Holy Helsinki Walk at International SBL/EABS

"Who is St. Urho? What is the Free Church free from? What happens at the Seventh-Day-Adventists' place on the eighth day? And what about the Finnish revivals?"

For those heading to Helsinki this year for the International Society of Biblical Literature and European Association of Biblical Studies Meeting, there's a great opportunity to participate in a guided tour (in English) led by a Finnish theologian. I've walked the streets of Munich with him, where I've lived for over two years, and he was able to show me some stuff in the city I hadn't seen before, and gave me a fascinating introduction to Laestadianism and Joseph Ratzinger's views on Purgatory -- so I'm looking forward to what he'll be able to show and tell us in Helsinki.

Information and tickets are available here.  

What time did the devil fall?

 In case you've ever wondered exactly when the devil and his buddies fell from heaven, an Ethiopic text provides the answer. The Miracles of Jesus narrates the fall of the devil and his angels, telling us:

ወኮነ ፡ ድቀቶሙ ፡ በሳድስ ፡ ዕለት ፡ ወበሣልስ ፡ ሰዓት ፨  

"And their fall was on the sixth day and in the third hour."

Compare this with the Cave of Treasures:

"He was cast down and fell, he and his whole rank, on Friday, the sixth day, and their fall from heaven lasted for three hours" (3:3; trans. Alexander Toepel).

Ethiopic Ezekiel Reading Guide: The Valley of the Dry Bones

I've posted a new Ge'ez reading guide/vocabulary guide, this time for the text of Ezekiel 37:1-14 in Michael Knibb's new critical edition of Ethiopic Ezekiel.  If you try to buy it online, you'll notice the volume is pretty expensive.  Fortunately, in a stroke of luck or a moment of divine favour I stumbled across it on Amazon.com several months back when, for some reason, they were selling copies of it for $10.

Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones is moving. My favourite visual interpretation comes from the St. John's Bible.

You can download the reading guide (and other guides for Jubilees and 1 Enoch) here.   Have fun!

An Introduction to Classical Ethiopic for Students of Early Judaism and Christianity

Ge'ez (classical Ethiopic) is one of those languages that many students of early Jewish and Christian literature know is important, and would like to be able to work with to some extent, but which remains a bit inaccessible.  Formal classes in Ge'ez are rarely offered. While there are good grammars in English, German, and Italian, they don't always offer the easiest entryway into Ge'ez for the autodidact or for the classroom.

One project I have been working on is writing an introductory Ge'ez grammar which is meant to be a stepping-stone into the language and is specifically designed with students of early Jewish and Christian literature in mind. The intended audience includes those focusing on the so-called Pseudepigrapha, as well as those working on the textual criticism and textual history of "biblical" literature. It will naturally also be useful for those who are interested in learning Ge'ez in order to interact with other important Ethiopic texts. After working through the grammar readers will have a good, basic understanding of the language, and be equipped to start engaging relevant texts, tools, and resources. Those who want to go deeper with the language could then continue on to more extensive resources, like Lambdin, Dillmann, or Tropper.

A few of the features of the grammar:

• Paradigms and examples presented both in the Ethiopic script and in transliteration.
• Footnotes indicating where more extensive discussions can be found in works like Lambdin, Dillmann, Tropper, and Weninger.
• Extensive exercises with helps, notes, and commentary so that from the beginning one is working through texts.
• Vocabulary, exercises, and examples drawn primarily from Jubilees, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, and "biblical" texts like Daniel, Ezekiel, Matthew, and Acts.
• Info boxes that point out common features (especially orthographic variation) that one will encounter in manuscripts.
• Tips and "tricks" for recognizing forms.

If there are features that you personally would find helpful in a grammar like this, please let me know!

Ge'ez everywhere! Classical Ethiopic course offerings

I'd posted before about Ge'ez (classical Ethiopic) being offered in Munich this academic year.  But back in North America this has also been an exciting year for Ge'ez:

At the University of Toronto Prof. Robert Holmstedt is teaching the language, discussed in this article here.

At the University of Washington Ge'ez is being taught by Prof. Hamza Zafer.

