Court on Crossley

Tomorrow's Church Times (it's still today in America though it's already tomorrow in England) features a short review by John Court of James Crossley's Why Christianity Happened:

Explaining a faith
John Court is sceptical about an account of Christianity’s causes

How to Give an Academic Talk

The question of how to present papers is a regular one here and it has recently resurfaced (More SBL Reflections, especially on Presenting Papers and SBL Assorted Reflections). Matthew Collins mentioned to me that Heather McKay and he presented a workshop on the topic at the annual meeting last year, headed "Giving a Better Presentation at the Meeting (a.k.a. Speed Readers Anonymous)". Apparently it runs each year at the International Meeting too. Matthew also sent me a copy of an excellent article on the subject, which is available for distribution provided one retains the copyright information at the top of the article:

How to Give an Academic Talk:
Changing the Culture of Public Speaking in the Humanities (PDF)
Paul N. Edwards
School of Information
University of Michigan

. . . . Why do otherwise brilliant people give such soporific talks?

First, they’re scared. The pattern is a perfectly understandable reaction to stage fright. It’s easier to hide behind the armor of a written paper, which you’ve had plenty of time to work through, than simply to talk.

But second, and much more important, it’s part of academic culture — especially in the humanities. It's embedded in our language: we say we're going to "give a paper." As a euphemism for a talk, this is an oxymoron. Presentations are not articles. They are a completely different medium of communication, and they require a different set of skills. Professors often fail to recognize this, or to teach it to their graduate students.

Stage fright is something everybody has to handle in their own way. But academic culture is something we can deliberately change. This short essay is an attempt to begin that process with some pointers for effective public speaking . . . .

I have provided that quotation by way of taster. I must admit to finding it very refreshing to see someone independently making the case I have been trying to make for the last three years; he does it with clarity and style. I see that the article appears in a variety of places on the net where other sympathisers have uploaded it, so I'd also like to thank Paul Edwards for making it available in this way, which demonstrates the power of the net to disseminate one's writing on topics of interest to a broad range of people.

Review of Biblical Literature latest

I have fallen behind with the Review of Biblical Literature announcements recently, so here in one post are all the ones I have missed under the NT and related headings:

David E. Aune
Apocalypticism, Prophecy and Magic in Early Christianity: Collected Essays
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5791
Reviewed by Lorenzo DiTommaso

James D. G. Dunn
The Partings of the Ways: Between Christianity and Judaism and Their Significance for the Character of Christianity
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5891
Reviewed by Peter Carrell

Hans-Josef Klauck
Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5701
Reviewed by Pieter J. J. Botha

Hershel Shanks, ed.
Where Christianity Was Born: A Collection from the Biblical Archaeology Society
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5826
Reviewed by Jonathan Reed

Cynthia Long Westfall
A Discourse Analysis of the Letter to the Hebrews: The Relationship between Form and Meaning
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5841
Reviewed by Gabriella Gelardini

Kurt Erlemann, Karl Leo Noethlichs, Klaus Scherberich, and Jürgen Zangenberg, eds.
Neues Testament und Antike Kultur (4 vols.)
Band 1: Prolegomena; Quellen; Geschichte
Band 2: Familie; Gesellschaft; Wirtschaft
Band 3: Weltauffassung; Kult; Ethos
Band 4: Karten, Abbildungen, Register
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5828
Reviewed by Joseph Verheyden

Graeme Goldsworthy
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5878
Reviewed by Erwin Ochsenmeier

Hermann Gunkel; trans. by K. William Whitney Jr.
Creation and Chaos in the Primeval Era and the Eschaton: A Religio-Historical Study of Genesis 1 and Revelation 12
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5560
Reviewed by Pieter G. R. de Villiers

Stanley Hauerwas
Matthew
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5839
Reviewed by John Nolland

Ilze Kezbere
Umstrittener Monotheismus: Wahre und falsche Apotheose im lukanischen Doppelwerk
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5756
Reviewed by Loveday Alexander

