SBL Chicago 2012

In the past, I have often blogged my way through the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. Sometimes I have even sat in sessions, blogging away as I listen.  For one thing, it's been a great way to help me to stay awake.

To some extent, Twitter has changed all that. A quick tweet on your phone, with the #sblaar hashtag, and you are in touch with loads of others who are also tweeting away, most of whom you will never even meet.  Twitter has actually made blogging the SBL much easier -- it helps you to work out what's worth a blog comment and what is only worth a tweet.

If you read this year's tweets, one thing will come through again and again, especially on Saturday, the realisation that McCormick Place is simply MASSIVE.  One fellow participant said that it was far bigger than the village he lived in in Cambridgeshire.  I found that it was a huge help with the usual SBL diet issue, that one eats far too much unhealthy stuff in quantities that are too large.  Normally, one does not have to walk ten miles in the convention centre just to get from one session to the next, and so I was able to shed a few calories that way.

And that was already after one had commuted in from the hotels area, itself a couple of miles from McCormick.  You did not have to walk, though, if you did not want to.  The shuttles laid on by the society worked well and it reminded me a bit of Orlando 1998 when you could find yourself sitting next to someone interesting quite by chance, or renewing old acquaintances, or overhearing fascinating conversations.

In some years, the book exhibit has been really squeezed in space.  This year, there was so much space available that they hardly knew what to do. And yet, I don't think I visited it as often as usual because everything was so far away from everything else.  You had to plan to go to the exhibit.  You could not simply pop in for 10 minutes in between sessions.

Moreover, SBL tarting was much more difficult than usual.  I have always been an advocate of tarting one's way from one session to another.  But this year, you might have half an hour's walk to get from one session to another.  On the Saturday, I wanted to get from John, Jesus and History (superb paper by Dale Allison aligning the BD with John son of Zebedee that cohered nicely with my NT Pod on the topic) to the Second Century Intertextuality section to hear about Papias -- but I had nearly had a heart attack by the time I had arrived.

My experience of SBL this year was tarnished by the worst series of headaches I have had since I was in college.  So I was in survival mode for much of it and I must apologize to those who found me a little stranger than usual.   Nevertheless, there were a couple of highlights, one the chance to see Skyfall, on Friday evening, with old friends.  Of course the danger with doing the best thing first is that everything is down-hill from there, but it was still a treat.

I was pleased too to get some Chicago pizza on Monday evening, and some good beer, pub food and Thai food on other evenings.  It's awful to say, but eating and drinking really is the heart of SBL.  Oh, and I had an amazing breakfast on Tuesday morning at Eleven City Diner, which looks exactly what you would imagine a Chicago diner should look like, and the breakfast was fantastic, and lasted me all day. And we saw Austan Goolsbee there too (Obama's first term economic advisor, for those not as up with American politics as I am).

As usual, I seemed to have let myself in for involvement with too many sessions this year.  I enjoyed speaking on Secret Mark over at the Biblical Archaeology Society's Fest on Sunday morning and found them an ideal audience, genial but interested and full of questions (more here).   In the past, I have not bothered with a powerpoint, but on this occasion I felt that I needed to illustrate the talk, and it took us the best part of fifteen minutes to get it working.  Still, we got there in the end.

Back at the SBL, I also chaired a session that day, the first of the "Blogger and Online Publication" sessions.  The focus was on Media and Archaeology and featured Simcha Jacobovici, James Tabor, Robert Cargill and Christopher Rollston.  It was not the easiest session to chair and the attendance was poor, I'd guess thirty to forty or so.

On Monday afternoon, I was part of a panel reviewing Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels in the Synoptic Gospels section.  The other reviewers were Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster and Robert Derrenbacker.  I found myself in the unusual position of being the mean guy here, since it seems that the other reviewers were all far more positive overall about Crook's new Synopsis than I was.  I will post my review under separate cover.  For what it is worth, Zeba Crook responded well  to the critique, with good humour and some good points.  The discussion flowed too in the aftermath.

I walked the twenty miles from that session in the East of McCormick Place to another in West, only just making it in time.  This was a session reviewing two recent books on the Gospel of Thomas, my Thomas and the Gospels and Simon Gathercole's Composition of the Gospel of Thomas.  The three reviewers were Stephen Patterson, Christopher Tuckett and Nicola Denzey Lewis.  I was delighted with them all -- critical but appreciative.  More than one could possibly have hoped for.  I received the reviews too late to compose a response, so I responded on the fly.  I made a fair fist of it but Simon did much better and made me laugh several times, not least in drawing attention to Dorothy L. Sayers's character the Revd. Simon Goodacre, in response to the reviewers' remarks about the remarkable similarity of our books in spite of their independence.

One thought did occur to me in that session.  Although there is the conceit that everyone has read the books in question at a book review session, in fact very few have yet had the chance even to look at them, all the more so as several have only just bought them in the book exhibit.  So it would be ideal to begin these book review sessions by allowing the authors ten minutes each to summarize their books before the reviewers are invited in.  In other words, with new books, the sessions could be crafted in such a way that they are geared towards the majority of hearers.  The reviewers too could be encouraged to address those who are not familiar with the books.  Having said that, I did think the organization and chairing of the session (by the Extent of Theological Diversity section, partnering with the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism section) was exemplary, so it's just a small suggestion for the future ethos of the SBL.

