Category Archives: Bibliobloggers

“Examining our Exams” links added

Below are links to material from my SBL session entitled, “Examining our Exams: What to include, exclude, and revisit for Biblical Language Exams.” These links have been added to my SBL 2009 Pedagogy page (link in toolbar above). A summary of my presentation, as well as links from other presenters will be added soon.

These materials are, of course, just samples and will continue to be refined. Leave a comment with a suggestion or description of what you do in your own classroom!

Michael Fox discusses his commentary on Proverbs

Michael Fox discussed the second volume of his commentary on Proverbs with a group of bibliobloggers gathered at a dinner hosted by John Hobbins at the Deutsches Haus in New Orleans. Great food, fellowship, fun and discussion. The evening benefited Jericho Road, a charity rebuilding community after Katrina. I’ll post more about this fine evening later.

Taking the Distance Out of Distance Education

Today I was one of the presenters in the following session:

22-201 Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
11/22/2009 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM Room: Studio 9 – MR
Theme: Distance Learning: How to teach traditional topics in a non-traditional format

I’ve posted links to some of the resources mentioned in my portion of session below. An updated list (including material from the other presenters) will be kept on the SBL 2009 Pedagogy page of my blog. Check back again to find more material as we (the five presenters) update the links.

Online Tools:

  • Moodle: Open Source community-based tools for learning
  • Elluminate: web, audio, video, and social networking solutions for teaching, learning, and collaborating
  • LearnCentral: social learning network for education, sponsored by Elluminate

A few of the tools mentioned by Brooke Lester:

  • Wetpaint: A site solely for creating wikis
  • Diigo: Social bookmarking, highlighting, and commenting of web pages.
  • Netvibes: Bringing feeds to a central location from blogs, from wikis, from Diigo, from Twitter, from Yahoo Pipes, and so on.
  • Yahoo Pipes: Grouping, filtering, ordering RSS feeds from anywhere.

Check his resource page for more links and tutorials to use these resources.

Bible Software Shootout

I could not be at the SBL Bible Software Shootout session between Logos, SESB, BibleWorks, Accordance and Olive Tree but I did follow some of the SBLtweets. So I’m putting a roundup of the tweets from that session here. If you were there and have anything to add, please leave a comment, thanks!

UPDATE (for a full summary of the session go to the blog This Lamp):
Continue reading

Jim West’s International Influence

We all know that Jim has been ranking high in the blogosphere numbers over in New Zealand.

Little did we realize that the Kiwis’ affinity for West’s profundity would have such an affect on their national integrity. Read here for details about the ranking of New Zealand as the least corrupted country in the world. Perhaps this will help with Jim’s bid to be recognized as an honorary Kiwi.

BioLogos: In Search of a Theology of Celebration (Workshop on Science, Evolution & Theology)

Science and the Sacred blog
The BioLogos blog (Science and the Sacred) has a post with a summary of some of the discussion from the BioLogos workshop last week that sought to look at issues of science, evolution, and theology. A very necessary conversation!

In the history of North American evangelicalism, there has never been a meeting like this. Gathered together at the Harvard Club in New York City were about 55 leading evangelical pastors, theologians, scientists, and other scholars. We were also privileged to have a small number of lay observers, who were especially important in our informal reflections. We spent two days in worship, study, prayer, and fellowship.

The scientists likely all held the position that God has created life in a manner that is consistent with the findings of mainstream science. Many of the others in attendance were not sure what to think, but amazingly–given the schedules of people in leadership positions–they were willing to come from all over the country (and beyond) to spend two days helping us understand the theological and pastoral ramifications of the science which we are so convinced is true. They were so gracious, not just in how they helped to inform us about theology and pastoral care, but especially as they listened to us talk about science. We, the scientists, described the evidence for evolution and attempted to show why it is so important for the Church hear what mainstream biology has to say about creation. They listened, and we were deeply moved by the spirit with which they listened.

Read the entire post here.

Pete Enns (Part 2) at Science and the Sacred blog

Pete Enns is the Friday “guest voice” for a second week over at Science and the Sacred (the BioLogos blog).
Science and the Sacred blog

This week he starts to describe in more detail what he means by an Incarnational Model for understanding the Bible.

Models are intellectual constructs that try to account for data. They are ways of putting the pieces together and aim to achieve the greatest degree of explanatory power.

We all have models of reality, whether or not we know it. We all hold to hypotheses and theories (which I will take as roughly synonymous with “model”) to explain what we see.

This is also the case for how we interpret the Bible. All of us–from the most ardent Fundamentalist to the most Liberal Christian–construct models to account for the “data.” The models that are the most coherent (account for the most data) wind up being the most persuasive. No model is pure and objectively correct. They are all working hypotheses, and as such are also always up for revision.

One model that accounts for why the Bible behaves the way it does is an incarnational model. Simply put, an incarnational model of Scripture is one that expects Scripture to have an unapologetically thorough human dimension analogous to Jesus’ complete humanity. Both the human dimension of Scripture and the humanity of Jesus are essential to making them what they are.

Read the rest of this second part in the series here.

SBL tips

Jim West has a great post giving his best tips (actually, 10 commandments) of how to “do” the SBL annual meeting.

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre has also added his sagely advice here.

I’d like to add one very important suggestion: Wear comfortable shoes!! Even if you are staying in the headquarter hotel, you may have signed up for the SBL Fitness Program without knowing it. For example, in San Diego (2007), you had to hike through what seemed like miles of convention hall lobbies to get to the Book Exhibit and Meeting Rooms which were at the extreme opposite end of the convention center from the attached main hotel (we’re talking city blocks here folks).

My maiden name is Murphy, so listen to me about this next Law of SBL Session room assignments. The distance between session rooms is inversely related to the amount of time you have to get to the next session. Check your Program (and map) carefully!