2007 SBL Report
As promised in my last post, here are some brief comments about this year’s Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Keep an eye out also for Jim Davila’s roundup on Paleojudaica (he may even have some good photos) and April DeConick’s comments on Forbidden Gospels.
The meeting took place in sunny San Diego, California—a wonderful location. Usually I try to take some time at conferences to check out the city a little but most of my wanderings were relegated to the boardwalk behind the hotels and a trip to the nearest mall for gifts for loved ones. One night was dedicated to a death-defying trip south of the border to Tijuana. After polling about 1000 other academics, I could find only one other brave soul willing to join me on this “spiritual quest” (the “spirit” in this case was a bottle of Tequila); in retrospect, they are far wiser for it.
On day two I took in the papers of the Early Christian Families Group and an AAR session on “The Holy Child: Traditions of the Infant and Child Jesus”. In the evening I squeezed in at the end of the crowded session on “Books of the Gospel of Judas: An Evening with the Authors” and stayed around long enough to introduce myself to April DeConick (of Forbidden Gospels fame).
Day three was spent at two Christian Apocrypha sessions. The highlight of these sessions for me was the presentation by Abraham Terian on his forthcoming edition of …