Blue Cord

It is being reported in the biblioblogosphere that David Noel Freedman has died.¹ Freedman was a giant in the field. He was a Johns Hopkins University graduate, and his fellow student Frank Moore Cross was the Doktorvater of my professor P. Kyle McCarter when I was at Hopkins, so naturally we read a lot of Freedman’s books and articles. And if I ever have to be trapped on a deserted island with only one book (in addition to the Bible), that book would be the Anchor Bible Dictionary, which Freedman edited.²

I don’t believe I ever met Freedman, unless it was in passing at a Johns Hopkins reception at the SBL. I do have a small connection with him, however. My first publication was a seventy-five word entry on the Egyptian city of Hanes in the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, edited by David Noel Freedman et al. It earned me the first $3.25 I ever made as a scholar.

As I was searching for his official obituary on the web, I came across an article about his father, David Freedman. He was a comedy writer in the early days of radio, and also produced some works for stage and screen. He wrote a biography that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Another biography about Florenz Ziegfeld was later the basis for the movie The Ziegfeld Follies. He also wrote the script for Blue Blazes, a short comedy film starting Buster Keaton as a bumbling firefighter.  David Noel Freedman wrote an article about his father entitled “David Freedman: Captain of Comedy”.

1. Jim West appears to have been the first to report this. I have not been able to find an official announcement. [back]
2. I am hoping that whoever makes up the rules for being trapped on a deserted island will let the six volumes of the ABD count as one book. [back]

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature contains a review of Calum Carmichael’s book Illuminating Leviticus: A Study of Its Laws and Institutions in the Light of Biblical Narratives. I had not heard of this book, but the blurb in the RBL (presumably taken from the publisher’s description) states:

The origin of law in the Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Until recently, the historico-critical methodologies [sic] of the academy have yielded unsatisfactory conclusions concerning the source of these laws which are woven through biblical narratives. In this original and provocative study, Calum Carmichael — a leading scholar of biblical law and rhetoric — suggests that Hebrew law was inspired by the study of the narratives in Genesis through 2 Kings. Discussing particular laws found in the book of Leviticus — addressing issues such as the Day of Atonement, consumption of meat that still has blood, the Jubilee year, sexual and bodily contamination, and the treatment of slaves — Carmichael links each to a narrative. He contends that biblical laws did not emerge from social imperatives in ancient Israel, but instead from the careful, retrospective study of the nation’s history and identity.

While I would not say that historical-critical methods (not “methodologies”!) have yielded unsatisfactory results, I am always open to a new theory. But just on the basis of this blurb, the theory sounds highly implausible. I didn’t have time to read Reinhard Achenbach’s entire review (which is in German), but the concluding paragraph is rather scathing. He states in one place that “in the entire book, there is not one philological or literary-historical proof to convince one of the position put forth.” Not exactly high praise.

Although I am usually glad to see a new book on Leviticus come out, I think I will have to pass on this one.

If you are visiting this site on April 8-9 (instead of reading it in an RSS reader), you will notice that the presentation of the site is a bit naked. That is because it is CSS Naked Day (which for some reason takes 48 hours). This was an event started two years ago to promote web standards. For those who are not familiar with web standards, they are a way of ensuring that web pages are displayed the same in all browsers and that web sites are accessible to people with disabilities.

One of the practices encouraged by web standards is the use of (X)HTML for the content of the site and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for the display. In the “old days” of web design, HTML did both. This made the sites hard to update and was a nightmare for people with disabilities. Making sure your (X)HTML is POSH (Plain Old Semantic HTML) allows people who have trouble seeing the screen to access the site, because there is nothing to interfere with software that scales your site to be large enough to read or programs that read the content aloud. Although users cannot override (X)HTML in a browser, it is possible to tell the page to display with a different style sheet. This is a very helpful feature for those who need assistance viewing the content.

As a Christian, I consider accessibility to be an ethical issue. It certainly falls under the umbrella command to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). But more to the point, it would seem to be demanded by the admonition not to put a stumbling block in front of the blind (Leviticus 19:14). When I write my code, I do my best to ensure that it does nothing to hinder a blind person who wants to read my sites.¹

CSS Naked Day is a way to encourage web standards. Participants agree to turn off their CSS, so that what is seen is the structure of the site. The pages displayed on these days are nothing but (X)HTML. This is what accessibility software and search engines see. Showing the pages without CSS gives people a better understanding of the underlying structure of a web page.

For those not familiar with CSS, I encourage you to visit the CSS Zen Garden. That site presents a number of different CSS designs. Although the designs have a variety of appearances, every single one of them has the exact same XTHML coding. All that is changes is the CSS.

1. For the record, I did not design the theme that is used on my blog. I am currently writing my own theme, however, which should premier in a month or so. The current theme would validate according to web standards if it wasn’t for the Amazon.com link to my book. For some reason, Amazon uses an older technology to deliver this content. [back]

The white flag with the blue “W” flying above the score board can only mean one thing: “The Cubs win! The Cubs win! The Cubs win!”

