2010 News

January 25, 2010 SBL e-Newsletter

2009 News

December 15, 2009 SBL e-Newsletter

News
SBL has received a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant to develop an interactive website that would improve public understanding of the Bible and its contexts.
Click here for the press release.

The SBL now publishes Teaching the Bible , a monthly e-pub geared to high school teachers of Bible electives and their students. The goal is to deliver scholarly content about the Bible in easy-to-grasp writing, visuals, activities, and audio segments that can be readily used in the high school classroom. See: http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/media/TBv1_i1.htm

Teaching the Bible currently seeks writers who can translate academic scholarship on the Bible and its contexts for the high school audience. If you think you would like to contribute, contact editor Moira Bucciarelli for writers’ guidelines and details. 

Read a report on the class for Texas high school teachers offered by the SBL and partners. 
 
Career Center
Employer and Candidate Registration for the 2009 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans is open. The Career Center provides the opportunity for employers and those seeking employment to register for interviews at the AM, as well as interview facilities, job listings, candidate credentials, and a messaging service.

Membership News
Thanks to all who have filled out their Optional Profile information! This summer’s Optional Profile Information drawing winners are:

July
1) Alan Applebaum
2) Dr. Mary L. Coloe

August
1) Rev. E. Heather Benson
2) Dr. Stan Harstine
 
Completing the Optional Profile Information page in your membership profile automatically enters you in a monthly, random drawing to win a free one-year membership. So far, 3000 of our 8700 members have completed this information. To join this growing number, log in and click "My Profile."

Question of the Month
Some of us wonder if any of the social networking tools would serve the purposes of members to advance their teaching, research, or networking with colleagues.

Is there a need for SBL to develop an online, interactive platform for members?         

Think about the SBL publishing, congresses, and professional initiatives and let us know if you see a connection between the SBL strategic objectives, your personal/professional needs, and the possibility of an SBL blog or Wiki.  

Reply to this e-mail and give us your perspectives.

SBL is now on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Please give generously to The Society Fund.

This month on The SBL Forum, a special issue on Bible Translation

Rewriting the Cultural Myths: Clarence Jordan and the Cotton Patch Gospels
Frederick L. Downing

Translation and Narrative: Transfiguring Jesus
Scott S. Elliott

A New Thing under the Sun: A Doctor of Ministry Degree in Bible Translation

Roy E. Ciampa

The Jewish Quest for a German Bible: The Nineteenth-Century Translations of Joseph Johlson and Leopold Zunz
Abigail Gillman

A Reexamination of Phoebe as a “Diakonos” and “Prostatis”: Exposing the Inaccuracies of English Translations
Elizabeth A. McCabe

Unavoidable Gender Ambiguities: A Primer for Readers of English Translations from Biblical Hebrew
David E. S. Stein

Remember— one of the benefits of membership is a gratis online subscription to the Journal of Biblical Literature through MetaPress. Just log-in to the SBL website using your member number and navigate to the JBL page to view the latest issues of the journal. Members will also find a link for accessing back issues of JBL through JSTOR.

Looking for a back issue of Semeia? The entire set of ninety-one Semeia journal issues is available on a CD-Rom from Logos Bible Software [link CD-Rom to: http://www.logos.com/products/details/2061]

Membership News
A new audio interview has been posted. This month, Moira Bucciarelli talks to Brigitte Kahl.

Brigitte Kahl received the Th.D. (1983) and the Dr.Sc.Theol. (1986) from Humboldt University in Berlin. She is an ordained minister of the Protestant Church of Berlin-Brandenburg. As a Professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary and an Associate Professor at the Columbia Religion Department, a major focus of her work has been examining the relationship between New Testament and Empire.

We have 2 winners of the Optional Profile Information drawing for June:

Ben C. Blackwell and Renate Viveen Hood

Completing the Optional Profile Information page in your membership profile automatically enters you in a random drawing to win a free one-year membership. 

Give generously to the Society Fund.

Meetings and Events

Read a Report from the International Meeting in Rome

[http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=836]

Career Center

Employer Registration for the 2009 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans is now open!  The Career Center provides the opportunity for employers and those seeking employment to register for interviews at the AM, as well as interview facilities, job listings, candidate credentials, and a messaging service.

We have 2 winners of the Optional Profile Information drawing in May:

Russell Morton and Kevin Caldwell

Completing the Optional Profile Information page in your membership profile automatically enters you in a random drawing to win a free one-year membership. 

Give generously to the Society Fund.

Meetings and Events

Annual Meeting registration prices step up on July 1: register now to get the Early Bird prices.

[http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/AnnualMeeting.aspx]

Report from the International Meeting

The International Meeting in Rome opens today with the Opening Session: The Pontifical Biblical Institute: A Century of History

Kent Richards, Society of Biblical Literature, Presiding

Rev. José María Abrego de Lacy, S.J., Rector, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Welcome

Maurice Gilbert, Pontifical Biblical Institute

Paul Achtemeier, Union Theological Seminary, Respondent

Lawrence Boadt, Washington Theological Union, Respondent

James Kugel, Harvard University, Respondent

The Opening Session is followed by the Opening Reception this evening.

