Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals and Book Chapters
“The Reversal of (Food) Injustice: The Song of Hannah (1 Sam 2:1–10).” Bulletin of Biblical Research (forthcoming, 2023).
“Hiding Easter Eggs.” Teaching Theology and Religion. 25 (2022).
“Titling Class Sessions with Leading Questions.” Teaching Theology and Religion. 25 (2022): 45.
“Freeing Ahasuerus, Haman and Mordechai; Liberating the Oppressor in the Book of Esther,” Journal of Theological Studies 71 (2020):36-61.
Abstract: In this essay, I argue that “contingent” is not a plausible translation for אלף in Joshua - 2 Kings. My argument focuses on two types of evidence that have received scant attention in the conversation thus far — grammatical and comparative. First, there are several unique ways that the term אלף behaves grammatically like a numeral when it is used in conjunction with other numerals. Second, comparative linguistic data demonstrates the absence of any clear evidence not only that אלף was ever understood as an armed militia group in biblical Hebrew 8, but also that this was ever a definition for the cognate term in other Semitic Ianguages (such as Ugaritic alp). Third, a survey of comparative literature demonstrates that other ancient Near Eastern texts that contain battle narratives do not enumerate numbers of contingents when reporting troop and casualty figures. On the other hand, they do report hyperbolic numbers in the tens and hundreds of thousands. In the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, for example, kings do not declare how many dozens or hundreds of contingents they killed or exiled, but how many thousands of men. It seems unlikely that the authors of the DH would regularly report battle numbers in terms of “contingents”, when other ANE texts do not speak in this way.
“What Did YHWH Do in Lam 1:12?: Correcting a Misreading in the DJD Edition of 4QLam.” Vetus Testamentum (2016): 513-523.
Abstract: In his edition of 4QLam in DJD XVI, F. M. Cross found a significant and otherwise unattested variant for a much-discussed crux, reading יהוה הוגירני” ,YHWH frightened me (√יגר “,(instead of יהוה הוגה” YHWH has afflicted (√יגה .“(However, close inspection of the manuscript indicates that the verb should actually be read הוגיאני ; Cross incorrectly identified an ʾalef as a resh. Furthermore, I argue that the reading in 4QLam attests to the more primitive reading יהוה הוגיעני ,from which the others developed, though this reading is not actually found in any extant manuscript. This means that instead of a text that originally read, “YHWH afflicted (me),” as many previous translations have concluded, or “YHWH frightened me,” as Cross suggested, one finds a text that said, “YHWH wearied me.”
