SBL/AAR Wrapup

One of the takeaways from this year's Biblioblogging panel at SBL is that I tend to over-think my blog posts, so I'm going to jump right in.

Overall, the weekend was a success. I had a promising interview for a job that really suits my skill-set and interdisciplinary tendencies (not to mention geographical preferences). My presentation, "Academic Busking: A New Paradigm for Distance Learning and Online Content Creation," was well received, and meshed much better than I expected it to into the lively discussion of academic blogs, self-branding, and content creation that ensued in the Blogging and Online Publications session.

I attended a number of interesting panels, especially in the Esotericism and Mysticism, Wisdom and Apocalyptic, and Pseudepigrapha groups, including a review session for Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Volume 1, edited by Jim Davila, Richard Bauckham, and Alexander Panayotov. (This marked the first time that I've been in the same room with the real John J. Collins, but no tears in the space-time continuum have been reported...) The question of the appropriateness of perpetuating the term "Old Testament pseudepigrapha" for a rather heterogenous, polyphyletic body of works came under discussion. The only real defense anybody had was "what else are we supposed to call them?" I can say that from the perspective of the job market, it would be nice to have a catch-all term for what I do that doesn't require scare quotes, so if anybody comes up with an answer, let me know.

The most important part of the conference was getting to meet people, some new, some I'd only known electronically. I am not at my best in crowds full of unfamiliar faces, but hopefully I've now established enough of a foundation that I can overcome the Yoghurt Paradox in the future.¹ I appreciate everyone being so welcoming when I suspect I spent much of the weekend looking like a frightened mammal.


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¹ "The Yoghurt Paradox" is my term for the difficulty of meeting new people if you don't already know people, much as you must already have a yoghurt starter to make yoghurt, or, according to m. Avot 5:6, you need tongs in order to forge tongs.²

² And yes, another thing that came up in the Blogging panel is that footnotes aren't really appropriate to blogging as a genre, but some things I can't give up!

Pay to play: the cost of scholaring

Yesterday, I went to the Association for Jewish Studies website in order to submit a paper proposal for the annual conference.¹ I was surprised to find that, in addition to requiring that you be up-to-date on my membership dues before proposing a paper (which is understandable), they require you to pay next year’s dues, so you will be current at the time of the conference, and make you register and pre-pay $130 for the conference, before knowing if your paper will even be accepted!

Is this common practice? I have only submitted papers for SBL/AAR and smaller colloquia in the past, and I’ve never seen such a thing. Granted, AJS will give you a refund if your paper isn’t accepted and you decide not to come, but it seems a little prohibitive, especially for those of us without a department to help foot the bill. I mean, I’m lucky enough to have a day job that leaves me with a little money after my student loans and DC-area rent, but for a full-time adjunct, $130 could be a month’s worth of ramen. Or a doctor’s visit for a sick kid. Tying that money up until a decision is made on the proposal can constitute a real burden.

Now, AJS does have a sliding-scale for membership dues, and they prorate your membership so you don’t have to pay for another full year in January if you just joined in November (I’m looking at you, American Philological Society!). But perhaps they should consider—in light of the changes in the market—either extending the student conference discount to PhDs without TT posts, or at least wait until proposals are approved before requiring payment.

There were a couple of opinion pieces on Al Jazeera a few months back by Sarah Kendzior that discussed the financial barriers to non-affiliated scholars, especially in terms of access to scholarly publications. I hadn’t thought about that too much, until I was writing my proposal this weekend. See, my day job is at a major university, so I am accustomed to having access to their library and online resources. But this weekend I realized that if I want to continue research on my own, I can’t really leave this job, unless I can find one at another university. I have limited library privileges as an alumn at UVA, but they have locked down most of the online resources. 

I suppose I am spoiled for expecting to be able to do all of my research from my living room in my pyjamas, but that’s my point. The current conditions are creating a class system within academia, where those who are privileged with full-time positions have far more resources than those who do not. Now that the majority of courses are being taught by non-full-time faculty, keeping research materials out of the very people responsible for instructing students can only end badly. More to the point, I’ve already saddled myself with a Mercedes of debt in exchange for entrance into academia; how much more do I have to ante up for a seat at the table?

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¹ The proposal is for a paper I’ve been meaning to do for years, comparing the pluralism of opinion found in Rabbinic discourse with that found in Greco-Roman symposia literature. My rabbinics professor from UVA will be pleased that I finally got around to it.

Speaking of worthless...

My apologies for neglecting this blog in the past several weeks. My day job has been taking a lot out of me lately, and I made the mistake of reactivating the distracting shiny object that is my personal Facebook account. But I have every intention of adding some meaningful content this weekend.

And now for some less meaningful content.

We have reached the point in the academic hiring season that is roughly analogous to a bar 10 minutes before last call, with a few desperate drunks left looking for anyone to go home with. Most of the TT openings have sent out their official rejections by now (although through the wonder of the Academic Jobs Wiki, you get to find out you didn't make the first cut for interviews in real time!), and all that remains are a few last-minute sabbatical-replacement VAP jobs (and in one case, a fellowship vacated by someone who took one of the jobs I didn't get). So far, the only nibble I've gotten is a single telephone interview for a fellowship.

