Clinton J Moyer

This article departs from the traditional view that the episode involving Balaam and his donkey (Num. 22.21–35) is an independent insertion that disrupts the Balaam narrative (Num. 22–24). Instead, the focus here is on the manner in which, within this episode, Balaam displays certain characteristics that are associated elsewhere in these three chapters with the Moabite king Balak. Comparison with two other texts, Genesis 38 and 1 Samuel 25, reveals that the presence of such a role-reversal in the donkey episode renders it an indispensable component of the larger narrative. Each of these three texts thus instantiates a trope in which a role-reversing interlude interacts closely with its surrounding context to highlight the rich human complexity of a central figure.

This article identifies an extended, highly complex literary device, here termed a “compound topos”, evident in both Esther and the Greek novel Chaereas and Callirhoe, in which a surpassingly beautiful female outsider arrives at the Persian court and comes to prominence as the romantic rival of the Persian queen. From a theoretical standpoint, the device itself consists of a series of thematic components (topoi) whose meticuIous collocation and arrangement in each text produces a combined effect that surpasses the mere sum of the constituent parts (hence “compound topos”). Seen in this way, the device exhibits both the operational principles of the type-scene and the scope and complexity of  a compositional artifice, thus bridging the oral and the written realms.

Here, the specific compound topos in question is examined by way of an articulation of the various major elements of which it is constituted, and of the literary force achieved by each text’s distinctive combination of these elements. Rounding out this study is a discussion of the socio-historical significance of the compound topos’s  attestation in these two particular works, with special attention devoted to the import of this device as a discrete indicator of the relationship between Esther and the Hellenistic literary sphere.

Originally presented at the 2018 SECSOR Annual Meeting as part of a book review panel on Brent A. Strawn's book The Old Testament Is Dying. These proceedings, edited by Dave Schreiner, have appeared as a special volume of The Asbury Journal (73/2 [Oct 2018]), with this article appearing on pp. 36–47.

The figure Balaam has interested exegetes and scribes for millennia. Jonathan Miles Robker examines the different versions of the literary character Balaam as attested in biblical and epigraphic literature. By contrasting the distinct information about Balaam presented in the various sources (the plaster inscription from Deʿir Alla, Numbers 22–24; 31; Deuteronomy 23; Joshua 13; 24; Judges 11; Micah 6; and Nehemiah 13), the author seeks to trace the development of characterizations of Balaam from the oldest available material to the youngest in the Hebrew Bible. In this way, Jonathan Miles Robker advances discourse about the literary and tradition-historical development of the texts that became the Hebrew Bible. Beyond the text of the Hebrew Bible, he also traces the continued development of Balaam's characterization through the texts of Qumran and the New Testament. To this end, the author contributes discussions of the history of religion in Antiquity.

** See also accompanying handout.

Habakkuk 1 offers a grim prediction of the impending Chaldean onslaught, followed by the prophet’s lament over the disproportionate destruction to be wrought by the invaders. Then, awaiting God’s response at the outset of chapter 2, Habakkuk receives instructions to render his vision plainly—thus implying its obscurity—in conjunction with specific language, most notably the words mwʿd “appointed time” and qṣ “end,” that bear a distinctly “eschatological ring” (Francis I. Andersen).

The move calls up the usual eschatological expectations: the current world order will be overturned, the scales of justice will be balanced once more, the horror will pass, and the suffering of the righteous will end. Typically called upon as a means of providing comfort and hope for the future, in this context such an eschatological frame might reasonably lead the prophet’s audience to anticipate relief from the coming devastation described in chapter 1.

Instead, however, the prophet is led in the opposite direction. Rather than looking beyond the period of suffering to the relief that is to follow, he takes up the other side of the eschatological coin—namely, its direct engagement with the circumstances of the present moment—by decrying a series of home-grown social issues that themselves require eschatological correction. Fixing his people thus squarely in the crosshairs of judgment, the prophet reveals that they are to be the victims, not the beneficiaries, of the impending eschatological reset.

This future-to-present framework also suggests a new perspective on Habakkuk’s third chapter, which draws hope in the face of ruin by harking back to demonstrations of God’s enduring faithfulness in the great stories of old. Thus, these three chapters evince a powerful overarching future–present–past schema that unfolds as the audience progresses through the book.

** See also accompanying handout.

In a distinctively American way, American Christians often find themselves driven to make outward symbolic expression of their faith identity. Indeed, even more permanent than the cross necklace or the fish logo on the car, biblically-themed tattoos—in particular, specific words, phrases, and verses—enjoy an abiding popularity. And hey, wouldn’t my new ink look cooler in the “original” language(s) of the Bible?

But anecdotal evidence appears clearly to indicate that one’s desire for a biblical tattoo does not necessarily correspond to any meaningful understanding of—or even interest in—the markings being etched permanently on one’s flesh. Bad Hebrew tattoo parsing and analysis has become an Internet cottage industry; and the linguistic (mal)practice extends freely to stickers, grave markers, shirts, mugs, phone cases, and so on.

