End of the First Week!

Classes are going to be awesome this year!

Wednesday I had my Psalms and Archaeology classes. Psalms is going to be great, studying the various theologies therein and the hidden, edited or removed theologies of the popular religion, as opposed to the official religion, of the ordinary people (such as an extensive angelology - a hierarchy of angels and heavenly beings surrounding God). ooooo!

The archaeology class is called Social Production of Technologies, looking at what exactly is "technology"; how do our bodies relate to the technologies we create? We're covering an enormous breadth of time and space, looking at prehistoric civilizations and beginnings of animal husbandry and agriculture; moving to the Mediterranean with the Greeks and Romans; the Middle East and The Book; the Scientific Revolution and Western Industrialization; and finally ending with modern "technology", and how gender studies affects how we understand space and technology. Super awesome! I'm so excited to get back into archaeological/anthropological theory! There were so many people in the class (almost 40!) that the prof was saying he'd have to give preferential treatment to MA and PhD students in socio-cultural anthropology and archaeology. I was afraid I didn't fit those categories, as I am technically a Bible student, but I talked with him after class and he was very excited to have me in the class. Yay!

Yesterday I had my Akkadian class! We're going to cover the entire Law Code of Hammurabi! I can already recite the first three words! Shu-ma a-wi-lum a-wi-lam... "If a man [accuses] a man..." I added "accuses" even though it's not a part of the first three words because otherwise it wouldn't make sense to you all reading. However, that is the verb in the first half of the sentence. I just don't know the word for it yet. Dr. Marcus is so fun. He was saying how very soon we would all be a part of an elite group of scholars who can stand up and recite the first law code to each other; that if he called us at 3am, we'd be able to recite it in our sleep. haha. I am so pumped to be able to read the cuneiform! There is a massive list of the signs sitting right in front of me as I speak - and they're just the simple signs! The course continues with a second half next semester where we will read the annals of Sennacherib and the Descent of Ishtar! 

As of yet, I cannot tell whether Akkadian or the archaeology class will be my favorite. By mid-terms, I might be saying Akkadian, if only because it will be significantly less work. haha.