iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Please tell me this is where we get the English word "shriek" from

Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I wonder if it's significant that the end of Psalm 72 has been removed in more than one manuscript. While it was literally chopped out in the quote skeet, in this late C13 (Parm. 1872) one it was only crossed out. We don't talk about Shlomo?

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Lovely artwork above this ץ (Psalm 90) next to the note that this is now Book IV (ספר רביעי). This manuscript (Parm. 3239) was copied in 1284, not even 50 years after Radak died. It still astounds me, both the work that went into it, and that I can scroll through it from the comfort of my couch.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Sermon prep on 2 Timothy 2 going well

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Here’s a glimpse of this sweet manuscript from the 1200s with the Psalms and Radak’s commentary. The book endings are really nicely done.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

It's PhD Friday and I am again looking at ancient Hebrew Psalms manuscripts, this time with a 12-13thC Radak commentary. He wants no one to be unaware that this is "the end of the first book"; it's so important it's written twice!

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Timely. Just finished marking 20 Job papers 😅 I can appreciate how he feels.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Does this sounds okay? On why there are 150 Psalms. 🪔 "150 is a highly manipulable number, meaning it can be divided into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths and tenths. The numbers either side are prime numbers, so from a purely utilitarian view, 150 is a much better number." 1/2

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I guess I'll see you at Radiohead in May then [sweats in credit card]

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Seriously, AI has ruined education. Instead of marking being evaluating the arguments, I spend my whole time guessing if a bot wrote it. Like, who writes, "Let's wrap it up." as the introduction to their final paragraph? Gotta be a bot, yeah?

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I know nothing about American Football, but seeing as they’re playing at the spiritual home of Australian Rules Football, they could at least have an Aussie commentating - ideally someone who knows absolutely nothing about the sport! #nfl

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Nanny state. If a bloke can’t butter a bagel while driving with his knees through four lanes of traffic, then I don’t know what we’re doing here. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

abc.net.au

Driver fined $1,000 for buttering bagel at the wheel

Police said the 29-year-old was caught driving with his knees while buttering the ring-shaped bread roll in the regional city of Toowoomba on Monday afternoon.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

RS with your home river This is the Murrumbidgee, which flows just near my parent's place in Canberra. Great place to cool off in summer.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Some work I did today on the "book" divisions in the Psalms. Here Radak says he's wrapping up Book III, praise to the shaper and doer (i.e. the creator), and now this is Book IV. Scroll through for the other book divisions.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Triple negative just dropped! Hebrews 13:5 rolls with an ουδέ ου μη

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Checking out the 1477 Radak Psalms commentary and enjoying the variation at the end of the "books". It's digitised at the NLI and fairly uniquely has the text inline with the commentary (rather than in a box in the centre or corner). 🪔 Here's the first division (41/42), which has a small doxology.

נשלם ספר ראשה תהלה לאל עליה ואתחיל ספר שיני

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Oh yay! I’ve always wanted one of these spam messages. Oh wait - maybe my teenage son skipped school and travelled to Morocco and dropped his phone in water in one of the driest countries on earth and it’s legit after all…

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Great symposium today on Humour in the Bible with FBS (the Australian Fellowship of Biblical Studies). Couple of points - every paper but one was OT/HB. Is there no humour in the NT?! - AI pictures really are 🤮 and I wish people wouldn’t use them

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Brilliant thread on Ea-nasir with more details than I’ve read before

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Tried to make a pretty diagram of the structure of Job. I have some marking coming up soon so thought it was time to refamiliarise myself with the book. duck5.blogspot.com/2026/09/stru...

duck5.blogspot.com

Structure of Job

Job is a book I've never spent too much time with. I haven't preached through it, and while I think I translated the first couple of chapter...

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

How great is this! They can’t agree on whether Robin Hood is in the film. Is it a gritty film about the peasants’ revolt or should it be made about a figure Americans might care about to get them in the theatre?

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Working through Psalm 90 and I’m surprised at the conjectures around רהב in v10. I keep thinking it must be רחב, as in the breadth (all) of them. The pride of years being trouble reads weird. The hemistich in question: וְרָהְבָּם עָמָ֣ל וָאָ֑וֶן

HALOT entry for רהב in Accordance as inflected in Ps 90:10.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

If you use AI “art” on your blog, I ain’t reading, or pod. I ain’t listening. It’s really gross and you should stop.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

People joke (in fear) about their browser history but tbh for me it's usually just "h with a dot under it" or "a with a line over it" because I don't want to learn unicode off by heart.

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Reposted by Douglas Fyfe

Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Maybe if the AI people yell at me for the 5 millionth time about how I’m not using their dogshit technology that has made everyone’s lives worse I’ll finally start liking it for no conceivable reason.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

When you hear "the two exiles" what do you think of? My default would have been the Assyrian and Babylonian, but the Karaite literature I'm reading at the moment says it's the Babylonian and Roman. I'm now thinking it's less Karaite and more generally Jewish, while the former is a Christian take?