It wasn't my favourite SBL, but that's mainly my fault, and I would like to thank the SBL for the fantastic work they put into making this such a successful meeting, and thanks too to all those who worked so hard as volunteers to make things go so well.

How to enjoy SBL

Last year, I wrote a post on Enjoying SBL, based on an earlier post on Surviving SBL. I have dug it out again and revised it in the light of a bit more thought and experience about the meeting, especially as others are offering their own slightly different advice.

(1) Enjoy Beer and Good Company: The SBL Annual Meeting is absolutely massive, and there is nothing more lonely than being on your own in a crowd. It's not like smaller conferences like the British New Testament Conference where you can just go with the flow. At this meeting, you create your own agenda. Find people you like spending time with, and ideally who like spending time with you, if you can, and your experience will be ten times more enjoyable than otherwise. I have heard some people say that they find the SBL a bit of a maze and rather overwhelming. I have never found that, and perhaps because I have been lucky enough to spend time with people whose company I greatly enjoy. The intellectual stimulation will often come more from those small gatherings with friends over a beer than it will at the sessions. Nevertheless, when you do get stuck into the academic side of the meeting, it is important to:

(2) Choose Sessions Carefully: Don't be over ambitious about how many sessions you can get to. I used to treat the SBL a bit like the way I used to treat the Christmas Radio Times and TV Times when I was a child. I used to fill every moment in the day with telly, allowing just little slots for five or ten minute "breaks" in viewing. SBL sessions, though sometimes enjoyable, are no Christmas TV, and a lot of them will be pretty ordinary. Nevertheless, these days I miss being able to get to as many sessions as I used to get to because of the number of other commitments and I find that I enjoy the ones I do get to all the more as a result. But in order to enjoy the sessions, you need to:

(3) Be a Tart: Don't feel obliged to stay for the whole of each two-and-a-half hour session that you go to. Several times I've got stuck in the world's most boring papers by accident because I was interested in the paper just before it or just after it. Once, I attended a paper in a packed room, over 100 or so in the audience, but I did not make a sharp enough exit when it had finished. I got stuck listening to the next paper with four other people and felt so sorry for the guy presenting that I felt obliged to stay and feign interest. Unlike the British New Testament Conference, where one is encouraged to be loyal to one seminar throughout the conference, you are allowed to be a complete tart at the SBL. Mind you, if you do get in a session that's not tip-top, you can always:

(4) Enjoy your sleep: I spend approximately 50% of the time in sessions sleeping. I am not proud of this fact, but there's nothing I can do about it. I am now fairly resigned to it and so just enjoy it. Some of my friends are good at elbowing me in the side but most of them now just know that this is what I do when I sit down for any length of time. This only becomes a major problem if it is one of your graduate students who is presenting, in which case they may be offended, or if you are chairing the session, in which case you are not able to watch the clock for the speakers. Of course the reason that one gets into this predicament is that it is too easy to:

(5) Burn the Candle at Both Ends: The toughest thing at the SBL is to avoid burning the candle at both ends, socializing until late and then getting up before the crack of dawn for a breakfast meeting. I am talking to myself here. I walk round the SBL perpetually exhausted because I don't have the discipline to go to bed early when I have to be up early. Every year I tell myself not to arrange breakfast meetings, or get invited to them; every year I end up with breakfast meetings each day. I've done it again. Bummer. Speaking of breakfasts, remember those:

(6) Budget beating breakfast buffets: To reiterate some advice from an a recent post called SBL on a budget, here's a tip for those at SBL on a budget: get to one of those great American breakfast buffets and eat to your heart's content. Don't be put off by earnest looking professor types who only visit the buffet once. Keep going for as long as you can. Eat so much that you won't want lunch. You can then make it through to the evening when you'll be just peckish enough to enjoy something else. In fact you might even be invited to one of those evening receptions where there is a lot of food. On days like that, you have only had to buy breakfast and the budget is looking healthier than it might have been.

Birmingham never gave me enough to travel, and so troughing my face at breakfast was my standard survival strategy. And the American breakfast buffets are great, though for Brits it can be a little off-putting to see Americans putting their fruit on the same plate as their sausage and bacon, or worse, putting corn syrup on their scrambled egg. So Brits abroad may need to avert their eyes. There is also an unappetizing pastey coloured concoction called "grits", which is to be avoided. So it is also worth:

(7) Getting to Receptions: Receptions are a great way of meeting people, and they can be fun. They are held by publishers, universities and others and are often generous in their invitations, and it is good, once again, to be a tart. There are signs, though, that the seven years of plenty may be coming to an end. This is the second SBL meeting since the split with AAR, the recession is still causing drastic cutbacks, and universities and publishers are all feeling the squeeze. Several publishers no longer hold receptions and several universities have pulled the plug too. My guess is that there we will some cash bars instead of free bars, and less food at the receptions that remain. This year Duke goes to a cash bar for the first time since I have been attending. But I haven't yet mentioned the thing that lots of people will be doing given the size of the program book:

(8) Presenting Papers: Regular readers will know that I have outspoken views on this topic, but I continue to be amazed by the lack of investment that many make in presenting their papers. The gist of my concern is this: far too many people simply read their paper out verbatim at SBL sessions in the most inarticulate way imaginable, often with no attempt to communicating with the audience. A particular problem is speed-reading. People write their fifteen page screed and have a bloody-minded determination to read through the whole lot if it kills them, whether or not it fits into the time. This is a slight problem with graduate student papers, and here it is often related to nerves. My advice: practise your paper beforehand and think about issues like pausing, breathing, adding light and shade and varying your intonation.

