Scholar in Training

From Waco, TX

2006-02-05T06:32:00.000Z

Hey people! Sorry about the lack of posting, but January was a pretty manic month, culminating in my first trip to the USA for a church conference called World Mandate. When some other members of the team have sorted out their photos, then I'll post some of the best on here. For now, I'll just comment that the US is surprisingly different to the UK even though it's all part of the 'western world'. I know Texas isn't representative of the whole US, but it's very flat, there are loads of fast food places and churches all over, and the less said about the obscenely-sized 'cars' that use petrol like there's no tomorrow, the better. Americans are very friendly, though.

Semester at Sheffield starts on Monday, which is great - I've been looking forward to it for a while! - but it's a little badly timed. I fly back to Manchester Sunday afternoon, but don't get into Manchester until 8am on Monday, and I have a Hebrew Texts lecture at 10am. Plus the research seminar following that. I really hope I'm not jetlagged!!

I'll post some more when I get back and have had some sleep, and hopefully I'll have found a way to get my cartography paper on here in a downloadable PDF format. Pax!

Happy New Year!

2006-01-05T12:17:00.000Z

Just a quick post to say that I won't be updating again until I get beck to Sheffield towards the middle of January. And I should have some work to post for critical comment - hooray!

Oh, I have a new-found respect for people who have marked my essays in the past. I have about 30 first-year undergraduate essays to mark, and it's taking longer than I thought it would! I'm getting a little quicker though, and it's the first time I've ever done marking (excuses, excuses!).

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-24T19:11:00.000Z

It's been an absolute age, but I'm finally relaxing on my Christmas 'break'. Not that it's much of one, really: a Hebrew exam to revise for, 2 essays to do and 65 first year undergraduate scripts to mark. Ah well. I'm sure most of you who read this are busier than I, so I suppose I can't complain.

It's nearly Christmas! However, it feels less and less like Christmas every year. I once again left my shopping until the last minute. Why do I do it? There's something soul-destroying about Christmas shopping... perhaps this is how the Magi felt! But seriously, I feel horrible after I've involved myself in the compulsory capitalist ritual Christmas has become; granted, walking around Derby trying to find presents for people involves more exercise than I'd get in a typical day, but that doesn't make me feel any better. It also feels like an immense waste of time: much like proving/disproving the nativity stories of Christianity. (Of course, just because the Christmas stories are fictions doesn't mean they aren't 'true'.)

For those who are interested, I have done a draft dissertation outline, and will be posting it shortly for any comments, etc. I am also writing an essay on cartography and the New Testament, and I shall post that as well in mid-January, when it's finished!

Outside of biblical studies, I recently purchsed Mario Kart DS (and here). Considering the work I have to do over the next three weeks, it was probably a bad idea... It's a great game, though! (If any of you own Mario Kart DS, my friend code is 5197 5250 2465.)

Merry Christmas to all!

What's the point of SBL?

2005-11-29T16:11:00.000Z

It takes someone who's been to SBL to ask this question, and Hugh Pyper graciously obliges with his remarks on presented papers:

"One thing that I continue to rail at is the unrelieved wordiness and worthiness of so many presentations, with honourable exceptions of course. Boy are they worthy! [...] How often do you sit in a paper and think, 'I love this subject, and I know more about it than most, but if this person goes on any longer, I'm going to lose the will to live, let alone touch the topic with a barge pole.' If that's how feel after 20 minutes, what do their students feel after a semester?"

As of yet, I haven't really come across this in as far as academic papers go. True, I've found some of the Sheffield Research Seminar papers hard to follow, but that's more down to my ignorance of the subject material rather than a deficiency in the presentation. (The papers presented yesterday by Paul Nikkel and Deborah Kahn-Harris were excellent, though - very user friendly, easy to follow, and interesting to boot!) It does worry me that someone like Hugh, who's been teaching Biblical Studies/Theology for 13 years, can sit down and effectively say "Boredom is the norm in conferences".

Perhaps it's not the norm, and Hugh is just being cynical - though Mark Goodacre also notes that he "would be keen to see more quality control" (on the back of Ed Cook's post - for which some of the comments on it by others are illuminating!), and makes a plea for the use of handouts.

