My deinde Colleague pointed out some comments in moderation that I missed on my previous post called “My Beef With Researching”. There were a number of good comments there if anyone is interested in this matter.

One item that came up that I want to mention further is what we call OpenURL. Basically, it is quick way to send information to a “resolver” site from a library or other database. The resolver site will then resolve the information and point you to a relevant source is they have it on catalogue. To my knowledge the biggest and best OpenURL resolver is WorldCat Link Manager. My only beef with it is that for some reason it doesn’t link issn’s with WorldCat — that is the easiest way, in my opinion, to find out if a journal is in your library.
OpenURL is definitely a good thing and it is fantastic that school libraries are tapping in to it. I still find the DOI superior as it takes you directly to the digital object, but OpenURL is a close second. DOI’s are also a little more user friendly, as it is not too difficult to type in dx.doi.org/doi#, but trying to remember the syntax for OpenURL is not so easy.

In the comments of my previous post, Andy Keck mentioned that ATLA supports URL. Those of you who use ATLA know this, though you may not know it by that name. When you search in ATLA and get your results list, there should be a link saying “Find It” or something to that affect with a logo of your institution. This is an OpenURL link, allowing you to quickly see if your library has the item. I would love to see a few more OpenURL links added to ATLA, like WorldCat Link Manager for instance.

For those of you who don’t quite understand what I’m talking about let me just say this: many libraries and databases like ATLA are trying their best to connect you with the information as fast as they can with a protocol called OpenURL, and that is a great thing.

I want to now include one of the comments from my previous post that came directly from ATLA:

Dear Mr. Zacharias:

I am writing to officially respond on behalf of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) regarding recent postings regarding the ATLA Religion Database and DOI issues on your blog:

http://www.deinde.org/blog/

To the best of our knowledge, we were not contacted by you before you posted these comments and then directly asked the readers to “nag and whine” to us.

In fact, if you would have contacted us in advance, we would have told you that we recently published some information in our Feb. 2008 newsletter that directly addresses your concerns:

Beginning in January 2008, ATLA’s Religion Database (RDB) will include any DOI (Digital Object Identifier) data that some journals are now using. The data will be coded in the MARC 21 024 tag, subfield a, with a subfield 2 code: doi as well. This may prove helpful to users who link to full text versions. This data is expected to appear in the summer 2008 data release. There are no plans at this time to add such data retrospectively. ATLA Newsletter, vol. 55 no. 2 (Feb. 2008), 14

In the future, I encourage you and your colleagues to contact us directly with any product questions in advance of any speculation.

We pride ourselves on both the quality of our products and our responsiveness.

I wasn’t aware I needed to ask permission to blog on a topic, and if you are a regular reader of deinde you know I try and throw some humor in once in awhile, which is what the “nag & whine” comment was about. And considering the fact that I use ATLA regularly and have not seen a DOI, I wasn’t just speculating. But even if people did bombard ATLA with email, that just means more people got informed of ATLA’s efforts, so you’re welcome!

More seriously though, I am very glad to hear that DOI’s will be included now in ATLA’s efforts as well as their OpenURL system which I was aware of— though I don’t like the limitation of it being connected only to my libraries OpenURL. I continue to use ATLA and encourage and teach my students to do so as well. So ATLA if I offended you, my apologies. Live long and prosper dudes!

This post is to solicit some help from my fellow bloggers and deinde readers. I am trying to make a list of biblical studies journals along with a link to their main page.

First off, does anyone know of such a listing that already exists so I can save some time?

Second, this list is meant for biblical studies. Obviously this means we stray into other disciplines, but I’m trying to stick to the middle. This means I’ve included some journals that do some biblical and theological, but didn’t list periodicals that are totally theological.

So, if you can help me out I’d gratefully appreciate it. And I’ll post the final list somewhere too. If titles below are not linked, it’s because I can’t find its homepage or it is no longer published and doesn’t have a homepage.

Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Anglican Theological Review
Aramaic Studies
Australian Biblical Review
Biblica
Biblical Archaeologist
Biblical Interpretation
Biblical Theology Bulletin
Bibliotheca sacra
Bulletin of Biblical Research
Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society
Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Calvin Theological Journal
Catholic Biblical Quarterly
Criswell Theological Review
Currents in Biblical Research
Dead Sea Discoveries
Didaskalia: The Journal of Providence Theological Seminary
Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
Expository Times
Filología Neotestamentaria
Hadashot Arkheologiyot
Harvard Theological Review
Hebrew Linguistics
Henoch
Hiphil
Horizons in Biblical Theology
Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology
Israel Exploration Journal
Jewish Bible Quarterly
Jewish Quarterly Review
Journal for the Study of Judaism
Journal for the Study of Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testmant
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
Journal of Biblical Literature
Journal of Biblical Studies
Journal of Early Christian Studies
Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Journal of Semitic Studies (2002-pres.)
Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Journal of Theological Studies
lectio difficilior
Liber Annuus
Near Eastern Archaeology
Neotestamentica
New Testament Studies
Novum Testamentum
Palestine Exploration Quarterly
Restoration Quarterly
Review of Rabbinic Judaism
Revista Bíblica
Revue biblique
Scandinavian Journal of the 0ld Testament
Scottish Journal of Theology
Semeia: An Experimental Journal for Biblical Criticism
TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism
Themelios
Tyndale Bulletin
Tyndale House Bulletin
Vetus Testamentum
Vigiliae Christianae
Vox Evangelica
Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity
Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche
Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und Kunde der Alteren Kirche

I came across another beautiful data visualisation today - this time it is a more basic visualisation of characters, verbs, occurrence across the major religious texts. It’s called “Similar Diversity” and is made by Philipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller.

The large arc visual shows the 41 most frequent characters from different Holy Scriptures and their communalities.
The characters are aligned alphabetically on the x-axis. Their names’ and the arcs’ size is calculated from their total wordcount in all scriptures. According to that, characters which play a big role in several scriptures are displayed larger.
The colored segments of the arcs are showing the frequency of the word resp. the character in the particular Holy Books.

Link

Ok the title is a little tenuous but it sounds good and we all know archeology and Germans are a natural fit (both in Indiana Jones and scholarship). There seems to have been quite a bit of press lately on how the Germans are decoding and putting together literally hundreds of millions of tiny document shreds from the Stasi records. Apparently when unification occurred there was a last minute mass purging of Stasi documents which were shredded to bits. Now the Germans have rolled out a machine capable of analysing and re-assembling these shreds into probable manuscripts.

Then, in May 2007, the German government revealed the world’s most sophisticated pattern-recognition machine, the $8.5 million dollar (U.S.) E-Puzzler, which can digitally put back together even the most finely shredded papers.

Scanning up to 10,000 shreds at once, the machine links them together by their colour, typeface, outline, shape and texture – not unlike how the average human might try to piece together a puzzle. The machine then displays a digital image of the original document on a computer screen.

Now the biblical studies part… Isn’t the connection obvious? If this can be done with shredded Stasi records why not those drawers full of DSS fragments? If it was possible to analyze fragments for probable connections massive amounts of time could be gained in putting together fragment relationships. Maybe someone is doing this already?

via mirabilis

This is a fantastic project by a fellow Chris Harrison who has used a data set to map visualisations of biblical cross references, social networks (people and places) an distribution of people and place occurrences. I think the first one would make a brilliant poster for any department of Biblical Studies (hint - Chris put up a webshop link ;))

Hit the link and read it all but here’s what he had to say about the cross-ref visualisation:

This project started after receiving an email from Christoph Römhild. He had compiled a list of cross-references found in the Bible and was looking for advice on how to visualize these connections. After several email exchanges and a copy of Christoph’s data, I was able to produce the arc diagram below. Due to the extremely high number of cross-references, this lands more on the aesthetic side of the information visualization spectrum. Different colors are used for various arc lengths, creating a rainbow like effect. The bar graph running along the bottom shows every chapter in the Bible and their respective lengths (in verses). Books alternate in color between white and light gray.