The bigger issue for me, though, relates to those who should know better. I never cease to be amazed to see seasoned scholars completely unable to time a paper, selfishly praying on the good will of the chair and the other presenters. This is really elementary stuff -- overrunning on a paper is egotistical and unprofessional. If you are chairing a session, be ruthless -- the presenter who is unable to time their own paper does not deserve your compassion. I feel like having a longer rant on this, but perhaps I'll save it for later. There is something else you should do too and that is to:

(9) See the city: It is very easy to spend several days in a city and not see the city. It's really worth taking some time out to see the city. I have never been to New Orleans, and I am looking forward to seeing it though I suspect that I won't see a lot of it. Too many of my SBL memories merge into one because I spent 95% of my time on the inside of hotels and convention centres.

Oh, and one more thing:

(10) Tell us about it: The proliferation in bloggers at the SBL means that lots of us can share our experiences with those less fortunate than ourselves. And this SBL will be the first SBL to have been extensively tweeted. Those of us who will be tweeting SBL are using the hashtag #SBL09. I'll see you -- and tweet you -- there.

SBL Online Program Book: line spacing

Is it just me or does anyone else instinctively look at the wrong line in the online program book for sessions? I find my eyes always going to the paper title and then expecting to see the presenter underneath. It causes some odd moments of the kind, "Richard Hays is really reading a paper on that?" and "What! I'm down to give a paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls!" The problem could be solved with a good old fashioned bit of line spacing so that the titles are not squashed together with the presenters' names. The printed version works much better in this respect.

Yet More on the SBL / Biblioblogging Affiliation

The number of posts on the SBL / Bibliobloggers affiliation has continued to proliferate since I last commented on Wednesday. For those who have not been following it, the narrative goes something like this. An affiliation between the SBL and "bibliobloggers" (i.e. those broadly blogging in Biblical Studies and related areas) was announced, there was scepticism about the new affiliation in some quarters, there were attempts to clarify what was involved in others, and there have been comments on both sides of the issue. Observatório Bíblico provides a list of the key contributions to the discussion (and now add If I were a bell, I'd ring; another post on Higgaion; and a post on Targuman; apologies if I have missed others; pleased add links in the comments thread below). [Update: complete list on Daniel O. Mclellan].

I have been commenting on other people's posts across the weekend, and have decided to gather together my thoughts here now. First, there is a perception around that the affiliation with the SBL means that we are taking things too seriously. Blogging should be informal, spontaneous and fun, and the new arrangement threatens that. I understand this point and agree with its premise, but disagree that the SBL affiliation is likely to cause problems. Lots of us have had relationships with the SBL in this and other areas and it has usually been greatly to the good. The accusation of taking things too seriously actually cuts both ways. The decision to opt out of any SBL / blogging discussions could turn out to be an unnecessarily forthright reaction to something that could be a productive and interesting venue. It could stimulate, it could come up with new ideas; there might be new collaborations and new voices. Perhaps there will not be, but we just don't know until we have given it a go. I suppose my feeling is that the spontaneous, risky, unpredictable side to blogging could generate some genuinely interesting and productive conversations at the SBL. That may not be the case, but we won't know until we give it a try.

I'd like to develop a point further that I made in comments on Biblia Hebraica, and to note that the SBL has lots of affiliations and relationships with different groups and these relationships are regularly profitable. Much of the time it is simply a question of providing a forum for the discussion of important and interesting questions. The fact that the SBL has a session on the status of women in the profession is not giving women in the profession some kind of official recognition that they would not otherwise have. Rather, it is a useful forum for women to come together and discuss key issues and take action on a major issue that affects us all. Individual scholars will choose to attend those sessions, and take action, or not, as they choose. And no woman scholar is given a hard time for not attending. To take a less politically significant association, one might point to something like the Computer Assisted Research Group, or Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies. These are venues where like minded people can opt in and participate should they choose to do so. No one is forcing them to be involved; no one is given a hard time for not being involved. This is the way I see blogging and the SBL -- it could be a really useful venue for coming together and discussing some issues of interest and relevance. But if it is not, then that is no problem.

One of the reasons that I agreed to serve on the new SBL / biblioblogging steering committee has been the recent discussions about women in the blogosphere, resurrecting discussions that were important when they were first raised in 2005, but which have never gone away, and now have a new urgency. I have always maintained that this is an important issue worthy of serious discussion, even if I don't get it right myself. When Jim proposed serving on a steering committee that included both April DeConick and Steph Fisher (as well as Bob Cargill and then also Chris Brady), I was immediately very enthusiastic. Consider this: only 7% of biblioblogs, it is said, are authored by women, but half of our steering committee is female. You can guarantee that one of the major issues in the new unit will be the discussion of the gender gap, and I am delighted that it will not be a bunch of middle-aged men getting anxious together about the issue. It is the proactive possibilities of the new affiliation that make me enthusiastic about it. Again, I may be wrong, but is it really worth risking losing the chance for some profitable discussion on areas of interest and importance?

