Category Archives: Conferences

SBL Housing Scam Warning

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The SBL emails

Annual Meetings: Hotel Reservation Scam Warning

We would like to make you aware of a situation that has been brought to our attention. There is a company Convention Housing Services, who has been contacting our exhibitors and attendees to assist with hotel reservations. They are disguising themselves as the AAR & SBL Housing Bureau. They are claiming they can get better rates, that rooms are limited or other sales pitch methods. They are NOT the official housing bureau and are NOT affiliated with the SBL Annual Meeting.

If you receive a call from this company claiming to represent the SBL, be aware that this may be a scam and DO NOT MAKE THE RESERVATION.Convention Housing Services is NOT affiliated with SBL in any capacity.

The SBL Annual Meeting official Housing Bureau is the Visit Baltimore Housing Services. The Visit Baltimore Housing Services will book rooms at the hotels within the block with previously negotiated rates in which AAR & SBL have contracted years in advance. The Housing Bureau will never contact you via the phone and solicit your business. They will contact you via phone if you contact them and ask them to return your call.

If you have already made hotel reservations through Convention Expo Travel, SBL is unable to guarantee the validity of the reservation. If you would like to cancel your reservations, please contact the hotel directly. Additionally, contact your credit card company and tell them NOT to pay the 20% penalty if it is put through by Convention Housing Services.

Please contact us at annualmeeting@sbl-site.org if you have any questions.

Good grief and heavens to betsy.  File this one under ‘totally depraved duplicitous pretenders’.

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Graham Ward’s Lecture at Oxford

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The Theological Faculty notes

INAUGURAL LECTURE – GRAHAM WARD

Yesterday evening a large audience gathered to see Prof Graham Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity give his inaugural lecture on ‘What Makes a Belief Believable’ in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor.   A podcast of the lecture will be made available in due course.

ward

Hope so.  And I hope ‘in due course’ doesn’t mean after the next ice age.

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Conference Announcement: Risk and Rapture- Apocalyptic in Late Modernity

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To be held at the University of Chester- situated, as it is, in a beautiful little town in a beautiful part of western Britain (right on the cusp of Wales).

Risk and Rapture: Apocalyptic Imagination in Late Modernity
Centre for Faiths and Public Policy, University of Chester
Wednesday 11th September 2013
Keynote Speaker: Professor Scott Lash (Goldsmiths College, University of London)

Apocalypse captivates the human imagination. Once synonymous with ‘end of the world’ scenarios and confined largely to the religious, the term is part of vernacular language in the West and is used to describe a myriad of events from the fiscal difficulties of the Eurozone to nuclear war, from environmental disaster to the dangers of digital technology.

More plus registration at the link above.  If you can, you ought to go.  If only to attend a few sessions and then to spend the bulk of your time in the city of Chester.

Rachel Elior at the University of Chicago

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Thursday, May 9, 2013 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Where: Swift Hall, Third Floor Lecture Room
1025 East 58th Street, Chicago, IL

“Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Were they Forgotten?”

By Rachel Elior, Visiting Professor of Israel Studies

During his recent visit to Israel, for President Barack Obama’s itinerary began with a viewing of the Dead Sea Scrolls in The Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Officials took this occasion to underscore the continuity from biblical times to the present exemplified by these most ancient of biblical scrolls. Of course, examination of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of the ways they have been understood in ancient and in modern times, affords evidence not only of continuity but also of dispute and disagreement. In her lecture, Rachel Elior will offer an overview of the provenance of the Scrolls and her assessment of their significance in both ancient Judaism and modern scholarship.

Rachel Elior is John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Israel Studies Professor for Spring Quarter 2013 at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She is teaching a class at Chicago on “Major Issues in the Study of Jewish Mysticism: Between Kabbalah and Hasidism.” Professor Elior is the fourth visiting faculty member at the Divinity School’s program, Religion and Culture in the Twenty-first Century: Perspectives from Israel,” made possible through the generous support of the Israel Studies Project of the Jewish Federation of Chicago.

That’s not much notice, but if you’re in Chicago, you should go.

