Jennifer Guo hosts a festive holiday carnival complete with snow and “inaugurated eschatology.” There are many links to blogs from old veterans to new blogs from graduate students. Head over to Jennifer’s blog and start your new year right by reading a few new blogs this year.
In his final carnival, Jim West bemoans the death of biblioblogging. He claims (rightly) “the first generation of bloggers have either succumbed to irregular posting or post nothing at all anymore” but also that anyone blogging on biblical or theological topics have “withered into dullness.” What is more, he claims that “Bibliobloggers have, by and large, forsaken their posts.”
I think Jim is overreacting and acting more curmudgeonly than usual. Jennifer’s carnival demonstrates there are many excellent posts by quality scholars (McKnight, Hurtado, Keener, Keith, Bird, Gupta) as well as graduate students using their blogs as an extension of their studies (Jacob Prahlow, William Ross, Jennifer Guo, Lindsay Kennedy, Biblical Reasoning). Jim is correct some of the older bloggers have moved on, but “life happens.” Yet veteran blogger Jim Davilla points out his blog “PaleoJudaica has tallied up 1822 posts for the year (including this one), considerably more than any previous year since it began back in 2003.” Virtually all of PaleoJudaica’s links are to important posts around the web, making me wonder who has in fact “forsaken their posts.”
As for conference participation, another veteran blogger Daniel O. McClellan has already posted is SBL 2017 proposal for discussion. Although Daniel has posted less frequently in the last year, virtually all his posts concern conferences. Torrey Seland reported on Philo, Wisdom and Apocalypticism at the 2016 SBL meetings. William Ross had an excellent review of the 2016 ETS Septuagint consultation. Jim has linked to these reports, so I am not sure why he thinks they do not exist.
I agree there is cause for concern when quality bloggers stop posting. But Brian LePort said something similar on his now-shuttered Near Emmaus blog in 2014, and Claude Mariottini offered a very thoughtful response. In fact, I have the same sort of hand-wringing in a 2011 post (Educating Evangelicals and BiblioBlogs). Jim is simply wrong to dismiss people because there only starting blogging in the last year.
If you have an opinion on this so-called death of the biblioblogs, please leave a comment on this discussion below.
I would like to see a few new bloggers volunteer to host a Carnival. It is not too late to volunteer to host a Carnival in 2017. If you you have hosted in the past, feel free to volunteer again. Carnivals are a great way to attract attention to your site if you are new blogger, but more importantly it gives you a chance to highlight the best and the brightest in the world of bibliblogs. Contact me via email (plong42@gmail.com), DM on twitter (@plong42) or a comment on this post and I can contact you.
The upcoming schedule for Carnivals is as follows:
- January 2017 (posted February 1) Cassandra Farrin, Ethics and Early Christianity.
- February 2017 (posted March 1) – Jacob Prahlow @prahlowjacob
- March 2017 (posted April 1) –
- April 2017 (posted May 1) –
- May 2017 (posted June 1) –
- June 2017 (posted July 1) –
- July 2017 (posted August 1) – Reuben Rus from Ayuda Ministerial/Resources for Ministry
- August 2017 (posted September 1) – Jason Gardner, eis doxan
Obviously I am still looking for volunteers for March – June 2016, and then the rest of the year.
Finally, I have a FlipBoard Magazine dedicated to biblical studies. You can use the web version or follow me using FlipBoard on your iOS or Android devices. I really enjoy the iPad version of FlipBoard, so check it out. You can always follow me on twitter, @plong42.
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