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2022 Annual Meeting
Meeting Begins: 11/19/2022
Meeting Ends: 11/22/2022
Call for Papers Opens: 1/19/2022
Call for Papers Closes: 3/18/2022
Requirements for Participation
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Program Units
Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Description: Pedagogy and the classroom each provides a hermeneutical and heuristic frame of reference for the reading and interpretation of the Bible. Each classroom is also part of a larger institutional context has its own mission statement and culture. These provide concrete interpretive communities in which reading and interpretation take place. The exploration of the dynamics of teaching within the context of pedagogical concerns, institutional goals and cultures, and specific classroom communities is the goal of the group's agenda.
Call for papers: 2022 Annual Meeting
For the 2022 SBL meeting, we seek paper proposals in the following three areas:
Session #1: Teaching Biblical Texts with Film
Students are increasingly coming to class having experienced the Bible through film or other media, as opposed to having read the text. In addition, some students are becoming increasingly desirous to watch videos as opposed to reading. What opportunities and challenges does this afford for teachers of biblical studies? How have you integrated video to effectively teach a specific text? How have you substituted videos for readings to improve overall student learning? What non-biblically based movie clips have you used to teach biblical texts? Special consideration will be given to proposals that model the suggested teaching practice.
Session #2: Teaching Tips for 2022
What best practices for the Biblical Studies classroom do you have? Propose an engaging 20-minute presentation that models teaching and learning practices, engages attendees in learning, and shows promise of helping learners develop desirable biblical literature study skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Presentations might also model approaches that contribute to the ethical formation of students (i.e. building character, fostering concern for the common good, creating responsible citizens, etc.).
Joint Session with “Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context”: Gaming and Biblical Studies
“Reacting to the Past” (https://reacti“Reacting to the Past” (https://reacting.barnard.edu) is a simulation-based approach to teaching with simulation games. Students are assigned roles in a historical setting and use primary texts to debate with their classmates. Other simulation activities exist. This session invites instructors who have used "Reacting to the Past" or similar approaches to present and reflect on the impact of these games.
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African Biblical Hermeneutics
Description: This section is devoted to the study of the Bible from African perspectives, and focuses on African issues. A diversity of methods reflecting the social-cultural diversity of Africa is used in reading the Bible. The emphasis is on encouraging readings of the Bible that are shaped by African perspectives and issues, and giving voice to African biblical scholars as they contribute to global biblical scholarship. The unit expects to publish essays from its sessions.
Call for papers: 1)Developments in Methodologies and Theories of African Biblical Interpretation-This session invites papers utilizing various methods, theories, contexts, and concerns to generate African interpretations of specific biblical texts. Proposals that apply new reading methods (including trans-disciplinary ones) to particular books or themes of the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. 2) Reading the Bible in the Context of Covid 19-The session invites papers that examine reading paradigms and methodologies generated in response to Covid 19 and related pandemics. Papers utilizing theories and methods from the fields of health, economics, ethnicity and race, religion and faith, ecology, spirituality, and work in relation to the African context are especially welcome. 3) Genesis: African Interpretations-This session calls for papers that utilize any of the following approaches to interpreting the book of Genesis: inter-testamental, inter-textual, inter-contextual, inter-religious, and inter-disciplinary African interpretations of the book of Genesis. Abstracts should engage specific texts from the book of Genesis, with attention to the ancient biblical culture, modern African culture, and the themes of empire, environment, exile/migration, and ancestors. 4) ABH/AASR: African Oral Traditions and the Bible
African oral pedagogies and epistemologies are critical to understanding the Bible and its impact on identity formation and communal belonging. Jesus’ and early Christian epistemologies and pedagogies reflected the practices of Jewish and Hellenistic oral cultures. Considering that storytelling and ritual actions constitute powerful forms of symbolic speech that convey and connect Christian history and present practice, this joint session between ABH and AASR invites proposals of formal papers to participate in a panel that explores the interaction between African oral traditions and biblical interpretation.
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African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Description: The purpose of the African American Biblical Hermeneutics Section (AABHS) is to engage in the interdisciplinary and holistic study of the Bible and its place in a multi-faceted and complex African-American cultural Weltanschauung. The section provides a forum for scholarly discussion of any aspect of engagement with the bible from the perspective of African American culture, history, literature, or politics. It encourages interdisciplinary discussions about hermeneutics and culture and strives to encourage emerging scholars in publishing scholarly work in the field and advancing the study of African American hermeneutics.
Call for papers: CALL FOR PAPERS 2022
The African American Biblical Hermeneutics section welcomes proposals for papers on various aspects of engagement with the Bible from the perspective of African American culture, history, literature, or politics. Four (4) sessions are planned for the unit. The first session will be a joint session with the Bible and Practical Theology section. We welcome papers that address issues of borders and difference in the biblical world in conversation with the range of global, political issues that have arisen around racialized violence, immigration, and xenophobia. The second session is an invited panel dedicated to the work of Cain Hope Felder (1943-2019), renowned New Testament scholar, editor of Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, and long-time member of the faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary and Howard University School of Divinity. The third session, “Minoritized Bodies in Biblical Studies Spaces” is an invited panel designed to explore the struggles, shifts, and strategies for scholars of color. This panel is co-sponsored with Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession Committee of SBL (CUREMP). The fourth session is an open call for paper proposals taking up interdisciplinary discussions advancing the study of African American biblical hermeneutics.
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Ancient Education: Social, Intellectual, and Material Contexts
Description: Ancient Education: Social, Intellectual, and Material Contexts invites
conversation about the production and transmission of knowledge in the
late ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. Rather than treating social
networks, material artifacts, and curricular frameworks separately, we
explore their manifold intersections and investigate their contexts and
implications. The unit locates the production of religious knowledge within
capacious social, intellectual, and material histories, crossing geographical,
linguistic, and religious boundaries that often divide scholarly conversation.
Call for papers: Ancient Education: Social, Intellectual, and Material Contexts invites
conversation about the production and transmission of knowledge in the
late ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. Rather than treating social
networks, material artifacts, and curricular frameworks separately, we
explore their manifold intersections and investigate their contexts and
implications. The unit locates the production of religious knowledge within
capacious social, intellectual, and material histories, crossing geographical,
linguistic, and religious boundaries that often divide scholarly conversation.
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Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Description: The Section on Ancient Fiction and Early Jewish and Christian Narrative fosters methodologically diverse analyses of these ancient narratives, including: their interplay and interconnections; socio-cultural contexts; representations of reality, including religion; and narrative form, including plot, character, style, voice, etc.
Call for papers: The Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative section is planning three sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting. The first will focus on the topic "fictional masculinities." For this session we invite proposals that address various conceptions and constructions of masculinity in ancient fiction. The focus of the second session will be on "disability in ancient fiction." For this session we invite proposals that address the representation, description, and/or construction of disabled bodies or neuro-divergence in ancient fiction. Because of the influence that many works of ancient fiction continue to exercise, proposals for this session may also address questions related to the reception of these texts. For the third session, we invite proposals on any topic related to the interests of the Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative program unit.
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Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Description: This section examines the ways that ancient pictorial material informs interpretations of biblical texts. We welcome papers that explore the relationships between iconographic and textual materials as well as papers that deal exclusively with iconographic issues.
Call for papers: We continue our collaboration with “Nature Imagery and Conceptions of Nature in the Bible.” We are planning a session on that topic as well as an open session. We welcome paper proposals on nature as well as papers that fall within the general parameters of the ANE Iconography and the Bible section.
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Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars
Description: The Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars is an international association of biblical scholars who are affiliated with the churches of the Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church in the U.S., the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Church of England. Its purpose is to support biblical scholarship at all levels in the Anglican Communion. AABS is dedicated to fostering greater involvement of biblical scholars in the life of Anglican churches, and to promoting the development of resources for biblical studies in Anglican theological education.
Call for papers: Plans for the 2022 meeting of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars (AABS) are still under discussion, although we are not calling for paper proposals. However, there will be a virtual component to the meeting even if there is also an in-person component, and the virtual component may occur prior to the SBL meeting. Information will be made available through announcements on the SBL website and in the SBL newsletter and through direct emailings to all on our emailing list. If you wish to be added to that list, email Elizabeth Struthers Malbon at malbon@vt.edu with your request.
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Apocalypse Now: Apocalyptic Reception and Impact throughout History
Description: Apocalypse Now is conceived as an interdisciplinary research group aiming to analyze the effective history of biblical and related apocalyptic literature (Daniel, Revelation, Enoch etc.) in the creation, establishment, and development of eschatological groups from antiquity to the present within the Abrahamic traditions, and in particular those of apocalyptic nature. It is of much interest to our work to observe how those groups developed networks of eschatological nature throughout history that can be found today at the basis of some social and political movements. By analysing in tandem the nature of the different groups over the centuries and how eschatological hope circulated among them at different moments, this research unit aims to foster and develop new interpretation theories that can lead to a better understanding of the use of apocalyptic expectations in the 21st century, and in particular, of the processes that led apocalypticism to take peaceful and/or violent forms.
Call for papers: Outside academia, the term ‘apocalyptic’ is commonly used to refer to cataclysmic events, either in movies or in the news. This is indicative of the perceived role of violence in apocalyptic texts and traditions. Violence and graphic depictions of violent battles and actions play an important role in apocalyptic material and expectations. This raises the question of how to interpret these apparent violent characteristics of apocalyptic texts. Are they meant as accurate descriptions of events that are expected to take place? Or should they be interpreted in a symbolic way? Throughout history, many groups of different religious backgrounds have opted for the literal interpretation. In 2022 this group intends to organize one session by invitation on new readings on Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium (1st ed. 1957), and two open sessions in which both the literary role of violence in apocalyptic texts and the influence of the violent aspects of these texts on the behavior of interpreting communities are highlighted. Of special interest is the interaction between the literary violence and violent use and/or understandings of apocalyptic texts.
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Aramaic Studies
Description: The Aramaic studies section is intended to provide a forum for scholars interested in various aspects of Aramaic language. Previous paper topics have included aspects of the Targumim, Qumran Aramaic, Peshitta, Samaritan papyri, and Elephantine Aramaic.
Call for papers: Call for Papers: The Aramaic Studies unit is planning three sessions for the 2022 Annual Meeting. We invite submissions for two open sessions. Our third session is a joint session co-sponsored with the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew unit on the topic "Language of Aramaic and Hebrew Epigraphy in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods." A great deal of new data has been published lately, e.g., from Idumea and Judea, while advanced methods of analysis—electronic and historical-linguistic—permit broadening of the dialectological and historical discussion. The unit of Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew, together with the unit of Aramaic Studies, invite scholars to submit proposals for papers that pertain to the Aramaic and Hebrew epigraphic materials of these periods.
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Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Description: The goal of this unit is to promote the study of material culture associated with religious activity in the Hellenistic and Roman periods and to showcase new theoretical approaches to this evidence. Presentations related to Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman religion, broadly defined, are all welcome.
Call for papers: We welcome any paper proposal that substantially addresses material culture and religious activity in the Roman world. We are also interested in papers that address the following:
1) "In and Around Sanctuaries": we seek papers that investigate subsidiary structures—not the main altar/temple/church, but e.g. secondary shrines/altars/chapels, boundaries, and other architectural facilities like dining rooms, dormitories, or storage areas—and objects or images in and around the sanctuary (e.g. statues, offerings, icons, graffiti), and the worshippers’ interactions with them, their movements or itineraries through space, rituals, gestures, performances, from archaeological and/or literary evidence.
And 2) "Wilderness and Frontiers": we welcome papers that discuss how built spaces and material cultures engage with wilderness and frontiers, whether real or imagined. Among questions to consider are how representations of wilderness are used to signal the “uncivilized” and the ways that religious structures, art, and objects are used to conquer and colonize along frontiers.
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Archaeology of Roman Palestine
Description: This program unit explores the socio-political, economic, cultural, and
religious history of Roman Palestine (ca. first century BCE to fifth century
CE) through its material remains. The goal is to emphasize the importance
of archaeology as an independent source of evidence for the study of early
Judaism and Christianity.
Call for papers: This year’s two sessions will focus on the Jerusalem Temple and its legacy. The first session centers on “The Jerusalem Temple, Temple Mount, and Temple-Related Material Culture during the Late Hellenistic–Early Roman Period.” This session will explore various material aspects of the temple, its context, and its significance in the region from around the second century BCE to the late-first century CE. To provide a variety of perspectives on this topic, we invite proposals for papers dealing with a wide range of issues, including but not limited to the architectural transition between the Hasmonean and Herodian temple complexes; the construction and development of the Herodian Temple Mount; the place of the Jerusalem temple in Herod’s larger building program; and material reflections of temple ritual apart from the temple mount (such as the use of pre-70 temple iconography or ritual activity outside of Jerusalem). It is hoped that by exploring these and related topics, this session can further illuminate the physical aspects and historical significance of the Second Temple during its final century as a way to better understand its long-term impact on the region.
The second session will focus on “The Legacy of the Jerusalem Temple in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” To more fully understand the temple’s long reaching impact, we invite proposals for papers dealing with a wide range of issues, including but not limited to the legacy of the temple in post-70 liturgy, art, and architecture as seen in the synagogues, churches, and mosques of the late Roman through early Islamic periods, as well as other reflections of temple-related material culture in late antique Palestine. It is hoped that by exploring these and related topics, this session can further illuminate the profound influence the Jerusalem temple had on the physical, religious, and social landscape of the region long after its loss at the hands of the Romans.
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Art and Religions of Antiquity
Description: This consultation examines the visual and material evidence of the religions of the Mediterranean basin in antiquity (Judaism, Christianity, and Greco-Roman "paganism") as well as the methods by which scholars study these materials alongside textual or documentary evidence.
Call for papers: The Magic of the Crafted Image: Statues, Icons, Talismans
[Cosponsored by AAR Religion in Premodern Europe Group]
Papers are invited that consider statuary, figurines, poppets, processional sculpture, astral talismans, iconic/sacred books,as magical agents and/or ritual subjects:in the context of object-agency, ritual performance, and the lives of images. A sizeable theoretical literature has come to regard images not as passive objects of ritual or decorative activity but as agents in a world of vital things. We invite papers that can bring these new frameworks to bear on particular artifacts. Papers should interact with Laurel Kendall’s Mediums and Magical Things: Statues, Paintings, and Masks in Asian Places (Berkeley, 2021).
Passages and Doorways
Inspired by Emilie van Opstall’s recent volume Sacred Thresholds: The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity (Leiden 2018), we invite papers that address the iconography, epigraphy, and meanings of transition zones and passages in architecture: e.g., windows, doorways, lintels, thresholds, hallways, and approaches in temples, churches, synagogues, and other religious areas. How is a door a ritual object? How is a doorway a frame for theophany? How does writing function at transition points? What sorts of images cluster around entrances?
The Arts of Healing: Images and Crafts
While various crafts serve healing rituals (in the form of votive objects and healing images), iconography preserves both legends and the promise of healing miracles – on walls, icons, relief images, and pilgrims’ eulogiae. How do votive objects and healing iconography effect and sustain a culture of healing? How are different types of healing distinguished through craft and representation? Papers should address the artifacts of healing cults and stories ranging from antiquity to the early medieval/byzantine era, particularly papers that address the context of pandemics.
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Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Description: The unit promotes Asian and Asian American biblical scholarship, highlighting the broad range of diversity that makes up the different Asian and Asian American communities. It also aims to contribute to diversifying biblical scholarship and expanding biblical studies in terms of topics, approaches and discourses.
Call for papers: The Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics Seminar invites proposals addressing the following themes: Theme 1: “The current state of scholarship in Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics.” Proposals may include: (1) an analysis of the history and current state of biblical scholarship in a particular nation state in Asia (e.g., South Korea, Philippines, Myanmar, Japan, China, Indonesia); (2) a specific theory or methodology developed in Asian or Asian-American biblical scholarship (e.g., feminist, postcolonial, sexuality); (3) the state of scholarship around a particular book (e.g., the reading of Matthew, or the reading of Pentateuch) in the Asian or Asian-American context. Theme 2: Radical Women-of-Color-Centered Biblical Criticism. With the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, Latina/o and Latin American Biblical Interpretation, and Womanist Interpretation program units, we invite papers from women-of-color biblical scholars to discuss the history, benefits, and challenges of building a radical women-of-color coalitional movement within the field of biblical studies. Panelists will be encouraged to engage the contributions of radical feminists of color (see Minoritized Criticism and Bib Interp CFP for further description). Theme 3: Asian and Asian-American Interpretations of Paul. With the Pauline Theology section, we invite proposals that address Asian and Asian-American (AA-A) contextual readings of Paul, particularly those that analyze and appropriate Pauline texts and themes as resources for AA-A theological reflection and take into account AA-A histories, identities, and social locations (see Pauline Theology CFP for further description). We will have one additional session: A Review of Gale Yee’s Toward an Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics: An Intersectional Anthology (Cascade, 2021) by a panel of invited scholars.
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Assyriology and the Bible
Description: Assyriology and the Bible section provides the focused context for papers dealing with various Mesopotamian-related topics. It seeks to generate strong integrative research between the disciplines of Assyriology and Biblical Studies by encouraging adept historiographic, philological, literary and/or iconographic work.
Call for papers: In Denver, the Assyriology and the Bible Section will host an invited, joint session on "Magic and Its Practitioners" with the Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World Section, which will focus on focus on magical practices as part of cultic religion as well as the cultic in magical practices. We will also host a second year of joint sessions on “Hope” in collaboration with the Prophetic Texts in their Ancient Contexts Section. Additionally, Assyriology and the Bible will host open sessions, for which we will consider proposals on any subject related to the study of both Assyriology and the Bible. Proposals relating to the themes of either of the joint sessions are also welcome.
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Bible and Emotion
Description: This section focuses on understanding the spectrum of emotions displayed throughout the Bible in their literary and cultural contexts, informed by the burgeoning cross-disciplinary study of emotion in contemporary philosophy, psychology, literary theory, linguistics, neuroscience, politics, economics and other fields.
Call for papers: The Bible and Emotion Section will host three sessions in 2022. The first session is OPEN. We invite proposals related to the critical study of emotion across the full range of biblical literature and closely related literature. We are interested in papers that examine divine and/or human emotions in a biblical text, set of texts, book, or genre. The theme of the second session is Emotion and Power. Power and emotion are intimately related as constituent elements of all social life. Emotions are provoked by and produced within social interactions—and the form and content of social interactions are governed by power. Emotions serve as a vehicle for extending and reinforcing existing power structures, but they can also function as a means of resisting, defying, subverting, or redefining the terms of a power relationship. Emotions directed at another person such as fear, anger, disgust, shame, grief, pity, and hate reveal how the one experiencing those emotions imagines who does and who should possess power over whom and who has, should have, or should not have the power to act in certain ways. We invite proposals that explore the intersection between power and emotion in domains such as politics, gender, and sexuality. We will also host a joint session entitled Space and Affect Theory with the Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity program unit. We invite proposals that explore affect theory broadly conceived and ways that affects and emotions are represented, expressed, provoked, and imagined in relation to physical, literary, or imagined spaces. Papers that explore pleasant emotions and emotions of disgust in relation to space are especially encouraged.
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Bible and Ethics
Description: This unit explores ethical issues related to the biblical canon. It seeks to bring together exegetes of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in order to discuss similarities, differences, and intertextual connections between the various ethical traditions in biblical literature and their respective contexts.
Call for papers: We invite papers that discuss the so-called “Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang”, i.e. the relation between people’s deeds and their wellbeing. In other words, to what extent can individuals be regarded as ethically responsible for their fate and fortune? We welcome papers that explore this question through a study of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and/or the New Testament. The session will seek to bring together exegetes of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in order to discuss similarities, differences, and intertextual connections between the various ethical traditions in biblical literature and their respective contexts in response to this question.
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Bible and Film
Description: This unit focuses on the critical analysis and interpretation of the multiple intersections between Bible and Cinema. Our focus is broad, giving attention to “Bible films” (“Bible on Film”), the use and treatment of biblical texts in films (“Bible in Film”), how films and biblical texts can function in analogous ways (“Bible as Film” / “Film as Bible”), and how Bible and Film can be placed into mutually critical dialogue. We explore how biblical texts can enhance our understanding of cinema, and how films can offer lenses for helping us (re)interpret biblical texts. In short, we welcome papers that seek to illuminate our understanding of Bible, Film, or both. (This unit was titled Scripture and Film through 2013).
Call for papers: This year we will sponsor or co-sponsor the following calls: (1) “Catastrophe and the Bible” (Co-sponsored with AAR’s Religion, Film, and Visual Culture unit). We invite proposals that consider various methodological approaches to visual culture that put the Bible into conversation with some kind of catastrophe, small- or large-scale. Someone’s world is ending, somehow, and the Bible casts a shadow over the proceedings. We are especially (but not only) interested in examinations of works that may not be all that thrilled with this shadow. For instance, the recent Indigenous zombie apocalypse film Blood Quantum is clearly anti-colonial and opens with a quote from Exodus 34:12 about treaties. (2) “Trauma, Film, and Society” (Co-sponsored with Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures unit). As the world struggles to manage the trauma of Covid, we invite proposals that investigate societal trauma in the Bible and film. We welcome all papers that can illuminate our understanding of trauma in the Bible and film using social scientific approaches. (3) Open session. We also invite proposals for an open session on any subject pertaining to Bible and Film (both broadly construed). All proposals should make clear how the presenter will establish a dialogue between a given film and biblical text as well as how this dialogue enriches our interpretation of each. Please note that we expect presenters to incorporate film clips into all presentations. We are also committed to insuring diversity among our presenters as well as diversity of subject matter in terms of global cinema.
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Bible and Popular Culture
Description: This unit explores and analyzes the relationship between the Bible and popular culture. It focuses on materials designed for everyday life—comic strips, advertisements, theme parks, popular music, etc. Drawing from a variety of disciplines and analyzing both the printed and visual media, presenters will explore the interaction between biblical text and popular culture.
Call for papers: The Bible and Popular Culture Unit will host two sessions in 2022. Our first session is an open session, and we invite and welcome proposals for papers focusing on any aspect of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture.
Our second session is a joint session with Intertexuality in the Hebrew Bible exploring unexpected intersections between biblical texts and pop culture productions. Intertextuality puts two or more unlike things in conversation in order to illuminate each other and create new and unexpected "truths" via their dialogue. Understood in this way, we invite presenters to put the Hebrew Bible and pop culture into unsuspected dialogues that stimulate novel perspectives and ideas. For example, how might reading science fiction change the way we understand prophecy? What new modes of feminist literature could be inspired from the intersections of Beyonce and Judith? How might Tik Tokers and the biblical writers teach each other and future communicators about (un)effective storytelling? What does K-Pop have to do with the Deuteronomistic History? How might reading modern poets and Psalms together create new understandings of poetry? Presenters are encouraged to pursue creative lines of investigation that bring the Hebrew Bible and modern examples of popular culture into new and fresh dialogue.
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Bible and Practical Theology
Description: This section aims to promote the development of integrative knowledge centered upon the intersections between biblical interpretation and practical theology. We want to challenge both doctrinal reductionism and the distancing inherent in the historical-critical method, as well as encourage relational and interactive readings of both human situations and biblical texts in order to reveal their multivalence.
Call for papers: Bible and Practical Theology will host three sessions.
The first session will be an open session: We invite papers on any issue emerging out of the intersections of biblical interpretation and practical theology (liturgy, formation, education, administration, pastoral care, and public theology) that encourages relational and interactive readings of both human situations and biblical texts. We encourage papers that address issues of resiliency and positive practices that respond to the culture of violence in America, particularly gun violence and mass shootings.
The second session will be a joint session with the African American Biblical Hermeneutics Section. We welcome papers that address issues of borders and difference in the biblical world in conversation with the range of global, political issues that have arisen around racialized violence, immigration, and xenophobia.
The third session welcomes papers that include a focus on the January 6, 2021 political insurrection at the United States Capitol. We encourage papers that deal with biblical interpretations that are informed by family systems, community division, and issues of mental health.
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Bible and Visual Art
Description: The purpose of the section is to provide a forum at the national SBL to explore historical, hermeneutical, theological, iconographic, and/or theoretical aspects related to the interpretation of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures in visual art through the centuries.
Call for papers: The Bible and Visual Art section welcomes submissions for the following two sessions at the Annual Meeting in 2022: (1) We invite proposals on the Bible and art of Indigenous North American and Latin American cultures, and especially encourage proposals related to biblical art in public spaces in the Denver area; (2) For our open session, we invite proposals that fall within our broad purpose: to explore historical, hermeneutical, theological, iconographic and/or theoretical aspects related to the interpretation of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures in visual art through the centuries. There will also be a third session, joint with the Gospel of Luke section, postponed from 2021 (papers already approved).
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Bible in America
Description: This group will examine the uses of both an abstract idea of "the Bible" and
of particular biblical narratives by different groups, considering the Bible's
utility for social control, resistance, identity and group formation. Our forum
will bring together disparate discussions touching on the Bible
Call for papers: We invite papers for one session on the topic "The Bible and Reproductive Rights." For our second session we invite papers on any aspect of the Bible's use and reception in America.
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Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Description: This section (a) provides a forum for sustained and focused attention on the concept of myth and its place in biblical studies and (b) encourages the development and refinement of multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to this area of inquiry.
