When Asked…

By various and sundry people ‘I’ve heard thus and such and this and that about you’ it’s always rather flattering really – even if the question is intended to cast one in a negative light.  Here’s why.

Let’s suppose Eddie Chef says ‘you know, I’ve looked into it and I think Rev. Shmarty Pants feels inferior so he tries to fit in amongst academics’.  All in the world it implies is that

1- Billy spends an awful lot of time and expends mountains of mental effort  thinking about Pants.  Why?  Because Pants fascinates him, that’s why.  He’s intrigued by and drawn strangely to an utterly incomprehensible adoration  so that he devotes himself entirely to thinking about Pants.  When the occasion arises, he even shares his thoughts about Pants with others.   Waking and sleeping, Pants is on his mind.

Oh to be sure, his public pronouncements and back room observations about Pants are intended purely and only to denigrate Pants.   But that’s the irony, delicious and magnificent.  He hates Pants, so he says, but he can’t stop thinking about Pants.  And he can’t stop telling others about Pants.

And 2, in truth, that he loves Pants and wants his attention so badly that he – like a little schoolboy on the playground seeing a girl he likes- runs up behind and pulls on the ponytail.  It might annoy her, but in his childish adolescence he at least for the moment has her much desired attention (even though it’s negative).

Imagine it- Eddie Chef is so enraptured by Shmarty that he pines for the merest nod.

That’s flattering, and in the words of Larry the Cable Guy, ‘funny, and  I don’t care who you are!’

On Books: An Observation

Books are a blessing when you’re young, a burden when you’re middle aged, and a curse when you’re old.

A blessing because they open new worlds; a burden because they must be moved when y0u move; and a curse because they have become so numerous there’s neither space for them nor means to rid yourself of them properly.

And On The Morning of the Fifth Day…

There was much time at the New Orleans airport to ponder the meaning of conferences like SBL.  So, since I have time- here are a few utterly random thoughts.

1- The highlight of the meeting was, for me, the get together at Cafe Giovanni.  Spending time with Mogens Muller and the others who were there was just magnificent.

2- Bob Cargill’s session at which his book was reviewed was tremendously good as were the steering committee meetings for both ASOR and the Blogger Unit.

3- I was impressed by the John and Archaeology session and the Monotheism session so far as papers were concerned- but the rest were really quite dull.  When, oh when, will presenters learn that their standing there and dully reading a paper we could all read at our desks is just simply silly.  Be interesting.  Seriously, how some of them have academic positions is a huge mystery.  Their poor students must be so bored and yet terrified to say so.

4- Downtown New Orleans smells like a bit of garbage.  And there’s nothing quite so off-putting as walking down a street and having to jump over a puddle of urine created just that moment by a fellow in a corner letting nature loose.

5- The news media bungles reports of biblical studies related stories so badly we need to – one and all – call them on it every time they do it.

6- You people who are audience members and yet who talk non stop during sessions, if I can say this without seeming rude- shut up or get out.  Your disruptive behavior is absurd.

7- Academics are an amusing bunch.  Partly weird, partly goofy, partly self absorbed, and mostly utterly oblivious to nearly everything outside their specializations.  To be sure, they can ramble on about Q for days and days, but they are – many of them – bereft of the ability to converse about anything meaningful.

8- Please, for the love of heaven, when you present, stop using the idiotic word ’subaltern’.  It’s a stupid word and like ‘liminal’ last year and the year before, grotesquely overused.  And any person who says ‘vis-a-vis’ should be denounced and mocked.

9- Stuck up scholars are few and far between.  Most are astonishingly friendly (even if they can’t talk about anything interesting after 2 minutes of common chatter).  Indeed, most of the time the bigger the name, the more accessible the person.

