Council News

The SBL Council held its spring meeting on April 22-23, 2017, in Atlanta, GA. The meeting opened with an orientation for new Council members, Monica Melanchthon, Chris Rollston, and Vice President Brian Blount. In addition to attending to regular business, such as reviewing the budget for the new fiscal year, the SBL Council concluded its work on a new statement on academic freedom, which the Society will soon be announcing. Following the completion of this statement, Council laid the groundwork for developing a related statement on academic boycotts, which the Council hopes to have ready by the end of this year. The Council addressed changing travel guidelines for attending SBL meetings, approved additional Annual and International Meeting travel grants, and reviewed development goals for the Society. The Council had a stimulating conversation with Rodney Sadler, Chair of the SBL Committee on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession (CUREMP) about the committee's future goals and how the Council can support CUREMP in its ongoing work. In addition, Council devoted substantial time to long term trends in the field and discussing matters such as strategies for the future of biblical studies and the shifting job market.

Archived Council News

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Recent SBLHS2 Blog Posts

Citing Reference Works 5: Topical Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

Citing Reference Works 6: Hebrew Language Tools

Citing Reference Works 7: Greek Language Tools

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Status of Women in the Profession Outstanding Service in Mentoring Award

The Status of Women in the Profession Committee (SWP) is looking for nominees for its Outstanding Service in Mentoring Award. SWP honors women that have served as excellent mentors to women in the field, and needs your nominations. If you would like to recommend a nominee, let us know! Please send your nomination with a descriptive letter of endorsement to April Deconick.
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Congratulations to the 2017 Award Recipients

The 2017 David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Creativity in Hebrew Bible Scholarship has been awarded to Carly Crouch (Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, University of Nottingham, UK) for her paper entitled, “Playing Favorites: Israel and Judah in the Marriage Metaphor of Jeremiah 3.”
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The 2017 Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship has been awarded to Courtney Friesen (Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Arizona) for his paper entitled, “Gluttony and Drunkenness as Jewish and Christian Virtues: From the Comic Heracles to the Christ of the Gospels.
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It is with great pleasure that SBL offers these awards – a singular honor from colleagues and peers! We would also like to thank our members whose contributions make these awards possible. If you would like to know more about the Achtemeier and Freedman awards read more here.

Super Saver Registration Rates End Soon

The last chance for the Super Saver registration rates for the SBL Annual Meeting is Thursday, May 18!   If you haven’t registered for the SBL Annual Meeting 2017 yet, the Super Saver registration rates are in effect through the end of the day (11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time) Thursday, May 18. After this day they will increase an additional $50 so please make sure to Register Now.  Please make sure to have your SBL Membership number and a valid Mastercard, Visa or American Express credit card available when you register.

Registration, the Exhibit Hall and the Employment Center will be located at the Hynes Convention Center.  Sessions and other meeting activities will be held at the Convention Center as well as the Fairmont Copley Plaza, Hilton Back Bay, Marriott Copley Place, Park Plaza Hotel, Sheraton, and the Westin Copley Place.  There is not a designated headquarter hotel for the Annual Meetings 2017.

To review additional information about the Annual Meetings, 2017, including meeting dates & times, a hotel map and list of amenities, travel information, answers to frequently asked questions, etc. please click here.

Register Now and make plans to enjoy time with your colleagues in a great city.  See you in Boston!

SBL Press Spring Sale Ends May 31

Almost all new, recent, and backlisted SBL Press and BJS titles are available to SBL members at a 30 percent discount during the spring sale.

Download the order form, then mail, fax, or phone your order by May 31.

If you prefer to order at the SBL Press Store, make sure to use the promo code SPG2017 at checkout to receive your discount.

New Books from SBL Press

Life in Kings: Reshaping the Royal Story in the Hebrew Bible
A. Graeme Auld

Building on a lifetime of research and writing, A. Graeme Auld examines passages in Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Isaiah that recount the same stories or contain similar vocabulary. He advances his argument that Samuel and Kings were organic developments from a deftly crafted, prophetically interpreted, shared narrative he calls the Book of Two Houses—a work focused on the house of David and the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem. At the end of the study he reconstructs the synoptic material within Kings in Hebrew with an English translation.

Paper $39.95, ISBN 9781628371710
Hardcover $54.95, ISBN 9780884142126
Kindle, ASIN B06Y61F15H
Google Play, ISBN 9780884142119
330 pages • 2017 • Ancient Israel and Its Literature 30

Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom: The Cognitive Foundation of Biblical Metaphors
Nicole L. Tilford

The Bible is full of metaphors. On the surface, these metaphors seem like simple literary flourishes that have been added to the text for artistic effect. This book, however, argues that biblical metaphors reflect more basic, prelinguistic cognitive structures. These conceptual metaphors developed out of common concrete experiences and only gradually developed into the complex metaphors that one finds within biblical texts. This book explores how common sensory activities like seeing, hearing, touching, eating, breathing, and walking developed into the abstract metaphors for wisdom that one finds in Proverbs, Job, and Qohelet. Because it traces the cognitive development of a set of related metaphors across several congruent texts, it provides a model by which scholars can trace the cognitive development of biblical metaphors more generally in the Hebrew Bible and other early Jewish and Christian texts.

Paper $34.95, ISBN 9781628371758
Hardcover $49.95, ISBN 9780884142201
Kindle, ASIN B06ZXQTBQR
Google Play, ISBN 9780884142195
258 pages • 2017 • Ancient Israel and Its Literature 31

Sex, Christ, and Embodied Cognition: Paul's Wisdom for Corinth
Robert H. von Thaden Jr.

Robert H. von Thaden Jr.'s sociorhetorical analysis examines Paul's construction of sexual Christian bodies in 1 Corinthians by utilizing new insights from conceptual integration theory about the embodied processes of meaning making. Paul's teaching about proper sexual behavior in this letter is best viewed as an example of early Christian wisdom discourse. This discourse draws upon apocalyptic and priestly cognitive frames to increase the rhetorical force of the argument. Reading Paul's argument through the lens of rhetorical invention, von Thaden demonstrates that Paul first attempts to show the Corinthians why sexual immorality is the worst of all bodily sins before shifting rhetorical focus to explain to them how they can best avoid this infraction against the body of Christ.

Paper $47.95, ISBN 9781628371819
Hardcover $62.95, ISBN 9780884142287
358 pages • 2017 • Emory Studies in Early Christianity 16