Josep Rius-Camps and Jenny Read-Heimerdinger
The Message of Acts in Codex Bezae: A Comparison with the Alexandrian Tradition; Volume 2: Acts 6:1-12:25: From Judea and Samaria to the Church in Antioch
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5489
Reviewed by Jacob M. Caldwell

D. H. Williams, ed.
Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretation: A Sourcebook of the Ancient Church
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5657
Reviewed by H. H. Drake Williams III

Barry Beitzel, ed.
Biblica The Bible Atlas: A Social and Historical Journey through the Lands of the Bible
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5621
Reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins

Silvia Cappelletti
The Jewish Community of Rome: From the Second Century B.C. to the Third Century C.E.
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5648
Reviewed by Judith Lieu
Reviewed by Allen Kerkeslager

Georg Gäbel
Die Kulttheologie des Hebräerbriefes: Eine exegetisch-religionsgeschichtliche Studie

http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5881
Reviewed by Gabriella Gelardini

Bruce J. Malina and John J. Pilch
Social-Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5391
Reviewed by Eduard Verhoef

Jerome Neyrey
The Gospel of John
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5880
Reviewed by Dirk van der Merwe

Richard P. Thompson
Keeping the Church in Its Place: The Church as Narrative Character in Acts
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5609
Reviewed by Steve Walton

Pheme Perkins, Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels

I am grateful to Eerdmans for a copy of the following:

Pheme Perkins, Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels

In this book respected New Testament scholar Pheme Perkins delivers a clear, fresh, informed introduction to the earliest written accounts of Jesus — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — situating those canonical Gospels within the wider world of oral storytelling and literary production of the first and second centuries. Cutting through the media confusion over new Gospel finds, Perkins’s Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels presents a balanced, responsible look at how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke came to be and what they mean.

Endorsements and table of contents are available on the Eerdmans site from the title link above. I have a brief comment of my own to add about the book, but I will do that in a separate post.

HarperCollins Visual Guide to the Bible

Jim West has been blogging this, but I wanted to add my own comment, not least given that a copy arrived in my pigeonhole earlier this week. I am talking about Jonathan L. Reed, The HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament. I haven't spent a lot of time reading the text yet, but I have enjoyed flicking through and looking at the pictures. How often do we get to say that about books on the New Testament?! It really is a gorgeously produced item. I have linked here to HarperCollins's browse facility above so that you can see for yourself:

Bible and Critical Theory Latest

Latest Bible and Critical Theory posting (sorry, I'm a few weeks late) from the SBL.
---
The Bible and Critical Theory
Volume: 3, Number: 3 October 2007
------------------------------

FREE ARTICLE
What Is The Bible and Critical Theory?
By Roland Boer and Julie Kelso
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070035

FREE ARTICLE
Che Vuoi? Politico-philosophical remarks on Leo Strauss' Spinoza
By Matthew Sharpe
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070041

BOOK REVIEWS

David E. S. Stein, ed., The Contemporary Torah: A Gender-Sensitive Adaptation of the JPS
Reviewed by Nathan Eubank
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070042

Marion Ann Taylor and Heather E. Weir, Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis
Reviewed by R. Christopher Heard
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070043

Jens Bruun Kofoed, Text and History: Historiography and the Study of the Biblical Text
Reviewed by Sean Burt
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070044

Mark Hamilton, The Body Royal: The Social Poetics of Kingship in Ancient Israel
Reviewed by Milena Kirova
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070045

Scott M. Langston, Exodus through The Centuries
Reviewed by Peter D. Miscall
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070046

Review of Uriah Y. Kim, Decolonizing Josiah: Toward a Postcolonial Reading of the Deuteronomistic History
Reviewed by Mark Sneed
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070047

It's a Small World After All. Review of Fransisco Lozada Jr. and Tom Thatcher, eds., New Currents through John: A Global Perspective
Reviewed by Christina Petterson
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070048

Jennifer Knust, Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity: Gender, Theory, and Religion
Reviewed by Gillian Townsley
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070049

Stephen G. Wilson, Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Antiquity
Reviewed by Michael F. Bird
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070050

