Back at the end of the calendar year I was interviewed by Jerry Johnston HBU’s “Think About It” podcast. They try to highlight different faculty from the University. We had a lot of fun doing this. Please have a listen if you’re interested!
Tag Archives: HBU
HBU Theology Conference This Week: FREE SESSIONS
In case you’re interested, there is a conference going on at Houston Baptist University at the end of this week commemorating the 500-year anniversary of the *first* published Greek New Testament, an event that helped fuel the Protestant Reformation. There are FOUR FREE plenary sessions, open to the public. I list them below, followed by more info on the conference. Please feel free to come, as well as to distribute this to anyone you think would be interested in attending any of the sessions. Some fine scholars will be speaking in the plenary sessions (Timothy George and Daniel Wallace, for example, as well as HBU’s own Craig Evans, and Reformation scholar Herman Selderhuis!).
Thursday, 7:30pm: Plenary Lecture 1 (Belin Chapel): Timothy George “Erasmus and the Search for the Christian Life”
Friday, 9:00-10:15am: Plenary Lecture 2 (Belin Chapel): Craig A. Evans “Erasmus and the Beginnings of Textual Fundamentalism”
Friday, 7:30pm: Plenary Lecture 3 (Belin Chapel): Daniel B. Wallace “Erasmus and the Publication of the First Greek New Testament”
Saturday, 9:00-10:15am: Plenary Lecture 4 (Belin Chapel): Herman Selderhuis “The Impact of Erasmus´ Biblical Work on the Reformation”
For more info on the conference, the schedule, and the speakers, click here.
================
HBU Theology Conference
Ad Fontes, Ad Futura:
Erasmus’ Bible and the Impact of Scripture
February 25-27, 2016
Houston Baptist University
In celebration of upcoming 500th anniversary of Erasmus’ Greek text and the Reformation, the Department of Theology at HBU, in conjunction with the Dunham Bible Museum, is pleased to host the conference Ad Fontes, Ad Futura: Erasmus’ Bible and the Impact of Scripture. The conference will consider the textual and historical issues surrounding the development of the Bible, the Bible’s impact on human society across the centuries, and the future of Biblical translation and interpretation in the future. Our keynote speakers include Craig Evans (Houston Baptist University), Timothy George (Beeson Divinity School, Samford University), Herman Selderhuis (Theological University Apeldoorn) and Daniel B. Wallace (Dallas Theological Seminary). The plenary talks are free and open to the public.
Registration
The conference will be held at Houston Baptist University, Houston, TX. The conference fee is $40, which includes refreshments and coffee. Accommodations and meals are not included in the conference fee.
If you are affiliated with HBU (faculty, staff, or student), admission to the conference is free. To register please send an email from your HBU account to theology@hbu.edu, giving your name as you want it on your nametag.
Hebrew Humor for the Holiday (that’s Spring Break for non-UK folks)
I cannot take credit for the following; my MA student (at HBU) 
Benjamin Summers forwarded these to me months ago. But they *are* enjoyable.
—————————
Q: Why don’t Bible translators ever buy matte paint?
A: Because they’re always looking for a good gloss.
—————————
Q: Which Hebrew letter is nothing to sneeze at?
A: Allergic nun.
—————————
Q: Which Old Testament authors found the most gems and nuggets of wisdom?
A: The miner prophets.
—————————
Q: What kind of machine would Siskel & Ebert use to determine whether a film gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down?
A: Their critical apparatus.
—————————
Q: What story did the Hebrew professor tell around the campfire?
A: The tale of the headless relative clause.
—————————
Q: What flavor gum does a rabbi chew?
A: Tar gum.
—————————
Q: How is an exegete different from a submarine captain?
A: One searches through a periscope while the other searches through a pericope.
—————————
Q: If you don’t practice using a lexicon, why will your translation stink?
A: Because not brushing up gives you HALOT-osis.
—————————
Q: The sentence topic that was just here – where did it go?
A: It left dislocation.
—————————
Q: Why couldn’t the overly humble student tell a direct object from an adjunct prepositional phrase?
A: He just didn’t know how to take a complement.
—————————
Q: What moral lesson can we learn from identifying verbless clauses?
A: What’s right isn’t always copular, and what’s copular isn’t always right.
Hebrew: the EASY language?
Just posted this today at the HBU School of Christian Thought blog. Reblogging for those who don’t catch the SCT site regularly.
One of our MA in Biblical Languages students did an undergrad degree in French at the University of Oklahoma. While on a brief visit to his old alma mater recently, he snapped this picture of one of the bulletin boards in the language department. Especially intriguing is the green flyer. So . . . Hebrew is a fun, EASY language! Who knew?
Of course, my students who are in the middle of learning first-year Hebrew don’t think it’s easy (although I have heard from a number of them that they do think it’s fun). How easy is Hebrew compared to, say, Greek? Hebrew is simpler than Greek in a number of ways, and often simpler is easier. So here are a few tidbits for the interested reader. In my Koine Greek class, we learn 24 forms of the definite article (the). In Hebrew, we learn one basic form…
View original post 336 more words
Hebrew & Greek Humor for the Holidays
One of our MABL (Master of Arts in Biblical Languages) students is showing a set of skills I had heretofore not seen in full blossom–he’s very nearly a stand-up comedian! Today he passed along some language jokes that would make any elementary Greek and Hebrew professor very proud, and thankfully, he has permitted me to post them here. Enjoy! And if you don’t smile, then please take it as definitive proof that you *need* to come study Greek and Hebrew here at HBU! Merry Christmas!