Call for papers: For our first session, we welcome proposals on the use of myth and myth theory in any area of biblical studies. We especially encourage papers that explore various theories of myth and what it means to utilize this category within biblical studies. We welcome participants from diverse specializations, including Hebrew Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature, gospel studies, and Greco-Roman Religions. We aim to include studies covering a range of methodologies, critical theories, and types of data: textual and literary criticisms, philology, cognitive sciences, archaeology, art history, and social and anthropological theories.
Our second session will cover myth in polemical literature and heresiology. Much of biblical literature is also polemical literature, a genre that attempts to undermine and/or vilify opponents, categorizing perceived insiders as outsiders. One biblical writer accused his opponents of using “myths and endless genealogies” (1 Tim 1:4). Significantly, polemicists of all kinds also used myths to frame and defame their opponents; for instance myths of succession (fictive teacher-disciple relationships), myths of licentiousness (wild sexual acts under cover of night), fall myths attacking the putative founder of a movement (e.g., the founder falls from grace due to lust, jealousy, or for failing to obtain a leadership position), and so on. For this session, accordingly, we invite papers that reflect on myth employed for polemical or heresiological purposes. We encourage, that is, reflection on polemicists themselves as prolific and creative mythmakers, to theorize specifically what it meant for them to weaponize myth and why (or why not) it proved effective.
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Biblical Archaeology Society
Description: The Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) was founded in 1974 as a nonprofit, nondenominational, educational organization dedicated to the dissemination of information about archaeology in the Bible lands. BAS’s flagship publication, Biblical Archaeology Review, is the only magazine that connects the academic study of archaeology to a broad general audience eager to understand the world of the Bible.
Call for papers: This year’s session, organized by the editors of Biblical Archaeology Review magazine, will provide accessible overviews of recent trends and scholarship related to archaeological sites, discoveries, and findings from the biblical world. Session presentations aim to present the latest archaeological scholarship to scholars and educators who have a general interest in learning more about the historical, cultural, and material context of the biblical past.
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Biblical Exegesis from Eastern Orthodox Perspectives
Description: This unit fosters interpretation of biblical texts through engagement with Eastern Orthodox interpretive tradition. Such engagement might include critical reflection on Eastern patristics, Orthodox liturgical tradition, and modern Orthodox theologians to stimulate theological interpretation. The consultation will bring Orthodox perspectives to bear on contemporary exegetical issues.
Call for papers: Our unit welcomes proposals for the following four sessions: 1) A joint panel with the Book of Ezekiel section on passages describing the manifestation of the deity in Ezekiel (Ezek 1-3, 8-11, 40-48). We invite submissions either on the reception of these texts by Jewish and Christian authors in Late Antiquity or on the function of these passages in the context of the book’s formation.
2) A joint session with the Religion and Philosophy in Late Antiquity seminar regarding exegesis and anti-Christian polemics. We invite contributions that scrutinize how ancient exegetes react to non-Christian philosophers (e.g., Celsus, Porphyry) who challenge Christian traditions and vice versa.
3) Our third session will be devoted to fresh perspectives on St. John Chrysostom as an exegete. An increasing number of scholars describe John Chrysostom as both a Christian and a son of Hellenism who conceives of exegesis as a kind of care for the soul. This session invites papers that consider current scholarly debates on John Chrysostom and recon-struct his exegetical background, techniques, and strategies. The papers presented in this session and the respective panel from last year will be published in an edited volume. Chrysostomic experts who cannot attend the meeting can submit a chapter proposal.
4) We invite papers for a session on the theme “Orthodox Biblical Studies: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” Presenters are expected to reflect critically on the history and current developments of biblical exegesis in Eastern Orthodox traditions. We welcome reflections from specific Orthodox sub-cultures/countries. For example, papers on doing biblical studies in Romania, Serbia, etcetera.
Proposals must present a clear thesis, explain the theoretical and methodological approaches of the research, and identify a specific body of evidence that the research will interpret.
Tags: Religious Traditions and Scriptures (History of Interpretation / Reception History / Reception Criticism)
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Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Description: This section aims to promote and discuss ongoing research into biblical Greek language and
linguistics, covering the Septuagint and particularly the New Testament. While traditional
language studies are welcome, methods derived from modern linguistic theories and their
applications are encouraged.
Call for papers: This section aims to promote and discuss ongoing research into biblical Greek language and linguistics, covering the Septuagint and, particularly, the New Testament. While traditional language studies are welcome, methods derived from modern linguistic theories and their applications are encouraged.
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Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Description: This section focuses on all aspects of Hebrew poetry in the biblical canon: archaic poetry, the role of oral tradition, poetic meter, parallelism, structural and nonstructural poetic devices, imagery, metaphor, and figurative language. Papers dealing with any portion of poetry in the Hebrew Bible are welcome.
Call for papers: Biblical Hebrew Poetry will be holding four sessions (two invited and two open): (1) Emotions in the Psalter (joint with the Book of Psalms), (2) Cognitive Poetics (joint with Cognitive Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew), (3) Reading Biblical Hebrew Poetry and the World in Front of the Text, and (4) an open general session. (1). "Emotions in the Psalter" (joint with the Book of Psalms): Biblical Hebrew Poetry and the Book of Psalms will be hosting a joint session on emotions in the Psalter. This session focuses on the interactions of poetry and emotion in individual psalms or groups of psalms. We are particularly interested in papers that present clear methodologies for examining the relationship of poetry and emotion. Draft presentation papers will be due Sep 25, 2022. (2). "Cognitive Poetics" (joint with Cognitive Linguistics): The invited panel will discuss the approach to biblical poetry using cognitive poetics presented in Emmylou Grosser’s Unparalleled Poetry: A Cognitive Approach to the Free-Rhythm Verse of the Hebrew Bible (OUP) and reflect on further steps of theory and method for engaging in the subjective enterprise of biblical poetry interpretation – in terms of both poetic structure (i.e., lineation) and the relationship between the poetic line and poetic effects. (3). "Reading Biblical Hebrew Poetry and the World in Front of the Text": Historically the study of biblical Hebrew poetry has focused on the world behind the text and the world of the text. Increasingly scholars point to starting with the world in front of the text. Such approaches place the issues facing the world today as a locus for interpretation of biblical Hebrew poetry. The goal of this session will be to explore methodologies that begin with the world in front of the text as a starting point to address arising social issues. This session includes 4 invited papers and a respondent. (4). General open session: We invite general papers regarding any aspect of Biblical Hebrew Poetry.
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Biblical Law
Description: The purpose of the Biblical Law Section is to promote interdisciplinary research on ancient Near Eastern, biblical, and post-biblical law. Methodological perspectives include historical-critical, literary, legal-historical, feminist, and social-scientific approaches.
Call for papers: The Biblical Law section plans four sessions for the 2022 Annual Meeting. We invite proposals for two open sessions on any aspect of the study of biblical law, including work related to cuneiform documents, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple Literature, questions of pentateuchal criticism, legal history, gender analysis, social-scientific analysis, and newer methodologies. Together with the Deuteronomy section, we will be co-sponsoring a session of invited papers on the topic of "Is Deuteronomy Law?" We will also be co-sponsoring a session with the Gender, Sexuality, and Bible section on the topic of gender identity (beyond the binary opposition between man and woman) and legal status. In this session, we will consider the role that gender plays in conferring specific legal rights, obligations, and social statuses in Near Eastern and biblical law. We invite papers that explore questions related to this theme, such as: How does (or doesn’t) sexuality define the social/legal status of women, especially in the areas of marriage and adoption? How does gender define the institution of inheritance? Although it appears that patrilineal descent was considered the customary norm, what do texts reveal about the legal autonomy of women in such systems? Were gendered legal statuses (i.e., father/mother/brother/sister) based on biological or social definitions? Could people legally change their gender?
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Biblical Lexicography
Description: The Section brings together those working on lexicography and lexicology of ancient biblical languages. The discussions seek to bring the theoretical to bear on the practical task of dictionary making and encourage research in the area of historical lexical analysis.
Call for papers: The Biblical Lexicography program unit will organize four sessions in 2022, as follows:
1) Open Call for papers relating to Hebrew lexicography
2) Open Call for papers relating to Greek lexicography
3) Open call for a session to be held in conjunction with the Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation program unit. Our joint goal in co-sponsoring this session is to integrate more traditional modes of philology with theoretical cognitive linguistics. We are specifically interested in papers that apply insights from cognitive semantics to Hebrew and Greek lexicographical description. Papers may focus on more theoretical issues in semantics or on the practical aspects of dictionary-making, but strong candidates for this session must go beyond methodological reflection and include exegetical and linguistic results.
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Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma
Description: This unit studies methods for employing various definitions of trauma to interpret particular sets of biblical and extra-canonical texts, giving attention to the relationship between personal and communal dimensions of trauma, and to applying biblical interpretation in other theological disciplines.
Call for papers: The Biblical Literature and Hermeneutics of Trauma section has created a call for papers for three sessions: A) the first will be a panel – co-sponsored by the Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma unit, The Paul & Politics unit, and The Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible unit – inviting proposals addressing the traumatic impact of white supremacy as built within biblical scholarship. Proposals may engage questions of 1) critical race theory, 2) feminist theory that analyzes the ramifications of white supremacy on gendered readings of texts 3) racial trauma perpetuated by the biblical texts or their reception history, and/or 4) politics in any aspect of the contemporary study of Pauline scholarship, the Pauline legacy, and/or contemporary communities using these texts. Proposals may also construct scholarship beyond whiteness as a center (i.e., conversations in Afropessimism or Afrofuturism). Successful proposals will outline biblical texts and critical theorists employed in their interpretations. B) The second will be co-sponsored with the Paul within Judaism unit and will consist of an invited panel of NT scholars that will present the strengths and limitations for applying trauma theory to NT studies along with examples. C) The third will be an open session to which we invite proposals of all types that seek to interpret biblical text through the lens of trauma theory(s).
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Book History and Biblical Literatures
Description: This unit investigates how insights from Book History illuminate scriptural
literatures. We marshal scholars of various fields in a theoretical and
historical conversation about the culturally contingent concepts of text,
authorship, readership, publication, and materiality.
Call for papers: We invite proposals for a co-sponsored session (with the Religious World of Late Antiquity unit) on “Books and Religious Practice in Late Antiquity,” which will feature shorter presentations (~10-12 minutes) on the relationship between texts, broadly conceived, and ritual performance. We invite proposals for a second session on “Texts beyond Reading,” which will feature short presentations (approx. 12 minutes) on the uses of texts for purposes other than reading. Proposals may explore topics such as ritual uses for texts, apotropaic purposes, or varied symbolic functions in social contexts, and we particularly encourage topics that may engage with other religious traditions (e.g. Islam, Manichaeism, Samaritans). We will also host an invited panel on the theme of “the Critical Edition as Technology.”
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Book of Acts
Description: This Section (1) explores new strategies for reading Acts; (2) proposes solutions to existing exegetical, literary, text critical and historical problems associated with Acts; (3) highlights new areas of inquiry regarding Acts; and (4) assesses the significance of the history of Acts scholarship.
Call for papers: The Book of Acts section invites submissions for an open session covering any aspect of research related to the Acts of the Apostles, including (e.g.) textual, theological, narratival, historical, reception-historical, exegetical, social-scientific, and postcolonial approaches. Proposals for papers that engage in reading Acts with new, minoritized, or multiperspectival approaches are especially welcome. The section also plans to host an additional session composed of invited papers, respondents, and open discussion around the theme "Wealth and Poverty in Luke-Acts, Revisited," sponsored jointly with the Economics in the Biblical World and Gospel of Luke sections.
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Book of Daniel
Description: The Book of Daniel consultation seeks to promote new and inter-disciplinary scholarship on Daniel and Daniel-related literature (both canonical and pseudepigraphical literature). It welcomes a range of analytical approaches to Daniel, but especially encourages ideological, theological, and literary treatments.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting, the Book of Daniel Section invites proposals dealing with any topic or issue in the critical interpretation of Daniel, including the MT, the LXX, the Additions to Daniel, and pseudepigraphical materials related to Daniel. The best proposals will indicate a distinctive contribution to a current problem in the study of Daniel, will bring a promising theoretical framework to a particular issue, or will raise new questions about an overlooked problem in the understanding of Daniel. In addition to this open call, we will be hosting an invited session. All proposals must go through the SBL proposal submission link on the website.
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Book of Deuteronomy
Description: This unit provides a forum for the discussion of Deuteronomy as a book, its origins and growth, as well as its reception by different groups of readers in antiquity.
Call for papers: The Deuteronomy Program Unit will entertain proposals for a limited number of papers on topics related to the origin, growth, or reception of the book of Deuteronomy. For the 2022 annual meeting, we will co-sponsor a session with the Biblical Law Program Unit consisting of invited papers on the topic “Is Deuteronomy Law?” The session explores the ways in which law and narrative interact in the Book of Deuteronomy. The laws themselves draw attention to their narrative qualities as they describe cases and prescribe outcomes. At times, they refer to national history. More broadly, how does consideration of the narrative context affect our understanding of what appears to be legislation? Indeed, in context, can it be called legislation at all?
The Program Unit will also host one or two open sessions this year. N.B.: All abstracts will be anonymized for voting purposes to ensure equity.
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Book of Ezekiel
Description: This Section has two aims. First, it seeks to bring together scholars working on the book of Ezekiel to share research and conclusions about the book. Second, it encourages an expressly theological approach to the book.
Call for papers:
The Book of Ezekiel section will hold three sessions in 2022:
1. The book of Ezekiel -
This session is an open session. We invite submissions on any topic with a linguistic, textual, literary, or historical focus.
2. Manifestations of the Deity in the Book of Ezekiel: Literary-Historical Contexts and Reception in Jewish and Christian Late Antiquity -
This session is a joint session with the “Biblical Exegesis from Eastern Orthodox Perspectives” section, on passages describing the manifestation of the deity in the book of Ezekiel (Ezek 1-3, 8-11, 40-48). We invite submissions either on the reception of these texts by Jewish and Christian authors in Late Antiquity, or on the function of these passages in context of the book’s formation.
3. The identity-shaping and/or rhetorical function of law and legal language in the book of Ezekiel –
This session will consist of invited papers on the rhetorical and/or identity-shaping function of law and legal terminology in the book of Ezekiel.
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Book of Isaiah
Description: The Book of Isaiah unit provides an international forum for discussion of issues related to the formation, growth and unity of the Isaiah scroll as well as questions of poetic imagery, intertextuality, history of interpretation and reader response criticism.
Call for papers: The Formation of Isaiah group will offer three sessions in 2022. It will also offer a joint session with the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew Seminar with invited papers, which is devoted to the Language of First Isaiah: Literature and Vernacular.
The first session will investigate the relationship between the book of Isaiah on the one hand and the books of Micah and Zephaniah on the other. Many scholars have noted the affinity and textual overlap between individual texts in these books, a case in point being the correlation between Micah 4:1–5 and Isa 2:1–5. Papers from a variety of perspectives and approaches are welcome, ranging from redaction-critical studies to papers looking at matters of intertextuality and inner-biblical interpretations.
The other two sessions are open sessions, and we welcome papers related to the book of Isaiah.
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Book of Psalms
Description: It is the aim of the Book of Psalms unit to promote all aspects of and approaches to the study of the Psalms, with a major focus on the issue of how the Psalter as a collection has an integrity, history, and purpose of its own.
Call for papers: The Book of Psalms unit welcomes papers on all topics relating to the Psalms. In addition to an open session (or two), the unit plans a joint session on emotions with the Biblical Hebrew Poetry unit.
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Book of Samuel: Narrative, Theology, and Interpretation
Description: Utilising critical and literary methods, this unit focuses on the literary and theological interpretation of the Book of Samuel. The consultation promotes the integration of multiple methodologies in interpretation, including dialogue between specialists in synchronic and diachronic approaches.
Call for papers: At the 2022 meeting the following sessions are planned: 1) An invited session on divine violence in Samuel, interacting with Rachelle Gilmour’s recent book, Divine Violence in the Book of Samuel (OUP, 2021); 2) An invited themed session on reading Samuel intertextually; 3) An open session on any aspect of the Book of Samuel. We welcome proposals for the open session on any aspect of the book of Samuel, especially papers which explore different methodologies in interpretation, the dialogue between synchronic and diachronic approaches, and theological concerns.
Tags: Former Prophets - 1-2 Samuel (Biblical Literature - Hebrew Bible/Old Testament/Greek OT (Septuagint))
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Book of the Twelve Prophets
Description: The Book of the Twelve Prophets Section provides a forum for research
into textual, literary, historical, religious, and ideological aspects of the
Book of the Twelve Prophets. The section is interested in understanding
individual passages as well as all phases of the development of this book.
Call for papers: The Book of the Twelve section will hold four sessions in 2022: 1. Open Session: We invite papers investigating issues related to any text or texts within the Minor Prophets, with preference given to papers that address the formation or interrelatedness of the Minor Prophets as a literary corpus. 2. Joint open session: The Book of the Twelve Prophets section will sponsor a joint session with Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible. Papers may focus on a metaphor or network of metaphors within one of the individual collections (e.g., Amos, Joel, Nahum, etc.) or analyze the deployment of a single metaphor across the Book of the Twelve Prophets as a whole.
3. Invited Session: The Book of the Twelve in the Hellenistic Period. 4. Invited Session: New Insights in the Book of Micah – Commentators in Discussion.
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Children in the Biblical World
Description: This section explores the child characters in the Bible, investigates the lives of children in the ancient world, and evaluates how biblical texts affect children in the post-biblical world. We invite traditional research in biblical studies, as well as interdisciplinary approaches to the topic.
Call for papers: The Children in the Biblical World section plans to host two sessions in 2022. (1) The first will be an open session. We invite submissions on any topic related to children and the Bible, the ancient world, or how biblical texts affect children in the post-biblical world. (2) The second session will be a themed session surrounding disabilities studies and children. Proposals from both Testaments and related literature are welcome, though we would especially appreciate proposals from parts of each testament which have not received much attention vis-à-vis children, such as the Writings and Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the General Epistles and Revelation in the New Testament, as well as contributions from Rabbinic Literature.
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Christian Apocrypha
Description: The Section fosters ongoing study of extra-canonical texts, as subjects of literary and philological investigation; as evidence for the history of religion, theology, and cult practice; and as documents of the socio-symbolic construction of Christianity along lines of class and gender.
Call for papers: The Christian Apocrypha program unit will co-sponsor a session with the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism unit on “Apocrypha: Storyworlds in Transition.” This session will feature fellows from the institute at the University of Oslo and their work on Coptic Apocrypha in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods. Additionally, we invite paper proposals on any topic directly related to apocryphal texts, but are particularly interested for the 2022 Annual Meeting in papers that employ postcolonial and racial/ethnic minoritized readings or approaches to apocryphal literature. Advanced graduate students and scholars of traditionally under-represented groups are especially encouraged to submit abstracts for consideration.
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Christian Theology and the Bible
Description: This unit invites a conversation between the disciplines of Christian Theology and Biblical Studies. We are interested in questions, categories, or hypotheses drawn from the broad tradition of Christian theology which inform readings of the biblical texts, and we aim to foster constructive theological work with biblical texts.
Call for papers: The Christian Theology and the Bible unit welcomes papers on any topic relating to the intersection of Christian theology and the Bible, whether exegetically driven, focused on a specific text(s), or more topical in nature, oriented toward, say, a particular doctrine. The unit strives for balance between the two testaments of Christian Scripture. For 2022, the unit expects two or three sessions with one reviewing a recent publication.
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Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Description: Our section provides a collegial forum for graduate students and scholars in which papers can be read, projects initiated, questions explored, new approaches attempted and broader discussions held relating to the research and scholarship of these biblical books.
Call for papers: The Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah (CEN) section will hold four sessions in 2022. Session 1: An invited panel, "Reading Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah amid Early Jewish Literature," co-sponsored with the Pseudepigrapha Program Unit. Session 2: "Chronicles and Utopia," co-sponsored with the Utopian Studies Consultation. We welcome proposals that address questions regarding the category of utopia as it has been utilized to interpret Chronicles: How might we theorize the category of utopia in conjunction with the category of historiography, with Chronicles as the case study? What do we understand differently about Chronicles when it is put in conversation with other ancient or modern utopian works, and vice versa? Submissions for this session should attend to theoretical work from within the field of Utopian Studies. Session 3: A co-sponsored session with the Textual Criticism of the Historical Books Program Unit, focusing on text-critical and text-historical issues as they relate Chronicles to Samuel–Kings. This session is accepting proposals for any topic that fit under this rubric. Session 4: An open session. We welcome paper proposals on any topic relevant to the program unit, and we especially encourage early-career scholars to submit proposals to the open session.
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Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Description: The field of cognitive science has reshaped longstanding philosophical assumptions about how people use and process language. This section applies cognitive linguistics to biblical studies, with a focus on the ways cognitive approaches help scholars understand and interact with ancient texts.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting we will host three sessions: 1) an invited panel co-sponsored with Hebrew Poetry; 2) an open, themed session co-sponsored with Biblical Lexicography; and 3) an open session.
The invited panel will discuss the approach to biblical poetry using cognitive poetics presented in Emmylou Grosser’s Unparalleled Poetry: A Cognitive Approach to the Free-Rhythm Verse of the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press) and reflect on further steps of theory and method for engaging in the subjective enterprise of biblical poetry interpretation – in terms of both poetic structure (i.e., lineation) and the relationship between the poetic line and poetic effects.
Call for the Open Themed Session: Our joint goal with Biblical Lexicography in co-sponsoring this session is to integrate more traditional modes of philology with theoretical cognitive linguistics. We are specifically interested in papers that apply insights from cognitive semantics to Hebrew and Greek lexicographical description. Papers may focus on more theoretical issues in semantics or on practical aspects of dictionary-making.
Call for the Open Session: Papers should use and explore at least one cognitive-linguistic method to study a biblical text or corpus. We are especially interested in approaches that are underrepresented in biblical studies, for example, construction grammar, viewpoint analysis, applications of embodied cognition, prototype theory, force dynamics, conceptual blending, frame semantics, and conceptual metonymy. We welcome papers that use conceptual metaphor theory to explore a biblical text or corpus but will give priority to approaches that are under-utilized by biblical scholars.
Strong candidates for the open sessions must go beyond methodological reflection and include exegetical and linguistic results. Proposals should reveal the author’s assessment of the payoffs and the challenges of the chosen models and/or methods for analyzing biblical material.
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Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World
Description: This program unit draws on scientific explanations of human thought and behavior to understand cognitive processes behind religious thought, experience, and practice, in order to explain religion in the biblical world and develop approaches integrating cultural and cognitive studies.
Call for papers: This year we will host two sessions, one on the experience of disease, and one one comparative approaches to moral infringements.
(1) Medical anthropology and Disability Studies have demonstrated the significance of culture in the experience and effects of illness, as well as the (successful) treatment of these conditions. For this session, we invite papers that explore the relationship between the biological (including psychological) features of illness and the cultural responses to it. How do specific cultural instances of diagnosis or treatment (e.g., pharamceuticals, ritual, dream incubation, isolation) interact with underlying cognitive and biological patterns? How are innate heuristics (e.g., of contagion, ingestion, transformation) expressed in specific cases in ancient texts and societies? Please note that presentations will be brief (a tight 10 minutes) and will be circulated among participants two weeks before the meeting. The session is co-sponsored by the Healthcare and Disability unit and the Religious Experience unit.
(2) Comparative approaches to moral infringement: we invite papers that take a comparative approach on how different groups and texts address interpersonal moral infringement in thought, practice, and ritual. Thought: how did they think and speak about moral infringement. Practices: how did they resolve moral infringement and crime (revenge, compensation, forgiveness etc.). Ritual: How did they involve the gods and other spiritual entities (curses, oaths, prayers etc.) Presenters are encouraged to use cross-disciplinary insights (e.g. ritual theory, game-theory, cognitive linguistics, anthropology, social psychology) to formulate relevant points of comparison. Both comparisons between different groups and texts in antiquity and comparisons between ancient and contemporary groups are invited. The session is co-sponsored by the Comparative Method in Biblical Studies Unit and the Mind, Society, and Religion Unit.
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Comparative Method in Biblical Studies
Description: Comparative Method in Biblical Studies (CMBS) is designed to develop the
skill set and critical attention necessary for intellectually and ethically robust
approaches to comparison. CMBS examines and critiques approaches to
comparative methodology, explores ethical questions, and offers practical
suggestions for improving comparison within biblical studies and to other
literatures and scriptural traditions.
Call for papers: For our second year, we will host three types of sessions:
1) An open session that welcomes proposals from across fields and subfields that deal overtly with comparative method and that may or may not use illustrative case studies. Interdisciplinary work is encouraged.
2) In partnership with the Israelite Prophetic Literature program unit, we invite proposals that address the question “What comparative methods or approaches can help us understand the performative aspects of the aurality of prophetic texts, be they ancient Near Eastern, sacred, or popular-cultural expressions?” This session will also include invited papers.
3) In partnership with the Mind, Society, and Religion: Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World program unit, we invite proposals that address the theme “Comparative Approaches to Moral Infringement.” We invite papers that take a comparative approach on how different groups and texts address interpersonal infringement in thought, practice, and ritual. For more information, see the CFP from Mind, Society, and Religion below. This session will also include invited papers.
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Connecting John: Intertextualities, Contexts, Reception
Description: This consultation explores the Gospel of John's connections with other literary works, media, and
artifacts, with all papers and panels setting John in dialogue with another object of study, ancient or
modern—including, narratives, letters, apocalypses, apocryphal acts, ritual forms, and artistic
representations. Its aim is to re-frame John as a watershed work in early Christian history—one that
creatively synthesized earlier traditions, carved out new literary spaces, and ignited new directions in
theology, literary practice, ritual, and art.