As we ruefully smile and shake our heads at such things, however, it is important to remember that there are even more consequential areas of religious education in which fundamental misconceptions or distortions frequently arise and flourish unchallenged. As educators in religious studies, we owe it to our students to ask regularly the germane pedagogical questions: about how we address students’ predispositions, positive or negative; about how we responsibly and respectfully challenge those predispositions in ways that draw students into deep and nuanced thinking; and about how these matters relate to the broader conversation about liberal education in general and the humanities in particular.

This presentation proposes engaging the biblical “writing prophets” alongside familiar modern voices that seek to drive social change in a manner analogous to what we encounter in the biblical context. Two examples are particularly instructive. First, Martin Luther King’s oratory provides an opportunity to consider standardized language, rhetorical tropes, and the exploitation of communal narratives as important items in the prophetic toolkit. Second, selected poems by Wendell Berry highlight the power of poetic speech to express profound truths about a specific issue.
The primary pedagogical purpose of such an approach is to address the potentially challenging balancing act that exists in a first-time academic introduction to the writing prophets. On the one hand, one must provide an adequate foundation in the cultural context and historical circumstances within which biblical prophecy emerged. But undue insistence on the ancient Near Eastern background of biblical prophecy, without sufficient regard for its content and expressive nature, can reduce the genre to a complex of arcane divinatory or ritual components, which both “others” the material and obscures its rich literary sophistication. On the other hand, overemphasis on its distinctive stylistic and ethical power, at the expense of sustained consideration of the surrounding ancient Near Eastern environment, risks reinforcing the assumption of some kind of Yahwistic monopoly on “real” prophecy, and also may unduly weight its relevance for a modern audience over the significance of its original context.
The two examples presented demonstrate that this approach brings students into more immediate contact with the sociohistorical context of biblical prophecy, by helping them to reimagine the prophets as real human individuals addressing social concerns relevant to their own experiences, rather than as vaunted, quasi-magical, and often largely inaccessible figures. This in turn enables students to retain a remarkable degree of detail as they digest  the biblical prophetic corpus, and brings into sharper focus elements in this literature that are both ancient and familiar, such as advocating for the marginalized in society. Thus “demystified,” the prophets take on a new accessibility, and students encounter both ancient and modern voices with new eyes.

This paper explores a distinct aspect of the relationship in biblical prophecy between the sense of sight and the speaking of prophetic utterances. It focuses specifically on those situations in which the prophet’s visual experience has an inspirational function, serving as the raw material from which is drawn an expansive and/or interpretive prophetic speech. Three distinct types of this scenario are considered. The first deals with instances where ordinary physical sight is conceived as playing a key role in the nature of the resultant prophetic utterance, as in Balaam’s encounter with the Moabite king Balaq (Numbers 23–24). The second involves those situations in which the prophet verbalizes the content of his vision in response to the question “What do you see?,” and then recounts an interpretation that springs from some aspect of this description: either a particular quality (e.g. the south-facing pot in Jer 1:13–14); a pun on the actual vocalization of the object glimpsed (e.g. the qayiṣ “summer fruit” of Amos 8:1—compare qēṣ “end” in the following verse); or the metaphorical significance of the vision as a whole (Zechariah, passim). The third category consists of situations in which the prophet speaks in response to a visual prompt that is not physically immediate to the viewer, and thus is envisioned or imagined only in the mind’s eye of the prophet, such as Ezekiel’s prophecies to the mountains of Israel, but uttered in Babylonia (Ezekiel 6 and 36). While these scenarios demonstrate the centrality of the visual component of biblical prophecy, at the same time its significance in these contexts is suppressed, since the prophetic message is properly laid out for its audience only through the verbalization that follows. Thus the evidence suggests that the utterance of artfully interpretive speech, rather than the experience of oracular vision, is the true prophetic gift. On the other hand, however, by tracing the diachronic development of the relationship between prophetic sight and inspired speech, we may posit that over time, increasing emphasis was placed on the prophets’ visionary talents, over against their oratorial capability. This hypothesis in turn permits us to examine how the biblical attestations of this phenomenon are to be situated within the larger world of ancient Near Eastern prophecy generally.

Utilizes the statistical method pioneered by Frank Polak to evaluate stylistic complexity within a given biblical prose text, by examining 1) the number of explicit arguments in each clause, 2) the ratio of embedded to non-embedded clauses, and 3) the number of extended noun strings in the pericope.

This article departs from the traditional view that the episode involving Balaam and his donkey (Num. 22.21–35) is an independent insertion that disrupts the Balaam narrative (Num. 22–24). Instead, the focus here is on the manner in which, within this episode, Balaam displays certain characteristics that are associated elsewhere in these three chapters with the Moabite king Balak. Comparison with two other texts, Genesis 38 and 1 Samuel 25, reveals that the presence of such a role-reversal in the donkey episode renders it an indispensable component of the larger narrative. Each of these three texts thus instantiates a trope in which a role-reversing interlude interacts closely with its surrounding context to highlight the rich human complexity of a central figure.