I'd like to add that the number of people blogging on Biblical Studies and related areas is now so massive that the group is already characterized by diversity. That is exactly as it should be, and given this huge range of areas and perspectives covered, any affiliation between the SBL and bloggers is going to be about celebrating that diversity rather than attempting to enforce a dubious unity or orthodoxy. The great thing about facilitating discussion among ourselves is that it may well lead to a realization of the major differences between us. In fact, I hope that that is the case. I wouldn't enjoy being in a session when we are all in a room nodding our heads at everything that everyone is saying.

My overwhelming feeling is that we really don't have a lot to lose here. The problem is that a lot of bloggers actually imagine that the enterprise of blogging is more important than it is. Much as we enjoy ourselves doing this, we are a tiny minority of the guild, and most people don't have a clue what we are up to. Affiliating with the SBL will barely be a blip on the horizon of the vast majority of these people. Meanwhile, there is a lot that we can do by getting together and talking. In general, talking is a good thing. And although the geek in all of us might prefer talking by tapping away at a keyboard, in glorious isolatioin, with only our cats for company, real life interaction actually has something going for it.

More on the SBL / Biblioblogging Affiliation

Earlier this week, I mentioned the new affiliation between bibliobloggers and the SBL, and there have been major advances on this story today. Jim West reports A Further Bit of News Concerning the Biblioblog Program Unit in the Society of Biblical Literature and notes that he will chair a new section, with a steering committee made up of April DeConick, Stephanie Fisher, Robert Cargill, Christian Brady and me. I must admit to being impressed at seeing the speed with which Jim gets things done. I've been writing today, and I had scarcely written two paragraphs between the time that Jim had engaged in full and complete negotiations with all of the above, securing agreements and announcing the results.

I am very happy to have been invited to participate in this unit, all the more so given the range of expertise on offer. I realize that some are a bit concerned about the affiliation, and about the unit (John Hobbins in Ancient Hebrew Poetry and Chris Heard in Higgaion). I understand the points of view expressed here, and I would hope that we will take on board some of the concerns expressed, but my own feeling is that you really don't know quite how something is going to evolve until you have given it a try. I don't think we need to be pompous or exclusionary or prescriptive, but we can collaborate, listen and learn. We have plenty of time before the Atlanta SBL in 2010, which is the earliest occasion on which the group can meet, so the discussion does not need to be rushed. Some of the very issues mentioned by John and Chris would in fact be pertinent to our discussions, and I would add that the interest that came out of the session on biblioblogging at the SBL in 2005 is testimony to the potential value of a broader, continuing discussion.

Bibliobloggers and the SBL

Jim West and Kent Richards on the SBL site announce a new affiliation between the SBL and bibliobloggers, and we are invited to use the logo here. As Jim mentions, this is something that we have been talking about for some time, beginning at least as far back as the Philadelphia SBL 2005 meeting, with thanks to Jim and Kent for bringing this to pass.

SBL Receives NEH Award for "World of the Bible" website

The SBL site provides news of a successful award application:

Society of Biblical Literature Receives NEH Award

Atlanta – The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) has received a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant to develop an interactive website that would improve public understanding of the Bible and its contexts. This website, “The World of the Bible: Exploring People, Places, and Passages” will feed the large public interest in matters biblical and will draw on the work of SBL members.

The Project Director is SBL executive director Kent Richards, who will oversee the planning phase for the website from September 2009 to September 2010 . . .

The press release also mentions an advisory board, which includes a couple of familiar names from Duke University.

SBL on a Budget

Around the blogs, talk is in the air about the SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans in November (e.g. should Dr Jim go?). One of the big issues this year, for many, will be finance. Even wealthy universities like my own, Duke, are cutting conference grants and expenses as part of their bid to save millions from their operating budgets. So for the first time since crossing the shores, I will not be able to claim a $1,000 conference grant to fund the trip. Luckily, I have experience of attending SBL on a budget. It is something I have blogged about before (Enjoying SBL), but here is a revised and expanded version:

1. Find a cheap flight. This has to begin pretty early, like a month or so ago. It's a good idea to use an aggregator site like Kayak and to watch the prices daily. I have managed to find a $216 flight from Raleigh to New Orleans after having watched the site for the last few weeks, and I am feeling quite chuffed about it.

2. Room-share. The SBL hotels are all pretty posh and pretty expensive. The only way to stay in one of those hotels and keep the price down is to room-share. Of course you need to have a person or people that you can cope with for several days, but the lucky ones among us will actually enjoy the SBL a great deal more because of the company they keep.

