Which morphologically-tagged Hebrew Bible is most accurate?

Technical post alert: While looking around for a free on-line Hebrew Bible concordance to recommend to my Hebrew students, I noticed that different electronic concordances produce different results. Here, for example, is what you get if you search for the Hebrew verb אָהַב ("to love"):

Online sources that use Strong's KJV:
209 results in 195 verses (Biblearc.com; Crosswire's Bible Tool)
208 results in 195 verses (Blue Letter Bible)

The Grove's Center's Westminster Hebrew Morphology
215 results in 200 verses (WTM 4.2, 4.14, 4.18 in Bibleworks* and Logos)
(*Bibleworks originally gave me 217 results in 200 verses because I had selected both Ketiv and Qere readings.)

Other Logos Tagged Texts
BHS/WIVU (Werkgroep Informatica): 210 results in 197 verses
Lexham Hebrew-English Interlinear: 210 results in 196 verses

Observations:

1. I assume that the Westminster Hebrew Morphology is the most accurate. 
2. All the online sources I have tried that give frequency information are based on Strong's concordance, which is too bad for anyone looking for decent quality, free resources. (I'm disappointed that Biblearc.com fares no better, as its Greek New Testament resources are outstanding.)
3. There is currently no online resource that provides full parsing information for the Hebrew Bible. 
4. Tyndale House's Step Bible may be out to change 2. and 3., but it is not there yet. (A search for אָהַב gave me 196 verses, but no occurrence list.) 
5. We need to remember that our digital tools still have mistakes.
6. Please let me know if there are other resources I should be looking at.

Update: Andy from Biblearc emailed (back in January!) to let me know that the discrepancy between Biblearc and other tagged databases of the Hebrew Bible can be explained:

I would challenge the conclusion you make in your blog post that the lemma data we use for the Hebrew searches is not "decent quality". I took a look at the example you give of אהב in your blog post for instance. The verses where the lemma data differs are found in the following verses:Gen 29:20; 1 King 10:9, 11:2; 2Chr 2:10; 2Chr 9:8; Hos 3:1, 9:15; Mic 6:8.

Taking a look at these, you will discover that the issue is whether to take the appearance of "אהבת + noun" as an infinitive construct of the verb "to love" (אהב) with object or as the noun "love" (אהבה) in construct form. In most all (if not all) of these cases an argument could be made for both of the options as there is no difference in how they are written. Perhaps there is another example besides אהב where the discrepancy is more significant, but if not I would encourage you to reconsider your judgment of the Hebrew lemma data that we use.

Here's to survival in 2014

With weather like this, it's no wonder that a posture of mere survival, just getting by--but surviving nonetheless--has such deep roots in the Saskatchewan psyche. Survival also feels like the watchword for my life as I head into another semester of teaching, trying to do my best in the classroom, while staying sane and not neglecting my family too much. But let me qualify that: Although I expect to be overwhelmed this semester, it's a privilege that "survival" in my case means doing so much of what I love. The prairie has its own desolate beauty.

In addition to "survival" I have landed on a more concrete and hopeful New Year's resolution: To read through Isaiah in Greek and Hebrew along with everyone else in the "Greek Isaiah in a Year" group. At 5 verses a day, I'm hopeful that the schedule and community will help me scale Mt. Isaiah in Hebrew (and Greek) at last. It's not too late to join, if you are interested!

For the record, here's what my semester schedule looks like:

Gospels I have taught a bunch of times, Greek Exegesis and Jewish Backgrounds are prep-heavy upper-level courses, Hebrew Exegesis II is brand new.

Reading Notes: Ernst Käsemann on the "'The Righteousness of God' in Paul"

I think about Ernst Käsemann each time I teach Romans and introduce different ways of understanding the "righteousness of God", but I confess that I never got around to reading Käsemann's 1961 essay until this week--shortly after encountering this statement by Leander Keck about the essay's significance: "In a time of massive monographs and multivolume commentaries on a single book, Käsemann redirected the study of Paul with an essay of a mere fourteen pages." (Keck, Paul and his Letters, 152-3).

The experience reminded me that actually reading seminal scholarship is a far richer experience than getting it second-hand. It also helps explain current debate. I thought, for instance, that I could detect traces of Käsemann in contemporary scholars who defend perspectives rather different from Käsemann and from each other. Needless to say I will introduce the topic more carefully and with greater precision next time.