Laura Donaldson and Kwok Pui-Lan, eds., Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse
Reviewed by Esther Fuchs
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070051

Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World
Reviewed by Darren Jorgensen
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070052

Sean Gaston, The Impossible Mourning of Jacques Derrida
Reviewed by Peter D. Miscall
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070053

Terry R. Wright, The Genesis of Fiction: Modern Novelists as Biblical Interpreters
Reviewed by Richard Walsh
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/abs/10.2104/bc070054

---------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.epress.monash.edu/bc

The Messiah: In Early Judaism and Christianity

Latest from Fortress:

Scholars Discuss The Messiah In Early Judaism and Christianity

Minneapolis (November 9, 2007)—In The Messiah, leading scholars offer succinct and illuminating essays on currents of messianic thought in the formative centuries of Judaism and Christianity, providing precision in thinking about “messianic” images and tradition. Special features designed with the student in mind include a map, a glossary of terms, and a timeline of significant events.

Contents

Introduction Magnus Zetterholm

Part One: Formation

Pre-Christian Jewish Messianism: An Overview
John J. Collins, Yale University
The Messiah as Son of God in the Synoptic Gospels
Adela Yarbro Collins, Yale University
Paul and the Missing Messiah
Magnus Zetterholm, Lund University


Part Two: Development

Elijah and the Messiah as Spokesman of Rabbinic Ideology
Karin Hedner-Zetterholm, Lund University
The Reception of Messianism and the Worship of Christ in the Post-Apostolic Church
Jan-Eric Steppa, Lund University

Editor:

Magnus Zetterholm is Adjunct Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Linköping University, Sweden. He is the author of The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (2003) and coeditor of The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins until 2000 C.E. (2001).

The Messiah: In Early Judaism and Christianity
Edited by Magnus Zetterholm

Item No: 978-0-8006-2108-7

Format: Paperback, 164 pages, 6 x 9 inches

Price: $18.00

To order The Messiah: In Early Judaism and Christianity please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at www.fortresspress.com.

To request review copies (for media), or to discuss speaking engagements or interviews, please call 1-800-426-0115 ext. 234 or e-mail toddb@augsburgfortress.org.

To request exam copies for classroom use (professors) go to www.fortresspress.com/examcopy.

Bible and Justice Conference

From the British New Testament Society list:
---
The 2008 Conference on Bible and Justice will bring together scholars from around the world to explore how the ancient texts of the Bible can play an active role in addressing twenty-first century social concerns. The purpose of the conference is to foster discussion about the relevance of the Bible to modern social issues, and promote bridges between the academic field of biblical studies and the various endeavours for a just world.

The Conference Will Focus On Three Main Areas:
- Human Rights
- Economic Justice
- Environmental Justice

Our Keynote Speakers Are:
- Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University
- Timothy Gorringe, University of Exeter
- John Rogerson, University of Sheffield (Emeritus)

A variety of other speakers, including James Crossley, Philip Davies, David Horrell, Louise Lawrence, Mary Mills, Hugh Pyper, Christoper Rowland, Gerald West, and Keith Whitelam will address how the Bible is able to relate to a wide variety of social issues.

We would like to invite members of the BNTS to submit abstracts, which will be accepted until 24 January 2008.

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/bibs/bibleandjustice/

Please visit the above website or contact our conference organizer, Matthew Coomber, for more information: bibleandjustice@sheffield.ac.uk .

H. Benedict Green Obituary, and Farrerians in Oxford

I commented on the sad death of H. Benedict Green in September. The Church Times recently had an obituary:

Obituary: FR BENEDICT GREEN CR [dead link, see update below]
The Very Revd Victor de Waal and Esther de Waal