Some more (illuminating?) comments, this time on last year's SBL international meeting from a grad student called Mark Stephens, who is commenting on Mark Goodacre's blog post here:

"As a grad student, my own reflections on the SBL international meeting in June would be more nuanced. Many academics, IMHO, have zero idea how to communicate their ideas. They know how to research and to write papers, but as regards the all important rhetorical skill of delivery, that is sorely lacking. Grad students are simply following in their masters footsteps... There is a reason many people fall asleep in lectures - they are boring. In fact, for many lectures, I just wish they would write the article and I would read it in my own time. These comments do not apply to everyone, and there are some absolute masters of presentation, but we need to give up on the idea that we are at present teaching people how to present in an oral context. If we are teaching it - it isn't working."

Fairly damning overall, but it links to the final question Hugh asks:

"How efficient a way of communicating is the average conference session? [...] It did make me think about the role the blogging community could have in raising the standards here - any reactions?"

I think that, given the openness of the whole biblical blogosphere, standards could be raised. For example, I could post a link to a written paper I was due to give at SBL 6 months early, and ask for hints/tips/ideas not just about the content, but how it might be best presented. In postmodern culture, just reading a paper doesn't work anymore - well, I don't think so anyway. People are more visual these days. A good PowerPoint presentation works wonders, as opposed to a bad one which just looks daft. If we use handouts in class, why not at conferences?

However, the genius of the internet is that not only can one publish the text of a paper, you could also publish the PowerPoint presentation and ask for constructive feedback on it. You could record a podcast of yourself delivering the paper, and ask for criticism on that as well for good measure.

...but, of course, some of the ideas above could make going to conferences partly redundant if everyone was into online publishing, blogging and podcasting all the time. :-) Would open biblical scholarship (also see here) destablise the whole point of conferences? There's a question...!

My "Holiday"

2005-11-22T12:37:00.000Z

Well, almost every other biblical scholar in the world is at AAR/SBL, and I'm not. Maybe next year. But, since I have a couple of reading weeks, I decided to visit some of my old friends as Mattersey Hall Bible College to find out what they're up to. Sadly, a few of the people I was hoping to see aren't here - Andrew Davies is in the USA, Glenn Balfour is in South Africa, and all the first year undergrads who I was hoping to meet are all away on mission. Bah!

Still, never mind. It's been cool to be back at Mattersey for a few days - I have fond memories of my first degree, and it's a very scenic place. Not as warm and sunny as Philadelphia, but I don't care. It's cheaper!

And, on the subject of money, the Student Loans Company here in the UK sent me my first annual statement this week. It was a horrible reminder that I owe nearly ten thousand pounds to a faceless organisation. The horror of it all... Plus, they had the gall to send me a little note with the statement telling me that they may have overstated the balance by a maximum of 7p per one thousand pounds. Gee, thanks guys... I give you thousands of pounds, you give me 70p...

Blogs: An Academic Issue?

2005-11-16T19:35:00.000Z

Having browsed the web a little in preparation for a plenary seminar we're having about biblioblogging at Sheffield on the 5th December, it seems as if blogging as an extension of scholarly activity is a little controversial with some. Two recent fairly negative articles about blogging have recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education (in July and September), written by the same person under a psuedonym. They make some salient points, one being that maintaining an academic blog could possibly damage career prospects. That might not matter too much if, like some of my Sheffield tutors who blog, you have a distinguished publishing record - but if, like many (the majority of?) bibliobloggers, you're a graduate student, it could matter. A lot.

Of all the criticisms, this seems the most practical and pragmatic one. Just because I happen to blog, does that mean I'm damaging my future job prospects? If I have a political opinion that I air on my blog, or a faith perspective, or something else that would fall into a 'personal' realm, could I lose out on jobs that I would have got if I didn't have a blog? Well, if that ever happens, then I don't think I'd be truly happy in those jobs anyway. I don't want to engage in dispassionate scholarship. I passionately believe that my personal life is tied up with my research, sometimes in small ways, but more often than not in major ways. I am a Christian, after all.

I quite the way Sepoy on Chapati Mystery puts it: "As a scholar, it is not coming out of the ivory tower into the real world, it is bringing the world into the ivory tower." Rebecca Goetz is also pro-blog as far as academics goes. See also the if:book blog entry about a meeting that they had on academic blogging.

