TIC TALK 35, 1996

Newsletter of the United Bible Societies Translation Information Clearinghouse

Contents: Double click on the highlighted, underlined words to go to that section.· : Surfing the Internet, by Harold P. Scanlin· Publication Notices on · Publication Notices on · Publication Notices on · : Translator’s Workplace 2.0

SURFING THE INTERNET

BY HAROLD P. SCANLIN

A few months ago, I decided to check the Internet to see if there were any resources on the book of Sirach, although I was not expecting to find much. To my surprise, there was a homepage devoted exclusively to Sirach. This homepage led me to other resources, including a 50 (!) page bibliography on the book of Sirach, and an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) connection to CCAT at the University of Pennsylvania for an electronic version of the Greek text with parallel aligned Hebrew text (where extant). I also discovered that there is a mailing list devoted to “Wisdom and Deuterocanonical Studies.”

What will I find on the Internet? Probably more than you could possibly want, and therein lies a problem, or at least a warning. The Internet explosion has made infoglut a reality. Because it is so easy for anyone to develop a homepage, you are bound to find both wheat and chaff, with little or no initial clues to determine what is worthwhile and what isn’t. But there are enough rewards awaiting you to make the effort generally worthwhile.

How do I get started? First, you need an Internet connection, which you can get through CompuServe and other commercial services, or you can go directly through an Internet provider. The advantage of the former is that Internet access is integrated with your electronic mail provider and there are local telephone access numbers in most major cities of the world. The latter may provide a more efficient connection at a lower cost, but you will want to be sure that the service handles e-mail. If you have some contacts with a local academic institution, you may want to ask them to see if you can be part of their Internet connection. Keep in mind that for access to the World Wide Web, your modem speed should be 9,600bps, as a absolute minimum, and preferably as fast as 28,800 or more. Unfortunately, in some areas of the world, these higher-speed access connections are either not available or may be unreliable. However, if a good connection

is not available in your area right now, it is quite possible that it will be in the near future.

How do I find all these treasures? Most Internet connections and accompanying software come with a Web browser, which is a Windows-based software package that allows you to view and capture information on the Internet. One of the best known Web browsers is Netscape, currently in version 2.x, but soon to be upgraded to 3.0. Version 3.0 will allow for on-screen display of non-Roman fonts, including Hebrew and Greek. These browsers connect you with a variety of search programs, such as AltaVista, Excite, and Yahoo. Yahoo even offers a specialized “Society and Culture: Religion” categorized index with search capability. Some search services offer only simple word or string searches, but others allow for more complex searches with Boolean operators. When I wanted to find information on Sirach, I simply typed in “Sirach,” clicked “Find,” and came up with a concise list of available resources. Obviously, more general search terms, such as “Bible,” will find many more sites. Some of the search programs actually assign a rating to the successful finds, so you get at least some help in locating the most likely sources of information. Obviously, the search service’s criteria for rating may not correspond with yours, but once you get to a major homepage in your area of interest, there will probably be plenty of hyperlinks to other homepages and relevant FTP sites.

Are there some homepages I should be sure to check out? Here are a few that you may find interesting. The address of Internet Web sites is known as the URL (Uniform Resource Locator).· Internet Resources for the Study of Judaism and Christianity from the U. of

Pennsylvania has a page with lots of relevant links athttp://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/resources.html

· The Divinity Library of Vanderbilt U. has an excellent homepage with many links to Internet resources for religion and theology, including “Resource Pages for Biblical Studies.” You can also get to the “Yahoo: Society and Culture: Religion” search program from here.http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/divinity/homelib.html

· “Not Just Bibles: A Guide to Christian Resources on the Internet,” an extensive classified guide to Web sites, electronic newsletters and journals, discussion groups, and other electronic resources. Listings are primarily evangelical, but many other groups are included, as well.http://iclnet.org/pub/resources/Christian-resources.html

· ABZU at the Oriental Institute, U. of Chicago provides links to material relating to the Ancient Near East, including Bible. ABZU has very useful “author” and “project” directories.http://babylon-orinst.uchicago.edu/oi/dept/ra/abzu/abzu.html

· GRAMCORD offers information on their computer programs, and provides links to other resources relating to biblical studies:http://www.GRAMCORD.org

· Silver Mountain Software, which produces BibleWindows (current version, 4.5):http://www.silvermnt.com

· Hermeneutika, which produces BibleWorks for Windows (current version, 3.5):http://www.intr.net/bibleworks

· “The Jesus Sirach (Ben Sira)” homepage I mentioned above is:http://www.uni-passau.de/ktf/mitarbeiter/boehmisch/bensira.html

· The Paratext program, developed by Reinier de Blois and reviewed in TIC Talk No. 33, is now being developed by Nathan Miles. His homepage provides updates and background information on the development of the new Version 4.0, scheduled for release in 1997:http://home1.gte.net/nmiles

· Other Bible Society homepages you can look up are the Brant County branch of the Canadian Bible Society, the Singapore Bible Society, and Bea Beltran:http://www.bfree.on.ca/comdir/churches/CBShttp://home.pacific.net.sg/~bobcatp/homepage.htmlhttp://pw1.netcom.com/~bbeltran/ubsamer.html

· TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism is a new electronic journal which just began publication in 1996. It has already published a number of valuable articles and book reviews:http://scholar.cc.emory.edu/scripts/TC/TC.html

· “Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts” is a Web site which provides a basic introduction to New Testament textual criticism:http://www.stt.brown.edu/projects/mss/overview.html

· “Electronic New Testament Manuscripts Project” intends to provide a wide range of information and data on New Testament manuscripts, including images of select manuscripts. Visit them at:http://www.entmp.org

· The new “Journal of Hebrew Scriptures” is in electronic form only. Its first article is “Text - Reader - Author. Towards a theory of exegesis: Some European viewpoints,” by Helmut Utzschneider.http://www.ualberta.ca/ARTS/JHS/jhs.html

· SIL’s homepage provides links to many translation and linguistic resources:http://www.sil.org

· A collection of useful links and resources for translators is at this URL:http://www.iol.ie/~mazzoldi/lang/index.htm

· The “Linguistics” homepage offers a wide variety of links to other homepages devoted to linguistics:http://www.cog.brown.edu/pointers/linguistics.html

· “Linguistics WWW Resources” from the Linguistics Department of the University of Oregon:http://logos.uoregon.edu/wwwling.html

· TELA, the homepage for Scholars Press, gives information about SBL and AAR events and issues, including the members directory, and also provides links to scores of other sites related to the areas of Bible and religion.http://scholar.cc.emory.edu

What are discussion groups? They are forums which bring together persons interested in carrying on a discussion on a particular topic via e-mail. These forums or “lists” are usually maintained by an interested academic or other organization. Some lists are open to anyone who sends a simple “subscribe” message. For others, you submit a subscription request, which is then approved by those maintaining the list. Normally, this is a rather routine matter, but it does provide the listserver with an opportunity to maintain some control over the group list. Still other lists are monitored, which means that someone or some group in charge of the list can choose not to send messages from subscribers if they are deemed to be irrelevant to the focus of the group or in some way inappropriate. Here are a few lists that may be of interest to TIC Talk readers:

· TC-List, maintained by TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, and focusing on textual criticism of both the Old and New Testaments. To subscribe, e-mail:

majordomo@scholar.cc.emory.eduwith the following message:

subscribe tc-list <your e-mail address>(of course, no angle brackets around your e-mail address).You need not put anything in the subject field, unless, of course, your e-mail software requires that something be put in there. If this is the case, you can just try a hard space or the word “subscribe.”

· B-Greek. E-mail to:majordomo@virginia.edu

with the following message:subscribe b-greek-digest <your e-mail address>

· B-Hebrew. E-mail:majordomo@virginia.edu

with the following message:subscribe b-hebrew-digest <your e-mail address>

Both B-Greek and B-Hebrew provide this digest service, which means that periodically you will receive all recent e-mail activity with a table of contents. This can be quite convenient, especially if you are traveling. Some very active lists can have 50 or more messages per day.

· • “Ioudaios” is a very active list focusing on early Judaism and related fields: to subscribe to IOUDAIOS-L, send the following one line e-mail message:SUB IOUDAIOS-L <yourfirstname yourlastname>to:

listproc@lehigh.eduIoudaios also has a review service, which is not a discussion group. Send the following message to the same address:

sub ioudaios-review <yourfirstname yourlastname>· The “Linguist” list is a general forum for linguistics. You can, however, specify that you

only want to receive certain topics. This is done with the command SET LINGUIST TOPICS. If you are not familiar with this procedure, the list will send you details after you sign up. Send a subscribe message to:

listserv@tamvm1.tamu.eduwith the message:

subscribe <your firstname lastname>· “Funknet” is devoted to discussion of functional linguistics. E-mail to:

listserve@rice.eduthe following message:

subscribe funknet <your name>As you can imagine, the possibilities are almost endless, especially if you go exploring via hyperlinks. I hyperlinked to an English translation (otherwise unpublished) of an important article by Kurt Treu, “The Significance of Greek for Jesus in the Roman Empire” [original in German], Kairos n.f. 15 (1973) 123-144.

What other resources are available? You can often download shareware software and demos of commercial programs. I recently found a full working demo of WordSmith Tools from Oxford University Press, which describes itself as a “Swiss Army knife of lexical analysis.” It compiles wordlists, generates concordances, profiles and analyzed

keywords, has a “dual text aligner” and other utilities. You can find the file at:http://www1.oup.co.uk/cite/oup/elt/software/wsmith/

What happens to all this information, once I find it? Almost all Internet material now comes in a formatting called HTML. If you want to save something, you can print it immediately while online, but you will probably want to save larger documents to print out later. Your Internet software should have a “load to disk” or “save as...” option, which saves the file in a directory you choose. You can then reopen the file, once you are offline, but you need to use the HTML reader that usually comes with the Internet software. Alternately, a software utility such as “Word for Word” (from Adobe) will convert a HTML file to almost any word processor file. Keep in mind that you may lose the graphic images with an offline file, but text formatting will generally be preserved.

