Progress!

At the end of last week, I made the long trek up to Dingwall for the HTC postgraduate conference. This was a small gathering (even more so than usual, for various reasons) but nevertheless a useful and encouraging time. There was one prospective and four current PhD students present which gave lots of opportunity to discuss issues related to being a research student, publishing, networking and getting jobs, as well as our own research. I was the only biblical scholar in a room of systematic and historical theologians, so I had a good workout for my memory as I tried to listen and make sensible comments on such matters as the will of God, Calvin’s view of body and soul, and the incarnation.

I also had chance to meet up with my supervisor and talk about progress thus far. He’s happy with where things are at the moment and is pleased with the work I’ve produced. Among other things we outlined a provisional schedule for work to be done. I’m encouraged that, despite the difficulties of the past year, it looks like things are still on track to be completed in a reasonable time frame.

The chapter that I’m working on at the moment is one of three that will look at the effect of reading the Song of Songs in different canonical contexts: wisdom literature; writings/megilloth; Christian bible. It’s a fun exercise in intertextuality which is already producing some interesting results. For instance, it’s relatively easy to read the bride in the Song as Lady Wisdom, but it’s almost as easy to read her as the Foreign Woman/Adulteress. It’s almost as if the Song is a test of the wisdom learned in Proverbs – can you distinguish what sort of woman this is? Or is the reality that It’s Always More Complicated and that wisdom and folly are not so easily separated as Proverbs would have us believe? The plan is to do a close intertextual reading of three pairs of texts: Proverbs 5 and Song 4; Proverbs 7 and Song 2; and Sirach 24 and Song 7; and use this to build up a picture of the woman in the Song, then to turn my attention to the male figure(s) -Solomon, shepherd, king – and do similar intertextual work, before putting it all together. Something like that, anyway. The idea is to repeat the exercise in each of the three contexts, identifying different significant intertexts which will lead to differences in the interpretation of the Song.

But right now, I’m busy writing three talks for this and producing a final draft of my paper for SBL.

The life of a PhD student

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

ER 1.2

The autumn issue of Ecclesia Reformanda is almost ready to print. Abstracts of the articles are available on the website, where you can also subscribe.

The articles include: ‘And Their Children After Them’: A Response to Reformed Baptist Readings of Jeremiah’s New Covenant Promises by Neil Jeffers; An Intertextual Analysis of Romans 2:1-16 by Paul White; What the Bible Says, God Says: B. B. Warfield’s Doctrine of Scripture by Marc Lloyd; and Trinitarian Telos: Tracing Some Theological Links from God’s Triunity to Christian Eschatology by David Batchelor.

There are also some book reviews, including one by me on Beale and Carson’s Commentary on the NT use of the OT.

At £15 for a year’s subscription it’s a bargain you can’t afford to miss out on! Would also make an ideal Christmas present for any Reformed pastors or theologians in your life.

Novelty communion

Marc Lloyd posts some excerpts from Keith Mathison about the historic novelty of symbolic memorialism.

Garry Williams

Very late in spotting this fascinating interview with Garry before he was due to start as the Director of the John Owen Centre.

Blueprint

Blueprint, the annual Co-mission media forum will be held on 13th Feb, 2010. Main speakers this year are Ellis Potter and Jim Paul (more details on the Blueprint page). Minor speakers may include yours truly. This year’s theme is work:

Doing good work is time-consuming and hard. Why do it? What is the eternal value of being a creative? What is the point of technical excellence? Does our work matter? For how long? Doesn’t it all get wiped away at The End anyway? What is The End? And how does knowing the answers to any of these questions actually help?

If you, or someone you know, is a Christian working in any creative industry within shooting distance of London, this day is really not to be missed.

Pretending to be a biblioblog

There has been lots of hoo-ha recently in the biblioblog world (I was trying to type biblioblogosphere but my fingers just wouldn’t let me use such an awful word) about the lack of women who blog biblical studies. Some people have compiled lists of female bibliobloggers, some of which include me.