So, where do I think biblioblogging is headed? Group blogs, certainly. It'd be really cool for, say, the SBL Johannine Literature group to blog about their papers, work, direction, etc. It would make it a lot easier for people who haven't ever been to SBL (like me!) to meaningfully contribute something next year (when I do plan to attend!). However, I'd love to see, at some future point, a Sheffield Biblical Studies Dept. blog, where the whole department (and maybe ickle grad students like me) can engage with the online world of biblical scholarship in a collective way, and let everyone else know in an open and accessible way about the cutting-edge stuff being done here. Something like the Chicago University Law School blog - though this idea would depend on whether Sheffield Unversity would be happy for its staff to do this! (And, of course, whether the staff wanted to as well!)

There are many more questions and issues involved in biblioblogging at the moment, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the SBL biblioblogging session. Mark Goodacre has posted a link to one of the papers being given, which I haven't yet had a chance to read. (See also Rick Brannan's paper.)

Hugh Pyper turns to blogging

2005-11-16T17:58:00.000Z

With his very unsuitable blog (and book), Sheffield scholar Hugh Pyper bursts onto the blogging scene like a supernova. Even though I remember him saying to me that he wasn't going to. :-) Still, there's no law against people changing their minds, and I'm sure I'm not alone in looking forward to Hugh's contribution to the (biblical) blogosphere.

It's been a while... again!

2005-11-13T22:08:00.000Z

However, I am still here!

Just got back from church, which brought up some stuff that I thought I'd dealt with, but obviously haven't. My grandad passed away earlier this year (February), and after tonight it's clear that I'm still grieving. He was a loving and caring man, a huge support throughout my undergraduate degree, and it was so hard not having him at my graduation ceremony.

Still, onto more directly related academic stuff. I had another idea for a dissertation topic on Friday as I was reading in the Sheffield library, prompted by a recent CBQ article by Kelli S. O'Brien entitled "Written That You May Believe: John 20 and Narrative Rhetoric". What is the function of the beloved disciple (BD) in John? Is he, as so many commentators have claimed, the 'ideal disciple', or is it a lot more complicated than that? To be honest, I'd never really considered the problems of reading the BD as an 'ideal' before - indeed, in my last undergraduate essay on John's Gospel, I thouroughly endorsed the idea! But there are real problems with the reading of the 'ideal' BD.

For starters, does the BD fulfil the conditions of Johannine discipleship? As far as I'm aware, disciples are to believe in and witness about Jesus. Until ch.21, which by all accounts is a later addition to the gospel, the BD doesn't do any witnessing. Would an ideal disciple leave Mary weeping by the tomb in ch.20, while just going home. (Just like Peter, it must be added - so, while Peter and the BD are frequently contrasted in the gospel, they still do the same thing in ch.20!)

I think deconstruction/poststructuralism can make a positive contribution to the study of the character of the BD, and also to the whole construction of the 'ideal' in John. Obviously, the idea needs a little more work, but hopefully I can shape it enough to suggest it to my supervisor, Hugh Pyper, after he gets back from SBL.

Goodnight, all. Looking forward to some cool posts on 'biblioblogs' from SBL!

Bizarre Site of the Week

2005-11-05T03:32:00.000Z

I might make this a weekly thing, we'll see...

Anyway, I came across this website with the rather pleasant (and grammatically incorrect) address yourgoingtohell.com. It's certainly one of the more extremist websites I've come across, with such hyperlinks as "Whoremongers click here", "Perverts and other sickos click here" and "Hellbound of the Month". There's an interesting animated GIF which caught my eye:

The site, suffice to say, is very literal in its interpretation of hell. It tends to take the book of Revelation very literally, which being a partial preterist I don't agree with at all. Apparently every 2.5 seconds, someone dies and goes to hell, though how the site can predict that with any accuracy is anyone's guess. If you scroll down a little, it turns out that the site is 'KJV-only', which is daft - not least because the KJV NT is based on the Majority Text, which is not the best Greek NT text. (It's also really hard to read, even for someone who got an A in English Language/Literature A-Level!)

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that this Bizarre Site of the Week is bizarre purely because I can't quite see why anyone who actually reads the Bible could get a theology like this one! It's very interesting to find out how other interpret the Bible, but sometimes for me it's quite sad. Especially in this case: why make hell rather than Jesus the focus of a NT theology?

David vs. David

2005-11-03T23:45:00.000Z

Just watched the Conservative party leadership candidates debate on BBC Question Time. Very interesting. Listening to BBC Radio 5 Live at the moment, the general impression is that David Davis just won, but there were no "knockout blows" made. Personally, I think David Cameron came out quite well, but that's possibly because I'm 22 and not in my 40s (or older) like most of these radio presenters and political commentators. Certainly, I think Cameron has his approach to policy exactly right - general ideas now, exact details later when the Conservative party has had time to think about it, as opposed to Davis' "headline grabbing" approach to policy.