10- It is utterly and pridefully thrilling when people you’ve never met, in the dozens, come up and introduce themselves and say ‘you’re so and so aren’t you!  I read your such and such all the time and I want to thank you for your work’

11- And it’s even more delightful when they do it while Tilling is standing there and you can say ‘have you met Chris Tilling’ and they respond ‘oh yes, but only because you’ve mentioned him so regularly in those amusing posts’.   At such times one could expire and leave this depraved and filthy world totally satisfied that one has done one’s best.

The Evening of the Fourth Day

Nathan MacDonald’s session on Monotheism was fantastically informative.  You’ll see below some of the photos from before and during and after.  And the photos of Roland Boer and Jim Linville promised earlier in the previous post.

It’s the last night and there yet remains the Sheffield Reception and the Goettingen Reception.  More anon from there.

MacDonald grimaces at the presence of Tilling and yet remains polite

What a motley lot

Linville Grimaces… You know Why

Kirk grimaces, you know why…

more bloggers!

a student of Roland’s, Roland, and Jim L.

Loren Crow

Nathan MacDonald

It Was the Afternoon of the Fourth Day…

And I had a fine time meeting with Roland Boer and Jim Linville around lunchtime for coffee, and then again with Bobby K. of Hendrickson concerning matters of mutual interest.  I snapped some photos and I’ll post them to Facebook sometime this evening.  But for now I’m heading to Nathan MacDonald’s session on monotheism.  It’s going to be fantastic.

More anon…

The Morning of the 4th Day…

Featured a fantastic breakfast meeting whereat the steering committee of th newly formed SBL blogging Section laid the framework for our 2010 sessions in Atlanta.  You.ll be hearing more about it after the first of the year.

I attended portions of the John and Archaeology section, the second paper of which was magnificent.  Robert Bull spoke about places of worship on Mt Gerizim, asserting that the Roman Temple built during the reign of Hadrian actually sat atop the destroyed altar of the Samaritan Temple from the first century.

I snapped a few photos from his slide presentation which I hope are clear enough for you to get a gist of his presentation:

Roman Temple

Roman inscription

Roman Temple

Reconstructed Samaritan Altar

There are a few more photos I’ve snapped from here and there, that you’ll find here.

More anon…

The 2009 Biblioblogger Dinner

It was a great time, at least for me, and I think for many. Thanks to all who came.

Daniel and Tonya

Mariottini and Traphagen

Joel and his boy

Kashow, Athas and Campbell

Melee

I feel bad for forgetting and Koke

Crossley and Smith

Melee

Bibb and I don’t remember

Kashow and Campell

Watts and Richards

Weaks and McGrath

Mogens Muller

Fisher and Muller

I confess I can’t see him, Mariottini, Williams

Cargill

Tilling

Cargill and Crossley

Brady

Viviano and Meier

I Would Only Say To My Friend Chris Brady…

We don’t blog for those who are at SBL experiencing it first hand, we do it, or rather I do it at least (since I don’t speak for everyone!) to inform those unable to attend of the doings so that they have a flavor or a sense of what’s happening (and hopefully will be intrigued enough to join the Society and attend the meetings themselves one day).

Hence it is in fact a task done for the non-present, and not for the present so much.

At least for myself.

SBL Day 3, Afternoon

The Cargill and Qumran Session I attended this afternoon was absolutely fantastic.  Absolutely the finest of the conference to this moment.  Jodi Magness laid into the thesis and Lawrence Schiffmann described the fact that whether or not the site was a fort or a house or whatever it was, it makes no difference on how we interpret the scrolls.

Eric Cline presented brilliantly and humorously the usefulness of such modeling techniques and it all wrapped up with Cargill’s response.

It was just excellent altogether.

I snapped some photos from the Cargill session and from the SBL initiative get together and then again at the book stalls where I stalked spotted some famous folk worthy of our appreciation.  You can see them here.

The blogger dinner is tonight, so I’ll have a bit more photos after that.

Finally, Boer and I will meet tomorrow around noon-thirty (among other things that are going on).  I’m sure it will be delightful, as was seeing Jim ‘the Viking’ Linville again.

More anon…

More From New Orleans- The Morning of the Third Day