Call for papers: This consultation explores the Gospel of John's connections with other literary works, media, and
artifacts, with all papers and panels setting John in dialogue with another object of study, ancient or
modern—including, narratives, letters, apocalypses, apocryphal acts, ritual forms, and artistic
representations. Its aim is to re-frame John as a watershed work in early Christian history—one that
creatively synthesized earlier traditions, carved out new literary spaces, and ignited new directions in
theology, literary practice, ritual, and art.
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Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Description: The goal of this consultation is to explore the interest in developing a SBL seminar or section on *Contextual Biblical Interpretation,* its different strategies (including “inculturation,” inter(con)textualization, and reading with “ordinary” readers) and its methodological justifications, and the extent to which all interpretations are contextual.
Call for papers: We welcome papers that examine biblical texts or methodology while explicitly engaging a reader’s contemporary context. There are three open sessions and one invited session. (1) We welcome papers for an open session on contextual biblical interpretation. Papers should examine biblical texts from a reader’s contemporary context(s) or with communities they engage. This call is open to papers on any topic related to contextual readings or methodologies. (2) We seek papers on the “Bible and Nationalism” co-sponsored with the Minoritized Criticism Biblical Interpretation Unit. This session seeks to analyze the specific role the Bible has played in relation to nationalism. Questions of interest include, but are by no means limited to: What are some ways in which the Bible has been interpreted to explain particular forms of nationalism? What biblical language, tropes, motifs, images, narratives, and rhetorics have been used to construct, critique, or sacralize nationalist claims? How has the Bible informed ways of thinking and talking about the origins of the nation, its mission, its destiny, its role in the world? How has biblical interpretation reinforced nationalist notions of the minoritized Other? We especially welcome proposals of interdisciplinary and intersectional nature. (3) We seek papers for co-sponsored with Gender, Sexuality and the Bible and Biblical Ethics units, that respond to and build on the volume Terror in the Bible.This volume picks up on Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror and extends it to thinking about the impact of biblical texts on gender, caste, violence, and colonization/imperialism. The use of the Bible in colonization and mission, past and present, invites thinking of "terror" from a communal and collective location. Papers are invited that take up or supplement the methods and approaches and apply them to new texts, other bodies, different scriptures, biblical afterlives. BIPOC and global south perspectives are especially invited.
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Contextualizing North African Christianity
Description: This consultation encourages interdisciplinary study of North African Christianity within its broader social, cultural, and historical contexts (ca. 180-650 CE). The goal is to explore how North African Christians cultivated religious identities and practices as inhabitants of an evolving society in late antiquity.
Call for papers: This year, we have an open call for three sessions. The first is entitled the Book of Hebrews in North Africa and will focus on the reception of Hebrews in North Africa, including its absence (almost) in early North African authors to its importance in later writers. Papers may consider a range of issues such as the use of particular texts, Hebrews in the work of a particular author, or changing views of its authorship, for example. The second session is entitled Food, Drink and Fasting and concerns practices around food and drink in North Africa. Papers may consider the use of food and drink as symbols, the practice of the eucharist, ascetic concerns, or other aspects of this theme. The third session is entitled Bible, Text and Tradition in North Africa and will consider the reception and use of Scripture in North Africa. Papers may consider the knowledge of biblical languages, the LXX and other texts uses as the basis of Latin translations, the formation of the canon, and other aspects related to the theme.
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Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Description: This consultation will 1) read and discuss ancient Greek materials that provide insight into the literary and religious worlds of early Christianity and 2) read and discuss papers that analyze early Christian texts in dialogue with Hellenistic materials.
Call for papers: This consultation will 1) read and discuss ancient Greek and Roman materials that provide insight into the literary and religious worlds of early Christianity and 2) read and discuss papers that analyze early Christian texts in dialogue with Hellenistic materials. For the 2022 Meeting, the CHNT will sponsor four invited sessions on (1) Qur’an and Early Christian Literature; (2) Material Theology; (3) Please Recycle: Repetition among Apocryphal Traditions / Joint Session Christian Apocrypha; and (4) a Book review panel, Margaret M. Mitchell, trans. John Chrysostom on Paul: Praises and Problem Passages, WGRW Series, SBL Press, 2022. In addition, this section invites paper proposals for an open session with the title Miscellanea: Peter and Paul in the Purview of Paradoxography and Philosophy.
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Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Description: This section comprises a forum for the investigation of the social and historical roles of cultic personnel in the biblical world broadly conceived, including ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Asia Minor. Sessions will cover textual, iconographic, and archaeological evidence and may take a variety of methodological approaches.
Call for papers: The Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World Unit will run four sessions this this year. Of these, two are open, and two are invited. The two open sessions are
1. An entirely open call on anything linked with cultic personnel in the Bible and other literature and archaeology from the ancient Near / Middle East in antiquity.
2. An open call on Cultic Landscapes. For this session we welcome papers that study in particular how cultic landscapes are established, maintained and adapted, whether gradually or through a sudden intervention. Cultic landscapes include settings such as temples, sanctuaries, and processional routes that have traditionally been interpreted as cultic as well as settings that have a less obvious or a more ad hoc sacred quality. This session (as well as its invited sister session) will focus on material from the ancient Near / Middle East in antiquity, but is open also to papers that study later uses of such ancient cultic landscapes. The focus on cultic landscapes will be the unit's main focus for the years 2022 and 2023.
3. There will be an invited session on Cultic Landcapes to complement the open session on the same theme.
4. There will be an invited session on the theme magic and its practitioners co-sponsored with Assyriology and the Bible.
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Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
Description: The unit provides a forum for the deuterocanonical writings. The goal is to foster academic research, stimulate discussions among scholars, and promote interest in these texts.
Call for papers: Limits of Monotheism
Monotheism has often been seen as the “crown” of theological development in research on the history of religions. Until today, this hermeneutic key is used to do theology and to evaluate the historical development. However, a closer look reveals a more differentiated picture. A few aspects are:
In numerous writings of the DCL, there are notions of angels and demons, figures such as the Son of Man, or entities such as Wisdom, the Logos, and others. Ben Sira prefaces e.g. his book with an emphatic commitment to monotheism, but then introduces Wisdom as a figure besides God. In view of the many gods that all peoples of the Ancient Near East knew, the question arises how the earlier gods and god-like beings fit into this thinking and how the new ideas relate back to the old ones. How are the many names of God and the attempts to identify different gods from different religions and regions to be understood in this process? Theologically, the belief in one God aggravates the problem of theodicy, since there should be no other powers. Anthropological questions are also touched upon: What does a one-God belief say about people's self-understanding? What anthropological backgrounds are reflected in the development and emphasis of monotheism?
All of this shows that the alleged “crown” of the development of the history of religion also contains problems when viewed from a differentiated perspective, and that monotheism has its limits. These are the questions that the PU is addressing this year.
Tags: 1 Esdras (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), 1 Maccabees (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), 2 Esdras (4 Ezra) (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), 2 Maccabees (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), 3 Maccabees (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), 4 Maccabees (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Additions to the Book of Esther (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Baruch (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Deuterocanonical Works (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Judith (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Letter of Jeremiah (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Prayer of Manasseh (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Psalm 151 (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), The Additions to the Book of Daniel (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), The Additions to the Book of Daniel - Bel and the Dragon (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), The Additions to the Book of Daniel - Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Young Men (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), The Additions to the Book of Daniel - Susanna (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Tobit (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works), Wisdom and Philosophical Literature (Early Jewish Literature - Jewish Pseudepigrapha), Wisdom of Solomon (Biblical Literature - Deuterocanonical Works)
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Deuteronomistic History
Description: This unit is a forum for scholarship pertaining to the books of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets (Joshua–Kings). Papers may treat material in one or more of these books or in the collection as a whole. Relevant foci include literary history and compositional techniques; theological trends exemplified in the texts; the social and historical milieu or milieus in which they were produced; as well as connections among one or more of these books, whether topical, chronological, or linguistic.
Call for papers: The Deuteronomistic History section invites abstracts for papers pertaining to the books of Deuteronomy and the Former Prophets (Joshua–Kings). Papers may treat material in one or more of these books or in the collection as a whole. Relevant foci include literary history and compositional techniques; theological trends exemplified in the texts; the social and historical milieu or milieus in which they were produced; as well as connections among one or more of these books, whether topical, chronological, or linguistic. In addition to the one or more open session(s), the Deuteronomistic History section will be organizing two special sessions, both of which will be populated by invited papers: (1) The first will explore issues of kinship and state formation, as they emerge from the Deuteronomistic History. (2) The second will be a review panel of P. Dubovsky and F. Giuntoli (eds.), Stones, Tablets, and Scrolls: Periods of the Formation of the Bible (Archaeology and Bible 3; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020).
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Development of Early Christian Theology
Description: This unit explores the close connections among the construction of the Christian scriptures, early Christian practices of biblical interpretation, and the theological and ecclesiastical debates that occurred from the apostolic period through the seventh century.
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Digital Humanities in Biblical, Early Jewish, and Christian Studies
Description: This consultation explores the ongoing transformation of biblical studies, and early Jewish and Christian studies, within digital culture. Initiated in the 1940s, the "Digital Humanities" is now shaping all Humanities disciplines. Sessions will focus on its impact on manuscripts and editions; reading and exegesis; publishing and access; and innovative research methodologies more generally.
Call for papers: This consultation explores the ongoing transformation of biblical studies, and early Jewish and Christian studies, within digital culture. Initiated in the 1940s, the "Digital Humanities" is now shaping all Humanities disciplines. Sessions will focus on its impact on manuscripts and editions; reading and exegesis; publishing and access; and innovative research methodologies more generally.
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Disputed Paulines
Description: The Disputed Paulines Consultation seeks to explore historical, literary (including rhetorical), and theological matters which bear upon the interpretation of the letters of the Pauline Corpus that many argue are not genuinely or immediately authored by Paul. It is hoped that careful study of these letters will help us better understand both these documents and early Christianity more broadly.
Call for papers: Depending on the number and quality of proposals received, the Disputed Paulines Section will offer one or more open sessions for which we invite papers exploring historical, literary (including rhetorical), and theological matters that bear upon the interpretation of one or more of those letters (or a discreet section thereof). This year, we especially welcome papers that explore how any aspect of the Disputed Pauline letters may offer some constructive theology, in particular, a word of hope for the climate of racial tensions in America today.
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Documentary Texts and Literary Interpretation
Description: Studies often rely on documentary sources to interpret the Bible, but is this
done responsibly? This program unit will explore examples of, approaches
to, and teaching perspectives on the interdisciplinary use of documentary
texts, especially in the digital age, for the study of biblical literature.
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Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Description: The Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy Consultation is the foundational component of an international, interdisciplinary project that seeks to delineate the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy in the period from Jesus to Justinian, demonstrating both similarities and differences in attitudes, approaches to problems, and attempted solutions.
Call for papers: The Early Christianity and Ancient Economy program examines economic aspects of early Christian groups from the first to the fifth century CE, understood within the context of the economies of the Roman Empire and its provinces. “Economy” is understood broadly to consist of the production, transmission, and consumption of goods and services, as well as the social, political, and ideological conditions associated with economic systems. We invite papers exploring aspects of the economic organization of early Christian assemblies as well as Rome and its provinces, in addition to those critically assessing the theoretical frameworks (e.g., economic anthropology, régulation theory, New Institutional Economics) and concepts (e.g., class, exploitation, wealth and poverty, gender, ethnicity, and movements of human and material resources) used in the study of the economic history of the Mediterranean basin in antiquity.
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Early Exegesis of Genesis 1–3
Description: The Impact of the Exegesis of Genesis 1–3 for the development of Christian and Jewish
Theology is at the center of the program unit. Important issues are the integration of
philosophical concepts(especially for cosmology and anthropology), the methods of exegesis,
and the different literary strategies (commentaries, sermons, theological works, catenae) in
various contexts from the 1st to the 6th century.
Call for papers: The Impact of the Exegesis of Genesis 1–3 for the development of Christian and Jewish
Theology is at the center of the program unit. Important issues are the integration of
philosophical concepts(especially for cosmology and anthropology), the methods of exegesis,
and the different literary strategies (commentaries, sermons, theological works, catenae) in
various contexts from the 1st to the 6th century.
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Early Jewish Christian Relations
Description: The Early Jewish Christian Relations Group deals with the relationships of Christians and Jews as Christians emerged as groups distinct from Jews, and how these groups continued to affect one another in the following centuries. It considers approximately the first four centuries.
Call for papers: For the 2022 annual meeting, Early Jewish Christian Relations seeks proposals for three sessions:
1. Pedagogies of Jewish-Christian Relations
This session invites reflection on teaching and learning about Jewish-Christian relations in antiquity. Proposals may take an abstract or theoretical approach, considering one or more of the big questions implicit in teaching courses on Jewish-Christian relations. Alternatively, they may be practical, outlining specific strategies, assignments, forms of assessment, or structures for any kind of classroom setting. Also welcome are strategies for soliciting respectful dialogue across religious differences.
2. Conversions
For this session, we invite reflection on conversion as a category of scholarly inquiry as well as a lived experience for ancient people. How should we think about conversion among ancient Jews and Christians (and between Christianity and Judaism), and how do our ways of describing conversion reflect both ancient and modern biases? Is conversion a religious, political, and/or social category? How does conversion appear in the literatures and material cultures of antiquity, and what can those appearances say about the way Jews and Christians related to each other? In short, what is at stake in our discourses of conversion?
3. Rabbinics and “Relations”
What does the study of early Jewish Christian relations look like from the perspective of the study of rabbinics? What insights might non-specialists glean from the work of rabbinics scholars for thinking about early Jewish-Christian relations? How do the “relations” between these two groups appear when viewed from the perspective of rabbinics, and how might that perspective function as a corrective to other ways of describing the relationships between Judaism and Christianity in antiquity? What kinds of interdisciplinary partnerships might enhance scholarship in this area, and how should scholars of early Christianity go about forging such partner
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Ecological Hermeneutics
Description: This Section will focus on hermeneutical principles and models for ecological readings of the biblical text and tradition. Attention would be paid to the anthropocentric bias of texts and readers as well as to discerning alternative traditions sympathetic to ecology, Earth and the Earth community. The aim is to explore the art of reading the text with empathy for the natural world.
Call for papers: Someone has wryly suggested that 2021 did not have an identity, but was colonised by 2020. Last year, the call for papers opened with the observation that the challenges and event of the 2020 may have prompted new insights and encouraged proposals that refined and developed those insights in relation to Ecological Hermeneutics. This year, we issue the same invitation: to consider the trajectory of the Earth community in relation to biblical material using significant themes, such as climate change, mass extinction, food and hunger, and the pandemic. In addition to the open sessions, there will be an invited session on some recent publications, including the Earth Bible Commentary Series (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark). Proposals on any aspect of Ecological Hermeneutics are invited. All proposals are encouraged to engage with the principles of ecological hermeneutics - e.g., suspicion, identification, retrieval (Habel and Trudinger, Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics, SBL 2008) or the methodology of the Exeter project (Horrell, Hunt and Southgate, Greening Paul, Baylor 2010).
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Economics in the Biblical World
Description: This program unit explores economics in the biblical world from a variety of approaches, including textual analysis, archaeological study, economic history, and much-needed theoretical engagement. We examine both larger economic structures and more local patterns (i.e., household and village).
Call for papers: This program unit explores economics in the biblical world from a variety of approaches, including textual analysis, archaeological study, economic history, and much-needed theoretical engagement. We examine both larger economic structures and more local patterns (i.e., household and village).
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Egyptology and Ancient Israel
Description: The principal goal of the Egyptology and Ancient Israel Section is to promote collaboration between biblical scholars and Egyptologists in their comparative examination and analysis of historical and literary connections between ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and the history and literature of ancient Egypt. Where appropriate, the section joins with other related program units to foster interdisciplinary conversation across the wider ancient Near East.
Call for papers: The Egyptology and Ancient Israel section will hold one session at the 2022 Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. The session is OPEN, accepting papers dealing with any topic which deals with the relations between ancient Egypt and Israel or Egypt and the Hebrew Bible. Priority will be given to papers dealing with the processes of transmission and reception between Ancient Egyptian records and Biblical sources.
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Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Description: The aim of the Ethics and Biblical Interpretation section is to study the way the various projects of biblical interpretation and hermeneutics intersect with the concerns of ethics. This consultation will engage ethicists, theologians, and biblical scholars in interdisciplinary conversations.
Call for papers: The Ethics and Biblical Interpretation section is planning two sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting:
1. Pandemic, Ethics, and the Bible:
The Ethics and Biblical Interpretation section invites papers focused on the intersection of biblical text(s), ethical interpretation(s), and the experience(s) of pandemic. Biblical scholars, theologians, and ethicists are invited to consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered or illuminated our hermeneutical concerns; ethical inquiries and perspectives; and engagements with biblical texts and theological topics. Papers should interpret biblical text(s) or theological topic(s) in close connection with the themes of personal health, sickness, healing, health equity, public health, vaccine mandates, personal freedom, corporate responsibility, resilience, hope or some combination of these or other relevant matters.
2. The Intersection of Climate Change, Violence, Migration:
It has become increasingly evident in recent years that the phenomena of climate change, violence, and migration are deeply intertwined. Environmental crises force people to migrate, the scarcity of resources puts communities at the brink of violence, and civil wars turn many stable communities into refugees and asylum seekers. The way these phenomena are interconnected is not linear, since migration may stir conflict and it may have an impact on the natural order of where people desperately look for a better life. And the cycle keeps on unfolding. The intersection between environmental crises, violence, and migration is not new. Biblical traditions reflect strong connections between experiences of exile, forced migration, diaspora, imperial violence, famines, and food scarcity. The Ethics and Biblical Interpretation Section calls for papers that focus on the intersection of the phenomena of environmental crises, violence, and migration as reflected in texts from the Bible, the ancient Near East, Second Temple, or the Greco-Roman world.
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Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Description: This unit studies the sacred texts and literature of the ancient and rich Ethiopic tradition. It seeks, through critical study, to understand the ideology, sociology and the process of literary formation, of the Ethiopic tradition, in particular the Bible, and also discusses its manuscript tradition.
Call for papers: We plan two sessions. One session will focus on the textual history of the Ethiopic Bible and Canon. Papers presenting the current state of research on, or that synthesize data and develop the picture of the textual history of Ethiopia’s Bible or canon are invited. This session also welcomes papers on specific Ethiopic manuscripts or external traditions (e.g., Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac) that contribute to our understanding of Ethiopia’s transmission or canonical history. The second session broadly encompasses ideology, sociology, and literary formation in Ethiopic literature. This tradition bears many marks of originality, for Ethiopian theologians and community leaders developed their own sense of identity and expressed these in their form of the biblical text and in various works of literature, as it does marks of external influence, from Christian traditions—such as Greek, Syriac, and Armenian—but also from Jewish and Muslim traditions in the Horn of Africa, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. Proposals on any aspect are welcomed.
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Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium
Description: The Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium (ECBC) emerged with the rise of the awareness of contextualization and cross-cultural awareness in biblical interpretation. A group of scholars who are of ethnic Chinese origin created ECBC as a forum to address issues relevant to this concern within SBL in the 1990s. Prominent founding members of this group are Dr. Seow Choon-Leong, Dr. Wan Sze-Kar, Dr. Gale Yee, Dr. Mary Foskett, Dr. Jeffrey Kuan, and Dr. John Yieh. The group invites scholars to participate in the forum held annually within the SBL Annual Meeting.
Call for papers: The Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium (ECBC) emerged with the rise of the awareness of contextualization and cross-cultural awareness in biblical interpretation. A group of scholars who are of ethnic Chinese origin created ECBC as a forum to address issues relevant to this concern within SBL in the 1990s. Prominent founding members of this group are Dr. Seow Choon-Leong, Dr. Wan Sze-Kar, Dr. Gale Yee, Dr. Mary Foskett, Dr. Jeffrey Kuan, and Dr. John Yieh. The group invites scholars to participate in the forum held annually within the SBL Annual Meeting.
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Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Description: This section examines exile, displacement, and migration (forced or involuntary) in biblical literature—its history, associated literature, and conceptualization from a wide range of methodological perspectives.
Call for papers: We will offer three sessions. (1) The first session is an invited panel reviewing the book by Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Voices from the Ruins (Eerdmans, 2021). (2) The second session invites papers on exile as a liminal state. Papers might explore liminal space, persons (such as visionaries or messengers), the construction of the other, etc. Proposals should demonstrate a clear sense of the definition of liminality in play and its applicability to given bodies of evidence. (3) The third session invites papers on method in the study of exile/forced migration. Papers should address the appropriateness of given methods to the study of the texts of the Hebrew Bible and provide a detailed case study demonstrating their applicability or lack thereof.
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Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Description: The aim of this unit is to provide a forum for research in issues and questions relating to feminist methods of interpretation. While specifically focused on methodological concerns, we are also concerned to ground that reflection in the reality of engagement with specific texts.
Call for papers: The Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible (FHB) section will offer the following three sessions at the 2022 meeting.
Open Call Session #1: FHB issues an open call for papers using feminist, womanist, Latina/x, or other cognate ideological frames to read biblical texts, broadly defined. We especially welcome emerging scholars to submit proposals.
Session #2: FHB and the LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics unit will present an invited book review panel on Jimmy Hoke's new book: Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God?
Session #3: This panel – co-sponsored by the Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma unit, The Paul & Politics unit, and The Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible unit – invites proposals addressing the traumatic impact of white supremacy as built within biblical scholarship. Proposals may engage questions of 1) critical race theory, 2) feminist theory that analyzes the ramifications of white supremacy on gendered readings of texts 3) racial trauma perpetuated by the biblical texts or their reception history, and/or 4) politics in any aspect of the contemporary study of Pauline scholarship, the Pauline legacy, and/or contemporary communities using these texts. Proposals may also construct scholarship beyond whiteness as a center (i.e., conversations in Afropessimism or Afrofuturism). Successful proposals will outline biblical texts and critical theorists employed in their interpretations.
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Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Description: This group engages in critical discussion with research on sexuality and gender in disciplines such as critical theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies and the social sciences. It explores the implications of this research for biblical and postbiblical studies.
Call for papers: Our FIRST session invites all papers with an INTERSECTIONAL approach for our 2022 themed session. We are excited to receive dynamic papers that explore gender alongside post-colonialism, critical race theory, disability, cultural studies, queer theory, or other intersectional disciplines. Paper submissions can engage any biblical / extra-canonical text(s) that illuminate issues of gender and/or sexuality, from texts that easily lend themselves to gendered analyses to texts that are underexplored.
Our SECOND session is co-sponsored with the The Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism, Religious Worlds of Late Antiquity, and Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity. This session is dedicated to a future-directed exploration of Elizabeth A. Clark’s scholarly legacy. This session is one of invited papers that center on the exploration of “big ideas” emerging from Clark’s research.
Our THIRD session is co-sponsored with the Biblical Law program unit on the topic of gender identity (beyond the binary opposition between man and woman) and legal status. We will consider the role that gender plays in conferring specific legal rights, obligations, and social statuses in Near Eastern and biblical law. (See the Biblical Law unit for a full description).
Our FOURTH session is co-sponsored with Biblical Ethics. We invite papers that respond to and build on the volume Terror in the Bible (https://bit.ly/3KcxW7L). This volume picks up on Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror and extends it to thinking about the impact of biblical texts on gender, caste, violence, and colonization/imperialism. The use of the Bible in colonization and mission, past and present, invites thinking of "terror" from a communal and collective location. Papers are invited that take up or supplement the methods and approaches and apply them to new texts, other bodies, different scriptures, biblical afterlives. BIPOC and global south perspectives are especially invited.
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Genesis
Description: The Genesis unit promotes sustained and continued dialogue and scholarship on the book of Genesis from a variety of methodological perspectives, especially (yet not limited to) those approaching and treating the text as a canonical whole. It creates space for those working on Genesis to share their work in a focused place.
Call for papers: The Genesis Program Unit will host three sessions in 2022, two themed sessions and one open session as follows. (1) Themed sessions: We invite proposals focusing on Israel's neighbors in Genesis. (2) Open session: We welcome proposals on any topic related to the interpretation of Genesis.
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Gospel of Luke
Description: The Gospel of Luke garners continued interest because of its distinctive narrative construction and its rhetorical, theological, and ethical emphases. The unit is interested in exploring Luke’s literary features and theology, and in encouraging new research on the gospel.
Call for papers: The Gospel of Luke section will offer three sessions in 2022. First, we invite submissions for an open session covering any aspect of Luke’s distinctive narrative construction and its rhetorical, theological, and ethical emphases. Proposals for papers that employ new, marginalized, or multiperspectival approaches to Luke are especially welcome. The section will also host two sessions carried over from 2020: “Early Reception of Luke in Visual Art,” jointly sponsored with the Bible and Visual Arts section and "Wealth and Poverty in Luke-Acts, Revisited," jointly sponsored with the Economics in the Biblical World and Book of Acts sections. These latter two sessions will be made up of invited panelists and are not accepting additional paper proposals.
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Gospel of Mark
Description: The Gospel of Mark Section is a venue for research on the text and themes of the Gospel of Mark and its various contexts.