Now, as far as the academic job market goes, I knew it was a scorpion when I let it on my back. I suppose it would be less frustrating if my day job as a help-desk monkey were more fulfilling, or even if I had some adjunct hours to look forward to after an exhausting day at work. (It's astonishing how much more energy I had this time last year, when I was teaching at GWU, even though I was often up all night preparing my lectures.)

I am really going to have to reconsider how I approach next year's search. I may have to start applying for New Testament/Early Christianity posts in addition to Hebrew Bible/Old Testament ones, because once you eliminate all the posts that demand "doctrinal conformity" or "a dedication to preparing $DENOMINATION clergy," there were barely a half-dozen TT HB/OT openings in the whole country this year. I should probably look into adjunct positions teaching intro Greek, Latin, or Biblical Hebrew classes, too.

About the Tabor Thing

I attended a panel at SECSOR/ASOR-SE at which James Tabor, Christopher Rollston, and Mark Goodacre discussed Dr. Tabor’s new book, The Jesus Discovery, the second one he has co-written on ancient Jewish tombs he claims are connected to the family of Jesus.

The root of his argument comes from the fact that one of the ossuaries discovered at Talpiot seems to be inscribed ישוע בר יהוסף (Yeshuaʿ bar Jehoseph​=​Jesus son of Joseph). There are several other ossuaries, one inscribed with the name מריה (Mariah​=​Mary), another with יוסה (Yoseh​=​Joses), one with מתיה (Mattiyah​=​Matthew), and one with יהודה בר ישוע (Yudah bar Yeshuaʿ​=​Judah, son of Jesus). Of these, only Mariah (Mary) and Yoseh (Joses) correspond to members of Jesus’ family in the gospel accounts (his mother and brother, respectively).

When I spoke with him, I asked him how many of the names he could lose before he would change his mind. Tabor banked his entire case on the last ossuary, which is inscribed with a Greek phrase that he transcribes as ΜΑΡΙΑΜΗΝΟΥΗΜΑΡΑ.¹ Tabor reads the first part as the name Mariamne, and claims this form of the name Mariam was only ever used in reference to Mary Magdalene, in Hippolytus and in the Acts of Phillip. Even if there are lots of Jesus Josephsons, he argues, there was only one who was associated with Mary Magdalene.²

What he specifically said is that if you search the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae for “Mariamne,” those are the only hits you get. This may be technically true (at least in pre-medieval texts), but only by splitting hairs. I pointed out to him that there were several Mariamnes among the Herodians, and he responded that in the original Greek of Josephus, these are Μαριαμμη, not Μαριαμνη. This is also technically true.³

So I emailed my Acts of Phillip girl, the lovely Dr. Armstrong. (If you live your life correctly, you too can accumulate a collection of beautiful experts in various fields…) And, it turns out, there is nothing in the Acts of Phillip to indicate that the Mariamne in that work is Mary Magdalene. More importantly, some manuscripts of Acts of Phillip use the form Μαριαμμη. So not only does this shoot holes in Dr. Tabor’s contention that Mariamne only refers to Magdalene, it also shows that the forms Mariamme and Mariamne were at least sometimes conflated by the fourth century, so one can’t assume the latter form is somehow unique.

But here’s the real kicker: the name on the “Magdalene” ossuary is not Mariamne. Transliterated, it reads Mariamenou, which would be the genitive of the unattested name Mariamenon. Even if you read this as a diminutive, it would be a diminutive of Mariamene, not Mariamne. So what, you say? It’s close enough. What’s one eta between friends? Well, remember that Tabor’s assertion that the Herodian name Mariamme wasn’t the same as Mariamne was based on a single nu. He can’t have it both ways. If he wants to assert that Mariamne is a unique form only used in reference to Magdalene, then there is no reason to assume the Mariamenon in that ossuary is she.⁴

I will end by saying that James Tabor is a very nice guy. He called me over from across the bar just to talk, and he gave me some very useful advice about how the faculty hiring process goes. I think the way he leveraged popular interest in The Da Vinci Code as a way to get funding for archaeology is terribly shrewd, and I support any attempt to include more robots in scholarship. I even think he has a point that some in our field would be reluctant to accept evidence of Jesus’ natural death if it did exist. But I’m a scholar with absolutely no vested interest in the Empty Tomb, and I still find his arguments problematic. I’d hate to think he was being disingenuous; he seemed honestly convinced that he is right, and baffled by those who don’t see it. But based on his and other blogs I've looked at since, I know he was entirely aware of the issues I just raised when I was talking to him, and yet when presenting the issue to an uninitiated, he didn’t choose to address any of the criticisms. Maybe his conviction has blinded him to the faults.