Annual Meeting 2009
- Additional Meeting Registration is now available on-line.
- To register online, click here.
- To fax or mail in your Additional Meeting registration, download this form.
- Exhibitor registration and Housing now posted .

Publications
- With your continued support, we were able to add ten more books to the ICI Book Program.
       
Please support SBL by donating today at https://www.sbl-site.org/membership/donatenow.aspx

Membership
Winners of a free one-year membership

Congratulations and thank you for completing your optional profile.  The winners are:
 
March - Cynthia Kittredge and Richard Miller
April - Nina E. Livesay and William L. Lyons

Completing the Optional Profile Information page in your membership profile automatically enters you in a random drawing to win a free one-year membership.          

SBL Interviews
- Carol Bakhos is our featured interviewee for May.

Web site updates
Syllabi Collection — now also linked to the Wabash and AAR syllabi collections. If you have developed a syllabus that worked well this year—send it in!

Religion and the Bible 
Jonathan Z. Smith
 
Whatever Happened in the Valley of Shinar? A Response to Theodore Hiebert
André Lacocque
 
Ideology and Social Context of the Deuteronomic Women's Sex Laws (Deuteronomy 22:13-29)
Cynthia Edenburg
 
Samson's Last Laugh: S/ŠHQ The Pun in Judges 16:25-27
Charles Halton
 
Topographical Considerations and Redaction Criticism in 2 Kings 3
Erasmus Gass
 
Why 2 Kings 17 Does Not Constitute a Chapter of Reflection in the "Deuteronomistic History"
Hartmut H. Rösel
 
The Devil Made David Do It … Or Did He? The Nature, Identity, and Literary Origins of the Satan in 1 Chronicles 21:1
Ryan E. Stokes
   
"She Binds Her Arms": Rereading Proverbs 31:17
Tzvi Novick
  
Accession Days and Holidays: The Origins of the Jewish Festival of Purim
Jona Schellekens
 
Rachel's Tomb 
Benjamin D. Cox and Susan Ackerman

April SBL Forum has been posted:

FEATURE
The Perils of Prepublication in the Digital Age: Essenes, Latrines, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Ian Werrett 

IN THE CLASSROOM
Biblical Studies in the Context of the Emerging Religion Major
Jane S. Webster

IN POPULAR CULTURE
Evil in Contemporary American Film: Deep Darkness and Eschatological Hope
Greg Garrett
 
The Apocalypse of John and Its Mediators, or Why Johnny Cash Wrote a Better Apocalypse than John of Patmos!
William John Lyons

 SBL Spring Sale
Almost all new, recent, and backlisted titles are available to SBL members at a forty percent discount during the spring sale. Download the order form, then mail, fax, or phone your order by June 15. If you prefer to order at the SBL Store, make sure to use the promo code SPG2009 at checkout to receive your discount.

The cost of shipping books is high, but we have been able to get the books to libraries through a variety of ways that cost us nothing. Sometimes a benefactor of a school provides funds. Last year a professor in the United States paid to ship books to China. In March 2009, we were able to supply fifty-three pounds of books for a library in Ethiopia by getting them to a group that was going there. They each put a few books in their suitcases and delivered them to the library. We also have partnered with the Theological Book Network (TBN) to ship books to Kenya and have donated overstocked books to TBN for their program.

Through creative partnerships and donations, such as to the SBL Society Fund, we can continue this project and make it grow. This is one more way that SBL is striving to fulfill our mission to foster biblical scholarship internationally.

Rome

2009 International Registration is Open!

Register today for the 2009 SBL International Meeting

Celebrating the Centenary of Pontifical Biblical Institute

New Orleans

2009 Annual Meeting Registration

Super-Saver Rates Ending Soon.

Register by March 31^st for Super-Saver Rates

Three new affiliate organizations will be joining the SBL Annual Meeting! We are excited to announce the Institute for Biblical Research, the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Gospel and Our Culture Network will be with us in New Orleans.

Publications

            SBL SPRING SALE

Almost all new, recent, and backlisted titles are available to SBL members at a forty percent discount during the spring sale.

Download the order form, then mail, fax, or phone your order by June 15.

If you prefer to order at the SBL Store, make sure to use the promo code

SPG2009 at checkout to receive your discount.

NEW TITLES

The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400

Ramsay MacMullen

The author uses excavation reports about hundreds of churches of the fourth century to show what worshipers did in them and in the cemeteries where most of them were built. What emerges, in this richly illustrated work, is a religion that ordinary Christians, by far the majority, practiced in a different and largely forgotten second church. The picture fits with textual evidence that has been often misunderstood or little noticed.

The Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War: Rhetorical Analysis and Historical Observations

Mark Andrew Brighton

This book offers a comprehensive study of the Sicarii in Josephus’s Judean War. In a departure from the classical proposal that the Sicarii were an armed and fanatical off-shoot of the Zealots, this work concludes that from a historical perspective, “Sicarii” was a somewhat fluid term used to describe Jews of the Judean revolt who were associated with acts of violence against their own people for religious/political ends.