A couple of things in the obituary may be of interest to scholars of the Synoptic Problem. The obituary mentions that Benedict Green was schooled at Eton, and I might add that that is where he first met his younger contemporary Michael Goulder. (The New Testament scholar Anthony Harvey was also at Eton at the same time). The obituary also notes Father Benedict's connections with Oxford. His father F. W. Green was a fellow of Merton College, and it was his father's commentary on Matthew that Father Benedict later updated, in the Clarendon Bible, and still very much worth consulting today. The Farrer Theory has a marked Oxford pedigree. Austin Farrer spent most of his academic career there; Michael Goulder and H. Benedict Green were both students there, and Michael later returned to give the Speakers Lectures. E. P. Sanders, a Farrer sympathiser, was Dean Ireland Professor there in the second half of the 1980s, a fact that probably has a lot to do with my own Q scepticism, and Eric Franklin, author of Luke: Critic of Matthew, Interpreter of Paul was there from the 1970s until his sad death recently. Other Farrerians are still in Oxford, John Muddiman, my doctoral supervisor; Robert Morgan, recently retired; and Eric Eve.

Back to the obituary, its authors mention that "his major work on this subject became his monumental Matthew: Poet of the Beatitudes, finally published in 2001". I would like to underline that this is a fine book, and it is one that is only going to be fully appreciated now after his death.

--
Update (23 February 2014): The link above is now dead, but the obituary is reproduced on the Mirfield website here:

H. Benedict Green Obituary

SBL Biblioblogger Lunch mini-podcast

Chris Brady has uploaded a seven minute podcast of everyone introducing themselves at the bibliobloggers lunch at the SBL last week, Is this mic on? Introducing the bibliobloggers lunch. I am not quite sure why I thought introducing my name and blog was so hilariously funny.

More SBL Reflections, especially on Presenting Papers

Over on the Forbidden Gospels Blog, April DeConick weighs in with her SBL Odds and Ends. April's reflections are helpful and interesting, and I agree with many of them. Like her, "my experience of SBL is a communal one". On the perennial issue of reading papers, April makes the valuable point that predistributing papers can be problematic given that many in the audience will not have read the paper in question and suggests that "Predistributing only works if the group is very small - like a seminar - and the goal of the meeting is detailed discussion of the paper". This is the set up in the Mark Group, and I have had some good experiences there. Nevertheless, the group sometimes illustrates the problem that April discusses. Non-members of the group inevitably come along to the session, they will not have read the papers, and they are sat around the outside of the room as non-participants. On Evangelical Textual Criticism, Peter Head draws attention to the set up of the Mark Group this year. I can't help thinking that it is appropriate to a group studying Mark, with a group of "those around him with the twelve" and "those who are outside".

My feeling about presenting papers, though, is not so much about the benefits of predistributing over not predistributing. Rather it is a question of the style of delivery. If one is reading out a paper rather than presenting it, I think a great deal can get lost. People do not hear everything in a read-aloud paper. The question which I tend to ask is this: why do we not read aloud our lectures in class? The answer, presumably, is because we wish to communicate effectively with our students. Likewise at the conference, if we wish to communicate with our audience, it is preferable to present rather than to read. (I am assuming here that people do not read aloud undergraduate lectures, do they?). On this theme, in comments, James McGrath makes the interesting point that "I think I've become so used to papers, that the rare person who does a presentation makes me feel like they are 'teaching a class' and treating the audience like we are students!" Well, that's certainly one to watch, and I do know what James means. In fact, I went to a session this year where a presenter spoke as if he was talking to his class. Mind you, I heard every word he said, and I would not have done if he had read aloud. Here, I think, we need to adjust our presentation style to the audience. Being an academic is about communicating one's ideas, and engaging with others, and so one has to ask about the most effective means of doing that.

Also in comments, Jack Poirier continues to argue strongly in favour of reading papers:

I'll continue my theme of supporting the reading of papers: If someone "presents" their paper without reading it, and I happen to be really interested in what they have to say, then I'm in the unfortunate position of having to get a copy of the paper and read it for myself just to see all the stuff that was left out of the presentation. That's why I prefer a paper to be read: then you know that you're getting it all (except perhaps the footnotes). I would hate to go to a conference where everyone presented. The more I liked the papers, the more homework I would have after the conference.