Now, I'm too much of a socialist to ever vote Conservative, but if I were on the right of the political spectrum I'd vote Cameron. So, there we go. I'm decided. Of couse, since I'm not a member of the Conservative party, I don't have a vote, but if the Tory party members have any sense they'll all listen to me!

Monday Research Papers

2005-10-31T19:27:00.000Z

Another Sheffield Monday, another highly enjoyable research seminar. Three papers were read today:

Minna Shkul, "Religious Identity and the Power of Naming: Saints and Sinners in Ephesians"
Ephesians reflects a complex matrix of early Christianities in the late first century. Naming/categorisation within the book itself establishes both similarity and difference, and this naming is done on the basis of ethnic origin and religious affliation; e.g. saints and sinners act as stereotypical codes, which convey central values and paradigms. Minna contests that the author of Eph. uses these various categories to resocialise a formerly pagan audience, getting them to appreciate their Israelite cultural heritage and simultaneously distancing themselves from their pagan, non-Israelite background.
Ela Nutu Hall, "Thinking of Judith and Conjuring Salome: Why?"
This started off examining the painting Judith I by Klimt which has repeatedly been given the title Salome. This might be surprising, until you consider the fact that Klimt paints Judith as a femme fatale, which is not really the Judith we are shown by the apocryphal book. However, the book of Judith has various gender ambiguities, which artwork over the centuries have (unwittingly?) picked up, until we get Klimt's early 20th century's femme fatale, a sexualised, Freudian-neurotic Judith.
Kathryn Harding, "'You have captured my heart': The Dynamics of Power in the Song of Songs"
How does power work in the Song of Songs? Is it a one-way patriarchal thing, or a mutual egalitarian exchange? Kathryn's paper tried to occupy the middle ground by suggesting that the power dynamics within the Song are much more complex than either of these positions suggests. In light of Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, specifically the chapters on union and vouloir-saisir (will-to-possess), the protagonists of the Song can be seen to both desire and dream of total union with each other, whilst at the same time renouncing this dream.

Minna and Kathryn are third year Ph.D. students, Ela is a Research Assistant in the Sheffield Centre for the Study of the Bible in the Modern World. (In fact, I know Minna from Mattersey Hall: she teaches a second year undergraduate module there called New Testament Christian Origins.) They were all excellent papers, and I make it clear here that my summaries of them don't really do them justice. If you're going to SBL, Minna and Kathryn are giving their papers there in just a few weeks time!

On a slightly related note, the Sheffield Biblical Studies website has had a facelift (long overdue, it has to be said!), and there's a photo of the current M.A. students here (I'm the third from the left). I'm not sure if it's my net connection, but the site seems a little slow at the moment. You, of course, may find it faster!

Jesus and James

2005-10-29T00:06:00.000Z

James Crossley, that is... I just noticed on his blog that my Sheffield colleague has had an article published in JSHJ 3.2 along with a bunch of other historical Jesus stuff. I shall have to read the issue and his article soon - and since James knows more about 1st-century CE history and Josephus than most people I've met, it's bound to be pretty good.

As a comic aside, "Joyless Creams" is an anagram of "James Crossley", and "Use Ostrich Jails" is an anagram of "Historical Jesus".

Being ill sucks

2005-10-28T16:28:00.000Z

It's been far longer than I would have liked, but I've been quite ill recently. Every time I think I've got over it, something else happens (though the fatigue remains... zzzz...). Last Saturday I threw up at work, spent the weekend in bed, and then I missed a Hebrew lecture this Wednesday 'cause I felt like the entire world was trying to break into my skull. Yes, I know I'm a student, but it wasn't a hangover. Drinking far too much for my own good is a daft indulgence I left behind in my pre-university teenage years. For those of you still with "fresher's flu" (or the lite version), Weetabix helps. Mmmm.... Weetabix.....

Still, I'm here now, in the middle of installing some new graphics drivers. Oh, trying to get the best Doom 3 performance from your PC is so exciting!! Heehee... I like Doom 3. Slaying multitudes of hellspawn, visiting hell and defeating Satan makes me feel like I'm right in the book of Revelation! And I read Left Behind the other day as well. I'm feeling sooo apocalyptic this week!