Call for papers: The Gospel of Mark program unit has three sessions for 2022. Session 1: An open call for papers on any topic advancing scholarship on the Gospel of Mark. We welcome proposals that show a clearly defined thesis, methodology and argument. Session 2: A joint session with Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior program unit in which invited papers demonstrate the use and exegetical importance of the recently published Editio Critica Maior on Mark. Session 3: Invited panelists will review Robert Moses' book Jesus and Materialism in the Gospel of Mark: Traveling Light on the Way (Fortress/Lexington Books, forthcoming early 2022).
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Greco-Roman Religions
Description: This unit is highly interdisciplinary and comparative, a forum regularly bringing together historians of religion, specialists in Christian origins, classicists, archaeologists, and social scientists from across the world to pursue questions that foster new cooperative research initiatives.
Call for papers: We invite papers for the following sessions:
1. Materiality and Religion in the Greco-Roman World: on the “material turn” in the study of religion, including studies of amulets, clothing and cosmetics, cult architecture, the protection of doorways, funerary artifacts and spaces, the arrangement of altars and votives, iconic books, etc., that discuss matters of efficacy, agency, assemblage, human/thing interaction, and discursive reflections on object-agency. Papers should be explicit in their understanding of “materiality of religions.”
2. Sex, Embodiment, and Cult Spaces in Greco-Roman Antiquity: on embodied religious experiences associated with cult spaces, including pilgrimage, devotional behaviors, ritual performances, sacred prostitution, therapeutic practices. We welcome papers mapping processes of religious continuities and discontinuities, individual or collective conversions, transformations and reconstructions of places and space.
3. Encountering Monsters: Religious Interactions with the Monstrous in Greco-Roman Antiquity: on interactions with monstrous beings in the literature and material culture of ancient Mediterranean religions. We welcome papers exploring the place and function of a wide range of human and non-human monstrous entities in myth, cultic rites, apotropaic contexts, processes of identity construction, including mutation from/into human form, and other phenomena of relevance for Greco-Roman religions.
4. Remodeling the Motel of the Mysteries: Innovations in the Study of Secret Cults (joint session with the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions): on recent innovations in the study of mystery religions, including analyses of soundscapes, affective impact, social identities, network analyses, digital reconstructions of sacred spaces, the descriptions of mystery rites by the Church Fathers, the intersections of mystery cult with magical practices, and distinctions between Greek and Roman mystery rites.
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Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Description: This unit, titled Disability Studies and Healthcare in the Bible and the Ancient World, seeks to foster scholarship related to disability, illness, medicine, and healthcare in the biblical world and text. Major areas of interest include: the religious, legal, and cultural status of persons with disabilities or illness in the biblical and formative Jewish and Christian periods; the representation of disability and illness in biblical and cognate texts; the theology of such texts; the history and archeology of medicine and healthcare in the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman worlds; and the subjects of disability, illness, medicine and healthcare in the history of biblical interpretation.
Call for papers: The unit plans to have three sessions at the 2022 meeting.
Two sessions with an open call for papers:
1) At least one open session welcoming paper proposals on any aspect of health and disability related to the Bible.
2) A jointly sponsored session with the Religious Experience in Antiquity and Mind, Society, and Religion units: Medical anthropology and Disability Studies have demonstrated the significance of culture in the experience and effects of illness, as well as the (successful) treatment of these conditions. For this session, we invite papers that explore the relationship between the biological (including psychological) features of illness and the cultural responses to it . How do specific cultural instances of diagnosis or treatment (e.g., pharamceuticals, ritual, dream incubation, isolation) interact with underlying cognitive and biological patterns? How are innate heuristics (e.g., of contagion, ingestion, transformation) expressed in specific cases in ancient texts and societies? Please note that presentations will be brief (a tight 10 minutes) and will be circulated among participants two weeks before the meeting.
3) A session reviewing Meghan R. Henning, Hell Hath No Fury: Gender, Disability, and the Invention of Damned Bodies in Early Christian Literature (Yale University Press, 2021)
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Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Description: This program unit exists to foster discussion of the relationship between archaeology in all its aspects (including survey, excavation, and epigraphic data) and the history of the ancient Israelite kingdoms and/or the Hebrew Bible.
Call for papers: The Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology unit is holding three sessions for the 2022 meeting. We are planning an invited session on palace–clan relations in the southern Levant during the Iron Age, examining textual and material evidence to the rise of multi-regional polities, with a focus on the Kingdom of Israel. We are also asking for papers in two more sessions: (1) Elite Women in Iron Age History and Historiography in the southern Levant and the Hebrew Bible: What roles do elite women play in these historical discourses? How are elite women marked as such? What is their relationship to non-elite women and other social groups? (2) An Open session: we welcome any paper proposal that fosters discussion about the relationship between archaeology in all its aspects (including survey, excavation, and epigraphic data) and the history of the ancient Israelite kingdoms and/or the Hebrew Bible.
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Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Description: The Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature Section provides a major forum for research on specific points of contact between the Bible and the literatures of Israel's neighbors, to better elucidate the Bible as a collection of ancient Israelite writings.
Call for papers: The Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature Section welcomes papers that highlight comparisons between the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts. We especially appreciate contributions that establish new points of overlap and illuminate the source material in fresh and unexpected ways.
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Hebrews
Description: The famous and almost proverbial saying that Hebrews appears to its viewer as a “melchisedekitisches Wesen ohne Stammbaum” was uttered by Franz Overbeck in the year 1880, during the high noon of historicism. The missing genealogy that Overbeck lamented meant peculiarly to him a lack of historical context. This perceived “lack” was the consequence of flawed presuppositions originating in ideological frameworks, and consequently led New Testament scholarship to view Hebrews as the “enigmatic,” the “other” one, and furthermore led to the neglect of its historical context by Hebrews scholarship. Consequently, the context was judged as “irrelevant” for Hebrews interpretation. Recent scholarship on the contrary has developed a particular interest in Hebrews’ context. Therefore, while maintaining the distinctiveness of Hebrews it is the aim of this Group to explore extensively and facilitate scholarly research on Hebrews’ relations to other early traditions and texts (Jewish, Hellenistic and Roman), so that Hebrews’ historical, cultural, and religious identity may be mapped in greater detail.
Call for papers: For 2022, the Hebrews Program Unit invites any papers related to the study of Hebrews.
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Hellenistic Judaism
Description: This section is devoted to the history of (a) Judaism of the Hellenistic period (that is, "Hellenistic" understood chronologically from Alexander the Great to Augustus), (b) Greek-speaking Judaism in antiquity (that is, "Hellenistic" understood linguistically), and (c) the interaction between Judaism and its host cultures in antiquity ("Hellenistic understood culturally and socially).
Call for papers: For the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting in Denver the Hellenistic Judaism section organizes three sessions. 1) Slavery and Hellenistic Judaism (open call): We invite papers that examine any aspects of the social history of enslaved, semi-dependent, and freed persons in Hellenistic Judaism, broadly conceived to encompass the period from Alexander the Great to Hadrian as well as Greek-speaking Judaism throughout antiquity. We especially welcome topics that engage with recent scholarship on enslaved persons and freedpersons in the ancient Mediterranean as well as theoretical and cross-cultural approaches that may help to reconstruct the experiences, agency, and survival strategies of enslaved or formerly enslaved persons. 2)The Galilee: Politics, Religion, Culture (open call). Research on the Galilee has gained renewed momentum over the last two decades, following archaeological discoveries at various urban and rural sites in the heart of the region and its periphery. Those discoveries have implications for understanding the socio-cultural and religious history of the Galilee from the late Second Temple period through late antiquity. We invite papers that examine questions related to the politics, religion, culture, and society of the Galilee, Galilean Jewry, and other social groups in the region within this time frame. 3)The Hellenistic Judaism Unit invites papers on the reception of Hellenistic Judaism from the 19th century to the present. The call is open, but papers focusing on the perception / reception of Hellenistic texts and / or authors in the lights of the important historical events and scholarly advancement of last two centuries, including the introduction of Hellenistic Judaism as a scholarly subfield, are particularly welcome.
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Historical Geography of the Biblical World
Description: This unit provides a platform for scholars to present original research
related to the historical geography of the biblical world. While we anticipate
many studies related to both the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New
Testament, we welcome studies of related regions and texts as well.
Call for papers: This year we will offer the following two sessions: (1) A session of the Historical Geography of the Biblical World will be dedicated to studies that focus on the historical geography of biblical genealogies and related literature. Researchers may also be interested in presenting papers on Judahite and Israelite personal names, as well as seals and bullae, which focus on their geographical aspects. (2) An additional session will be open to all aspects of historical geography in the Bible, ANE, Hellenistic-Roman and related literature.
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Historical Jesus
Description: Historical Jesus research is one of the oldest and most debated areas in Biblical Studies. We encourage critical analyses of historical methods, recent trends and contemporary reception, and we give scholars and students opportunities to present their latest Jesus research.
Call for papers: The Historical Jesus section organizes four sessions for the 2022 meeting. We invite papers for two sessions: 1) This session will involve ways of reconstructing the quest for the historical Jesus following the extensive criticisms levelled at the “criteria of authenticity.” 2) The second session will be on overlooked or new themes in historical Jesus studies (e.g., race, class, slavery, gender, sexuality) with an emphasis on comparative and interdisciplinary approaches. In addition, there will be two sessions with invited speakers. We will have joint session with the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media unit on the historical Jesus and ancient media culture. We will also organize one session on the so-called Third Quest for the historical Jesus.
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Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Description: This unit (formerly Current Historiography and Ancient Israel and Judah) explores how historians use the Hebrew Bible for purposes of historical research and writing.
Call for papers: The Historiography and the Hebrew Bible program unit invites paper proposals that examine specific historical questions or topics that pertain to the texts of the Hebrew Bible. Papers that engage contemporary debates surrounding the theories and methods of history writing as they pertain to the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the lived past are particularly welcome. In addition to one or more open session(s), we will host a special session featuring invited papers that reflect upon Israel Finkelstein's recently published collection of essays, Essays on Biblical Historiography: From Jeroboam II to John Hyrcanus (FAT 148; Mohr Siebeck, 2022), in order to generate a provocative and stimulating discussion of present research and future directions in the field, especially in relation to historiographic practices.
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History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Description: This section is devoted to both historical and literary study of the Rabbis of Late Antiquity (ca. 70 CE - 640 CE). We encourage studies that are interdisciplinary and comparative, and that take into account the wider social and cultural environments in which the Rabbis worked.
Call for papers: For the 2022 meeting, the History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism section invites papers on any and all topics relating to late antique Judaism. Potential areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to: Rabbinic theology, pedagogy in/of Rabbinic literature, and lesser-known figures in Rabbinic literature.
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Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Description: The Homiletics and Biblical Studies Section encourages dialogue among scholars in both fields who share an interest in critical exegesis, its various methods, and the unique hermeneutical and theological problems inherent to the relationship between biblical interpretation and proclamation.
Call for papers: The Homiletics and Biblical Studies Section invites papers in our open call session for the 2022 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. The papers can address any topic related to the intersection between homiletics and biblical studies. We encourage papers from a variety of traditions and welcome inter-religious dialogue.
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Institute for Biblical Research
Description: The historical goals of the Institute for Biblical Research include fostering the study of Scripture within an evangelical context, establishing facilities for the furtherance of biblical studies, and encouraging university and college students toward a vocation of biblical scholarship. Website: www.ibr-bbr.org
Call for papers: Some of our research groups are issuing a call for papers. For details on each group and to submit a proposal, please see the IBR website: www.ibr-bbr.org and contact research group sponsors directly.
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International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Description: The IOSCS is an Affiliate of the SBL. For further information on the IOSCS, please contact the program unit chair.
Call for papers: The International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS) is soliciting papers for its annual meeting in Denver, to be held in conjunction with SBL. We invite 20' papers on any aspect of the LXX and cognate literature. Proposals of max. 350 words should be submitted through the SBL Annual Meetings website. All presenters and panelists must be members in good standing order of IOSCS (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ioscs/membership/). Please direct any queries to Reinhart Ceulemans at reinhart.ceulemans@kuleuven.be.
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International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA)
Description: The International Qur’anic Studies Association fosters scholarship on the Qur’an, its context, its relationship to other scriptural traditions, and its influence upon literature and culture. IQSA facilitates the broad and open discussion of the Qur’an from a variety of academic perspectives.
Call for papers: For the 2022 meeting in Denver, IQSA invites proposals for papers that engage any aspect of the Qur'anic text. These may explore particular themes in a given surah or aspects of the Qur'an's conversation with the religious traditions of Late Antiquity, or even discuss methodological concerns when studying the text or highlight features of physical manuscripts. All topics are welcome.
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International Syriac Language Project
Description: All papers are presented as contributions to the International Syriac Language Project (ISLP), the aim of which is to redefine ancient-language lexicography for the 21st century, and to lay the foundations for a new comprehensive Syriac-English lexicon. The group and its invited contributors is interdisciplinary and collaborative, and therefore includes specialists in related fields.
Call for papers: All papers are presented as contributions to the International Syriac Language Project (ISLP), the aim of which is to redefine ancient-language lexicography for the 21st century, and to lay the foundations for a new comprehensive Syriac-English lexicon. The group and its invited contributors is interdisciplinary and collaborative, and therefore includes specialists in related fields.
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Interrelations of the Gospels
Description: This section focuses on the production and reception of early Christian
Gospels, particularly the ways subsequent authors redacted and rewrote
previous Gospels in whole or in part. Perennial inquiries include the
Synoptic problem and John's relation to the Synoptics, but additional
texts-both extant and hypothetical-are also evaluated. The unit fosters an
open forum that does not privilege or exclude any methodologically
rigorous source-critical hypothesis.
Call for papers: We are planning three sessions in 2022. First is an open call for any papers studying the interrelations of the Gospels. Second is an open call for a joint session with the New Testament Textual Criticism group on the topic of textual criticism and the interrelations of the Gospels. Third is a joint session with the Redescribing Christian Origins seminar and the Social-Scientific Interpretation of the New Testament unit, which will be a prearranged panel discussion of Robyn Faith Walsh's Origins of Early Christian Literature.
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Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible
Description: The purpose of this unit is to provide a forum for presentation and discussion on the study of intertextuality in the Hebrew Bible. This unit explores various issues related to methodology as well as interpretation, considering not only the Hebrew Bible but also its connection to ancient Near Eastern literature, Second Temple texts, the New Testament, interreligious sources, art, and film.
Call for papers: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible will be hosting four sessions.
We will have two joint sessions (invited papers): one with Israelite Prophetic Literature and the other with Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions.
Our third joint session, co-sponsored with Bible and Popular Culture, is an OPEN call. We invite proposals exploring unexpected intersections between biblical texts and pop culture productions. Intertextuality puts two or more unlike things in conversation in order to illuminate each other and create new and unexpected "truths" via their dialogue. Understood in this way, we invite presenters to put the Hebrew Bible and pop culture into unsuspected dialogues that stimulate novel perspectives and ideas. For example, how might reading science fiction change the way we understand prophecy? What new modes of feminist literature could be inspired from the intersections of Beyonce and Judith? How might Tik Tokers and the biblical writers teach each other and future communicators about (un)effective storytelling? What does K-Pop have to do with the Deuteronomistic History? How might reading modern poets and Psalms together create new understandings of poetry? Presenters are encouraged to pursue creative lines of investigation that bring the Hebrew Bible and modern examples of popular culture into new and fresh dialogue.
Our final session is OPEN to all proposals related to Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible with preference given to proposals related to the call for our joint session with Bible and Popular Culture (see above).
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Intertextuality in the New Testament
Description: The purpose of this unit is to provide a forum for presentation and discussion on intertexual interpretations of New Testament passages. This unit focuses on ways in which the language of texts are recited, echoed, reconfigured, or recontextualized by other texts from the LXX, Greco-Roman philosophers, orators, decrees, Second Temple sources, Hebrew Scriptures, or another ancient source.
Call for papers: The Intertextuality in the New Testament (INT) Section invites proposals for papers during the 2022 annual meeting. Papers may focus on any aspect of intertextuality and New Testament interpretation, but should articulate the kind of intertextual work or method being employed. First-time presenters are encouraged to propose papers. They should submit their abstract through the SBL website and send the full paper by email to the section co-chairs.
INT is also planning two invited plenary sessions. One will be co-sponsored with the John’s Apocalypse in Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern section, focusing on the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21-22. The second will be a panel review of New Testament Basics, a new introduction to the New Testament by Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt. The panel will feature three panelists, responses from Alkier and Moffitt, and extensive time for conversation.
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Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Description: This unit focuses on the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the apologists, and the authors of martyrdom accounts (AFAM) in the second and third centuries. The goal is to explore their role in the invention of “Christianity” and early Christian identities.
Call for papers: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs will be running two sessions in 2022.
For our first session, we take the first part of our section name and ask: in what ways was early Christianity invented? Beliefs and practices have been both justified and excluded by appeals to “early Christianity” or “the” early Church. Therefore, we invite papers that explore any aspect of the construction, development, appropriation or reception of the idea of “early Christianity” in the ancient world or beyond.
Our second section uses the recent publication of L. Stephanie Cobb’s edited volume, The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas in Late Antiquity (University of California Press, 2021) to reflect on the place of this martyr act in the historiography of early Christianity. We invite papers that address themes such as: gender and the body, authorship, martyrdom and the cult of the martyrs, visions and prophecy, or Christianity in North Africa. We are particularly interested in novel assessments of these themes that offer new appraisals of this martyr act and its reception in late antiquity.
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Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures
Description: This section is a platform for island and islander views, languages, peoples, swaggers, rhythms and more. It engages interests and realities of islanders from and between the Caribbean and Oceania, and how those condition the reception, translation and interpretation of scriptures.
Call for papers:
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Israelite Prophetic Literature
Description: This section aims to provide an open forum for scholars to present papers on a variety of topics germane to the study of ancient Israelite prophecy and prophetic literature.
Call for papers: The Israelite Prophetic Literature section will sponsor four sessions in 2022 and now accepts proposals: (1) In this joint session between the ‘Nature Imagery and Conceptions of Nature in the Bible’ and the ‘Israelite Prophetic Literature’ units, WE ARE ACCEPTING PROPOSALS: we invite papers that examine the use of nature imagery in prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah – Malachi) or in ancient Near Eastern prophecy. Nature images can draw on a wide range of topics including fauna, flora, landscape characteristics, climate systems, and water sources. This year, preference will be given to proposals related to landscape characteristics and water sources. (2) In this joint session between the ‘Comparative Method in Biblical Studies’ and the ‘Israelite Prophetic Literature’ units, WE ARE ACCEPTING PROPOSALS: While the received classical prophets’ words are now written, the reality is that these texts have had and still have a major aural component. What comparative methods or approaches can help us understand the performative aspects of the aurality of prophetic texts (be they ancient near eastern, sacred, or popular/cultural expressions)? (3) In a joint session with the ‘Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible’ unit, we will sponsor a session of invited papers. This session will be a roundtable discussion of contributors to a forthcoming Festschrift for Marvin A. Sweeney (Mohr Siebeck). (4) “OPEN” session: WE ARE ACCEPTING PROPOSALS with papers on a broad range of topics dealing with prophetic literature. Papers that fall within the scope of this year’s themes in our joint-sessions may also be presented here.
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Israelite Religion in Its Ancient Context
Description: A forum for the study of religion in Israel and Judea within their larger Southwest Asian and East Mediterranean contexts. Aims to bring together a wide variety of questions, perspectives, periods, disciplines, theories, methods, and kinds of data, e.g., verbal text (literary and pragmatic), visual art, artifacts and architecture; philology (broadly), art-history, sociology and anthropology, and history; theology, ritual, gender, and ethnicity. Above all, the forum seeks to facilitate the systematic framing of questions and analysis of religion in theoretical terms, with theoretical scholarship.
Call for papers: A forum for the study of religion in Israel and Judea within their larger Southwest Asian and East Mediterranean contexts. Aims to bring together a wide variety of questions, perspectives, periods, disciplines, theories, methods, and kinds of data, e.g., verbal text (literary and pragmatic), visual art, artifacts and architecture; philology (broadly), art-history, sociology and anthropology, and history; theology, ritual, gender, and ethnicity. Above all, the forum seeks to facilitate the systematic framing of questions and analysis of religion in theoretical terms, with theoretical scholarship.
This year we have one open call for papers.
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Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Description: The section aims to encourage the exploration of the diverse ways (accommodation; cooption, ambivalence; self-protective protest; challenge; alternative communities and contestive practices; exposure of imperial strategies etc.) in which Jesus traditions and gospels negotiate the Roman imperial world.
Call for papers: This session aims to encourage the exploration of the diverse ways (accommodation; cooption, ambivalence; self-protective protest; challenge; alternative communities and contestive practices; exposure of imperial strategies etc.) in which Jesus traditions and gospels negotiate the Roman imperial world. Proposals for papers on any aspect of this negotiation are welcome for the program unit's' two sessions.
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Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Description: The broad aim of this research unit is to clarify the religion, history, and sociology of the ancient groups traditionally called, collectively, “Jewish Christianity,” but increasingly “Christian” or “Jesus-believing Judaism.” The group also seeks to clarify the issues involved in conceptualizing such groups as a distinct category of religion in antiquity.
Call for papers: For the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting, the "Jewish-Christianity/Christian Judaism” section welcomes proposals on papers on any topic related to our theme, including but not limited to Jewish Christianity in Syria. Planned sessions include a review panel on Barbara Meyer's *Jesus the Jew in Christian Memory* (Cambridge UP 2020)
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Johannine Literature
Description: Our mission is to address issues and concerns having to do with the analysis and interpretation of the Johannine literature--a major component of the Christian Scriptures, encompassing for our purposes the Gospel of John and the three Johannine letters. The section has historically been committed to highlighting new voices and issues in the field.
Call for papers: The Johannine Literature Section welcomes papers for the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting. We will have four sessions. Two invited sessions with panelists and respondents: (1) Reading John within Judaism; and (2) John’s Relationship with Mark, co-sponsored with the Mark Seminar.
We invite paper proposals for two entirely open sessions, which may focus on the Gospel, the Letters of John, or a combination of the two. A wide variety of methodologies, interdisciplinary readings and interpretations are encouraged.
Program Unit Chairs
Adesola Akala
Christopher Skinner
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John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Description: This section provides an interdisciplinary forum for nontraditional and traditional methods to interact in the exploration of the meaning and significance of the Apocalypse of John and related literature in both their ancient and modern cultural contexts.
Call for papers: We invite submissions for open sessions on John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts, Ancient and Modern. While we welcome proposals on all aspects of the book of Revelation, we especially invite papers that offer new perspectives on the text, including papers that approach the text from specific hermeneutical contexts, employ innovative approaches to the Apocalypse, and/or offer new perspectives on enduring questions.
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Josephus
Description: The Josephus Group will support the Brill Josephus Project, which is publishing all of his works with translation and commentary. We shall reach out collaboratively to the SBL community with a wide variety of topics related to the study of Josephus.
Call for papers: Two sessions are planned for the 2022 annual meeting. One session will be devoted to papers related to the Brill Josephus project and is by invitation only. The second session is an open paper session. We are especially interested in proposals that bring Josephus into sustained comparison with another ancient author (e.g., Philo, Polybius, Luke) but will consider proposals on any Josephus-related topic.
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Joshua-Judges
Description: The Joshua-Judges Section will seek to reach a synthesis of all genuinely pertinent information and insight needed to interpret Joshua and Judges responsibly and competently. Specialists will contribute to understanding contents, background, text, structure, and interpretation of these books.
Call for papers: At the 2022 Annual Meeting, we will have three sessions. -- Two open sessions on Joshua and Judges. Papers dealing with any topic related to either book are welcome. -- And an invited session (postponed from 2021): The Book of Judges before the Judges (Judg 1:1-3:6): The first chapter of Judges tells stories of conquest and settlement outside the framework of most of the book, as the tribes here are not led by chieftains, and there is no one overarching narrative framework. Chapter 2 tells the story of the angel at Bochim (vv. 1-5), then the repeat of Joshua's death scene (vv. 6-10). Following this the text lays out "the Judges scheme" (vv. 11-23) and then lists the remaining peoples (3:1-6). Only at 3:7 do we arrive at a story of what can properly be called "a judge," that of Othniel (though even this is skipped over in the brief survey at the end of LXX Joshua 24, which jumps directly to Eglon). How are we to understand these opening units, their relationship to each other, to the rest of the book, and finally to the larger DtrH or Enneateuchal corpus?
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Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion
Description: The JFSR is the oldest interdisciplinary, interreligious feminist academic journal in religious studies. Founded in 1985, it is published twice annually, in the spring and fall. Located at the intersection of feminist theory and studies in religion, it welcomes contributions that explore a diversity of feminist theories, practices, cultures, and religions. Its editors are committed to rigorous thinking and analysis in the service of the transformation of religious studies as a discipline and the feminist transformation of religious and cultural institutions. Website: http://www.fsrinc.org/jfsr/
Call for papers:
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Korean Biblical Colloquium
Description: The purpose of this organization is to promote Korean scholarship in biblical studies and related fields and to facilitate fellowship and networking among Korean scholars in those fields. Members of KBC include Koreans and others who are engaged in biblical studies and related fields and who are interested in developing Korean perspectives in those fields and sharing their scholarly experiences with fellow Korean scholars.
Call for papers: Our 2022 panel session (as an extension of the 2021 panel on Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko") will focus on the film “Minari” (written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung in 2020), with the main theme: "Minari, Memory, Migrants." Panelists will address various issues related to the migrant experiences and/or memoirs such as the one “Minari” portrayed, in light of their unique expertise and perspectives.
