Hebrew Voices #180 – SBL Reactions 2023: Part 1

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, SBL Reactions 2023: Part 1, Nehemia joins Dr. Kim Phillips and Nelson Calvillo to share the highlights of the most important annual conference on biblical studies including a review of the scholarly work of TikTok-famous bible pundit Dan MacClellan and another session about a groundbreaking theory on the origins of ancient Hebrew accent marks.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Transcript Hebrew Voices #180 - SBL Reactions 2023: Part 1

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Kim: This is not an artificial product. It’s not, as you said, that the Masoretes sat down and said, “Okay, here’s the half verse marker.” Extraordinarily, this has been preserved since before the fall of the Second Temple, the way naturally that the text is read.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices! I’m Dr. Nehemia Gordon with this year’s SBL Reactions. And joining me from last year is Nelson Calvillo, who’s a research assistant at the Institute for Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research.

And for the first time joining me for SBL Reactions is Dr. Kim Phillips, who is a research associate at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, an affiliated lecturer at the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge Biblical Hebrew, and last, but certainly not least, a research fellow at the Institute for Hebrew Bible Manuscript Research. Shalom, Nelson and Kim!

Kim: Shalom. Good to see you.

Nelson: Shalom, Nehemia, shalom, Dr. Kim Phillips. Great to be here.

Nehemia: Thanks for joining me, guys. So, what we’ve done in the past, Kim, is everybody shares the top lectures they went to. SBL, for those who haven’t seen one of these before, is the Society of Biblical Literature’s annual meeting. It’s gone back to the 1800’s.

It’s funny. I once, in one of my articles, quoted something from the 1905 meeting, and at that meeting there were 5 or 10 lectures the entire meeting. Well, now there are over 1,000 lectures, so you can’t go to all of them.

There were lectures that I wanted to go to that I couldn’t go to because I was speaking at the same time, and all kinds of things like that. So, I’m going to let you start, Kim. What was the top lecture that you went to?

Kim: I think I’m going to have to have a pair of lectures, if that’s okay.

Nehemia: Fair enough, absolutely.

Kim: Sophia Pitcher works in Masoretic studies, particularly focusing on the ta’amim, the accents, and she gave a couple of papers, one of them in the Biblical Hebrew Poetry section, where she was co-presenting with Emmylou Grosser, and the other she was presenting in the Masoretic Studies section. And she was speaking alone at that point, and in both of the papers she more or less gave us an overview, an introduction, to her very particularly linguistic way of looking at the ta’amim, the riddle of the ta’amim.

Nehemia: Tell the audience what ta’amim are. Let’s assume people don’t even know Hebrew. What are the ta’amim?

Kim: Okay. So, when you open a Hebrew Bible, you are faced with a whole gamut of information on the page. First of all, let’s say it’s a Tiberian Bible codex. You’re faced with three columns of the biblical text, assuming it’s one of the prose books, so Genesis through to 2 Kings, or Second Kings... whichever I’m meant to say, Nehemia. I remember from last time that...

Nehemia: No, it’s fine! I’ve since found out that it’s a very British thing to say, “One Corinthians”, and “Two Kings.” So that is something the British do in general, I found out.

Kim: Okay, phew, good! So, let’s say it’s one of those books. There are others in three columns as well, but let’s just say it’s one of those. And at the top and the bottom of the page of this Masoretic codex, and in the margins of the three columns, you’ve got all of the Masoretic notes. We’re...