Link

via boingboing

There’s been an interesting collection of WTC ads made far before the events of 9/11 posted recently at copyrant. There’s nothing notable in the ads themselves if it weren’t for the events of 9/11 but that’s the interesting thing about them. As an artifact they were meaningless 1970-80’s magazine fodder that held little resonance for a modern reader until the events of 9/11 - now they can evoke a response in just about anyone simply because their chronology combined with a recent event makes them appear the work of some secret prescient author.

Yet as a reader I don’t (and I am guessing no-one else does) react with the thought of “how the **** did they know that would happen in 1979″. My interest in the ads is piqued not by the factor of time-shifting or prophecy but by the irony of coincidence, the significant meaning imbued on an otherwise ordinary object, and probably my mind sparking as it tries to make a seemingly logical connection (one is related to the other) with the incongruent dates.

The parallels to biblical studies are obvious I think… both in terms of how we mis/treat artifacts, chronology and history but in the way in which artifacts/events can both foresee the past and remember the future. It seems the focus is often on attempting to assemble artifacts into a logical relationship whatever that may be, rather than asking how those artifacts attract, create or adopt meaning. There is certainly interest in the latter, but it seems pursuit of the former never dies. To some it seems a coincidence that there are no coincidences in the biblical text…

via boingboing

I’ll start with 2 apologies. I am pretty swamped with work and haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like, my sincere apologies for all my adoring fans that hang on my every word. There will be a few book blurbs coming up this week and hopefully some posts in the not too distant future.
Second, I had not been receiving notes from Wordpress regarding comments. I had just assumed that I was talking to myself all this time. Paul fixed some setting and I was bombarded with emails by Wordpress about comments. So if you asked me a question in the past five months in the comments of posts, my apologies for not responding. I have responded to a few.

And now my announcement. Last semester I was hard at work revamping Acadia Divinity College’s website (a shameless pat on the back). The reason I mention this here is because I have started the process of placing ADC’s Hayward lectures online.

This means that at this very moment you can enjoy some excellent lectures from the likes of James Dunn, N. T. Wright, Craig Evans, Christopher Seitz, Lee McDonald, James Charlesworth, John Stackhouse, Emanuel Tov, to name but a few.

Visit ADC’s site at http://adc.acadiau.ca and check on the Hayward online page (under the Continuing Education menu). Enjoy!

Danny

I’m a bit out of the loop due to more pressing things over the past year (like finishing my thesis) so forgive me if this has already been posted somewhere. In any case as it is of such relevance to scholarly pursuit and an invaluable apologetic tool (yes it is better than the Creation museum!)it could bear posting more than once.

The crucifixion:

Parting the red sea:

Adam/Eve in Eden:

Noah’s ark on Mt. Sinai:

The work was commissioned from The Glue Society for the Miami Art Fair - “We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work. And with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened to be visualized and made to appear dramatically real,” say The Glue Society’s James Dive. “As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted, it has been interesting to mess with that trust.”

via BLDGBLOG

Josh McManaway pointed out some Ben Witherington lectures available online. I always enjoy listening to BW3 even when I don’t agree with him. Having listened to the lectures, I wanted to add some comments. It is unfortunate that Baylor didn’t put these on as regular quicktime movies so that users could download if they wanted. There is unfortunately a lot of hangtime when trying to watch these types of streaming channels.

The first lecture is titled “Canonical Pseudepigrapha: Is It an Oxymoron?“. He offers a conservative approach to the idea of canon. One issue that caught my attention was his, admittedly brief, mention of Lee McDonald’s thought in his book “The Biblical Canon”. I took a canon class with Lee and am well acquainted with his thoughts, but Witherington clearly does not. Witherington sets himself up against McDonald as saying there was a canon consciousness in the first century already, whereas McDonald claims this was a process that became prominent not until the 3-4th century. This is an incorrect caricature of McDonald’s work. It is quite obvious that there was canon consciousness for the OT and even to some extent early Christian documents that would become the NT. The point that Lee continually makes, very legitmately, is that we do not know the content of these canons. The risen Jesus’ mention of the “law, prophets, and psalms” is not enough to assert that we know what was in that canon. The criteria for deciding what was in the canon happened later, which BW3 admits. Later in this lecture he says that we can say de facto the canon was therefore closed in the first century. This is anachronistic if you are talking about the closing of the canon. You can, perhaps, say that all the books which later constituted the canon were done by the end of the first century, but not that it was therefore closed. It continued to be a question in the following centuries. McDonald’s work on canonical lists is food for thought at this point—we have lists and collections with wide-ranging contents. If the canon was de facto closed, wouldn’t the early canonical lists and manuscripts de facto reflect it?

