Books from SBL

I am fortunate that although I have less time for research due to my administrative duties I do have a research budget. Thus…books! (The average 45% SBL conference discount helped.) A quick list:

Conversations with Scripture: The Law, by (our own bibliobloger!) Kevin Wilson. This series of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars looks very interesting. Thanks for putting me on to it Kevin!

The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader (Vol 1-6), by Parry and Tov (Brill). A (relatively) inexpensive set of books. (Ok, not so cheap through Amazon for all 6 at $219. They are about $40 a piece. I have a discount as an author, so it was much cheaper for me.)

Biblia Hebraica Quinta: Megilloth. I am continuing my interest in the targumim of the Megilloth so I needed this volume. Besides, I am cited in the introduction to Lamentations. 🙂

I also purchased two volumes of The Aramaic Bible series. The Targums of Ruth and Chronicles, by Beattie and McIvor and The Targum of Canticles, by Alexander. This series provides an English translation with an apparatus to the text (but not a critical edition, there is intentionally little in the way of textual notes) and a running commentary. It really is the best entrance into these texts that we have for English readers.

Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity, by Anne Killebrew. (I got the paperback SBL version, not the Brill version linked.) I am a new PennState colleague of Anne’s and I wanted to see what she is up to! I have heard great things about her work, so I look forward to reading it.

Genesis: The Story We Haven’t Heard, by Paul Borgman. I am teaching an honors seminar on Genesis and this looked interesting.

First Theology, by Kevin Vanhoozer. The Subtitle is “God, Scripture & Hermeneutics.” I was impressed by Vanhoozer’s intellect and insight when writing a couple of articles for The Dictionary for The Theological Interpretation of the Bible (“Lamentations” and “Targum”).

Exploring Christian Ethics: Biblical Foundations for Morality, by Kyle Fedler. We are working on how to integrate ethics into honors education at SHC. The immediate question that springs to mind is “whose ethics.” This looked like a nice intro to Xian ethics.

Along the same lines, this book caught my eye: Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, by Christopher J. H. Wright. I am not enamored of the title, but it looks like it is addressing some key concerns for Christians and his intent is well place, imho, that is to demonstrate the vitality of the OT/HB for Christian ethics.

And last, but not least! Jim West’s posts and James Crossley’s own site have me intrigued, so I picked up Why Christianity Happened: A Sociohistoircal Account of Christian Origins (26-50 CE).

So, that is the lot. I did buy a fair amount of upgrades to Accordance, including Neusner’s Talmud. (Davka, when are you going to get back in the game! OS X has been out a while now… And since I cannot run Classic on an Macintel…) I am lousy at reviewing books (“most expensive way to get a free book” someone once said) but if I think of it I will post a few comments.