Biblioblogs

Women Biblical Scholars Blog – Check It Out!

~ Jessica Parks ~ 1 Comment

So I stumbled across this blog, Women Biblical Scholars, the other day and it looks AMAZING! It is a blog solely dedicated to women in biblical scholarship.

Throughout history women have loved, studied, and taught the scriptures. Unfortunately, many of us have never heard of these biblical scholars and theologians. Often they are left out of history books and classrooms. The goal of this blog is to draw attention to the works of these women and discover what they contribute to our understanding of the biblical text. With greater awareness, this scholarship can shape course curriculum, homilies, public discourse, and academia itself. (from the blog’s About page)

This is like my meager, short-lived (but not necessarily retired!) Frauen Friday series on steroids and I’m super excited about it. I’m probably a little late to the party but if you haven’t seen it yet you should definitely check it out. It is relatively new but there are already tons of interviews and videos and it looks like it is updated pretty frequently so mosey on over and dive on in.

Also, you can follow @Women_Scholars on Twitter for updates. Kudos to this new blog and I look forward to being a regular reader!

PonderForth: Halloween and Soteriology

~ Mike Skinner ~ Leave a comment

Go ahead an bookmark the new blog PonderForth.
You can thank me later.

Michael Forth, the author, is a good friend of mine and a bright doctoral student at Aberdeen University. This week he posted two blogs worth reading:

A Word About Halloween:
“The bottom line is that we are witnesses to Christ and His Kingdom.  All symbols that do not point to Jesus are not wrong; they have been twisted from their proper purpose of revealing Him to His world.  We are to untwist them; we are to bend them back into shape so they can reveal Christ and His Kingdom.  In the case of Halloween, is there anyone better to explain the true meaning of death and how it has been overcome?  How can we not embrace this opportunity to reclaim a symbol that has been illegitimately appropriated by an unbelieving culture, especially when it was done by means of such a silly subculture as the neopagans.

It would be improper, however, to use this line of thinking as an opportunity to browbeat our neighbors in the name of Jesus.  We are witnesses and ambassadors, not Gospel thugs.  When we use Halloween as an excuse for aggressive evangelism, we show that evangelism per se mean more to us than our neighbor.  Our neighbors feel as though we are using a children’s holiday to sell them a spiritual pyramid scheme.  Opportunistic evangelism never works.”

The Price We Pay for Soteriology:
“The more and more that I experience of the Evangelical world, both in the U.S. and in our new circumstances in Scotland, the more I am convinced of the dangers of soteriolatry (soteriology + idolatry).  Soteriolatry is a name that I have given to the Evangelical tendency to prize soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) above all else, functionally turning it into an idol with disastrous effects.  While I may have coined the neologism “soteriolatry” in a moment of self-congratulatory pseudo-insight several years ago, others with similar concerns may have coined the same term or something similar….

This overemphasis on soteriology in the Evangelical tradition may well be labeled as Neo-Lutheran, since it stems largely from one of the primary motivations of Luther (though without his nuance and balance).  Some may disagree with this label, but I will use ‘NL’ as shorthand for this perspective in what follows.  What am I offering in contrast to the focus?  What can I say?  I’m a kingdom guy.  I believe that when the New Testament refers to the gospel it is referring to the good news of the arrival of the Kingdom of God.  It is only within such a context that our salvation in Jesus Christ has its proper place.  Without such a context, it too often seems as though we are saved for the sake of being saved.”

Biblical Studies Blog Carnival | September 2014

~ Mike Skinner ~ 5 Comments

Welcome to the September 2014 Biblical Studies Blog Carnival!

September means one thing in Texas: football season is back! And of course, I’m speaking of American football – both college and NFL teams are now on the field once again. I know that many of our biblical studies bloggers are more inclined towards the internationally recognized form of “football” (what we down here in Texas call “soccer”), so please accept my apologies for picking such a culturally-biased theme. You might enjoy the video below of a confused “football” coach attempting to coach a “soccer” team.

College football divides each team into certain conferences – the SEC (Gig ‘Em Aggies!), Big 12, ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12, etc. Thus, I’ve divided this month’s excellent blogging into four conferences:

– The OTC (Old Testament Conference)
– The NTC (New Testament Conference)
– The CHTC (Church History, Theology, and Hermeneutics Conference)
– The BRC (Book Review Conference)

However, just because a post might not be in one of the above conferences it still might have merited a place in the Wild Card Race (Miscellaneous Posts).

There were a ton of great blog posts this month.
Thanks to all who contributed –  happy reading!

The OTC (Old Testament Conference)

The NTC (New Testament Conference)

The CHTHC (Church History, Theology, and Hermeneutics Conference)

BRC (Book Review Conference)

The Wild Card Race (Miscellaneous Posts)

* * *  New Blog Alert  * * *
Michael Forth, a doctoral student at Aberdeen, has started a new blog: PonderForth. Check out his first blog post, “Is Christian Fundamentalism a Manifestation of Liberal Theology?”

[1] Did I miss a great post from the month of September? Post a comment with the link so that we can all enjoy it!

[2] Next month’s Biblical Studies Blog Carnival (October 2014) will be hosted by Brian Renshaw on November 1. Be sure to stay tuned for another month of blogging greatness.

[3] Phil Long at Reading Acts is still looking for volunteers to host future Carnivals. This is my “emotional plea” for a few decent folks to step up and help continue this biblioblog tradition! If you’re interested and/or willing to be coerced, please contact Phil through his blog.

