The January 2011 Biblical Studies Carnival Published

Jim West has composed the biblical studies carnival of January here bringing together "the best posts from as many biblioblogs as possible."

Biblical Studies Carnival November

The Biblical Studies Carnival for November has been posted by Deane Galbraith at the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. This is a quite comprehensive carnival divided into seven sections and several subsections:


1. Academy, Biblioblogging and Handy Hints
a. Conference Time
Many references to SBL Annual Meeting blogposts and other meetings.
b. Academic Biblical Studies versus Faith
c. Handy Hints and Resources
d. Biblioblogging Anomaly
(An interview with Jim West)

2. Christian origins
a. The Gospels and Jesus
b. Paul and Pseudo-Paul
c. Apocalypse Now
d. Other Christian Origins Blogging

3. Emerging Judaism
a. Tanach
b. Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Mysticism
c. Ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic Background
d. Septuaginta
e. Talmud and Rabbinics
f. Other Emerging Judaism Blogging

4. Language, Text and Translation
a. The NIV
b. Critical Edition
(SBLGNT)
c. Hebrew
d. Greek

5. Reception History

6. Humor and Gossip

7. Biblioblog Top 30

All in all there are five references to ETC blogposts! Moreover, this blog makes it into the top 30 bibliobloglist (#9) as judged by "quality not quantity" (in reference to the latter, Deane refers to another bibliobloglist for November based on Alexa ranking (where ETC is #45).

In the Biblioblogosphere

It is a new month and that means two things in the biblioblogosphere:

1. The Biblical Studies Carnival (xlviii) is published, this time by Doug Chaplin aka Clayboy. This carnival notes several of our posts in November (on Archaic Mark, and the first SBL reports highlighting Peter Head's paper on distigmai here and here and two other reports here and here).

For general information about the Biblical Studies Carnival see the carnival homepage maintained by Tyler Williams, who incidentally is hosting the next carnival in January 2010 on the same website. It is possible to nominate posts by sending suggestions to biblical_studies_carnival AT hotmail.com.

2. The Biblioblog Top 50 for November is out, and this blog is ranked no. 36, which is very good - we have readers! Our best ranking since this list started was #9, February-March 2009. Below I have listed our rankings:

October 2008 #22
November 2008 #26
December 2008 #36
January 2009 #17
February 2009 #9
March 2009 #9
April 2009 #13
May 2009 #20
June 2009 #25
July 2009 #28
August 2009 #28
September 2009 #54
October 2009 #35
November 2009 #36

One may get the impression that we lost a lot of readers since March, but that is not the case. Instead many new blogs, more or less related to biblical studies, are being added successively to the "Complete List of Biblioblogs" which means that the competition gets tougher and tougher. In fact, just looking at our own statistics for this year, the summer month July has unexpectedly been the best month so far, mabye because of long reports from conferences in Rome (SBL), London (Codex Sinaiticus) and Birmingham (VMR launch/Mingana collection).

These two monthly events, Biblical Studies Carnival and Biblioblog top 50 could be interpreted merely as narcissistic manifestations. On the other hand, they can be viewed positively as tools that draw reader's attention to: (1) good posts on good blogs and (2) good blogs with good posts.

Biblical Studies Carnival 41 is out

Over at Exploring our matrix, James McGrath has posted a comprehensive and amusing Biblical Studies Carnival 41. There is a special "parade of ancient manuscripts." Go check it out!