There are also published guides, which naturally become quickly outdated. Here are a few recent items:

Kellner, Mark A. God on the Internet. Foster City, CA: IDG Books, 1996.“Bible Resources.” Yahoo Vol. 2, No. 4 (Sept. 1996), pp. 102-103.

Go to TIC Talk 35

BIBLE TRANSLATION

Jaroslav Pelikan. 1996. The Reformation of the Bible/The Bible of the Reformation. Yale University Press. Examines the role of the Bible in the Reformation and the effect of the Reformation on the text of the Bible, biblical studies, preaching and exegesis, and European culture in general via vernacular translations. The book also serves as the catalogue (by V. Hotchkiss and D. Price) for a major exhibition of early Bibles and Reformation texts, and includes many illustrations and some color plates. $45

Stephen Prickett. 1996. Origins of narrative: The Romantic appropriation of the Bible. Cambridge University Press. A recurring theme in P.’s writing, that the Bible becomes a different work in every age that interprets it, is worked out here for the Romantic period. Includes a chapter on the Bible as translated text and the making of the Authorized Version.

Stephen J. Stein. 1995. “America’s Bibles: Canon, commentary, and community,” Church History 64/2:169-184. Explores “the ways in which Americans have created their own bibles through the processes of manipulating the canon of sacred scriptures or writing commentary on it,” focusing especially on Mormon, Shaker, Christian Science, and Seventh-day Adventist scriptures. Those processes include commentary, new translation, and the selection of a canon within the canon, with the product depending vitally on the religious group for its acceptance as scripture.

J. B. Taylor. 1995. “William Tyndale: Bible translator,” Anvil 12/1:35-44.

Edwin H. Robertson. 1996. Taking the Word to the world: 50 years of the United Bible Societies. Thomas Nelson. A history of UBS in celebration of its Golden Jubilee.

ANCIENT

Harold P. Scanlin. 1996. “A New edition of Origen’s Hexapla: How it might be done,” in Origen’s Hexapla and fragments, A. Salvesen, ed. J.C.B. Mohr. Scanlin’s is among papers presented at the Rich Seminar on the Hexapla, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1994.

Karen H. Jobes. 1996. The Alpha-text of Esther: Its character and relationship to the Masoretic Text. Scholars Press. This dissertation from Westminster Theological Seminary offers a detailed comparison of the alpha-text of Esther with the MT and the LXX in an attempt to establish its textual history. Over 200 pages of appendixes include the parallel texts of Esther, the mss of the alpha-text, and a table of syntactical data for the alpha-text and the LXX of Esther.

The Peshitta as a translation: Papers read at the II Peshitta Symposium held at Leiden 19-21 August 1993. 1995. P.B. Dirksen and A. van der Kooij, eds. Brill. The volume includes a report on the Stellenbosch Peshitta Project; Peshitta progress report; “Correspondances lexicales entre Peshitta et MT du Pentateuque, Les racines verbales,” P. Borbone; “Some aspects of the translation technique in P-Chronicles,” P. Dirksen; supplement to An Annotated Bibliography of the Peshitta of the Old Testament (Brill, 1989); “Bible translation and Syriac idiom,” G. Goldenberg and response from T. Muraoka; “Doublet translations in Peshitta Proverbs,” J. Joosten; “Methodological criteria for distinguishing between variant Vorlage and exegesis in the Peshitta Pentateuch,” Y. Maori; “Techniques of translation and transmission in the earliest text forms of the Syriac version of Genesis,” R. Romeny; “The Use of sources in the Peshitta of Kings,” D. Walter.

Jan Joosten. 1996. The Syriac language of the Peshitta and Old Syriac versions of Matthew: Syntactic structure, inner-Syriac developments and translation technique. Brill. Analysis of the language and process of translation in these versions helps to establish their relationship to the Greek text and also to identify developments within the Syriac language. $122.75

MODERN

Joseph Blenkinsopp. 1996. “The Contemporary English Version: Inaccurate translation tries to soften anti-Judaic sentiment,” Bible Review October:42,51. With a response from Barclay Newman: “CEV’s chief translator: We were faithful to the intention of the text,” pp. 43,51. The brief “Point-Counterpoint” focuses on the CEV’s translation of .

Barclay M. Newman. 1996. Creating and crafting the Contemporary English Version: A new approach to Bible translation. American Bible Society. Written with Charles Houser, Erroll Rhodes, and David Burke of the ABS Translations Department. The essays address a number of topics relating to the development of the CEV, including readability, translating poetry, cultural concerns, and translation principles.

Reynolds Price. 1996. Three Gospels. Scribner. An American novelist’s translation of Mark and John, along with his own “An honest account of a memorable life: An apocryphal gospel,” written “on the basis of the classic ancient four, on my knowledge of other early documents pertaining Jesus, and on what I have gained in reading widely in the recently revived attempt by scholars to proved a minimally reliable history of Jesus’ life and work...” (15)

Gwilym H. Jones. 1995. Hen Destament 1988. Cydymaith i’r Cyfieithiad Newydd. Pantycelyn. A companion to the new (1988) Welsh translation, in four sections: Readings based on a better understanding of the Hebrew, readings improved by contributions of cognate languages, contributions of ancient versions, and a list of probable readings. The author systematically explains the basis for all renderings that differ from the previous 400-year-old translation. (from the SOTS Book List, 1996)

Go to TIC Talk 35

BIBLE

GENERAL

The surveys of recent trends in Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 3 (1995) include: J. O’Brien, “Malachi in recent research,” M. O’Brien, “The Book of Deuteronomy,” J. Anderson, “Life on the Mississippi: New currents in Matthaean scholarship 1983-1993,” D. Watson, “Rhetorical criticism of the Pauline Epistles since 1975,” and C. Roetzel, “Paul and the Law: Whence and whither?”