3. Breakfast trough-out. The cost of food is a big problem, and four days of conference-attending can put the strain on your budget. What I suggest is to get to one of those great American breakfast buffets every morning and eat to your heart's content. Don't be put off by earnest looking professor types who only visit the buffet once. Keep going for as long as you can. Eat so much that you won't want lunch. You can then make it through to the evening when you'll be just peckish enough to enjoy something else.

Birmingham never gave me enough to travel, and so troughing my face at breakfast was my standard survival strategy. The American breakfast buffets are great, though for Brits it can be a little off-putting to see Americans putting their fruit on the same plate as their sausage and bacon, or worse, putting corn syrup on their scrambled egg. So Brits abroad may need to avert their eyes. There is also an unappetizing pastey coloured concoction called "grits", which is to be avoided.

4. Get invited to receptions. Even if you have troughed out at breakfast, you'll be hungry again by the evening. If you can, get to an evening reception where there is a lot of food. Unfortunately, publishers and universities are all feeling the pinch, and the amount of "free" food at the receptions is now pretty limited, let alone free drinks (e.g. Duke goes to a cash bar this year for the first time in recent history). Nevertheless, if you are not too fussy, you might be able to pick up some nick-nacks while networking.

And with apologies to the publishers, who do need your money,

5. Don't visit the book exhibit. If you do, you will probably end up buying books. You know you can't afford them, and you run the risk of weighing down your bags so much that you have to pay extra at the airport for the journey home. And all these scholars who write big books have got plenty of money anyway, and don't need additional royalties from an SBL-on-a-budget type like you. Bear in mind that they won't be flight-watching, room-sharing, breakfast-troughing and reception-grabbing. The last thing you want to do is to subsidize their luxury.

New SBL Consultation on Bible and Film

I am happy to announce that there is a new consultation at the SBL Annual Meeting on the Bible and Film. Like all consultations (I think), it runs for three years in the first instance. Here's the blurb:

Bible and Film
Jeffrey Staley

Description: Focuses on the critical analysis and interpretation of Bible/Jesus films and other films incorporating biblical themes or motifs in terms of the films’ biblical and extra-biblical content, cultural and historical significance, and ideology. Secondary focus on pedagogical use of such films, and the preservation, archiving, and digitalization of rare Bible/Jesus films.

I have been asked to serve on the Steering Committee of the group and I am looking forward to being involved in what sounds like a very interesting program unit.

Enjoying SBL

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post on Surviving SBL. It was in response to a request from Sean Winter who was, at that time, a newcomer to the meeting. This year I have had a couple more requests for my own tips about surviving the meeting, so I thought I would revisit and revise the original post, but now under the heading "enjoying" rather than "surviving" SBL. I am one of those for whom SBL is both duty and joy.

(1) Beer and Good Company: Find people you like spending time with (and who like spending time with you, I suppose!) and your experience will be ten times more enjoyable than otherwise. I have heard some people say that they find the SBL a bit of a maze and rather overwhelming. I have never found that, and perhaps because I have been lucky enough to spend time with people whose company I greatly enjoy. The intellectual stimulation will often come more from those small gatherings with friends over a beer than it will at the sessions.

(2) Choose Sessions Carefully: Don't be over ambitious about how many sessions you can get to. I used to treat the SBL a bit like the way I used to treat the Christmas Radio Times and TV Times when I was a child. I used to fill every moment in the day with telly, allowing just little slots for five or ten minute "breaks" in viewing. SBL sessions, though sometimes enjoyable, are no Christmas TV, and you can get conferenced out.

(3) Be a Tart: Don't feel obliged to stay for the whole of each two-and-a-half hour session that you go to. Several times I've got stuck in the world's most boring papers by accident because I was interested in the paper just before it or just after it. Once, I attended a paper in a packed room, over 100 or so in the audience, but I did not make a sharp enough exit when it had finished. I got stuck listening to the next paper with four other people and felt so sorry for the guy presenting that I felt obliged to stay and feign interest. Unlike the British New Testament Conference, where one is encouraged to be loyal to one seminar throughout the conference, you are allowed to be a complete tart at the SBL.

(4) Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Try not to burn the candle at both ends, socializing until late and then getting up before the crack of dawn for a breakfast meeting. I am talking to myself here. I walk round the SBL perpetually exhausted because I don't have the discipline to go to bed early when I have to be up early. Every year I tell myself not to arrange breakfast meetings, or get invited to them; every year I end up with breakfast meetings each day. I've done it again. Bummer.

(5) Budget beating breakfast buffets: To develop some advice from an older blog post, here's a tip for those at SBL on a budget: get to one of those great American breakfast buffets and eat to your heart's content. Don't be put off by earnest looking professor types who only visit the buffet once. Keep going for as long as you can. Eat so much that you won't want lunch. You can then make it through to the evening when you'll be just peckish enough to enjoy something else. In fact you might even be invited to one of those evening receptions where there is a lot of food. On days like that, you have only had to buy breakfast and the budget is looking healthier than it might have been.

Birmingham never gave me enough to travel, and so troughing my face at breakfast was my standard survival strategy. And the American breakfast buffets are great, though for Brits it can be a little off-putting to see Americans putting their fruit on the same plate as their sausage and bacon, or worse, putting corn syrup on their scrambled egg. So Brits abroad may need to avert their eyes. There is also an unappetizing pastey coloured concoction called "grits", which is to be avoided.

