Early to bed Friday night, early to rise Saturday morning. I rolled out of bed a little after 5:00 AM Saturday morning and set right to work on polishing my book proposal. Around 10:00 AM I headed down to the Kinko’s embedded in the convention center, paid too much to get three copies of book proposal v. 1.3, and delivered two of these to one of the editors (I’d had coffee with the other editor on Friday). He had some great suggestions and was very encouraging, so I am getting more and more confident that I know what I’ll be doing, research-wise, for the next five to seven years of my life. Since the editors—David Gunn and John Sawyer (I haven’t met the other two editors of the series)—seem so encouraging, and were talking about it pretty openly, I guess I might as well be specific: barring any unforeseen difficulties, I’m about to start writing two volumes on Genesis for the Blackwell Bible Commentary series.

I actually got to the exhibit hall about 30 minutes early for my meeting with John Sawyer, so I quickly went around to selected booths and grabbed some of the things I wanted to take home with me, including:

My sit-down with John Sawyer was in the back of the exhibit hall, and ran a little past noon. Noon was also the starting time for the annual Christian Scholarship Foundation luncheon, so after taking my leave of John I hightailed it all the way to the other end of the “convention strip” here in San Diego. I obviously was late to the luncheon, but got there in time to hear my major professor from Abilene Christian University, John Willis, list (in classic Willis style) nine changes he thinks have happened (for the better!) in Churches of Christ over the last 60 years.

I got away from the luncheon a little too late to make it on time to the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media session in which Hector Avalos was scheduled to present a paper on religion and violence in film. I would have slipped in late, if the door had been at the rear of the meeting hall—but no, in that room, the door is right by the presenters’ table. The moment I realized that, I just let the door quietly slip back into place. I headed back to my room, read Israel Finkelstein’s first chapter in The Quest for the Historical Israel, spent a little time with The End of Biblical Studies, and then took a nap.

From 4:00–6:30 PM I moderated a session of the Israelite Prophetic Literature section, on the topic of “failure or fulfillment” in biblical prophecy. The papers were all interesting, each in its own way. I actually would not have gone to this session if I weren’t chairing it, because there were other things in the same time slot that interest me more than prophetic literature. However, I learned some interesting things, and had some of my inchoate thinking confirmed. I won’t go through each paper in turn here. Suffice to say that the evaluation of whether a prophet or a prophetic oracle “succeded” or “failed” depends radically on the criteria one is using for success or failure.

At 7:00 I went to the SBL Presidential Address. I have to confess that Ron and I did not stay the whole time. I was really expecting a great speech, but my expectations were not being met. So, we slipped out the back and went for turkey burgers. After that, it was back to the room for a little more reading, a little more writing, and some much-needed sleep.