Old Testament Studies

Biblical Studies Societies – A Guide for Students

In this Resource Review, I will offer an overview of the world of professional biblical and religious studies organizations. I had no idea what they were at first – or that they existed – so hopefully this will be helpful. The information I have here is particularly targeted at helping current students of biblical studies hoping to enter a doctoral program understand the kind of parallel universe they’re approaching.

The Societies

No gauntlets required.

The first thing you need to know, if you don’t already, is that like many communities in higher academics, biblical studies as a discipline has a variety of professional organizations that are by and large called “societies” or “organizations.” While this may sound medieval, the only rites of passage you will have to endure are membership fees and the sudden feeling of insignificance.

In large part, the whole point of these societies is the refined, scholarly version of what anyone else would call networking. The point is to share ideas, compare work and conclusions, argue about minutiae, and (naturally) catch up with old friends. As a result, it’s an invaluable opportunity for younger scholars to learn and get to know the discipline and its community. But, when you first join, and for years afterwards, you’ll be a mere newcomer who knows nothing and no one. (This is my current status, by the way.) So settle in, get ready to listen, and try not to bother anyone.

The societies I deal with in this post are the main ones you want to be aware of, although there are innumerably more if you search around. In each, I try to discuss how and why to join the organization, and what is required to present at one of their conferences.

Who’s Who in Biblical Studies Societies

The main societies you want to know about are as follows, listed roughly by largest membership and broadest in range, to more narrow either in terms of religious outlook or technical discipline.

American Academy of Religion

AAR is about as broad as you can get. Limited only to anything called “religion,” this group offers a venue for “ongoing reflection upon and understanding of religious traditions, issues, questions, and values.” For the last number of years, AAR has joined with SBL (below) for its annual national conference, usually in November (brochure here). Also, like SBL, AAR has a number of annual regional conferences: Eastern International, New England-Maritimes, and Pacific Northwest. The wonderful thing about both AAR and SBL is that they are remarkably organized, and have meetings planned for the next handful of years already. Students can become a member of AAR for $55, which has a number of benefits, which include faculty position postings. I am not personally a member of AAR, and am not entirely sure what goes into qualifying to present at the conferences, but my guess would be that it is the same as SBL.

Society of Biblical Literature

The big kahuna for biblical studies is the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), whose mission statement is simply: “Foster biblical scholarship.” Anyone can join, and there are many benefits of doing so, not least of which include online access to the society’s Journal of Biblical Literature and Handbook of Style. More importantly, there is a student discount to join for $60 a year. As the oldest society for biblical studies (founded in 1880), it is the most reputable and respected.

Every year SBL throws a conference that is eagerly attended by thousands upon thousands of scholars from around the world. The conference booklet listing presentations is fatter than most college textbooks. Since the annual SBL conference is combined with the AAR conference, the event is even more massive. It’s an exciting experience, made only more exhilarating by the coffee stampede that occurs when the only Starbucks in the entire facility closes down at 2pm. Best of all, this coming year’s conference, held from Nov. 22nd-25th, will be in sunny California. 

SBL also has an international conference each year, as well as numerous regional conferences that are usually held in the spring. These include Central, Eastern Great Lakes, Mid Atlantic, Midwest, New England, Pacific Coast, Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains – Great Plains, Southeastern, Southwestern, and Upper Midwest regions. It is possible, but not typical, for pre-doctoral students to present at the regional conferences (I did it). But the national conference requires presenters to be current doctoral candidates. Moreover, the SBL website is valuable in and of itself, with career and educational resources to boot. 

The International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament

IOSOT (pronounced “YO-sot” or “EYE-oh-sot”) is the biggest, specifically Old Testament-focused society. It’s so large, it doesn’t have “conferences,” but “congresses.” And it doesn’t meet except for every three years at a given location around the world. The last meeting was in Munich 2013, which I attended and presented a paper (see here). Some prior meetings were Basel 2001, Leiden 2004, Ljubljana 2007, and Helsinki 2010. As far as I know, there is no way to “join” IOSOT, as much as attend and possibly participate in the congresses. The next one is slated to be in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2016, so mark your calendars. Nor is there an IOSOT website, but only sites for the next congress. I’m not totally clear on whether you must be a current doctoral candidate to present at one of these congresses. I presented when I was in my masters program, so theoretically the answer is “no,” but it may have only been because it was assumed that I was a doctoral student!

When IOSOT meets, a number of other, more specialized organizations also meet, such as the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies (IOSCS, see below), of the International Organization for Masoretic Studies (IOMS), of the International Organization for Qumran Studies (IOQS), the International Organization for Targumic Studies (IOTS), and the International Syriac Language Project (ISLP).

International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies

One of my favorite organizations is the IOSCS, which is among the organizations that meets under the auspices of the IOSOT congresses. This group is “a nonprofit, learned society formed to promote international research in and study of the Septuagint and related texts,” the latter of which include the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical literature contemporary to the turn of the era. The main page of this organization includes lots of announcements that are regularly updated.