(6) Getting to Receptions: Receptions are a great way of meeting people, and can be fun. They are held by publishers, universities and others and are often generous in their invitations, and it is good, once again, to be a tart. There are signs, though, that the seven years of plenty may be coming to an end. This is the first SBL meeting since the split with AAR, the credit crunch is biting and universities and publishers are all feeling the squeeze. Several publishers no longer hold receptions and several universities have pulled the plug too. My guess is that there we will some cash bars instead of free bars, and less food at the receptions that remain.

(7) Presenting Papers: Regular readers will know that I have outspoken views on this topic, but I continue to be amazed by the lack of investment that many make in presenting their papers. The gist of my concern is this: far too many people simply read their paper out verbatim at SBL sessions in the most inarticulate way imaginable, often with no attempt to communicating with the audience. A particular problem is speed-reading. People write their fifteen page screed and have a bloody-minded determination to read through the whole lot if it kills them, whether or not it fits into the time. This is a particular problem with graduate student papers, and it is related to nerves. My advice: practise your paper beforehand and think about issues like pausing, breathing, adding light and shade and varying your intonation. I never cease to be amazed, though, to see seasoned scholars completely unable to time a paper, selfishly praying on the good will of the chair and the other presenters. This is really elementary stuff -- overrunning on a paper is egotistical and unprofessional. If you are chairing a session, be ruthless -- the presenter who is unable to time their own paper does not deserve your compassion. I feel like having a longer rant on this, but perhaps I'll save it for my conference thoughts.

(8) Seeing the city: It is very easy to spend several days in a city and not see the city. It's really worth taking some time out to see the city, especially a city as fine as Boston. Too many of my SBL memories merge into one because I spent 95% of my time on the inside of hotels and convention centres. Actually, my hope this year is that I might bump into Doctor Who. Meeting in the same city and at the same time this year is the New England Fan Experience, at which Peter Davison (the fifth doctor) is a special guest. It would make my day to meet him.

SBL Assorted Reflections

A few thoughts about the SBL Annual Meeting:

(1) It's nice to see Duane Smith joining my campaign to have more people making presentations rather than reading out manuscripts (see Abnormal Interests). As some readers may remember, this has been something of a theme here. I am still baffled by the academic habit of reading out papers at conferences. If one is going to read out a paper, one may as well distribute it in advance. I realize that there is some risk and some additional nerves inevitable in a presentation as opposed to reading-a-paper-out-loud, but the risks are worth taking, not least given the fact that one's audience will usually be forgiving if one makes a mistake. I made a much better job of my first presentation (in CARG) than my second (in the Q Section) this year and I think the difference was down to two things: (a) the nature of the audience and (b) the nature of the presentation. My Q section presentation was somewhat thick with facts and figures, and in retrospect, I think I should have added a powerpoint, or at least made my handout more detailed. I suspect, too, that I was overprepared for the Q section -- I had spent so much time on it that I was brim full of things I wanted to share and did not have time for.

(2) The chairing of sessions: this is another standard complaint. While many sessions are chaired very well indeed, there are always sessions where the chair does not seem to understand about how to organise timing. Timing at SBL meetings is particularly important because there are usually several speakers in a limited time slot. If one goes over by 10 minutes, that is 10 minutes less for everyone else; if the second person goes over by 10 minutes, that is 20 minutes less for the remainder , and so on. It's a very straightforward principle and once again, I can't understand why people allow this to happen because it is unfair on some of the speakers. Perhaps one should add that it is also the speakers' responsibility to time themselves properly. If you know that you have 20 minutes, speak for 20 minutes, not 25, or 30. It is selfish to use someone else's time, and no one will be pleased with you.

The relationship between (1) and (2) is an interesting one too. If one has written out a paper that one intends to read out loud, why would one not practise the paper to see how long it takes to read out loud?

(3) Another paper-reading issue: please avoid speed-reading. Take a long, deep breath at regular intervals and take your time. If you are conscious that you have too much material, don't try to squeeze 30 minutes of material into 20 minutes by reading quickly. Cut 10 minutes of material out. This is a particular concern for international attendees. It is much harder to understand a speed-read paper in a second language.

(4) On Blue Cord, Kevin Wilson has several excellent pieces of advice about reading a paper, including avoiding "air quotes", avoiding using abbreviations out loud, avoiding apologizing for your paper by insisting that it is part of a larger research project and so on. On the latter I would always be inclined to avoid "Time does not permit me to . . ." comments. Of course you don't have time to say everything relevant to the topic, so avoid apologizing for the obvious.

(5) I think there are too many sessions, and far too many overlapping sessions. Do we really need to have a Synoptics section as well as a Mark Group, a Matthew section, Luke-Acts consultation, an Acts section, a Q section, a Historical Jesus section, Johannine Literature, John, Jesus and History and so on? Perhaps the single biggest problem in the guild at the moment is over-specialisation and the failure to think across boundaries and at the SBL we are encouraging a high degree of specialisation. I would like to see the SBL organisation taking some time to think through these issues. If the quality of the papers at each of these were overwhelming, then well and good. But as we all know, the quality tends to be mixed.