A Feminist companion to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament. 1996. A. Brenner, ed. Sheffield Academic Press. A collection of essays that contribute to the understanding of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the NT, and between Judaism and Christianity, from the perspectives of the gender relations reflected in both groups of texts and their interpretations. Essays address four general areas: the recycling of Hebrew Bible characters in the NT; utilization of Hebrew Bible models of femininity for the portrayal of NT female characters; gendering of the female body in the NT and its links to Hebrew Bible representations; the potential anti-Judaism in the NT and its feminist interpretations. In the Feminist Companion series (other volumes are Genesis, Ruth, Song of Songs, and Judges).

Feminist approaches to the Bible. 1995. Biblical Archaeology Society. Papers from a 1994 symposium held at the Smithsonian, by P. Trible, T. Frymer-Kensky, P. Milne, and J. Schaberg, followed by a transcription of the panel discussion. Introduction by H. Shanks.

T. Ilan. 1995. Jewish women in Greco-Roman Palestine. An inquiry into image and status. Mohr-Siebeck. Surveys research on Jewish women in the Hellenistic-Roman period and discusses the literary and archeological sources pertaining to Jewish women

in Palestine from ca 300 BC to AD 200. Main topics: daughters, woman’s biology, chastity, marriage, crises in married life and breakdown of marriage, women and the legal system, women in public.

Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World. 1995. R.S. Sugirtharajah, ed. Orbis. This second edition has been expanded “to include geographical regions such as the Caribbean and the Pacific,... to offer a high profile to the emerging subaltern exegesis worked out by Indian dalits and the other indigenous people; to expand the cross-religious hermeneutics to include Christian-Buddhist inter-textual studies, and Christian-Chinese hermeneutics;” and to introduce updated versions of some materials.

J.S. Ukpong. 1995. “Rereading the Bible with African eyes: Inculturation and hermeneutics,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 91:3-14.

Kwok Pui-lan. 1995. Discovering the Bible in the non-biblical world. Orbis Books. An Asian woman theologian engages in a dialogue with the Bible in a move to develop a model of interpretation based on Asian perspectives. In Orbis’s Bible & Liberation series.

W.R. Domeris. 1995. “Sociological studies and the interpretation of the Bible,” Scriptura 54:203-213. Surveys trends in social scientific studies of the OT and NT in the past 20 years. In NT, focuses on the historical Jesus and the world of the early church.

Honor and shame in the world of the Bible. Semeia 68 (1994), pub. 1996. V. Matthews and D. Benjamin, eds. This volume includes three articles on Hebrew Bible (Song of Songs, Joel, David narratives) and two on NT (Matthew’s beatitudes, John’s Passion narrative), with two responses: John Chance, “The Anthropology of honor and shame: Culture, values, and practice,” and Gideon Kressel, “An Anthropolo-gist’s response to the use of social science models in biblical studies.”

John J. Collins. 1995. The Scepter and the star: The messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient literature. Doubleday. (Anchor Bible Reference Library) Explores the meaning of messianism in the ancient Jewish context based on biblical, apocryphal/pseudepigraphal, and Qumran texts, as well as Hellenistic Jewish authors, other rabbinic texts, and patristic authors. A number of the chapters incorporate material from previously published articles and essays.

Research project on animals and plants of the Bible. The goal of this project, set up last fall, is to reappraise biblical animal and plant references/evidence. The Lehrstuhl Altes Testament II of Tübingen University is undertaking the project, working in cooperation with the Biblisch-Archäologischen Institut of Tübingen, the Biblischen Institut of Freiburg/Schweiz, and the Institut für Antikes Judentum und Hellenistische Religionsgeschichte at Tübingen. Iconographic and archeological materials on animals and plants from the ANE and ancient Judaism will be considered. The plan is also to build a slide and offprint collection of relevant articles that will be made available for interested parties. The project is soliciting offprints from anyone who may have published on the subject. The address is “Tier- und Pflanzenwelt der Bibel,” c/o Peter Riede, Evang.-Theol. Seminar der Universität Tübingen, Lehrstuhl Prof. Dr. B. Janowski, Liebermeisterstr. 12, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany.

BIBLICAL LANGUAGES

HebrewYoshinobu Endo. 1996. The Verbal system of Classical Hebrew in the Joseph story: An approach from discourse analysis. Van Gorcum. This revised 1993 dissertation from the University of Bristol investigates the verb use in direct discourse and narrative in Genesis 37-50 within the parameters of word order, tense/aspect/modality, clause type, and sequentiality.

Alan Millard. 1995. “The Knowledge of Writing in Iron Age Palestine,” Tyndale Bulletin 46/2:207-217.