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

[Palindromicus bangs staff] A man [bangs staff] A plan [bangs staff] A canal [bangs staff] Panama

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Just watched the Odyssey with Mrs and Mstr14. Really enjoyed it and thought Nolan made some fascinating choices. The trauma theme I don’t know if it was always there and I just missed it but it was really persuasive as a reading.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Old mate at the lunch queue at the preaching conference on Monday casually asked what I thought of #AI. I said I abhor it. He said it’s really helpful. I said I would have to resign in disgrace if I ever used it to write a sermon or Bible study. He didn’t respond. Hopefully he’ll reflect.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

We used to have arguments over this. My colleague back in the day had the golden oldies/ads; I can’t stand ads. Whenever either of us would leave the workshop the other would switch it. 🥁 all the way 🤘

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Preaching conference at Morling College on the Letter to the Hebrews with David deSilva, which we are told is neither a letter nor to Hebrews.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I’m reading his book “Enshittification” at the moment and it’s all so depressing. The monopolies, now they own everything, are strip mining everything of value until there is nothing left. And as a non-American, we, the rest of the world, have to wait for them to do something about it.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I've been reading b. Qiddushin and I'm still confused about whether I have to get off the toilet or out of the bath to greet an honoured guest. (It's because it mentions in passing "two fifths" of the psalms, which may or may not be saying something about "books" within the psalter).

sefaria.org

Kiddushin 33a:7 | Sefaria Library

And furthermore, bar Kappara, and some say it was Rabbi Shmuel bar Rabbi Yosei, was sitting in a bathhouse. Rabbi Shimon bar Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi entered and...

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

The highlights of this game are just going to be 20 shots by Spain plus their two goals (one disallowed) and the rest just Argentina rolling around on the ground. #ESPvARG This is what made the 3rd place game so fun - very little performative rolling.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Nice of England to do a deal with France: if England get some easy first half goals then Mbappe can have one or two in the second so Messi is that much further away from the golden boot. #FRAvENG The shadow of the Falklands is long!

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

working on Psalm 122 for this Sunday and there's a fun text thing going on. MT has in v4 שֶׁשָּׁם עָלוּ שְׁבָטִים שִׁבְטֵי־יָהּ עֵדוּת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל לְהֹדוֹת לְשֵׁם יְהוָה׃ while 11Q5 has just the second line in full: עדת ישראל להודות לשם יהוה LXX similarly has not statutes but witnesses: μαρτύριον τῷ Ισραηλ

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

After 10 minutes of the new @theresthistory.bsky.social series I think I’m convinced: go team Redcoats.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

After my talk at #SBL #ISBL on "books" and spacing in the medieval psalms manuscripts at Sydney University Library, here are some puzzles I'm still trying to solve around Radak's commentary. If you know anything about medieval Hebrew I'd love your thoughts on this: duck5.blogspot.com/2026/07/rada...

duck5.blogspot.com

Radak at the seams

I've spent a lot of time looking at a 1491 Incunable (87.2) at the University of Sydney rare books collection, which contains, among the wri...

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Final morning of #ISBL #SBL kicks off with politics and kinship. Gili Kugler backs up from yesterday with a fascinating take on Jacob & Esau/Judah & Edom - fraternal conflict is a massive thing in the Bible!

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Today at #ISBL #SBL we start out talking about the career of Ian Young (one of my PhD supervisors). It’s his collaborators in blowing up linguistic dating of Biblical texts, Robert Rezetko and Martin Ehrensvärd.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Absolute banger by Thomas Goud on Jesus cleansing the temple to start off Tuesday of #ISBL #SBL. A great pushback to the weaponisation of Jesus to validate human anger.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Great start to the Psalms unit at #ISBL #SBL with Andrew Brown on enemy language in the lament Psalms. Indeterminacy of enemies is key.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Second #ISBL #SBL talk now completed. Expecting a mad rush on the Sydney Uni rare books collection in the aftermath to behold the mysterious variation in spacing and segmentation in their medieval Hebrew Psalms manuscripts. #booksky

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Reposted by Douglas Fyfe

christhebarker @christhebarker.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Hey Bayeux Tapestry fans have I made the platform game for you? I’m sure someone else will have done this before but well now I have too… bayeuxgo.live

bayeuxgo.live

Bayeux Go!

Bayeux Go! Thou art Harold. Go forth and win thine battle. Jump your way to victory, avoiding arrows…

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Okay I'm not going to touch my #ISBL #SBL talk on Psalm 118 in the Dead Sea Scrolls again. I'll just say this: if you were planning to buy a new Bible, hold off until next week when I give my talk and they have to rewrite them all.

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Reposted by Douglas Fyfe

lizardbreath 🦎🪦🎃 @spindlypete.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

i love not gambling. every day i wake up and just don't gamble at all. any money i have at the beginning of the day i either keep or exchange for goods or services. if somebody says "hey do you want to get into some gambling" i say "hell no, brother. do i look like an idiot to you" it's fantastic

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Reposted by Douglas Fyfe

Evan Caddy @excadthedra.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

If this hypothetical movie were properly ambitious, it could be framed as coming from a storyteller to Jews huddled in a cave during the Antiochene crisis: give the film the context the book is missing for the modern reader. 6/14

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

(Re-)writing my #ISBL talk and reminded again how annoying it is when editors ignore the materiality of the texts they present. There is a double-spaced line before Psalm 145 in 11Q5 which Sanders completely ignores, which IMHO completely misrepresents the text.

Column 16 of 11Q5 in Sanders The Dead Sea Psalms Scroll. Lines match the gaps created by the English translation overleaf but ignore the manuscript presentation.

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Douglas Fyfe @duck5.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

After perusing the #ISBL Radelaide program, the formula for any talk at the Catholic Biblical Association is quite straightforward: "[Any passage or topic] + and the eucharist" will get you a slot. Thanks for attending my talk on "the extra verse in Psalm 118 from 11Q5 and the Eucharist"

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