Jim West, the grand old veteran of Biblical Studies Carnivals, posted a fine collection of links at Zwinglius Redivivus. You can follow Jim on Twitter, @drjewest. Jim is off to attend the Zwingli Conference, celebrating Zwingli’s arrival in Zurich 500 years ago, so we will all be treated to photos of his hotel room and the book room for the conference. (Seriously, I live for the book room pics…)
Unless I hear from somebody soon, Reading Acts will host the February Carnival, then Spencer Robinson at Spoiled Milks (@spoiledmilks) has March 2019 (Due April 1).
As you can see there are some gaps in the schedule and there is no one for the rest of the year after (September through December are wide open). I have a few asks out there, but there is still time for you to volunteer as Carnival Host. Hosting the carnival is a great way to draw attention to your work, so consider hosting in the near future.
Seriously….PLEASE email me (plong42 at gmail.com) or direct message on Twitter (@plong42) to volunteer. You can also leave a comment here with your contact info and I will get back to you.
You can also review older carnivals by browsing this tag. Follow me on twitter (@plong42) if you are into that sort of thing. I have a Biblical Studies magazine on Flipboard, an essential app for your iOS device. I use it on my iPad for news and other special interests (including biblioblogs).
In case you have not seen the announcements, Logos Bible Software released a major upgrade at the end of last year. I did a “first look” review of Logos 8 here. There are plenty of new features to justify an upgrade and the software runs much more efficiently than the previous version. Everything runs faster than Logos 7 so the upgrade is well worth getting.
As always, be sure to check out the Logos Free Book of the Month. They give away a new book every month and usually have promotional pricing on one or two others from the same publisher. This is a great way to build up your library.
First time host Christopher Scott has posted the Biblical Studies Carnival for December 2018. Christopher collects links from the four categories that I write about: Bible, theology, small groups, and leadership. Head on over and check out what he has for us this month. Veteran blogger Jim West will host the Carnival in January. Jim always mixes up an interesting stew when he hosts a carnival. Here is the schedule for the next few months:
July 2019 (Due August 1) – My Digital Seminary, Lindsay Kennedy @digitalseminary
As you can see there are some gaps in the schedule and there is no one for the rest of the year after (August through December). I have a few asks out there, but there is still time for you to volunteer as Carnival Host. Hosting the carnival is a great way to draw attention to your work, so consider hosting in the near future. Seriously….PLEASE email me (plong42 at gmail.com) or direct message on Twitter (@plong42) to volunteer. You can also leave a comment here with your contact info and I will get back to you.
You can also review older carnivals by browsing this tag. Follow me on twitter (@plong42) if you are into that sort of thing. I have a Biblical Studies magazine on Flipboard, an essential app for your iOS device. I use it on my iPad for news and other special interests (including biblioblogs).
Bob MacDonald (@drmacdonald) posted the November 2018 bright and early on December 1, and it is a good one. Be sure to check it out and click on all the links. Subscribe to a few new blogs this holiday season. First time host Christopher Scott will take control of the Carnival for the December 2018 carnival (due January 1, 2019).
As of this time, I do not have hosts for any carnivals for 2019. I have reached out to a few newer bloggers as well as previous hosts, but I have had fewer volunteers recently. Bob MacDonald said this about hosting a carnival:
Hosting a carnival is a valuable task. You will be challenged to decide what to include from the several possible source streams that you follow on aggregators, flipboards, social media, blogs, and other news feeds. Just what is Biblical Studies? BS opens up questions that may be disturbing to an established position. Do you follow people that you may disagree with? You may allow some leeway since preachers and theologians of all confessional stripes say they ‘study the Bible’. And you may watch secular blogs and newspapers, for some of them express reception history, whether assumed or critical, from the Bible. As the month progresses, a theme emerges, maybe flippant or serious, not always as expected. Take up the gauntlet.
This is your chance to step up and host a carnival. This is true for veteran bloggers as well as newer academic blogs. Hosting the carnival is a great way to draw attention to your work, so consider hosting in the near future. Seriously….PLEASE email me (plong42 at gmail.com) or direct message on Twitter (@plong42) to volunteer. You can also leave a comment here with your contact info and I will get back to you.
