Updated: Biblical Studies Carnival for July 2011

UPDATE: J. K. Gayle has offered some additional links specifically from women bloggers. (I will more fully incorporate them into the blog when I return from vac and have access to a computer. Back so see the bottom of the post for her links, but be sure to visit her blog as well for comments there.)

[Folks, I have worked on this for the last two days, I even have LOTS more links, but I am just out of time. Sometimes real work and family have to take priority over blogging.]

Bibliobloggers, creators of posts interesting and challenging, judges of all dilettantes and heretics: I acknowledge and bewail my manifold sins and wickedness, which I have from time to time most grievously committed. I have not read your blogs on a regular basis, I have not commented with consistency, I often have not posted on my own blog. I am truly sorry and I humbly repent. As penance, I make this offering from your own good gifts. Accept them, I ask, in the spirit in which they are intended and add to them also through your comments.

Welcome to the July Biblical Studies Carnival covering the month of June, 2011. As with all Carnivals this one reflects the host so this month it will be all photos and comics…. Not really. Well, not much. I am grateful to those who submitted entries and I encourage anyone who feels I have missed something important to post it in the comments. Questions of translation were big last month (or at least those folks were better at tooting the translation horn). And I know I have missed an awful lot of good discussion. So educate us all, if you don’t mind, and if nothing else, consider each link a reason to go a read whatever that author has on offer.

Trends and being trendy

A few things out of the way first. If you are interested in Zwingli (occasionally), people of Wal-Mart, and the detritus of humanity, you know where to go. And lately Herr Depravity has been rubbing off on Buddy Jesus. #justsoyouknow 1Not really into the whole hastag trend myself, particularly not outside of twitter, but Joel did it last month so with a need to be tragically hip, I follow suit. #justsayin

Early in the month, John Hobbins to us why he couldn’t recommend Patheos. It elicited some good discussion and James McGrath defended his move. Ben Myers of Faith and Theology also debated the move, generating just under a 100 comments. He had an invite. Others of us are just bitter. (I am still trying to figure out why so many are now cluttering their links with “NetworkedBlogs.” Those things drive me nuts, but I wonder if they are driving revenue or hits for some?) On other issues of little meaning, June began with a new #1 Biblioblog. I still don’t understand why Alexa doesn’t like me. I send her flowers…

As I have been writing this a flurry of posts have gone up about the Biblioblog Reference Library. Today (July 1) an open letter was posted by the curator, Steve Caruso.

Back to the Bible, First Matters

(I can't remember my source, but I think it is Brad Guigar http://www.evil-comic.com/)

We should begin this section by congratulating John Anderson on his book being in press with Eisenbrauns, Jacob and the Divine Trickster. (He should also be commended for losing 71 pounds! [And that is not Sterling.] Well done mate.) And he is already thinking about God Gone Wild and his next book project.

The aforementioned author of Ancient Hebrew Poetry encouraged us all this month to get our Hebrew on by reading through Genesis. While I am on John’s blog and since I myself have been hard at work translating Targum Ruth, I would be remiss not to point out his several posts on the difficulties of biblical translation (there are lots, click through). One of the reasons I read John is because of his great reflection, but also his links. The article on “Dissatisfaction with the new NIV among Biblical Bloggers” is a great example.

Bob MacDonald had two posts on the topic and a mid-month round up of his own. He also offered observations by Joel Hoffman, who insists that G0d Didn’t Say That, on translating mistakes in the text. On matters relating to the Septuagint Brian D of LXXI asks What does 70 have to do with the Greek Old Testament?PDF Version of the NA27 Marginal Notes and With Christ “in God”?

We shouldn’t lose site of the fact that before we can translate we have to have a text, and Adam Couturier, otherwise known as Mishlei_Adam, has some thoughts on the importance of reading handwritten manuscripts. Larry Hurtado coincidentally has some remarks on the longevity of manuscripts.

Bizarro by Piraro

Finally, and turning to the New Testament, Ken Schenk asks how we should translate Paul’s “deterministic” language. A topic of great interest to many of us, he argues:

1. Paul himself does not follow through with this language philosophically in the rest of his theology and
2. It contradicts a fundamental principle in James 1:13, namely, that God does not tempt anyone with evil.

Moving from translation to questions of methodology, NT Mark pointed out several posts responding to Roland Boer’s Bible & Interp article on Reception History. Chris Heard started the responses, followed up by, guess who?, John “The Hobo” Hobbins, and Roland himself. (And be sure to see Mike’s notice about his paper for iSBL in London and his posts on the provenance of Mark.)

bob cargill, a new addition to the mighty big 10, has the 2010 debate on the reliability of scripture between bart ehrman and craig evans not to mention james mcgrath on our shifting view of literalism and reality in the bible (and a disturbing lack of capital letters).

Big News

Bizarro by Dan Piraro

There were a few big stories this past month. Well, technically the end of the world was last month, but cartoonist extraordinaire Dan Piraro (artwork and commentary found often on this site) addressed the topic in June.

