Return from SBL, #SBL10

The Tuesday morning of the SBL Annual Meeting tends to be a bit of a non-event.  There are sessions still going on, but they are attended by the speakers and just a smattering of people, those who are not yet fatigued and  those who do not have a flight to catch for a while.  I once had to speak on a Tuesday morning, Boston 1999, but on the whole I have been lucky since then.  I do try to make it to Tuesday morning sessions when I can, but this year I could not.

I had a nice breakfast, though, at the Corner Bakery opposite the Hyatt Regency, where I was staying.  And from there,  I took the metro to the airport -- much cheaper than a taxi -- and was lucky to meet friends at the airport and to have one last Sweet Water 420 before flying.

I enjoyed this SBL.  I found the Saturday, with my three speaking commitments, so exhausting that the Sunday and Monday seemed so much more gentle and relaxed in spite of the fact that I had lots on.  The session highlight for me was the inaugural Blogging and Online Publication section, and it is good to see that several of the papers from that session have already been posted on the blogs (e.g. Paleojudaica; more below).

Another highlight was going up and down in the funky lifts in the Hyatt Regency -- I really liked them.  I was a bit disappointed to discover late on Monday evening, when we tried to go all the way to the top, that the top two floors are closed off for the elite.

I heard several good papers this year and several pretty ordinary ones.  I must admit to being disappointed that everyone seems completely devoted to reading papers rather than presenting them.  I would like to see more people looking at their audience.  On the other hand, I was pleased with the number of clear handouts.  There were several papers that would have been greatly improved with nice handouts too.

It was interesting to see that several people did use Powerpoint and Keynote in spite of the charges.  I was pretty horrified about the $25-$75 speaker charges and hope that this is not repeated next year.  Three were especially memorable -- Bob Cargill and James McGrath at the Blogging session and Joe Weaks at the Synoptic Section.  Those three really showed the value of a strong illustrated presentation.

As usual, of course, the real highlight was the socializing with old friends.  I particularly liked the Irish pub, Meehans that was just down the road from the conference hotels.

And did anyone else take a day or two to realize that the book exhibit was in two different rooms?

SBL Atlanta 2010, Monday, #SBL10

As usual, it was an early star at the SBLt, this time for our Library of New Testament Studies editorial board meeting at 7am. Unlike previous years, the meeting was in a suite, with breakfast laid on, and it enabled us to have a decent and uninterrupted conversation.

The SBL gathers everyone together and so provides the opportunity for things like PhD vivas. I was examining a St Andrews University (UK) PhD and it was the first time I have done this kind of thing at the SBL rather than at the institution itself.  That was my major morning's activity.

A particular highlight this afternoon was the inaugural meeting of the "Blogger and Online Publication" section. Several of you might remember the discussion about this earlier this year.  Bob Cargill was chairing and he began by mentioning Charlie Haws and Jim West as key characters in getting the section going.  The speakers were all excellent -- Jim Davila appropriately beginning, followed by Chris Brady, Michael Barber, James McGrath and Robert Cargill.  I agreed with pretty much everything that the panel said, and I'd have thought that it would be ideal for the blogs to get the discussion going on these things.  The session was packed out, there were lots of interesting questions and comments, and it was all-round very positive.  More anon on this one.

I did the SBL tart thing for the last couple of hours today, taking in both the Cross, Resurrection and Diversity Section and the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media section, the latter a session on Anthony Le Donne's book and featuring Paula Fredriksen on the panel.

It has to be said, of course, that the highlight of the SBL is always the socializing.  I visited Max Lager's Wood Fired Grill and Brewery for dinner, and then retired to Meehan's Public House where we were treated very nicely, and got given a free bottle of Fuller's Vintage Ale.  Our friendliness and perhaps the British accent helped.

SBL Atlanta 2010, Sunday, #SBL10

After the pretty exhausting day yesterday, today was much more relaxing and enjoyable. I went to the University of Birmingham breakfast first thing. This has become a bit of a highlight since leaving Birmingham over five years ago, and a nice way of keeping in touch with old friends and colleagues. I ate some rather odd sausages, chicken apple flavour I think they were.

I did the SBL tart thing this morning, flitting between several different sessions of interest. I particularly enjoyed Richard Wright's paper on 1 Cor. 11.2-16 in the Ritual and Gender section. I also enjoyed catching a couple of papers in the Intertextuality section, including Dukie Lori Baron who did a great job.

