It is traditional for the media to fill out their content at the end of the year with “top ten lists” and other year-in-review type stories. Part of the reason is that no one really wants to work from Christmas to New Year’s Day, so these kind of easily generated stories pad out news outlets. They do not really say anything new, although they are sometimes interesting to read. I find that reading “top fifty albums of the year” lists remind me how out-of-touch I am with contemporary culture. But mostly these kind of articles are Shameless Self Promotion. So without further ado, allow me to flog my own blog for the final post of 2013.
It was a busy year on Reading Acts, with 256 new posts, pushing the total over 1000 posts since the blog began in September 2008. The blog had over 173,000 hits from 195 countries, with the Philippines, India and Singapore leading the non-English speaking countries) and it cross the 500,000 hit threshold in the next day or two. My first book was published in November (here is a summary of the book with links).
Reading Acts makes the “top lists” regularly now, such as the BiblioBlog Top 50, although my favorite is Peter’s Kirby’s list, since he put me at #4. Reading Acts was the host for the March 2013 BiblioBlog Carnival and I have been cajoling people into volunteering for that honor for the last year and a half. If you are interesting in hosting a Carnival, contact me!
Since I do not write on political / cultural issues, this is quite remarkable. I could probably generate a great deal more traffic if I made a few sharp comments about the burning issues of our day. I suppose I could do a few posts on Kim Kardashian’s strange relationship with Duck Dynasty, or Rob Bell’s new book denying the existed of Rick Warren, or Mark Driscoll plagiarizing Peter Enns’ new book on the historical N. T. Wright. But that has not been the ethos of this blog and I probably will not change things that much.
As you can see in the left margin, I have added links to my Academia.edu page (facebook/linkedn mash-up for academics) and the Bible Gateway Blogger Grid. Both of these sites are excellent resources for academic study of the Bible.
My Top Seven Posts in 2013:
- Top 10 Ways to Fail a Bible Paper (5,619)
- Was John the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved? (5,034)
- Top iPad Apps for Bible Study (Part One) (4,884, top post of all time since 2011)
- Paul: At the Feet of Gamaliel? (3,852)
- Acts 15:36-40 – Disagreement with Barnabas (3,277)
- Why did Judas betray Jesus? (2,481)
- Acts 2:42-47 – The Early Community of Believers (2373)
WordPress does a good job of letting me know the sorts of things people search to get to Reading Acts. I obviously get hits on iPad apps, especially around Christmas or the release of a new iPad/iPhone. But the top five search terms for this year were “why did judas betray jesus,” carnival, pentecost, and judaizers. So the ultimate post would be about Judas and the Judaizers betraying Jesus at a Pentecost carnival. I am always amazed and the hits I get from people obviously cut and pasting a question from their homework (“1. why did paul….” or “what are the three main themes of Galatians?”) I assume that these are properly cited in MLA format.
I do want to sincerely thank the many people who read this blog. I am always amazed to hear that someone follows the blog and actually reads it.
“I could probably generate a great deal more traffic if I made a few sharp comments about the burning issues of our day. I suppose I could do a few posts on Kim Kardashian’s strange relationship with Duck Dynasty, or Rob Bell’s new book denying the existed of Rick Warren, or Mark Driscoll plagiarizing Peter Enns’ new book on the historical N. T. Wright.”
This gave me the first big laugh in 2014 🙂
“But that has not been the ethos of this blog and I probably will not change things that much.”
Glad thats the way it is.