International Cooperation Initiative's (ICI) Teaching Collaboration Program

After several months in development, SBL is pleased to announce that the online forms for participation in the International Cooperation Initiative's (ICI) Teaching Collaboration program are now available. The forms are designed for institutions and scholars to provide the necessary information for SBL to establish databases that will facilitate international partnerships in biblical studies. In the first phase of the project, lists containing the pertinent information will be created and posted on the SBL web site; the long-term goal is for searchable databases to be established.

Scholars who are interested in and willing to (co)supervise and generally mentor students in institutions outside their home country, those who are willing to teach courses for appropriate individuals through distance education via e-communication, or those who would like to travel to another country to teach are all encouraged to participate in this exciting initiative.  Some host institutions may be able to only provide room and/or board, but the rewards of living in and experiencing the culture of another country cannot be measured monetarily. Retirees, as well as scholars on sabbatical or with travel time, are invited to join this initiative.

Institutions that are interested in these types of cooperative efforts will be listed separately. Individual scholars and schools will then have the information needed to contact each other and make their own arrangements. The SBL will not be responsible for any arrangements made by these parties. The SBL, as the host of these lists, will take reasonable steps to protect the privacy of the individuals who offer their services through these databases. Scholars and institutions that wish to participate should complete the appropriate online forms and submit the information for inclusion in the databases to SBL.

For more information on the ICI, please go to http://www.sbl-site.org/InternationalCoopInitiative.aspx or contact the SBL staff liaison, Leigh Andersen

SBL Interviews, a new series of audio interviews with members.

SBL Greek: SBL is pleased to announce the release of the SBL Greek font.  SBL Greek is an advanced Unicode font for use on the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms.  It is the second in the SBL font series, along with SBL Hebrew.  Please be sure to check out the Biblical Font FAQ as well by clicking here. 

Our Font Forum has also moved.  We invite you to join the discussion about all things SBL Fonts at our new location.

Humanities Advocacy Day

A member is requesting participation in a survey on Introductory Bible Courses and Student Religious Commitment.

This month on The SBL Forum:

Love Turns into Hate: The Rape of Tamar (2 Sam 13:1–22) in Baroque Art 
Sara Kipfer

Know*Be*Do: Using the Bible to Teach Ethics to Children 
Valerie A. Stein

"They’ve Given You a Number and Taken Away Your Name": Gnostic Themes in The Prisoner, Television’s Ultimate Cult Classic” 
Mark Holwager and Valarie Ziegler

The City as Salvific Space: Heterotopic Place and Environmental Ethics in the New Jerusalem )
Thomas W. Martin

PLUS! Essential links to articles and news items of interest and much more!

SBL has posted additional titles to the International Cooperation Initiative Online Books page. We are pleased to welcome our publishing partner, Brown Judaic Studies (BJS), to this program. There are currently six BJS titles available free of charge to scholars and students who live in countries whose GDP is considerably less than the average GDP of the US and the EU. Please visit the ICI book page to view a list of available SBL and BJS titles.

JBL Subscriptions

The deadline for subscriptions to JBL that will include the Spring 2009 issue has been extended to March 4. If you set aside your renewal notice thinking you would get to it later, now is the time to take action! We welcome new subscribers and urge members to make sure that their libraries do not allow their JBL subscriptions to lapse. For more information on SBL journals, please go to our website.

SBL Spring Sale

Almost all new, recent, and backlisted titles are available to SBL members at a forty percent discount during the spring sale.

Download the order form, then mail, fax, or phone your order by June 15.

If you prefer to order at the SBL Store, make sure to use the promo code

SPG2009 at checkout to receive your discount.

New Title

They Were All Together in One Place?: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism

Edited by Randall C. Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia

Critics from three major racial/ethnic minority communities in the United States—African American, Asian American, and Latino/a American—focus on the problematic of race and ethnicity in the Bible and in contemporary biblical interpretation. With keen eyes on both ancient text and contemporary context, contributors pay close attention to how racial/ethnic dynamics intersect with other differential relations of power such as gender, class, sexuality, and colonialism.

Meetings and Events

New Orleans

2009 Annual Meeting Registration is Open!

Register today for the 2009 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Teaching Bible Electives in School Systems: A Workshop for Faculty will be offered at several regional meetings in March including the Pacific Coast, Southeast and Southwest regional meetings.

Bible Electives in Public Schools: A Guide can now be viewed on-line (8.55MB) or print copies ordered by e-mailing Moira Bucciarelli.

Congratulations to Review of Biblical Literature

2009 is the ten-year anniversary of the Review of Biblical Literature. Please give generously this year to honor the work of all the SBL members and all of the publishers who volunteer their time and books on this valued service. In support of these efforts, please make a tax-deductible contribution to the Society Fund by visiting our website at www.sbl-site.org

REGISTER FOR A FREE-MEMBERSHIP!

We encourage all of our members to take a few minutes to update or complete their Optional Profile. Log in your account on our website and click on “My Profile.” By completing the Optional Profile Information page, you will be automatically entered into a drawing for a free membership. Names will be randomly selected twice a month. Winners will be notified by e-mail or mail. One entry per member per calendar year.