Today was a great day for free food -- didn't buy any all day. I wasn't expecting to get a free lunch, but it turns out that this is one of the perks of being on the JSNT editorial board. The food was that Mediterranean stuff -- olives, sun dried tomatoes, mozzarella, all that kind of stuff.

I finally managed to get my strength up to visit the book exhibit today too. I am not a big fan of the book exhibit -- find it depressing seeing all those books -- but I do like meeting people there, and I had a couple of good meetings with publishers.

Another good session today was the Synoptics Section. I went primarily because I wanted to hear Rebekah Eklund's paper on the crowds in the Passion Narrative, which she had initially worked on for my Passion Narratives graduate class last year. She did a great job -- clear, interesting, engaging. But it was a bonus also to catch several other interesting papers, including Joe Weaks's presentation on "MarQ", reconstructing Mark's Gospel on the basis of Matthew and Luke alone as a test for reconstructions of Q. I was on Joe's committee at Brite Divinity School and I really enjoyed his presentation. I don't know whether he forked out $75 for his projector fee but he had a great powerpoint.

It was receptions evening tonight and I took in three -- UNC Chapel Hill, T and T Clark and Duke. All were enjoyable, especially getting the chance to catch up with some old friends. Of course the days of the lavish food are over, but if you are lucky you can grab a cube of cheese and perhaps a cookie. Good if you are a diet.

SBL Atlanta 2010, Saturday, #SBL10

Several days ago, when I actually checked the programme, I realized that Saturday was going to be a big day. Somehow, I had managed to find myself speaking three times on the one day.  The first of these is not, strictly speaking, part of the SBL Annual Meeting.  Rather, as some of you will know, the Biblical Archaeology Society holds its annual "BibFest" round the corner from the SBL and several of us go to address the conference there on topics of interest to us.  My topic this year was "Paul's Letters: Women, Men and the End", some reflections on the roles played by women in Paul's churches (specifically Phoebe, Prisca, Junia) and then some analysis of the troubling passages in 1 Cor. 11 and 14, with conclusions on the eschatological nature of Paul's views on women and men, in discussion of Gal. 3.28.  I like speaking at the BAS -- it is an audience of enthusiasts who always have interesting comments and questions, and who appear appreciative of our coming along to speak to them.

My second stint of the day was in the Ideological Criticism section.  This is where all the cool kids hang out, and it is not my usual haunting ground.  The topic was James Crossley's book Jesus in an Age of Terror.  My paper offered a critique of James's discussion of the "politics of the bibliobloggers" and it is probably something that I will offer here in the blog in due course to generate some further discussion.  Zeba Crook spoke second and discussed the representation of the context group in James's book -- and he had some critical things to say.  Bill Arnal offered a more sympathetic reading of James's book and Roland Boer offered some sophisticated and often very funny reflections on what James was doing.

James gave a response to our four presentations and there was a very lively discussion afterwards.  I am still reflecting on this session and I am not really sure what to make of it.  I think I'd like to read all the papers and James's response and to work out where things stand.  I'll come back to this in due course.  I did not have any time to chew over that session in my mind, though, because I went from a panel with the cool kids to a panel with the bigwigs.

Pat McCullough organized a session entitled "Finding your 'niche' in Biblical Studies".  There were five panelists, Christopher Hays, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Dale Martin and Paula Fredriksen and me. I have shared here in the blog the substance of my short presentation. I was hugely impressed with the other speakers, all of whom were witty, engaging, compelling. We had ten minutes or so each. The room was packed. There must have been two or three hundred people there, and there were people standing at the side. After we had finished speaking, the room emptied out a good deal, but then there was time for discussion of the topic and many of the contributions from the floor were excellent too.

I dined tonight with an old friend at Azio, an Italian place just a couple of blocks away from the conference and it was a hugely enjoyable evening. There is also a nice little Irish pub not far away from the conference hotels that is well worth a visit.

