A friend emailed this to me:

Hmm… I’m still a bit under the weather… perhaps I need a Mentos!

I have been fighting a bug or something this week — aches, no energy, and a developing cough. To top it all off, Friday when I left work to ride my mountain bike home I discovered someone had ripped it off! Talk about irritating! And I just had the front tire studded to give me more traction on the icy roads up here in Edmonton.

Talk about a bummer!

No, I don’t think the rapture has happened (and even if it did, I imagine Jim West would be down here with me!). No, maximalists haven’t kidnapped Jim (right, Joe?). What has happened is that Jim West has pulled the plug on his Biblical Theology Blog.

Do not dismay, however, Jim has started up a new blog connected to the church he pastors: First Baptist Church of Petros weblog. Here is what Jim says in regard to his decision to shut down Biblical Theology and start up the new blog (I quote his post pretty much in full):

… Readers of various weblogs will know that most recently I redacted the Biblical Theology blog. That blog, it seemed to me, had run its course and it was time for a re-evaluation of its purpose, and my own efforts in the use of this important web communication tool.

So today I laid the Biblical Theology weblog to rest. It’s time had come. Though enjoyable, and I believe useful to many, I thought it important to refocus. It has been my very strong feeling since my College days that people in the pew are in need of serious, disciplined, concise, and well researched biblical and theological information. Hence, with the new year comes a new direction in my own efforts in the blogosphere. The former blog focused on Biblical Theology for the academic community — and this blog will focus on biblical and theological studies for the Church itself — the community of faith.

I hope that those who valued the previous incarnation will also enjoy visiting here. Many things will remain the same. Many things will change. Stay tuned!

….

I am exceedingly hopeful that amidst the sea of biblical and theological mis-information presently online this page and the companion Biblical Studies Resources pages will be an island of what the author of Timothy had in mind when he described Pastor’s as those who “rightly divide the word of truth”.

Jim’s Biblical Theology blog was informative and insightful (and controversial at times!). I wish Jim all the best on his new blog and as you can see, I have updated my blogroll to reflect the change. I for one will be a regular reader of the First Baptist Church of Petros weblog. (Otherwise, how will I know about significant days in the life of Zwingli?)

I have been negligent in my posting of new reviews in the Review of Biblical Literature (bad Tyler!). I almost decided to forego the ones that I missed, but I just couldn’t do it! So here they are in all of their glory — this post brings me up to date.

Take special note of the the review of Hossfeld and Zenger’s new Psalms commentary (I have sung their praises often on this blog), a review of the latest editions of the new French translation of the Septuagint, La Bible d’Alexandrie, as well as Joe Cathey’s review.

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

• Britt, Brian. Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text. Reviewed by Mark Mcentire
• Chapman, Cynthia R. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter Reviewed by Mayer Gruber
• Eschelbach, Michael A. Has Joab Foiled David?: A Literary Study of the Importance of Joab’s Character in Relation to David Reviewed by Regine Hunziker-Rodewald
• Fischer, Irmtraud (Translated by Linda Maloney). Women Who Wrestled with God: Biblical Stories of Israel’s Beginnings. Reviewed by Athalya Brenner
• Freedman, Amelia Devin. God as an Absent Character in Biblical Hebrew Narrative: A Literary-Theoretical Study. Reviewed by Walter Brueggemann
• Gass, Erasmus. Die Ortsnamen des Richterbuchs in historicher und redaktioneller Perspektive. Reviewed by Uwe Becker and Ernst A. Knauf
• Grabbe, Lester L. and Alice Ogden Bellis, eds. The Priests in the Prophets: The Portrayal of Priests, Prophets and Other Religious Specialists in the Latter Prophets. Reviewed by Henrietta Wiley
• Hossfeld, Frank-Lothar and Erich Zenger (Edited by Klaus Baltzer; translated by Linda M. Maloney). Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100. Reviewed by Thomas Kraus
• Lessing, R. Reed. Interpreting Discontinuity: Isaiah’s Tyre Oracle. Reviewed by W. A. M. Beuken and John Engle.
• Lo, Alison Job 28 as Rhetoric: An Analysis of Job 28 in the Context of Job 21-31. Reviewed by Leo Perdue
• Lohfink, Norbert. Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur deuteronomistischen Literatur V. Reviewed by Anselm Hagedorn
• Moatti-Fine, Jacqueline and Isabelle Assan-Dhote, eds. La Bible d’Alexandrie: Baruch, Lamentations, Lettre de Jérémie. Reviewed by Innocent Himbaza
• Rogerson, John (Edited by M. Daniel Carroll R). Theory and Practice in Old Testament Ethics. Reviewed by Denis Müller
• Simundson, Daniel J. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah. Reviewed by Joseph Cathey
• Wright, Richard M. Linguistic Evidence for the Pre-Exilic Date of the Yahwistic Source. Reviewed by Christoph Levin