The IOSCS also publishes the Journal of Septuagint Studies (JSCS), which can be slow in coming but is usually worth the wait. The group meets at the triennial IOSOT congress, but also every year at the SBL national conference as well, which means you cannot present a paper unless you are accepted through SBL’s call for papers. It’s easy and quite affordable to become a member ($15 for students), which subscribes you to the Journal.

Evangelical Theological Society

Another group you may consider becoming involved with is ETS. Founded in 1949 with the purpose statement: “To foster conservative Biblical scholarship by providing a medium for the oral exchange and written expression of thought and research in the general field of the theological disciplines as centered in the Scriptures.” (Constitution, Article II.). ETS requires members to subscribe to a doctrinal statement, which says: “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.”

Membership is $15 for students, and includes a subscription to the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS). Somewhat frustratingly, the process of joining is a bit complex. Only those with a completed ThM or equivalent can become full members, and students can join only by applying with a recommendation from a full member. As a result, you’ll have to pester one of your professors to fill out a form when you apply to join.

ETS also has a national conference that follows SBL around each year. Like SBL and AAR, there are yearly regional meetings as well. It is possible, but not typical, for pre-doctoral students to present in the regional conferences (at least, I did it), but you must be a current doctoral candidate to present at the national conference.

Institute for Biblical Research

IBR is still another organization that may be worth your time, particularly if you wish to or have joined ETS. The group’s vision is to “to foster excellence in the pursuit of Biblical Studies within a faith environment,” which occurs primarily through conferences, seminars, workshops, and publications. One of the primary forms of the latter is the Bulletin for Biblical Research (BBR).

Like the IOSCS meeting at the SBL conference, IBR generally has their annual meeting during the ETS national conference, where they will hold a number of sessions for general attendance (see this schedule from 2013). Membership is somewhat confusing in this group also. One can only be a “fellow” after completing a research doctoral degree and requires two letters of recommendation from current fellows. You can become an “associate” member only if you are currently in a doctoral program, and get a letter of recommendation from a full fellow. Finally, “friends” of IBR covers everyone else, but still requires nomination by a full fellow. Fellows’ and Friends’ memberships are $62.00 per year.  Associates’ memberships are $42.00 per year.  If you also wish to subscribe to the Tyndale Bulletin, IBR’s journal, you may do so for $35.00 per year.

As a historical point, IBR was begun as a result of the scholarly community at the Tyndale House, in Cambridge, England. Also, the site includes a job posting page.

The Conference Scene

Part and parcel with joining any of these societies and organizations is participation in the life of the community. This means, at least, keeping up with the journals and publications either in print or online (or listed in newsletters). Ideally, however, you will also be able to attend the conferences. Doing so is a major project and can be very expensive, but is extremely beneficial for aspiring doctoral students. I will be posting a similar “Guide for Students” for attending these conferences – why you should, how to go about it, what to do when you’re there, etc.

It’s great if you can also begin participating in these conferences by actually presenting your own work. This can be difficult to do, and at the pre-doctoral level is generally limited to regional conferences or the odd coincidental vacancy that you providentially fill at a more significant conference. More difficult still, even if you meet requirements for presenters, it can be intensely competitive to get accepted. I’ll cover these topics a bit more in the next post.

 

 

Upcoming Presentations at ETS & SBL ’14 – San Diego

Balboa Park, San Diego. Museum of Man pictured right.

One of the things I have been trying to do over the past year and a half or so is to attend and participate in more biblical studies conferences. Some of this I have written about previously (here). It’s a lot of fun, if occasionally overwhelming and often expensive. But it’s also worthwhile. I’m working on a post right now for aspiring doctoral students of biblical studies that will be a kind of “how-to” (and a “why”) for the conference scene, which can be tremendously beneficial to the student. So look for that in a few weeks.

SBL National Conference

The upcoming annual Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) conference will be held from November 22nd-25th in San Diego, CA. The location will be a welcome change compared to the prior two years’ frigid locales, Baltimore and Chicago, respectively. Information about the meeting, including registration, transportation, and housing are on the annual meeting page.

Rumor has it the book exhibit will be on the beach.

I am excited to have the opportunity to participate by presenting a paper this year. I will read it at the IOSCS program unit (here), which usually meets at least twice during the conference. My paper will be an extension of the research I presented at the 2013 IOSOT Congress in Munich, which dealt with Septuagint lexicography in the double-text of LXX-Judges.

In the congress paper I took a brief foray into verifying research done almost fifty years ago now by John A. L. Lee in LXX lexicography. Lee’s work was decisive in demonstrating that LXX Greek is in fact simply the vernacular Koine of its time, not a special “Jewish Greek” that some scholars had posited (for more on the language of LXX, see this post). Lee also dipped into historical linguistics using documentary evidence to establish a terminus ante quem for the translation of the Greek Pentateuch. His dissertation is in print (and quite affordable, here). An abstract of my previous congress paper and its appendix are available here.

