SBL postpones implementation of new policies for students

From the recent mass email:

The Executive Committee of Council met on 12 January 2011 to discuss concerns over the recent policies regarding student participation in the Society’s Annual Meeting. The policies that were announced in November 2010 required all students without a doctoral degree to submit to the Program Unit Chair the full text of the paper they intended to read and limited the number of sessions student can participate in (as panelist, presenter, and respondent) to one.

The action taken by the Executive Committee of Council, effective immediately , is to postpone the implementation of these policies and to undertake additional discussion of these matters at the Spring 2011 Council meeting. This action thereby sets aside these requirements and restrictions until 2012, pending further review.

I want personally to thank the members of the Student Advisory Board and the network of OSRs for the conversations we have had concerning these matters. They are active advocates for student interests. Please do continue these conversations with me or with representatives on SAB. SAB will provide a report directly to Council in April.

[...]

John F. Kutsko
Executive Director
Society of Biblical Literature

A wise move, I think.

Happy Newt Year and an SBL Student Survey

First of all, Happy Newt Year to you all! Here's to a year filled with the passing of courses and prelims, progress on dissertations, graduations, publications, jobs, and success wherever you are along the way.

As you probably know, SBL recently changed the criteria for student papers at the Annual Meeting. The main two changes are as follows:

1. All students without a doctoral degree are required to submit to the Program Unit Chair the full text of the paper they are proposing to read.

2. The number of sessions a student without a doctoral degree can participate in will be limited to one.

The first point has generated quite a bit of discussion in the blogosphere. For some examples, see the original email from SBL Executive Director John Kutsko on Pat McCullough's blog and a response by James McGrath. The most obvious problem from my point of view as a student is that I am not going to take time away from my dissertation in February to write a paper that may or may not be accepted for the Annual Meeting. Nor is it clear why this step is necessary for students who have successfully presented papers in the past. This rule will severely limit my ability to participate in future meetings and, I feel, diminishes the benefits of my SBL membership. No doubt there have been valid complaints about the quality of papers at the meeting, but this blanket rule assumes that (1) students are the only ones submitting poor quality papers, and (2) steering committees for the individual sections are incompetent at screening the abstracts they receive. I am sure you can come up with additional points in favor of or against these changes.

The good news is that it seems that SBL wants to hear from us. Pat McCullough posts some good suggestions here, one of which involves completing a survey that will provide data directly to SBL's Student Advisory Board. Pat mentions January 10 as a deadline for completing the survey and for submitting formal written responses to the Board. So I just wanted to encourage y'all to fill out the survey and make your voices heard.

Dr. Seuss does Gnosticism

Colby Whittaker, a first year Duke Divinity student, composed this Dr. Seuss-inspired version of a Gnostic creation story:


One day the first principle was feeling a bit down,

his glumdiferous magnificence turned in a frown.

he pondered and thunk and he thunk and he thought

and oh what a surprise when he saw what he'd wrought

there in the light of his emanated glow,

sat the second principle, the barbelo!

The barbelo in its barbelo suit, with its barbelo spirit munching
spiritual barbelo fruit.

And that barbelo

in its barbelo suit,

with its barbelo thoughts and its barbelo fruit,

why it looked on ole dad with his emanated glow his splendiferous
magnifence and before you know

there came a loud pop, a gnarf and kabangs

And out of the ole Barbelo came 4 more things

And not any ole things

no not any would do

but the best and the brightest, the shiny and new.

First Logos and Life, for who doesn't need a buddy

Then Man and then Church that fuddy old duddy

and they came and they spread

oh they spread and they spread

but they looked around and you know what they said?

Our world is too small oh far far too small

For our father is so so great, so grand and so tall

his world must be sad, such a tiny little world

and so they thought and they thought and thought unfurled

they expanded and grew and then they knurled.

What is knurl I hear you ask?

Why a wonderful thing in which we all should bask.

For out of their knurling

their thinking and thought

their swirling and whirling

they found what they sought

10 little aeons all in a lot.

Well not all at once you must understand

They came out in pairs!

Like a 10 man band.

10 aeons sprung forth, all shiny and new,

and fresh out in the world, they knew and they grew,

and they knew and they grew as good aeons ought

and then, as you'd guess, they too had a thought!

With their 12 aeon friends 22 strong,

they thought and they thought all the day long.

