Bob Cargill has shared both his introductory remarks and his paper, “Instruction, Research, and the Future of Online Educational Technologies”, from the session on blogging and online publication at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Thanks to Bob from all of us not only for his own presentation but also for organizing and chairing the session! Read more

The first is to wish all readers who celebrate Thanksgiving today a Happy Thanksgiving. The second is to pass on a cartoon from David Hayward and encourage you to remember the martyrs who gave their lives so that you could celebrate this day in the traditional manner. Finally, I join with Jerry Coyne in saying “Don’t overdo it”! Have a happy Thanksgiving, and even if you don’t celebrate it today, have a happy day! Read more

What follows below is the text of my presentation at the session on blogging and online publication at the Society of Biblical Literature 2010 annual meeting in Atlanta. The Blogging Revolution: New Technologies and their Impact on How we do Scholarship James F. McGrath When I begin with the question “What is a blog?” I am not asking it to insult the intelligence of those present here today, since I assume that anyone who has chosen to come to a session dedicated to... Read more

“Bloggership” is a term for scholarly blogging which I learned at the SBL session on blogging. I will share my own paper from that session here soon (with slides and links!), but in the mean time I wanted to share links to the posts of other bloggers sharing their papers from the session, accounts of being present in it, or other items of interest related to blogging, electronic publication, and other themes that were the focus of the session. Jim... Read more

Several posts over the last few days have touched on the topics of courage and fear, faith and atheism. It seemed worth gathering them together. The most amusing of them is Hacking Christianity’s “Fear Will Keep The Local Churches In Line” alluding to the Star Wars scene in the picture in this post. Some church leaders have indeed engaged in bullying – especially when they have found your lack of faith disturbing. Cliff Martin and Eric Reitan discuss the courage... Read more

Nikki Stafford has posted her latest installment in her blog series “Lostaholics Anonymous.” The subject is the finale and the way it polarized fans. Nikki discusses the fact that some were put off by the ending’s overt Christian overtones. In fact, some were put off by its non-Christian overtones, the pluralistic symbolism. But I think she is right that the religious element polarized viewers, and that she is also right to say that no one who paid attention to the show... Read more

Joel Watts snapped a photo of me presenting at the section on blogging at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting: As you can see from the image projected on the screen, my talk was about what happens when matter and antimatter collide. Jim Linville‘s picture, while somewhat more impressionistic, is not for that reason less accurate: Alas, this year we didn’t find a piano. But I hope that we can figure out a way to organize a Biblical scholars’ and/or... Read more

By complete coincidence I am sitting next to Ken Schenck, a good friend and fellow New Testament scholar and blogger, on a flight back from Atlanta, where this year’s Society of Biblical Literature conference was held. Neither of the main conference hotels provided free wi-fi, and so I didn’t manage to blog the conference as it was going on, much as I would have liked to. Delta, on the other hand, managed to provide us free wi-fi in flight, and... Read more

I am delighted that Larry Hurtado has taken the time to respond to my earlier response, and allow his review of The Only True God to evolve into a “bloggersation.” To begin my own brief reply, let me not only share the link to Hurtado’s reply, but also links to a couple of my own earlier blog entries in which I discussed Richard Bauckham’s work, since Bauckham’s work was mentioned in Hurtado’s review. I also want to ask readers whether my brief discussion... Read more

Jim Davila has made his conference paper on biblioblogging available on his blog. The title of the paper is “WHAT JUST HAPPENED: The rise of “biblioblogging” in the first decade of the twenty-first century.” His doing so also illustrates another potential use for blogs – distributing copies of one’s conference paper, or at least handouts, in a form that preserves HTML links and other such embedded data or interactive components. Of course, the question is whether you want those listening to your paper... Read more