ATLA Historical Monographs Collection Trial

We (Hekman Library) have a trial (until June 30, 2010) for a digitized version of ATLA Historical Monographs Collection, which contains thousands of monographs, mostly from 1850 until 1923. WE have many of these books in the library already. About 10-15 years ago we purchased a substantial part of this collection in microfiche. I invite you to take a look - the trial is available for those connected through the Calvin College and Seminary IP range. Among the advantages of this database is that the text of each work is fully searchable.

American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1:
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h7h

American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 2:
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h8

ATLA Historical Monographs Collection:

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monograph Collection consists of two Series that contain more than 29,000 titles focused on religion and theology. In its entirety, the collection is estimated to contain over 7.5 million pages, representing a core collection for colleges and universities with programs in history, theology, religion, sociology, political science and other disciplines. This collection features over two dozen foreign languages from books published all over the world.

Two series will be released. The segmentation is outlined below.

Series 1 consists of titles from the 13th Century through the 1893 World Parliament of Religions with the majority of titles from the 19th century.

Series 2 consists of titles published from 1894 through 1923.

The bulk of the titles date from 1850 through 1923, a time of great doctrinal, social and organization turmoil and upheaval in American culture. This important collection is a vital resource for scholars seeking to understand religious thought and practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Link to Historical Archives Flyer, Title List, and Additional Information: http://www.ebscohost.com/thisTopic.php?marketID=1&topicID=1152

R. Crumb on Genesis

The dust jacket of R. Crumb's newest work, an illustrated version of 'The Book of Genesis,' contains this warning: 'ADULT SUPERVISION RECOMMENDED FOR MINORS.' Crumb says that he wanted to prevent people from thinking, Oh, a Bible comic book; I'll give it to my kid!"

People my age remember R. Crumb from the late 60s and early 70s as part of the underground comix movement, with one of his most memorable drawings the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, sometimes criticized for images that were sexist and racist.

Is Crumb's illustrated Genesis simply a perverse anti-religious comic, exploiting the admittedly numerous R-rated scenes in the book of Genesis (think about it - Sarai and Pharaoh, Noah, Lot's daughters, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Dinah and Shechem, Tamar as a roadside prostitute, etc.)? It looks like much more than that - a serious attempt by a talented graphic artist to make sense of the Genesis narrative. In doing so, Crumb inevitably adds an interpretive layer in his drawings and his heavy reliance on Robert Alter's translation of Genesis. Gary A. Anderson writes about this in in a fine recent review ( "The Bible, Rated R.," First Things, Feb. 2010, 13-15).

In a famous essay from his book Mimesis, Erich Auerbach described the Genesis narrative as "fraught with background" and filled with omissions and mystery in its representation of the reality behind the story. When you retell the story in a graphic novel format, you're forced to fill in a lot of that background - and Crumb does. Take a look at how Crumb portrays the famous "Sacrifice of Isaac" story of Genesis 22, or the story of Dinah in Genesis 34. Crumb's brief commentary at the end of the book reveals that he has adopted a rather quirky interpretation of the Genesis narratives. Behind the portrayal of the strong women of Genesis we can see remnants of the replacement of a matriarchal society by patriarchal dominance. (He gets this from the work of Savina J. Teubal, Sarah the Priestess [Swallow Press, 1984]).

But take a look for yourself. You'll find the book in Hekman Library in the Graphic Novel section, at BS1233 .A785 2009.

Ipad vs. the Rosetta Stone

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament.
Ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Pp. xxvii + 1239.
Hekman Library ThRef 511.3 .C653 2007

In one volume Beale and Carson and sixteen other New Testament scholars have produced a unique reference tool that will be helpful for pastors, theological students, and biblical scholars. Each contributor (typically one per gospel or epistle) focuses his attention on those places where the NT writer actually cites or alludes to the OT. In their introduction, Beale and Carson outline six questions each contributor was asked to bear in mind:

1. What is the NT context of the citation or allusion?
2. What is the OT context from which the citation or allusion is drawn?
3. How is the OT source handled in the literature of Second Temple Judaism?
4. What textual factors come into play in this use of the OT (e.g., MT, LXX, Targum, etc.)?
5. How is the NT writer using or appealing to the OT?
6. To what theological use does the NT writer put this OT allusion or citation?

A good number of the contributors use these six questions as an outline in treating clear OT allusions or citations, with more generic discussions of less obvious allusions which do not lend themselves well to such a prescribed format. Each contribution has its own bibliography, with convenient author-date references within the text for those who wish to pursue matters more deeply.

