Sunday morning at the SBL always means one thing for me: the so-called Churches of Christ Professors Meeting, basically unstructured worship service attended mostly by members of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches. By custom, attendees spontaneously lead songs or prayers, or read scripture, so one never quite knows what to expect. To tell the truth, I don’t usually feel very “worshipful” at these “Professors Meetings,” but I always like to see old friends and make new ones.

After the “Professors Meeting,” I went back into the book display to purchase an unlock code for the new Accordance module with the Hebrew text of Ben Sira. I spent the next couple of hours reviewing my notes for the Avalos review panel, never realizing that I had already missed it. At lunch I went out with some of our newest Pepperdine faculty members, plus one potential faculty member, and we had a nice conversation over Indian food. I had planned to go to hear Chris Rollston on paleography, but I wasn’t feeling confident about my contributions to the Avalos panel, so I spend a little more time re-reading and preparing. Silly me.

From 4:00–6:15 I attended a meeting of the editors and authors in the Blackwell Bible Commentary series. Some of the authors who have finished their volumes pointed the rest of us toward some helpful bibliographical resources. Then I got myself over the Connaught Room, and discovered my dreadful mistake. Right now I’m hiding under a rock trying to get up the courage to come out again tomorrow morning for the Restoration Quarterly breakfast.