Robert Alter on El Shaddai

Robert Alter (Hebrew Bible):

El Shaddai. The first term, as in El Elyon (chapter 14), means God. Scholarship has been unable to determine the origins or precise meaning of the second term—tenuous associations have been proposed with a Semitic word meaning "mountain" and with fertility. What is clear (compare Exodus 6:3) is that the biblical writers considered it an archaic name of God.

G.J. Wenham (WB Commentary on Genesis):



For another potential explanation of El Shaddai, see John Skinner, ICC on Genesis, pages 290-291.

How to Work Your Way Back to the Past: Be Like the Chronicler

In my humble opinion, time travel (physically journeying to the past or future) is not causally possible. That is, it's not possible given what we know about the laws of physics and how time potentially works. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which we can travel back to the past by studying it: I realize that one can dwell on the past and visit past events in that way. Yet in order to work our way back to the past through a study of history, we need certain skills and tools.

1) One must develop literacy of the ancient world to a satisfactory degree. Just like it takes work and time to acquire literacy in any language, if one is going to develop literacy with respect to the ancient world, it will take hard work and time. For instance, you will need to learn the relevant language(s) whether it's Hebrew-Aramaic, Greek, Syriac or Latin and that might require a guide. That guide could be a book or person, or both.

2) Historians study variegated facets of the past: such studies involve numismatics, examining ancient cultures and their practices (i.e., anthropology) and analyzing texts. Historians must study a variety of texts and interrogate them while archaeologists carry out digs. To study the past well, one must learn about historical methodology and the art of writing history (i.e., historiography). Furthermore, what about ancient culture? Learning cultural practices is another challenge to studying the past.

3) What about objectivity? The Roman historian Tacitus said, "sine ira et studio" (without anger and passion). In other words, the historian is supposed to be levelheaded, objective, and free from prejudice (i.e., be disinterested). Well, that is the idea anyway although it's not possible to be completely objective. That notion is an antiquated relic of the Enlightenment. Nevertheless, historians should strive for objectivity as they attempt to reconstruct the past.

4) See https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/why-study-history-(1998)

This link contains plenty of helpful tips.

Compare Proverbs 22:20-21; Ecclesiastes 12:10; Luke 1:1-4.

P.S. The so-called "father of history" is Herodotus and the father of church history is Eusebius of Caesarea.

Words of the Month (March 2023)

 1. Polysyndeton (English)-From Oxford Reference:

[from Greek, ‘using many connectives’]

The repetition of conjunctions in close succession for rhetorical effect, as in ‘Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea’ (Shakespeare, Sonnet 65).

See https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100336782;jsessionid=2B2540DCB4E4B304614AC888E2163CAE

The example from Shakespeare reminds me of Romans 8:38-39 (RSV): "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

2. Asyndeton (English)-"Asyndeton (ah-SIN-di-ton) is the deliberate omission of a coordinating conjunction between words or phrases in literature or any written speech."

The definition comes from https://www.supersummary.com/asyndeton/

The website contains bountiful amounts of data about asyndeton and other rhetorical devices. One of my favorite examples is "veni, vidi, vici" by Julius Caesar (attributed to him).

Compare Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.12, which the website above references.

See also https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/asyndeton

Veni, vidi, vici is an example of other devices, rhetorically speaking, including alliteration.