This work succeeds in its goal of being a good comprehensive survey of specific instances of the use of the OT in the NT. While the contributors are informed by contemporary debates over the nature of the exegetical methods used by the NT writers and developments in the field of typology, the book does not attempt to address these issues comprehensively. For good, quick summaries of such issues, one might consult the relevant articles and bibliography in the recently published Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed. Kevin J. VanHoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005) :

• “Relationship between the Testaments,” by R. T. France, pp. 666-672
• “Intertextuality,” by Paul E. Koptak, pp. 332-334
• “Jewish Exegesis,” by Craig A. Evans, pp. 380-384
• “Typology,” by Daniel Treier, pp. 823-827

Religion Past and Present = RGG4 (1)

Probably the preeminent theological dictionary published in the twentieth century is the German-language Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. From 1908-2007 it went through four editions: RGG1 (1908-1913), RGG2 (1927-1932), RGG3 (1957-1962), and now the newly completed 4th edition, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1998-2005).
This 4th edition is now being published in English translation by Brill as Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (2007-). At Hekman Library we've received the first five volumes (A-Haz) so far, with seven more to come. These four editions, taken together, contain a chronicle of changes in theological thought over the course of the past century.

RGG1 was initially conceived in 1900 as a cross-disciplinary work which would incorporate the research of the new "history of religions school" and other liberal theological movements, as well as speak to the current situation of the church (hence the "gegenwart" (present) in its title. This "present" orientation was to be a corrective to the more academically oriented Realenzyclopaedie fuer protestantische Theologie und Kirche (3rd ed., 1896-1913), which formed the basis for the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1908-1912) [full-text online].

RGG2 (1927-1932) was a completely new work, covering a cross-section of German theological thought and reflecting the rise of neo-orthodoxy. Selected articles from it have been translated and published in Jaroslav Pelikan, Twentieth-Century Theology in the Making (3 vols., 1969-71).

RGG3 (1957-1962) had a more international character, with some contributors from throughout the world, but retained its fundamentally German Protestant orientation and its many articles of interest to German readers. The "present" focus continued (with articles on the ecumenical movement, the New Deal), and the Fraktur script of the first two editions was replaced by roman type.

RGG4 is a fundamentally new work. One notes that its title is now Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, dropping the definite article "Die", perhaps indicating a desire to conceive "religion" more generically, with more emphasis on world religions. In my next post I'll look at RGG4 and its English translation more closely.

For a good review of the history of RGG in its various editions, see John Fitzgerald, et al., "Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: The Past and Present of a German Theological Dictionary," Religious Studies Review 27.4 (Oct 2001):319-329 [ DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-0922.2001.tb00374.x ]

Flannery O'Connor - New Biography

I've not read Brad Gooch's new book Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor (Little, Brown & Co., 2009), but the review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes today has a great quote from some correspondence between F.O. and her friend Betty Hester: " I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both."
Gooch's biography supplements the last O'Connor biography, published in 2002 by Jean W. Cash, Flannery O'Connor: A Life (University of Tennessee, 2002), and makes use of a significant amount of hitherto unpublished correspondence. For excerpts from the O'Connor-Hester letters (in the Emory University Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library), see the 2008 article by Christine McCulloch, "Glimpsing Andalusia in the O'Connor-Hester Letters" in the online journal Southern Spaces . Here's a sample:

Gabriel's Revelation

Today's New York Times contains an article by Ethan Bronner, Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection :

"A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days."

According to a translation of the tablet by Israel Knohl, the text relates a vision of the archangel Gabriel who speaks of the resurrection of a messiah after three days, a motif previously not attested prior to Jesus.
See Knohl's article: Israel Knohl, "'By Three Days, Live': Messiahs, Resurrection, and Ascent to Heaven in Hazon Gabriel," Journal of Religion 88, no. 2 (April 2008):147-158.

Here's a summary of some of the discussion and links to articles, posted by Jim Lauer:

Hershel Shanks noted that the first English publication of the tablet appeared in an article “A New Dead Sea Scroll in Stone?” by Dr. Ada Yardeni in the January/February 2008 BAR. The Hebrew and English texts of the tablet are linked at the BAS website at http://bib-arch.org/news/dss-in-stone-news.asp .

In addition, as also circulated on Dr. Jack Sasson’s Agade list, in that article, Dr. Yardeni described the 3-foot-by 1-foot stone inscribed with a lengthy text that she would refer to as a Dead Sea Scroll had it been written on leather. A photo of the stone appears in the issue; for the transcription of the Hebrew text go to
< http://bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_hebrew.doc >; for an English translation, go to < http://bib-arch.org/news/dssinstone_english.doc >.
Yitzhak Sapir noted that an April 4, 2007 Nfc Hebrew-language article about the Cathedra article mentioned by the Times (in which Ada Yardeni and Binyamin Elitzur analyzed the tablet), could be read at http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127652-00.html?tag=11-28-43 (or http://www.nfc.co.il/Archive/001-D-127652-00.html ). He also noted that through links in the Nfc article a PDF of the Yardeni/Elitzur Cathedra Hebrew article (no. 123, Nisan 5767, pp. 155-166) could be read at http://www.nfc.co.il/uploadFiles/138240993022919.pdf and a drawing and a Hebrew transcription of the tablet could be viewed at http://www.nfc.co.il/uploadFiles/848324000835419.pdf . See

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/8651 and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biblical-studies/message/18003

As some may remember, I circulated an April 20, 2007 Ha’aretz article by Prof. Israel Knohl (”In three days, you shall live”) in which he discussed the tablet and his book and his theory, mentioned in the Times article. The article may be read at

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=850657 [English]
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=850111 [Hebrew]