Jim West has decided to rub my nose in the fact that his blog is worth $77,341.98, while my blog is worthless — at least according to those mean people over at “How Much is My Blog Worth?” (Actually Jim was nice enough to note that my value — or lack thereof — “makes no sense at all to me”).

But, alas, a far superior authority thinks my blog is worth something! (and no, I’m not talking about my Mom — if I told her I had a blog, she would probably insist I go to the doctor!). Blogshares values my blog at $10,695.63 — and that is US dollars, which is like gold up here in Canada (actually the conversion rate isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still more!).

Yipee… now my kids will have Christmas presents after all!

“May I present my wife, Asherah?”

The Fort Wayne News Sentinel has a brief article on William Dever’s recent book, Does God have a Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Eerdmans, 2005; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). Actually, the report was more on his SBL session of the same topic. I particularly liked the quote from Dever which concluded the article:

After quoting a number of feminist scholars arguing for a female deity, Dever then quotes his five-year-old stepdaughter explaining why God must be both “a man and a woman.”

It’s because, she said, “half the people in the world are women and God has to be for everybody.”

God’s Big Toe

I came across what looks like a delightful children’s book by Rabbi Marc Gellman and Oscar de Mejo (Illustrator), called Does God Have a Big Toe?: Stories About Stories in the Bible (HarperTrophy, 1993; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). This book has been around for a while (it won a number of children book prizes when it was first published in 1989), but I had never heard of it. The back cover describes the book this:

Reflecting Mr. Gellman’s lifelong love for his subject, this witty collection of midrashim provides a wonderful way to learn about and to share the stories of the Bible.

While I can’t recommend it without seeing it; it sure looks like it would be a great Christmas/Hanukkah gift!

After a short hiatus, the Review of Biblical Literature Newsleter is back up and running. Today’s issue notes a number of reviews relating to the Hebrew Bible and the Second Temple period. The Campbell Festschrift looks like it has a number of interesting chapters from the likes of Peckham, Lohfink, Sweeney, McEvenue, Knierim, among others. In particular, the chapter by Steven McKenzie on Jonah looks like it is worth a read.

• Martin Kessler, ed., Reading the Book of Jeremiah: A Search for Coherence. Reviewed by Else Holt.
• Kenneth Mathews, The New American Commentary: Genesis 11:27-50:26. Reviewed by Thomas Hieke
• Mark O’Brien and Howard Wallace, eds., Seeing Signals, Reading Signs: The Art of Exegesis: Studies in Honour of Antony F. Campbell, SJ for his Seventieth Birthday. Reviewed by Mark Christian
• Noel Weeks, Admonition and Curse: The Ancient Near Eastern Treaty/Covenant Form as a Problem in Inter-Cultural Relationships. Reviewed by John Engle

Second Temple

• David R. Jackson, Enochic Judaism: Three Defining Paradigm Exemplars. Reviewed by Eric Noffke

Other

• BibleWorks 6. Reviewed by Jan Van Der Watt
• Anne-Marie Pelletier, ed., Bibles en Français: Traduction et Tradition: Actes du Colloque des 5-6 décembre 2003. Reviewed by Sabrina Inowlocki

My good friend Bob Derrenbacker — or is should that be Rev. Dr. Robert Derrenbacker, Jr.? — has entered the blogosphere with his new eponymous blog, “Bob’s Blog” (Gee, I think that was the first time I used “eponymous” outside biblical studies!).

I first got to know Bob during my Toronto days. He is an avid U2 fan, a Macintosh enthusiast, an amateur film critic (Hey Bob, remember the day my wife informed your wife that we went to a film that afternoon? If they only knew… that was only one of many!), and a very good friend!

While Bob has a somewhat distinguished picture of himself on his first blog entry, I dug out a picture taken of Bob some ten years ago. Here he is holding my oldest daughter (who was only eight months old at the time).

Oh yeah… Bob is also a great scholar. He is Assistant Professor of New Testament Studies at Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. His University of St. Michael’s College doctoral dissertation, completed under Dr. John Kloppenborg, was entitled “Ancient Compositional Practices and the Synoptic Problem.”” It is soon to be published in the series Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium (It was supposed to be available at SBL). Bob is also the author of a number of essays and articles in periodicals including Journal of Biblical Literature and Toronto Journal of Theology, and is currently working on a book for Paulist Press, What Are They Saying About Q? His academic interests include the composition of the Gospels, Pauline literature and theology, the Historical Jesus, the social, economic and political backgrounds of the New Testament, ancient literacy and book production, and the portrayal of Jesus in modern film.

In his new blog — which you should add to your blog aggregator and blogroll — Bob promises to give us his musings on biblical studies, politics, faith and culture. I look forward to being a regular reader!

Once again, welcome!

Filed in: News Personal Blogosphere

Go Esks Go! This afternoon the Edmonton Eskimos defeated the Montreal Alouettes 38-35 to win the 93rd Grey Cup. The game was a nail biter with Edmonton winning in overtime by a field goal. Even though Ricky Ray — Edmonton’s hit and miss quarterback — pulled out the win in the end (and even won the MVP award), when there was about six minutes left I sure was thinking that he should have been pulled and Jason Maas put in. Doesn’t matter anymore! The Esks won!