Finding your "niche" in Biblical Studies, #SBL10

A little later I am doing a stint in a section organized by Pat McCullough entitled "Finding your 'niche' in Biblical Studies" and featuring also Christopher Hays, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Dale Martin and Paula Fredriksen. One of the things I will be encouraging people to do is to treat all advice with a pinch of salt. When I was in the early stages of my doctoral research in Oxford, I was asked by one of the New Testament dons, "So what are you writing on for your DPhil, Mark?" I said that I had settled on a thesis about the work of Michael Goulder on the Gospels. "There are two things wrong with that topic," he replied, while we stood outside the Theology Faculty building at St Giles.  "It will be unpublishable, and you won't get a job." The problem was that that was what I really wanted to write about and I knew that the best chance I had of writing a decent DPhil (they are DPhils in Oxford and not PhDs) was to write about something that I was enthused about.

Luckily, there were others with different thoughts.  I suppose that the research would never have got off the ground if things had been different.  When I went to Ed Sanders with my idea about Michael Goulder, he said, "Well, I have said for years that someone should spend time with Goulder's work and I think it would be a fine topic for a doctorate."  And so I began the work on the thesis only for Prof. Sanders to tell me, not long afterwards, through clouds of pipe smoke in his room at Queen's College, that he would be leaving to go to a place I had never heard of in America, Duke University.  I was crestfallen and I remember thinking, "Why on earth would he want to do that?"

Well, I ploughed on with the research on Goulder and the Gospels, a DPhil orphan for a while, turned down by one potential supervisor, and only saved by the arrival of John Muddiman in Oxford in 1991, and I could not have had a more ideal supervisor.   As it turned out, I did get a job and I did get the thing published.  I enjoyed my doctorate and I am still pleased that I did not really listen to the naysayers.

I suppose that this is going to be the difficulty with the "Finding your 'niche'" session.  I imagine that there will be a lot of conflicting advice.  The thing is that every academic's experience is so different.  I am not sure that I would want to advise my students to choose to write about unpublishable, un-marketable topics.  And yet the key thing is to follow your nose and to write about the things that will enthuse you, whatever they might be.    I mean: I am baffled by the fact that many (most?) scholars appear to be so uninterested in detailed discussion of the Synoptic Problem, but I haven't let that prevent me from airing my own interest in it.

In fact, on this topic there is another piece of advice that I ought to offer, but which I have ignored: if you want a career, don't try to take on the establishment on a dearly loved, consensus topic.  I wrote a book called The Case Against Q in which I argued that the grounds for postulating the existence of Q are not as persuasive as the alternative, which accepts Marcan Priority but adds that Luke also knew Matthew.  Looking back on it now, I wonder if I might have been a bit naive to have been so confrontational so early in my career and to have taken so great a risk.  I could have played safe.

I suppose that the serious advice I would give here is that if you are going to take a risk like that, then make sure you fully understand your opponent's position, and make sure you go the extra mile to represent it as fairly as possible.  You will get nowhere if your readers can easily charge you with misreading, misunderstanding and misrepresentation.  In fact, that is probably much more destructive to a potential career than anything, the failure to attempt to represent the scholarship honestly and fairly.

I remember once talking to a PhD student about his plans for the future;  he handed me a sheet in which the research program was mapped out for the next twenty years, with projected publishing dates and everything.  I think what amazed me most about that was that the plan was made on the assumption that the student would have no new ideas for twenty years, that there would be a predictable pattern to his career.  One of the things that is so enjoyable about the academic's life is, for me, that it is unpredictable.  And you have new ideas all the time -- it's an inevitability of teaching and of continuing to read and research.

It is a question, I would say, of enthusiasm rather than obsession.  I have got pretty close to being obsessed with the Synoptic Problem, but I don't want to go the way of William Farmer and spend my entire career on it.  In fact, Ed Sanders once warned me that getting into the Synoptic Problem is like getting into quicksand -- he was concerned I would never emerge.  So I think it's good to put your ideas out there, to see what happens and to move on.

Sometimes the a major research project will emerge naturally from the topic you are studying.  I am finishing up a book on the Gospel of Thomas at the moment, but I got into Thomas because of Q.  While I was writing about Q, people kept saying, "What about the Gospel of Thomas?"  And so I became interested in Thomas.  And having become interested in Thomas, I began teaching courses on the non-canonical Gospels, which, in turn spawns further research into related topics of interest.

