Blue Cord

The final day of the SBL began with me at the Pentateuch section. This was the second Pentateuch section that was held together with the Deuteronomistic History session. Although four presenters were scheduled, Mark Zvi Brettler and Albert De Pury were not able to attend.  So, we only heard two papers, but fortunately they were both very good.

Thomas B. Dozeman’s paper “The Golden Calf in the Enneateuch” was first.  The is probably the best paper I heard at the conference, mostly because he combined excellent scholarship and new interpretive approaches in a paper that was logically organized and easy to follow. He discussed the passages that discuss the Golden Calf: Exodus 32, Deuteronomy 9-10, and 1 Kings 12.  He argues that Exodus 32 is the latest of these and is engaged in innerbiblical exegesis on the other two texts.

This has implications for some of the work I am doing.  Obviously, Exodus 32, which is non-P, is pro-Levite and anti-Aaronid.  This would suggest that it was composed around the same time as texts such as Ezekiel 44 and the reworking of Numbers 16-18 by HS. It seems a part of a larger dialog taking place in the post-exilic period about the place of the Levites.

The second paper was “The Envisioning of the Land in the Priestly Material: Fulfilled Promise or Future Hope?” by Suzanne Boorer.  She argued that Priestly material does not continue into the book of Joshua, which leaves the promise of the land unfulfilled in the Priestly document. Although it was a good paper, I disagree with her. As I argued in a paper last year at the EABS, I think there is a good deal of P in Joshua 13-21. But I do agree with Boorer that at some point the promise of land was broken off when Joshua was removed in the process that created the Pentateuch out of the Hexateuch.

Some of the discussion surrounding the papers was helpful for my own thought process.  One idea that came to me is that the Priestly layers in Joshua might have been added by HS in the post-exilic period in order to encourage people to return to Judah/Yehud from Babylon. A focus on the land would make sense at that point.

After a quick run through the book sale, I headed to the Kansas City Barbecue place across from the Hyatt.  Some scenes from the movie Top Gun were filmed there, and being an aficionado of  barbecue I thought I should give it a try.  The barbecue was OK, but not quite up to the standards of North Carolina, although the sweet potato pie I had for desert was excellent.

I will be heading to the airport this afternoon.  I have a red-eye flight back tonight at 11:00 pm.

Next year in Jerusalem Boston!

I attended the Pentateuch section at the SBL today. This has been a good year for Pentateuch, with four sections (two of them in conjunction with the Deuteronomistic History section). Today’s section was not thematic, so the papers were on a number of topics and several were on the topic of Numbers.

The first was Danny Mathews’s paper “‘A New King Arose over Egypt Who Did Not Know Joseph’: The Joseph Novella as Prologue to the Moses Biography.” Mathews argues that the Joseph and Moses stories run in parallel. He points to similarities between the two figures: both are shepherds at times, both are threatened but saved by family members, both are sent to save their brothers, etc. While the parallels are there, I did not find the paper convincing. It could simply be that these are common elements to stories like these. In addition, it is currently an open question whether there was a connection between the non-P strands in Genesis and Exodus prior to the work of P.¹ Since all of the parallels that Mathews points out are in the non-P material, this is not an insignificant question.

The next paper was “Is ‘The Joseph Story’ a Misnomer for Genesis 37-50?” by Richard J. Clifford. I went into the paper already thinking it was a misnomer, so I was convinced by his argument. One new thing that he did point out was the importance of what he called “recognition stories.” These are points in the story where the main character realizes that there has been a plan in place that was different than the one he had planned. Among these are the moment when Judah realizes that Tamar has had a plan to carry on her husband’s name (Genesis 38) and when Joseph realizes that God used his misery to save his father’s family (Genesis 50).

The next two papers were alright, but did not really break any new ground. The first was Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor’s “Pentateuch and Exile.” The other was Nathan Lane’s paper “YHWH’s Mercy and Wrath: The Contribution of Exodus 34:6-7 to the Canonical Shape of the Torah.” The latter was not particularly convincing.

The final paper was Mark A. Christian’s “Integrating the Alien,” which dealt with Torah passages that specify how resident aliens (Heb. gerim) are to be treated. This is an issue in the post-exilic period, with Ezekiel and HS taking up position, so I enjoyed what he had to say. Of the presenters in this session, he seemed to be the only one aware of recent European scholarship on the Pentateuch.

The evening was finished off with dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House with one of my closest friends and some of his friends from graduate school.

1. For a discussion of this question, see the articles in the first part of A Farewell to the Yahwist? [back]

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.