation. I mentioned Adolphe’s new album briefly as something “of related... Read more
One of the ideas I am exploring in connection with my research on the historical John the Baptist, and which I already make some reference to in my book What Jesus Learned from Women, is the persistence of Israelite traditions of a variety of sorts in a range of places including Galilee as well as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Suggesting that Jesus had a heritage that was different than it might have been if he had grown up in Judaea is an... Read more
We have all been warned about YouTube comments, right? But I did come across one that was genuinely useful and insightful, although my perception of it that way may be because it expressed something that I had been thinking. Here is what the comment said (with slight fixes of capitalization, punctuation, and the like): Here is a way to test Haik-Vantoura’s claims: Psalms 57, 58, and 59 and possibly 75 share a melody: אל תשחת Psalm 69 and 45 also... Read more
I saw on the news a report about how quickly and efficiently Israel has been able to get the majority of its citizens vaccinated. You just know that there will be conservative Christian Zionists who will say “see, Israel is blessed by God, as we will be if we stand with them.” I cannot stop everyone from going that route, but I have to at least attempt to draw attention to some facts that complicate this conservative Christian narrative. First,... Read more
In recent years Bob MacDonald has played a particularly active role in drawing attention to the work of Suzanne Haik-Vantoura on the “accents” (more accurately called cantillation marks) found in Hebrew Bible manuscripts going back a millennium or so. He has also mentioned that there is a particularly important test case for any deciphering key: a traditional melody used to chant Psalm 114. He talks about this towards the end of his video here: Here is the melody that results... Read more
I have felt puzzled and surprised by some of the things said in a response on the Biblical Scholarship Blog to my recent blog post about the longest an embryo has been frozen before being implanted in a woman’s womb and carried to term, which I highlighted in connection with a discussion of some of the views that supporters of a “pro-life” stance claim to hold. The response starts with a lengthy quotation from another source, which assumes that abortion... Read more
I have a document that is now 34 pages long in Word that is a place for making note of compositions I come across that set or otherwise intersect directly with a biblical text. I have been trying to decide what to do with it. Clearly if I had foreseen how it would grow I would have made an Excel or Google spreadsheet. I may still do that, but what is really needed is a database of music related to... Read more
I did in fact end up thinking about how much the view of creation that we get early in Ovid’s Metamorphoses parallels what we expect that ancient Israelites thought before and perhaps while shifting in the direction of what eventually becomes monotheism. The initial chaos. The bringing of order. The creation of human beings with some likeness to the divine. The eventual breakdown of things as humans move from dwelling in caves and living as hunter-gatherers to farming, as war and... Read more
I watched the latest documentary from Journey Films about the life of Abraham J. Heschel last night, and realizing that today is Holocaust remembrance day and that Heschel was inspired by, among other things, losing so much of his family in the Holocaust, I thought I would write a blog post and share my enthusiastic recommendation today when it seems particularly appropriate to do so. The film covers so many aspects of his life and work. As a biblical scholar I... Read more
The one issue that has become the make-or-break issue for not only Catholics but also Evangelicals in recent years, turning them into single-issue voters prone to manipulation by the Republican party, is of course abortion. It continues to come up in connection with Joe Biden and I will return to that topic below. But first I want to address the more basic issue of whether the opposition is based in convictions that make logical (to say nothing of scientific) sense.... Read more
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