Keith Massey-Gillespie. 1995. “Semitic Quadriliteral Animal Terms: an Explanation,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 21/1:83-90. Such terms are contractions from original kinship-based constructs. Observing the original forms of these words and the reasons for their formation sheds light on the role the animals played in the culture.

Tod Linafelt. 1996. “The Undecidability of in the prologue to Job and beyond,” Biblical Interpretation 4/2:154-172. The apparent ease with which the meaning of is settled in the four instances in Job where it is taken as a euphemism for “curse” is illusory. Each may in fact be translated in the primary sense of “bless” and make sense in the narrative. The point of this exercise in counter-reading is not to prove that always means “bless” in the prologue to Job, but rather that it is the site of conflicted meaning in each occurrence. Too hastily resorting to euphemisms results in an under-reading of the prologue and of the book as a whole. The faultline within runs much deeper than a single word, extending throughout the book and evincing a fundamental ambivalence about the character of God.

Timothy Wilt. 1996. “A Sociolinguistic analysis of ,” Vetus Testamentum 46/2:237-255. A study of the sociolinguistic context of the speech situations in which occurs supports Gesenius’s claim that it is a mark of politeness, against more recent suggestions that it signals logical consequence or emphasis or urgency. Referring to Brown and Levinson’s study of the concept of “face” in politeness strategies in speech, W. shows that the speaker-hearer relationship determines the use or non-use of the particle.

OT

Berit Olam (The everlasting covenant): Studies in Hebrew narrative and poetry. Liturgical Press’s NT commentary series Sacra Pagina is now complemented by this OT series. Both series have a strong emphasis on literary approaches to the texts they treat. 1 Kings, by Jerome T. Walsh, is available in the OT series ($39.95). Ruth/Esther should be out within the next few months.

Literary structure and rhetorical strategies in the Hebrew Bible. 1996. L.J. de Regt, J. de Waard, and J.P. Fokkelman, eds. Van Gorcum. Essays cover a range of topics, including narrative perspective, parallelism, intertextuality, discourse issues, and analyses of a range of texts, including J.C. Margot’s “La structure du cortège d’Israël autour de Jéricho d’après Josué 6.” The contributors were asked to discuss the implications of their

findings for Bible translators. The volume ends with “Hebrew rhetoric and the translator,” by J. de Waard.

Congress Volume. Paris, 1992. 1995. J.A. Emerton, ed. (VT Supp 61) Brill. Some articles: Z. Kallai, “The Explicit and implicit in biblical narrative,” J. Loza, “Genèse xviii-xix: présence ou représen-tation de Yahvé? Essai sur la critique littéraire et la signification du récit,” J.L. Ska, “Quelques exemples de sommaires proleptiques dans les récits bibliques.”

Moshe Greenberg. 1995. Studies in the Bible and Jewish thought. Jewish Publication Society. In the JPS Scholar of Distinction series, this collection contains articles and essays by Greenberg, 24 previously published and two not.

V.H. Matthews. 1995. “The Anthropology of clothing in the Joseph narrative,” JSOT 65:25-36. Garments are central to Joseph’s position within his family and in the households he serves. In each case he is given a distinctive garment which, in the first three cases, he leaves behind. Finally, he reverses the pattern and gives garments to others, marking the story’s final status change in which he becomes the master.

T. Römer. 1995. “Approches exégétiques du Deutéronome: Brève histoire de la recherche sur le Deutéronome depuis Martin Noth,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie 75/2:153-176.

H.G.M. Williamson. 1995. “Sound, Sense and Language in Isaiah 24-27,” Journal of Jewish Studies 46/1-2:1-9. Wordplay and sound-patterning effects are sometimes achieved by the artificial use of forms or by the possible coining of new words for the sake of sound. These effects should be taken into account in text-critical work on these chapters.

K. Seybold. 1995. “Psalmen-Kommentare 1972-1994,” Theologische Rundschau 60/2:113-130. Newer commentaries tend to be the result of teamwork and pay more attention to the collection as a canonical book and to the variety of readers of Psalms.

Jill M. Munro. 1995. Spikenard and saffron: The imagery of the Song of Songs. Sheffield Academic Press. This 1991 dissertation from the University of Edinburgh discusses images taken from court life, family life, nature, and space and time first in terms of the way various interpretations of the Song have viewed the images, and then in terms of how the images operate in relation to each other throughout the poem as metaphors for love. Includes the author’s translation, which is intended to “mirror and to test the conclusions of the study.”

David A. deSilva. 1996. “The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Honor, shame, and the maintenance of the values of a minority culture,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58:433-455. In a period of cultural crisis Ben Sira makes use of the language of honor and dishonor to promote loyalty to the values of Jewish culture and to provide insulation from the non-Jewish world from which Jews increasingly desired recognition.

TextHarold P. Scanlin. 1996. “Erased ga’yot in the Leningrad Codex,” in Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of the International Organization for Masoretic Studies, E.J. Revell, ed., 105-125. Scholars Press. Erasures of ga’yot in B19a indicate that

a scribe corrected the ms towards a ben Asher standard. Many of these erasures have only become clear in the most recent photographs made by the Ancient Biblical Manuscripts Center and West Semitic Research.

