Brent Niedergall posted the Biblical Studies Carnival 194 for April 2022. In honor of the international holiday, Star Wars Day (May 4), Brent also provided a bunch of Star Wars themed biblical memes. So head over to Brent’s blog and check it out. Come for the links, stay for the memes.
Bob MacDonald will host Carnival 195 for May 2022 at his blog Dust. He is also on twitter, @drmacdonald. After June, I have no volunteers until October. I would love to get those lined up, so if you have thought about hosting, now is the time to step up and contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or DM on twitter (plong42) to discuss hosting a summer Biblical Studies carnival in 2022. If you are a new BiblioBlogger, this is a good way to get your blog some recognition. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about hosting a Carnival this summer.
Ben posted Biblical Studies Carnival 193 at his Amateur Exegete blog highlighting the best and brightest BiblioBlog Posts for March 2022. Ben did a great job collecting links to a wide range of quality biblical and theological posts. Ben also points out the passing of Burton Mack, Norman Gottwald and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Ben is a podcaster and active blogger, and he will argue with you on twitter if you want. So click the fool and read through Ben’s Biblical Studies Carnival. Click all the links and show Ben some love for his hard work.
Looking ahead to the April 2022 carnival (Due May 1), Brent Niedergall will be the host, you can send him suggestions via twitter, @BrentNiedergall. For May 2022 (Due June 1), Bob MacDonald will host at his blog Dust. He is also on twitter, @drmacdonald. If you would like to be a part of the Carnival in the future, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or DM on twitter (plong42) to discuss hosting a carnival in 2022. If you are a new BiblioBlogger, this is a good way to get your blog some recognition. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about hosting a Biblical Studies Carnival this summer. Check out the Biblical Studies Carnival Master List at the top of this page to visit past carnivals.
Here is something that happened in the last week, tangentially related to biblical studies blogging. In March Jacob Cerone notice a familiar review published by Panayotis Coutsoumpos in the Review of Biblical Literature. It was obviously plagiarized from a review Cerone had written. He reported this to RBL and the review was quickly withdrawn. But that was blood in the water to the twitter-verse. Isaac T. Soon, PhD started examining other reviews Coutsoumpos published, and it appears he regularly plagiarized book reviews including a review of Frank Thielman’s Romans commentary from Reading Acts. The review was published in Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible and Culture, and as of April 1, the review is still on the Sage Journals website.
I did not know about any of this until Alex Aamodt from Spectrum Magazine contacted me. I did a quick phone interview with him and his article was published on March 30, about the same time Sarah Einselen at the The Roys Report ran a story with the improbable headline “Biblical Academia Rocked by Scholar’s Pattern of Plagiarism.” I doubt the vast majority of the biblical academic world had any idea who Panayotis Coutsoumpos was before last week, and the slight-less-than-vast majority still don’t know who is today.
Plagiarism is nothing new and there have been some high profile examples in recent years in academic writing. Some of those were unfortunate but in some ways understandable. In most cases the scholar was not trying to steal and cheat; they made some lazy decisions and got caught. But Coutsoumpos consciously tried to cheat by claiming work that was not his own.
Academic book reviews are not high-stakes academics and I doubt any book review editor as the time to run reviews through a website to check for plagiarism.
I have the next three Carnival Hosts set, but would really like to get the rest of the year scheduled. Even more, I would love to see some newer bloggers volunteer to host a carnival.
193 March 2022 (Due April 1) – Amateur Exegete, @amateurexegete
195 May 2022 (Due June 1) – Bob MacDonald at Dust @drmacdonald
if you want to be a part of the Carnival in the future, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or DM on twitter (plong42) to discuss hosting a carnival in 2021. If you are a new BiblioBlogger, this is a good way to get your blog some recognition. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about hosting a Biblical Studies Carnival this summer.
I am leading a tour in Turkey starting March 1, I will set the blog on automatic and hope everything works will I am away. I will be posting pics various places, so follow me on facebook, twitter, (@plong42) or Instagram.
Jim West took a break from his record-breaking Wordle streak to post the January 2022 Biblical Studies Carnival at Zwinglius Redivivus. This is Carnival #191, and Jim says this was “the first Carnival I’ve run that has included so many links from so many different people.” And Jim has hosted many carnivals over the years, his first was in 2006. This is a good thing to hear: people are still posting quality biblical and theological studies despite the “death of the blog” I hear so much about.
Head over to Jim’s blog and click all the links.
Here are the upcoming Biblical Studies Carnival Hosts with their twitter feeds so you can spam them with links to your own blog the moth they are hosting.
192 February 2023 (Due March 1) – Bobby Howell, The Library Musings @SirRobertHowell
193 March 2022 (Due April 1) – Amateur Exegete, @amateurexegete
195 May 2022 (Due June 1) – Bob MacDonald at Dust @drmacdonald
I have openings for the second half of the year, so if you want to volunteer, now is the time to step up. Contact me via email plong42 @gmail.com or twitter, @plong42.
What is a Biblical Studies Carnival? In the early days of blogging, people would collect blog posts on a particular topic and call it a carnival. I have no idea why a carnival (as opposed to a yard sale, a circus, or a monthly index… it’s an internet thing). There were psychology carnivals, sociology carnivals, etc. In March 2005, Joel Ng posted the first Biblical Studies Carnival at his now defunct blog, Ebla Logs. But nothing is really dead on the internet. You can still read that first carnival on The Wayback Machine. Prior to 2012, Jim Linville kept the list of Biblical Studies Carnivals. When Jim retired from this role in August 2012, I volunteered to be the “keeper of the carnival list.” This means I try to draft (harass) people into volunteering to host the Biblical Studies Carnival and update a master list of Carnivals (in the banner, or click here).