I understand what Jack is saying here, and I have some sympathy with it. My guess is that Jack is far better at concentrating on academic papers than I am. I am afraid that I drift away very quickly when people read, so I hear much less when they read aloud than when they present. I have also noticed that I am much more likely to fall asleep in read papers than in presentations, so again I get to hear less of a read aloud paper. There is an assumption too in what Jack writes that papers are fuller than the presentations, that presentations leave things out. I don't think that that is necessarily the case. A presentation can sometimes provide more information than can a read-aloud paper because there are different ways of communicating information when one is not reading.

Back to April's post, there are some helpful reflections on the multiple sessions, arguing that they can help to hone research, with like-minded people meeting together on a given topic of interest. There is a lot in that, but I suppose that I am concerned about the over-specialisation in the discipline that ultimately detracts from research that goes across boundaries and encourages conversations between different sub-fields. To speak of my own interests, for example, I had to miss sessions on Jesus and film which I would have loved to have attended because I was in other sessions that touched on other areas of interest. This year I did manage to get to one session on Paul, but at the expense of the Synoptics section which was meeting at the same time, and I was the co-chair of that section. I missed all the meetings of the Mark Group because they were timetabled at the same time as other sessions that I needed to attend, and that in spite of being a member of the Mark Group. I can't even begin to think about getting to sessions on Luke-Acts, or on Matthew, or on, say, the Gospel of Judas, one of the sessions I would have liked to attend. And so on. I just use myself by way of illustration; I know others feel the same way. If nobody can get to a fraction of the sessions that they would like to get to, I think there are too many sessions.

I am glad to see that April agrees with me on the problem of extending the conference to 9am on Saturday morning. It's another case in point -- there were two sessions I wanted to get to at that time but I had two meetings to attend. April also echoes the point made elsewhere about room sizes:

Please judge room size better. I cannot believe that the panel on Judas where Elaine Pagels and Karen King were responding to Birger Pearson, Louis Painchaud, and me was put in a room that seated 75. People were sitting in the aisles, along the perimeter of the room, and hanging out the door. Those crammed in the doorway told me that at least 50 people tried to get into the room, but finally left exasperated.

I agree. In most cases, this is one for the session chairs (see my post on SBL Room Sizes).

Update (Wednesday, 21.21): April DeConick makes an excellent case for Why Speciality Units at SBL Are Important. I might perhaps add that my own concern relates not to speciality units per se but to extensively overlapping units, but I may be wrong about that.

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.

Christian Origins SBL Bauckham Thread

The strange thing about e-lists is that they can lie dormant for months and then spring into life quite unexpectedly. The Christian Origins e-list is a case in point. It has been buzzing for the last 48 hours with a fascinating discussion of the Synoptic Gospels section which reviewed Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses at the SBL Annual Meeting last week. On one level, I am gratified that a session I organized has resulted in such an interesting discussion. On another level, it is difficult to know quite what to make of some of the comments in the thread, so I encourage you to read it, and perhaps contribute too. The discussion features several of the participants on the panel including James Crossley and John Kloppenborg, and Jeff Peterson, who was presiding. Begin with Crossley's message, What is to be done? and follow the thread from there.

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 Monday

As well as the usual meetings of different kinds, I went to the session on Paul and Empire featuring John Barclay and Tom Wright. This was the academic highlight of the conference. John Barclay gave an excellent paper, all the better for being completely convincing. He argued, essentially, that Paul was not particularly concerned with the Roman empire except in so far as it instantiated the darker forces of this present evil age. The really memorable image was one constructed around the Emperor's New Clothes. In contrast to those who see a naked emperor running all over the pages of the New Testament, Barclay said that he saw no emperor. (Wright attempted a riposte about the emperor being so heavily clothed that people could not see how the clothes were standing up, but it was weak). I thought Tom Wright's response was not one of his better performances . Indeed, I think it was the closest I have seen to his being quite flustered. He spoke from his laptop, and he was updating his talk as Barclay spoke, but there was little he could say that would help him to answer so strong and persuasive a presentation. I hope that Barclay publishes soon.

