Blue Cord

Chris Weimer at Thoughts on Antiquity has the latest Biblical Studies Blog Carnival up. Chris issued a post on Tuesday saying that he had not received enough posts to include in a carnival. It didn’t occur to me that this was an April Fool’s joke. Last month when I hosted the blog carnival, I was encouraging people up to the last minute to submit posts so that I would have enough material to make up a carnival. When I saw Chris’s post saying he didn’t have enough submission, I went back over my own posts in March to see what I could submit. I couldn’t find anything, as it turns out that last month I only had eight posts, the lowest number of posts in any month since I began blogging two and a half years ago. Spring Break and Easter really slowed down my blogging.

Be sure to check out Chris’s blog carnival, especially if you like discussions about translations and liguistics or posts slandering Zwingili.

I have been tagged in the Zwingli Meme by Chris Brady at Targuman. The entire purpose of this meme is to annoy Jim West, who has threatened to remove anyone who participates in the meme from his blogroll. I was removed from Jim’s blogroll about a year ago for sins unknown, so I risk little by participating. Besides, Jim’s blogroll is down to single digits at this point, so I am not sure how big of a threat that is.

The rules of this meme are simple:

1. Post something rude about Zwingli. (Outrageous slander especially welcome.)
2. Tag someone who is not Jim West.

Personally, I was under the impression that zwingli was a type of pasta.¹ The meme seems to suggest that he was a theologian, so I looked him up. I tried most standard theological reference books, but he doesn’t seem to have been important enough to have been included in any of those works. I loaned someone my copy of Irrelevant Theologians of the 16th Century last week, so I had no choice but to head to Wikipedia.

I learned from Wikipedia that Zwingli was actually a stand-up comedian known primarily for doing a passable impersonation of Martin Luther. Although his impersonation gained him a good deal of popularity in Reformation circles, he stopped doing it after the Diet of Worms over fear of how it might hurt his standing with the Catholic church. This effectively ended his show business career, although his twin brother Elmer Fudd — a well-known actor — was able to get him cameo appearances in films from time to time. Years later, Zwingli was able to meet his hero Martin Luther while Zwingli was working as a bus boy at the Marburg Colloquy.²

I hereby tag Jim Getz.

1. They used to serve a baked zwingli casserole at seminary that was to die for! [back]
2. Zwingli’s role in the colloquy has been greatly exaggerated in subsequent accounts. [back]

“Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!” — Karn Evil 9

Once again, the Biblical Studies Blog Carnival is up and running. Join us as we stroll down the midway, taking in the best that bibliobloggers had to offer in February.

We first stop at the hospitality tent, where we welcome a few newcomers to the biblioblogosphere. My colleague Jin Yang Kim at Wartburg College started a blog this month called Old Testament Story. Jin is a Ph.D. student at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. The Prime Time Jesus blog at Bible.org also added a contributor this month. Their new blogger is Bob Webb, who teaches at McMaster University and specializes in the Historical Jesus. Alan Lenzi at the University of the Pacific began blogging on the last day of January, but we can include him as a February newcomer as well. His blog is Bible and the Ancient Near East. And although he is by no means a newcomer, we want to welcome Jim West back to the blogging world. His previous blog was hacked and deleted in mid-February (the list of suspects is too long and illustrious to mention), but Jim is back up and running at his new address, jwest.wordpress.com. For those who wish to follow the conspiracy theories about the deletion of Jim’s blog, Lingamish is a good place to start.

To the right as we move down the midway is the translation booth. Zondervan posted an article by Karen H. Jobes entitled “Bible Translation as Bilingual Quotation”. They issued an open invitation to bloggers to respond to the article and several took up the challenge. Jim Getz at Kethubim criticized the article in his post “How to Lie with Statistics: Bible Translation Edition”. At Ancient Hebrew Poetry, John Hobbins wrote two pieces in response: “Karen Jobes Squares Off against the Essential Literalists” and “Defining Faithful Translation: Why Jobes is Only Half Right”. The Epistle of Thomas joined the discussion with “Verbosity in English Translations”. Wayne Leman at Better Bibles Blog has a short discussion that contains links to some additional posts on Jobes’s paper.

Next up is the Ancient Near Eastern booth. If you are interested in music, point your browser to Awilum where you can read Charles Halton’s post on musicians at Mari. Duane Smith at Abnormal Interests discusses KTU 1.48, a Ugaritic Ritual Text possibly written by a non-scribe.

Let’s head on over to the big tent, where there is action in three rings: Old Testament, New Testament, and the Bible as a whole. In the center ring is the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible.¹ Starting us off is Steve Cook at Biblische Ausbildung, who responds to a reader’s question about why Isaac took Rebekah into his mother’s tent. Here at Blue Cord, I discussed stories about the golden calf and what they suggest about the history of the priesthood. And lest we limit ourselves to the English speaking world, Jan Pieter van de Giessen had a post on gladiators in the Old Testament at Aantekeningen bij de Bijbel. Van de Giessen’s blog is in Dutch, but the Google translator does a decent job of making the text accessible to those of us who still haven’t gotten around to learning Dutch.