Blogging has come and gone, and maybe come back again. Some bloggers moved into podcasting or producing YouTube videos. Maybe even TikTok, whatever that is. Others remembered they had a real life before blogging. S Nevertheless, some blogs persisted. For new bloggers, getting involved by hosting a Biblical Studies Carnival is a great way to generate interest in your blog.
First, let me apologize to Bob MacDonald for not posting a link to his carnival last month. I simply forgot. I blame the end of a busy semester, SBL hangover, COVID, anything but old age. Bob did a great job, still worth visiting the November 2021 carnival.
So what is a Biblical Studies Carnival? In the early days of blogging, people would collect blog posts on a particular topic and call it a carnival. I have no idea why a carnival (as opposed to a yard sale, a circus, or a monthly index… it’s an internet thing). There were psychology carnivals, sociology carnivals, etc. In March 2005, Joel Ng posted the first Biblical Studies Carnival at his now defunct blog, Ebla Logs. But nothing is really dead on the internet. You can still read that first carnival on The Wayback Machine. The first link is to Jim Davila, at PaleoJudaica.com, a remarkable blog still going strong after all these years. I notice the one-time keeper of the Biblioblog Top Fifty list, Peter Kirby (although his blog Christian Origins is now gone). Jim West hosted in November 2006, although that version of his blog no longer exist (as far as I know). Some of the older blogs have (sadly) been taken over by spammers.
Prior to 2012, Jim Linville kept the list of Biblical Studies Carnivals. When Jim retired from this role in August 2012, I volunteered to be the “keeper of the carnival list.” This means I try to draft (harass) people into volunteering to host the Biblical Studies Carnival. I keep a master list of Carnivals with links here on Readng Acts (in the banner, or click here).
Blogging has come and gone, and maybe come back again. Some bloggers moved into podcasting or producing YouTube videos. Others remembered they had a real life beyond blogging. Sometimes students blogged for a few years then graduated and got jobs that took them away from regular posts. Nevertheless, some have persisted. Even though I would love to see the return of N. T. Wrong, there is a new generation of biblical studies bloggers.
Here are the upcoming Biblical Studies Carnival Hosts with their twitter feeds so you can spam them with links to your own blog the moth they are hosting.
191 January 2022 (Due February 1) – Jim West, Zwingli Redivivus @drjewest
192 February 2023 (Due March 1) – Bobby Howell, The Library Musings @SirRobertHowell
193 March 2022 (Due April 1) – Amateur Exegete, @amateurexegete
194 April 2022 (Due May 1) – I Need a Volunteer!
195 May 2022 (Due June 1) – Bob MacDonald at Dust @drmacdonald
I have opened for the second half of the year, so if you want to volunteer, now is the time to step up. Contact me via email plong42 @gmail.com or twitter, @plong42. If you want, you can follow me on twitter too, I am relatively harmless.
Now on with the December 2021 Biblical Studies Carnival!
Kevin Chen posted an interested article at Cateclesia Institute, The “Deuteroevangelium” in Numbers 21–24. I am pretty sure he made the word deuteroevangelium up. Chen defines it as “a second proclamation of the gospel based squarely on Gen 3:15 and fleshed out with greater detail and scope with the help of Abrahamic covenant texts.”
On December 7, Michael Bird tweeted “Sweet Mother of Melchizedek!” Twitter users went a bit crazy over this (some probably added as a tattoo over their hearts), but Claude Mariottini responded with “Who Was Melchizedek’s Mother?”
Bob MacDonald has been working with John Forbes, D.D., LL.D., Emeritus professor of Oriental Languages, Aberdeen, following some wild geese (namely messianic beliefs in the nineteenth century). There are at least eight parts to this series so far, and yes, there is music involved.
Archaeology
Andrew Lawler, Unearthing David’s city, from his chapter on archaeologist Eilat Mazar in Under Jerusalem (2021). I read the book and highly recommend it. Here is a review from the WSJ.
The Old Testament and the Infant Christ is an Advent meditation on Matthew 2:1–21 by Trevor Laurence from the Cateclesia Institute’s event “An Unexpected Glory: A Night of Advent Worship.”
Jacob N. Cerone and Matthew C. Fisher, Daily Scriptures: 365 Readings in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (Eerdmans 2021), Reviewed by Brent Niedergall, my review is here (from November), and here are Jim West’s thoughts.
Jim West posted a note on an upcoming book: Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans: Retrospect and Prospect. When the book is released in late May 2022 it will be open access.
Peter head has a short note on a new book on Edgar Goodspeed, Todd M. Hickey & James G. Keenan, Edgar J. Goodspeed, America’s First Papyrologist (California Classical Studies 8, 2021)
Michael Bird has been posting to Substack, “Word from the Bird.” For example, he reflects on listening to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” Podcast. Just recently, he commented on his own upcoming book, “Why I Wrote a Book on Religious Freedom.” Most of this is behind the Substack paywall, so we may never know.
Clint Archer at Cripplegate asks, “Is Elder-rule an Orwellian Nightmare?” He says, “As freaky as it is to know you have someone watching over you, the Bible portrays this reality as a blessed privilege of a healthy church.”
Bobby Howell 