Abraham Wasserstein. “On Donkeys, Wine and the Uses of Textual Criticism: Septuagint Variants in Jewish Palestine,” in The Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman World. Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, Isaiah Gafni, et al., eds., 119*-142* [English section]. Zalman Shazar Center and The Historical Society of Israel. On the rabbinic list(s) of 14 or 15 LXX renderings which altered MT.

NT

D.C. Duling. 1995. “Social-scientific small group research and Second Testament study,” BTB 25/4:179-193. After a historical survey of small group research, D. spells out the implications of small group theory and research for the study of Mediterranean antiquity, and suggests how a small group model sheds light on leadership roles in Matthew. Includes 5 page bibliography.

Ian H. Henderson. 1996. Jesus, rhetoric and law. Brill. H. ”locates pre-gospel orality and gospel literacy within Greco-Roman rhetorical norms for education and performance. Heavy use of a few basic rhetorical conventions marks the gospel tradition as a marginal yet rhetorically competent attempt to create a Christian public.” The gnomic saying is taken as the focus of comparative study, since it is important throughout ancient rhetorical practice. The work “establishes a credible model of interaction among the speech-habits of Jesus, those of early Christian oral tradition, and the innovative rhetorics of gospel and epistolary texts.” $139.50

Stevan L. Davies. 1995. Jesus the healer: Possession, trance, and the origins of Christianity. Continuum. The quest for the historical Jesus has primarily been ruled by the notion of Jesus as teacher. D. finds the arguments unconvincing and proposes the notion of Jesus as healer fits better with the textual evidence. Spirit-possession is the principal category for discussing the origin and development of Jesus’ career and the later expansion of the Christian movement. D.’s discussion of spirit-possession is informed by cross-cultural anthro-pological study and contemporary psychological theory.

Treasures new and old: Recent contributions to Matthean studies. 1996. D. Bauer and M. Powell, eds. Scholars Press. 12 essays that reflect the major trends and issues in the contemporary study of Matthew. pb $34.95

Celia M. Deutsch. 1996. Lady Wisdom, Jesus, and the Sages: Metaphor and social context in Matthew’s gospel. Trinity Press International. Studies Matthew’s use of the Lady Wisdom metaphor to express his understanding of Jesus’ life and ministry. The relationship between the figure of the teacher in Matthew’s community, Jesus-Wisdom, and the portrayal of Jesus’ disciples in the gospel is examined. $20

Anthony J. Saldarini. 1995. “Boundaries and polemics in the Gospel of Matthew,” Biblical Interpretation 3/3:239-265. A sociological analysis shows that Matthew does not reject Israel or oppose Christianity to Judaism; he hopes to convince his fellow Jews to endorse a Jesus-centered Israel. Matthew’s group is better understood as a sect or

deviant group still within the broader, varied and often ill-defined, Jewish community of the late first century.

J. Engelbrecht. 1995. “Are all the commentaries on Matthew really necessary?” Religion and Theology 2/2:206ff. Comments on commentaries by Blomberg, Hagner, Luck.

John C. Poirier. 1996. “‘Day and night’ and the punctuation of John 9:3,” NTS 42:288-294. Punctuates John 9:3-4 as ‘It was not that this man or his parents sinned. (3b-4) But in order that the works of God might be made manifest in him, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is yet day...’ seeing in 3b as part of the symbolic complex of light/darkness in the gospel, connected to day and night in v 4.

Troy Martin. 1996. “Pagan and Judeo-Christian Time-Keeping Schemes in Gal 4:10 and Col 2:16,” NTS 42/1:105-119. Shows that the two verses are parallel neither in content nor in function. The Colossian list (festival, new moon, Sabbaths) is exclusively Jewish and describes the religious calendar observed by Pauline communities, while the list in Galatians (days, months, seasons, years) can be either Jewish or pagan, with the context indicating it is the latter, and thus describes a pagan calendar unacceptable to Paul and his communities. The Colossian list cannot be used to prove that the Galatian list is Jewish, nor can the Galatian list be used to prove the Jewish scheme in Colossians belongs to non-Christian practice (Lightfoot).

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor. 1996. Paul: A critical life. Clarendon Press. The author of many works on Paul now offers a biography of Paul, using the letters as his principal source and organizing principle in tandem with the general chronology that he establishes. “This two-pronged approach has the advantage of throwing into relief the essentially dialogical character of Paul’s thought. Each community generated questions to which he had no ready-made answers. His response in each case is tailored to the particular situation, but rooted in a consistent core, which is his vision of Christ. I have devoted particular attention to isolating the new ideas, and the improved or modified formulations, that changing circumstances forced him to develop. Only thus can one come to a proper appreciation of the quality of his intellectual training and the extraordinary flexibility of his mind.” (vii)

David A. deSilva. 1995. Despising shame: Honor discourse and community maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews. (Dissertation Series) Scholars Press. Honor and shame language used by the author of Hebrews functioned to promote solidarity within the Christian minority culture faced with pressures from the outside, and to increase commitment to the values and behaviors of that alternative social group, in opposition to the dominant culture.

