I’m back from SBL and getting ready to leave this evening for Austin where my wife and I will spend Thanksgiving with my family. I had a great time at the conference. Most importantly, I saw great friends and made new ones. This is the real reason why I go to conferences–you can eventually read the papers that were presented as they filter out in articles and are integrated into books. However, there is no substitute to meeting fellow scholars in person.

As an added bonus, there were some particularly good sessions that I attended. The two highlights for me were the sessions on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and Karel van der Toorn’s book, Scribal Culture. I was particularly happy to hear that all of the CAD should be in pdf format within one year. I have been scratching my head at the fact that the Oriental Institute has been digitizing archeology volumes and such while the single most helpful resource that they produce, the CAD, has been languishing of late. The van der Toorn session was quite interesting as well, especially Niek Velduis’ bombastic statement that oral tradition didn’t/doesn’t exist.

Lastly, I hit the book tables. I primarily focus upon purchasing primary texts and reference works. Here’s a selection of the books that I purchased or ordered:

Edwin Yamauchi gave me his personal edition of KAI, however, it was a previous edition and I felt like I should have the updated texts.

The AHw was my prize of this year’s book purchases. It was interesting to hear the varied ways in which people in the CAD session at SBL referred to this work. I have always referred to it with the German names for the three letters in the abbreviation, however others in the session said the three English letters while others just said A-H. Also, I think Steven Holloway mispronounced about half of the names of the people who worked on the CAD.

I’m very interested in ancient scholars and scribal education.

I finally picked this up–long overdue.

This book is a pretty basic intro to Ugaritic, but I thought that it might make a good textbook for teaching non-PhD students Ugaritic. It also includes a nice intro to Ugarit and the language as well as texts along with an overview of Ugaritic grammar.

I read this book on the plane ride home. I liked it quite a bit and would probably use it in an OT intro class.

Here are some forthcoming books that I ordered:

This fits into my interest of ancient perceptions of communication between humans and deities.

Volumes that give you access to quality bibliography and primary texts are invaluable.

I have not formally studied Hittite, but I would like to at least have some familiarity with it.

Finally, Biblical Hebrew Phonology and Morphology

To all my friends old and new, it was great seeing you. For everyone that I was not able to meet, there is always next year!