Call for posts for the Biblical Studies Carnival April 2012

It is carnival time (just like it is every month).  March's carnival is looking very festive over with Jim West so pop on over and check it out if you haven't.  Muggins is hosting April's carnival so please email your links to fascinating and edifiying posts from your blog or someone else's to little old me. 

Much obliged.

Hermeneutics remains the only question in town

Dan Kirk offers a list of what he feels are the big issues being discussed at the moment on Christian blogs.  You'll need to read his post for a full description but in short:

1. The Gospel.
2. Human origins after evolution.
3. Gender in the church. 

A couple of his commenters also suggest that conversations around inerrancy and the nature of scripture deserve to be on that list as well.  Inerrancy has certainly been a hot topic this year.  While inerrancy could certainly be a #4 on that list (and creationism #5 and homosexuality #6), each one of these issues and the conflicts that they generate stem from the way we read the Bible and the interpretive decisions that we make. These issues are really only test cases for the hermeneutics that generate the readings of scripture that are being defended or attacked.  The only really important question is How do you read scripture?, after that the outcomes of those other debates are more or less determined.

The problem is, of course, that if scripture is our standard but we have to interpret scripture one way or another (ruling out of court the idea that such things are just plain obvious - because obviously they are not to everyone!), then what is to stop our interpretations of scripture being totally arbitrary?  The answer, I think, is to be found in scripture itself as many books of scripture interpret other books of scripture and thus in scripture itself we are offered examples of legitimate interpretation.  It is possible to read the last 61 books of scripture as a commentary on the first 5, and perhaps until we we do that - and study the other ways in which scripture interacts with scripture, our own commentary on the rest will be doomed to the frustration of our own blinkered biases.

Let me know what you think :-)

Blog renewal

I realise Xenos has been a bit flat this year, in fact it lost its way a while ago when I made my bid to enter the Biblioblog top 50 relying on sheer volume of posts to drag me into the ranks.  It is now time for Xenos to shake off its chequered past, to lose its pretensions of grandeur and to embrace its humble blogness.  Gone are the manifesto and overtly pious tag line, the blog roll is much reduced, and I hope this trimming will result in a sleeker more efficent blogging experience for us all.

brick-a-brack 20/06/11

Ramachandra gets stuck into the IMF

We have been intimidated for far too long by the pseudo-scientific pronouncements of economists and the lies of politicians. Banking is not so complex that we cannot understand how we are being conned.  Where are the Christians in economics and finance who dare to think “outside the box” and write the kind of books that Susan George writes, explaining to “ordinary” folk how not to be hood-winked by the games the rich play?

Steve ponders whether he is a skeptic or a faith blogger

I know that both the Defenders and the Disillusioned/Deconverted would consider me and the growing numbers of people like me to be living in an untenable state of cognitive dissonance. They would say I am the unreasonable, illusioned defender, denying the fruits of the doubts and disbelief I have uncovered and at times trumpeted.

John Byron points to some useful resources for Bible background

Geoff New levels an indictment against multimedia preaching

Michael Patton struggles with depression as a preacher

Rachel Held Evans champions the church of the uncool

 Enjoy!

New Year, same old blogging

Xenos has slipped a few places in the ranking this month, but still hanging on in the top 50 for now!

Another mamoth BS carnival has come out.

Rhett has started blogging again, again.

Xenos hits new highs

Now at number 13, I think it might have been higher but all those peeps who went to SBL have been going crazy in a massive north american biblical studies blog love fest and generated a lot of traffic that i didn't tap into. 

November Carnival is Up

IT'S A WHOPPER!

OK, now I am embarrassed, Deane has gone the extra mile with his carnival, making mine look rather puny by comparison! But I'm surprised to hear he is now a woman. (update: others are also giving away personal information)

Brick-A-Brack 01/12/10

• Claude Mariottini gives a concise and very helpful argument that God did not command genocide in Joshua and Judges
• Loren Rossen cites three historical Jesus scholars on why the non-canonical gospels are not admissible for historical Jesus research, "Two of them are secular liberals, so it's not as if plain sense flows only from Christian bias." 
• TVNZ reports on "a former atheist who found God and like many Christians he's trying to make the world a better place."
• Darrell on the modern and hypothetical ancient Greek word for blog.