I was speaking in the Q section, next. It was the first time I had been invited to speak to the Q section, though I once spoke as the result of having a proposal accepted back in 1999. The topic of the session was Mark-Q overlaps and I have blogged the substance of my paper here in a series of six posts (Mark-Q Overlaps) here over the last few weeks. Although I was pleased with the substance of my paper, I was less pleased with my presentation. I think I underestimated how tough it is to convey statistical information clearly, and in retrospect I think a powerpoint presentation may have helped; or perhaps more information still on my handout. Speaking of the handout, I must remember to upload it to the blog. (Please remind me if I forget). Having thought a good deal about the issues, and having discussed them a bit at the SBL, I think it will be a good idea for me press ahead with publication on the extent of verbatim agreement issue. I think there is a strong argument here for the Farrer Theory that has not been put forward before.

The other speakers in the session were Harry Fledderman and Linden Yongqvist. Linden summarized the views of Dennis Ronald McDonald, who was sitting in the audience. At one point, he showed the audience the manuscript of a book on "Q+", which was the theme of his talk. "Q+" is Q but with lots more stuff in it than just the double tradition. Occasionally McDonald would himself contribute. Harry Fledderman's paper focused on John the Baptist's preaching in Mark and Q, and gave reasons for believing that Matthew's and Luke's independence, and Mark's knowledge of Q. Unfortunately, Timothy Friedrichsen was unable to be there, so there were just the three speakers. We all responded to one another's papers and there was also some discussion from the floor. A lot of the discussion was broad discussion, i.e. defaulted to discussing the theories as a whole rather than focusing specifically on the papers themselves.

I was unable to stay for the Tuesday morning and began my journey fairly early on, flying from San Diego to Phoenix, where I picked up the story back on Tuesday lunchtime.

SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego, Sunday afternoon

Sunday afternoon: having left the bibliobloggers lunch, without eating, at 12.40, I went to present in the Computer Assisted Research Section. The theme was Pedagogy, and there were several interesting papers. Mine was on The Future of the New Testament Gateway and the substance of the talk is in posts here (previous link). Indeed, I began from this blog, assembling my links from there. I quite enjoyed the presentation. Speaking in CARG tends to be pretty non-confrontational. It's more in the nature of a group of friendly and encouraging enthusiasts who wish to listen and offer gentle advice. I did begin by saying that I had been tempted to begin the talk by saying that there was, in fact, no future for the New Testament Gateway and that I was simply going to close it down and say thank you and goodnight. But good sense and optimism prevailed and I set out my plans for the future. One useful piece of feedback: one questioner asked that I not retire the Journals page, which he said he found particularly useful.

Later in the afternoon I got to the second Q section of the conference. It met in a tiny room and only 20-25 or so were there, but it was quality rather than quantity because several famous Q scholars were present. There were five papers including Joseph Verheyden on Q and judgement, Ken Olson on compositional practices and the Synoptic Problem, with special reference to Luke's use of Matthew's additions to Mark, and Steve Black on the Minor Agreement at Mark 14.65 and parallels.

I just managed to catch all of these before dashing to the T and T Clark reception; I took a cab so that I could make it in time. These days, T and T Clark do not hold a big publishers' reception but just have a small, selected event in a restaurant by invitation only. It makes it a useful occasion, with the chance to catch up with people involved in the Library of New Testament Studies series.

I had been hoping to make it to the Oxford reception afterwards, but time was too tight, and I went instead straight to the Duke reception. This was an enjoyable affair, and it's nice to feel part of such a prestigious family. It was the third time I had been along to this event and, as usual, I met new friends and old.

SBL: Arrival Home

I arrived at about midnight last night after the kind of journey that reminded me of the lengths of journey I used to have flying back to the UK. The only difference was that I was in flights with much less leg room, and changed more often. I flew out first to Phoenix, from where I blogged. My flight to DC was then so delayed that I had to be re-routed via Charlotte. There was a bonus, though, in meeting a fellow blogger and NT enthusiast at the airport there and sharing notes about the meeting. On arrival at Raleigh-Durham just before midnight, my luggage had not arrived. I was expecting that, given the re-route, and would have been very surprised if it had arrived, so it was no big deal. And it was very nice to be home. And now there is lots of catching up to do, but it is so much easier to do all that now that I am living in the US because it's the Thanksgiving break here and there is no university until next Monday, and the kids are off school too.