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La Comunidad of Hispanic Scholars of Religion
Description: Our organization was founded in 1989 at the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical
Literature to advance the interests and scholarship of Latinas and Latinos in biblical, theological,
and religious studies. Although originally created to bring together Latino/a Catholic and Protestant scholars, today we are interdenominational and interreligious in nature and welcome scholars from across all disciplines who share our vision and mission, and who are interested in scholarly work on
Latino/a religions. We regularly sponsor panels, host annual events, engage in advocacy for Latino/a scholars, and seek to provide networking and mentoring opportunities. For more on our mission and
goals, please review our "Mission" and "Objectives" pages.
Call for papers: Our organization was founded in 1989 at the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical
Literature to advance the interests and scholarship of Latinas and Latinos in biblical, theological,
and religious studies. Although originally created to bring together Latino/a Catholic and Protestant scholars, today we are interdenominational and interreligious in nature and welcome scholars from across all disciplines who share our vision and mission, and who are interested in scholarly work on
Latino/a religions. We regularly sponsor panels, host annual events, engage in advocacy for Latino/a scholars, and seek to provide networking and mentoring opportunities. For more on our mission and
goals, please review our "Mission" and "Objectives" pages.
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Latino/a/e and Latin American Biblical Interpretation
Description: The issue of contextualization at the level of reception or interpretation, involving not only location but also perspective, has become paramount in Biblical Studies in recent years. For some time now, a good and growing number of Latino/a American and Latin American biblical scholars have been addressing the problematic of reading the Bible explicitly from their particular placements and optics in society and culture. This proposed Consultation seeks to pursue such work in sustained and systematic fashion by bringing together scholars—Latino/a and Latin American as well as others with an interest in such discussions—from across the spectrum of biblical criticism. Its scope is conceived as broad: first, the biblical texts as such, both testaments; second, readings and readers of these texts in modern and postmodern biblical criticism; lastly, traditions of reading the Bible outside academic criticism. Its approach is also envisioned as wide-ranging: open to a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives, from the more traditional to the more recent.
Call for papers: For 2022, we invite papers that address critical times. In his 2014 Presidential Address, Fernando Segovia called for a new paradigm in biblical studies “that would foreground sustained theorization of critical vision and task as well as the global state of affairs” to address “the unique, indeed unprecedented, critical times in which we find ourselves” (“Criticism in Critical Times,” JBL 134 [2015]: 29). In the seven years since Segovia issued this call, the global state of affairs has been upended in ways that in 2014 would have been difficult to imagine. The Covid-19 pandemic foremost comes to mind, but so does the election of political candidates advocating nationalist and xenophobic platforms to the highest seats of government, climate change and its ramifications for current weather patterns and phenomena such as the lingering effects of Hurricane María, outbreaks of protest in response to violence inflicted on Black and Indigenous peoples by law enforcement (as in the US) or to years of dissatisfaction with government leadership (as in Cuba and Puerto Rico), the manipulation of social media algorithms to spread disinformation, and continuing migrations resulting from political, economic, climate, or social crises in countries of origin. More could be added to this list. For this session, we are holding an open call for papers that, from the standpoint of biblical studies, respond to one or more events or phenomena that since 2014 have heightened the critical nature of our times on a transnational scale. We especially seek papers that focus on Latin American and/or Latinx populations, that draw from discursive frameworks of the Global South, and/or that employ hermeneutical approaches developed in Latin American and/or Latinx biblical criticism. Our other two panels will be an invited panel responding to Jean-Pierre Ruiz’s Revelation in the Vernacular (Orbis, 2021) and a session on radical women of color whose call is led by the Minoritized Criticism section.
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Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Description: This unit examines the interpretation and use of the Bible by Latter-day Saints beginning with Joseph Smith down to the present. Papers draw on tools used in biblical studies and address topics of broad interest to the academy of biblical scholars.
Call for papers: The Latter-day Saints and the Bible section invites presentation proposals for two sessions. One session will focus on ecological narratives, themes and motifs in the Bible. Proposals that engage monographs such as Hilary Marlow’s Biblical Prophets and Contemporary Environmental Ethics (Oxford, 2009), David G. Horrell’s The Bible and the Environment: Towards a Critical Ecological Biblical Theology (Routledge, 2010) or similar works created outside the LDS community will be given first priority. The other session will be an open forum in which presenters may engage any aspect of the Bible or its reception within the wider LDS tradition. Among the topics that might complement the focus of the other session are the reception and alteration of biblical ecological narratives, themes or motifs in the Book of Mormon or other LDS texts.
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Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Description: The Letters of James, Peter, and Jude Section considers research on these letters that contribute to understanding them and their social contexts. It encourages the use of rhetorical, social-scientific, sociorhetorical, ideological, and hermeneutical methods, as well as other cross-disciplinary approaches in addition to the historical-critical method.
Call for papers: For the Fall 2022 meeting in Denver, The Letters of James, Peter, and Jude Section will focus on the Catholic Epistles (the letters of James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude) as an early collection. Our first session will be made up of a series of invited papers that offer a critical reconstruction of these letters as a canonical collection. In addition there will also be an open session where we invite papers proposals that offer original research on the Letters of James, Peter, and Jude, but especially proposals that focus on the interpretation of the Catholic Epistles either as a seven-letter collection, or in smaller groupings or associations (1 and 2 Peter, or 1–3 John, etc.).
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LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Description: Sexual orientation and kinship continues to be contested in public, ecclesial and academic communities across the globe and Biblical interpretation underpins much that is oppressive in these efforts. This section provides a forum for interrogating issues related to these interpretations and for formulating interpretive methods that emerge from the diversity of LGBTI/Q experience and thought.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting in Denver, LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics plans to hold three sessions, and we invite and encourage scholars at all levels to submit proposals to be considered for presentation in the first two of these sessions:
(1) Connected to the meeting's location in Denver and Colorado, we invite abstracts for a special thematic session on "High Places." We imagine papers that engage LGBTIA2Q+ perspectives in order to explore the multiple meanings of "high"--whether glorious or forbidden--in biblical texts and contemporary spaces.
(2) As always, we will hold an Open Session where scholars should feel welcome and highly encouraged to propose papers driven by any wide range of interests and topics around LGBTIA2Q+ approaches and perspectives on biblical texts, contexts, histories, reception, and politics.
(3) We are co-sponsoring with Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible an invited book review panel on Jimmy Hoke's new book: Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God?
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Linguistic, Literary, and Thematic Perspectives on the Qur’anic Corpus (IQSA)
Description: This unit provides a forum for the study of the Qur’an from a literary standpoint. We welcome papers that examine the structure of passages or entire surahs; analyze the plot, characterization, themes, and voice in Qur’anic narrative; study the interplay between sound and meaning; explore literary motifs specific to each type of Qur’anic discourse; compare and contrast recurrent narratives and other repeated elements or passages; and investigate the Qur’an’s use of literary devices such as imagery, metaphor, foreshadowing, flashback, irony, chiasmus, caesura, alliteration, assonance, and so forth.
Call for papers: This unit provides a forum for the study of the Qur’an from a literary standpoint. We welcome papers that examine the structure of passages or entire surahs; analyze the plot, characterization, themes, and voice in Qur’anic narrative; study the interplay between sound and meaning; explore literary motifs specific to each type of Qur’anic discourse; compare and contrast recurrent narratives and other repeated elements or passages; and investigate the Qur’an’s use of literary devices such as imagery, metaphor, foreshadowing, flashback, irony, chiasmus, caesura, alliteration, assonance, and so forth.
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Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Description: The goals of the unit: to provide a forum where scholars can share the
results of their research on different aspects of Biblical Hebrew; advocate
the advantages of linguistic methods for biblical studies; build a platform for
interdisciplinary partnership with other disciplines and units.
Call for papers: The Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew section solicits papers for four sessions: The FIRST SESSION is open and entitled “Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew” (co-sponsored with NAPH). Papers that address the study of BH using a well-articulated theory and apply linguistics to BH constructions or corpuses are welcome. The SECOND SESSION is a thematic session entitled “Biblical Hebrew and African Linguistics.” African linguistics is an important sub-branch of general linguistics, especially in what has to do with the analysis unwritten or endangered languages. The linguistics of BH and of African languages meet in the sphere of Bible translation, but the union also yields scholarship in other branches. We expect abstracts on a variety of topics connected to BH and different African languages. The THIRD SESSION, co-sponsored with the Formation of Isaiah Unit, is entitled “The Language of First Isaiah: Literature and Vernacular.” First Isaiah (chs. 1–39) is linguistically diverse, containing material from the 8th century through the postexilic period. The rich lexical, syntactic, and poetic material makes the book an ‘encyclopedia’ of Ancient Hebrew literature. We invite papers addressing linguistic and stylistic traits of the Proto-Isaianic corpus, especially from the diachronic and comparative perspectives. Papers should engage with and assess existing redactional theories in light of the linguistic evidence. The FOURTH SESSION, "Language of Aramaic and Hebrew Epigraphy in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods," is a joint session co-sponsored by the Aramaic Studies unit. A great deal of new data has been published lately, e.g., from Idumea and Judea, while advanced methods of analysis—electronic and historical-linguistic—permit the broadening of dialectological and historical discussion. We invite scholars to submit proposals for papers that pertain to the Aramaic and Hebrew epigraphic materials of these periods.
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Literature and History of the Persian Period
Description: The Literature and History of the Persian Period Group emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to biblical texts and related literature of the 6th-4th centuries BCE by bringing together archaeologists, Assyriologists, classicists, Egyptologists, and sociologists, to name but a few, with biblical scholars specializing in various facets and texts pertinent to this era.
Call for papers:
For 2022 LHPP will have multiple sessions; we invite papers within two thematic foci. Participants in both will pre-circulate their papers among their fellow panelists, to foster discussion.
1) Social Network Analysis as a method for the Persian Period
Invited and Open Call
Though long used by sociologists and biologists, amongst others, recent advances in digital humanities and data collation have helped make the ancient world accessible to network approaches. Though it involves complex interdisciplinary work, networks offer the potential of exploring structures otherwise difficult to discern in data. How might scholars of history and literature of the Persian Empire make use of these tools? We plan to invite a set of panelists working in SNA, but welcome all proposals making use of network methods, especially those looking at archaeological data in a new light. Depending on response, we will hold one or two sessions on this theme.
2) Social History
Open Call
We also invite papers on any aspect of social history within the Persian Empire, including but not exclusive to those making use of explicitly anthropological/sociological lenses. We especially encourage the use of multiple sources—archaeological, literary, documentary—for reconstructing the social history of the period, as well as interdisciplinary papers. Depending on submissions, we will hold one or two sessions.
3) "Theocracy"
Invited
Another invited session on "theocracy" will be held jointly with the Pentateuch section.
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Mark Passion Narrative
Description: The Mark Passion Narrative Seminar approaches Mark 14-16 from a variety of methodological
approaches in dialogue. The goal is twofold – to gain new insights into the Mark PN within the
context of the entire Gospel of Mark and to illustrate how methods in dialogue can produce
meaningful understandings of texts.
Call for papers: The Mark Passion Narrative Seminar invites members only to propose papers for the 2022 Annual Meeting in Denver. To request membership email co-chair Jocelyn McWhirter at jmcwhirter@albion.edu. Invited papers will be circulated in advance and then discussed among seminar members and session attendees. Check the program for our three sessions: one on the trial of Jesus before Pilate in Mark 15:1-20 and two on the crucifixion and death of Jesus according to Mark 15:21–47.
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Masoretic Studies
Description: The purpose for this section is to discuss, research and promote the field of Masoretic Studies among Hebrew Bible Scholars. Masoretic Studies seeks to clarify the translation and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible text through the use of the Masorah, to further our understanding of the history of the Masorah, and to explore related fields (e.g. grammar, Rabbinic Studies).
Call for papers: The Masoretic Studies section is planning to have three open sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting. Papers can address any topic pertaining to Masoretic studies, such as Masoretic annotations, Hebrew manuscripts, biblical accents, etc. The presentation of the work of doctoral candidates and early career researchers is especially welcome. We invite submissions for these sessions.
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Matthew
Description: The Matthew Section sponsors invited and submitted papers, panels, reviews and welcomes submission on any topic related to Matthean scholarship.
Call for papers: The Matthew Section is seeking proposals on Matthean topics for the 2022 Annual Meeting. We plan to hold two sessions at this meeting.
The first session is open to any topic in Matthean studies, with non-western perspectives especially encouraged. The second session is an open session on Matthew and the historical Jesus. What, if anything, should material unique to Matthew (i.e. M-material or Matthean redaction) contribute to the quest for the historical Jesus? Proposals may focus on methodological questions (e.g. “social memory” and Matthew) or on particular Matthean passages or themes.
Submissions will be evaluated based on the originality and clarity of the thesis proposed, command of current and classic scholarship (author; year), quality and clarity of supporting evidence, and the overall contribution it makes to knowledge and the vision of SBL Matthew to present the best in Matthean scholarship. Please note that proposals lacking a clear thesis and explicit reference to the scholarly context of the proposed paper will not be considered. Abstracts should be less than 300 words.
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Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Description: The Greco-Roman banquet, which was a complex and highly influential
Hellenistic institution, will be explored as a lens into Greco-Roman social bonding and
boundaries and as a pivotal consideration in reconstructing the history of
early Christianity and Judaism.
Call for papers: The MGRW seminar has planned three sessions for 2022: a) (Proposals are welcome for this session.) A session on non-canonical sources and meals which have not yet been the focus of the seminar's attention. In what ways do the so-called apocryphal writings reflect lived meal practices in early Christianity? How do these sources fit into the dynamic development of the early Christian communal meal as it evolves into the Eucharist as an act of individual appropriation of salvation in late antiquity? This session is co-sponsored by the Redescribing Christian Origins seminar which have also planned another, more general session on non-canonical sources. Please see the CFP of the Redescribing Christian Origins group for more details. b) The second session on meals in Matthew and in John's Revelation is a postponed session from 2021. c) The third session is by invitation only and features interaction between churches in the Republic of Korea practicing worship meals based on their understanding and research of early Christ people meals of the first and second centuries, and SBL scholars. This group of churches, led by the Yega Presbyterian Church in Seoul, translated and published in Korea the book, In the Beginning Was the Meal: Social Experimentation and Early Christian Identity (Hal Taussig, Fortress, 2009).
MGRW subscribes to SBL’s Professional Conduct Policy and is committed to SBL’s core values, particularly those of critical inquiry, inclusivity, accountability, and professionalism.
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Meals in the HB/OT and Its World
Description: The unit explores the cultural-anthropological centrality of meals, utilizing the considerable data about food and feasting from the OT/HB and ANE (textual, iconographic, archaeological), to address questions of gender, social formation/identity, intercultural dynamics, ecology, ideology & theology.
Call for papers: The SBL ‘Meals in the OT/HB and Its World’ group will host two sessions this year. The first is an open session on the theme of ‘Food and Social Relations in the HB/OT.’ This session seeks to explore questions posed in the ‘Future Directions for Meals Research’ session at SBL 2021, in particular, the links between Food and Social Relations in biblical literature and its broader literary and archaeological contexts, considering how social relations are negotiated through meals, feasts and fasts. Fruitful avenues for investigation include (but are in no way limited to) matters of hospitality, etiquette, table manners, how individual ‘voice’ and social values are expressed through food, the performative nature of meals, reception history studies of communal eating and ‘food events.’ The second session is an invited panel of papers on the topic of ‘Food Taboos/Dietary Prohibitions.’
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Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
Description: This unit interrogates the contours and boundaries of the discipline of
biblical studies, including analysis of the guild's historic and current
preoccupations, methods, and participant composition, while providing a
forum for constructive recommendations for future directions in the field.
Call for papers: This unit interrogates the contours and boundaries of the discipline of
biblical studies, including analysis of the guild's historic and current
preoccupations, methods, and participant composition, while providing a
forum for constructive recommendations for future directions in the field.
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Metaphor in the Bible and Cognate Literature
Description: This section aims to advance the understanding of how metaphor operates in the Hebrew Bible, with a focus on how applied metaphor theory can enhance our work as Bible scholars; it also aims to deepen our knowledge of the diverse metaphorical language used in the Hebrew Bible.
Call for papers: The Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible section will host two sessions in Denver. The first session will be jointly sponsored by The Book of the Twelve Prophets section. Papers in this session may focus on a metaphor or network of metaphors within one of the individual collections (e.g., Amos, Joel, Nahum, etc.) or the deployment of a metaphor across the Book of the Twelve Prophets as a whole. The second session will be an open session. Papers in this session may focus on a wide variety of issues related to translation and interpretation of individual metaphors or networks of metaphors in the Hebrew Bible. For both sessions, we welcome papers that utilize a range of methodological approaches and theories.
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Midrash
Description: The Midrash Section is a scholarly forum for the comprehensive, interdisciplinary study and analysis of the particular mode of interpreting the Bible developed and utilized by the rabbis of late antiquity.
Call for papers: The Midrash Section invites paper proposals for two sessions it will sponsor at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the SBL: 1) A session devoted to the theme "Food and Meals" for papers that offer a critical examination of food and meals in Midrash, including religious and cultural practices, cuisines, the ethics of consumption, and how food brings people together and creates divisions between them: 2) An open session devoted to any aspect of the study of Midrash and related literature.
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Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation
Description: The issue of contextualization at the level of reception and interpretation, involving not only social-cultural location but also ideological perspective, has become paramount in Biblical Studies in recent years. For some time now, a substantial and ever-growing number of African American, Asian American, and Latino/a American biblical scholars have been addressing the problematic of reading the biblical texts explicitly from their respective placements and optics in society and culture. This proposed Consultation seeks to expand such work by bringing together scholars from these and other population groups, both national and international, that have traditionally been classified as “minority” groups but who today classify themselves as “minoritized” groups.
A word about the term “minoritized” is in order. Such groups have undergone what in Racial-Ethnic Studies is known as a process of racialization or ethnicization, grounded in real or perceived biological or cultural features, respectively. The process itself is dialectical as well as differential. It is dialectical insofar as it entails a construction of a racial or ethnic Other by a Self, which in the process constructs itself as separate. It is differential insofar as such a construction involves an unequal relation of power between Self and Other, one of domination and subordination, respectively. When such a process takes place at the level of a political unit or state, then one can speak of such groups as “minoritized” by a “dominantized” group formation.
The proposed Consultation thus seeks to bring together critics from such groups not only within the United States but also globally, in order to work together as critics on the problematic of minoritization-dominantization at all levels of the discipline as conceived and practiced today. Its scope is thus quite broad: (1) the ancient texts as such, canonical as well as extracanonical; (2) readings and readers of these texts in modern and postmodern
Call for papers: The MCBI section holds three sessions this year. (1) The territorial nation-state remains a dominant othering force of our time. Hence for this session, we invite proposals that speak to the theme of "Bible and Nationalism." This session seeks to analyze the role of the Bible in relation to nationalism. Questions of interest include, but are by no means limited to: What are some ways in which the Bible has been interpreted to explain particular forms of nationalism? What biblical language, tropes, motifs, images, narratives, and rhetorics have been used to construct, critique, or sacralize nation-states? How has the Bible informed ways of thinking and talking about the origins of a nation, its mission, its destiny and its role in the world? How has biblical interpretation reinforced nationalist claims of the minoritized Other? We especially welcome proposals of interdisciplinary and intersectional nature. (2) The second session's topic is "Radical Women-of-Color-Centered Biblical Criticism." The political term "women of color" has a solidarity definition and historically describes a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been "minoritized." Hence, this session invites papers from women-of-color biblical scholars to discuss the history, benefits, and challenges of building a radical women-of-color coalitional movement within biblical studies. While it is an open session, we will also invite a few respondents for a productive conversation across generations. Panelists will be encouraged to engage the contributions of radical feminists of color like Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldua, Chela Sandoval, Nikol Alexander-Floyd, Grace Lee Boggs, and Yuri Kochiyama, to name a few. (3) Our third session is an invited panel reviewing "Activist Hermeneutics of Liberation in the Bible (Routledge, 2022), edited by Jin Young Choi & Gregory L. Cuéllar.
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Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Description: This unit is dedicated to the critical investigation of religious currents of secrecy (esotericism), knowledge (gnosticism), and/or their revelation through religious praxis (mysticism) as they developed during the formative periods of Judaism and Christianity (500 BCE-500 CE). This unit is committed to the examination of texts and artifacts created and used in early Jewish, Christian, Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian contexts. We are open to the application of a wide range of historical, comparative, and critical methodologies, including reception history for those who wish to study the effects of these texts and artifacts in later historical periods.
Call for papers: For the 2022 annual meeting, we are inviting PANELS as well as PAPER PROPOSALS on any aspect of mysticism, esotericism, or gnosticism in Mediterranean antiquity. Paper proposals should be uploaded to the SBL website. IF YOU WANT TO PROPOSE A PANEL, contact April DeConick directly, adeconick@rice.edu.
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Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Description: The Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism Section provides a forum for current international research on the Coptic codices discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. Research areas include issues of text, interpretation, social and religio-historical contexts, codicology, and translation.
Call for papers: The Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism Section is planning to hold four sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting in Denver. There is an open call for the first session for papers on any topic related to the study of Nag Hammadi and/or Gnostic traditions. The second session will center on new currents in Valentinian studies, including a consideration of Geoffrey Smith’s Valentinian Christianity (2020); proposals for papers related to Valentinian traditions will be considered for this session, which will also include invited papers. Additionally, we will hold two joint sessions with invited panelists. The first, with the Christian Apocrypha section, will focus on the work of the Storyworlds in Transition: Coptic Apocrypha in Changing Contexts in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods project at the University of Oslo. The second, with the Wisdom and Apocalypticism section, will review a forthcoming edited volume of contributions from The Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dead Sea Scrolls conference held at Humboldt-Universität in July 2018. For the two initial sessions that seek proposals, advanced graduate students and scholars of traditionally under-represented groups are especially encouraged to submit abstracts for consideration.
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National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Description: The NAPH is an Affiliate of the SBL. For additional information on the NAPH, please contact the program unit chair.
Call for papers: 2022 Annual Meeting Call For Papers: NAPH is sponsoring four sessions and two co-sponsored sessions. I. Annual Meeting of Officers and Members. II. Book event, Kenneth Hanson, Hebraic Luke: Jewish Scholarship Enlightens the Narrative of Jesus (Global Center for Religious Research/GCRR Press, 2022). This session deals with the suggestion that beneath the Greek texts of the Gospels, Luke in particular, lay a long-vanished Semitic grundschrift, which may be imperfectly glimpsed through the occasionally awkward syntax of the traditional Gospel narratives. Issues related to the Jewish “reclamation” of Jesus are featured. III.Film event, "The Samaritans: A Biblical People."A documentary by Moshe Alafi.Viewing and discussion. IV.NAPH and SBL Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures section will co-sponsor a panel discussion of J. Richard Middleton, Abraham's Silence: The Binding of Isaac, The Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God (Baker Academic, 2021). The session focuses on the biblical theme of confronting God throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as a hermeneutical lens for an innovative peshat reading of the Aqedah. Presenters will be invited.V. Theme: New Hebrew Grammars. The 2022 Biblical Hebrew pedagogy session will focus on the Hebrew grammars that have either been published in the last decade or appeared with significant revisions. Two kinds of proposals are sought. One would be a summary of recent publications with descriptions of their salient features and intended audiences. The other would be devoted to a particular grammar or curriculum. Contact: Robert Stallman (bob.stallman@northwestu.edu).VI. Joint session with the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew Seminar of SBL entitled Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew. Papers that address the study of Biblical Hebrew using a well articulated linguistic method and those that apply linguistics to particular constructions or corpuses.Contact Tania Notarius (tnotarius@gmail.com).
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Nature Imagery and Conceptions of Nature in the Bible
Description: The section focuses on the plethora of nature references in the Bible,
discussed multi-disciplinarily by scholars of Bible, archaeology,
iconography, life & natural sciences, and more. Our goals are to enable
better exegesis of biblical nature imagery and to address biblical
conceptions of nature.
Call for papers: In Denver 2022, we plan four sessions, three of them are open for suggested proposals. (1) We will initiate a new thematic session on “Climate and Weather in the Bible.” Seasons, winds, various kinds of precipitation, and times of drought are among the climate experiences authors in the Bible have utilized within narratives, poetry, wisdom writings, and more. We will accept papers, and encourage presenters to draw multi-disciplinary collaborations to decipher the biblical imagery, its contents and functions. (2) We will conclude our third year of the methodological study session in collaboration with Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible Section, focusing on “Conceptions of Nature in Literature and Iconography: Methodological Considerations.” This will be an invited session, to further discuss “Conceptions of Nature in Ancient Cultures” asking what would be considered as conceptions of nature in literary and pictorial ancient sources? (3) We invite papers for the Open session on any topic relevant to this group’s focus on nature imagery in the Bible. (4) We will establish a new co-operation with the Israelite Prophetic Literature unit on “Nature Imagery in Prophetic Literature” and so invite papers on prophetic texts in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah – Malachi) or on ancient Near Eastern prophecy. Nature images can draw on a wide range of topics including fauna, flora, landscape characteristics, climate systems, and water sources. This year’s preference will be given to proposals related to landscape characteristics and water sources.
