A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, I gently guide forces around me while serving as a champion of the light.
Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not - for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life greets it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminescent beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you, everywhere.
I left Edmonton on Thursday, July 22nd, and arrived in Groningen on Friday, July 23rd. For accomodations, I stayed with a student of the University of Groningen, who was a gracious host and also, like me, a student of the Hebrew Bible.
On Saturday, July 24th, my host invited me to attend an orientation meeting, hosted by the Executive of the I-SBL for the student volunteers of the University of Groningen. This gave me the opportunity to meet some of the students at the University of Groningen and also hear from the Executive on some of the challenges faced by the SBL at the International Meeting. In particular, the SBL is attempting to make the meeting accessible to Eastern European scholars as well as scholars from so-called Third World countries. In this, the SBL has not been very successful and seems not to have a very deliberate or focused strategy to overcome these problems. They continue to schedule the meetings in countries where the costs of travel and accomodations are simply too high. Consider this: some Eastern European scholars make as little as $100 a month; the cost of registration for the I-SBL is $70 and the I-SBL's choice of hotels for this conference were all over $100/night. This actually exposes a problem that many scholars may not realize: the SBL, for its International and Annual Meetings, always recommends four or five star hotels and claims that it negotiates discount rates. Yet, I discovered from several scholars at the conference that they were able to get better rates at the same hotels (or other nearby hotels) than those negotiated by the SBL; these scholars testified to being able to do so at both the International and Annual events. So, scholars beware! It may be in your best interests to use the Internet or call the hotels directly and arrange accomodations that way.
I also had the opportunity to talk to Kent Richards about the SBL's lack of scholarships for students. Personally, I find it deplorable that a society that has existed for more than a century does not provide even one significant scholarship program in biblical studies. In our conversation, Kent Richards mentioned that the SBL is presently undertaking a fund raising drive that will attempt, as one of its goals, to rectify this situation. My conversation with Kent Richards then turned to the problem of diminishing faculties in biblical studies in North American schools, especially in the public or state universities. More emphasis, in my opinion, needs to be placed on marketing this discipline in order to ensure its continued growth and development. In any case, my conversation with Kent Richards was interesting and enlightening, though I remain unconvinced the SBL is doing enough in these two very important areas.
On Sunday, July 25th, I helped the student volunteers set up for the meeting. I brought tables and chairs to the book fair and prepared the SBL handbags. The conference itself started to get under way at around noon. I attended the book fair (which was very, very small), the opening plenary session, given by Ed Noort of the University of Groningen, and the reception.
The reception is a somewhat difficult environment for a student, at least for a student who does not know many of the people in attendance. Still, I was able to spend some time talking with one of the students I had met before and, through Roy Brown, I later on had the opportunity to meet Eugene Ulrich, as mentioned in my previous blog post. Indeed, I also spent considerable time on Sunday (and throughout the conference), at reception and at the book fair, talking with Roy Brown, who let me in on on some of the plans for Accordance in the coming months and years. While it is nothing I can advertise here, let me simply say that Accordance will continue to grow its tremendous resources for scholars. This is certainly a company devoted to the scholarly market! After the reception, I went for dinner with Francis Landy, one of my professors at U of A, and his son. On the way home, I got lost in downtown Groningen and spent a couple of hours trying to orient myself before receiving some help from locals.
On Monday, July 26th, I began the day by attending morning lectures. I sat in on lectures by Lester Grabbe, Emmanuel Tov, Lawrence Schiffman, and Eep Talstra. Personally, I thought the lectures by the first three were rather conventional, simply reflecting their present research interests without anything too groundbreaking on the horizon. Still, they were informative and interesting. Unfortunately, Schiffman spoke too quickly for any in the audience whose first language was not English; his Brooklyn Jewish accent amplified the problem for many. For those who understood him though, Schiffman characteristically punctuated his presentation with humour. Talstra's presentation on the Name in Kings and Chronicles was very interesting to me as this presentation related to my research interests in Chronicles. For lunch, I went out with my professor, Ehud Ben Zvi, and a colleague.
In the afternoon, I spent most of my time continuing conversation with Roy Brown as well as some scholars. There were no lectures of interest to me.
In the evening, I attended Garcia's very interesting, though perhaps overlong, presentation on Dead Sea Scrolls research at the University of Groningen. For the night cap, I went out with the student volunteers. All in all, a good day.