Anthony Casurella. 1996. Bibliography of literature on First Peter. Brill. A classified bibliography of modern scholarship on 1 Peter and important works that have appeared throughout the history of interpretation of the book. $58.25

TextNew Testament Greek Manuscripts. 1995. R. Swanson, ed. Sheffield Academic Press; William Carey. A collation of 45 of “the most important” NT manuscripts in a parallel

interlinear format of variants against Vaticanus. One volume for each gospel, from $27 to $40 each, or $119.95/set from BIBAL Press, the distributor.

Keith Elliott and Ian Moir. 1996. Manuscripts and the text of the New Testament: An introduction for English readers. T & T Clark. A basic introduction for students and general readers to the text of the NT, using examples from English translations to explore the discrepancies between translation and printed text and manuscript. $13.95 pb

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LANGUAGE

Douglas Robinson. 1996. Translation and Taboo. Northern Illinois University Press. Explores the prohibition of translation of sacred texts and shows how similar taboos influence intercultural exchange in general.

Wolfram Wilss. 1996. Knowledge and skills in translator behavior. John Benjamins. “Translation is seen as an activity with an intentional and social dimension establishing links between a source-language community and a target-language community and therefore requiring a specific kind of communicative behavior based on the question ‘Who translates what, for whom and why?’” $79

Translation: Religion, ideology, politics. 1995. T. Burrell and S.K. Kelly, eds. Center for Research in Translation, SUNY Binghamton. (Translation Perspectives VIII) Some titles in this collection: M. Gaddis Rose, “Introduction: Religion and Translation: Innocence and Guilt,” B. Kahl and H. Salevsky, “In Search of Hagar: A biblical story (Gen. 16) within the framework of the Jewish-Christian-Muslim encounter—an interdisciplinary approach,” W. Snyder, “Translations compared: The Bible translations of Martin Buber and Martin Luther: If we all translated the same text into the same language—how can our translations be different?”

The Translatability of cultures: Figurations of the space between. 1996. S. Budick and W. Iser, eds. Stanford University Press. Includes an introductory essay by S. Budick, “Crises of alterity: Cultural untranslatability and the experience of secondary otherness,” K. Reichert, “‘It is time’: The Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation,” and J. Assmann, “Translating Gods: Religion as a factor of cultural (un)translatability.”

Translation horizons beyond the boundaries of Translation Spectrum. 1996. M. Gaddis Rose, ed. Center for Research in Translation, SUNY Binghamton. (Translation Perspectives IX) Subtitled “A collection of essays situating and proposing new directions and major issues in translation studies,” including the following: E.A. Nida, “Translation: Possible and impossible,” A. Lefevere, “Translation: Who is doing what for/against whom and why?” A. Neubert, “Textlinguistics of translation: The textual approach to translation,” I. Wallerstein, “Scholarly concepts: Translation or interpretation?” R. Rabadán, “Functional models and translation equivalence: A pragmatic approach,” W. Snyder, “Context: An essential element of language meaning,”

H.S. Straight, “Translating as instructing versus translating as adapting: How to establish criteria for judging the communicative coherence of a translation,” G. Rabassa, “Words cannot express...The translation of cultures.”

Lawrence Venuti. 1995. The Translator’s invisibility: A history of translation. Routledge. Another round in the domesticating/foreignizing debate: Looking at western translation from the mid-17th century on, V. aims to show how prevailing cultural (esp. political) and literary norms affected the representation of the text in the target language. The translator’s “invisibility” resulted from the attempt to make translations as transparent as possible, or “domestication,”a process V. sees as a form of ethnocentric violence.

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Orality, literacy, and modern media. 1996. D. Scheunemann, ed. Camden House. Essays represent an approach to the study of presentational forms and media of communication, with emphasis placed on their interaction rather than their differences. Exploring the multi-sensory nature of oral, written and electronically transmitted modes of cultural expression, the approach allows more precise descriptions of these modes. Individual essays focus on visual aspects of oral storytelling, combinations of oral and written features in literary composition, sound composition in moving pictures, and the digitalization of images and texts in the latest developments of television.

J.P. Small. 1995. “Artificial memory and the writing habits of the literate,” Helios 22/2:159-166. Discusses the mechanics of reading and writing in antiquity, classical training in mnemotechnics, and the ancient concept of accuracy as “gist.” Once that concept is understood, it becomes clear why the ancients would so willingly rely on their memories for retrieval.

Randall Buth. 1994. “Contextualizing constituent as topic, non-sequential background and dramatic pause: Hebrew and Aramaic evidence,” in Function and expression in functional grammar, E. Engberg-Pedersen, L. Jakobsen, and L. Rasmussen, eds., 215-231. Mouton de Gruyter. B. favors eliminating the category discourse topic until the textual framework is better developed, substituting the term “contextualizing constituent.” In Hebrew and Aramaic texts, contextualizers signal nonsequentiality and discontinuity in the text. An example of high-level textual application of contextualizers can be seen in Hebrew narrative where the topic marks a dramatic pause. B. concludes that contextualizing constituents in functional grammar have wider roles than simple “aboutness.”