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Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE)
Description: NetVUE
Call for papers:
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New Testament Textual Criticism
Description: The New Testament Textual Criticism Section seeks to foster the study and criticism of the text of the New Testament—including examination of manuscripts and other sources, evaluation of their textual variation, restorations of texts, and the investigation of the history of its transmission—in its cultural and historical contexts. SBL has had a group dedicated to this topic as far back as 1946.
Call for papers: The New Testament Textual Criticism section invites proposals for its two open sessions on any aspect relating to the study and criticism of the text of the New Testament, as well as an open call for papers on any aspect of textual criticism touching upon the interrelations of the Gospels for a joint session with the Interrelations of the Gospels unit. In addition, we will be hosting an invited joint session with the Mark Group on the scholarly legacy of Larry W. Hurtado (1943-2019), which had been postponed from the previous annual meetings.
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Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Description: The unit presents the on-going work on the Editio Critica Maior (ECM), a comprehensive text-critical edition of the Greek New Testament that exhibits the history of the Greek text through its first millennium as documented in manuscripts from the second century until the invention of letterpress printing. It provides scholars engaged in the tasks of exegesis and textual criticism with all the relevant materials found in Greek manuscripts, patristic citations, and early translations. The selection of Greek manuscripts rests on an evaluation of all known primary witnesses, and each of the manuscripts selected is cited completely with all its variants. This opens the way for a new understanding of the history of the text, the more so because all relevant evidence is stored on databases. The primary line of the ECM presents a text based on a careful application of internal and external criteria, streamlined by the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method.
Call for papers: In 2022, the main session will be open for submissions related to the published volumes of the ECM (Acts, Catholic Epistles, Mark) or the volumes in progress (John, Revelation, Galatians). Presenters should clearly indicate how their contribution engages with the material or methodology of the ECM. There will also be status reports for the ongoing parts of the edition.
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Numismatic Evidence and Biblical Interpretation
Description: This Program Unit explores how ancient coinage illumines the
interpretation of early Christianity and biblical literature. It will appeal to
scholars interested in epigraphic, iconographic, and historical questions, as
well as those who specialize in the social history of early Christianity.
Call for papers: The theme for 2022 in Numismatics and Biblical Interpretation is Roman Imperial coinage and biblical interpretation. We welcome paper submissions from SBL members. The first session (open call) offers a critical exploration of the implications for biblical interpretation in light of coinage produced in Rome or subsidiary imperial mints from 27 BCE onwards. The second session (open call) is devoted to addressing any key issues in the employment of numismatic material for biblical interpretation. Among other topics, papers might include such topics as methodology, iconography, lexicography, reception history etc. Both sessions will showcase and demonstrate navigation of the major resources and databases in numismatic studies.
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Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Description: The Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds Group explores how the ancient papyri illumine the world of early Christianity and will appeal to scholars interested in paleographic, linguistic, and textual questions, as well as those who specialize in the social and cultural history of early Christianity.
Call for papers: The Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds Group invites papers which can address any of the group’s themes, including paleography, codicology, linguistics and textual criticism, as well as larger questions relating to the social and cultural history of early Christianity.
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Paul and Politics
Description: The purposes of the Paul and Politics Group are to bring together several currently separate but often overlapping lines of investigation and interpretation of the apostle Paul, his mission, his letters, and his longer-range impact. Those lines of investigation include "Paul and the politics of the churches," "Paul and the politics of Israel," "Paul and the politics of the Roman Empire" and "Paul and politics of Interpretation."
Call for papers: The Paul and Politics Section proposes three sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. We have three sessions with three sessions open for paper proposals.
The first session is entitled the “Hermeneutics of White Supremacy in Biblical Scholarship.” This panel – co-sponsored by the Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma unit, The Paul & Politics unit, and The Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible unit – invites proposals addressing the traumatic impact of white supremacy as built within biblical scholarship. Proposals may engage questions of 1) critical race theory, 2) feminist theory that analyzes the ramifications of white supremacy on gendered readings of texts 3) racial trauma perpetuated by the biblical texts or their reception history, and/or 4) politics in any aspect of the contemporary study of Pauline scholarship, the Pauline legacy, and/or contemporary communities using these texts. Proposals may also construct scholarship beyond whiteness as a center (i.e., conversations in Afropessimism or Afrofuturism). Successful proposals will outline biblical texts and critical theorists employed in their interpretations.
The SECOND SESSION is a call for papers on Paul and the Politics of Imprisoned Bodies. The papers will explore the hermeneutical resources and/or challenges that Pauline texts offer to conversations on ancient and contemporary embodied experiences of being in the prison system.
The THIRD SESSION will be an open call inviting proposals for papers on any element of research related to the relationship(s) between "Paul" and "politics" (in the broadest sense of both of these terms)
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Paul within Judaism
Description: While the opposition between Paul and Judaism has been the undisputed point of departure in much previous Pauline scholarship, the aim of this program unit is to develop Pauline studies from the hypothesis that Paul remained within and practiced Judaism.
Call for papers: This year we will have one invited and one open session, both on the theme “Visions of Judaism Contemporaneous with Paul.” For the open session we invite papers on universalist and Israel-centric visions of Judaism respectively, focusing in particular on Israel and the gentiles, and the relationship between Jews and gentiles and their respective relationship to the Torah in texts preserved for instance in the Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha.
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Pauline Epistles
Description: The Pauline Epistles section aims to stimulate critical analysis of the letters of Paul by offering a platform for new research. The section maintains a historical orientation and typically focuses on situating the undisputed Pauline letters in their immediate social, political, religious, and intellectual contexts.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting in Denver, the Pauline Epistles Section is planning two invited panels and two open-call sessions. One invited panel will feature papers on the theme of “Paul within Paganism,” featuring recent research on the letters of Paul in the context of ancient Mediterranean religions. The other invited panel will feature papers thinking about “assemblies” (ekklesiai) in Paul’s letters in conversation with John Kloppenborg’s Christ’s Associations (YUP, 2019). For one of the open-call sessions, we specifically invite paper proposals on comparison in the study of Paul, in conversation with Jonathan Z. Smith’s Drudgery Divine (UCP, 1990). For the other open-call session, we invite paper proposals on any aspect of the Pauline epistles in keeping with our Section description.
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Pauline Theology
Description: The unit has been set up in order to explore central issues in Pauline theology. No single understanding of "Pauline theology," or of how it is to be delimited from other aspects of Pauline discourse, is assumed at the outset. A complementary goal is the introduction of Pauline textual and theological insights into conversations with other fields, for example, with brain research, ecology, and race.
Call for papers: Theme 1: Paul and Mental Health. We welcome proposals that address one or more of the following questions (and others) around the theme of mental health: Is Paul interested in mental health by either ancient or modern standards? What is the relationship between the mind and the body in Paul’s thought? What role might the Pauline communities play in mental health? What, if anything, might the Pauline literature contribute to a theological framework for contemporary issues in mental health? Conversely, what might the field of mental health contribute to a Pauline scholar’s reading of the Pauline texts? Do Paul’s letters indicate that Paul himself, his congregants, or his compatriots were struggling with their mental health by ancient standards or according to current evidence-based mental health research?
Theme 2: Asian and Asian-American Interpretations of Paul.
With the Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics Seminar we invite proposals that address Asian and Asian-American (AA-A) contextual readings of Paul, particularly those that analyze and appropriate Pauline texts and themes as resources for AA-A theological reflection and take into account AA-A identities, histories, and social locations. Proposals may include consideration of one or more of the following issues from AA-A perspectives:
What hermeneutical considerations and contributions does AA-A historical experience bring to Pauline interpretation?
How do specific Pauline texts or letters contribute to aspects of AA-A theological reflection?
How do AA-A perspectives/texts shape or reshape understanding of particular Pauline ‘doctrines’ such as Christology, justification and justice, participation in Christ, faith, grace, law, eschatology, Israel, and so on?
How does AA-A interpretation highlight new or previously underexamined aspects of Pauline theology?
Which aspects, periods, and/or key figures in AA-A reception-history of Paul should be foregrounded and better understood?
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Pentateuch
Description: The Pentateuch Section provides a forum within the SBL for presentation and discussion of research on the Pentateuch, with a particular focus on transmission-historical issues and linkage of that area of inquiry with other more synchronic methodologies.
Call for papers: The Pentateuch Section provides a forum within the SBL for presentation and discussion of research on the Pentateuch, with a particular focus on transmission-historical issues and linkage of that area of inquiry with other more synchronic methodologies. For the 2022 Denver meeting, we will have a particular focus on Theocracy. One invited panel (co-sponsored with the Literature and History of the Persian Period group) devoted to the question of what theocracy is and how it might be applied to literature written prior to Josephus’s coining of the term. A second invited panel will address the nexus between gender, power, and the priesthood. We will host two open sessions in 2022. Paper proposals in all areas of Pentateuchal research are welcome, but proposals that address the subject of Theocracy in the Pentateuch and/or the nexus between gender and power are especially encouraged.
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Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Description: This interdisciplinary unit is intended to foster discussion about how the creation and interpretation of biblical and other ancient texts has been shaped by their oral transmission and aural reception by ancient communities, using the methods associated with performance criticism.
Call for papers: Theme: Comparative Methodologies: Rhetorical Criticism and Performance Criticism
Biblical Performance Criticism is inherently interdisciplinary, synthesizing the insights of many critical methods to construct scenarios of ancient performances and reframing analysis of Biblical traditions in the context of oral/scribal cultures of Judaism and early Christianity. Rhetorical Criticism is a critical partner in understanding the composition, preparation, and delivery of these traditions.
The first session, a joint meeting with the Rhetoric and Early Christianity section, is for invited papers that will compare methodologies and consider how changes in both Biblical Performance Criticism and Rhetorical Criticism over the last 10 years produce new opportunities for insight and development. Live performance of texts in the session will be invited and analyzed rhetorically and the insights compared with independent analysis of those texts.
A second session will be an open session inviting papers that bring rhetorical criticism and performance criticism into dialog in the theme, "Rhetoric and Performance of Biblical Literature.”
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Philo of Alexandria
Description: Philo’s works are invaluable sources about not only his own thought and exegesis but also such related fields as Judaica, philosophy, history, Classics, New Testament, and early Christianity. This Seminar focuses on these topics and on commentaries-in-preparation on Philonic treatises.
Call for papers: For 2022, the Philo Seminar is planning three sessions. One is an open call on "Philo Between Philosophy and Doxography." Any aspect of Greco-Roman philosophy in Philo, especially in connection to ancient doxography, will be considered. The second session is an open call on "Rewritten Scripture in Philo of Alexandria." This session encourages papers especially on Philo's Exposition of the Law. Finally, an invited panel of presenters will conduct the third session devoted to Maren Niehoff's commentary-in-preparation on Philo's Quod omnis probus liber sit.
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Philology in Hebrew Studies
Description: This program unit aims to take up the dual challenge of reflecting self-critically on the nature of philology as a discipline and developing rigorous methodologies of philological study, particularly as may pertain to the Hebrew Bible and related literature.
Call for papers: This program unit seeks to address matters of intellectual history (how operative categories of language and its products were generated and shaped over time), and critically engage methods of the major aspects of philology, such as but not limited to poetics, translation theory, lexicography, and textual criticism. The program unit is especially interested in the examination of these methods and their underlying conceptual frameworks, with an eye towards determining how contemporary scholars might better understand ancient texts. For the 2022 Annual Meeting, we invite proposals for one open session and will be holding two additional panels as well: 1) An open session for topics that fit broadly with the mission of our program unit with a preference for papers focusing on issues of embodiment, 2) an invited panel on concepts of beauty and other intersecting values in biblical and ancient Near Eastern literary traditions, and 3) an invited panel on divine and human speech in prophetic literature.
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Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Description: This section offers a forum for papers exploring any aspect of the relation between postcolonial studies and biblical studies, including both the use of the Bible in the modern colonial enterprise and the application of postcolonial models to the ancient world.
Call for papers: The Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies Section is seeking papers for two sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting. The first session is titled The Bible, Christian Theology, and Postcolonialism. This session continues our series exploring the significance of geography in the Bible. We welcome proposals on the role of the Bible in Christian theology’s colonial impulse, as well as how postcolonial interpretations of the Bible do (or can) intersect with Christian theology. The second session invites paper proposals on the theme Intersectionality and Postcolonial Studies in Biblical Studies.
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Poverty in the Biblical World
Description: This unit will examine poverty, servitude, and related issues in the Hebrew Bible, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity. While non-canonical texts and related materials will be included, primary focus will be on biblical texts. Innovative interdisciplinary methods as well as traditional exegesis are welcome.
Call for papers: The Poverty in the Biblical World program unit will host three sessions. SESSION 1 (INVITED): “Wealth in the Bible and Beyond”: Wealth is often perceived as an antithesis of poverty, with little appreciation for the causative interplay between the two. In this invited session, presentations will examine attitudes toward wealth in the Bible so as to better understand ancient attitudes toward fortune and scarcity, and what they might mean for readers, today. SESSION 2 (INVITED): We will co-sponsor an invited panel with the Social Sciences and Hebrew Scriptures program unit on the topic, "Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category Thirty Years Later: Critical Reflections on the Work of Norman K. Gottwald." Thirty years after Gottwald's 1992 SBL Presidential address, invited panelists will reflect, revisit, explore, and expand the relevance of class concept in current biblical scholarship, especially in relation to this pandemic situation. SESSION 3 (OPEN): The third session is an open session, and we invite papers on any topics that relate to themes of poverty in the biblical world.
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Prayer in Antiquity
Description: The Prayer in Antiquity Section examines prayer in Israelite, Jewish, Christian and pagan contexts. Moving beyond historical- and form-critical methodologies, and approaches that reduce prayer simply to text, presentations will examine prayer within its cultural context and give priority to understanding prayer as embodied practice.
Call for papers: The Prayer in Antiquity program unit is hosting three sessions in 2022. Our first session is a jointly sponsored session with Syriac Studies. For this session, we welcome contributions that engage with various forms or modes of prayer in the Syriac tradition in its social or cultural contexts, such as liturgical prayer, efficacy of prayer, prayer and illness/healing, praying with the body, praying with material objects, cultivating a disposition of prayer. Our second session is on the topic of “Embodiment, Community, and Ancient Prayers”. Our third session will be an open session. We ask that all proposals clearly identify the data that will be discussed, relevant texts, and the study’s methodological approach.
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Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Description: The objectives of this group are: (1) to foster as much discussion as possible among participants in the sessions without limiting the number of participants; (2) to involve a wide variety of viewpoints from the international academy interested in "prophetic texts and their ancient contexts"; and (3) to encourage creativity and diversity among those interested in this field by inviting proposals for papers within the described parameters.
Call for papers: The objectives of this group are: (1) to foster as much discussion as possible among participants in the sessions without limiting the number of participants; (2) to involve a wide variety of viewpoints from the international academy interested in "prophetic texts and their ancient contexts"; and (3) to encourage creativity and diversity among those interested in this field by inviting proposals for papers within the described parameters.
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Pseudepigrapha
Description: The goals of this section include: to provide a forum for scholarly discussion of Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha; to encourage the broader study of pseudepigrapha for its relevance in understanding early Judaism and Christianity; to facilitate both cross-disciplinary interaction and further integration of the study of pseudepigrapha within biblical studies.
Call for papers: The Pseudepigrapha Section seeks proposals for papers that discuss Neglected or Understudied Pseudepigrapha and less studied versions of better known pseudepigrapha for a thematic session, as well as proposals that take up the critical study of Pseudepigrapha and pseudepigraphal texts for an open session. The 2022 program of the Pseudepigrapha Section includes an invited panel on the Metacriticism of Pseudepigrapha Scholarship, co-sponsored by the Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship Section. There is also an invited session, jointly hosted with the Chronicles & Ezra-Nehemiah Section, on reading Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah alongside of early Jewish pseudepigraphal texts like the Book of the Watchers and Jubilees, a discussion occasioned by recent questioning of the dating of these canonical writings.
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Psychology and Biblical Studies
Description: The objectives of the Psychology and Biblical Studies Seminar are (i) to provide a forum for developing the future agenda of "psychological criticism" within Biblical Studies; (ii) to assess the significance of these approaches for ongoing Biblical research, exegesis, and interpretation, and (iii) from time to time to to present an historical-critical overview of "psychological" approaches to scripture. As always, we request that reference to the biblical languages be included where relevant.
Call for papers: The objectives of the Psychology and Biblical Studies Seminar are (i) to provide a forum for developing the future agenda of "psychological criticism" within Biblical Studies; (ii) to assess the significance of these approaches for ongoing Biblical research, exegesis, and interpretation, and (iii) from time to time to to present an historical-critical overview of "psychological" approaches to scripture. As always, we request that reference to the biblical languages be included where relevant. For the Annual Meeting in 2022 we invite papers dealing with exclusion vs. inclusion in the Bible, focusing on EMOTIONS of exclusion, such as shame, guilt feelings, envy, hatred. (This will be the first of 3 years dealing with exclusion vs. inclusion in the Bible, to be followed in 2023 with RELATIONS of exclusion and in 2024 with POLITICS of exclusion.)
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Q
Description: The Q Section offers a forum for research on the “Sayings Gospel” Q. Since Q provides access to earliest Jesus tradition and to the theology and social history of Jewish Christianity, the Q Section integrates a broad variety of issues and methods. The Q Section website is https://neues-testament.uni-graz.at/de/forschung/fwf-projekte-zum-spruchevangelium-q/sbl-q-section/.
Call for papers: This year the Q unit will offer three sessions. We are warmly inviting submissions for papers on any aspect of the Q source for two Open Sessions. Submissions could treat such topics as: Q and the historical Jesus; Q and John the Baptist; the composition, redaction, and/or stratigraphy of Q; parables in Q; Matthew’s or Luke’s use of Q; the authors of Q; the social formation envisioned by Q; etc. We look forward to the creativity of submissions! Our third session will be invited papers that deal with the state of the field of Q studies.
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Qumran
Description: The Qumran Section of the SBL provides an equal-opportunity forum for presentation and discussion of views relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran settlement, and the people of that place and of those documents. The Qumran Section has three goals: (1) It provides a forum for scholarly discussion of any aspect of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the material culture of Qumran, and the history, literature, and worldviews of the people associated with them. (2) It encourages new discussions and new approaches in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls studies. (3) It strives for integrating the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls with other fields of biblical and related studies.
Call for papers: The Qumran Section has three goals: (1) It provides a forum for scholarly discussion of any aspect of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the material culture of Qumran, and the history, literature, and worldviews of the people associated with them. (2) It encourages new discussions and new approaches in the field of Dead Sea Scrolls studies. (3) It strives for integrating the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls with other fields of biblical and related studies.
In 2022, the unit organizes four sessions. (1) The first is an invited and joint session with Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature unit. The session will discuss the concept of “authorship”—human and divine—and its ramifications in cuneiform literature and Qumran. (2) The second is a thematic session on new perspectives on the dating of the Qumran Scrolls. Recent advances shed light on paleographic and Carbon-14 dating, while at the same time changes are required in the concept of dating scrolls/texts/compositions and on their assignments to the respective caves. The historical context in the Hasmonean/Herodian period will also be discussed. The session is partly invited but also welcomes proposals. (3-4) In addition, we invite paper proposals to two open-call sessions that will address any aspect of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran.
We commit ourselves to balance senior and junior voices. In order to maximize opportunities for presenters, scholars should not present more than two years in succession. This restriction does not apply to invited papers.
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Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Description: Recent scholarship recognizes the need for dialogue and cooperation in understanding the relationship of the Bible and biblical literature to the Qur'an and Muslim exegesis. The aim of this unit is to encourage scholars to consider the importance of the Qur'an and Muslim exegesis for understanding the Bible and its interpretation, and vice-versa.
Call for papers: Recent scholarship recognizes the need for dialogue and cooperation in understanding the relationship of the Bible and biblical literature to the Qur'an and Muslim exegesis. The aim of this unit is to encourage scholars to consider the importance of the Qur'an and Muslim exegesis for understanding the Bible and its interpretation, and vice-versa.
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Qur’anic Studies: Methodology and Hermeneutics (IQSA)
Description: This unit aims to understand and contextualise the methods and hermeneutics applied to the Qur’anic text, both historical and contemporary. The Methodology and Hermeneutics unit addresses questions that might implicitly govern other units, such as: what is Qur’anic Studies, and how does the study of the Qur’an differ from the study of its interpretation? What are the methodological differences between descriptive and normative approaches to the text? How does context (intellectual, social, ethical, historical) affect hermeneutical approaches to the text? The unit welcomes papers addressed to the hermeneutics and methods of particular schools of interpretation or thought, and also on hermeneutics as applied to specific subjects or concepts such as social justice and gender.
Call for papers: This unit aims to understand and contextualise the methods and hermeneutics applied to the Qur’anic text, both historical and contemporary. The Methodology and Hermeneutics unit addresses questions that might implicitly govern other units, such as: what is Qur’anic Studies, and how does the study of the Qur’an differ from the study of its interpretation? What are the methodological differences between descriptive and normative approaches to the text? How does context (intellectual, social, ethical, historical) affect hermeneutical approaches to the text? The unit welcomes papers addressed to the hermeneutics and methods of particular schools of interpretation or thought, and also on hermeneutics as applied to specific subjects or concepts such as social justice and gender.
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Racism, Pedagogy, and Biblical Studies
Description: This consultation will focus on strategies for addressing racism in the process of teaching and learning biblical studies. Presentations and discussions will deal with racist assumptions and practices at curricular, institutional, disciplinary, and meta-theoretical levels, as well as with respect to reading or use of specific biblical texts.
Call for papers: We will have two sessions in Denver. Presenters for both sessions will be invited.
Tags: Pedagogical Theory (Learning & Teaching)
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Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Description: The Reading, Theory, and the Bible Section provides a forum to encourage innovative and experimental approaches to biblical studies, to facilitate critical reflection on the role of theory in reading, and to support biblical scholarship informed by cross-disciplinary conversation.
Call for papers: Reading, Theory and the Bible offers a home for innovative, experimental work on the Bible and related texts. We welcome work that explores new approaches and pushes the boundaries of scholarship and conventional hermeneutics. We work on the assumption that traditional questions of provenance, philology, and history are amply accommodated by other groups in the SBL. Continental philosophy, critical theory, and other recent theoretical movements are especially welcome, as are papers that take seriously literature and reading as forms of conversation and criticism. We also encourage innovative presentation. For 2022, we are planning two open sessions.
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Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Description: This unit focuses on the recovery of work by female biblical interpreters before the twentieth century who wrote from various faith and ideological standpoints. These female interpreters will be considered in their cultural and historical contexts, with the intention of analyzing their neglected contributions to the study of biblical literature.
Call for papers: There will be two sessions: 1) Invited panelists reviewing "Voices Long Silenced: Women Biblical Interpreters through the Centuries," by Joy Schroeder and Marion Ann Taylor (Westminster John Knox, 2022).
2) “Colonialism, Feminism, and Justice in Women’s Biblical Interpretation and Translation: Papers in Honor of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922).” 2022 is the centenary of the death of Indian activist and biblical translator Pandita Ramabai Dongre Sarasvati. We invite proposals for papers on Ramabai and on other female biblical interpreters or translators working prior to the 1920s. We are especially interested in papers on female interpreters active in colonial settings or whose biblical interpretation addressed colonialism, racism, and gender-based violence.
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Redescribing Christian Origins
Description: The Seminar contributes to the study of Christian origins by problematizing current consensus
views, unexamined assumptions, and categories. It recontextualizes and redescribes key data
through comparative analysis. It accounts for (i.e., explains) the production and continued
function of cultural artefacts (mainly texts but not entirely) in terms of social theory.
Call for papers: Redescribing Christian Origins (RCO) will be hosting three sessions at the 2022 Annual Meeting.
Two of our sessions will address the themes of ethics, research methodology and historiography. The first, Redescribing Historiography: Legacies and Possibilities, asks how we can best approach the study of religion in an inclusive and ethical manner. The second, Transgressing “Canon”: Redescribing Categories and Approaches, challenges categories of canon and canonicity.
Our third session will review Robyn Faith Walsh’s recent book The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Our panels will include a combination of invited speakers and panelists selected through the CFP process. Please see more details on each of these sessions at the RCO website: https://redescribingxo.com
RCO subscribes to SBL’s Professional Conduct Policy and is committed to SBL’s core values, particularly those of critical inquiry, inclusivity, accountability, and professionalism.
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Religion and Philosophy in Antiquity
Description: This unit seeks to investigate how Christian, Jewish, and “pagan” intellectuals engaged with the concepts, questions, and writings of ancient philosophy in order to understand better the interconnections of “religion” and “philosophy” in late antiquity and to reassess the usefulness of those categories.
Call for papers: 1) "Likeness to God": Deification in Ancient Religio-Philosophical Discourse - this session seeks papers that examine the language, theory, and praxis of deification in Late Antique religions/philosophies/ritual traditions.
2) A joint session with the Biblical Exegesis from Eastern/Orthodox
Perspectives unit regarding exegesis and anti-Christian criticism. We invite contributions that scrutinize how ancient philosopher-exegetes react to non-Christian philosophers (e.g. Celsus, Porphyry) who challenge Christian traditions and vice versa.
