There are still biblioblogs, but most of the first generation of bloggers have either succumbed to irregular posting or post nothing at all anymore. The second generation has long ago withered into dullness. And the third generation has returned to its first love- nothingness.
The heady days of blogging conferences have long passed and people hardly mention their conference participation anymore. Book reviews seldom appear and when they do it’s usually just a mention of the blogger’s own book. I.e., they blog reviews when those reviews are about their book, but they can’t be bothered with reviewing anyone else’s.
TV specials and archaeological news too have become simply the occasion, for most, to talk, again, about themselves. If Bob is on TV Bob is happy to blog that fact but otherwise nothing occurs to Bob but Bob.
In sum, most blogs have simply devolved into avenues of self promotion. Discussing the work of others has become passe. Discussing advances in the field has become passe. Discussing methodology has become passe.
For all of these reasons it have become virtually impossible to populate Carnivals with anything at all. Carnivals were, once upon a time, a place where one could find the most interesting postings from a wide range of practicing bibliobloggers. Now, there are so few bibliobloggers and so few postings by them that there is simply no reason to attempt to assemble their more interesting contributions.
Bibliobloggers have, by and large, forsaken their posts. They have, by and large, curved in on themselves and withdrawn from the wider world. They have retreated behind the safe walls of academia and there they hole up speaking only to themselves.
It’s fitting, I suppose, that the final Carnival posted by me was a reminiscence of SBL2016 (on 1 December). And it was populated with tweets more than with posts because so few posts were actually written by any biblioblogger.
And yet I find it all a bit tragic. Just when society needs to know what Christian academics and academic biblical scholars have to say, they’ve silenced themselves. No one has silenced them. They have silenced themselves.
Farewell, Biblioblog Carnival. You were fun while you lasted. But you’ve been well and truly starved to death by the indifference of the very people who should, by rights, be most interested in sharing biblical studies with the wider culture.
Zwinglius Redivivus 