A few excerpts:

Righteousness as activity: "The widely-held view that God's righteousness is simply a property of the divine nature can now be rejected as misleading." Instead, the "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:16 "is for Paul, as it is for the Old Testament and Judaism in general, a phrase expressing divine activity, treating not of the self-subsistent, but of the self-revealing God" (174). Käsemann grants that righteousness is also a gift (cf. 169), but...

You can't have the gift without the giver: "Paul knows no gift of God which does not convey both the obligation and the capacity to serve" (170). This is because "the gift which is being bestowed here [i.e., the "righteousness of God"] is never at any time separable from its Giver. It partakes of the character of power, in so far as God himself enters the arena and remains in the arena with it. Thus personal address, obligation and service are indissolubly bound up with the gift. When God enters the arena, our experience is, that he maintains his lordship even in his giving; indeed, it is his gifts which are the very means by which he subordinates us to his lordship and makes us responsible beings." (174) 

On justification and sanctification: "[E]very gift of God which has ceased to be seen as the presence of the Giver and has therefore lost its character as personal address, is grace misused and working to our destruction. Justification and sanctification must therefore coincide, provided that by justification we mean that Christ takes power over our life. But at the same time the understanding we have now gained excludes the possibility of righteousness by works and of boasting of one's own moral achievement. The same Lord who calls us to his service enables us for it and requires us to render it in such a way as to ensure that his gift is passed on. As an instrument of grace, one cannot reasonably go on talking of one's own achievements." (175) 

On historical method: "[T]he historical is not simply that which can be shown to be what actually happened, but the field on which the self-understanding of the interpreter is either confirmed or shattered, or else triumphs by violence. We ourselves are at risk here" (173 n. 4).

The whole essay is gold. Tolle lege.

Bibliography:
Käsemann, Ernst. “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul.” 1961. English translation: Pages 168–82 in New Testament Questions of Today. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969.

Keck, Leander E. Paul and His Letters. 2d ed. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988.

50% off at Fortress Press

Fortress Press is currently offering a 50% discount on your first order when you sign up for email updates. This, it should be noted, is a better deal than the SBL/AAR conference discount. (If you are ordering from Canada, you will need to call in your order, but the discount still applies.)

SBL 2013: Initial Reflections on Baltimore

Washington Monument, Mount Vernon, Baltimore

George Peabody

This year's Society of Biblical Literature meetings had just about the right mix of good sessions and good conversations with friends and acquaintances new and old.

In the past, I would have included good new books as an essential component of any successful SBL, but this year I found that the sheer size and scope of the exhibit hall had a stultifying effect on my purchases, and that N.T. Wright's 1700 page Paul and the Faithfulness of God plugged a hole in my wallet: I wandered through the Fortress Press display several times, tempted by the sale on Wright's newest massive 2-volume tome, and thought to myself, "When will I ever have time to read that?" It turns out that the question is a useful one: It came to mind again when I encountered Francis Watson's newest important 500-page book on the Gospels, and Dale Allison's final book on Jesus. I would like to read both some day, but of the four important Watson volumes already in my possession, two are still unread, and I won't have time to read Allison—let alone Wright—during the next five months. This time around I wish that I had spent less time wandering through the exhibit hall and more time attending sessions.

In addition to stimulating papers and conversations, another highlight was my Monday morning hunt for the statue of George Peabody (pictured above) that figures in Knight's Castle, a 1950's era children's book I am reading to my daughter. (Remarkably, the book makes no mention of the statue of a much more famous George, right beside it.) When Shoshana saw the picture, she said we should take a family trip to Baltimore.

I hope to comment on individual sessions presently, but for now I leave you with a few lines from C.S. Lewis that I read the night before heading out to Baltimore:

"Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower—become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations." - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 81. 

Replace "artist" with "scholar", and you have it about right.

The Message of Romans in a Paragraph

Rembrandt "Peter and Paul"
(This picture has no connection to this post
except that pictures look nice.)

