Scott C. Jones (editor) - When the Morning Stars Sang: Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday

When the Morning Stars Sang

Edited by

John Barton, Reinhard G. Kratz, Nathan MacDonald, Carol A. Newsom and Markus Witte

Volume 500

ISBN 978-3-11-042520-8

e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042814-8

e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042822-3

ISSN 0934-2575

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

www.degruyter.com

Amid the swirling words and creative energy of the first divine speech in Job (3839), Gods reference to the morning stars in 38:7 is particularly well-known. The popularity of the reference traces back to the King James Version (KJV) of 1611. With a subtle yet significant substitution of the verb sang for what earlier translations of 38:7 rendered as praised, the KJV captivated centuries of subsequent interpreters: when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. The translation inspired renditions and allusions from such remarkable company as John Milton and Friedrich Schiller, Ludwig van Beethoven and Henry Van Dyke, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Emily Dickinson, Francis Bacon and Woodrow Wilson, C. S. Lewis and Lyndon Johnson, James Curnow and Terrence Malick, Martin Luther King, Jr. and William Blake (see frontispiece). Poets and composers, authors and artists, filmmakers and scholars remain enchanted by the image of a radiant and jubilant heavenly chorus celebrating the creative work of God.

The image likewise inspires this Festschrift in honor of our beloved teacher and friend, Professor Choon Leong Seow, the Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt Divinity School, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Assembled here is a chorus of twenty-three of Leongs primary interlocutors in wisdom and wisdom literature in the Bible and ancient Near East over the last four decades. Each scholar accepted our invitation to contribute to this volume without hesitation to a one expressing gratitude to and affection for Leong. Equally generous was Albrecht Dhnert, the Editorial Director of Theology, Jewish Studies, and Religious Studies at De Gruyter in Berlin. Thankful for Leongs many contributions to De Gruyter over the years, Albrecht offered not only to publish this work, but to do so as volume 500 in Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW), on whose editorial board Leong served for nearly a decade (20032011). The result of this happy convergence of world-class wisdom scholars and a fine publisher is a tribute to Professor Seow that we are delighted and honored to present to him.

In the company of many, we celebrate and give thanks for Leong as our teacherfor his infectious joy and passion for the field, his creative and thoughtful pedagogy, his ready availability and wise counsel, his insistence on the highest standards of academic excellence, and his conviction that the work we do matters for the sake of the world. Insisting that his students check it! and then walking to the library with them to demonstrate how, Leong conveys time and again his fierce commitment to intellectual rigor and his enduring investment in those who are fortunate to study with him.

In the company of many, we celebrate and give thanks for Leongs remarkable scholarship. Few in our time command his depth and breadth of knowledge, much less sustain comparable research and writing agendas. Leongs work consistently unsettles settled thought, challenges and inspires his readers, and presses the field in new directions. Imbued with a relentless curiosity, he runs through disciplinary boundaries and ignores the limits of traditional training and methods: Leong simply learns what he needs to learn to better understand and interpret the biblical text. Time and again, the results compel others to follow.

In the company of many, we celebrate and give thanks for Leongs generous collegialityfor his wise leadership on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary for thirty-two years and now at Vanderbilt Divinity School, his faithful service on numerous editorial and advisory boards and guild committees, and his encouragement of other scholars and exceptional advocacy on their behalf. Numerous as the stars are Leongs phone calls and emails, letters of recommendation and cups of coffee, all in the interest of connecting people and building the collegium around the world. Moreover, Leong and his family consistently open their home to others, providing delicious meals and always-inviting space for engaging conversations and new friendships.

As two in the chorus of many, we thank you, Leong, beloved teacher and friend.

We close with gratitude to those who have made this volume possible. We thank the contributors for their essays and forbearance, and the editorial and production staff at De Gruyter for their attention to every detailespecially Albrecht Dhnert, Sophie Wagenhofer, and John Whitley. F. W. Chip Dobbs-Allsopp provided early and helpful counsel about the volumes design. Ada Yardeni, Martin Heider, Kathy Whalen, and Zoe Watnik of The Morgan Library & Museum kindly aided in securing permissions for the images. Finally, we are particularly grateful for Christopher Hooker, also a student of Leongs, who tended to formatting and copy-editing, and prepared Leongs intellectual biography and list of publications.

Choon Leong Seow, listen now as your morning stars sing for joy .

Scott C. Jones

Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GA USA

Christine Roy Yoder

Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, GA USA