Biblioblog Carnival

Bob MacDonald posted the the July 2020 Biblical Studies Carnival #173 (“An odd, deficient, odious, but balanced prime) sorted into Tanakh, New Testament, Canonical Edges, Miscellaneous and book reviews. Bob has been a great supported of Bibliobogs over the years and has hosted several times now. He says “spending a month actually reading the bloggy scholars and the scholarly blogs is an education…” Hosting a Carnival is a bit of work, but I agree with Bob, it is enjoyable work.

Koine-Greek.com posts a monthly Ancient Greek Footnotes, a mini-carnival for Greek, Textual Criticism, and LXX posts. They even have a summary of recent posts to the venerable B-Greek forum. Not there is a name I have notheard in many years….B-Greek and B-Hebrew began in the early days of the internet as mailing lists. This multi-author blog “is a space online for discussions of linguistics and especially Ancient Greek grammar. Most of the time, we are interested in the Koine period of the language from roughly 200 BCE to 300 CE. Our goal is to make technical linguistics research accessible and available for students and scholars of Ancient Greek.”

Brian Small has a brief Hebrews Highlights for July. He also has a link to an announcement from Roger Pearse that Cyril of Alexandria’s lost Commentary on Hebrews has been found and published based on three Armenian manuscripts. Unfortunately there is no English translation yet.

On targuman, Christian Brady had a few comments about Facebook and why he is “going dormant” in the platform. Along the way, he says “How nice it would be if we could return to the days of ‘Bibliobloggers’ and substantive discussion in debates in the comment sections, eh?” Christian is one of the oldest Bibliobloggers still active. He hosted carnivals 25 (December 2007) and 64 (June 2011). For perspective, I started Reading Acts in September 2008 and did not host a carnival until #100. Although there is no going back to 2005, Christian points out something important here. There are many excellent scholarly posts each month (go read Bob’s Carnival for a sample), but there is little substantive interaction.

For future carnivals, I will be hosting the August 2020 Carnival (unless someone else wants to take it). Brent Niedergall is hosting in September 202, but after that I have no more volunteers for the rest of the year starting with September 2020 (Due October 1). Even if you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again. I am always interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved. Are you new to blogging? Are you a lapsed biblioblogger? James McGrath has some encouraging words for you.

How can you get your posts into a future carnival? Start by writing a quality academic post, perhaps a book review. Then send the link to the upcoming host. It is entirely their decision to include your post in their carnival, but you can at least nominate yourself for inclusion. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn.

If you have questions about what writing a carnival involves, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or twitter DM @plong42. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Jim West hosts the Biblical Studies Carnival for June 2020 at Zwinglius Redivivus. He entitled it “Its the ‘Pandemic / Societal Apocalypse / Is June Finally Over? / Ugh What a Miserable Month’ Edition of the Biblical Studies Carnival.” Jim is correct, June was not a particularly good month. We keep thinking it is going to get better next month, but the trend does seem to be pointing toward “immanent apocalypse.” On June 1 everyone was assuming COVID would take the summer off and everything could return to normal. By June 30, COVID is even busier and businesses are shutting down again. Just when you thought racist attacks on people of color couldn’t get any worse, George Floyd is killed and protests shook most communities across America (and the world). Just when you thought the current administration could not possibly shock us with embarrass itself and the nation any worse that it already has….well you get the idea.

Biblical Studies is not immune from sin and stupidity. This month most people heard Old Testament scholar Jan Joosten was arrested and sentenced to prison to a year in prison for possession of child pornography. For me this was shocking, but it led to comparison to other scholars who have been arrested and convicted for similar crimes, some of which were news to me. Late in the month, the Logos Academic Blog posted a study on what the Law says about eating bats. The author attempted humor but ending up insulting people with what appeared to be racist comments. When scholars like Max Lee (follow him on twitter, @ProfMaxLee) and Jennifer Guo (follow her on twitter, @jenniferguo) made serious protests, the #LogosBatPost led to an apology from Logos CEO Bob Pritchett.