(6) In relation to the previous point, I think the conference is too long, and it appears to be getting longer. I don't think we need sessions on Saturday morning at 9, when we are just beginning to orientate ourselves, and have multiple early morning meetings that make it impossible to get to them. And the Tuesday morning sessions are so badly attended that there is little point continuing with these, is there? One might add that there appear to be ever more evening sessions now. On several occasions at the meeting, I suggested meeting someone at an evening reception, and heard, "Oh, I'm going to the John and History section at that time", and so on.

(7) This one is the most important of all, and if I could make only one comment, this would be it. A massive thank you to the organisers of the SBL Annual Meeting, who do a fantastic job. The conference always goes incredibly smoothly, the organisers are on top of all the issues, they are unfailingly polite and helpful and I am lost in wonder at how they manage to pull it all together. Very many thanks.

SBL Annual Meeting: My Papers

Several have noted that the SBL Annual Meeting 2007 Program Book is now online. I have two papers this year, and it's a case of out with the new and in with the old for me, with some internet stuff and some Synoptic problem stuff, but I was delighted to receive an invitation to speak in the Q section, not something that happens every year. First, in Computer Assisted Research (18 November 2007, 1pm, "Pedagogical Resources for Teaching the Bible"):

The Future of the New Testament Gateway

When academic subject gateway sites began to emerge in the mid 1990s, it was possible for every major internet resource on the site’s subject area to be covered. It was also possible for one enthusiastic and energetic individual to do all the work, designing the site, researching content, adding links, writing annotations and correcting ever-changing URLs. The massive growth of the internet has now made it impossible for one individual to do all the necessary work and gateway sites are beginning to suffer. While newer technologies like blogging have opened up new possibilities, and dealt with some of the difficulties of maintaining a gateway site, the larger questions of effort and workload remain. It is now essential for gateway sites to embrace new technologies and different models that aid collaboration if they are to avoid becoming moribund. This presentation explores the future for subject gateways by focusing on The New Testament Gateway (http://NTGateway.com), which is now ten years old, and demonstrates a new collaborative model which will enable it to build on existing strengths and to adapt to the future.

The Q section I am speaking in is dealing with "The Mark Q overlaps" (19 November, 4-6.30pm):

Taking Leave of Mark-Q Overlaps: Major Agreements in Matthew 3.7-12 // Mark 1.7-8 // Luke 3.7-9, 15-17

Matt. 3.7-12 // Mark 1.7-8 // Luke 3.7-9, 15-17 (John's Preaching) features substantial agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark. The Two-Source Theory explains this by appeal to the overlapping of Mark and Q while the Farrer Theory suggests that Luke was dependent on Matthew as well as Mark. This paper argues that Luke's use of Matthew is the preferable option because (1) the degree of verbatim agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark is too high for it to have been mediated by a shared source; (2) the agreement here represents a mid point in a continuum of influence of Matthew on Luke, which spans triple tradition to Mark-Q overlap passages to double tradition; and (3) the theory of Mark-Q overlap necessitates major contacts between the structure and thought of Mark and Q, which causes problems for the architecture of the Two-Source Theory.

SBL Forum latest

The April edition of the SBL Forum is now available. It covers several things that have been mentioned here in the past. In particular, it is good to see a prompt obituary of Reginald Fuller. I must admit that I have been surprised at how little other bibliobloggers have commented on the sad death of such a major New Testament scholar (mentioned here last Friday). Also, Mark Chancey has an article called Bible Courses in Public Schools: SBL's Response to a Growing Trend. I have often mentioned Mark's interesting work in this area here and it is good to see him carrying that work forward now with the SBL in a new consultation.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Stephen S. Carver
The UnGospel: The Life and Teachings of the Historical Jesus
Reviewed by Pieter J. J. Botha

Margaret M. Mitchell and Frances M. Young, eds.
The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 1: Origins to Constantine
Reviewed by Everett Ferguson

Eva Schönemann
Bund und Tora: Kategorien einer im christlich-jüdischen Dialog verantworteten Christologie
Reviewed by Judith Lieu

Manuel Vogel
Commentatio mortis: 2Kor 5,1-10 auf dem Hintergrund antiker ars moriendi
Reviewed by Tobias Nicklas

James Ware
The Mission of the Church in Paul's Letter to the Philippians in the Context of Ancient Judaism
Reviewed by Torrey Seland

Mark W. Waterman
The Empty Tomb Tradition of Mark: Text, History, and Theological Struggles
Reviewed by Michael R. Licona

Ben Witherington III
1 and 2 Thessalonians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary
Reviewed by Mark R. Fairchild
Reviewed by Craig L. Blomberg

I've not actually blogged the previous two email messages because of a build up of correspondence at the time, so I will get to those too in due course.

SBL / Logos Technology Paper Awards deadline fast approaching

Michael Heiser emails to ask that I (and other bloggers) post a reminder about the SBL / Logos Technology Paper Awards. The deadline of 1 May 2007 is fast approaching. Details are available here:

Logos Bible Software and Society of Biblical Literature Technology Paper Awards

The link explains the awards as follows, and provides all the other relevant information:

Logos Bible Software and the Society of Biblical Literature announce two sets of awards for papers that creatively use technology in exploring questions of grammar and syntax in biblical studies: one focusing on the Hebrew Bible, the other on the Greek New Testament. The contests are open to all those engaged in the study of those disciplines, and prizes will be awarded in both areas for student and faculty/professional categories. A total of twelve awards will be given.