==============================
(1) Q: What kind of poker do Hebrew cowboys play?
A: Texas Cholem.
(2) Q: Where did extremely sick adjective go?
A: The adjectival intensive care unit. (He himself went, by the way.)
(3) Q: What Hebrew vowel is so rare it only occurs in texts once every 75 years?
A: Halley’s Qamets.
(4) Q: What kind of airplane do Greek pronouns fly in?
A: The Pronominal Concorde, of course.
(5) Q: Which Hebrew vowel has also starred in several extremely violent action movies?
A: Steven Segol.
(6) Q: What’s the best app for studying Greek grammar?
A: Angry Verbs.
(7) Q: Why do so many young Hebrew farmers move to the city after their first crop?
A: How can you keep them on the farm once they’ve seen פְּרִי?
(8) Q: How do you know you’ve been studying Greek too hard?
A: At Christmas you see “‘Tis the season” and start trying to parse the “τις”.
(9) Q: How are many aspiring comedy careers like tsere, qamets, and chireq?
A: They’re not historically long.
HBU Hosts Dr. Emanuel Tov Lecture on Dead Sea Scrolls
The Houston Baptist University School of Christian Thought/Dept of Theology is pleased to invite any and all to a FREE public lecture tonight (Monday, 7pm) featuring Dr. Emanuel Tov. Dr. Tov is recognized as the world’s leading expert on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible (his textbook on this topic is considered the gold standard among those in the field) and on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the project called “Discoveries in the Judean Desert,” which was responsible for publishing the Dead Sea Scrolls materials for the scholarly world. As Director of the MA in Biblical Languages, let me say that I am nothing short of thrilled that our students living in Houston have the opportunity to meet with and hear such first-rate scholars in fields like these. We are indeed very honored to be hosting Dr. Tov at HBU this evening. See details of the meeting below:
LECTURER: Emanuel Tov, J. L. Magnes Professor Emeritus of Bible Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem
LECTURE TOPIC: “The Biblical Dead Sea Scrolls”
DATE: October 22, 2012
TIME: 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
LOCATION: Belin Chapel on the campus of Houston Baptist University (in the Morris Cultural Arts center)
Here’s a piece that I just posted on our School of Christian Thought website at Houston Baptist University. I explore briefly what linguistics is, and why it is beneficial to study linguistics.
Here at HBU we have a Biblical Languages program, which includes both an undergraduate degree in biblical languages (just Greek and Hebrew) and an MA in biblical languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic). One of the requirements that we insist on for both programs is a course in General Linguistics. As the Director of the MABL program, sometimes I am asked questions like What is linguistics? and Why is it important to study linguistics? In this post I will attempt to provide some brief answers to those questions.
View original post 1,265 more words
Handel’s Messiah
Tonight my wife, three children, and I want to First Presbyterian of Houston to our first ever Messiah Sing-Along. The orchestra was conducted by my colleague from HBU, Dr. John Yarrington. The music was splendid; my singing . . . well, that was clearly unworthy of the Lamb who is worthy, as the last choral piece proclaims. I offer my congratulations to Dr. Yarrington for a beautiful performance, and my thanksgiving to God that such a work exists to draw our attention and devotion to Jesus the Lamb and the King of Glory. I think that tonight may have been the beginning of an annual family tradition for us.
For those who are unaware, my old doctoral supervisor (when I was at Southern Seminary), Dr. Daniel Block (now at Wheaton) wrote a piece analyzing Handel’s Messiah from a biblical and theological perspective. If you plan to listen to it or attend a performance, please do read over Block’s essay before you go; it will greatly enhance your ability to understand and enjoy the spiritual themes of the work. You can get it here.
12-13-10 You can get the polished, published version of Dan Block’s essay in the following journal article: “Handel’s Messiah: Biblical and Theological Perspectives,” in Didaskalia 12 (2001): 1-23. Thanks, Dan, for pointing us to this text!
Official Announcement: HBU to begin MA in Biblical Languages in Aug 2009
Houston Baptist University has announced the inauguration of her newest M.A. program: the Master of Arts in Biblical Languages (MABL):
“Houston Baptist University will begin offering its tenth master’s degree program, the Master of Arts in Biblical Languages, in August 2009. In addition to permitting students to establish a master’s level proficiency in both Hebrew and Greek, the program will include work in linguistics, hermeneutics and Aramaic.
Students completing the 30 hours in biblical languages required to earn the degree will learn from three nationally and internationally recognized linguists who each work in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. The Master of Arts in Biblical Languages program will equip graduates to read the Bible and related literature in their original languages with an understanding of grammatical, syntactical, semantic, discursive, rhetorical, exegetical and hermeneutical issues.”
Read the whole press release here.
For a basic intro to the MABL, go here.
To apply for the program, go here.
To see program requirements, go here.
For MABL faculty, go here.
BIBLICAL LANGUAGES 