We have pleasant memories of the dinner. Thirty people gathered around a common table; amicable conversation filled the air. The lighting and acoustics were conducive to conversation, an advantage over meeting in a restaurant. The bar staff served a large quantity of German beer, and joined in when, with the help of two bottles of lemon grappa from Sicily, we toasted to “ancient Hebrew poetry,” “A-B parallelism,” and “friends.”

The evening raised $650 for an Episcopalian charity dedicated to rebuilding projects in one of the neighborhoods, Central City, hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. We were also treated to conversation and questions around Michael Fox’s Anchor Bible commentary on the book of Proverbs. Chris Heard asks for advice on teaching biblical wisdom literature. He would have found the back-and-forth between Ray van Leeuwen and Michael Fox very stimulating. For further reflections on Proverbs, Ben Sira, and friendship, see the series John is beginning on his blog.

Chris Myers, the volunteer chef for the dinner, chefs at one of the best New Orleans restaurants, and will offer a spread of local cuisine, vegetarian, meat, and “kosher” options (provisional menu available on request). Bar is not part of the dinner, but will be available, at the attendees’ discretion. The cost of the dinner for attendees is $50 a head, the proceeds of which, after expenses, will be devolved to a local Episcopalian charity, the Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative. The goal is to raise $1000. The dinner part of the evening will last from 7 to 8. The bar will, we think, be open until 10. The book presentation and signing will occur, 8 to 9 (mingling time at the beginning of about 10 minutes).

We will have pre-reserved copies of volume 2 of AYB Proverbs by Michael Fox on hand at a 33% discount ($40.50) thanks to the generosity of Eisenbrauns, the premier bookseller of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern books in the world. Note well: that price is as good as it gets, better than Yale U Press’s 30% SBL discount rate.

If you wish to attend the dinner, and/or reserve a copy of AYB Proverbs 10-31 to be signed by the author following the dinner, please contact me at jfhobbins@gmail.com. Dinner reservations at the moment stand at 24, with others seeking to clear their calendar so as to permit participation.

If you are a bona fide penniless graduate student, and would like to attend the dinner but not shell out $50, do not despair. You can offer to help the cook prepare the food, act as a server, and/or clean up afterwards. You can do that anyway, if you wish to work with a master chef.

It is also our hope that you will help out in some way with the biblioblogs.com site (see the earlier post to that effect).
Brandon and I hope to see you in New Orleans and we appreciate your participation in the biblioblogs.com project should that interest you. Thank you for taking the time to respond to this invitation.

Sincerely,
John Hobbins http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/
Brandon Wason http://sitzimleben.com/

(1) Is a member of a recognized community of students and scholars such as EABS, Tyndale House, SBL, IBR, CBA, ETS, SIL, AAR, ASOR, and AOS. The above list of communities is not meant to be comprehensive in any way. Blogs will be listed when membership in one or much such communities is acknowledged by the blogger;

(2) Blogs on issues of biblical criticism and interpretation in interaction with a broad cross-section of biblical scholarship 18x or more a year ([re-]start-up status factored in) – after a 6-month hiatus, a previously listed “active blog” will be removed;

(3) Keeps a blogroll, a comment function, and/or demonstrates commitment to link to and engage with other blogs that touch on shared interests.

(4) Commercial, institutional and associational blogs will not be listed until someone is in place to manage such a list and limit it to true blogs.

(5 Anonymous blogs are not listed.

(6) All blogs are listed by category, multi-author and semi-anonymous blogs included, alphabetically by blog name (title only, not subtitle).

(7) An aggregate blogroll of all blogs will be provided, alphabetically by blog author (format: first name, last name (if known); in the case of multi-author blogs, listed under the names of at most 3 people;

(8) Blog categories are in terms of primary focus.

There are many bloggers who enjoy interacting with biblical scholarship but do not wish to contribute or get the training to contribute to academic biblical studies and/or related disciplines. When that is the case, it stands to reason that criterion (1) will not be met. Criterion (1) is useful if the goal is to put together a list of scholars and scholars-in-training who are also biblical bloggers. That is our goal here.

To be sure, non-academic bloggers are sometimes more prepared on a topic than their academic counterparts. They are often teachers in communities of faith, seminaries, and/or wider communities (some members of the just-named categories, of course, pursue academics at the same time). But, for reasons of their own, they have chosen not to be scholars, that is, people who do dreary things like deliver papers at associational meetings, contribute to peer-reviewed journals, and otherwise write for academic as well as non-academic readerships.

Some of the best biblical bloggers are bereft of academic pretensions. Conversely, some academically qualified bloggers are known most of all for their dismissive attitude toward those with views other than their own. This is the opposite of scholarship as we understand it. “The Short List of Scholar Bloggers in Biblical Studies and Cognate Disciplines” is not the list of blogs we recommend. It serves another function. It is a measure of the involvement of academic bloggers in online debate. A list of recommended blogs in biblical studies and cognate disciplines might include some of the blogs in the list we plan to offer, and would include others not on the list. For a comprehensive list of biblical bloggers, see The Biblioblog Top 50.

(1) people willing to “watch” biblioblogs.com and offer advice by “sitting” on a steering committee, bloggers but also non-bloggers who nevertheless read and/or comment on blogs;

(2) people willing to do interviews, manage specific blogrolls, write up one-paragraph-long intros to blogs on the rolls, things like that. We’ve had people volunteer to help in the past; now we’re ready to launch. Feedback is welcome. Here are changes we plan to enact:

1.# Interviews. We would like to continue to have an inclusive focus in terms of backgrounds and interests of those interviewed. On the other hand, the focus will remain on bloggers who are contributors to the field of academic biblical studies and cognate disciplines, from students to tenured professors. With that in mind, we would like to have a stable of 4 or 5 interviewers. Several biblical bloggers have published interviews of favorite scholars and/or bloggers on their own blogs. There is also a need to create an archive of links.

2.# Blogrolls and feeds of blogs on the rolls. The current lists are mostly a fossil specimen of Jim West’s predilection for a short canon of blogs. (Jim West is a former contributor to this site.) It’s time to be inclusive but not as inclusive as The Biblioblog Top 50 list. The plan is to develop a “scholar’s” set of blogrolls and corresponding feeds according to a user-friendly set of categories. A draft set of categories and a draft set of criteria for inclusion in the blogrolls will be laid out in an upcoming post.

We will also provide an aggregate blogroll of all blogs regardless of category, alphabetically by blog author (format: first name, last name; in the case of multi-author blogs, listed under the names of at most 3 people).

Let us know if you are willing to help out in some way. You can email John at jfhobbins@gmail.com or Brandon (go to this page) . A host of people have already agreed to help:

Bryan Lee
Chip Hardy
Christian Brady
Daniel of “Daniel and Tonya”
David Ker
Duane Smith
Ekaterini G. Tsalampouni
James McGrath
Karyn Traphagen
Michael Aubrey
Michael Halcomb
Michael Heiser
Michael Whitenton
Steve Runge

• 5 Minute Bible
• NT Pod

As always, if you know of any blogs we should add to the list, let us know, whether they fit the category of podcasts or one of the others.

I also checked all the links for accuracy, added new links, and removed, if only temporarily, blogs that haven’t been updated in the past 45 days. As always, we are open to new link suggestions.