A Guide to SBL Ghost Panels

This year's official SBL program and convenient "app" are not an entirely reliable guide to what is happening at the conference.

You may have noticed a few odd-looking panels on the program: two and a half hour sessions with only two speakers, spaces mentioning 'discussion' with nothing to be discussed...This is due to some combination of new rules preventing participants who do not register far enough in advance from being listed with administator error.

For those interested in subjects from early Jewish and Christian literature and book history, religious experience at Qumran, and the light shed by Iron Age scribal culture on Deuteronomy, I submit the following guide:

S23-112 Book History and Biblical Literatures
Friday, Nov 23
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: 349 - Convention Center
Theme: Bodies of Scripture: Book History, Materiality, and Scriptural Corpora

Benjamin Wright, Lehigh University, Presiding

Eva Mroczek, Indiana University
"Materiality and the Study of Early Jewish Textual Collections" - 35 min.

Jeremy Schott, Indiana University
“Byzantine Textuality and the New Testament: Commentary and Catenae” - 35 min.

Seth Perry, University of Washington
"Biblical Variety and Biblical Facility in Early America" - 35 min.

Discussion - 35 min.

(Schott not listed in official program; see next post for ghost abstract!)


S24-139 Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Sunday, Nov 24
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Potomac 6 - Sheraton Inner Harbor
Theme: Review of Angela Harkins, Reading with an "I" to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions (DeGruyter, 2012)

Rodney Werline, Barton College, Presiding
Steven Weitzman, Stanford University, Panelist -25 min.
Carol Newsom, Emory University, Panelist -25 min.
Seth Sanders, Trinity College, Panelist -25 min.
Dan Merkur, University of Toronto, Panelist -25 min.
Angela Kim Harkins, Fairfield University, Respondent -20 min.
Discussion -30 min.

(Sanders not listed)

S25-124 Israelite Religion in Its West Asian Environment
Monday, Nov 25
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Room: 329 - Convention Center
Theme: Religion, Politics & Society

Simeon Chavel, University of Chicago, Presiding

Nathaniel Levtow, University of Montana "The Cultic Contexts of Monumental Inscriptions in Ancient West Asia" -20 min.

Seth Sanders, Trinity College "Placing Scribal Culture in History: Deuteronomy and Late Iron-Age Text Production" -20 min.

C.L. Crouch, University of Nottingham "Deuteronomy’s Identity Issues in Anthropological and Archaeological Perspective" -20 min.

Joel S. Burnett, Baylor University Iron Age "Deir ‘Alla: Gods, Kingdoms, and Worship at the Boundaries" -20 min

Karel van der Toorn, Universiteit van Amsterdam "The Jewish Pantheon at Elephantine" -20 min

(Sanders not listed; see next post for ghost abstract!)