And something to get you in the Christmas mood, 

Getting On My Blogroll

I've just spent a very worthwhile 30 mins updating my blogroll, removing some deadwood and adding a huge number that I've started reading since last time. Check it out!

1. If you are not on my blog roll leave a comment and I will happily link to you.  In fact I make it a policy to link to anyone who comments on my blog.  
2. Not only so, but I will also link to anyone who links to me as a matter of politeness. So if you do link to me make sure you let me know.
3. If I have linked to you, you might want to consider returning the favour. :-)

PS.  I wish I had more on my blog roll that are non-western or non-white or non-male (i.e. not so much like me!) if you know of any answering to that description, do let me know!

Disclaimer: I read most but not all of the blogs on my blogroll, there are only so many hours in the day.

When blogging fails

Extraordinary!  Tom Wright actually takes the time to reply to a blogpost about his views on justification and gets completely ignored by those discussing him. And then he even comes back again, but only manages to inspire some guy to tell him to take up blogging. D'oh! I can't help but feel we missed an opportunity to convert another scholar to the ranks of bibliobloggers, and what a trophy convert he would be.  :-D

A Short History of Biblioblogging

Jim Davila has kindly made available his SBL paper, give it a read.  Some highlights

But my experience remains that the legacy media by and large is determined to ignore the implications of the new mass individual media and the increased scrutiny and accountability it generates. Journalists who are not experts in anything continue to pontificate and editorialize with a sanctimony that is increasingly intolerable to their audience, with the result that that audience is steadily shrinking.

Let me next say a little about what biblioblogging has done and continues to do for the field. First, it has made possible the rapid dissemination of information on new discoveries and other matters of interest – as well as dissemination of accessible specialist commentary on such matters – to a vastly enlarged audience.

Second, blogging helps to put a personal face on biblical scholarship by allowing scholars to speak with an informal public voice different from the voice of academic publication. Even the most academic of academic blogs is a much more personal expression of the author's thoughts than any academic peer-review publication.

As you can't comment on his blog feel free to do so here!

Stress!

Well I just had one of those paradigm shifting experiences last night, a local trust, Tableside (who have a great website), had organised a seminar for men on coping with stress, led by Dr John McEwan (who needs to update his website badly).  The funny thing was, I thought I was going to it so I could share the information with other people who really needed it.  It came as a shock to realise, early on in the night as John explained the causes and physiological symptoms of stress, that I have spent the last few years being pretty highly stressed.  Aparently all change causes stress.  This was news to me, I have had a lot of change in my life in the last few years, and near constant change, but as it was almost all good, and almost everything was going my way, I couldn't understand why I was feeling so irritable and lethargic, not to mention all the minor health issues cropping up for no good reason (stress depresses your immune system, among other things).

It is hard to describe how good it feels to realise I've been stressed these last few years and to know now how to avoid it and manage it better in the future. One funny symptom of being stressed is that your body wants to expell the hormones it is producing under stress through tears and so you cry more easily, for the last few years I have been suprised to find myself tearring up at the most pathetic sentimental pap on telly or in magazines, despite feeling emotionally unmoved the tears would start flowing, sometimes quite liberally!   Now I can hopefully move to a new life where I am not always pretending "there's just something in my eye."  :-)

Oh yes, and the good news, being creative is stress reducing, so blogging is good for you after all!  :-D

The Carnival Goes South

November Biblical Studies Carnival being hosted by Deano down in Otago, get submitting but make sure your posts are dressed for the colder weather.

Laussanne III: Final Reflections

If you haven't seen this already go here for a round up of some really interesting reflections from a diverse group of blggers on their experiences of Cape Town 2010.

Xenos' Ascent of the BBT50 Continues

This month #15. ;-)

I notice my rate of ascent is slowing, allthough i am now literally clipping the heals of the magisterial Marc Cortez, but I notice that if I drop another 100,000 off my Alexa ranking like I did this month, I'll be in the top 10 before Christmas! 
What fun!