They thought of great things, such marvelous things

spirit-God kings and androgynous rings,

and they thought and they sang

their beautiful song

they sang and it rang

till something went wrong.

Poor little Sophie

said its much too crowded

with all your spirit singing I've been quite out-louded!

And then as you see poor Sophie was outed.

For Sophie had passions what a terrible lot

For silence and thinking is what a good aeon thought.

But Sophie wanted more, oh so much, more

she looked at her Aeon-friends and said “What a bore!”

So she sought out First-Principle,

grand ole Abyss,

and strung up in her passions

she gave him a kiss.

But oh what a kiss and such a kiss to miss

For Abyss would be having with none of this

he sent rough old limit,

that crabbity sort

to sort all this out

all this huffing and snort.

So limit did his limit-y best

and Sophie was purified

and returned to the nest

she returned to the rest

of her Aeon-y friends

but as we know things

take turns and bends

Cause Sophie's desire was not easily undone

It said “I'm still here! I'll still have my fun!”

That desire, misshapen and lumpy and cross,

It looked at that world and gave it the toss.

It said “Forget you Spirits” I've had my fill

of your Aeon-y sounds,

of your Aeon-y rules

of limits and bounds

and with a great whabumph,

and a sickening slumph

why gross ole desire

made some crumph,

and that crumph

it had mass and growth

so Desire became Ii-al-da-both.

And Ialdaboth was a bit of a fool

a bit of a munchkin, a bit of a tool

He forgot all that spiritual, gnosticky junk

and out came some matter with a resounding plunk

And out of that plunk came the moon and the earth

the clouds and the sky and so matter gave birth!

It gave birth to it all

All you can see

The rocks and dolphins

the birds in the trees

But all was not right

Oh certainly not right

Because all that world

was sad without light

Not normal light that pale thin drink

but the light of the Spirits!

Their old thoughty-think!

But Ialdaboth when he messed it all up,

he accidentally brought some spiritual stuff!

He dragged some gnosticy thoughty-thinking souls

And those souls fell into meat-mattery holes.

Those souls became psychics and gnosticky sorts

forming all new secret spiritual cohorts.

Poor Abel who died right off the bat,

And Cain who might have had a hand in that.

But then came Seth, marvelous Seth,

cause inside his chest was the spiritual breath

And inside his heart was the spiritual stuff,

the wonderful mystical spiritual stuff,

the stuff of which theres never enough,

So the children of Seth learned to think a humdinger thought

and this secret they took and they went and they taught

they taught about Sophie and they taught about her weird child

And they told the stories of how he went wild.

They taught about how all this matter is bunk

and all about Ialdy the maker of junk.

But with their humdinger secrets safe in your head

you too could go back, or so they said.

Go back to the start, to the place they still miss,

back home with the Spirits and good ole Abyss.

Resurrection of what?

I have been reading a lot of secondary literature on resurrection lately, and I have noticed a confusing ambiguity in the language employed in these discussions: In the common phrase "resurrection of the X," X can refer either to the thing that undergoes the process of resurrection or to the thing that has undergone the process of resurrection (that is, either to the raw materials or to the end product).

Thus, for example, the phrase "resurrection of the flesh" can be taken to denote either a view affirming that dead corpses will exit their graves (even if they are transformed radically in the process) or the view that the end product of resurrection will have all the "fleshly" qualities associated with our current form of existence.

This ambiguity is frustrating, but I am not sure what to do about it. Any suggestions?

Video interview of Douglas Campbell

Campbell is here talking about participation in Christ.


HT: Michael Gorman.

SBLGNT

My colleague Stephen Carlson has made a few insightful comments on the SBLGNT apparatus.

Here is another take on the Holmes edited volume:

SBL 2010

I went to the SBL 2010 online program book and searched for "duke". This is what came up, in the order that it came up.

If I missed something let me know.

See you in Atlanta!