I asked my Romans students to read the letter and summarize its message in a paragraph. As this is the first time I assigned the exercise, I decided I should try my hand at it. Here is the result:

Paul writes to introduce himself to the Roman church and to prepare for his planned trip to Spain. He does this by demonstrating why the Good News is the solution to humanity’s problem. According to Paul, the Gospel is power for the salvation of believers because it reveals God’s right action in putting the world to rights in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Chapters 1:18-3:20 demonstrate, by a ‘shoe fits’ argument, that everyone without exception is under sin, and can do nothing to deliver themselves. Chapters 3:21-5:21 describe the solution: God is shown to be righteous by paradoxically acquitting the guilty. This acquittal is secured solely by trust not by anything we do. The results of this gift of acquittal is life—present and future—through participation in the Messiah. Romans 6:1-8:16 works out the implications of this transfer of realms, demonstrating in response to objections that right action or “righteousness” paradoxically comes as a result of freedom from the law. According to Paul, participation in the Messiah necessarily results in a new Spirit-empowered life of freedom from law, sin and death, on the one hand, and "freedom" (i.e., slavery) to righteousness, on the other. The rest of chapter 8 unfolds the cosmic implications of the Christ-event, and reflects on what it means to hope in the ‘not-yet’. Chapters 9-11 defend God’s freedom and faithfulness in light of the majority of Israel’s lack of faith, and explore the implications for Gentiles. Chapters 12-15, finally, describe what it means to live as righteous people in the new age, with special reference to problems affecting the church in Rome.

Greek Tense in a Teapot

Semi-technical post alert: Since the publication of Stanley Porter's gargantuan dissertation almost 25 years ago, scholars of biblical Greek have debated whether Greek tenses convey time in the indicative mood. Porter's claim that the Greek tense system conveys aspect* and never time has found a following in Rodney Decker, Constantine R. Campbell, and D.A. Carson, with support from K.L. McKay. But, to my mind, Buist Fanning (who is followed by Daniel Wallace), Albert Rijksbaron--and just about everyone else--have the better part of the argument: In the indicative mood, Greek tenses, as a rule, convey time as well as aspect.

When the dust settles, that leaves us more-or-less where we were almost a century ago, when H.P.V. Nunn published the following:

   It is somewhat unfortunate that we are compelled to use the name tense in connection with the forms of the Greek verb. It directs our attention too much to the time of the action of the verb, whereas it was the state of the action, rather than the time, that was most prominently before the mind of a Greek. The time of the action of the verb is often left to be inferred from the context, and cannot always be certainly told from the form of the verb. This is almost invariably the case with the moods other than the Indicative, and is sometimes the case in the Indicative mood itself.
   To the Greek mind the forms to which we give the names "Present" and "Imperfect" denoted duration, or repeated action. The forms to which we give the name "Perfect" or "Pluperfect" denoted action complete at the time of speaking, the results of which were regarded as still existing. The forms to which we give the name "Aorist" denoted a simple, indefinite action, and were always used where no stress was laid on the continuity, completion, or incompletion of the action denoted by the verb.
   As a rule the Indicative mood of the Aorist refers to an action in past time. The idea of time is however quite secondary, and does not enter at all into the meaning of the moods of the Aorist other than the Indicative, except in reported speech. With this exception the idea of Past time is only to be found in the forms of the verb which have an Augment, that is to say the Imperfect, the Pluperfect, and the Aorist Indicative.
   The Future tense in Greek, as in English, refers to future time in all its moods, and is thus an exception to the principle that the tenses of the moods other than the Indicative do not denote time in Greek.
   ... The use of the Aorist Indicative denotes that the action is regarded simply as an event without any account being taken of its progress or of the existence of its result. Even its time is not always distinctly contemplated; but, generally speaking, it is regarded as taking place in past time. The name Aorist means without boundaries or indefinite, and denotes that the action expressed by the verb is not defined with regard to its time, progress, or result. The Aorist Indicative is most frequently used to describe a past event or series of events, viewed as a whole, without any reference to the progress of the action, or the existence of its result.

- Henry Preston Vaughan Nunn, A Short Syntax of New Testament Greek (3rd ed. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1920), 66, 68.

To be sure, we would use different terminology today, but Nunn's summary still stands as an accurate thumb-nail sketch of the relationship between the Greek tense system, time, and what we now call aspect. While aspect theory has contributed significantly to our understanding of the Greek verbal system, the debate about time in the indicative mood has generated more heat than light. Time to move on.

For more along the same lines, see these excellent posts by Stephen Runge (here) and Mike Aubrey (here, here and here).

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*A definition of aspect: The author or speaker’s decision to portray an action from a particular perspective or point of view—either as a process or as a whole