OnScript

John Walton - The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest

Episode: Matt L & Dru try to find the Lost world of the Israelite Conquest with John Walton, of Wheaton College, and they give it their best. This discussion dips into the various provocative claims of John's book, but also manages to cover important items like John's response to sombreroed penguins, good novels, and counting one's steps to ensure the closest route between two points. If you've ever wrestled with the ethics or theology of the conquest story, tune in.

Guest: John Walton is Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, IL. John works at the intersection of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies. He is the author of numerous monographs and commentaries, including the NIV Application Commentary on Genesis, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary on Genesis, and the IVP 'Lost World' series, including The Lost World of Genesis 1: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and The Human Origins Debate, and is co-author (with his son J. Harvey Walton) of the book under discussion today, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest: Convenant, Retribution, and the Fate of the Canaanites (IVP, 2017).

Book: (From the Publisher's Site) Holy warfare is the festering wound on the conscience of Bible-believing Christians. Of all the problems the Old Testament poses for our modern age, this is the one we want to avoid in mixed company.

But do the so-called holy war texts of the Old Testament portray a divinely inspired genocide? Did Israel slaughter Canaanites at God's command? Were they enforcing divine retribution on an unholy people? These texts shock us. And we turn the page. But have we rightly understood them?

In The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, John Walton and J. Harvey Walton take us on an archaeological dig, excavating the layers of translation and interpretation that over time have encrusted these texts and our perceptions. What happens when we take new approaches, frame new questions? When we weigh again their language and rhetoric? Were the Canaanites punished for sinning against the covenanting God? Does the Hebrew word herem mean "devote to destruction"? How are the Canaanites portrayed and why? And what happens when we backlight these texts with their ancient context?

The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest keenly recalibrates our perception and reframes our questions. While not attempting to provide all the answers, it offers surprising new insights and clears the ground for further understanding.

Help Support OnScript: Click through The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest to purchase Walton's book (or others, while you're in there) and the OnScript Podcast gets a whopping 2.5% or so (at no loss to you). Each bit helps us keep this operation going. Or visit our Donate Page if you want to join the big leagues and become a regular donor. Don't let us stop you from doing both.

Blake Couey - Reading Isaiah's Poetry

Episode: Biblical poetry can be tough going. It doesn't rhyme, doesn't have meter, and it comes from an ancient culture. But it makes up some 27% of the Bible! In this first of two episodes on biblical poetry, Matt L. talks with J. Blake Couey, who is a reliable guide through the challenging waters of ancient Hebrew poetry, and who brings listeners his infectious appreciation for the prophetic poetry of Isaiah 1-39. Matt and Blake discuss the (fairly) recent discovery of how biblical poetry works, prophecy, and much more from Blake's book book Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Guest: Blake is Associate Professor in Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. He teaches in the area of Hebrew Bible. His courses include an introduction to the Bible and upper-level courses on prophets, women and gender in the Bible, and biblical conceptions of God. He is also affiliated with the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and Comparative Literature programs. Blake's primary research interests are Biblical Hebrew poetry and prophetic literature, with a focus on the book of Isaiah. In addition to, Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah he is co-author with Elaine James of Close Readings: Biblical Poetry and The Tasks of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Book: Reading the Poetry of First Isaiah (Oxford University Press, 2015) provides a literary and historical study of the prophetic poetry of First Isaiah, an underappreciated but highly sophisticated collection of poems in the Hebrew Bible. Informed by recent developments in biblical studies and broader trends in the study of poetry, Dr J. Blake Couey articulates a fresh account of Biblical Hebrew poetry and argues that careful attention to poetic style is crucial for the interpretation of these texts. Discussing lineation, he explains that lines serve important rhetorical functions in First Isaiah, but the absence of lineated manuscripts from antiquity makes it necessary to defend proposed line divisions using criteria such as parallelism, rhythm, and syntax. He examines poetic structure, and highlights that parallelism and enjambment create a sense of progression between individual lines, which are tightly joined to form couplets, triplets, quatrains, and occasionally even longer groups. Later, Dr Couey treats imagery and metaphor in First Isaiah. A striking variety of images-most notably agricultural and animal imagery-appear in diverse contexts in these poems, often with rich figurative significance. - From the publisher's site.

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