Donyelle McCray, Duke Divinity School
When Illness Calls: Insights from Julian of Norwich’s Call to Frailty (20 min)

Carol Meyers, Duke University
Sustenance and Sacrality: Household Foodways in Ancient Israel (20 min)

Tom McGlothlin, Duke University
Patristic Rhetorical Analyses of Romans 3:1-8/9 (30 min)

Andrew D. Rowell, Duke University
John Howard Yoder’s Missional Exiles and Jeremiah 29: A Case Study for Missional Hermeneutics (20 min)

Richard B. Hays, Duke University
Intimations of Divine Identity Christology in Luke's Reading of Scripture (30 min)

Kavin Rowe, Duke University
The Return of Allegory: Scholarly Exegesis and the Literal Sense of Luke-Acts (30 min)

Nathan Eubank, Duke University
To Fulfill All Righteousness: Kenotic Glory in Matthew (20 min)

T.J. Lang, Duke University
Luke’s ‘Little Apocalypse’ is not about the Parousia: Reconsidering the Subject and Setting of Luke 17.22-37 (30 min)

Erin Darby, Duke University
Icons in Context: Judean Pillar Figurines from the Top Down or the Bottom Up? (30 min)

Jill Hicks-Keeton, Duke University
Rewritten Gentiles: Joseph and Aseneth and the Greek Bible (30 min)

Lori Baron, Duke University
Did Matthew Misunderstand Mark? The Shema in the First Gospel (25 min)

Matthew Thiessen, Duke University
Proselutos in Light of the Translation Techniques of the LXX Translators (30 min)

Laura Lieber, Duke University
The Poetry of Creation: Amittai’s Yotzer le-Hatan (25 min)

Dave Nielsen, Duke University
Singular Readings in the Text of the 'Unknown Gospel' (30 min)

C. Kavin Rowe, Duke University
The Grammar of Life: the Areopagus Speech and Pagan Tradition (30 min)

Stephen C. Carlson, Duke University
Eschatological Viticulture in 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and Papias (30 min)

David M. Moffitt, Duke University
Blood, Life, and Purification: Reassessing Hebrews’ Christological Appropriation of Yom Kippur (20 min)

Rebekah Eklund, Duke University
The Identity of the Crowds in the Passion Narrative (30 min)

Matthew Thiessen, Duke University
Circumcision in the Early Church according to Acts (28 min)

T.J. Lang, Duke University
Critical Interaction with Paul’s Exodus Exegesis (1 Cor 10): Origen and Augustine (30 min)

Dave Nielsen, Duke University
Singular Readings and the Community Behind the 'Unknown Gospel' (20 min)

Bradley R. Trick, Duke University
The Singular Abrahamic Seed and the Law’s Supplementing of the Promise in Gal 3:15-20 (30 min)

Ken Olson, Duke University
Eusebius, Porphyry, and the Testimonium Flavianum (35 min)

Susan Eastman, Duke University
"The evil I do not want is what I do": Sin and Evil in Romans (30 min)

Stephen M. Wilson, Duke University
David’s Initiation into Manhood: Reading 1 Samuel 17 as a Rite of Passage Narrative (30 min)

Presian Burroughs, Duke University
Ethical Readings of Romans 8: Compassionate Attention or Liberative Action in a Groaning World (30 min)

Timothy Wardle, Duke University
Mark as a Sectarian Document? An Investigation into Mark’s Views on the Law (35 min)

Christian Theology and the Bible
11/21/2010
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: International South - Hyatt Regency
Theme: Book Review: C. Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (Oxford, 2009)
Stephen Fowl, Loyola College in Maryland, Presiding (10 min)
Beverly Gaventa, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (25 min)
Robert Wall, Seattle Pacific University, Panelist (25 min)
Douglas Harink, King's University College (Edmonton), Panelist (25 min)
Stephen Fowl, Loyola College in Maryland, Panelist (25 min)
C. Kavin Rowe, Duke University, Respondent (25 min)

Ideological Criticism
Theme: Book Review: James Crossley, Jesus in an Age of Terror (Equinox, 2008)
Randall Reed, Appalachian State University, Presiding
Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (25 min)
Zeba Crook, Carleton University, Panelist (25 min)
William Arnal, University of Regina, Panelist (25 min)
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, Australia, Panelist (25 min)
James Crossley, University of Sheffield, Respondent (30 min)

Finding Your “Niche” in Biblical Scholarship
11/20/2010
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Hanover Hall AB - Hyatt Regency
Theme: Hosted by the Student Advisory Board
Patrick George McCullough, University of California-Los Angeles, Presiding
Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Dale B. Martin, Yale University, Panelist (10 min)
Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (10 min)
Paula Fredriksen, Boston University, Panelist (10 min)
Discussion (90 min)