I woke up at 4:00 am yesterday morning and hopped in my car to drive to Chicago. I arrived a little after 10:00 and boarded the Red Line train to Addison St. Fortunately, I got on the train in Hyde Park, because by the time I got north of the Loop, the train was jam packed with Cubs fans heading to the game. (Click on the thumbnail to the right for a larger view.)

The crowd was huge. I have never seen such a pack of people arriving at a game. This is mostly due to the fact that Wrigley Field is smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood, instead of being on the outskirts of the city Despite the large crowd, it still has a very intimate feeling about it. And I wasn’t worried about being mugged like I was when I went to a White Sox game a few years ago.

The size of the crowd and the fact that I had to get my tickets at “Will Call” meant that I was late arriving at my seats (upper level, along the first base line). I only got to see the final batter in the top of the 1st. It was Carlos Lee for the Houston Astros. When I went to a White Sox game a few years ago, I got a foul ball off of Carlos Lee when he played for the White Sox. Unfortuantely, his closest foul ball this time was still twenty feet away.

I expected the game to be a pitchers’ duel, since it was Roy Oswalt going up again Jason Marquis. The two of them belong to a group of only seven pitchers who had more than 12 wins each season since 2004. It turned out to be a slug-fest, however. The Cubs came from behind to take the lead in the 7th inning when the scored five runs. The final was Houston: 7, Chicago 9. Kosuke Fukudome was 2 for 4 and drove in the go-ahead run with a double, while Derek Lee was 4 for 4 with 3 RBIs and a home run.¹

It goes without saying that Wrigley Field is a fantastic place to see a ballgame. It is a classic stadium. They layout gives you a feel for what it must have been like to see games at the Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field. The weather was a perfect 62 degrees with a beautiful sky overhead. Off to the right you could see Lake Michigan over the right field wall. I always feel revived after attending my first baseball game after a long winter, and a game at Wrigley field is a great way to start the spring.

For the record, this is my ninth major league ball park. The others where I have seen games are (in order):

• Fulton County Stadium (Braves, now replaced by Turner Field)
• Yankee Stadium (Yankees)
• The Holy Land Oriole Park at Camden Yards (Orioles)
• Miller Park (Brewers)
• The Metrodome (Twins)
• U.S. Cellular Field (White Sox)
• Great American Ball Park (Reds)
• RFK Stadium (Nationals, now replaced by Nationals Park)

I also made it over the Petco Park (Padres) during the SBL last November, but of course it was off season.

After the game I headed down to the Loop. I wandered around Millinium Park for two hours and took some pictures. At the left is the Pritzker Concert Pavilion on the Great Lawn, and below is the Cloud Gate sculpture. I like the pictures I took, but more than ever I am dying to get a digital SLR. I can get pretty good results with my digital point-and-shoot, but I miss the control of an SLR.

Afterwards, I met up with Anna Brawley, a friend from seminary days. As it turns out, she was also a classmate of my current roommate, Jin Yang Kim of Old Testament Story. Anna and Jin took Ugaritic together from Denis Pardee at the Oriental Institute. Anna and I want to the Billy Goat Tavern. It was an appropriate spot for dinner after my first Cubs game, since the original owner of the restaurant is the one who placed the curse on the Cubs after he and his goat were kicked out of Wrigley Field during the 1945 World Series.² If you watched Saturday Night Live in the 1970s, this is the restaurant that inspired the “Cheezborger. Cheezborger. Cheezborger” skit with John Belushi. Of course, I had a cheezborger with chips (”No fries. Cheeps.”).

1. I noticed on the back of my ticket this morning that it said that the holder of the ticket agreed not to transmit any information about the game. I broke that rule yesterday when I text messaged the score to a friend of mine, and I am breaking it again now via this blog post. Of course, right now I am not actually holding the ticket, so those rules may no longer apply. [back]
2. For those who don’t know their baseball lore, this curse is the reason the Cubs did not win the World Series in 1945 and have not won one since. [back]

Chris Weimer at Thoughts on Antiquity has the latest Biblical Studies Blog Carnival up. Chris issued a post on Tuesday saying that he had not received enough posts to include in a carnival. It didn’t occur to me that this was an April Fool’s joke. Last month when I hosted the blog carnival, I was encouraging people up to the last minute to submit posts so that I would have enough material to make up a carnival. When I saw Chris’s post saying he didn’t have enough submission, I went back over my own posts in March to see what I could submit. I couldn’t find anything, as it turns out that last month I only had eight posts, the lowest number of posts in any month since I began blogging two and a half years ago. Spring Break and Easter really slowed down my blogging.

Be sure to check out Chris’s blog carnival, especially if you like discussions about translations and liguistics or posts slandering Zwingili.