Which chapters do scriptural commentaries focus on? Ethiopic Commentary on Daniel

Sometimes us ancient and religious studies folks get to play with charts and graphs too. Here is a graph I put together for an upcoming Kolloquium presentation on my dissertation project (which I explained in an earlier post). I'm working on an edition and translation of the Ethiopic commentary materials on the Book of Daniel. One of the important questions we can ask when studying scriptural commentaries is: which parts of the scriptural text receive the most attention and commentary? Ancient and medieval commentaries can be fairly uneven in their treatment of the text, offering long discourses on a handful of key verses while glossing over larger blocks of text.
I've done some Ethiopic word counts of my transcription of the Daniel Commentary, and this chart shows both the number of words for each chapter in its version of Daniel and the number of words in the commentary on that chapter. The disparities are significant. Chapters eleven, seven, twelve, and three are the ones that attract the most commentary. This is not too surprising. Daniel 7 and 12 have been significant texts for Christian eschatology and Christology. For commentaries with an interest in historical questions, Daniel 11, with its extensive descriptions of events from the Hellenistic era, gives opportunity for lots of explication. Daniel 3 has an important place in Christian lectionaries.

Hipster Nativity

You may have already seen pictures of the 2016 Hipster Nativity Scene floating around the web. For a mere $130 you can replace your traditional Nativity set with something a little more modern:

This is a fun contemporary example of the visual reception history of the Nativity. If you're leading any discussions in the classroom or the church on the birth of Jesus this Advent season, I suspect this could create some interesting discussion.

As tempting as it is, I think if I'm going to dish out $130 on a Nativity set it'll be for something a little more traditional. Or, more likely, I'll use it as a down payment on a Brill book 😜

A couple more resources:
A short bibliography from the Glencairn Museum.

"The Nativity in Art" at Bible Odyssey, by Robin M. Jensen.

The Nativity, by Jeremy Wood.

Illuminating Luke: The Infancy Narrative in Italian Renaissance Painting, by Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal Carl Parsons.

Who Staged the First Nativity Scene? by L.V. Anderson.

Chung Hyun Kyung Resources

A little bit of bibliographic information I put together for those interested in learning more about salimist theologian Chung Hyun Kyung: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17VAX1TBXoq8j10BuiMhcczftHwvuYWCJLbLbD3GYaL0/

Live Long and Prosper -- in Ethiopic

A little something in honor of Star Trek's big anniversary.
What if when the crew of the Enterprise traveled back in time they ended up in late antique Aksum, rather than 1980s San Francisco? If they wanted to Vulcan salute the locals, how might they say that in Ge'ez/classical Ethiopic?

The original Vulcan expression is dif-tor heh smusma, expressed in English as "live long and prosper."  This gives us some opportunity to play around with the imperative, which "ist der Befehls-und Wunschmodus der 2. Person" (Tropper, 196). The imperative form can only be used for positive expressions. If you want to tell someone not to do something, you have to use a negated subjunctive form.  The imperative form reflects both gender and number, so the form is different if you're speaking to one male, one female, an all male/mixed group, or a group of women. So, if you're addressing the Vulcan salute to an individual male, it might sound like this:

ሕየው ፡ ጕንዱየ ፡ ወሥራሕ ። 
ḥeyaw gwenduya wašerāḥ   
Live a long time and prosper/be successful!  

But what does it really mean to prosper? Are the Vulcans the original supporters of the prosperity gospel? Another verb we could consider using is ጥዕየ which Leslau also glosses with "prosper," but it has the sense of being healthy.

ሕየው ፡ ጕንዱየ ፡ ወጠዐይ ።
ḥeyaw gwenduya waṭa'ay   
Live a long time and be healthy/prosper!

One of the things I learned watching the news here in Germany (which didn't let Star Trek's anniversary slip by without notice), is that the Germans translate "live long and prosper" as "Lebe lang und in Frieden", which means "live long and in peace." As a Mennonite I like that better, and for all I know, it might be a more accurate translation of dif-tor heh smusma (finding a class to learn Vulcan is harder than finding a class for Ge'ez).  So what might the German version look like in Ge'ez?

ሕየው ፡ ጕንዱየ ፡ ወበሰላም ።
ḥeyaw gwenduya wabasalām 
Live a long time and in peace!