Contrastive Sociolinguistics. 1996. M. Hellinger and U. Ammon, eds. Mouton de Gruyter. Essays are in three categories: Bilingualism—multilingualism, Language planning and language politics, Cross-linguistic discourse analysis. Titles include: L. Eichinger, “Sociolinguistic characters: On comparing linguistic minorities,” S. Romaine, “Pidgins and creoles as literary languages: Ausbau and Abstand,” M. Görlach, “The typology of dictionaries of English-based pidgins and creoles,” A. Wierzbicka, “Contrastive sociolinguistics and the theory of ‘cultural scripts’: Chinese vs English,” S. Günthner, “Male-female speaking practices across cultures,” U. Quasthoff, “Narrative universals? Some considerations and perspectives.”

Lexical functions in lexicography and natural language processing. 1996. L. Wanner, ed. John Benjamins. The articles describe recent work done on lexical functions in the framework of meaning-text theory. Lexical functions are a tool for the systematic description of “institutionalized” lexical relations, that is, where the use of a particular meaning of one lexical unit calls for the use of a particular second lexical unit, e.g., “take” a walk (and not “make” a walk). In two articles, L. Wanner and I. Mel’cuk give accounts of the nature and uses of lexical functions. J. Grimes offers a brief look at how the lexical functions approach might be used as a strategy for describing a language.

Denis Bouchard. 1995. The Semantics of syntax: A minimalist approach to grammar. University of Chicago Press. B. argues that it is impossible to build knowledge of the world into grammar and still have a describable grammar. He thus proposes simple semantic representations and simple rules to relate linguistic levels. The example of a class of French verbs shows how multiple senses can be accounted for by the assumption of a single abstract core meaning along with background information about how objects behave in the world. The approach simplifies the syntax at no cost to the descriptive power of the semantics.

Michael Stubbs. 1996. Text and corpus analysis: Computer-assisted studies of language and culture. Blackwell. An introduction to the basic methods of corpus analysis and its application to sociolinguistics and implications for meaning in texts and in language. With computer-assisted analysis, particularly collocational/concordance software, one can “use what is frequent in corpora to identify what is typical in the language, and . . . findings about frequently recurring patterns to construct a theory of the relation between routine and creative language use.” (231) Includes a chapter on “Keywords, collocations and culture: the analysis of word meanings across corpora” and shows how his method for studying culturally important keywords provides information that can be encoded in dictionary entries. “By searching out frequent collocations [especially across corpora], we can glimpse the recurrent wordings which circulate in the social world, and glimpse how linguistic categories become social categories.” (194)

Using corpora for language research: Studies in honour of Geoffrey Leech. 1996. J. Thomas and M. Short. Longman, eds. 16 essays introduce the corpus approach in a range of areas in linguistics and language study, including syntax, semantics, stylistics, machine translation, and lexicography.

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Three issues of the International Review of Missions are devoted to the topic of Christianity and culture. Articles in IRM 84/332-333 (1995) include: Y. Tesfai, “Ecumenism, culture and syncretism,” C. Geffré, “Christianity and culture,” G. Kretschmar, “The Early Church and hellenistic culture,” L. Sanneh, “The Gospel, language and culture: The theological method in cultural analysis,” S. Stauffer, “Culture and Christian worship in intersection,” M. Oduyoye, “Christianity and African culture,” C. Braaken-hielm, “Christianity and Swedish culture,” S. Song, “Doing Christian theology with Jesus in Asia,” M. Conway, “A Universal faith in a thousand and one contexts.” Some of the articles in 84/334 (1995) are: I. Bria, “A New typology for Gospel and culture syntax: From an Eastern European Orthodox perspective,” D. Nayap-

Pot, “A Maya woman reflects upon Gospel and culture,” R. Zoe-Obianga, “The Encounter of Gospel and culture in the experience of an African Woman.”

Religious plurality in Africa: Essays in honour of John S. Mbiti. 1993. J. K. Olupona and S. Nyang Sulayman, eds. Mouton de Gruyter. Essays are arranged in five sections: Study of African traditional religion, African theology, Africa and Christianity, Africa and some world religions, Responses to John Mbiti’s work. Includes H.-R. Weber, “The Bible and oral tradition.” $34.95pb

The Qur’an as text. 1996. S. Wild, ed. Brill. Papers from a 1993 symposium focus on the literary, intertextual, and receptional aspects of the Qur’an. $87.75

Shlomo Biderman. 1995. Scripture and knowledge: An essay on religious epistemology. Brill. B. attempts to clarify the epistemological functions of scripture in religious traditions and examine some of the ways these functions have been religiously understood. Examines the notion of scripture as a “provider of knowledge and supplier of the means by which this knowledge is justified.” Draws from Hindu and Jewish traditions for his examples. Chapters include: Textual and functional approaches to scripture, Scriptural knowledge and authority, Authority and necessity: Jewish perspective, Hindu perspective.

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NEWS & NOTES

Translator’s Workplace 2.0 is now available to those directly involved in Bible translation. Bible Society translation officers may order through Susan Combs in the New York office. Other orders, along with evidence of eligibility, should be addressed to JAARS Computer Services Department, Box 248, Waxhaw NC 28173, USA.

End of TIC TALK 35, 1996.

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