Note to the Reader: Latest Addition to my Blogroll

Check out Debtonation, the blog belonging to Ann Pettifor, whose simple book, The Coming First World Debt Crisis

(2006) grabbed my attention by predicting that the next debt crisis would take place in the ‘first world’ rather than some battling ‘third world’ country. How right she was. I guess I’m inspired to mention this by having seen The Big Short (about the GFC in the US) at the movies with my wife yesterday. So I’m still feeling a little apocalyptic after that, and Ann Pettifor, along with Satyajit Das (if I spelled that correctly) are my favourite apocalyptic economists.

Which reminds me of one of Das’ great quotes about the seemingly endless build-up of debt by governments like the US:

If something can’t go on forever, it’s going to stop.

Ahhh, impeccable and irresistible logic, and probably also true of our great economic structures.

Oh by the way, since this is an Old Testament blog, there’s plenty of wisdom there about money. What about,

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner” (Eccl. 5:13), or

As goods increase, so do those who consume them (5:11a), and,

As a man comes, so he departs, and what does he gain, since he toils for the wind? (5:16)

What I would advocate is a Christian theology of money, anchored in a parent theological category, the theology of human nature, with a keen eye on the theology of human corruptibility. We desperately need a theology of human corruptibility (check out Eccl. 5:8-9), which could save our society by warning us to retain checks and balances on greed in both our economic and our political structures. If the system is not already too sick to save.

Anyway, I could always be missing something. Feedback is welcome. But on to my real work for the evening…

A New Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Study Tool Online

From time to time I add a new pin to my Pinterest board on tools for studying biblical Hebrew: https://www.pinterest.com/abrown5929/biblical-hebrew-teaching-and-learning/

But occasionally there comes along a new tool that’s worth noting more fully. Care of a student of Matthew Anstey (and of mine, at intervals), I’ve found out about one called Shebanq, which appears to permit searching of anything you’d like to find out about the Hebrew Bible/OT. I’m sure it can do a great range of different things, and you may want to explore the possibilities. Let me mention just one.

Some time back, I explored manual representation of distribution of important OT terms by means of a heat map. If you don’t know what a heat map is, it is a kind of chart commonly used in data visualization circles. Here is an effort done up in Prezi to show where Levites are mentioned in the OT, and where they aren’t: https://prezi.com/uhjbcpw1xiyn/references-to-levites-in-joshua-kings-chronicles/

However, much better than a template that has to be filled in manually is a tool that creates a heat map (such as the circular one above) automatically. That is one thing that Shebanq does. As an experiment, I searched for the prefixed relative pronoun that usually appears as ‘שֶׁ’, typically in late biblical Hebrew contexts. In concert with a whole range of other terminological data, including the use of Aramaic and, more tellingly, Persian terms, it gives away parts of the OT canon as clearly postexilic, notably Book V of the Psalms, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. You’ll see what I mean in this screenshot from the program:

You’ll find this at http://shebanq.ancient-data.org/hebrew/text, and the relevant term is tagged with the number 2640. To get there, select ‘Words’ in the header menu, select the Hebrew letter ‘שׁ’, then find ‘שַׁ’, the first option under that letter. Then, in the LH dialogue box, select ‘chart’, and (as we say here) ‘Bob’s your uncle’! A heat chart making the distribution of the term clear at a glance!

I find this kind of tool an instant buzz, and a doorway both into diachronic studies of term frequencies (over time) in biblical Hebrew, and into ‘synchronic’ studies of key biblical themes accessed through tracing ‘giveaway’ words for those themes.

Did I mention that it’s free?