Back from Regional SBL Meeting
MSH| May 4, 2008 11:42 pmWell, my trip to Portland went well. Had a good time with Dave and Robyn (thanks again!). My two daughters and my wife were along, too, although they had another event to go to.
I actually got to hear a number of papers. The one I found most interesting was the last (but they were all interesting). It was entitled, “Generational Curse as Part of Collective Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible: An Inter-Cultural Hermeneutical Study.” The subject matter is partly self-explanatory — are we to take the generational curse idea as “for today” or was it done away with (in chapters like Jeremiah 31). What I really got out of it was a footnote — the speaker mentioned an article by the anthropologist and (late) professor of missions, Paul Hiebert. The article was entitled, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle” and is basically a critique of Western enlightenment thinking that excludes the “middle world” of gods, demons, angels, etc. Click on the link above for a summary of the article. The original article is here.