On June 26, James Dunn died. Many bloggers have posted tributes to one of the most significant New Testament scholars in the last fifty years. it is hard to image writing on the Gospels or the Pauline literature without interacting with James Dunn.

My theory is someone from the future keeps time traveling back to January 2020 and is trying to fix everything but they just keep making it worse. This makes more sense that some of the crazy conspiracy theories floating around FaceBook or YouTube.

The good news is we now have Jim’s Biblical Studies Carnival to uplift our spirits. He has a collection of links for the Hebrew Bible/LXX, New Testament, Archaeology, Books, and Miscellaneous. He has also collected choice Tweets on biblical or theological topics from June. Head over to Jim’s Carnival and see what academic biblical blogs have been up to in June.

Here’s the schedule for the next few Biblical Studies Carnivals:

• July 2020 – Bob MacDonald (@drmacdonald) has the July carnival.
• August 2020 – Phillip Long, Reading Acts (right here!)
• September 2020 – Brent Niedergall

I am looking for volunteers through the rest of the year starting with September 2020 (Due October 1). Even if you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again. I am always interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved. Are you new to blogging? Are you a lapsed biblioblogger? James McGrath has some encouraging words for you.

How can you get your posts into a future carnival? Start by writing a quality academic post, perhaps a book review. Then send the link to the upcoming host. It is entirely their decision to include your post in their carnival, but you can at least nominate yourself for inclusion. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn.

If you have questions about what writing a carnival involves, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or twitter DM @plong42. I would be happy to answer any questions.

March and April 2020 were bad months for most people as COVID-19 changed the way we lived. Just as many people were preparing to return to work for the first time in three months, May ended with another murder of a black man in police custody followed by riots throughout the country. Given the loss of life from the pandemic and the deep divisions in America playing out nightly in the streets of many cities, commenting on an academic issues in biblical and theological studies seems less important. I really do not think shouting at each other on Twitter helps, and I am confident passing along conspiracy theories on FaceBook makes things worse.

Despite all the weirdness and evil in the news over the last month, there were some quality academic posts in the world of biblical and theological studies this month. This month’s Biblical Studies Carnival host Bobby Howell posted the Biblical Studies Carnival 171 for May 2020 at The Library Musings. Head over to his blog and check out his collection of postings during the month of May. He focuses on Old and New Testament, Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew and  a helpful set of links to articles at Torah.com. Click all the links!

In other blogging news, Aaron White has returned to blogging as he begins his Brill LXX Commentary on Judges, Pastor-Scholar Meets Commentary: A Log on Writing a Commentary. Bookmark it, but also read his comments on The Mysterious Mu.

Brian Small had some links to reviews on Hebrews resources posted in May, I miss the old Hebrews mini-carnivals he used to post.

James McGrath posted several excellent posts on making the transition to online teaching and the future of education in the post-COVID-19 world.

For future Biblical Studies Carnivals…I have a couple of veteran bloggers lined up for the next two months. The godfather of blibioblogs Jim West (@EmilBrunner1) will host the June Carnival and Bob MacDonald (@drmacdonald) has the July carnival. I am looking for volunteers through the rest of the year starting with August 2020 (Due September 1). Even if you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again. I am always interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved.

Are you new to blogging? Are you a lapsed biblioblogger? James McGrath has some encouraging words for you.

Would you like to see your posts included in a future carnival? Start by writing a quality academic post, perhaps a book review. Then send the link to the upcoming host. It is entirely their decision to include your post in their carnival, but you can at least nominate yourself for inclusion. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn.

If you have questions about what writing a carnival involves, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or twitter DM @plong42. I would be happy to answer any questions.

Peter Goeman posted the 170th Biblical Studies Carnival for April 2020.  If you do not know Peter, he is professor of Old Testament and Biblical Language at Shepherd’s Theological Seminary in Cary, NC. He has been blogging since 2014, but this is his first carnival.

Like Brent Niedergall’s Carnival last month, Peter has really done a great job collecting link to all things Biblical Studies around the internet for the month of April. He covers the usual categories along with a timely section on Coronavirus and the Church’s Response and Easter during the pandemic. He includes collections of book reviews and a few interesting biblical studies podcast. I especially liked the section on doing education online.

