SBL Recap

My highlights of the annual SBL conference at San Francisco:

• It was a new experience to not only present twice but have an official respondent for each.  I enjoyed the session on Jewish-Christian relations and overall the respondent agreed with my central thesis on ethnic reasoning in the epistle of Barnabas with good critical questions.  The second paper was in an intimidatingly large room as I guess many are interesting in testing out the arguments for a second century date for Luke-Acts (this was the first of a three-year plan to test the second century hypothesis).  Although it still seems quite plausible to me that the portrait of John Mark may be influenced by traditions linking a Mark with Paul (Phlm 23; Col 4:10) or a Mark with Peter (1 Pet 5:13; Papias - his tradition passed down from “the elders” [i.e. elder John] since turn of the century), I recognize the strength of Dr. Loveday Alexander’s objection against a direct literary relationship with Papias is that the two may perhaps reflect familiar rhetorical topoi from preface conventions.  Had a good chance to have nice discussions/feedback afterwards from Loveday Alexander, Margaret Mitchell, Heikki Leppä and others and Richard Pervo signed a copy of Dating Acts for me so that was cool.
• Always fun to meet fellow bloggers at these conferences.  Some I knew beforehand (James Crossley is my supervisor, Tyler Williams my undergrad professor, Jim Linville a fellow UofA alumni, others such as James McGrath, Jim West, Chris Tilling, Ken Brown, etc. I have gotten to interact with at past conferences) while others I had an opportunity to meet for the first time (Joel Watts, Deane Galbraith, Bob Cargill, Christian Brady, Michael Halcombe, Brian LePort).
• I was really bad at catching sessions besides my own.  For instance, despite good intentions I missed all the Mark sessions but I want to note that Joel Watts has covered many of them on his blog here, here, here, here (the least I can do is share the links since Joel generously paid for my expensive drink at the biblioblogger get-together; readers who objected to my pre-70 date for Mark will also be happy to know Joel took me to task as I learned he sees the final redaction of Mark ca 75 CE in interaction with Josephus’ Wars).  I did manage to catch both secularism and biblical studies sessions (including hearing Burton Mack for the first time) and, while I consider myself a Christian believer, I agree it is important not to ever confuse the secular study of biblical (and other Jewish, Christian or Greco-Roman) texts as cultural artifacts of different groups in specific historical & social contexts that we at least attempt to study as honestly and methodologically rigorous as possible and the theological task of attempting to discern how a certain collection texts may be “relevant” within contemporary communities of faith.
• After all responsibilities were completed and nothing was left to do, I might have celebrated a little too much at the Sheffield reception…
• Also caught some of the tourist attractions in San Francisco including a bus tour over the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz (I learned that no escape attempt was ever successful as far as we know, but they didn’t take account of Sean Connery in The Rock ).