Travel Diary 3: Return from Baltimore

I arrived back from the Mid-Atlantic Region SBL Meeting in the early hours of this morning with jumpy flights which were running on time, and teaming rain when I got back, but happily no tornadoes. (The tornado warning for our area ended at 8 am).

I enjoyed getting the chance to go to an SBL regional meeting for the first time. This one was remarkably low key compared to the SBL Annual Meeting. I would guess that there were only 150 or so people there, and not many of what Michael Goulder always used to call the "top brass". The seminars were fairly laid back affairs with only ten or so people in each one that I went to. It reminded me much more of the British New Testament Conference than of the SBL Annual Meeting, though it was considerably smaller than the BNTC, with a much smaller book display, and without the communal, scheduled meals.

My paper, "The Devil is in the Detail: Dispelling Doubts about Dispensing with Q" was the plenary paper in the late afternoon. (Handout available here). There were fifty or sixty present and it was a friendly audience and there were some useful an interesting questions. I enjoyed getting the chance to revisit Q again, having been invited to do so by Kathy Grieb who is the president of the MAR-SBL but not having had much in the way of fresh thoughts about Q in the last five years. After my talk, which I gave as a presentation rather than as a read paper, as is my habit on these occasions, there was a smaller, informal gathering with fewer people (ten or so) for further discussion. All in all, I was grateful for the invitation.

Travel Diary 2: Arrival in Baltimore

I had a most enjoyable flight, that ideal combination of reading, thinking and sleeping. I sketched out the plan for my next book and had that great (if unrealistic) feeling of, "Well, that's half the work done". I feel a little bad about flying now that the Bishop of London has declared it a sin. But I couldn't face driving 300 miles alone, especially since it's a big battle to stay awake, and I'm not sure that it's so much better for global warming to have a single person in a car driving 600 miles. You can't get the train or the bus between cities here in the US, at least not where I live. While waiting at Charlotte airport, I decided that since I was sinning by flying, I may as well compound the sin by having one of those delicious brownies they do at Starbucks, and the pint of coffee washed it down splendidly.

I arrived at the hotel after midnight and after a particularly enjoyable thirty minute chat with my cab driver who, it turned out, was an immigrant from Eritrea. He'd come here twenty-six years ago, after eighteen months in Rome, and now one of his kids is a doctor and another is a successful businessman.

This is my first regional SBL meeting and it is interesting that these too, like the enormous Annual Meeting, seem to take place in hotels and conference centres. It will be interesting to see how it differs from the big meeting.

Travel Diary 1: On the way to Baltimore

It's a while since I have had a travel diary on the blog, but I have a brief one over the next day or so because I am on the way to the SBL Mid-Atlantic Region Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland where I have been invited to speak on the topic, "The Devil is in the Detail: Dispelling Doubts about Dispensing with Q". I know, it's horribly alliterative but I just couldn't resist it once I started with "the Devil is in the detail". The occasion for that was Christopher Tuckett's review of my Case Against Q in Novum Testamentum a couple of years ago, which ended with the point that "the devil is in the detail", i.e. there are lots of natty little details among the Synoptic data that my case does not deal with. I am not going to use the occasion tomorrow, except briefly, to respond to critics, however, but will instead focus on why the details matter for my case too, and how a careful look at them can encourage us to dispense with Q.

The conference gets underway tomorrow morning, but I am flying in tonight and am currently enjoying a Sam Adams and a "Seattle Chicken Club" sandwich at the sports bar in Raleigh Durham International Airport. I am one of those people who generally fills one's day so full that I love travelling to give me a chance to take it a little easier, to catch some time to read, think, relax, sleep, oh, and blog. It is particularly welcome that I have this time now since I have been recently been deep in another paper, on Thomas's use of the Synoptics, which I gave at our New Testament Colloquium last night.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

Latest from the SBL Review of Biblical Literature under the NT heading:

Youngmo Cho
Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile These Concepts
Reviewed by John T. Squires

Donald Jackson
Pentateuch: The Saint John's Bible
Reviewed by Walter A. Vogels

Luke Timothy Johnson
Hebrews: A Commentary
Reviewed by Craig R. Koester

Judith E. McKinlay
Reframing Her: Biblical Women in Postcolonial Focus
Reviewed by Valerie Bridgeman Davis

Daniel Patte and Cristina Grenholm, eds.
Gender, Tradition and Romans: Shared Ground, Uncertain Borders
Reviewed by Veronica Koperski

Marie Sabin
The Gospel According to Mark
Reviewed by Pieter J. J. Botha

Antonius Siew
The War between the Two Beasts and the Two Witnessess: A Chiastic Reading of Revelation 11.1-14.5
Reviewed by Pieter G. R. de Villiers

Leif E. Vaage, ed.
Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity
Reviewed by Joseph Verheyden