Camelford Hall (Room 226),
McMaster Divinity College
Hamilton , ON
Mon, March 24, 2025
Start: 01:00 PM
End: 02:00 PM

At this week’s Theological Research Seminar, Sungmin (Iain) Park will be presenting, “Sacred Language Ideologies in Jewish Traditions”

Read the abstract and bio below.

All are welcome to attend in Camelford Hall (room 226) at McMaster Divinity College at 1:00pm or via livestream at the link below:

Join the Livestream
Password: z00m (Note that the password has zeros rather than “o”)

Abstract

After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, scholars determined that the Old Testament manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls (dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE) are almost identical to those of the Masoretic Text (dating from the sixth to tenth centuries CE). However, scholars have noted significant differences in the use of God’s name in these documents. In 46 documents written by Qumran scribes, 243 textual variations have been identified. Meyer (2022) investigates the differences in the use of divine names in the Qumran Old Testament and the Masoretic Old Testament and argues that it is impossible to identify a consistent pattern in these differences.
In this study, I argue that the variations in the use of God’s name in the Old Testament manuscripts by the Jerusalem Jews and the Qumran Jews stem from their differing sacred language ideologies concerning the Tetragrammaton. While research on the Tetragrammaton has been conducted through archaeology, comparative philology, papyrology, and other disciplines, it has not been extensively examined through the lens of sociolinguistics. This study aims to uncover the reasons for the different uses of divine names in the Qumran texts and the Masoretic Text by applying macro-, meso-, and micro-sociolinguistic approaches (Bell 2013; Terttu 2015).
First, macro-sociolinguistics explores the historical literature of the Jerusalem Jews (who later developed the Masoretic Text tradition) and the Qumran group (the so-called Yahad community), revealing that the two groups held different sacred language ideologies and language policies regarding the use of the Tetragrammaton. Second, meso-sociolinguistics compares the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text to analyze the indexical fields associated with the use of the Tetragrammaton and other divine names across various communities. Finally, micro-sociolinguistics examines the unique uses of God’s names found exclusively in individual Qumran documents.

Bio

Sung Min Park is Research Fellow at McMaster Divinity College (Hamilton) and Lecturer at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the East (Toronto). He actively engages in the fields of historical sociolinguistics and biblical studies. He has presented several papers in the annual meetings of ETS, SBL, NARNiHS, HiSoN, and LSA. In addition, several of his journal articles in these fields are set to be published in 2025. His research interests include the religious languages (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin), style, linguistic ideology, and language policy within the Greco-Roman world. Sung Min’s Ph.D. dissertation, titled “The Prestige Language of Christianity in the Book of Acts: Historical Sociolinguistic Approaches to Multilingualism in the Greco-Roman World,” is forthcoming in Brill’s Linguistic Biblical Studies series.

About TRS

The MDC Theological Research Seminar (TRS) is a bimonthly gathering for all MDC students and faculty. TRS meets from 1:00 PM to 1:50 PM on alternating Mondays, and includes about thirty minutes for the paper presentation and twenty minutes for discussion.

All advanced degree students are invited to present a paper and share your research with your colleagues. TRS is an excellent opportunity to “test drive” a paper you will be presenting at an upcoming conference and receive helpful feedback on your current research projects. Thinking about submitting an article to a journal and want some interaction first? TRS will provide it. Just published an article or an essay and want to share it us? TRS is an excellent opportunity to broadcast it.

This year the organizing committee consists of Dr. James Dvorak, Dr. Phil Zylla, and Dr. Gord Heath. To submit a paper, contact a member of the organizing committee.

Register

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