User:Alexei Kopylov/I Am the Very Model of a Biblical Philologist

"I Am the Very Model of a Biblical Philologist" is a patter song by Joshua Tyra. It is parody of "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance.

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I am the very model of a biblical philologist. I’m quite the Semitician and a passing Hittitologist. My articles are free from all grammatical iniquity. I rank Semitic cognates in their order of propinquity.

I am very well acquainted, too, with matters exegetical. I side with all the orthodox, and censure the heretical. In print, I wrinkle brows of any liberal who wrinkles mine, And counter all the theses of that vigilante Finkelstein!

Then I can give a lecture on the logic of Leviticus And tell you every symbol in the apparatus criticus. In short, in matters lexical, semantic, and homologous, I am the very model of a biblical philologist!

I know my St. Jerome and all his Vulgate Prolegomena. I’ve memorized, in order, all the known hapax legomena! Then I can tell the age of every patriarch in Genesis And tell the daghesh fortés from the shureqs and the lenéses.

I dream in Aramaic and interpret it in Syriac. I’ve posited that Esau was a possible porphyriac. Then I can parse at sight a polal, hithpolal or hishtaphel And topple any argument it happens that I wish to fell!

Then I can date a sample of Arabian calligraphy And tell you what the scribe was wearing, based on the epigraphy! In short, in matters lexical, semantic, and homologous, I am the very model of a biblical philologist!

Then I can write a shopping list in classical Sumerian, And tell you whether peoples were nomadic or agrarian. I know the Jewish festivals, Purimic and Kippurian. I mumble in Mandaic, I can hum a little Hurrian.

Then I can sing the alphabet in Hieroglyphic Luwian, And catalogue the animals, both pre- and postdiluvian. Then I can tell a surplice from a chasuble or maniple. And reconstruct the library of ancient Assurbanipal.

I wrote my dissertation in a flowery Akkadian And proved the Philistines were almost certainly Canadian. In short, in matters lexical, semantic, and homologous, I am the very model of a biblical philologist!