Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Digitized!

Dear Colleague,

Each November from 1971 through 2003 the Society of Biblical Literature published a collection of papers that would be presented in the sessions (or seminars) at that year’s Annual Meeting: the SBL Seminar Papers. The contents of the collection were determined not by theme or topic but by which papers were submitted to SBL early enough to be assembled into a volume and printed for distribution at the Annual Meeting.

Over the thirty-three years of the Seminar Papers’ existence, SBL published forty-one physical volumes (two volumes each for 1971–1975, 1978–1979, and 1998) containing 1,126 papers that filled 19,849 pages. Although the Seminar Papers explicitly identified their contents as “working documents,” “experimental and initial work on a subject,” many continue to be cited in scholarly work today—that is, when one can locate a library that owns them.

Now, nearly twenty years after the last volume was published, SBL is happy to announce that all 1,126 papers have been digitized and are openly available for anyone to read online or download. All forty-one volumes can be accessed here as a part of the Pitts Theology Library Digital Collections.

The Society wishes to thank Pitts Head of Special Collections and SBL Archivist Brandon Wason, Director of Pitts Theology Library Richard (Bo) Manly Adams Jr., and all other Pitts personnel who assisted with the scanning and online posting of the Seminar Papers. SBL believes that the money we invested to complete this project will pay dividends not only to our members but also to the broader scholarly community, both as a resource and as a model of preserving our intellectual heritage for generations to come.

We also encourage you visit the SBL Archive, linked here, which is an invaluable record of the history of biblical studies and the Society.

Sincerely,

John F. Kutsko

Executive Director

Now to download them all and remind myself whether there’s anything in them relevant to my current work on John the Baptist!