His second lecture is titled “Oral Texts and Rhetorical Letters: Rethinking the Categories“. I appreciated this lecture a lot to help me understand BW3’s understanding of rhetorical criticism. I don’t think I’m alone in being puzzled at the label “socio-rhetorical” being applied to Witherington’s commentaries. Socio-rhetorical criticism is still very much a criticism in development, spear-headed by Vernon Robbins. Socio-rhetorical criticism also has its own nomenclature and a pretty clear methodology. None of this comes into play in BW3’s commentaries, which results in some unfortunate confusion of terms.
After listening to this second lecture, I understood a little more Witherington’s approach. He critiques Vernon Robbins and company for employing and applying modern rhetorical study to the NT. In Witherington’s opinion, they should be studies in the light of ancient rhetoric, not modern. This helps me understand his position and work better, but I find the objection to Socio-rhetorical criticism a la V. Robbins to be quite flawed. Of course ancient rhetoric will shed important light on the NT, but ‘modern’ methods aren’t sub-par just because they are modern. Would he say the same thing about models of sociology? historical-critical methods? This brings out an interesting observation: Witherington’s so-called “socio-rhetorical” commentaries actually highlight his flawed critique of modern socio-rhetorical criticism. The “-rhetorical” tag on his commentaries indicates that he looks at the NT from an ancient rhetorical perspective, while the “socio” part indicates a modern method.

The third lecture on the site is titled “The Unity of James and Paul: On Implementing the Apostolic Decree.” However, the download is of the 4th lecture, so there is some mix-up here. This video is BW3’s hypothesis that Lazarus is the beloved disciple. I heard this lecture at SBL in 2006. It was interesting, but I’m not sure anyone was convinced of it. Bauckham’s theory that it is John the Elder has my vote. For a paper version of BW3’s argument, see here.

Man, I’m really sorry I missed this past SBL, but am thoroughly enjoying this whole discussion of miracles. Thanks James Crossley, for stoking the fire!

I wanted to make a few comments on the matter and then let John Meier speak to us all (through his book that is).

1. I have no problem with believing in the miraculous, I am a confessing Christian after all. But I must agree with James in part on this — the belief in the miraculous takes us out of the realm of historical inquiry. I am in partial ignorance on this subject as I did not hear the ensuing discussion, but have read Bauckham’s book and Crossley’s paper.
2. I appreciate Crossley’s ‘though experiment’ as it were, and think it has validity to it. But in my mind, he is specifically asking us to move from history to theology. When you force Christian scholars to make that move, don’t be mad if they answer they believe miracles can occur — you have asked them to move from a historical judgment to a philosophical/theological judgment! I nowhere got the impression in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that he is claiming miracles are real — only that we need to trust that this is what the eyewitnesses believe they saw happen.
3. Having admitted that discussion of miracles is out of the realm of history proper, it is likewise just as disastrous, in my opinion, to let the secular world-view dismiss them. These are still solid and well attested historical happenings in the Jesus tradition. And stop comparing these miracle stories to other ancient ones. Yes we have some examples, but do we have such a high concentration of miracle stories in various forms surrounding one individual? Not that I am aware of.
4. Can we all get over the fact that someone gave a whooping call after Bauckham said his bit on miracles? It happened, so be it. That person doesn’t represent all of us Christians, nor did it represent Bauckham. The person vocally agreed with Bauckham, big deal. Everyone who knows that person already knew their faith bias, now a whole room knows. I am mortified by some of the things I hear from Hector Avalos, but I don’t assume James Crossley or Jacques Berlinerblau thinks the same thing and therefore dismiss them because of it! (I have a harder time not dismissing Avalos, I’ll admit!)
5. I went to the secular section that James Crossley read at for the previous SBL. I heard quite a bit of laughter and ‘vocal’ smirks at some of the jabs the presenters took at evangelical scholars in general and particular (*cough cough* N. T. Wright *cough cough*). Was this professional just because all of the presenters took the “high ground” of the secular world-view and therefore were justified in the unprofessionalism? Of course not. Let’s get a dose of reality — we are all human beings with opinions and presuppositions that always will taint our work to some degree and even activate our vocal chords in (gasp!) professional settings on occassion.