Tags: Church History and Ecclesiology (Other), Greece and Hellenism (History & Culture), Religio-Historical Approaches (Interpretive Approaches)
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Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Description: This unit analyzes the competition between diverse socioreligious and philosophical groups of the ancient Mediterranean basin through the development of broadly comparative approaches and methodologies. It delineates the ways in which competitive interaction reshaped cultural and religious landscapes.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting, the Religious Competition in Late Antiquity program unit will host four sessions: 1. Philanthropy, conversion, and materiality: The stories of and sites connected with various families (e.g., Adiabene dynasty, 1st century CE) were ripe loci for religious competition in late antiquity. This session of invited papers will address the larger themes of conversion, materiality, patronage, philanthropy, and the interpretation and reception of figures in late antiquity. 2. The second session will be an invited panel to review Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos’ Constantinople: Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital (2020). 3. Open Call: We invite proposals on competitive interactions between different social and religious groups in the ancient Mediterranean basin and late antique southwest Asia, and/or how this competition reshaped cultural and religious landscapes. 4. An exploration of Elizabeth A. Clark’s scholarly legacy, co-hosted by The Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism unit: We invite papers showcasing productive engagement with an aspect of Clark’s research, highlighting future trajectories emerging from her expansive oeuvre. We particularly encourage contributions from scholars who have not been explicitly mentored by Clark, including graduate students and early career professionals.
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Religious Experience in Antiquity
Description: This section investigates the experiential elements of religions from the ancient near east to late antiquity, with a particular interest in examining (1) the relationship between texts and experience, (2) religious practices in the context of ritual, prayer, ecstasy, dreams and visions, 3) the role of embodied experiences (cognitive, neurological, and sensory) in the generation of religious ideas and commitment.
Call for papers: The Religious Experience in Antiquity unit will hold 4 sessions, 3 with open calls for papers. (1) We invite paper proposals for an open session on any topic connected to Religious Experience in Antiquity. This call is open to scholars working in any period or geographical region of antiquity. We ask that you specify the texts or other material artifacts under discussion and include a clear methodological perspective. Innovative approaches are most welcome. (2) Together with the Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World unit and the Mind, Society, and Religion unit, we invite proposals for short papers (10 min) to be circulated among participants 2 weeks before the meeting, on this topic: Medical anthropology and Disability Studies have demonstrated the significance of culture in the experience and effects of illness, as well as the (successful) treatment of these conditions. For this session, we invite papers that explore the relationship between the biological (including psychological) features of illness and the cultural responses to it. How do specific cultural instances of diagnosis or treatment (e.g., pharmaceuticals, ritual, dream incubation, isolation) interact with underlying cognitive and biological patterns? How are innate heuristics (e.g., of contagion, ingestion, transformation) expressed in specific cases in ancient texts and societies? (3) Together with several other program units, we are co-sponsoring a session in memory of Professor Elizabeth Clark. We invite papers that showcase productive engagements with an aspect of her research, highlighting future trajectories emerging from her expansive oeuvre. We particularly encourage contributions from scholars who have not been explicitly mentored by her, including graduate students and early career professionals. (4) We will hold an invited session to review Reed Carlson’s monograph, Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and other Spirit Phenomena (Ekstasis 9; De Gruyter, 2022).
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Religious World of Late Antiquity
Description: A forum for scholars working comparatively and thematically in the period and regions in which Christianity, Judaism, Manichaeism, and Islam formed within a rich environment of other religious traditions, where norms of authority, belief, practice, and identity were contested and settled.
Call for papers: This year RWLA will be co-sponsoring three panels. First, we invite proposals for a session, with the Book History and Biblical Literatures Unit, on “Books and Religious Practice in Late Antiquity,” which will feature shorter presentations (~10-12 minutes) on the relationship between texts, broadly conceived, and ritual performance. The other two of this year’s sessions are dedicated to a future-directed exploration of Elizabeth A. Clark’s scholarly legacy. The first, an invited roundtable co-sponsored with the Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism; Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity; and Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible units centers on the exploration of “big ideas” emerging from Clark’s research. The second, an open call co-sponsored with the Religious Competition in Late Antiquity; Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity; Religious Experience in Antiquity; and Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism, invites invite papers showcasing productive engagement with any aspect of Clark’s research, highlighting future trajectories emerging from her expansive oeuvre. We particularly encourage contributions from scholars who have not been explicitly mentored by Clark, including graduate students and early career professionals.
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Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Description: This section has historically explored the continuously-evolving field of
rhetorical criticism of the New Testament in all its diversity. Marking a slight
shift in focus, 'Rhetoric and Early Christianity' will extend RNT's refined
critical lens to address a broader spectrum of source material.
Call for papers: The Rhetoric and Early Christianity (formerly Rhetoric and the New Testament) Section fosters research centered on the arts of persuasion, broadly conceived, as they intersect with the study of Early Christian sources and worlds. This section premises that, given our current socio-political climate and discursive landscape, the study of rhetoric and early Christian Literature is as highly relevant as ever. For the 2022 annual meeting, we plan to host three sessions, centered on several themes. The first, a joint session with the Biblical Performance Criticism section, will be comprised of invited papers that compare methodologies in both Biblical Performance Criticism and Rhetorical Criticism. In this session, we will consider how changes in both subfields over the last 10 years have produced new opportunities for insight and development. Likewise, the session envisions live performance of texts with complementary analysis of the insights gained through these two critical methods of interpretation. For our second session, we seek proposals that take up the rhetoric of criminalization in the New* Testament and other early Christian literature – including martyrdom narratives. For this session, we are especially interested in exploring how early Christian texts discussed Jesus-followers’ relationship to imperial and local authorities that policed, arrested, jailed, tried, sentenced, and executed them. Finally, for our third session we invite proposals dealing with various aspects of the intersection of the study of rhetoric and the study of early Christianity. In this open session, all approaches will be considered. However, we encourage papers that explore the interplay of ancient and modern discourses, contexts, and deployments. Additionally, proposals that focus on the question of why the study of rhetoric and early Christianity matters ‘now’ will be particularly welcome.
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Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Description: The Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity Seminar provides a forum for collegial work on the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity Commentary Series, and for the public exploration of facets of sociorhetorical interpretation that promise to contribute to the work of biblical scholars not directly associated with the project.
Call for papers: Sociorhetorical interpretation is a broad and interactive interpretive analytic that welcomes engagement with a wide variety of interpretive perspectives and strategies that seek to explore the interpretation of biblical and cognate texts. Our first session will be an analytical seminar that delves into sociorehtorical commentary on a particular book of the New Testament. Our second session will analyze a number of different texts and genres using and refining different tools of sociorhetortical interpretation. In addition to these two regular track sessions, the Seminar is putting out an open call for papers that engage biblical and cognate texts within the broad scope of sociorhetorical interpretation. Sociorhetorical interpretation is a heuristic analytic that features the analysis of pictorial reasoning, the blending of various religious discourses, the multiple textures of a text, and the rhetorical force of emergent structures. Papers are welcome to employ a wide variety of classic and contemporary interpretive strategies (e.g., cognitive science, material culture, critical spatiality, topoi analysis, new institutional economics, affect theory, etc.) within an interactive process that explores the social, rhetorical, cultural, ideological, and religious interpretations of texts.
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Ritual in the Biblical World
Description: The Ritual in the Biblical World Section focuses on the nature, meaning and function of ritual found in textual sources (HB, NT, non-canonical) in the larger context of the material culture of the ancient world, employing insights and methods of the field of ritual theory and enthnography.
Call for papers: The Ritual in the Biblical World section will offer three sessions in the upcoming 2022 annual meeting. 1) The first session will be a joint session with the Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity section. We invite proposals that critically examine the use and significance of physical, literary, or imagined urban spaces and the role of ritual in the formation, maintenance, or dissolution of these spaces. Papers focused on use of locations in or near cities (such as temples, plazas, cemeteries) especially for ritual activities, or papers that explore the organization of cities are encouraged. We are especially interested in papers that consider how urban spaces influence ritual practices and religious imagination and how rituals influence the use of urban space. 2) The second session is a continuation of our efforts to explore the role(s) of women in liturgical contexts. This session wishes to engage some of the following questions: What role did women play in liturgical rites? Did they hold positions of authority or leadership in liturgy? Was female participation in liturgy a contentious issue? We welcome submissions that address issues of authority, power, and/or variances in participation based on conceptions of gender as they relate to women in liturgy in the Biblical world. 3) The third session will be an open session on all parameters of meaning and function of ritual found in textual and iconographic sources in the larger context of the cultures of the ancient world, employing insights and methods from the field of ritual theory.
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Scripture and Paul
Description: The intent of this seminar is to provide a forum for a group of Jewish Scripture and Pauline scholars to examine Paul’s use of Scripture in light of text-critical and scholarly advances regarding second temple literary use of Scripture. It is the intent of this seminar to work toward the resolution of scholarly gridlock concerning the way the apostle Paul interpreted and applied the Jewish Scriptures.
Call for papers:
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Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Description: This interdisciplinary unit investigates all aspects of sensory perception in the Bible and early Judaism and Christianity, including how various cultures thought about, used, and ascribed meaning to the senses. The unit embraces diverse approaches to the study of the senses, including philological, anthropological, psychological, linguistic, cognitive, literary, and phenomenological methods.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting, we invite paper proposals for the following sessions: (1) Senses and the Afterlife. We welcome submissions that explore the sensorial dimension of the afterlife as expressed in ancient literature, inscriptions, iconography, and other aspects of material culture. Possible questions include the (dis)continuity between how senses function in the afterlife in comparison with earthly existence; the connection between sense perception and the specific type of postmortem existence that is envisaged; philosophical and theological underpinnings; the so-called “spiritual senses”; the way in which the functioning of the senses is understood (e.g., exteroceptive versus interoceptive). (2) Senses and Material Culture. We invite contributions that analyze the relationship between the senses and material culture. We are particularly interested in papers that apply either a material agency perspective, a multimodality perspective or a cognitive science perspective to the sources. We also welcome submissions focusing on methodological issues pertaining to the relationship between material objects and sense perception. (3) Teaching the Senses. Finally, we invite proposals discussing how sensory criticism can be integrated in teaching Biblical Studies. For all the panels, there is an open call for papers. The abstract should state the paper's thesis, outline the approach that will be taken, and identify the primary sources and examples to be discussed.
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Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom
Description: This unit will investigate the intersections between Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean slavery and biblical and early rabbinic texts, the diverse forms of resistance to it, and the meaning of freedom in slave-holding societies. Presenters will also examine how Jews and Christians—free, freed, and enslaved—have interpreted biblical texts on slavery and freedom and will propose how to “read for freedom.”
Call for papers: Our session is an open call for proposals that address any aspect of enslavement, resistance, and freedom from enslavement in the Bible and Ancient Near East; New Testament; early Christian history; early rabbinic literature; and ancient Mediterranean history; or later interpretations of biblical, rabbinic, or other classical texts. We also welcome comparative papers, e.g., on the Bible and the Qur’an or on early Christianity and contemporary slavery, or papers on the legacies of ancient slavery for trans-Atlantic slavery. We encourage papers that show the complex experience of slavery by taking into account such various dimensions as ethnicity, age, gender, or disability, as well as relationships among slavery, religion, and specific economies. Papers might also address the theological use of slavery as a metaphor and its consequences for children and people of various ethnicities in the ancient world. Additionally, we welcome proposals about "sticky texts," or passages in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that are used or misused in public contemporary discourse about slavery. Time periods addressed in any proposal may be ancient, contemporary, or any time in between.
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Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Description: This section is dedicated to a study of formative Christianity and formative Judaism utilizing a broad methodological perspective that places an emphasis on interpreting the data within specific social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. We function as a clearinghouse for developments in social historical methodology and perspectives for our period. (previously Social History of Early Christianity)
Call for papers: This year, we will sponsor or co-sponsor the following calls: (1) "Supernatural Beings" (Co-Sponsored with Syriac Studies unit). We invite proposals that address the topic of angels (as intermediaries, role models, or guardians) in formative Christianity, Judaism, and other religions of the late antique Mediterranean. Proposals may discuss popular beliefs and ritual practices, as well as the impact of magisterial formulations and authorized liturgical functions. We particularly welcome papers that engage with Mika Ahuvia’s recently published book, On My Right Gabriel, on My Left Gabriel: Angels in Ancient Jewish Culture (University of California Press, 2021). (2) For a session on the topic of "Law and lived experience" among communities across the ancient and late antique world, we welcome proposals that address such questions as: How did legal discourse and legislation relate to practices of historiography, community formation, identity marking, and incarceration, as well as to issues of epistemology, gender, and ethnicity? The final two of this year’s sessions (3-4) are dedicated to a future-directed exploration of Elizabeth A. Clark’s scholarly legacy. The first, an invited roundtable co-sponsored with the Religious Worlds of Late Antiquity; Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity; and Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible units centers on the exploration of “big ideas” emerging from Clark’s research. The second, an open call co-sponsored with the Religious Competition in Late Antiquity; Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity; Religious Experience in Antiquity; and Religious Worlds of Late Antiquity units, invites invite papers showcasing productive engagement with any aspect of Clark’s research, highlighting future trajectories emerging from her expansive oeuvre. We particularly encourage contributions from scholars who have not been explicitly mentored by Clark, including graduate students and early career professionals.
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Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Description: This quintessentially interdisciplinary unit combines the skills that are unique to classic biblical scholarship with exciting and vibrant conversations and developments from disciplines in the social sciences, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, and political science.
Call for papers: The Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures will hold four sessions this year. (1) The first will address the question: Does Wisdom Have a Sense of Humor? This session will seek to initiate a discussion on the presence and purpose of humor in Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and related texts. Is humor a part of the sage’s rhetorical and pedagogical strategy, can we discern it, and what purposes does it serve? This is an invited panel and will be jointly sponsored by the “Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Literature” unit; however, proposals addressing the core question of the seminar in creative ways will be carefully considered. Both positive and negative responses are welcome. (2) The second session is another invited panel, co-sponsored with the Poverty in the Biblical World unit, on the topic, "Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category Thirty Years Later: Critical Reflections on the Work of Norman K. Gottwald." Thirty years after his 1992 SBL Presidential address, the invited panelists will reflect, revisit, explore, and expand the relevance of the class concepts in the current biblical scholarship, especially in relation to this pandemic situation. (3) The third session is open and jointly sponsored with the Bible & Film unit on the topic of Trauma, Film, and Society. As the world struggles to manage the trauma of COVID, we invite proposals that investigate societal trauma in the Bible and film. We welcome all papers that can illuminate our understanding of trauma in the Bible and film using social scientific approaches. (4) Our fourth session is open. We invite all proposals that incorporate methods and theories from the social sciences and apply them to issues related to the Hebrew scriptures.
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Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Description: The Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament Section program encourages the self-conscious employment of recognized models, methods, or theories of the social sciences in order to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the texts and social world of the New Testament.
Call for papers: The SSCNT of the New Testament unit is pleased to offer three sessions this year.
One session, which will be co-sponsored with Redescribing Christian Origins and Interrelations of the Gospels, will be a review session for Robyn Walsh’s new book The Origins of Early Christian Literature. Participants will be invited.
The other two sessions will both be open sessions, for which we enthusiastically seek papers on any aspect of the social-scientific study of the New Testament and/or early Christianity.
Submissions could concern topics such as the social structure of the Roman empire, gender identities, urban or rural experiences, honor/shame constructions, social identity theory, economic/wealth/poverty studies, ethnicity, kinship, ritual studies, memory theory, communal identity, social movements, and sociological studies of early Christianity (to name a few).
We especially encourage submissions from current and former participants in the Context Group.
We emphasize that despite the name of the unit, we will happily accepted proposals on any social-scientific aspect of early Christianity.
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Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Description: This new group is devoted to the study of the religions of the ancient Mediterranean basin broadly conceived. The Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions aims to focus particular attention on the polytheistic religious traditions of Greece, Rome and the Near East, their interaction with each other, and with the monotheistic religious traditions of the region. Please visit out website (www.samreligions.org) for further information.
Call for papers: REMODELING THE MOTEL OF THE MYSTERIES: innovations in the study of secret cults
A rich range of new approaches has reinvigorated the study of Greek and Roman mystery cults. New technologies for reconstructing the affective, embodied, interactive experience of these rituals open previously inaccessible frameworks for a phenomenology of the mysteries. Fresh analysis of the Christian fathers read them less as the voice of Christianity triumphant than as interlocutors in the complex processes of social, personal, and gender identities the rites enabled. Digital humanities approaches enable consideration of soundscapes and social networks; comparative studies draw on ethnographic models of secrecy; contextual approaches explore intersections with magic. More detailed historical-philological studies on specific cult sites and activities have shown the different ways in which Greeks and Romans made use of such rites. This panel invites papers focused on innovations in theory and method in relation to Greek and Roman mystery cults, including disability studies, framing an emerging analytical horizon for rites sealed by secrecy.
Abstracts (500-600 words) for papers of fifteen to twenty minutes should be submitted by email attachment as .doc or .docx files to socamr@gmail.com. All abstracts will undergo blind review; abstracts should contain a title and a word count but should not have any information regarding the identity of the submitter. Please direct all queries to SAMR at socamr@gmail.com.
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Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies (SARTS)
Description: The Society was organized to provide a forum for scholars and artists interested in the intersections between theology, religion, and the arts, to share thoughts, challenge ideas, strategize approaches in the classroom, and to advance the discipline in theological and religious studies curricula. The goal of the Society is to attract consistent participation of a core group of artists and scholars of theology and religion in order to have dialogue about the theological and religious meaning of the arts, and the artistic/aesthetic dimension of theological and religious inquiry.
Call for papers: The Society was organized to provide a forum for scholars and artists interested in the intersections between theology, religion, and the arts, to share thoughts, challenge ideas, strategize approaches in the classroom, and to advance the discipline in theological and religious studies curricula. The goal of the Society is to attract consistent participation of a core group of artists and scholars of theology and religion in order to have dialogue about the theological and religious meaning of the arts, and the artistic/aesthetic dimension of theological and religious inquiry.
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Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Description: This unit seeks to engage diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives on social practices in antiquity as mediated through place or larger spatial frameworks. Presentations exploring the creation, use, or understanding of space or place through material remains and/or texts are welcome.
Call for papers: For the 2022 Annual Meeting, the Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity section will host two sessions, one focused on urban spaces, rituals activities, and lived experiences and a second focused on space and affect theory. We will hold a joint session with the Ritual in the Biblical World section. We invite proposals that critically examine the use and significance of physical, literary, or imagined urban spaces and the role of ritual in the formation, maintenance, or dissolution of these spaces. Papers focused on locations in or near cities (such as temples, plazas, cemeteries) especially for ritual activities, or papers that explore the organization of cities are encouraged. We are especially interested in papers that consider how urban spaces influence ritual practices and religious imagination and how rituals influence the use of urban space. We will also host a joint session with the Bible and Emotion section entitled Space and Affect Theory. We invite proposals that explore affect theory broadly conceived and ways that affects and emotions are represented, expressed, provoked, and imagined in relation to physical, literary, or imagined spaces. Papers that explore pleasant emotions and emotions of disgust in relation to space are especially encouraged.
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Student Advisory Board
Description: SAB functions as a Board within the Society’s governance structure, and as such is composed of appointed individuals, both student members of the Society and a faculty liaison, who work to advise the SBL Council regarding issues and opportunities relating to student membership and participation in the Society as a whole. SAB also has as its core mandate the coordination of student participation across all Society activities, committees, and programs in an effort to foster opportunities for student participation and leadership development. In order to achieve this mandate, SAB works to encourage student attendance and active participation at regional, national, and international congresses, with a focus on paper presentations and professional skills development; to link SBL student membership to effective, working resources for skills advancement, facilitated through the development and maintenance of communication tools such as a webpage and newsletter and to provide support in the development, review and evaluation of SBL policies and procedures as relating to student membership and participation and to make recommendations, where appropriate, to SBL Council on these matters. See more at https://www.sbl-site.org/SBLcommittees_SAB.aspx.
Call for papers: SAB functions as a Board within the Society’s governance structure, and as such is composed of appointed individuals, both student members of the Society and a faculty liaison, who work to advise the SBL Council regarding issues and opportunities relating to student membership and participation in the Society as a whole. SAB also has as its core mandate the coordination of student participation across all Society activities, committees, and programs in an effort to foster opportunities for student participation and leadership development. In order to achieve this mandate, SAB works to encourage student attendance and active participation at regional, national, and international congresses, with a focus on paper presentations and professional skills development; to link SBL student membership to effective, working resources for skills advancement, facilitated through the development and maintenance of communication tools such as a webpage and newsletter and to provide support in the development, review and evaluation of SBL policies and procedures as relating to student membership and participation and to make recommendations, where appropriate, to SBL Council on these matters. See more at https://www.sbl-site.org/SBLcommittees_SAB.aspx.
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Synoptic Gospels
Description: The Synoptic Gospels as a unit plays an important role in modern scholarship, including, but not limited to, generating debate about the relationships among the gospels. This section provides a forum for the discussion of papers from a variety of theoretical perspectives and critical methods on the content and formation of the Synoptic Gospels and what they reveal about the contexts of their composition.
Call for papers: The Synoptic Gospels section invites proposals for two open sessions on the content or formation of any of the Synoptic Gospels, especially those which deal with themes touching on multiple Gospels or the relationship between two or more Gospels. We also invite proposals on trauma theory and the Synoptics, whether it involves violence between humans or to the created order. In addition, we will co-sponsor an invited session with the Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World section for a strategic review of The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, ed. by Helen Bond, Chris Keith, Christine Jacobi, and Jens Schröter (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2019).
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Syriac Studies
Description: Syriac Studies invites papers on the Syriac versions of the Bible, on the
interpretation and reception of biblical material in Syriac traditions, and on
the literature and history of Syriac-speaking Christian communities and
their interaction with neighbouring cultures (e.g., Greek, Armenian, Arabic)
and religions (e.g., Jews, Manichaeans, Zoroastrians).
Call for papers: We invite proposals for three thematic sessions and one general session. (1) Our session on ‘The Bible in Syriac Manuscript Cultures’ invites papers that address, for example, lectionaries, illuminated manuscripts, scribal habits, the ‘new philology’, or manuscript transmission. (2) For a session on prayer, co-sponsored with the program unit on Prayer in Antiquity, we welcome contributions that engage with various forms or modes of prayer in the Syriac tradition in its social or cultural contexts, such as liturgical prayer, efficacy of prayer, prayer and illness/healing, praying with the body, praying with material objects, cultivating a disposition of prayer. (3) For a session on ‘Supernatural Beings’, co-sponsored with the program unit on Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism, we invite papers on the role of angels (as intermediaries, role models, or guardians) or other types of divine beings, perhaps more ambiguously portrayed. (4) Our general session welcomes proposals on any aspect of Syriac Studies that pertains to biblical or parabiblical traditions and their reception in Syriac-speaking communities.
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Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Description: This unit addresses the unique opportunities and challenges of teaching
biblical studies in undergraduate liberal arts institutions. Sessions promote
the sharing and evaluation of pedagogical objectives, strategies, and
assessment tools, cultivate professional networks, and lead to published
results.
Call for papers: In 2022, the Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context Unit will offer three sessions.
Session 1: Trauma-Informed Strategies.
Trauma can affect people and groups. In teaching biblical studies, professors may use texts that can trigger unwanted emotions in students who had traumatic experiences. It is possible, however, to create a safer classroom environment. This session invites papers that focus on trauma-informed strategies in the undergraduate biblical studies classroom.
Session 2: Gaming and Biblical Studies. Joint-session with the Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies Unit.
“Reacting to the Past” (https://reacting.barnard.edu) is a simulation-based approach to teaching with simulation games. Students are assigned roles in a historical setting and use primary texts to debate with their classmates. Other simulation activities exist. This session invites instructors who have used "Reacting to the Past" or similar approaches to present and reflect on the impact of these games in their religious studies or biblical studies courses. Special consideration will be given to proposals that invite the participation of the audience.
Session 3: Open Session.
This session invites papers that present best practices in teaching biblical studies in an undergraduate liberal arts context.
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Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Description: The Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible section concerns itself with the origin and nature of all forms of the biblical text. The discipline involves the comparison of data from the various witnesses to the biblical text (Masoretic text, Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.), and the evaluation of that data.
Call for papers: The program unit encourages in particular applications from younger scholars and underrepresented groups. As always, the sole criterion for acceptance of papers will be their scholarly quality. For the 2022 annual meeting in Denver, TCHB invites papers for one open session related to the theme of “75 Years and Counting: Changing Perspectives on Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Papers should explore which future contributions the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls could make to the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. The program unit is excited to announce two invited sessions on the topics of 1) “75 Years and Counting: The Importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the Textual Criticism of the Bible” (speakers will include John C. Collins, Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Emanuel Tov) and 2) “Ancient Variant Literary Editions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Their Interpretative Value.”
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Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Description: This unit aims at enhancing cooperation and exchange of ideas between scholars working on the text of Samuel and Kings in various languages. (At the present, there is activity in editorial projects on critical editions of the Septuagint text, various projects on the daughter versions of the Septuagint, and projects around the Hebrew text aiming at commentaries,text-editions, or monographs on text-history.) Such cooperation is necessary, due to the very complicated nature of the textual history of these books, and promises good results, as it is the advantage of all parties to be informed of the progress of work by their colleagues.
Call for papers: Traditionally, this section has focused on the textual history of Samuel–Kings, but we have expanded to include the Historical Books more broadly. Thus, we are happy to receive proposals featuring the textual criticism of Samuel–Kings, but also encourage papers on the other Historical Books. For the 2022 Annual Meeting, we are planning three sessions.
