About this blog
Nov 6th, 2008 by Bryan
I am an assistant professor of Hebrew Bible at Furman University in Greenville, SC. On my site you will find questions and thoughts about teaching the Bible to undergraduates, studying the Bible within academic and religious contexts, and relating ancient ethical and religious ideas to the present. There will also be an occasional entry about technology, especially the more “religious” sides of the tech world (Mac OS X, Linux, Privacy, Free Culture, etc.).
The chap in the picture is Qohelet, the Teacher whose words are found in Ecclesiastes. His seminal insight is that the search for order in the world is limited by the horizons of human knowledge and abilities. All activities, including good things like the search for wisdom, the enjoyment of earthly delights, and the desire for property and influence, are fleeting, “a chasing after wind.” Like a fine mist or vapor, they can be experienced for a time, but never grasped, controlled, or preserved beyond their time. What is left for us mortals, Qohelet asserts, is to seek wisdom when it may be found, to enjoy what we have been given while we have it, and to embrace every moment as if it might be our last, because it just might be. The Hebrew term for “vapor, mist” is hevel, translated in the KJV and NRSV as “vanity.” One of the most potentially “vain” things you can do is write a personal weblog, so the name fits, I think. Here’s hoping that this site embodies some of the positive sense of hevel, a place for dynamic engagement between an enduring religious tradition and a world that moves so fast as it spins in place.
– Bryan Bibb
Bryan,
Enjoying the blog, and curious about the word hevel. Any notion when it was entered into the Hebrew lexicon? I know the word existed as far back as 950 BCE, at least as a name (Abel), but it begs the question of a connection between the name and the meaning. Further, is it current scholarship that non-Septuatgint Eccl (Quoholet) was set down somewhere around 250 – 150 BCE? So what transformations might have occurred to the word over those many years? I wonder if there was any absorption of PIE languages in other parts of Hebrew, over the years. (Interestingly, the Old Norse PIE-derived Hvel, ‘that which turns’ was the word used to describe a wheel; kuklos is the Greek, and similar in Hittite, both groups impinging and influencing the Hebrew peoples for centuries. And maybe the language as well? Might hevel also have the dynamism of wind, one that turns, possibly as seasons, or even an infection of post-Socratic notions of atoms that change form and density but remain essentially unchanged?) And how did the (70 or so) Greeks get it so wrong as to mistranslate hevel as vanitas? Am I missing something on the diff btw the greek and latin(ate) meanings?
Well, enough fumbling in the dark. I’d appreciate any of your thinking on this, if you can kindly find time. For many reasons I’m intent on saving this Wisdom Book from such as Talmudic nihilism and Christian assumption for dispensational speculation.
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Mark,
I am not a historical Hebrew grammar type (though don’t tell Prof. Seow I said that). I would date Qohelet to the 5th century BCE, but I don’t really know how the word hevel came into the language. Maybe someone else has a notion?
I do agree with you that Vanity, in it’s modern connotation anyway, does not capture the meaning of the term. The NIV uses “meaningless,” which is a terrible, misleading translation.