On Tuesday, July 27th, I attended the first half of the EABS Seminar on Historical Methodology, which was quite disappointing. The Seminar, and I hear this was true of the parts I did not attend later on in the day, frequently got sidetracked, did not really address the problems of historical method, and in general was not very productive. This is unfortunate given its distinguished participants, which included Christof Hardmeier, Rainer Albertz, Ehud Ben Zvi, Oded Lipschits, Thomas Thompson, Diana Edelman, Philip Davies, Lester Grabbe (chair), and another.
In the afternoon, I presented my paper in the Graduate Presentations section, chaired by Dr. Rainer Albertz. Unfortunately, my section coincided with the inaugural section of the International Organization for Qumran Studies, a Hebrew Bible section, and the afternoon session of the Seminar on Historical Methodology. So, not only was my section poorly attended, but I was unable to attend these sections.
In the evening, I went for dinner with Thomas Thompson, Ehud Ben Zvi, and several others. Much to my delight and surprise, I found myself sitting next to Katie Stott at the dinner table. Katie was set to present a paper on Wednesday on the motif of book-finding, which directly relates to my present thesis work. Unfortunately, I already had plans to leave for Amsterdam in the early afternoon on Wednesday and so was privately lamenting the fact that I could not hear this paper or have a chance to meet Katie. It is certainly strange then that I should myself sitting next to her that night. It was a pleasure to meet her (and discover she was my age) and arrange to receive a copy of her paper.
After dinner, I went out for drinks with Katie, her significant other, Philip Davies, Thomas Thompson, and others. By about 10-11pm, many people started leaving and I was, by then, engaged in an insightful discussion with Thomas Thompson with whom I remained at the bar until closing time when we were forced to continue our conversation in the street. This conversation only came to an end when his wife dragged her husband back to the hotel. In my conversation with Thomas Thompson, I really began to discover, much to my surprise, that his views on Israelite history and the Bible are not really all that radical. It seems to me that alot of the debate between the Copenhagen School, of which he is a member, and the North American so-called "Maximalists" was really a case of people talking past each other. The disagreements seem to me more about semantics or emphasis than real material disagreements. Of course, there are always some things to disagree on, even for a student like me. I also learnt from Thomas Thompson the origins of the words Minimalist and Maximalist as it pertains to the debate between them. Apparently, Thomas Thompson and Maxwell Miller were discussing their forthcoming books at an SBL section when Maxwell Miller commented that his book would be a maximum of 500 pages and Thompson said that his would be minimum of 500 pages, at which point the two began joking about "Max" being a Maximalist and Thompson being a Minimalist. Apparently, Dever was also in attendance at the section and picked up on the terminology, applying it to the ongoing debate.
On Wednesday, July 28th, I spent most of my time in the book fair to get some last minute deals on books; I actually managed to find 5-6 books in the meagre selection. That afternoon, I took the train to Amsterdam with Ehud Ben Zvi, Diana Edelman, Stuart Lesine, and another. I stayed in a hotel near the Schiphol airport and flew back to Edmonton on Thursday.
All in all, a good conference. I wish my lecture could have been better attended but c'est la vie. I also wish I had been able to attend more lectures in my area of interest but at these smaller conferences that is often difficult (and, in this case, largely impossible because my presentation coincided with sections of interests). In any case, it is the engagement with other scholars that I really enjoy at these conferences and this I was able to do. The smaller International meeting also allowed me to meet scholars I wouldn't otherwise meet at the larger Annual Meeting. Still, I think I prefer the Annual Meeting and, as far as smaller societies go, the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. I'd still like to attend a meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association as I've repeatedly heard that these are really a unique and fun experience!
Well, it has been a long time since I blogged. I've been busy trying to complete my Master's thesis (which still isn't done) and, from July 22nd to July 29th, I was in Groningen, Netherlands to attend the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and present my paper on 1 Chronicles 21 at the Annual Meeting of the European Association of the Biblical Studies.
The conference was great. I had the opportunity to meet with students at University of Groningen as well as numerous major scholars in Europe, including Thomas Thompson, Philip Davies, Diana Edelman, and others. I particularly enjoyed spending an evening at the bar with Thomas Thompson and debating historical methodology in biblical studies. We talked in the bar until closing time when we took our conversation into the street. Finally, his wife showed up to break up the discussion (and still we talked much to chagrin of his wife)! I also ran into Eugene Ulrich, editor of the Discoveries in the Judean Desert series, and luckily Roy Brown, owner of OakTree Software (the makers of Accordance), had a camera and snapped this picture of Ulrich and myself:
Anyways, I shall update my blog with further comments on the meetings soon. For now, it is back to work on my thesis!
I'm Yoda
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