SBL Room Sizes

On Ancient Hebrew Poetry, John Hobbins writes:

It is miserable to give a paper to an audience of 30 scattered in the back of a long space with a seating capacity of a hundred or more. I wish SBL organizers insisted on procuring rooms with seating capacities in line with expected attendance. I gave one paper to an audience in a relatively small, jam-packed room of perhaps 20 people. That worked well. I gave another paper to perhaps 30 people in a cavernous space. That did not work well. I couldn’t tell whether people were following me, which meant, in the end, that I couldn’t even follow myself.

I know what John means, but the fault is likely to be with the chairs of the section, group or consultation in question. When chairs set up a session, they are asked to estimate attendance, and a room is allocated based on that. So if a huge room is allocated for something with a small audience, it is sometimes because the chairs overestimated attendance. This is not always the case, though. Sometimes it's just the case that there are not enough of the requisite number of rooms for the time slot in question.

SBL Annual Meeting, San Diego, Sunday morning

Sunday. 7am. University of Birmingham breakfast reception. It was a great pleasure to meet lots of my old colleagues including some I hadn't seen for over two years. The Birmingham reception is a relatively new feature of the SBL and valued greatly by people like me who have flown from there but still have links and, of course, happy memories. But like several events I attended this year, it is going to be the last in this form. This is the last of the combined AAR (American Academy of Religion) - SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) annual meetings, at least for the time being, and in future there won't be the same opportunities to meet colleagues from across the Religion / Biblical Studies divide.

9am. The University of Birmingham breakfast was pretty light, and I got too busy chatting to pick anything up, so it was nice to get a proper breakfast in the Marriott, my hotel, with the Synoptic Gospels Steering Committee. We had an excellent meeting and have some great plans for next year. When these plans are a little more concrete, and after we have approached some people, I will, of course, blog what we are hoping to do. This was my last meeting as co-chair. I have been co-chair of the section for four years, and I think it is important to keep personnel rotating. I will, however, be remaining on the steering committee for the time being.

11.30am. The bibliobloggers lunch meeting began outside the book exhibit and it soon became clear that we were a very large number. It was also clear that in the two years since we had the big discussion about biblioblogging in Philadelphia, there had been precious little change in the demographic. Everyone present at the lunch was a white male, and mostly of a certain age. We walked in a large group to a restaurant, the name of which I forget, and they were able to find us a huge table, and seemed to do a great job of dealing with this odd party. I don't think I was as sociable as I would have liked to have been because I began to worry that my voice was giving way with all the shouting across the table, and I was due to speak in the Computer Assisted Research Section at one. As it happened, I had to leave the lunch before my food had arrived in order to get to the session. It was good to get to a lot of the meeting, though, and to put some faces to some names.

(More later).

SBL: Journey Home

It turned out that I had very limited time to use the blogging machine during the SBL Annual Meeting, so I will write up my diary on my journey home, which has already begun. I am blogging, with a pint of Sam Adams, from a bar called Tequileria at the airport at Phoenix, Arizona, having left San Diego earlier this morning. I've had a great conference with lots of great conversations, some good laughs, some excellent intellectual exchange and, as usual, not enough sleep and too much rushing around. But I am looking forward very much to getting home later. Not only is there the special new Doctor Who Children in Need scene that aired last Friday to look forward to (and I promised the kids that I would not watch it on my own while I was away), but there are the last two episodes of Sarah Jane Adventures, the Thanksgiving break which gives us several days off from work and school; and most excitingly, tomorrow England play Croatia for a place in Euro 2008. I found time on Saturday afternoon to check online and was delighted to see that Israel had beaten Russia to throw us a lifeline. So lots to look forward to in the coming days, and lots of interesting stuff to reflect on from the last few days at the SBL, more of which anon.