You can also review older carnivals by browsing this tag. Follow me on twitter (@plong42) if you are into that sort of thing. I have a Biblical Studies magazine on Flipboard, an essential app for your iOS device. I use it on my iPad for news and other special interests (including biblioblogs).
I was quite surprised today with a tweet from a former student who bought my book, Jesus the Bridegroom for the Logos Bible Software for $4.99. This is part of the Wipf & Stock sale through Logos which (I assume) runs through the end of November 2018.
Jesus the Bridegroom has been reviewed in a couple of places. Marianne Blickenstaff reviewed the book for SBL’s Review of Biblical Literature(click here to read the review) and Peter Leithart reviewed the book at First Things a bit earlier. Don K. Preston reviewed the book at Amazon, saying he loves “the research that went into this. While Dr. Long’s emphasis is on ‘source’ and my focus is on theology, Nonetheless, I did find this book to be very helpful. I particularly appreciated the linguistic studies, showing the marital language that is used in some texts (e.g. especially Isaiah 4-5) that I had never seen before, and I truly appreciated it. His inter-textual notations were also fruitful. Long’s conclusion that Jesus drew together several strands of Jewish thought, and conflated those strands into a harmonious message, thus, suggesting that Jesus stood well within the framework of a Jewish prophet, is very good”
The book is also available through Amazon and the Wipf & Stock website (the retail price is $33 but there are discounted copies at Amazon and Wipf & Stock). The Kindle version is only $9.99 and claims to have real page numbers, but I cannot see them reading the book with the Kindle App on an iPad. Still, the book looks great in Kindle.
Obviously I would love for you to buy a copy, but I know that is not always possible. Here’s how you can help get the word out for me:
Buy the book while it is on sale at Logos, it is only $4.99!
Request that the book be added to your college, university, or seminary library.
Leave a review on Amazon.com. I cannot stress this enough, it is very difficult to get people to leave a review on Amazon, but the sad fact is Amazon reviews count for something in today’s book buying world.
What is the book about? The full title of the book is Jesus the Bridegroom: The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels. The book is an edited version of my dissertation. As I was working on my dissertation, people would ask what I was writing on. I usually said “an intertextual study on messianic banquet imagery in the Synoptic Gospels.” After a moment of awkward silence, I clarified: “Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a Wedding Banquet – what’s up with that?”
The book attempts to study the marriage metaphor / motif in the teaching of Jesus. There are a few places in the Synoptic Gospels where Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven as a Wedding Banquet, Matt 22:1-14 and 25:1-13 are the most obvious texts. But there are a few places where Jesus describes himself as a bridegroom, and a marriage metaphor appears in a number of other places. My proposal is that Jesus combined the metaphor of an eschatological banquet with the common Old Testament marriage metaphor and described his ministry as an ongoing wedding banquet to which all Israel is now invited. The long period in the wilderness is over and it is time for Israel to return to her Bridegroom.
In order to make this case, I apply what might be called an intertextual method to traditions or set of metaphors. The “text” in this intertextual study is the Hebrew Bible, but that text was heard by Jesus’ original listeners rather than read. They knew the metaphors because they heard them taught in their homes and synagogues. Jesus used these metaphors because they were current, but by combining them to describe himself, he created a new image of the eschatological age as a wedding banquet.
I first examine the eschatological “victory banquet” motif in the Hebrew Bible, starting with Isa 25:6-8 (ch. 3), the use of the Wilderness Tradition in Isaiah 40-55 (ch. 4), and the Marriage Metaphor in Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah (ch. 5). I trace the development of these three themes through the Second Temple Period in chapter 6, and finally apply that database to the sayings of Jesus in chapter 7.
There are a few things that you will not find in this book. First, I did not cover John’s gospel, although there is much there that can be described as “wedding motif.” My reason for this omission are simple-the dissertation was already too long to include another major section on John’s Gospel! Second, there is nothing in this book on the application of the Bridegroom metaphor to the church. I wanted a study of Jesus’ use of the metaphor, not the (much) later theological development of that metaphor. Again, the reason for this is simply that I was writing a New Testament dissertation, doing “biblical theology” rather than “systematic theology.” I wanted to focus on the teaching of Jesus and the origin of the wedding banquet metaphor.
I would really like to hear feedback from anyone who reads the book – feel free to send me an email to continue the discussion. Thanks!
First time host 
