I got back home from Atlanta late last night and slept in this morning since I hardly got any sleep at all while I was at SBL.  It’s not that I went to many sessions–I only went to a few: to hear Terry Fretheim since I like his work but had never heard him in person before; friends’s presentations (sadly, I didn’t make it to all of my friends’s papers for various reasons so don’t be offended if I wasn’t at yours), the discussion of Seth Sanders’s book The Invention of Hebrew, and a few Assyriological presentations.

However, I did catch up with old friends, made many new ones, and introduced my students to some senior scholars who are friends of mine.  This is the real reason why I go to SBL.  It is a joy to sit around with people who are smarter and more well-read than me and get so caught up in conversation that we forget to go to sleep.  It is personally satisfying but also professionally edifying as well.  These conversations sparked at least two new article ideas and I was offered two book deals.  I have additional reflections and I need to pick up a series on teaching that I announced a bit ago but right now I need to catch up on some sleep and get to work on all this writing.

Thanks to everyone who made this the best SBL for me so far and if we didn’t connect this time, let’s plan on doing so in SanFran.

Every scholar knows that too much stuff is published.  It is just simply overwhelming how much secondary literature is out there in every sub-discipline and most of it is really not worth reading.  However, the standards by which professors are evaluated for both hiring and promotion center heavily on the quantity of work than an individual has published.  Some metrics also try to gauge the quality of articles and such but that only goes so far.

In light of this I was struck by this statement in Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei’s Postliberal Theology by Jason A. Springs:

The sheer quantity of the critical responses that Frei’s work continues to inspire nearly twenty-five years after his death is startlingly disproportionate to the two monographs and handful of articles that he produced over the span of his career (6).

Here is an example of a scholar who has had a tremendous influence on his field with relatively little writing.  I think that all of us who are engaged in or trying to get into the academy should think quite seriously about our own publishing efforts.  To be sure, we have to play the publishing game if we want to survive and thrive but maybe we should play it more carefully, thoughtfully, and with a good dose of restraint.  After all, we know those scholars who “have no thought that goes unpublished” and it is not a flattering portrayal.

Very few of us will have the influence of Hans Frei, but we can make sure that the stuff that we do publish is of good quality and beneficial rather than just CV padding.  And in this way we can follow in Frei’s footsteps and be of service to the academic world at large.

My wife would kill me if I placed a bid on this and a bankruptcy judge would hunt me down, but a boy can dream, right?  Christie’s is selling a pazuzu, a Neo-Assyrian demon, head.  The anticipated gavel price is between $20,000-30,000 and if you want to try to win it, follow the link.

If you are interested in the pazuzu demon the best book on the subject is:

Pazuzu
Archaologische und Philologische Studien zu einem altorientalischen Damon
Ancient Magic and Divination – AMD 4
by Nils P. Heessel
Styx Publications, 2002
viii + 253 pages, German
Cloth
ISBN: 9789004123861
List Price: $193.00
Your Price: $183.35
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/HEEPAZUZU

Amazingly, I get this question quite a lot from my students–either explicitly or implicitly–and I teach at a Christian seminary.  Most students at least grudgingly or guiltily think that the Old Testament is worth passing attention; it is still in the church’s book after all.  However, most need to be persuaded that they should give the OT equal attention as the NT.

There are many answers that one could give to the question, “Why should we study the Old Testament?” but Richard Bauckham provides one of the better ones:

We should never forget that the New Testament was never meant to be an independent collection of Christian Scriptures.  The New Testament writers themselves assume the Old Testament as given, and the process of collecting and authorizing their writings to form the New Testament canon was understood by the church as a matter of supplementing the Old Testament, which already formed a canon of Scriptures recognised as authoritative for the Church.  So it is not surprising that what is already well established in the Old Testament is not repeated in the New.¹

In other words, if you only study the New Testament you will, at best, only gain a partial understanding of biblical perspectives.  At most, you might misunderstand certain themes entirely.

1. The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation (Sarum Theological Lectures; Waco: Baylor, 2010), 141. [back]

John Meade over at LXX Studies has an interesting reflection on Jerome’s use of other versions with respect to his work translating the Hebrew text.  He then provides a helpful analogy (and corrective) to the NIV update.  Check it out.

For the two other people in the world besides myself who are interested in the Ur III period, here is info about and the table of contents of the Festschrift in honor of David Owen who in my estimation is the dean of Ur III studies in North America. Dr. Owen is not only an excellent scholar but also a very kind and generous man. He was a great help to me as I edited the Carnegie Museum’s collection of Ur III tablets.

Why Should Someone Who Knows Something Conceal It?
Cuneiform Studies in Honor of David I. Owen on his 70th Birthday

Edited by Alexandra Kleinerman & Jack M. Sasson
CDL Press
Bethesda 2010
ISBN 9781934309308
$60.00

??GETTING THE WORD OUT
LETTER-ORDERS AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR
Lance Allred

MEN AT WAR IN THE EBLA PERIOD
ON THE UNEVENNESS OF THE WRITTEN DOCUMENTS
Alfonso Archi

DATES (?) IN THE EBLA TEXTS (SYRIA 24TH CENTURY BCE)
Maria Giovanna Biga

AROMATA FÜR DUFTÖL
Hagan Brunke and Walther Sallaberger

MORE SARGONIC ADMINISTRATIVE TEXTS
Mark E. Cohen

NAMING UR III YEARS
Jacob L. Dahl

BU!
Robert K. Englund

A WOMAN MOST FAIR: INVESTIGATING
THE MESSAGE OF LUDINGIRA TO HIS MOTHER
Alhena Gadotti

THE ORGANIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN EARLY MESOPOTAMIA
INFORMATION, WEALTH, AND ARCHIVES IN THE UR III PERIOD
Steven J. Garfinkle

DIE KÖNIGSINSCHRIFTEN DES III. JAHRTAUSANDS IM BRITISH MUSEUM
EIN ERSTER BERICHT UND FÜNF NEUE TEXTE
M. Such-Gutiérrez

LEFT TO THEMSELVES
WAIFS IN THE TIME OF THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR
Wolfgang Heimpel

SUR QUELQUES DOSSIERS DES ARCHIVES DE GIRSU
Bertrand Lafont

KASSITE MERCENARIES AT ABIEfiU°’S FORTRESS
Karel van Lerberghe and Gabriella Voet

THE SEAL OF AYALATUM AND THE DYNASTY OF LARSA
Rudolf H. Mayr

WHERE’S AL?
HUMOR AND POETICS IN THE HYMN TO THE HOE
Piotr Michalowski

COURT RECORDS FROM UMMA
Manuel Molina

LES NOMS D’ANNÉ DU RÈGNE DU ROI fiULGI
Marcel Sigrist

MORE ON THE ARCHAIC WRITING OF THE NAME OF ENLIL/NIPPUR
Piotr Steinkeller

DIE BEDEUTUNG VON igi–sa5/sa55/sag9/sag10
Hartmut Waetzoldt

ILLICIT CUNEIFORM TABLETS
HEIRLOOMS OR STOLEN GOODS?
Aage Westenholz