Blue Cord

I have been away from my blog for almost two weeks at this point.  I have had only sporadic access to the Internet since the beginning of the month.  For the first week, it was caused by my trip to Tennessee.  My parents do not have Internet access at their house, so I didn’t even both to bring my laptop along.  I made one blog entry while I was down there, but that involved go to their church to use the office computers.

Once I returned to Massachusetts, I was had to deal with the fact that I had moved to a new apartment.  While it is problematic having my entire life in boxes, the lack of Internet has been a bigger issue, both with regard to blogging and to my freelance work as a web designer.  I have contacted Comcast to get Internet installed, but their earliest appointment was late afternoon this Wednesday.  I hope to be able to resume blogging then.  That will also be the point at which I am able to start contacting people who have offered to write essays for the book on academic blogging.

Let me start by thanking those of my readers who have picked up on this and mentioned it on their own blogs.  As I hoped, this is spreading in the standard blog manner.

I need to correct on issue with the original post.  My e-mail address was listed as ending with bluecord.rg, instead of bluecord.org.  I have corrected it in the original link, so if you have had trouble reaching me, please try again.

I also wanted to quickly address a bit of the discussion about the Ph.D. requirements for contributors.  Some have opined that this is not in the spirit of blogging and should be removed.  While I agree that blogging is more egalitarian, this book is an intersection between blogging and scholarship.  I have to balance both sides of the equation, so I will be keeping the Ph.D. requirement, although as I said in the original post the guidelines are somewhat flexible.

That being said, I have been considering adding two chapters at the end of the book: one written by a doctoral student who is a blogger and another by a non-specialists who blogs the Bible.   I will certainly keep people like Danny Zacharias at Deinde in mind for such a position.

For those of you who have e-mailed, I will get back to you by next week.  After posting the call for contributors on Wednesday, I left on Thursday to drive fourteen hours to Tennessee, where I am visiting my parents.  They have no Internet at home, so I am limited in my Internet access until I return to Massachusetts.

Thanks to everyone for their interest in this project.

This post is a call for contribution for a new book to be entitled Blogging the Bible: Scholars, Scriptures, and New Media (or something to that effect). The book is intended to explore questions related to blogging as an academic discipline.

The following essays have been proposed (authors who have already asked to write or are considering writing certain chapters are in parenthesis):

• Blogging as Academic Activity (Kevin A. Wilson)
• Blogging as Scholarly Writing (Christian Brady)
• The Weird and the Wonderful: Blog Carnivals and Tangential Topics (Tyler F. Williams)
• Beyond the Academy: Blogging for a Popular Audience
• Blogging as Review (Chris Heard)
• Blogging the Breaking News
• Blogging as Discourse between Scholars: A Talmudic Approach to Scholarship
• Blogging Off Topic: Letting the Personality of the Professor Come Through
• Blogging Every Day: Academic Writing as a Way of Life

These are obviously not the only topics that could be covered. Anyone is free to suggestion new topics, especially if it is a topic you are interested in writing about. I want the process of writing this book to reflect the blogging ethos, so I expect this book to evolve and grow through conversations.

Contributors should meet the following qualifications:

• Ph.D. in biblical studies or a closely related field.
• Blog should be focused on the academic study of the Bible.
• Been blogging for at least a year with a significant number of posts.

The purpose of these guidelines is not to exclude people, but to ensure that the contributors are scholars who have significant experience with what it means to blog on the Bible.

If you would like to be a contributor, please let me know. I can be contacted at my e-mail address. Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome via e-mail as well.