Wednesday, August 12, 2009

PHILIP DAVIES has an essay at the Bible and Interpretation website in which he calls for a Dictionary of Biblical Studies:
Watch Your Language!

By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies

University of Sheffield, England
August 2009

About twenty years ago, I gave a conference paper called “Do Old Testament Studies Need a Dictionary?”1 In those days, “Old Testament” was unselfconsciously used—but so were biblical categories of description. I was railing against “Academic Bibspeak,” in which key terms were not translated into meaningful modern equivalents but remained fossilized within biblical scholarship. My argument was that to be “critical” we had to analyze one kind of vocabulary by using another, and not in its own—and thus be able to offer a “judgment” by translating the vocabulary.

Rereading this old piece recently—for the first time since its publication, I think—I expected symptoms of youthful brashness and was not disappointed. Did I also recognize how far the discipline had progressed since? Just a bit.

[...]
I do take his points, but personally I think Ark of the Covenant has a much better ring to it than Treaty Box. But maybe that's just me.