The May 2020 Biblical Studies Carnival will be hosted by Bobby Howell at The Library Musings and Jim West will host in June. Even if you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again. I am always interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved. If you have questions about what writing a carnival involves, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or twitter DM @plong42

Brent Niedergall posted the Biblical Studies Carnival 169 for March 2020, and it is a good one. Plenty of great links to all things Biblical Studies around the internet for the month of March. He has links to quite a few blogs which are new to me. Head over to Brent’s blog and click all the links and tell him how much you appreciate his work.

Like a good carnival, Brent has fun and games and a few prizes. He has an exclusive coupon code for Carnival readers courtesy of Baylor University Press and an amazing giveaway from Lexham Press. There are links to free stuff from Randy Leedy from NTGreekGuy.com. All he needs is popcorn and an elephant ear truck to make this the perfect carnival.

A word about the numbering: Bob MacDonald (who really knows numbers) has insisted for quite a while that the numbering was wrong. I went over the past carnival lists and could not figure out where the error was, but honestly, I do not do numbers very well. Much like my bank statement, I will accept that Bob has been right all along and this is really the 169th Biblical Studies Blog.  I have been cajoling people into hosting the carnival since August 2012, and for the first time in that nearly eight year period, I do not have a host for the next carnival. Usually I have four or five months lined up, but for now, no one has volunteered.

I can always host a month and I know Jim West is always willing and quite capable, but I would like to see a few volunteers to use some of their shelter-in-place time to curate a Biblical Studies Carnival. Even if you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again. I am always interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved. If you have questions about what writing a carnival involves, contact me via email, plong42@gmail.com or twitter DM @plong42

Jim West shows everyone how to write a Biblical Studies Carnival with his January 2020 carnival. Jim has been blogging since Zwingli was a young pastor of the Grossmünster. His carnival is “fully stocked, cleverly curated, and vividly presented.” It really is a good carnival, so Carnival Rookies take note.Great links, some humor, and he used a pic of one of my students doing archaeology.

One unique feature to this month’s carnival is a section on “Tweets and Tweeters.” Like a certain world leader, Jim uses Twitter quite a bit and has a few interesting threads and tweets. Think of this as a list of people to follow on Twitter. If you do not twitter, then this paragraph made no sense whatsoever.

Bob MacDonald is hosting the February carnival (due March 1) and newcomer Brent Niedergall hosts in March 2020 (Due April 1). I am looking for volunteers for the rest of 2020. If you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again, but I am also interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved. Six of the hosts in 2019 were first-time hosts.

Carnivals are fun to write and a good Carnival draws attention to your blog. The Amateur Exegete posted his year in Blog Summary recently, his August 2019 carnival was his second most popular post of the year.

I would love to hear from a few volunteers and fill out the 2020 Biblioblog schedule, so contact me at plong42@gmail.com or twitter dm @plong42 to volunteer to host!

Alex Finkelson posted an excellent year-end Biblical Studies Carnival at Scribes of the Kingdom. He has a great collection of posts on Christmas and Hanukkah themes as well as links to a few “best-of-the-year lists.” Along with the usual categories of OT/NT/Theology, Alex has a nice list of “new publications that look promising” and a collection of book reviews posted in December.

Jim West will ring in the start the 2020 Biblio-blogging season off with the January 2020 carnival and veteran Biblio-blogger Bob MacDonald is hosting the February carnival (due March 1) and newcomer Brent Niedergall hosts in March 2020 (Due April 1).

I am looking for volunteers for the rest of 2020. If you hosted in 2019 feel free to volunteer again, but I am also interested in getting new bloggers and podcasters involved. Six of the hosts in 2019 were first-time hosts.

Carnivals are fun to write and a good Carnival draws attention to your blog. The Amateur Exegete posted his year in Blog Summary last week, his August 2019 carnival was his second most popular post of the year.

I would love to hear from a few volunteers and fill out the 2020 Biblioblog schedule, so contact me at plong42@gmail.com or twitter dm @plong42 to volunteer to host!