‘Changing Perspectives’ Conference: Reminder

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Changing Perspectives in Old Testament Studies.
Past, Present, and Future

International Conference at the University of Copenhagen, October 9-12, 2013

The conference centres on the manifold contributions to biblical studies by the scholars, John Van Seters, Thomas L. Thompson, Philip R. Davies, Niels Peter Lemche and Keith Whitelam. In various ways their work has significantly changed the perspectives of Old Testament scholarship and has influenced the outlook and methods of biblical studies and related disciplines in the course of the last 50 years. The Copenhagen conference is closely related to the series of collected essays Changing Perspectives, presently being published by Equinox (from 2014 Acumen) in the Copenhagen International Seminar series (CIS).

Douglas Knight, Thomas L. Thompson, Philip Davies and Niels Peter Lemche will participate as key note speakers at the conference, which will include a number of papers within fields related to their achievements in Hellenistic studies, theories of composition, theories of history, anthropology, archaeology, Ancient Near Eastern religion and comparative literature, Dead Sea texts and cultural memory studies. The aim of the conference is to assess some of the major changes within the field of Old Testament scholarship, to investigate those changing perspectives within a broader context and to suggest future prospects of the discipline. Each participant is expected to present and discuss the challenge of these new perspectives for his or her core area of research.

The opening lecture will be given by Prof. Jack Sasson, Vanderbilt University.

Papers will be published in A.K. de H. Gudme and I. Hjelm (eds.), Changing Perspectives in Old Testament Studies. Past, Present, and Future. International Conference at the University of Copenhagen, October 9-12, 2013 (CIS, Acumen).

The conference is hosted by The Faculty of Theology, Koebmagergade 44-46, DK-1150 Copenhagen K., and organized by members of the Dept. of Biblical Studies, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ingrid Hjelm, Assist. Prof. Dr. Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, Prof. Dr. Jesper Høgenhaven and Prof. Emer. Dr. Thomas L. Thompson.

Ingrid Hjelm
e-mail: ihj@teol.ku.dk

Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme
e-mail: akg@teol.ku.dk

News From the Enoch Seminar

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Via their facebook page-

We are pleased to announce that a second “Nangeroni Meeting” will be held in Rome in 2014:

Re-Reading Paul as a Second-Temple Jewish Author

Rome Italy (23-27 June 2014).

Chair: Carlos Segovia
Co-Chairs: Gabriele Boccaccini and Erik Noffke

in collaboration with the Waldensian Faculty of Theology

The meeting aims at re-examining afresh Paul’s Jewish background, his criticism against the Roman Imperial order, and his contribution to early Christian identity formation.

We plan to have panels on the following topics: (1) Paul within Second Temple Judaism, (2) Paul and Second-Temple Jewish Apocalypticism, (3) Paul and Second-Temple Jewish Messianism, (4) Paul and the Law, (5) Paul and Empire, (6) Paul, Anti-Semitism, and Early Christian Identity Making, (7) Is There a ‘Two-Way Salvation’ in Paul?

Major papers will be offered by Gabriele Boccaccini, William Campbell, Pamela Eisenbaum, Larry Hurtado, Davina Lopez & Todd Penner, David Rudolph, and James Waddell. Short papers on any of the aforementioned general topics will also be welcome. The pre-circulating papers shall be presented briefly (5 min.) before being discussed by the participants. They should be submitted by March 1, 2014. This will allow respondents and other participants enough time to prepare their responses.

Scholars who have heretofore confirmed their participation or expressed their interest to attend include: Kathy Ehrensperger, Paula Fredriksen, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Mark Nanos, Eric Noffke, Isaac Oliver, Antonio Piñero, Jeremy Punt, Anders Runesson, Timothy Saylors, Sze-kar Wan, Magnus Zetterholm, Albert Bamgarten, Jonathan Ben-Dov, Gerbern Oegema, Michael Satlow, Azzan Yadin, and other members of the Enoch Seminar. A volume will be published with the proceedings of the conference, which overall purpose is to contribute to the contemporary re-reading of Paul as a Jewish author by analysing some of the most controversial issues currently addressed in Pauline scholarship in close dialogue with Second Temple studies.

For further information, visit the website <http://www.4enoch.org/wiki2/index.php?title=Third_Nangeroni_Meeting_%282014_Rome%29%2C_conference>, and contact the secretary of the Conference, Jason Zurawski <jasonzur@umich.edu> .