Oktoberfest Biblical Studies Blog Carnival Extravaganza!

Haere mai, tena koutou katoa.  Welcome one and all to New Zealand for the October 2010 Biblical Studies Carnival.  Don't worry, sausages have a strong presence this month as rather presciently suggested by the carnival's rather larger and better lubricated Deutsche namesake.  Thanks go to Jim West for reviving the dormant carnival and coordinating hosts. Thanks to all those bloggers who plugged the carnival on their own blogs, and if you didn't - shame on you.  Thanks also to everyone who nominated posts, if you nominated it, it is here somewhere.  Special thanks to those very few who nominated other people's posts.  If I lovingly sought out your post and chose it for the carnival without asking anything in return, then you are very welcome.  If you haven't been mentioned and you think you should be, then you should have nominated yourself and you only have yourself to blame - go and sulk elsewhere.  If you find a link that doesn't work let me know in the comments.  For any sins of omission or comission or typographee I unreservedly apologise.  Otherwise, enjoy!


OT & ANE

John Byron considers the flood and human wickedness.

Konrad Schmid opposes Genesis to Moses as stories of Israel's origin. 

The very humble Targuman takes a literary/theological approach to Genesis in contradistinction to the prevailing winds of biblioblogdom.

Darrell Pursiful reflects on Abraham's era.

Matt Flanagan looks at the killing of innocents and the story of Abraham and Isaac

Chris Heard defend Ishmaels reputation against charges of sexual impropriety, sometimes a laugh is just a laugh

John Anderson's dissertation is going to be published: Jacob and the Divine Trickster: A Theology of Deception and YHWH’s Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle sounds like fun!

Duane's been busy pursuing his abnormal interests trying to see if he can identify differences in the semantic ranges of the verbal use of the root ktb in various cognate Northwest Semitic languages, as you do.  He has also been translating Akkadian fragments from Egypt not to mention the Akkadian snake omens.

Israel Finkelstein on the united monarchy

Claude Marionetti has a penetrating 3 parter on Solomon and social oppression, 1, 2, 3.

Bob MacDonald finally completed his thorough review of the Oxford Psalms Conference.  


Intertestamental

John Byron finds some useful videos on the period.

Loren Rosson takes us on a quick spin of fig trees in the literature from OT through Maccabees to the gospels.


NT

SBL and Logos have produced a Greek New Testament edition.

Darrell Pursiful asked When Did the New Testament Become the "New Testament"? and also channelled Dr Seuss whilst translating Matthew 13:44-50.

Richard Fellows has graciously produced a summary of his fascinating Titus = Timothy hypothesis for those of you too lazy to read the whole thing.

John Byron reflects on teaching and translating Romans

James McGrath observes the interesting convergence of the traditional and the account of Jesus' burial in Mark's gospel.

James was also got inspired to offer a critique by Mark Goodacre's post on the orthodox redaction of Mark  

Matthew Montonini interviews Ramsey Michaels about his new commentary on John and Tim Gombis on Ephesians.

Jim West gives us some enticing previews of Maurice Casey's new book on the historical Jesus. (#3 was my fave)

Ken Schenck has been sharing freely (like someone who believes in prevenient grace!) from his forthcoming Paul book, his thoughts on the day of the Lord and how to be saved are worth a look.

Larry Hurtado posts some thoughts on the diversity and inclusivity of the New Testament.

Phil Harland has a podcast on his religions of the Mediterranian blog about Jesus as a student



Early Church


Mark Goodacre has been thinking about the talking cross in the Gospel of Peter which reminded Steve Douglas of a talking cross tradition from another time and place.

Larry Hurtado argues for the importance of the second century NT manuscripts

Ken Schenk reads Ignatius on the Sabbath

Scott McKnight starts a series looking afresh at Constantine.

