The Good Book

ABC Radio National’s Encounter program recently featured a piece titled The Good Book. The program looked at how the Bible is understood today as both literature (‘a good book’) and Scripture (‘The Good Book’). Among those interviewed were myself (George Athas) and some of my students from Moore College (Dan Wu, Tim Escott, Tom Melbourne, John Hudson), Cheryl Exum (Sheffield), Robert Alter (UC Berkeley), Lori Lefkovitz (Northeastern), and John Carroll (La Trobe). The range of contributors present an interesting collage of views about the Bible. If you’d like to take a listen, you can click one of the links below. The program is 54 minutes.

The Good Book (listen now online)

The Good Book (download mp3)

The Good Book (transcript)

A Rejoinder by Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd on Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts

Last week, Bible Interpretation published an article by Ron Hendel taking to task Ian Young, Robert Rezetko, and Martin Ehrensvärd for a summary of their work in Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts. This week, Bible Interpretation has published a response to Hendel’s article by Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd. Here is just a little of what they say:

There are weaknesses in our books, and there are things we wish we had emphasized more or stated differently but, honestly, we are becoming tired of knee-jerk reactions to our work that reflect a superficial understanding of its content and purpose. For example, we have seen the claim repeated that the aim of our arguments is to prove a late date of all biblical literature. This is a truly bizarre claim. We are pretty clear that we are saying that all linguistic dating arguments, both for early or late dates, don’t work.

You’ll find the article by clicking here. Ron Hendel has also posted a couple of responses in the comments.