Biblical Studies Carnival XVII is here! Please buckle up, and keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times!

Biblical Literature

Claude Mariottini offered a number of interesting observations about non-Aaronite priests, including a post on Jesus and Melchizedek and another on David’s sons acting as priests (I offered some reflections on the latter topic myself; I thought I was mostly agreeing with Claude and using his comments as a springboard to make some larger points, but judging by Claude’s response, I must have come off as arguing against Claude’s post, which I never intended).

About the middle of April, Stephen Cook’s attention was drawn to the utopian temple envisioned in Ezekiel 40–48, which prompted a three-post series (here, here, and here) about representations of that visionary temple inside and outside of Ezekiel.

Back on March 19, a convocation on the book of Job was held at the Claremont Graduate Universities. Unfortunately, though I wanted to attend, my schedule would not allow it. Fortunately, Duane Smith was there, and throughout April Duane provided us with summaries of and his reflections on the convocation. Start with his overview of session I, where you will also find links to the other five entries in the series.

This just in! As I was preparing Carnival XVII for posting, John Hobbins posted an argument for including translations of the Hebrew version of Ben Sira in modern study Bibles. I’m eager to see what kind of conversation ensues.

Gary Greenberg graciously gave blog readers some sneak peeks at his book The Judas Brief: see them here, here, here, and here. As far as I know, reviews have not yet started to appear (I know that I’ve been too busy to crack open my own review copy).

David Ker took a look at what he called the “iconography” of the gospels; you need to gloss that as “verbal iconography” to see where David is headed. The complete series unfolds in part 1, part 2, and part 3, with kind of interlude between parts 2 and 3 on “The Doctor’s Strange Omissions” (not “Doctor Strange’s Omniscience,” which is what my brain fooled me into thinking it saw the first time I laid eyes on the title).

If you’ve been following the saga of Michael Pahl’s dissertation, you’ll want to bookmark the post in which he indexes the entire series.

Cognate Literature

If you’re in the mood for an Akkadian letter or four, see Duane Smith’s translations of four tablets from Taanach. Start with his preliminary notes and translation of Taanach 1; this post also contains links to the other three translations.

History and Archaeology

Aren Maeir of Tell-es Safi excavations fame published a brief comment on his own Biblical Archaeology Review editorial in defense of “biblical archaeology.”

Reactions to Simcha Jacobovici’s film The Lost Tomb of Jesus continued to pop up across the blogosphere during April. Todd Bolen links to and discusses a few of the reactions from early April.

Turning to matters of more scholarly merit, April DeConick, Mark Goodacre, and Loren Rosson treated readers to an interesting a provocative discussion of the various so-called “quests for the historical Jesus.” My qualifier “so-called” is important, because it is precisely the labeling of these “quests” that our colleagues examined. Jeffrey Garcia thinks that affirmation of Markan priority leads to problems with such quests; see part 1 and part 2 of his series on Markan “posteriority” (there’s a crude joke lurking in there somewhere).

Methodology

AKMA gave readers a review and critique of Rowan Williams’ Larkin-Stuart Lecture, touching on a number of interesting hermeneutical issues.

The Fifth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament received well-deserved attention on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. Tommy Wasserman previewed the conference and gave us a sneak peek at his own paper. Peter Head posted some highlights from the first day of the conference, while Tommy commented on the second day (each summary focuses on a single paper of interest).

Philology

Right at the end of the month, John Hobbins began a series reviewing electronic dictionaries of biblical Hebrew; see now part 1, part 2, and part 3.

On more specific topics, Tim Bulkeley debunked the connection of the divine name El Shaddai with breasts.

The Bible in Popular Culture

It was “awards month” over at the Bible Films Blog, where Matt Page treated readers to the Faith and Film Critics Circle Best of 2006 Awards (and a repost of the 2005 awards), Ron Reed’s Top 5 Bible Films, the Arts and Faith Discussion Forum’s Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films, Entertainment Weekly’s Top 12 Film Jesuses, Matt’s own list of the Top Ten Jesus Films, and the Church Times’s list of the Fifty Top Religious Films. As the good book says, “Of the making of lists there is no end.”

Kevin Wilson ventured into politics with two critiques of poor punditry.

Miscellany

As usual, Jim West was the most prolific of the bibliobloggers in April 2007, pointing readers to various bibliographical notices, conferences, awards, and so on. Undoubtedly, however, Jim’s greatest contribution to the blogosphere in April 2007—indeed, his greatest contribution to biblical studies generally—was undoubtedly his coining of the term Bullgeschichte (though I think he misspelled it; shouldn’t it be Bullsgeschichte?). It’s right up there with archaeoporn.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you are a Christian Zionist, you might want to take Bruce Fisk’s diagnostic test.

Airton José da Silva tried to get the biblioblogosphere to cooperate in an Amazon UnSpun ratings venture (see the linked post and then follow the links there). It didn’t quite play out like he intended, I think.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little tour of the biblioblogosphere for April 2007. My sincere apologies to anyone whose posts should have been included, but weren’t. This especially applies to those of you working in New Testament studies, Dead Sea scrolls, and so on—fields in which I don’t keep up with the blog conversations as eagerly as I read those focused on Hebrew Bible studies. In my own defense, I’ll say that I did not receive any nominations this month. Danny Zacharias is slated to host Biblical Studies Carnival XVIII at Deinde in the first week of June 2007; please make Danny’s life a little easier by sending your nominations (see the carnival home page for details).

The conclusion of the matter: all has been said. Well, until next month, anyway.