Nativity Story Review back online

I complained recently that my review of The Nativity Story had vanished from the SBL Forum in its reorganisation. I was happy to hear today that it is now back, and it is at the same URL:

The Nativity Story: A Review

Bibliobloggers and the SBL Forum

At the SBL Forum Board Meeting at this year's SBL, we had some discussion of the role that can be played by bloggers like us. The SBL Forum has a good history of engaging with the blogs, and encouraging articles on blogging (e.g. James Davila, Assimilated to the Blogosphere: Blogging Ancient Judaism and Tyler Williams, Welcome to the Biblical Studies Carnival). I noted at our meeting that in the past I have developed blog posts for publication, including in the SBL Forum (though rather annoyingly, my review of The Nativity Story has been lost in their reorganisation! More anon on that front). I suggested that there may be other bibliobloggers who might like to do the same thing in the future. So this post is in the nature of a call to all bibliobloggers: if you have any interesting ideas for articles for the SBL Forum, please be encouraged to participate. There is a good, developing relationship here between the blogs and the Forum, and it would be good to see the relationship going on from strength to strength.

Danny Zacharias's Wired Scholar

In the new SBL Forum for May, published today, Danny Zacharias has an excellent article worthy of special mention:

The Wired Scholar: Five Free Tools You May Not Know About
Danny Zacharias

Four out of the five are Google tools and Googleholics like me will already be familiar with these and using them every day. But even there, there are some extras you might not know about. For example, under the Google Books heading, Danny writes:

I currently know of two "under construction" web pages dedicated to pointing out biblical studies works that are freely available, mostly from Google Books. The first is maintained by Mischa Hooker from the University of Memphis. The links to J. P. Migne's collection are found on this first list. The second is by Bob Buller, with some collaborative efforts on my part as well. We welcome other collaborators who wish to help us maintain this list.

Those lists are both hugely helpful.

I would add a couple of quick additional advantages to the resources discussed by Danny:

(1) Back-up: In my experience (and this is the topic for another post one of these days), people only take backing up data seriously once they have had a disaster. A stolen laptop, a major computer crash, and then people begin to realize that they should have been backing up all along. One of the advantages of using Google Docs, Google Notebook and so on, and let's throw in GMail and Google Calendar, is that they automatically back up and store your data on the net.

(2) iGoogle: If you use iGoogle, customizing your homepage with all sorts of gadgets and widgets, you can throw in the Google Notebook and the Google Docs, as well as GMail, your Google Reader, your Google Calendar and so on. That makes it very straightforward for doing your research on the road, or on multiple computers.

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.