Now for almighty Meier (its a long one— please don’t sue me for copyright):

Left to themselves, the Christians in the unpapal conclave would probably want to affirm not only (1) that Jesus performed startling deeds that some of his contemporaries considered miracles but also (2) that such deeds were actually miracles, feats beyond all human capacity, accomplised by the power of God alone and revealing the unique status of Jesus. By the same token, left to himself or herself, the agnostic would state in no uncertain terms that miracles simply do not happen, than modern men and women cannot possibly accept the miracle stories of the Gospels as literally true, and that such stories had their origin either in the creative imagination and propaganda of the early church or in deeds actually performed by Jesus that were later magnified and reinterpreted (or misunderstood) by Christian faith in the light of the OT.
Obviously, if the members of the conclave are ever to forge a consensus statement on miracles, neither side can have its way absolutely. The committee must hammer out some sort of compromise language that will capture at least an essential part of the truth, without however expressing the whole truth as either side sees it. Restricted to the empirical evidence and what van be clearly inferred from it by rational argument, these latter-day Henry Clays will have to be content with modest questions and modest claims. In particular, with so many pitfalls along the way to consensus, the committee will have to take special care to thrash out preliminary but pivotal questions of method. Only then will the conclave be able to treat adequately the real point at issue: the miracles of Jesus narrated in the Gospels and the historical tradition lying behind them……
Can miracles happen? Do miracles happen? The problem of the possibility and actual occurrence of miracles is logically the first question any inquirer would raise in a discussion of the miracles of Jesus. I fear then that I will be disappointing almost all my readers with the answer I give. In my view, these wide-ranging questions are legitimate in the arena of philosophy or theology. But they are illegitimate or at least unanswerable in a historical investigation that stubbornly restricts itself to empirical evidence and rational deductions or inferences from such evidence. No sooner do I make this claim than I imagine both believers and nonbelievers crying- “cop-out!” On the one side, staunch Christian believers - especially those of a conservative bent-will protest that I am once again giving the victory to agnostics by default: I am in effect saying that miracles are not real events in time and space. On the other side, nonbelievers, non-Christians, and even some Christians will no doubt detect covert Christian apologetics in what seems a refusal to bite the bullet. In their view, I am refusing to pursue a thoroughgoing critical approach to history, an approach that necessarily accepts the conclusions of modem science and philosophy: miracles cannot and therefore do not happen. In their eyes, I am trying to preserve a tiny acre of a bygone mythical world within the otherwise modem universe of historical research. With more than a little chutzpah I reply that both sides are wrong……..
I maintain that … it is inherently impossible for historians working with empirical evidence within the confines of their own discipline ever to make the positive judgment: “God has directly acted here to accomplish something beyond all human power.” The very wording of this statement shows that it is essentially theo-Iogical (“God has directly acted … “). What evidence and criteria could justify a historian as a historian in reaching such a judgment? To be sure, a professional historian who is likewise a believing Christian might proceed from one judgment (“this extraordinary event, occurring in a religious context, has no discernible explanation”) to a second judgment (“this event is a miracle worked by God”). But this further judgment is not made in his or her capacity as a professional historian. The judgment that this particular event is a miracle accomplished by God necessarily moves the person making the judgment into the realm of philosophy or theology.