On a slightly more serious note, Left Behind was an interesting book. I confess that I read it for a bit of a laugh, but I also read it to see how it interprets the Bible. And it interprets it very strangely. I never knew that 1 Cor. 15 was talking about the rapture... how foolish could I have been to miss that mis-reading? Sarcasm aside, I don't believe in the rapture - and I spent 3 years at a Pentecostal Bible college! (I wasn't a Pentecostal to start off with, though - "liberal charismatic" would probably be my box, if I had one.) I don't see anything in the Bible that would convince me, which some may disagree with but I don't think they read the text responsibly.

And, since Mr G. W. Bush believes in the rapture, that makes me even less inclined to believe it, especially considering recent events involving his friends Miers, Rove, Libby and good ol' "Dick" Cheney. The Christian right really gives the rest of us a bad press, and makes me thankful that I don't live in America. Sorry, you guys who do live there, but that's the way it is.

First "real" post

2005-10-10T18:45:00.000Z

Monday is the "busy day" at Sheffield. Well, it's my busy day, anyway: Hebrew at 10am, research seminars from 11am-1pm, then 'The Newbie's Guide to Research' 2-4pm. And now, I'm sitting typing this alongside a nice bottle of very dry white wine. Mmm.

But, as well as being a busy day, it's been an engaging day intellectually. Dr Diana Edelman gave a paper on Sidonian and Sumarian coins - granted, it's not something I know much if anything about, but it was very interesting to hear her thoughts on how various scholars have built theories on (possibly wrong) theories. A warning to us all to be careful about the assumptions we make and the ideas we might uncritically adopt.

I was also rooting around for ideas for my M.A. dissertation in the library after lectures, and something really struck me. Basically, one of my interests is the Gospel of John, and another of my interests is Derrida and the poststructuralist/postmodern school of thought. Both interests are quite wide to say the least, so you'd think that it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a few ideas... Well, I'm finding it a little tricky!! I think that, because my interests are so varied, I find it naturally hard to narrow things down.

However, flicking through John, I came across a phrase in ch.4 that really struck me:

Jesus answered her [the woman of Samaria], "If you knew the gift of God [tēn dōrean tou theou], and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink', you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

(Jn. 4:10, NRSV)

What is a gift? Well, Derrida has much to say on the subject of gifts, a lot of it characteristically difficult to understand:

At the limit, the gift as gift ought not to appear as gift: either to the donee or to the donor. It cannot be gift as gift except by not being present as gift...

(Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, p.14)

Yeah, that's pretty incomprehensible! But the question Derrida asks (and this is a strand throughout much of his work, such as The Gift of Death) is this: is giving actually possible? Can one give without entering into an exchange mechanism that turns the gift into a debt to be reimbursed in one way or the other? For Derrida, no gift-giving is ever simply that. If I give you a gift, you feel obliged - and, in Western culture at least, are obliged - to acknowledge the gift as such. Even if this is just "Aww, thanks a lot!", it still enters you into the realm of economics. As soon as we see a gift in terms of subjects and objects, the gift is locked into give-and-take, exchange mechanisms, conscious and unconscious gratification and reward. So, is the "gift of God" in John (whatever that is anyway) really a gift, or is it a route into ideological contamination, textual instability and deconstruction?

It's certainly interesting to my mind to propose such an analysis of the concept of "gift" in John - not least because Derrida's concept of "gift" also relies heavily on another of my interests, psychoanalysis. And what exchange mechanism are we dependent on for out concepts of "gift" - the pre-capitalist ancient world, or the post/capitalist world we live in now? (Was the Roman Empire in some way capitalist?) Does it matter? Does it affect how we see John?

Of course, if anyone has comments on this, feel free to post them - even if it's just "I think you're talking a load of old cobblers"! I'm off to sit down and read The Independent - yeah, I know, it's a little late in the day to read a newspaper, but never mind. I paid 20p for it, so I'm gonna read the blasted thing, thank you very much!

Beginnings

2005-10-08T21:45:00.000Z

Well, welcome all. I'm typing this whilst watching the Northen Ireland vs. Wales World Cup qualifying match. Half-time, and Wales are winning 2-0, which is quite a surprise considering Wales haven't won a competitive match in over 2 years. Anyway, the point is that I really should be learning some more Hebrew vocabulary. Maybe after lunch. (Oh, the procrastination!)

My aim is to contribute something thought-provoking and useful on a semi-regular basis - and hopefully things people will be interested in reading! For now, though, it's hello and goodbye.