My SBL presentation will focus again on LXX lexicography and the Greek texts of Judges. This time I will be considering the translational renderings of the prevalent battle language throughout the book. Words like לחם and  מלחמה are translated in interestingly divergent ways in the A text as opposed to the B text. The question I will be asking then is simply, “Hmm… why?” I don’t have a clear answer yet! But I have my suspicions. Lee’s methodology of lexical inquiry in documentary evidence will be a primary avenue of inquiry for this paper (using papyri.info, which I have reviewed in part here). Hopefully come November I will have something cogent to offer in terms of an answer.

A full abstract is available here.

ETS National Conference

I will also participate in the ETS conference, also held in San Diego just prior to SBL, presenting a paper in the Psalms & Hebrew Poetry section. I have not been as active in ETS as I have in SBL in the past few years, so I’m looking forward to being a part of this conference. Although it’s a smaller event by far, it is still a great way to see what is happening academically within the purview of evangelicalism. 

My paper is a product of a longer study I did a few years ago in Nahum 1 (here and here). I presented a paper at a regional ETS a year ago that was less extensive (and sparsely attended!), so I’m looking forward to presenting this more in-depth analysis. 

The basic issue at hand is the question of the presence (or absence) of an acrostic in chapter 1. Especially in vv. 2-8 there is what appears as a partial, or “broken,” acrostic spanning the first half of the alep-bet. Ever since F. Delitsch mentioned it in his Psalms commentary there have been innumerable attempts to reconstruct it to either a full acrostic (older commentators mostly), or a complete half-acrostic (most current approaches). Although some are content to take the text as is, either as a coincidence or literary device, the majority opinion still leans towards textual emendation, to the extent that even BHS lays out the verses as an acrostic. 

My paper considers the warrant for emending the Hebrew text on the basis of a translation analysis of the Greek version, which is ordinarily the primary witness to which those who would emend the text appeal. Without giving too much away, my paper is entitled “There is No Spoon: Text-Critical Question Begging in the ‘Acrostic’ of Nahum 1 .” An abstract is available here.

The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library

As promised, the first of my Resource Reviews, collected here.

The Digital Scrolls Library

A few months ago, the Tyndale House posted a link on Facebook to an amazing resource that I thought was worth highlighting here as a first review. The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is the result of the work of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), who have used the latest digital technology to provide high resolution images freely to the public. The site offers hundreds of manuscripts and thousands of fragments found in the Judean Desert between 1947 and the early 1960s.

Not only that, but the site is actually quite beautiful and user-friendly – not often the case for online biblical studies resources! My favorite feature of the site (beside this interesting historical timeline) is the multi-criteria archive search page, where users can sort by archaeological site, language, scroll content, and even more technical filters like material, historic period, and manuscript type. The Greek manuscripts and fragments add up to just over 130 items, a remarkable resource for LXX and OT scholar alike.

This nice video does some of the work for me:

The Significance of Qumran for LXX Studies

Much could be said here, so I will limit myself as much as possible. The discovery of the Qumran documents was a paradigm-shifting event in the world of biblical studies. Prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), the amount of primary manuscript evidence for the Hebrew Old Testament had been largely limited to material from the 11-13th century C.E. and later. Important exceptions to this were of course some evidence in the Cairo Geniza (see the collection here), the Masoretic Leningrad Codex, and the Greek OT content of the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus uncials (both 4th century C.E.). Due to this lack of evidence, OT textual criticism was (far more) difficult. When the DSS were found, however, suddenly scholars had access to primary materials up to a millennium older than what they had on hand, precipitating a new era in OT scholarship.

Most of the DSS date between the 3rd century B.C.E. and the 1st century C.E. The collection includes religious literature far afield from what is today considered the canonical Old Testament, although that too was found. As a sectarian community, the Qumran covenanters had texts detailing their unique religious practices, commentaries, wisdom texts, calendars, and so on. Most are written in Hebrew, but Aramaic, Greek, and even unidentified languages were also used. Amazingly, every book of the bible was discovered (except, curiously, the book of Esther).

The payoff for LXX studies, of course, is the Greek texts among the collection. As little OT evidence as existed in Hebrew, there was even less for the Greek OT, particularly from the pre-Christian era. One of the most significant aspects of the DSS for LXX studies is that the evidence is pre-Hexaplaric, i.e. represents texts not influenced by the 3rd century C.E. text critical work of Origen. Origen’s efforts were massive and admirable, but disastrous for later textual critics.

While no significant divergences in the Greek DSS appeared in comparison to the major uncials, some scholars believe the latter may reflect updating or revision of some kind, usually attributed to Christian scribes. In short, the DSS shed unprecedented light upon the history of the Greek translation of the OT, and provided a sea of primary evidence on which scholars of Hebrew OT studies would set sail as well. May the voyage continue!

An excellent overview of further points of interest for LXX studies can be found in Jobes & Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Baker, 2000), chapter 8. (Buy here). Also see E. Tov, “The Contribution of the Qumran Scrolls to the Understanding of the Septuagint,” 285-300 in The Greek and Hebrew Bible (Brill, 1999).