The release of photographs and a statement from the IAA of an ossuary of questionable provenance made all the news last week. bob cargill has the most thorough roundup that i found, with plenty of links. But I should also note that both bob and Steve Caruso have great images with the inscription outlined for easy viewing:

Miriam, Daughter of Yeshua, Son of Caiaphas, Priest of Ma’aziah from Beth ‘Imri

And finally, in the last days of the month, news came out about a new software program created by Israeli computer scientist Moshe Koppel that analyzes writing styles. I have not seen a lot of comments on the blogs (yet) but I am sure more will come. From the news piece:

When the new software was run on the Pentateuch, it found the same division, separating the “priestly” and “non-priestly.” It matched up with the traditional academic division at a rate of 90 percent — effectively recreating years of work by multiple scholars in minutes, said Moshe Koppel of Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, the computer science professor who headed the research team.

“We have thus been able to largely recapitulate several centuries of painstaking manual labor with our automated method,” the Israeli team announced in a paper presented last week in Portland, Oregon, at the annual conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

And with that I must sadly end this month’s carnival. It has been fun and I know I have missed many great posts and conversations. The Biblioblog Reference Library may not be the answer, but there are now so many great bloggers out there that this monthly round up can never do it justice.

I hope you enjoyed it and for my fellow Americans, happy 4th of July! (And Happy Thanksgiving to those in the UK.)

Additional suggestions from J. K. Gayle, specifically blogs by women:

Trends and being trendy

Rachel Marszalek bucked the trend of absolute male dominance in theJune BiblioBlog Top 50 by Alexa by being there, the sole woman Bible blogger blogging alone last month to make it into this esteemed group. And she writes this post (musing some about the trendy of the previous month): “Sometimes the most beautiful things can stink.”  And then there was also this trend near-reversal to note:  just under half (i.e., a full 40%) of the “Current Top 10” (albeit not a current list at all) are women; that’s 4 of 10, ladies and gentleman, for May.

Back to the Bible, First Matters

Did you see this one by The Velveteen Rabbi, Rachel Barenblat?  Here’s a snippet from just the first of June:

The “kingdom of God” may be a term more comfortable for Christians than for liberal Jews. When we hear it, many of us think of The Lord’s Prayer — “for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory” — and these don’t feel like Jewish ideas to most of us. But they are Jewish ideas! We use these words in our liturgy every day (though in Hebrew, so they don’t push the same buttons for us which may be pushed by the English terms of Christian liturgy.)

Big News

Suzanne McCarthy pointed out the big news that the Danvers Statement was inverted.  She says:  “I hope that it is not seen as cruel, but just as an alternative look at how scripture could be selected and prioritized. No sin in that, surely.”  And don’t worry; she did not exclude anyone’s voice because she did also link to the un-inverse Danvers statement too.

And from commenters on her site (for inclusion, not to keep you from visiting JK’s site! By all means do so.)

Kristen said…

Here’s a blog I really like: The Happy Surprise by K. Bonikowsky:

http://kbonikowsky.wordpress.com/

She is doing, among other things, a series on the Church Fathers and another on Women in the Text.

Then there’s this one: Notations, by Naomi King Walker. It doesn’t get updated as often, but when it does, it’s well worth reading:

http://www.womanmusicminister.blogspot.com/

There’s also this really good one by Asian American Christian female church leaders:

http://aawolsisters.com/

Izzy said…

Best Blog on Genesis EVER… “Just Genesis” by Alice C. Linsley.

http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/

Alice is an amazing Scholar and after 4 years of writing about “Just Genesis” I feel like there is still much to mine. She approaches both as a Anthropologist and Theologian.

She is a former Priest of the Episcopal Church who renounced the priesthood and converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church…partially as a result of her study on gender roles are drawn from anthropological study of Genesis and the conviction that Genesis is foundational to the Bible and to Christian theology.

It’s refreshing to read her research knowing you are not going to have to sort through hidden agendas-feminist, conservative, liberal, creationist, evolution etc…While there are many ways to approach Genesis, Alice approaches it as the “origin of Messianic expectation among Abraham’s Kushite ancestors”

Very enlightening…take a look…you won’t be bored.

Sue also put in our comments, but I add it here as well:

I’d like to balance out John’s post on the NIV by linking to

http://claudemariottini.org/2011/06/21/the-sbc-resolution-on-the-niv-2011/

http://blogs.bible.org/bock/darrell_l._bock/in_defense_of_the_niv_2011

http://www.cbeinternational.org/files/u1/free-art/2011-NIV.pdf

http://kenschenck.blogspot.com/2011/06/niv-2011-and-romans-161.html

http://rogueleaf.com/biblioblog-library/2011/06/16/official-announcement-i%E2%80%99m-buying-an-niv-2011/

I have tried to follow responses to the NIV that cross the spectrum.

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    Not really into the whole hastag trend myself, particularly not outside of twitter, but Joel did it last month so with a need to be tragically hip, I follow suit. #justsayin

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