So I haven’t heard anything from visitor number 500,000 from Oakville Ontario, so now the free book will go to visitor number 499,999 who hearkens from Boulder, Colorado and visited early in the morning last Saturday 3 October. If that person doesn’t come forward, then I will try number 500,001, who visited from Tel Aviv, Israel who visited from a link from the Arabic wikipedia.
If any of these don’t work, then I will have to draw a name from a hat of blogs that linked to this post!
This blog has now reached over 500,000 readers and is (kind of) going strong. I imagine that I would have hit 500,000 a lot sooner if I somehow managed to avoid the blogging lulls over the years. I’m hoping I am back on track with some regular blogging, though only time will tell!
I would like to thank my readers — especially those who continued to look for signs of life when there was none! I hope that my blog posts, as well as my larger codex website is a useful resource for all who are interested in studying the Bible and other matters of faith — such as tattoos!
As I mentioned in a previous post, to celebrate my 500,000th reader, I decided to give away a book. The lucky winner visited this website Saturday 3 October at 8:29 am from Oakville, Ontario, Canada. (If this person doesn’t identify themselves, then the runner-ups are from Israel and the United States)
If you are this person from Oakville, all you have to do is email me (codex [at] biblical-studies [dot] ca) and confirm that it was actually you who was number 500,000 by telling me your operating system and what web browser you viewed this site with. If I don’t get anyone claiming the prize then I will post the next closest, etc., until there is a winner.
Once again, thanks for visiting!
So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I had the chance to review a prepublication edition of Barry Bandstra‘s Genesis 1-11: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com). As a result of the nice blurb I wrote for the publishers, I received a free copy of the book when it was published. As it turns out I ended up with two free copies, and while I like to read, I find reading one at a time works a bit better.
To make a long story short, what all this means is that I have an extra copy of Bandstra’s new book — it’s actually still in the original shrink wrap! And then I thought since I have been so inconsistent in blogging for the last number of months, I wanted to reward my faithful readers who kept me on their blogrolls and continued checking for new posts (and even emailed me to see if everything was alright!).
Since I can’t give everyone a new book, I need some method of picking a winner. I could do something random like I have done before, but I figured I should somehow benefit from this massive giveaway. So here’s the deal. I will give the book to the individual who leaves the most humorous anecdote, joke, or faux pas about teaching or learning biblical Hebrew. Perhaps it was something another student did in class or a humorous way that your professor tried to teach a particular aspect of Hebrew grammar — it can even be a humorous resource for teaching Hebrew (a comic, short video, whatever!). I’m pretty much open to anything related the Hebrew that will make me smile and/or chuckle — I just want to give away a book. After one week, I (and perhaps my TA) will decide on a winner. And then presto! I will send you Bandstra’s book for absolutely no charge!
So let the free book giveaway begin!
(For those waiting with bated breath for my next “Yahweh – A Moral Monster?” post, I have it pretty much written and may upload it later today. Right now I have to go shopping with my teenage daughter… so pray for me! 🙂 )