The process of scholarly interest in different topics is often accidental and unpredictable.  You simply don't know what new idea might pop into your head while you are teaching and researching, and I would discourage the tendency to identify yourself too strongly with any particular "niche" in Biblical Studies.  Very few of us only teach on our primary areas of interest and publication, and that breadth in teaching is our invitation to keep breadth in research and publication.  So finding a niche is good, but finding another after that, and another after that, is better.

SBL Atlanta -- 2010 vs. 2003, #SBL10

The last time the SBL was in Atlanta was in 2003.  It's funny to look back on the state of blogging at that time.  Now, you would struggle to keep up with all the SBL bloggers and tweeters.  Back then, we were only a handful, and it seems I was in prophetic mode in a post entitled Other SBL Blogs.  After having mentioned AKMA, Jim Davila's Paleojudaica and Stephen Carlson's Hypotyposeis, I wrote:

In years to come no doubt there will be myriads of other bloggers at the SBL and people will laugh as they look back to 2003 and say, "Good grief; were there really so few blogs in the olden days?" and we will be proud to have been there early on. AKMA will be prouder still -- he was even blogging at the SBL in November 2002.

Well, it's seven years later and now it does seem funny to look back on that simpler world.

Arrival at the SBL Annual Meeting Atlanta 2010, #SBL10

I've arrived in Atlanta for the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting.  There are thousands here for this conference every year and already I have run into lots of attendees.  Some of the enthusiastic ones are already proudly wearing their big badges in the necklace fashion.  Even those who aren't, though, can be spotted a mile off, especially the jacketed men, who are everywhere, and looking very much like academics, some of them suitably earnest, others greeting old friends loudly in the foyers of the hotels to make clear to everyone standing around how important, popular and genial they are.

I look forward to blogging the conference over the coming days, as time allows, and also to tweeting the conference.  You can follow me on twitter, or for the real deal, just go to the #SBL10 tag and read multiple live updates on the conference in the coming days.  Bear in mind that you don't even have to be a twitterer / tweeter to enjoy reading others' updates, on the ground, as they happen.

My really busy day is tomorrow, with a presentation on "Paul's Letters: Men, Women and the End" at the Biblical Archaeology Society's BibFest XIII and then later, at one, a paper on the "James Crossley and the Politics of the Bibliobloggers" in the Ideological Criticism Section, where all the cool kids hang out. Also reviewing James's book in that session are Bill Arnal, Zeba Crook and Roland Boer, and James is giving a response.  And at four, I'll be speaking in an interesting session organized by Pat McCullough entitled "Finding your 'niche' in Biblical Studies" and featuring also Christopher Hays, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Dale Martin and Paula Fredriksen.

But of course there are about ten thousand other sessions on over the coming days too.  Luckily, Nathan Eubank has distilled all the really good sessions, i.e. the ones involving people from Duke, over on Duke Newt.

SBL Annual Meeting 2010 Program Book Online

The SBL Annual Meeting 2010 in Atlanta, GA now has its Preliminary Program Book available.  It is traditional on these occasions for bloggers going to the SBL to outline their participation in the program and here are the two sessions I am speaking in:

Ideological Criticism
11/20/2010
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM

Theme: Panel Review of James Crossley's "Jesus in an Age of Terror"

Randall Reed, Appalachian State University, Presiding

Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (25 min)
Zeba Crook, Carleton University, Panelist (25 min)
William Arnal, University of Regina, Panelist (25 min)
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, Australia, Panelist (25 min)
James Crossley, University of Sheffield, Respondent (30 min)

--

Finding Your “Niche” in Biblical Scholarship
11/21/2010
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Theme: Hosted by the Student Advisory Group

The session will be geared as a way to help graduate students find their voices as budding scholars. Often students, at both the master’s and doctoral level, have a difficult time discerning precisely the direction in which to take their scholarship. They have a passion for a general area of biblical studies or a related field, but they have not been able to find a particular focus for themselves. While any scholarly career will obviously have many twists and turns, this session is meant to address the need to find that initial “starting gate.” In order to help bring some clarity, this panel of experienced scholars will share some of their own insights (with the benefit of hindsight) in an autobiographical way.

Patrick George McCullough, University of California-Los Angeles, Presiding
Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Dale B. Martin, Yale University, Panelist (10 min)
Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (10 min)
April DeConick, Rice University, Panelist (10 min)
Paula Fredriksen, Boston University, Panelist (10 min)
Discussion (90 min)