I've been working on learning Italian, so I was curious how the Italians might translate this expression from vulcaniano into italiano? Come si dice "dif-tor heh smusma" in italiano? The most accepted translation seems to be: lunga vita e prosperità! The next time you're toasting with some Italian wine, consider using this expression.

Translating things like this into Ge'ez may seem silly, but I find it's a helpful way to learn old languages. Often when we learn "dead" languages it is a totally passive process. When you have to compose something in the language or translate something into the language it forces you to engage grammar and syntax in a more active way. How might you translate this into Ge'ez, or any other ancient or medieval (or modern!) language?

P.S. If you're interested in the Jewish origins of the Vulcan salute, here's an old post. 

Ge'ez in Munich this Fall

Despite its importance for fields of research ranging from Second Temple Judaism to African Studies, it's a real challenge to find university courses in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia and Eritrea. There are a handful of universities where it's on the books (University of Chicago, Catholic University of America, and University of Washington, for example), but it's not an annual offering.

So it's exciting that this Autumn an introductory Ge'ez course is being offered once again in Munich at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München by Professor Loren Stuckenbruck.

The Assumption of Mary

One of the interesting things about living in Bavaria, a traditional Catholic region of Germany, is that we have a handful of state-recognized religious holidays.  So today, for example, the libraries and university and stores are all closed in honour of Mariä Himmelfahrt -- the Assumption of Mary.

Traditions about the end of Mary's earthly sojourn are of course important for the Catholic and Orthodox faithful, but they're also fascinating to those of us who study the history of religion.  A resource to check out, if you're interested in digging a little deeper into the Assumption or Dormition of Mary, is Stephen J. Shoemaker's Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Shoemaker discusses the earliest traditions and provides translations of some of the earliest texts.

The Book.

The BMCR review from Adam H. Becker.

The author's website and Academia.edu site.

On a side note, this is another example of why Ge'ez and other eastern Christian languages are so important to scholarship on Judaism and Christianity in antiquity, as many of the texts dealing with the Dormition and Assumption of Mary are in these languages.

Amharic

Addis Ababa; WikiCommons

Amharic is one of the semitic languages of Ethiopia, and is currently the second most spoken semitic language in the world (Arabic is #1).  Over 20 million people speak Amharic, and it currently serves as the official language of Ethiopia.

We don't have any ancient writings in Amharic, with our earliest extant Amharic texts possibly coming out of the 14th century.  So in a sense it might be an odd language to feature on this blog.  Nevertheless, there are several good reasons to learn some Amharic:

• It's a fascinating and beautiful language spoken by over 20 million people.
• As a Semitic language it is relevant for those with an interest in comparative semitics.  
• It is relevant for those who work with Ge'ez, as we can identify Amharic influences on the Ge'ez language and literature.
• For those, like myself, who have interest in the history of scriptural interpretation in the Ethiopian tradition, Amharic is significant as the language of the andemta commentaries.
• It's way more interesting than learning French.

Unfortunately it is not easy to find courses in Amharic.  CARLA lists the following institutions that offer Amharic in North America: Foreign Service Institute, Harvard U, Michigan State U, U of Florida, Boston U, National Foreign Affairs Training Center, Stanford U, U of Kansas, U of Pennsylvania, New School University, and World Mentoring Academy.

As far as scholarship goes, there is a plethora of resources on Amharic.  Here I just offer a few resources that might be helpful:

Ethnologue entry.

OLAC Resources in and about the Amharic Language.

Selected Annotated Bibliography on Amharic from Grover Hudson (MSU).

Isenberg, Charles William.  Dictionary of the Amharic Language. [downloadable]

Amharic course from the Foreign Service Institute.   [follow the link to Indiana University for the remaining audio files.  The audio files can be found a few other places on the web too].

Appleyard, David. Colloquial Amharic. [the audio files can be downloaded for free]

Amharic at Deutsche Welle.

National Bibliography of Ethiopia.

Meyer, Ronny.  "Amharic."  Pages 1178-1211 in The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook.  Edited by Stegan Weninger et al.

Writing the Amharic Script.