One session is open for submissions on any text-critical topic in the Historical Books. In addition to text-critical papers in the strict sense, this session is open to papers that focus on: literary, redaction, or narrative criticism; linguistics, such as lexicography and syntax; ancient versions beyond the Septuagint (Latin, Coptic, Syriac), etc. Papers in these cognate fields should either take advantage of text-critical findings or demonstrate the useful application of their approaches to textual criticism generally or specifically. Joint papers featuring cooperation between a textual critic and a specialist in another approach are especially welcome.
In addition to a general session, we are planning two thematic sessions. One will cover "Ancient Versions of and beyond the Septuagint." For this session, we will consider papers demonstrating the text-critical value and text-historical relevance of the daughter versions of the Septuagint (e.g., Coptic, Syriac, Latin, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian) and of the proto-Masoretic text (Peshitta, Targumim, Vulgate). In addition, papers that seek to explain translational or other features in the said versions using text-critical evidence are welcomed. Particularly, we encourage joint papers by scholars bringing together expertise on different areas of research on the ancient versions.
The second thematic session will be a joint session with the program unit “Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah.” It will focus on text-critical and text-historical issues relating Chronicles to Samuel–Kings. This session is accepting proposals for any topics that fit under that rubric.
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The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Description: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media Section provides opportunities to analyze the relationship between the original media world of Jewish and Christian communities and the functions and interpretations of biblical (and related) texts. Approaches using modern media must emphasize how the approach significantly influences the understanding of biblical literature in its ancient context.
Call for papers: We have an open call for papers that fit within the description of the section.
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The Enoch Seminar
Description: The Enoch Seminar is an academic group of international specialists in Second Temple
Judaism (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Origins), who share the results of their research in the
field and meet to discuss topics of common interest. The Enoch Seminar was founded in 2001 at the initiative of Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan. Members of the Enoch Seminar
are university professors and specialists in Second Temple Judaism, Christian Origins, and
early Islam.
Call for papers: The Enoch Seminar is an academic group of international specialists in Second Temple
Judaism (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Origins), who share the results of their research in the
field and meet to discuss topics of common interest. The Enoch Seminar was founded in 2001 at the initiative of Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan. Members of the Enoch Seminar
are university professors and specialists in Second Temple Judaism, Christian Origins, and
early Islam.
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The Forum on Missional Hermeneutics
Description: The Forum on Missional Hermeneutics fosters interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of
critical biblical interpretation, contextual theology, and mission studies. The Forum gives special
attention to the concepts and practices of Christian mission in their historical, postmodern, and
postcolonial manifestations and to their significance for the reception, interpretation, and usage
of biblical texts in a variety of social, cultural, ethical, theological, and religious contexts.
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The Historical Paul
Description: This program unit aims to reinvigorate the study of Paul as a historical figure. Through attention to biographical detail and social context, careful consideration of historical method, and engagement with a diverse range of comparanda, it seeks to describe him as a contextually plausible social actor.
Call for papers: The Historical Paul section welcomes proposals for two sessions: (1) Manuscripts as Pauline Memorialization: For this session, a sequel to our 2021 panel “Ancient Epistolography and Material Philology,” we invite papers that explore the Pauline manuscript tradition as a site of biographical memorialization: How was Paul’s biographical legacy reflected in and shaped by the manuscripts that contain his letters? Papers might consider a variety of evidence, including interpolations and variant readings, paratextual features (headings, argumenta, Euthalian apparatus), and the act of collection itself. (2) An open call for papers that address the section’s objective of providing a contextually plausible account of the historical figure Paul. (3) A third session will consist of invited responses to Ryan Schellenberg’s book Abject Joy: Paul, Prison, and the Art of Making Do (OUP, 2021).
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The Qur’an and Late Antiquity (IQSA)
Description: The Qur’an and Late Antiquity program unit focuses on investigation of and critical reflection on the historical context in which the Qur’an was revealed. We seek papers that illustrate significant textual parallels between the Qur’an and other literatures of Late Antiquity, especially those that contribute to a better understanding of the Qur’an’s place in its cultural, political, social, and religious environment. We also seek papers that interpret the rise of the Qur’anic community in a broader phenomenological, sociological, or historiographic context, whether that of pre-Islamic Arabian society or the Roman and Sasanian Empires that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Near East in this period. Particular attention will be paid to such questions as processes of political consolidation and legitimation, construction of communal boundaries, and relationships between communities and polities.
Call for papers: The Qur’an and Late Antiquity program unit focuses on investigation of and critical reflection on the historical context in which the Qur’an was revealed. We seek papers that illustrate significant textual parallels between the Qur’an and other literatures of Late Antiquity, especially those that contribute to a better understanding of the Qur’an’s place in its cultural, political, social, and religious environment. We also seek papers that interpret the rise of the Qur’anic community in a broader phenomenological, sociological, or historiographic context, whether that of pre-Islamic Arabian society or the Roman and Sasanian Empires that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Near East in this period. Particular attention will be paid to such questions as processes of political consolidation and legitimation, construction of communal boundaries, and relationships between communities and polities.
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The Qur’an and the Biblical Tradition (IQSA)
Description: The focus of this unit is the Qur’an’s relationship to the Biblical tradition in the broadest sense: the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in the various languages of their original composition and later translations (regardless of a particular book’s status of canonization within specific Jewish or Christian groups), the exegetical traditions of the Bible, and the homiletic, narrative, and legal corpora that have developed in close dialogue with this Biblical tradition prior to the emergence of the Qur’an and subsequently in exchange with the Qur’an.
Call for papers: The focus of this unit is the Qur’an’s relationship to the Biblical tradition in the broadest sense: the books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in the various languages of their original composition and later translations (regardless of a particular book’s status of canonization within specific Jewish or Christian groups), the exegetical traditions of the Bible, and the homiletic, narrative, and legal corpora that have developed in close dialogue with this Biblical tradition prior to the emergence of the Qur’an and subsequently in exchange with the Qur’an.
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The Qur’an: Manuscripts and Textual Criticism (IQSA)
Description: The aim of the Manuscripts and Textual Criticism unit is to provide a cross-disciplinary setting for the exploration of the various interconnected issues that arise when questions concerning the Qur’an’s text are investigated through the prism of its manuscript tradition. This latter term encompasses the field of Qur’an manuscripts per se, but also alludes to such information regarding the history of the text that can be gleaned from the citations, marginal notes, and detailed analysis provided in other branches of the Islamic sciences, for example Qur’an commentaries and the qira’at literature. It is hoped that bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines will serve to enrich and strengthen each of these fields. The Manuscripts and Textual Criticism unit seeks to create a forum for the application of textual criticism to the Qur’anic text attested both in physical manuscripts and within the wider Islamic tradition. It also aims to investigate palaeographic, codicological, and art historical features in the Qur’an’s manuscript tradition.
Call for papers: The aim of the Manuscripts and Textual Criticism unit is to provide a cross-disciplinary setting for the exploration of the various interconnected issues that arise when questions concerning the Qur’an’s text are investigated through the prism of its manuscript tradition. This latter term encompasses the field of Qur’an manuscripts per se, but also alludes to such information regarding the history of the text that can be gleaned from the citations, marginal notes, and detailed analysis provided in other branches of the Islamic sciences, for example Qur’an commentaries and the qira’at literature. It is hoped that bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines will serve to enrich and strengthen each of these fields. The Manuscripts and Textual Criticism unit seeks to create a forum for the application of textual criticism to the Qur’anic text attested both in physical manuscripts and within the wider Islamic tradition. It also aims to investigate palaeographic, codicological, and art historical features in the Qur’an’s manuscript tradition.
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The Qur’an: Surah Studies (IQSA)
Description: The program unit “Surah Studies” seeks to bring different perspectives and scholarship on a given Qur’anic surah into dialogue with one another.
Call for papers: The program unit “Surah Studies” seeks to bring different perspectives and scholarship on a given Qur’anic surah into dialogue with one another.
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The Societal Qur'an (IQSA)
Description: The Societal Qur'an
Call for papers: The Societal Qur'an
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Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Description: This seminar explores the hermeneutical innovations and theological implications that ensue when critical biblical interpretation is conducted within diverse confessional communities, especially, but not only, those of the Christian tradition. It is this complex exploration itself that amounts to what may be called theological interpretation, an approach to biblical interpretation that gives particular attention to (1) the relationship between theological and other approaches to biblical studies, including historical criticism; (2) the significance and the challenges of expanding the contexts of biblical interpretation to include canon, creed, community, and constructive theology; (3) the relationship between biblical studies and systematic theology, practical theology, and philosophical theology; (4) the impact of theological convictions and religious practices (both traditional and contemporary) on biblical interpretation, and of theological interpretation on religious and academic communities; and (5) the actual theological interpretation of biblical texts. (Formerly Theological Hermeneutics of Christian Scripture)
Call for papers: The Theological Interpretation of Scripture seminar will sponsor three sessions one will accept paper proposals: 1) We will accept paper proposals for theological interpretations of 1 Corinthians which can cover sections of the epistle or the epistle as a whole. This session is jointly sponsored with Pauline Theology. 2) A invited panel review of David Ford's The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Baker: 2021). 3) An invited panel discussion on writing theological commentary with a selected group of scholars currently engaged in writing theological commentaries.
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Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Description: The purpose of the Theology of Hebrew Scriptures section is to promote sustained reflection, dialogue, and research on the various theological ideas, themes, and motifs that are found throughout the Hebrew Bible. It seeks to facilitate Jewish-Christian dialogue, creating a venue where Jewish and Christian interpreters can reflect together on a theological interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Call for papers: The Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures section will host four sessions, one co-sponsored with NAPH, centered on the theme of challenging and confronting God in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the history of reception. (1) For the first session, we invite paper proposals that deal with the theme of challenging and confronting God in the Hebrew Scriptures and engage the text and its theological significance for Jews, Christians and/or others. (2) For the second session, we invite paper proposals that deal with the theme of prophetic intercession and challenging God in the Hebrew Scriptures. (3) For the third session, we invite paper proposals that deal with the reception and rewriting of the biblical theme of challenging and confronting God in post-biblical materials, including literature, visual arts, and music. (4) For the fourth session, co-sponsored with NAPH, we will invite speakers for a discussion centered on J. Richard Middleton’s Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God (Baker Academic, 2021).
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Theta Alpha Kappa
Description: Theta Alpha Kappa is the national honor society for religious studies and theology and is a member of the Association of College Honor Societies. Founded in 1976 at Manhattan College, the society has chartered over 350 chapters in institutions ranging from small religiously affiliated colleges and seminaries to large public research universities. Theta Alpha Kappa exists to encourage, recognize, and promote student excellence in the academic study of religion and theology through its local chapters, multiple scholarship opportunities offered by the national organization, publication of student articles in Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa, and other national programs. For more information, please see www.ThetaAlphaKappa.org or contact us at theta_alpha_kappa_inquiries@ThetaAlphaKappa.org.
Call for papers: Theta Alpha Kappa is the national honor society for religious studies and theology and is a member of the Association of College Honor Societies. Founded in 1976 at Manhattan College, the society has chartered over 350 chapters in institutions ranging from small religiously affiliated colleges and seminaries to large public research universities. Theta Alpha Kappa exists to encourage, recognize, and promote student excellence in the academic study of religion and theology through its local chapters, multiple scholarship opportunities offered by the national organization, publication of student articles in Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa, and other national programs. For more information, please see www.ThetaAlphaKappa.org or contact us at theta_alpha_kappa_inquiries@ThetaAlphaKappa.org.
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Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Description: The unit will concentrate on the transmission of traditions particularly in the Second Temple period. It will focus on both transmission processes themselves and the practical mechanics employed in such processes. While literary evidence is central to this investigation, physical manuscripts, other material artefacts, iconography, and traces of oral transmission processes will be factored into the discussion whenever possible. In the textual evidence particular emphasis will be placed on texts in which two or more empirically attested versions of the same story (or book) differ considerably. All such cases in the different available corpora from the general time period will be taken into consideration.
Call for papers: The section will host three sessions in 2021, two sessions with invited speakers and one open session. The first session with invited papers will focus on how the traditions concerning the three “major” prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, developed and changed during the Second Temple period. The papers will address both how the composition, reworking, and reception of the main literary works related to these prophets as well as other works associated with them or engaging with these figures changed the overall traditions. The second invited session is a book review session on Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture (HUP, 2021). The third session is open for all proposals directly related to the topic of the program unit. We hope the proposed papers would deal either with specific empirical evidence of transmission mechanics, like case studies on the use of editorial techniques, or more conceptual matters related to the wider processes of transmitting traditions in the Second Temple period.
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Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Description: Our purpose is to foster the academic study of ancient Ugarit, the associated cuneiform alphabetic texts, and ancient Northwest Semitic epigraphic texts, especially in order to explore areas of commonality between these fields of study and Biblical literature.
Call for papers: The Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy section plans to hold three sessions in 2022: (1)A thematic session highlighting new methods and technologies as applied to Northwest Semitic epigraphic texts, such as high–resolution photography, computer assisted analysis, the use of artificial intelligence, and other techniques that shed light on new and previously known texts. (2-3) Two open, non-thematic sessions consisting of papers on any topic relevant to Ugaritic and Northwest Semitic studies.
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Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Description: This program unit explores how the Bible has been used and/or influential in the way it has been received in society. The focus is upon the reception of the text in contexts other than a narrow critical-academic one.
Call for papers: For 2022 we are planning panels on methodology in reception history and on “the Bible and dystopian literature” and we welcome paper proposals on both of these topics. As usual we will have an open session: proposals are welcome on any aspect of the Bible's reception history. For the open session our preference is for papers that do not focus on the narrower history of scholarship, but explore wider aspects of the Bible's impact on religions, society and culture, art, literature and music. Finally, for a joint session with the 'Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible' unit, we invite papers that respond to and build on the volume Terror in the Bible: Rhetoric, Gender, and Violence, edited by Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon and Robyn J. Whitaker (SBL Press, 2021; https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628375008_OA.pdf). This volume picks up on Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror and extends it to thinking about the impact of biblical texts on gender, caste, violence, and colonization/imperialism. The use of the Bible in colonization and mission, past and present, invites thinking of "terror" from a communal and collective location. Papers are invited that take up or supplement the methods and approaches offered here and apply them to new texts, other bodies, different scriptures, biblical afterlives. BIPOC and global south voices and perspectives are especially invited.
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Utopian Studies
Description: The Utopian Studies consultation provides a forum in which (1) to foster a
sustained and focused conversation about the intersection of the fields of
utopian studies and biblical studies and (2) to examine the applicability of
methodological and theoretical insights from utopian studies for biblical
studies.
Call for papers: We welcome proposals for two sessions at the annual meeting. Our first session will focus on the theme “Chronicles and Utopia.” This session is co-sponsored by the Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah unit. We welcome proposals that address questions regarding the category of utopia as it has been utilized to interpret Chronicles: How might we theorize the category of utopia in conjunction with the category of historiography, with Chronicles as the case study? What do we understand differently about Chronicles when it is put in conversation with other ancient or modern utopian works, and vice versa? Our second session will focus on the theme "The Kingdom of God as Utopia." The category of utopia is frequently employed within biblical studies to characterize a wide range of literature that is examined within the field from legal codes to prophecy to apocalypses. However, little critical attention has been paid to understanding the meaning of this term in biblical studies or to theorizing the concept. We invite papers in this session to explore the ways in which utopia can be used to analyze productively the various descriptions of the idea of the kingdom of God in ancient (Israelite, Jewish, or Christian) literature. In turn, how has the notion of “God’s kingdom” impacted utopian conceptualizations? Submissions for these sessions should attend to theoretical work from within the field of Utopian Studies.
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Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Description: This section promotes a robust discussion of violence and its representations in the ancient world. Papers utilize a variety of approaches and theoretical tools to consider what constitutes violence, seeking to advance knowledge about power and its effects in antiquity while also providing analogical materials for thinking about contemporary manifestations of religiously inflected violence.
Call for papers: Our section will be hosting three panels this year, one of which is an open call. The first is a book panel on the volume SEX, VIOLENCE, AND EARLY CHRISTIAN TEXTS, edited by Christy Cobb and Eric Vanden Eykel (Lexington Press). The latter two sessions are co-sponsored with Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism, Religious Worlds of Late Antiquity, Religious Competition in late antiquity, Religion & Philosophy in Late Antiquity, and Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible. Both of these sessions are dedicated to a future-directed exploration of Elizabeth A. Clark’s scholarly legacy. The first, an invited roundtable, centers on the exploration of “big ideas” emerging from Clark’s research. For the second, an open call, we invite papers showcasing productive engagement with an aspect of Clark’s research, highlighting future trajectories emerging from her expansive oeuvre. We particularly encourage contributions from scholars who have not been explicitly mentored by Clark, including graduate students and early career professionals.
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Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Description: The Wabash Center encourages excellent teaching in departments of religion and theological schools through careful attention to the issues that every faculty member faces including course design, assessment, student learning goals, understanding the institutional context and the broader purposes of teaching. We offer programs at the SBL Annual Meeting as well as workshops, colloquies, and conferences which are organized throughout the year. Fully funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and located on the Wabash College campus in Crawfordsville, Indiana, we also offer grants for institutions or individuals who wish to propose projects or research relating to teaching and learning. Our consultants program can facilitate on-site faculty conversations about pedagogical issues through a brief application process available online. Teaching and learning resources (both books and those available through the Internet) are also available through our website. See our website for a full listing of programs, grant deadlines, and resources: www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu.
Call for papers: The Wabash Center encourages excellent teaching in departments of religion and theological schools through careful attention to the issues that every faculty member faces including course design, assessment, student learning goals, understanding the institutional context and the broader purposes of teaching. We offer programs at the SBL Annual Meeting as well as workshops, colloquies, and conferences which are organized throughout the year. Fully funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and located on the Wabash College campus in Crawfordsville, Indiana, we also offer grants for institutions or individuals who wish to propose projects or research relating to teaching and learning. Our consultants program can facilitate on-site faculty conversations about pedagogical issues through a brief application process available online. Teaching and learning resources (both books and those available through the Internet) are also available through our website. See our website for a full listing of programs, grant deadlines, and resources: www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu.
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Westar Institute
Description: Westar Institute — home of the Jesus Seminar — is dedicated to fostering and communicating the results of cutting-edge scholarship on the history and evolution of the Christian tradition, thereby raising the level of public discourse about questions that matter in society and culture.
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Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Description: We support work on Jewish & Christian sapiential & apocalyptic texts,
ideas, and their interplay, committed to inquiry into both production &
circulation and to grounding analysis in social-historical locations, as
relates to knowledge production, economy, gender & sexuality, and race &
ethnicity.
Call for papers: The Wisdom and Apocalypticism program unit will hold three sessions at the 2022 SBL Annual Meeting in Denver. The first is an invited session, “Race and Apocalypticism,” which is the first in what will be a series of sessions in the coming years, the goal of which is to foster interdisciplinary approaches that investigate the intersections between apocalypticism and the study of race/ethnicity in antiquity. We are interested in exploring how the study of ancient Jewish and early Christian apocalypticism might be informed by the works of scholars working in critical race studies, premodern race studies, or race and ethnicity studies more broadly conceived. Our second session, also invited, is a review panel for the forthcoming volume The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices (Brill), edited by Dylan Burns and Matthew Goff, a volume born out of collaboration between the Wisdom & Apocalypticism and Nag Hammadi SBL program units. The session will be co-hosted by both groups. The third session is open and we welcome submissions on any topic that relates to sapiential and/or apocalyptic traditions in early Jewish and/or Christian literature. This year, papers that focus on “philosophy and wisdom literature” will be especially considered. Submissions are particularly encouraged from women and underrepresented minorities.
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Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Description: The Wisdom Section seeks to provide a forum for the exploration of new ideas in the study of Israelite and cognate conceptions of wisdom, focusing on wisdom in the Hebrew Bible and Deuterocanon along with related literature from elsewhere in the ancient Near East.
Call for papers: The Wisdom Section seeks to provide a forum for the exploration of new ideas in the study of Israelite and cognate conceptions of wisdom, focusing on wisdom in the Hebrew Bible and Deuterocanon along with related literature from elsewhere in the ancient Near East. Paper proposals related to this topic are invited for two open sessions. This section will also host two joint sessions with invited papers: (1.) “Is ‘Wisdom Literature’ Dead? A Review of An Obituary for “Wisdom Literature” by Will Kynes” with the Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible section; (2.) “Does Wisdom Have a Sense of Humor? Exploring Humor in Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Related Literature” with the Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures section.
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Womanist Interpretation
Description: Womanist Interpretation is a unit that provides a space where black women
who identify as womanist biblical scholars and graduate students present
and receive generative affirming feedback on their intellectual work and
respectful sustained critical dialogue with other womanist scholars/ship,
students, and SBL units. It is a think tank for womanist epistemologies
engaged in the intersectional political work of interpretation with a
teleological goal of justice. As a mentoring space, it increases our presence
and impact while facilitating hope, stamina, and longevity in the academy.
Call for papers: SESSION 1: This is an open call for womanist biblical interpretation papers from biblical scholars and doctoral students doing or engaging womanist biblical interpretation. SESSION 2: Sister(s) Act 2(Too). The year 2023 marks the 35th anniversary of the publication of Renita Weems’ seminal book Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible (1988), the first critical reading of women’s stories in the Bible from the perspective and experiences of African American women. As one of the earliest efforts by Black women biblical scholars bridging the gap between the academy and the pew, JASA employed the tools of biblical scholarship to address questions ordinary black women readers raise about God, faith, life, love, relationships and unmerited suffering. This call invites papers from womanist scholars in Bible and other disciplines that (a) engage, expand upon, or approach the same or other biblical stories, or (b) advance dimensions of the publication of JASA in the critical study of gender, race, sexuality, and/or embodiment in biblical texts and traditions; or in the history of womanist/feminist writings and intellectual production of its time. Papers can bring contemporary concerns, histories, traditions, stories about relationships among/between Black women in conversation with biblical narratives. Presenters whose proposals are accepted are invited to revise their papers by JULY 2023 for publication in Sister(s) Act 2(Too): A Womanist ReVision of Women’s Relationships in/and the Bible in the 21st Century, co-edited by Renita J. Weems and Mitzi J. Smith;
SESSION 3 is an invited book review panel. SESSION 4 “Radical Women-of-Color-Centered Biblical Criticism” is joint with Minority Criticism and Biblical Interpretation inviting papers engaging the works of 'radical' feminists of color, e.g. Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldua, Chela Sandoval, Nikol Alexander-Floyd, Grace Lee Boggs..
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Women in the Biblical World
Description: This section explores the multifaceted lives of women in the biblical period. It is a forum for inquiry into literary and material culture, including biblical and extra-biblical texts, the history of their interpretation, and the relevant cultural milieu.
Call for papers: The Women in the Biblical World Program Unit plans to offer two sessions in 2022: 1) An invited panel discussing Rhiannon Graybill's groundbreaking book Texts After Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible; and 2) An open session for which papers on any relevant topic are invited. We especially invite papers on matters concerning women's health in the biblical world, including but not limited to famine, disease, and reproductive health (menstruation, infertility, pregnancy, childbirth, and pregnancy loss).
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Writing Social-Scientific Commentaries of the New Testament
Description: The goal of the seminar is to develop and test theoretical approaches suitable for writing social-scientific commentaries on the New Testament, in particular in the series T&T Clark Social Identity Commentaries in the New Testament
Call for papers: In 2022, the seminar will organize invited sessions and one session with open call. All proposals that apply the social identity approach or related social and cognitive approaches on any New Testament, Hebrew Bible or Second Temple Jewish writing are welcome. The papers will be pre-distributed and only summarized in the sessions.
Tags: Social-Scientific Approaches (Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology) (Interpretive Approaches)
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Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Description: The Writing/Reading Jeremiah group invites new readings and constructions of meaning with the book of Jeremiah "this side" of historicist paradigms and postmodernism. We welcome all strategies of reading Jeremiah that seek to reconfigure, redeploy, and move beyond conventional readings of Jeremiah. Our manifesto: not by compositional history alone, nor biographical portrayal alone, nor their accompanying theological superstructures; rather, we seek interpretation from new spaces opened for reading Jeremiah by the postmodern turn.
Call for papers: In 2022, the Writing/Reading Jeremiah section will have three sessions. These sessions will consist of a combination of invited papers as well as papers selected in response to the Call to Papers. In the first session, “The Future Beyond Chaos?”, we invite papers that explore the development of the theme of the future in the context of the crisis wrought by the end-of-the-world scenario associated with Babylonian imperial aggression. While paying attention to the historical reality of Babylon, Jeremiah links the fate of Judah/Jerusalem to various moral failings. Similarly, the nation’s future is theologically tied to moral renovation and the Babylonian Empire. The logic of crisis and chaos requiring political and other choices appears in different ways in the book. Papers that look at how the book depicts the interplay of crisis and chaos with the future are welcome. We are particularly interested in work that deploys interdisciplinary approaches that investigate how these ideas in Jeremiah develop into apocalyptic and other world-ending discourses in biblical and extrabiblical sources.
For the second session, “Jeremiah in Conversation with Jonah,” we invite papers that explore textual and thematic relationships between these two prophetic books, including, but not limited to prophetic identity; the traumatized prophet representing a traumatized community; Oracles against the Nations, etc. We encourage papers that pursue creative analyses of these intertextual relationships and reflect on the implications of these connections in different contexts.
In the final session, we will celebrate the recent publication of the Oxford Handbook of Jeremiah with a round table discussion by a number of the contributors to this important volume, led by the editors, Louis Stulman and Ed Silver.
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