2006 Society of Biblical Literature Meetings

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Well, like many others, I am heading off Friday to the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion meetings in Washington, D.C. Unlike many others, I am not presenting a paper this time (yipee!). I typically always present something, but this year I didn’t get my act together and also made a decision not to present something since I am already busy enough with various projects (Oh, yeah, I also teach more than full time). So this year I am going to SBL to meet with some editors/publishers, see old friends, buy some books, go to the Smithsonian, and, of course, listen to a few papers.

I found this year a bit frustrating as there are multiple sections I am interested in scheduled at the same time. So I will be catching the ones that I can, including the following:

  • International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS), especially the Saturday morning session on the Greek Psalter in later Jewish and Christian Writings. (I would also like to hear Gary Knoppers on the synoptic problems in the OT at the IBR session Saturday morning, but I don’t think it will work out).
  • Early Saturday afternoon I will probably divide my time between the SBL fonts session (I’m not sure if I will attend this, though I am quite interested to see if they are going to be releasing the SBL Greek and transliteration unicode fonts) and the session on Codex Sinaiticus.
  • Later Saturday afternoon I want to catch part of the Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah section and then perhaps go to some of the Hebrew tagged texts seminar by Logos.
  • Sunday morning is nuts. There are four concurrent sections I am interested in: the History, Historical Sources, and Historiography session in honour of Nadav Na’aman looks interesting, as does the IOSCS section, the Literature and History of the Persian Period group, and the Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible section.
  • Sunday afternoon the Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah panel discussion on post-exilic Judah looks interesting and I also have to drop in to the Zondervan suite later in the afternoon for a meeting.
  • Early Monday morning I will probably drag myself to the Regent College (Vancouver, BC) breakfast and then clone myself twice so that I can attend the IOSCS, Persian Period, and Accordance seminar (I will probably just have to settle for the Persian Period session).
  • Monday afternoon I may drop into the IOSCS and Text Criticism sessions, though since I can’t be at both I will probably attend the Text Criticism section since it is on 4QSamuel-a.
  • Tuesday nothing really caught my eye, though I have a couple meetings that will keep me busy for most of the morning.

And, of course, there is the informal biblioblogger meeting Sunday afternoon after the CARG session in room 103A-CC, as announced by Tim and Rick, among others.

All in all it should be a good meeting — especially since I don’t have to worry about reading a paper!