Blue Cord

In addition to the bibliobloggers lunch, I also attended a couple of sections. The first was the Pentateuch section.  I heard the tail end of Konrad Schmid’s paper “The Emergence and disappearance of the Separation between Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic History,” all of Thomas Romer’s paper “How Many Books (teuchs): Pentateuch, Hexateuch, Deuteronomistic History, or Enneateuch,” and all of Erhard Blum’s “How to Determine the Scope of Literary Works in Genesis to Kings.” Blum was not present, so his paper was read by David Carr.  These guys always deliver very dense papers, so I am hoping to be able to get copies of the papers to read and digest at length.

It was then off to a meeting with Jim, who graciously agreed to chat with me about starting a publishing company.   This was followed by a quick stop at the first biblical law section, where I heard Henning Graf Reventlow’s paper “Canaanite Cultic Law and Its Yahwistic Repainting in Leviticus 1-16, Shown by a Close Reading of the Chapter Leviticus 1.”  I was an interesting paper which tried to remove Israelite elements in Leviticus 1 in order to recover a Canaanite layer.  He argues that the basis of biblical cultic law was pre-Yahwistic.  I wasn’t convinced.

The evening consisted of the Yale reception from 7:00-8:30 and the Johns Hopkins reception from 9:00-11:00.  Both were enjoyable, but I couldn’t socialize the way I wanted to due to my laryngitis.

We had twenty-one people at the biblioblogger get together today. Unfortunately, I developed laryngitis after conversations in a noisy restaurant the night before, so I mostly got to listen to conversations. I did, however, pass around a sheet of paper for everyone to sign. Here, then, is the canonical list of bibliobloggers who gathered this year:

• Kevin A. Wilson - Blue Cord
• Ben Myers - Faith and Theology
• Kevin Scull - Novum Testamentum
• Brandon Wason - Novum Testamentum and Bibliobloggers.com
• Duane Smith - Abnormal Interests
• Chris Weimer - Thoughts on Antiquity
• J.B. Hood - Deinde
• Joe Weaks - The Macintosh Biblioblog
• Stephen Carlson - Hypotyposeis
• Mark Goodacre - NT Gateway Weblog
• James Crossley - Earliest Christian History
• Jim West - Jim West
• Chris Tilling - Chrisendom
• Christian Brady - Targuman
• Stephen L. Cook - Biblische Ausbildung
• Bob MacDonald - Dr. MacDonald
• T. Michael W. Halcomb - Pisteuomen
• Pat McCullough - kata ta biblia
• Jim Getz - Ketuvim

Also in attendance were Paul Buckley and David Mihalyfy, who do not blog but apparently enjoy eating lunch with a large group of geeks.

I also present the canonical list of those who did not attend:

• Women
• Minorities
• Guys who got dates in high school

I’m not sure why, but biblioblogging seems to be primarily a white male thing. I’m sure there are exceptions, but none of them came to lunch.

I couple of things annoyed me about papers I heard yesterday. It had nothing to do with content. What bothered me was some of the mechanics of the presentation. So, in the spirit of helping my readers, here is a guide to a few things not to do when delivering a paper at a conference.

• Don’t say “i.e.” or “e.g.” or “cf.” These are not words; they are abbreviations. We don’t say “e t c” when we find the abbreviation etc. in a text. You should either say “id est” or “exempli gratia” (which would make you look a bit odd) or say “that is” or “for example.”
• Don’t make “air quotes” with your fingers. Using gestures is a great way to illustrate what you are saying and make the paper more lively, but this one makes me want to rush the stage and break your fingers.
• Don’t read long passages out of the Bible. If we, your listeners, need to be reminded of the text, include it in a handout. This is especially important if you are arguing about a particular reading or a fine point of interpretation. Many of us bring Bible’s with us (I have a new one on my phone), but not everyone does. And for pete’s sake, include the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. Everyone in your audience can read it and most will want to see it.
• And while I am on the subject of handouts, please make sure that your handouts make sense. I got one handout yesterday that had two biblical texts next to one another. The text had a series of lines drawn from one text to the other and from one text to another point in the same text. Even after listening to the paper, I had no idea what the lines meant.
• Don’t make a big deal out of the fact that this paper is a part of a larger research project. This is the case for just about every paper. Don’t tell us that if we want a fuller argument we can wait for the paper to be published. If your paper is so broad that further arguments are needed, narrow the focus of the paper. The time to mention the fact that you have more to say is when someone asks for more info in the Q&A session.
• Only read the original languages when the argument depends on it. There are some papers where people rattle of strings of Hebrew at a remarkable rate. We are all pleased that you can speak Hebrew, but not all of your audience can. We can read it, but that doesn’t mean we understand it when it is spoken. (If you give a paper in Israel, this doesn’t apply. Go nuts with the Hebrew!) This rule is relaxed somewhat if you provide the Hebrew on the handout.

And most important is my final bit of advice. It should be obvious, but after hearing some papers yesterday it apparently needs to be said.

• Make sure your paper has a point to it.

Today wasn’t the most exciting day I have ever had at the SBL.

I started off the day by listening to one paper at in the Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah section.  It was Mark Leuchter’s paper, “The Prophets and the Levites in Josiah’s Covenant Ceremony.” I wanted to hear it because of my interest in the history of the priesthood.  It was a good paper, although not exactly on the topic I was hoping.

I then headed over to the book fair.  The only book that really caught my attention was Christophe Nihan’s From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of the Book of Leviticus. I saw it when looking for my own book at the Mohr Siebeck exibit.  Apparently they only bring books for two years, and because my was published in 2005, they didn’t bring it this year. I would love to get Nihan’s book, but even with the convention discount it is $112.

After lunch with a friend from Abingdon, I tried to go to the Hebrew Literature and Cognate Literature section on “Karl van der Toorn, Scribal Culture, and the Making of the Hebrew Bible.” It was packed to overflowing, so I didn’t bother trying to push my way in. Fortunately, both this section and the 4:00 one were in my hotel, so I just came back up to my room for a while.

At 4:00 I went to the first of four Pentateuch sections.  This was a good section.  My favorite paper was entitled “Of Animals and Nations: The Reception of Dietary Laws in P, D, and H.” It wasn’t until the Q&A session after his paper that I realized it was Christophe Nihan, who wrote to book I mentioned above.  Another good paper was Mark K. George’s paper, “Israel’s Tabernacle as Modification of Priestly Creation.” He argued that the construction of the tabernacle is the completion of the creation begun in Genesis 1.  In contrast to the gods who build the temple at the end of creation in Mesopotamian myths, in P the tabernacle building in Exodus 25-31 and 35-40 are the conclusion to creation.  This could dovetail nicely with my discussion of the covenant at Sinai and what Moses received there according to P.

I finished the evening with a nice dinner with two good friends from seminary, one from the largest US state and the other from the second largest.

I had some time in between an editorial board meeting in the morning and the AABS meeting in the afternoon. Since I am at a biblical studies conference, I thought it would be appropriate to visit some holy ground in the city, so I headed over to Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres.

Now, I am not a Padres fan, even though one of my favorite pitchers, Rodrigo Lopez, now pitches for them (he played with the Orioles when I lived in Maryland). But I love ballparks and consider them about as close to heaven as we can achieve here on earth.

Petco Park has an area out past the outfield that is open to the public on days when games are not being played. I was able to go in and look around. The picture above was taken with me standing just outside the center field fence, with the camera on my phone poking between the links in the fence.

It is a pretty park - despite being named after a business - and it has a fantastic location right downtown. Looks like a great place to see a game.