A lapsed mythicist wonder what's next and incurs the ire of enraged mythicist commentors! (No wonder McGrath loves to bait and taunt them! If you are trying to boost your traffic, it could be a good subject to get into)

Steve Demler, having recovered from last month's carnival provides us with an imagined essay evaluating Athanasius' "On the Incarnation" against the assumed normativity of Nyssa's "On Not Three God's" and also a brief essay comparing and contrasting Athanasius' "On the Incarnation" with/against Origen's"Peri Archon."


Interpretation

Daryll Pursiful unveils his research on the "Schofield paradox"

Cynthia Nielsen hosts a couple of stonking guest posts on slavery and violence.
 
Bacho Borjadze on Brevard Childs, Isaiah and exegesis

Brian LePort makes an empassioned plea for Lukan theology

The new intercultural theology blog points you to some fabulous resources

Periman raises some questions about reading other people's mail

Peter Enns tackles the challenge of being religiously critical, or was it critically religious, in his Bible reading.

James McGrath shares a massive roundup of posts on creation and inerrancy.

Marc Cortez does a quick round up and commentary on recent discussion of Christian gender roles.

Daniel J Kirk expounds his narrative Christology

Richard Walker compares the temptations of Adam and Christ

Bob McKlusky wonders if 1 John teaches that Christians cannot sin


Scholarship and Biblioblogging


Peter Lemenche argues that we need Biblical studies to undermine orthodox Christianity but Hector Avalos disagrees, we need to undermine Biblical studies to expose orthodox Christianity, or something.  I can't help but feel the poor tortured souls just need to spend more time in prayer and Bible study, and home baking.

Tim Bulkely calls for a revolution in the rules of the academic game and he is not alone.

And never in the history of the world have more posts been written by so few people on the offensiveness of the word sausage in academic discourse.  Personally I am very grateful for Roland's fine work in upholding academic freedom.  I feel like I just witnessed the Battle of Britain.

And biblioblogdom finally makes it into world (pulp) literature!


Obituraries

Two Biblical scholars of note left this mortal coil this month

Edward Netzer

Jan Alberto Soggin



Misc 

Madeline Flanagan would like to teach atheists Legal Interpretation 101 but how would they feel about it?

If you fancy another carnival why not check out Four Stone Hearth, an anthropolgy/archaeology carnival?

Deane Galbraith examines the mathematics of resurrection.

Tom Verenna doesn't like surveys

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There you go, thanks for stopping by.
If I missed something vital drop the link in the comments.
Don't be a stranger now, add me to your feed reader.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think :-) 
Pax vobiscum

The problem with blogging . . .

 . . . is that it is sometimes impossible to tell if people are joking. Surely Jim is not as offended as he makes out, by two such gentle jabs, but how would we know?  Well perhaps if he hit them the only place bloggers really hurt, by removing them from his blogroll, but surely he wouldn't do that over one tinsy winsy post?  Really?

Here's my prescription for such a sense of humour shortage:

1 Day left for Carnival Nominations!

Remember, here in the land of the long white cloud, those who stand on Maui's fish or ride Maui's waka, we get everything sooner that the rest of you, even Christmas, so if you want to be included or have found something that should be don't delay. (If you are confused by time zones, see countdown)   Email me before it is too late.

Blog Plug: William Birch

Happy to have found a new-to-me blog where a learned Southern Baptist Arminian takes to task such luminaries as Albert Mohler and Michael Patton with great aplomb.  I dropped a cheeky remark on Patton's post on prevenient grace myself and really need to do a proper response to the reply I got, sadly I think the carnival is going to be taking up any blog time for the rest of the week.  Do check him out if that is your cupatea.

Final Call For Posts, Oktoberfest Biblical Studies Carnival!

Thanks to all those who have already submitted.  I will be assembling the carnival over the next week in time for the deadline of Nov 1 (NZ time).  There is still room for more posts in every category but especially in the OT category.  And please remember you can nominate other people's posts as well your own, especially if you have been roving further afield than the usual biblioblogging suspects, it would be fun to make some new discoveries this month, afterall many of the old pillars have been conspicuous by their absence recently.

Email  me or comment on the original call post to nominate.

Kia ora kouto!