The Carnival is Coming to Town!

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

974540It’s been a while since Cataclysmic last hosted the Biblical Studies Carnival, but the wait is now over: we are in the on-deck circle and will soon be offering the
September 2014 Biblical Studies Carnival.

Help me make this month’s edition a Carnival to remember! Please send me submissions for consideration throughout the month as you read a good blog post. Place your submission in a comment, email me at mike@fc3.org, or use the following contact form:

* PS # 1: Be sure you check out Rob Bradshaw’s Biblical Studies Carnival for August 2014.

*PS # 2: Phil Long is still looking for volunteers to host future carnivals. Let him know if/when you’re willing to step up!

Biblical Studies Carnival XCIV: December 2013

~ Jessica Parks ~ 16 Comments

‘Twas the night before the new year when all through the house,
not a creature was stirring… except me and my laptop’s mouse.
Smart phones and iPads were set by the nightstand with care,
with hopes that the Biblical Studies Carnival would soon be there.

The bibliobloggers were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of end-of-the-year top ten lists danced in their heads.
And professors, students, bloggers, and more,
had just settled their brains for a two-week to month-long snore…
except for grad students because everyone knows we never sleep.

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2014, the year we all finally keep our new year’s resolutions… here’s hoping! Before we take a look back at December and all the bloggy goodness it contained, I wanted to remind you of the most exciting thing happening in 2014:

Houston Baptist University is hosting a conference on “Paul and Judaism” on March 19-20, 2014. Our keynote speakers include N.T. Wright (St Andrews University), Beverly Gaventa (Baylor University), and Ross Wagner (Duke Divinity School).

In addition to the keynote speakers, we are inviting papers in the area of Paul and Judaism, representing a variety of approaches from scholars and graduate students. Participants will have 30 minutes to present papers (inclusive of Q&A). Please submit a 200-300 word abstract to Dr. Ben C. Blackwell at bblackwell[at]hbu.edu by January 15, 2014, and you should receive notification regarding acceptance by January 31. Registration by February 15 is required for those who will present at the conference.

For more info: www.hbu.edu/theologyconference

This conference is going to be AWESOME so be sure to get your paper submissions in by January 15th and/or register for the conference!  Hope to see y’all there.

Now, on to the feast of December blog posts!

Advent, Christmas, and the Incarnation
Since this month’s carnival covers December it seems natural to start off with a sampling of Christmas-themed posts.

“One item of folk religion is the belief among Christians that the incarnation was temporary—a mere interim and perhaps even a charade in the life of the Son of God, God’s Word, the Logos. For many evangelicals (and others, I suspect), the incarnation was simply the Son of God ‘putting on human skin’ for thirty-some years in order to teach us how to please God and then to die for our sins. Either at the moment of his death or at his resurrection or at his ascension he shed that human skin and returned to his glorious pre-incarnation existence as God’s purely spiritual Son in heaven who also, somehow, dwells in every Christian’s heart.

This is, of course, an informal form of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. It is a docetic Christology. Most of the time I find that people who believe the incarnation was temporary don’t really believe in the incarnation at all! That is, they tend to think of Jesus’ humanity as an act, an outward performance, not a real human nature and existence like ours. To many Christians ‘Jesus’ was Clark Kent to the Son of God’s super-human glory.”

ANE, Hebrew Bible, OT Theology, and More

LXX, DSS, Apocrypha and More

New Testament, NT Theology, and More

Early Christianity and Patristics

Hermeneutics

Language, Linguistics, Textual Criticism, and Translation

“I say to my students, ‘Check your sources.’ I tell them,
‘Look up the works in the footnotes and read them.’ I warn them to get beyond the slogans and labels of ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ or ‘evangelical’ or whatever and to discover the substance of the argument. In this day of uncounted online ‘“news’ sources (not to mention on air news sources), many of which are propaganda for various positions and/or sensationalism, some of which being not just junk but worse than junk, this admonition is even more important than it has been in the past.

Archaeology

The “I wasn’t sure where to put it but you should definitely read it” Category

“One of the differences between ‘theology’ and ‘religious studies’ is that theology is carried out from within the perspective of the believer, while religious studies takes a strictly historical/sociological perspective. I am enrolled in a theological program: perhaps this is why my immediate response to learning of this theologian’s persistent sinful patterns of behavior was to question whether and how it reflected on the value of his theology. It seems a screamingly obvious question to me.”

Book Reviews
Good heavens, December was the month of book reviews!

The Biblical Studies Carnivals of 2013
Since it is the end of another year, I thought I’d include a link to all of the previous Biblical Studies Carnivals of 2013 compiled by The Biblioblog Top 50.

Peter Kirby has the Top 50 Biblioblogs Winter Report at his blog and Abram K-J has the Septuagint Studies Soirée #5.

And of course, Jim West is hosting his ‘Wright Free Zone’ carnivalat his blog… but is a carnival without Wright really a carnival at all?  We here at Cataclysmic love us some N.T. Wright… well, most of us (wink, wink)… so to start off the new year with lots of joy, here’s Tom-foolery: 12 Epic Facts About N.T. Wright from Out of Ur.

The next Biblical Studies Carnival (Jan 14, Due Feb 1) will be hosted by Brian Renshaw at NT Exegesis.  See y’all ’round the blogosphere!