Hence it is my contention that a positive judgment that a miracle has taken place is always a philosophical or theological judgment. Of its nature it goes beyond any judgment that a historian operating precisely as a historian can make. What a historian—or a physicist or a doctor—may say in his or her professional capacity is that, after an exhaustive examination of the evidence, one cannot find a reasonable cause or adequate explanation for a particular extraordinary event. The historian may also duly record the fact that a particular extraordinary event took place in a religious context and is claimed by some participants or observers to be a miracle, i.e., something directly caused by God. But to move beyond such affirmations and to reach the conclusion that God indeed has directly caused this inexplicable event is to cross the line separating the historian from the philosopher or theologian. The same person may make both types of judgments, but he or she does so in a different professional (or amateur) capacity and in a different realm of human knowledge.
All that I have just said holds true of nonbelievers as well. Let us suppose that an atheist has carefully examined a cure that is alleged to be miraculous. Let us also suppose that he has found that, at a certain moment, in a religious setting, a person totally blind from birth because of a physical pathology suddenly saw perfectly. Let us further suppose that the atheist then verifies the fact of the past physical blindness, the suddenness and permanence of the cure, and the truthfulness and sincerity of the blind person as well as of others who witnessed the cure. At this point the atheist can reach the same judgment as a colleague who is a believer: “As far as can be ascertained, this cure cannot be explained by any human ability or action, by any known force in the physical universe, or by fraud or self-delusion.” But, just as his believing colleague might proceed to take a further step and judge the event a miracle, the atheist might offer his own further judgment: “Whatever the explanation may be, and even in the absence of an explanation, I am sure that this is not a miracle.” The atheist’s judgment may be as firm and sincere as the believer’s; it is also just as much a philosophical or theological judgment, determined by a particular worldview, and not a judgment that arises simply, solely, and necessarily out of an examination of the evidence of this particular case.
To repeat my main point: the historian can ascertain whether an extraordinary event has taken place in a religious setting, whether someone has claimed it to be a miracle, and—if there is enough evidence—whether a human action, physical forces in the universe, misperception, illusion, or fraud can explain the event. If all these explanations are excluded, the historian may conclude that an event claimed by some people to be miraculous has no reasonable explanation or adequate cause in any human activity or physical force. To go beyond that judgment and to affirm either that God has directly acted to bring about this startling event or that God has not done so is to go beyond what any historian can affirm in his or her capacity as a historian and to enter the domain of philosophy or theology…..
Granted the severe limitations of our data, I would suggest that we must be careful to keep both our questions and our conclusions modest. What may we reasonably ask in such a restricted situation? In my opinion, we may reasonably ask and hope to answer the following questions: (1) Are reports about Jesus performing miracles totaIly inventions of the early church as it developed its missionary apologetic and propaganda in a Greco-Roman world that expected miracles from divine figures visiting the earth? Or do at least some of the reports ofJesus’ miracles go back to the time and activity of the historical Jesus? (2) Do certain kinds of supposed miracles appear to be typical of reports of Jesus’ activity, while other kinds are relatively or completely absent, in comparison with other reports of miracles in the ancient world? (3) To move from reports to what Jesus actually did: Did in fact Jesus perform certain startling or extraordinary actions that he and his followers claimed to be miracles? (4) What ultimately did these supposed miracles mean to Jesus, his disciples, and other observers in the total context of his ministry?
The reader will no doubt notice what issues these four questions do not include. In keeping with the position I mapped out above, I do not think that a historian as a historian (or an exegete as an exegete) can say yes or no to the further question: Was God directly acting in Jesus’ ministry to bring about miracles? I am not saying that such a question is illegitimate; I am simply saying that it lies beyond the specific competence of the historian or exegete…..
no matter what the evidence may be, a particular action of Jesus could not possibly have been a miracle is a philosophical judgment, not a historical one. And the agnostic has no more right to impose his or her philosophical worldview on the whole conclave than does a believing Catholic or Protestant.

Meier, John P. Mentor, Message, and Miracles. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus 2. New York: Doubleday, 1994, pp 510-518.