Um, okay. On the biblioblog list, this blog appears as a ‘related blog’ under the category of ‘Christian Spiritual, Theological, Homiletic, Patristics’. That is to say, I sometimes blog about biblical studies, but that is not the primary focus of the blog. That sounds about right to me. I blog about all kinds of things, and occasionally that includes my studies, though usually only when I come across something that I think might have wider interest for, say, pastors or other Christians. But if other people want to define things differently and include this as a biblioblog, that’s fine too. The more links, the merrier. Feel free to stick around if you find things you like. And if you can’t bear the pink and green, well that’s what the Lord gave us feed readers for.

Anyway, here’s some biblical studies. ;)

This is from Gerald Sheppard’s Wisdom as a Hermeneutical Construct in a section where he is examining Sirach 24:3-9 and observing some links to the Song of Songs:

It is possible that the choice of imagery in Sir. 24 is influenced by Song of Songs 3:6-11. The difficulty in dating the Song of Songs naturally complicates this hypothesis. However, early in the history of interpretation, the Song of Songs passage attracted exposition in terms of the ark of the covenant moving through the wilderness to Zion.
…
If one identifies Solomon with Wisdom, some interesting correspondences to the Sirach Song emerge. Solomon (the bridegroom?) comes up “from the wilderness” in procession that appears like a “column of smoke” (כתימדות עשׂנ, cf. Joel 3:3). Wearing his royal crown (v. 11), he rides a majestic litter (v. 6) or palanquin (v. 9) which is equipped with silver posts, a gold back, and a purple seat. Observers from Jerusalem watch enthusiastically. The daughters of Zion rush forward to greet him on what seems to be his royal wedding day.
…
In Sirach 24, instead of Solomon, the alleged author of the wisdom books, it is Wisdom who comes “circling” (v.5a) and “walking” (v.5b) through the cosmos in search of a resting place and an inheritance, as did Israel and the tabernacle in the wilderness. Just as Solomon’s royal litter appears as a “column of smoke,” her throne is in a “pillar of cloud.” Both are destined for the elect city of Zion. While Solomon rides on a portable throne, Wisdom is, likewise, carried on her throne in the transient pillar of cloud. With Solomon, the smoke is fragrant with “myrhh (sic) and frankincense,” two of the elements which compose the sanctuary’s perfumed holy incense with which Wisdom is intimately related in Sir. 24:15. (Sheppard:33 n.42)

I have previously noted various links between this passage in the Song and temple/sanctuary imagery, and also with NT passages about the coming of the bridegroom (most notably Mt 2:11). I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly connected it with the arrival of the ark in Zion after its journey through the wilderness before.

I’m working at the moment on the links between the Song and the wisdom literature, I don’t think the Song is wisdom literature, per se, but I do think that when you read the Song with the wisdom literature, it raises some very interesting possibilities indeed.

The difficulties of bible translation

Discussed by the dinosaurs.

Female biblical scholars meme

There is a tricky meme going round at the moment asking bibliobloggers to list the five most influential female scholars in their field. This is comparatively easy for me, since I am working on one of the books that most naturally draws female interest, so without too much thought I would say:

1. Ellen Davis (her work on the Song has probably influenced me more than any other scholar of either gender)
2. Adele Berlin (for her work on Hebrew poetry)
3. Phyllis Trible (whose ‘God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality’ is still one of the most important works on the Song)
4. Athalaya Brenner (for both editions of the ‘Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs’)
5. Carey Ellen Walsh (for her ‘Exquisite Desire’, exploring the themes of desire and frustration in the Song).

Never noticed that before

Thus the principal clue to the meaning of the Song has, to the best of my knowledge, never been noticed, namely, that there are twenty-six occurrences of the term ‘my beloved’ in the Song, and that twenty-six is the numerical value of the divine Name, YHWH.

From Sr. Edmée Kingsmill’s unpublished PhD thesis, The Song of Songs and the Eros of God.