Author Preface

The chapters that follow were originally presented as the Earle Lectures on Biblical Literature at the Nazarene Theological Seminary (NTS) in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 16–17, 2012. I am thankful for the honor bestowed on me to give these lectures, which are named after a prominent biblical scholar in the Church of the Nazarene whose family is well known by my own. I am also grateful for the warm and gracious hospitality showed to me by the faculty, staff, and students of NTS, including the then-president Dr. David Busic, Academic Dean Roger Hahn, and especially Dr. Andy Johnson, the coordinator of the lectures, who first invited me to come to NTS and who edits the series within which the book is now housed. Although the material that follows has been significantly expanded beyond the original lectures, I have tried to retain something of the oral style of the lectures if for no other reason than to increase the readability of the book. Perhaps this will also help those parts intended as humorous to come across in the right way.

Even before the lectures at NTS, students in several years of introductory courses at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University listened to me discuss the problem of the Old Testament’s linguistic death, even if only sporadically and inchoately. The same is true for an early presentation I made on the subject to Candler’s Committee of 100 and to Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. A more developed, but still incomplete form of the larger idea was given as the Marcy Preaching Lectures (March 2012) in Orlando, Florida, as a run-up to the NTS lectures. Since the NTS lectures, I’ve had the opportunity to speak on the topic at a number of different types of ecclesial gatherings in Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida, including the inaugural Thompson Lectureship at First United Methodist Church in Gainesville, Georgia, and in various academic settings, including the Thirteenth Annual Joe R. Engle Institute of Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary (2015), and at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego (2015). I think I learned more each time I spoke about the topic, including more about all that I do not yet know about the subject matter! I remain thankful for each of these opportunities and for the people who helped to make them happen.

It is appropriate to acknowledge up front my intellectual debt to John McWhorter, whose wonderfully engaging lectures for the Teaching Company on linguistics, especially those devoted to language death, pidginization, and creolization, not only relieved the pain of my daily commute, but also served as my first formal introduction to these subjects. The combination of listening to McWhorter’s lectures while driving to school to teach Old Testament to students training for Christian ministry is what first prompted me to consider the Old Testament in an analogical, linguistic fashion. Despite this debt to McWhorter, anyone familiar with his work will know (as do I) that he would no doubt quarrel with a number of the quite prescriptive ways to which I have put his (and others’) largely descriptive linguistic research, especially on dialects and creole continua. Then again, McWhorter himself rarely shies away from the political ramifications of his scholarly work. In any event, I have taken great inspiration from McWhorter’s teaching and writing—indeed, from the very inception of the idea. My further indebtedness to him and to other linguists can be traced in the footnotes and bibliography.

I must also mention my great debt to Jim Kinney. After many years of talking, it has been a pleasure to finally be able to work with Jim and all the wonderful people at Baker Academic. Jim has been exceedingly patient and gracious during the several delays the project encountered, which makes me even more appreciative of him and the press.

I’m also thankful to several individuals who read pieces of the manuscript, discussed its ideas with me, or provided help in one crucial way or another, especially (and alphabetically) the following: Bill T. Arnold, Lewis Ayres, Anthony A. Briggman, William P. Brown, Walter Brueggemann, Greg Carey, Stephen B. Chapman, Tracey A. Cook, Kenda Creasy Dean, Julie A. Duncan, Christy Lang Hearlson, E. Brooks Holifield, Luke Timothy Johnson, Steven J. Kraftchick, Joel M. LeMon, Thomas G. Long, Ian A. McFarland, R. W. L. Moberly, Ted A. Smith, Tim Suttle, and Reese A. Verner. Thanks, too, to my Emory colleagues Steven M. Tipton, for assistance with the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey and its cultured despisers; to †John H. Hayes, Jonathan Strom, and Phillip Reynolds for thoughts on the Apocrypha, for which I also thank my more distant colleagues John Endres and David deSilva; and to Andrea White and Don E. Saliers on George Lindbeck and “post-post-liberal theology.” Andrew Thomas gave me permission to cite lyrics from his song “You Are” featuring Kawan Moore. I am grateful to Timothy K. Beal for bibliography on Bible publishing and for his profound reflections on such in his wonderful book The Rise and Fall of the Bible. I also gladly acknowledge the help I received from several doctoral students who gathered needed items, listened to ideas, and occasionally brainstormed how to address certain problems: Harry Huberty, K. Parker Diggory, and Josey Bridges Snyder. A fourth, T. Collin Cornell, was especially helpful at the eleventh hour, offering me key encouragement and support. Collin also performed a final read-through and compiled the bibliography. I am also grateful to my Dean, Dr. Jan Love, for the sabbatical that afforded me the time to finish this and several other projects. Finally, I single out for special mention Ryan P. Bonfiglio, who read the entire manuscript (portions of it more than once) and, as is his custom, offered numerous suggestions that bettered it in virtually every possible way. It seems obligatory, but is nevertheless quite important given the number of people listed here and the arguments I make in what follows, to state that none of these individuals should be held responsible for my arguments even as I am more than happy to share with them the credit for any good ideas that might be found herein.

I also wish to thank my wife, Holly, sine qua non, who listens to me and to my thoughts about the Old Testament (and everything else) far more than anyone should ever have to, and my three children—Caleb (כלב), Hannah (חנה), and Micah (מיכה)—whose names bear evidence of their father’s primary linguistic love, but equally also my love for them. I can’t imagine more beautiful names (or kids).

Given the particular focus of this book, it is imperative that I recognize my first Bible professors: Dr. Reuben Welch, Dr. Robert W. Smith (my first Greek teacher), and Dr. Frank G. Carver (my first Hebrew teacher) of Point Loma Nazarene University. These three somehow put me on the path of lifelong study of Scripture in ways that continue to amaze me—ways I hope to emulate in my own teaching and somehow pass on to my own students.

Last, since this book is so much about language and, ultimately, about parents and their children, it seems only right to dedicate it to my parents, David and Sharon (two more Hebrew names—surely a sign of providence!). They were the first to teach me not only the English language but also the language of faith and Scripture, even, I’m quite sure, at preverbal stages and in embodied sorts of ways. I dedicate the book to them with profound love and gratitude—far beyond what words in any human language could express.