Or maybe he knows something he can’t reveal…[cue ominous music]⁵

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1. This transcription is very contested, I have since found, and while I am no epigrapher, the first thing I read when I saw images was ΜΑΡΙΑΜΕ ΚΑΙ ΜΑΡΑ (Mariame and Mara). I just don’t see a nu. People who know better than I, notably Dr. Stephan Pfann (http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Pfann.pdf), have given the same reading. Without the nu, the already weak case utterly collapses.

2. I’m not going to re-hash the Jesus’ wife thing again. The simple fact is that there is no credible reason to think Jesus was married to Magdalene; even the late Gnostic sources never make that claim explicitly. As to whether Jesus was married to anyone, we just have no data. I could venture a guess, based on what he is quoted as saying about marriage and celibacy, but that would be only a guess.

3. Τhe Jewish Encyclopedia (s.v. Mariamne) claims that the form Μαριαμνη is attested in Medieval manuscripts of Josephus, but I can’t confirm this. Tabor was under the impression it was an error introduced by William Whiston’s classic edition.

4. He makes a similar error about the form of the name Yoseh (יוסה), which apparently is very uncommon in Aramaic inscriptions. He says that, since the name is so rare, it is unlikely that there would be another Jesus with a relative who used that name. The problem is, we don’t know what form the brother of Jesus used in Aramaic, because we only have references to him in Greek. Tabor fixates on the reference in Mark 6:3, where he is called Joses (Ιωσης, in the genitive form Ιωσητος) and not on the reference in Matthew 13:55 where he is called Joseph (Ιωσηφ). But either way, Ιωσης is not identical to יוסה, so you can’t predicate arguments about the former based upon the rarity of the latter.

5. Dr. Tabor: if the Knights Templar are holding you prisoner to prevent you from revealing the secrets of the Freemasons, blink 23 times.

I just totally networked

Ended up talking briefly with James Tabor because he remembered my hair from the audience of his talk. I think I managed to tell him I think he's wrong without sounding like a dick.

SBL proposals

I submitted two paper proposals for this year's SBL. One is for the Biblioblogging group, and is based on the Academic Busking rant below. The other one—based on a seminar paper I wrote several years ago—is for the Pauline Epistles group, and it involves a reading of Galatians 3-4 from a perspective of temporal dualism and Roman adoption law. I had forgotten how good the paper was, and with a little polishing, it could be really impressive.¹

My experience at last year's SBL doesn't make me eager to go again, unless I'm presenting something, but it's in Baltimore this year, so I don't really have an excuse not to. It won't cost much, and if I need to escape, I can always just come home.

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¹     It's odd how many of my best papers (and the longest chapter of my dissertation) deal with Christian sources, considering I market myself as a Hebrew Bible specialist. I mean, in reality, my specialty involves a complex of Post-Exilic-to-pre-Rabbinic-Judaism-plus-early-Christianity that nobody has come up with a good name for. But there aren't a lot of jobs in that field, for that very reason. The traditional division of disciplines is arbitrary and artificial, but persistant. I have been applying for OT/HB positions, because I am more confident of my command of that material across the board. On the NT/EC side, I have decent chops in the historical and literary aspects, and I'm very strong in a few over-specific (usually heterodox) areas, but I feel shaky on the more theological angles. It does make me wonder if, next year, I should go both ways (heh) and apply for NT/EC posts as well. I mean, the worst that can happen is they reject me, and I've had plenty of practice at that.

Academic Busking

You know, as universities rush to get on the distance-learning bandwagon, one may legitimately ask what exactly the universities themselves contribute (besides brand prestige) to non-credit programs like edX. When working as an adjunct, I was paid the equivalent of one student's tuition, for a 90-seat class. For the same cost, any one of those students could hired me directly and had my undivided attention. The only value the university added was a room, bookkeeping, and credit towards a degree, for which it took a ~98.9% cut. Even pimps and record labels don't take that much.

Indeed, musicians can sometimes make more playing on street corners than they could if they "made it big," once the record company takes it's share. Why not academic busking? Sure, it's not practical for an scholar to, y'know, run out to the local stoa or peripatos and start teaching at the crowd. But if there is a demand for online, no-credit lectures, then why shouldn't the ones actually producing the content be the ones controlling, and yes, profiting from it? Why not cut out the middle man and provide courses directly to students?

There seem to be a couple of projects out there with similar ideas. Two for-profit companies, Udemy and Straighterline's Professor Direct, allow professors to create their own course content and set their own price for online courses. Of the two, Udemy seems the most scholar-friendly (it allows for free courses, while Straighterline sets a $49 minimum). But these are still, ultimately, commercial companies.

My vision of academic busking would work more like open-source software, crowdfunding, or voluntary pricing for music, where the students have some degree of choice about whether or how much they pay. Contrary to free-market dogma, these models actually seem to work, if one can drum up enough interest. Perhaps one could provide a "premium" service, where students get individual attention, while the basic content is free.

(I suspect I'm going to turn this into a paper proposal for the SBL's "Blogger and Online Publication" group.)