For my international readers, the Grey Cup is the Canadian Football League‘s championship game. And, IMHO, the Canadian football game is more exciting than American football (three downs which makes more of a passing game), though the calibre of American football players is superior).

The Wichita Eagle has an interesting — albeit brief — article by Phil Kloer on how U2 balances music and faith.

Here are some excerpts:

The song has been sung at almost every concert U2 has played on this American tour. It comes near the end of each show, sometimes at the very end, when band and audience are both a bit worn out:

“I waited patiently for the Lord,” lead singer Bono cries out. “He inclined and heard my cry.”

It’s a 3,000-year-old song that never made the pop charts, just the Old Testament. As in Psalm 40.

U2’s version is simply called “40” and was played last week during the band’s sold-out show here.

It was also played Sunday at All Saints’ Episcopal Church’s special service — a U2 Eucharist.

The events are mirror images of the same body of work: a rock concert in an arena that sometimes felt like a worship service, and a worship service in a church that felt like a rock concert.

The mega-selling Irish band — sometimes called the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world today — is not marketed as Christian music but as rock music, despite a body of work that constantly references the Bible, deals in apocalyptic imagery and addresses Jesus directly.

“The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or running away from God,” Bono said in a recent Rolling Stone interview. “Both recognize the pivot, that God is the center of the jaunt.”

I recommend taking a gander at the article.

On a similar note, I lectured this week on the “Gospel according to U2.” Among other things, I talked about how U2’s gospel (like Jesus’!) included a social conscience. To illustrate my point I showed “Love and Peace or Else” from the new Vertigo concert DVD. The performance of this song is awesome and it is a great lead-in to “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” I was playing the DVD so loud that one of my colleagues who was teaching down the hall had to come and ask us to turn the music down a bit. It was a blast and (ahem) a great learning experience for my students of how popular culture and religion are intertwined.

I’m not sure when I will have time to bring together my notes into a coherent blog post, but if I do, this is where I’ll post it!

In the light of the recent discussion by Jim West, Mark Goodacre, Jim Davila, Rick Brannan, Stephen C. Carlson, Tim Bulkeley, Paul Nikkel, and the mysterious female “Pligrim” (sorry if I missed anyone, you obviously weren’t on my “a-list” of approved biblioblogs!), I figured the biblioblog hegemony was in dire jeopardy.

Then it came to me! I thought, “what better way to identify approved biblioblogs than a flashy seal of approval that can be proudly displayed on certified biblioblogs?” By having an official seal of approval we true bibliobloggers can be sure of the quality — and more importantly — the official status of all blogs, since we will control who can enter the official biblioblogging club!

So with my trusty Photoshop I made the following “Biblioblog Seal of Approval.”

(Any and all likeness to real bibliobloggers is coincidental — really!)

Some of my students are quite intrigued to learn that the reasons I question young earth creationism are not scientific, but are actually biblical.

Along a similar vein Mark Zvi Brettler has a well-written op/ed piece dealing with understanding Genesis one: “Don’t Create Science from Bible Stories.” This article has been picked up by some other papers and is well worth a read, even if you disagree with his conclusions. Brettler’s main point is that when approaching the biblical creation stories (or any other part of the Bible for that matter), one has to take into consideration genre.

Here are some excerpts:

You might imagine that as a biblical scholar, I would support creationism and intelligent design, two notions in which my Bible trumps scientific theories. In fact, the opposite is true — I do not believe the Bible bolsters either of these theories.

We must ask of every biblical passage: What is this, and what is its purpose? Genre determines how we understand any literary work. For example, newspapers contain news stories, advertisements and comics. Each has a different purpose: We expect news to contain unbiased information, ads to be highly biased and comics to entertain. The genre and purpose of these texts are not explicitly marked; most advertisements are not introduced with the word “ad” and a disclaimer: “This is meant to persuade and maybe (slightly) exaggerate.”

The Bible does not contain genre labels either. The first chapters of Genesis, for example, do not begin: “This is a scientific account of the creation of the world, telling you literally how the world was created.” Thus, we must ask what genre a biblical text is and what it is trying to tell us.

We should not characterize the beginning of Genesis as natural history or science. Just as we look at clues to distinguish news stories from ads, we must find pointers to understand what biblical accounts are trying to convey.

….

I believe the ancients would have seen the contradictions and taken these stories as something other than science or natural history. Unfortunately, ancient Israelites did not affix genre labels (“science,” “enlightening tale,” “legend”) to their works, so we can’t be sure how they should be read. Still, nothing about the way these stories present themselves suggests “science” and “history” are the best labels to use. This does not make the Bible less important than science; it makes it different.

I am not trying not to diminish the Bible’s authority. Just the opposite: I am trying to read it correctly, to understand it as it was understood in the ancient period and interpret it within its proper genres. Just as it is wrong to read comics as news, it is wrong to read creation stories in Genesis as science. Doing so creates confusion in our religious institutions, our schools and society.

Christopher Heard has also recently posted an excellent discussion of the interpretation of Genesis one titled “Why I am Not a Creationist.” It is also well worth a gander (and it even has pictures!) You may also want to read Duane Smith’s comments on Christopher’s post here.