Second Temple

• Anderson, Robert T. and Terry Giles. Tradition Kept: The Literature of the Samaritans. Reviewed by Stefan Schorch
• Aune, David E., Torrey Seland, and Jarl Henning Ulrichsen, eds. Neotestamentica et Philonica: Studies in Honor of Peder Borgen. Reviewed by Gregory Sterling
• Barclay, John M. G., ed. Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire. Reviewed by Pablo Torijano Morales and Allen Kerkeslager
• Efthimiadis-Keith, Helen. The Enemy is Within: A Jungian Psychoanalytic Approach to the Book of Judith. Reviewed by D. Kille
• Regev, Eyal. Ha-tsdukim ve-hilkhatam [The Sadducess and Their Halakah]: al dat ve-hevrah bi-me bayit sheni [Religion and Society in the Second Temple Period]. Reviewed by Sagit Mor
• Runia, David T. On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Reviewed by Claudio Zamagni

Other

• Barmash, Pamela. Homicide in the Biblical World. Reviewed by Assnat Bartor
• Foster, Benjamin R. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Reviewed by Alan Lenzi
• Hill, Robert C., trans. Diodore of Tarsus: Commentary on Psalms 1-51. Reviewed by Martin Albl and Human Dirk
• Moore, Stephen and Fernando F. Segovia, eds. Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections. Reviewed by Jeffrey Staley
• Schertz, Mary H. and Ivan Friesen, eds. Beautiful Upon the Mountains: Biblical Essays on Mission, Peace, and the Reign of God. Reviewed by Christoph Stenschke
  
• Stichele, Caroline Vander and Todd Penner, eds. Her Master’s Tools?: Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse. Reviewed by Mary Coloe
• West, Gerald O. and Musa W. Dube, eds. The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories and Trends. Reviewed by Alistair Wilson

Phil Harland over at Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean blog has started a series of posts on the History of Satan, inspired by an undergraduate course of the same name he is teaching this term. In his first post (Satan 1), Phil describes the upcoming series as follows:

Welcome to ongoing discussions regarding the origins, development, and significance of personified evil — Satan and his demons — in early Judaism and in the history of Christianity. We will be tracing the history of Satan (a.k.a. the Devil, Beelzebul, Beliar, Mastema, Lucifer, Mephisto) and his minions from ancient Mesopotamian chaos-monsters to early Jewish and Christian fallen angels to modern portrayals in music, television, and film.

His second post (Satan 2) looks some at important predecessors of Satan from the Ancient Near East which help us to understand the rise of the figure of Satan, such as the different chaos monsters like Lotan/Leviathan. His third post (Satan 3) covers some terms often associated with Satan in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, including the term satan “the adversary” often translated (perhaps incorrectly) as “Satan.”

The series is off to a great start and looks to be a very interesting series of posts. I have some ideas about the development of Satan in the Hebrew Bible (especially 1Chronicles 21) as well as the influence of the Septuagint translation to the notion of Satan that I may blog on in the near future if time permits. Of course, it would be interesting to look at Satan in popular culture, as well.

Make sure to take a look at Phil’s blog. You can always say the “Devil made me do it!”