In another ring we have the New Testament blogs. Mike Aubrey at en epheso had several posts on linguistic questions in Greek. In his own words, he is working on “applying linguistic theory and particularly grammatical analysis to the Greek of the New Testament from a modified generative perspective”. This month he discussed the use of pas, predicative and attributive adjectives, and evidence for the Greek noun phrase. And if you are tired of reading and would prefer just to listen, Chris Christensen began a new podcast on the book of Romans at The Bible Study Podcast.

In the third ring, we encounter posts that don’t confine themselves to one testament or the other. Chris Brady (who fights crime as Targuman) has a series of devotionals for the season of Lent. There has also been a lively discussion on religious pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism in the Bible going on between James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix, Michael Halcomb at Pisteuomen, and Ken Brown at C.Orthodoxy. Ken Brown pulled together an index that includes links to their posts, as well as to others who have joined the conversation. The discussion includes an excursion into whether what they are doing should be call a diablogue or a bloggersation.

As we head back out to the midway, we can’t help stopping by the extra-canonical literature booth.² Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica has an excellent book review of April DeConick’s The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says. Deane at Merkavah Vision discusses a merkavah ascent in the Odes of Solomon.

After that, we drop in for a short snack at the hermeneutics booth, where we read what Esteban Vázquez has to say about apostolic exegesis at his blog Vox Stefani. Just around the corner is the tent for the guild of biblical scholars, where Alan Lenzi issues what is sure to be a controversial call for membership standards for the SBL.

There was so much to see this month at the carnival that we can’t help feeling a little tired as we head out the gate. But as we do, we notice a small booth that shows that all of our efforts do sometimes make a difference. Charles Halton at Awilum wrote a post last month pointing out that Baker Publishing had taken a negative review of a book and turned it into a positive blurb on their website through questionable use of ellipses. Charles returned to the Baker website this month and found that the blurb had been removed.

So, as the sun sets, we head back to the parking lot, our minds abuzz with the heady thoughts inspired by excellent blog posts from February (or maybe from having eaten too much cotton candy). We have our Biblical Studies Blog Carnival souvenir stadium cup and the kewpie doll we won by tossing a shekel in the sphinx’s mouth at the Ancient Near Eastern booth, but we can’t help looking forward to next month, when the carnival will once again roll into town at Thoughts on Antiquity. Be on the lookout for their call for submissions, and keep your eyes open for blog posts you want to nominate for next month’s carnival.

1. The OT is in the center ring because it’s my blog and I like the OT. So there. [back]
2. “It’s not just canonical — it’s extra-canonical. Now with 25% more canon!” [back]

It is almost time for another Biblical Studies Blog Carnival. The next blog carnival will be hosted here on Blue Cord. We are approaching the end of the month, so that means it is time to start submitting your favorite blog posts from February to be included in the carnival. Please submit your nominations for the posts you found to be most engaging, most entertaining, most informative, or most __________ (insert your own adjective here). We try to include the widest variety of topics possible, so feel free to include anything you want — within the following guidelines:

• Academic: Posts must represent an academic approach to the discipline of biblical studies rather than, for instance, a devotional approach. This does not mean that posts have to be written by an academic, PhD, or professor — amateurs are more than welcome! Nor does it mean that posts must take a historical critical approach — methodological variety is also encouraged.
• Biblical Studies: Blogs must be broadly focused on discipline of biblical studies and cognate disciplines, including Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Christian Origins/New Testament, Intertestamental/Second Temple literature (e.g., LXX, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, etc.), Patristics, Biblical Criticisms and Hermeneutics, Biblical Studies and popular culture, among other things.

The blog carnival is also the place to draw attention to new blogs. If you are aware of any new biblioblogs that have been started during the month of February, be sure to let us know.

You may submit nominations for the blog carnival by mailing them to me at kwilson@bluecord.org. In your e-mail, please include the following information:

• The title and permalink URL of the blog post you wish to nominate and the author’s name or pseudonym.
• A short (two or three sentence) summary of the blog post.
• The title and URL of the blog on which it appears (please note if it is a group blog).
• Include “Biblical Studies Carnival XXVII” in the subject line of your e-mail.
• Your own name and e-mail address.

While the carnival tries to include as many submissions as possible, it is not always possible to accept all nominations. The carnival is intended to highlight the best posts from the previous month, and judgment calls sometimes have to be made on whether a particular post is suitable for the carnival. We do try to include at least one post from each blog that it submitted.

For more information, please see the Biblical Studies Blog Carnival page.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues here at Wartburg College got interested in academic blogging. So, I told him about WordPress and helped him set some things up. He has been writing for two weeks now, so I thought I would help him gain some readers by posting a link here.

The new blog is OT Story, written by Jin Yang Kim. Jin Yang is a Ph.D. candidate at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. He is one of Ralph Klein’s students. Like me, Jin Yang is here at Wartburg for one semester teaching nothing but Bible 101. Jin Yang’s dissertation is focused on the book of Daniel.

Jin and I are sharing an apartment this semester. It is nice having a roommate who will occasionally stay up late discussing matters of interest only to biblical scholars. Last week we had a late night session where we debated the nature and extent of the priestly source until 1:00 am while snacking on dried octopus dipped in Korean hot sauce. Having spent the last year working at The Home Depot where no one cared about the Pentateuch, it is nice to have a conversation partner.

I encourage you to check out Jin Yang’s blog. Although he is just getting started, I am sure he will have great things to say.