Part 4: the present and the future

This is my final retrospective post on where deinde has been, where it is, and where it is going.

The Present

I must first say that I'm very happy with the response of the new deinde site. I made the decision earlier this year that I needed to move away from Wordpress, I just didn't feel like learning how to mod a new platform, and I wanted more flexibility in handling the increasing amount of resources on the site. So I made the switch just a few weeks ago now, using the awesome Rapidweaver website creator. The traffic to deinde has increased significantly since I made the change (according to Google Analytics) which is a good sign too! About the only thing I regret (though it couldn't be helped) is that I had to change the blog feed yet again. As with any feed change, you are bound to lose a few readers who forget or don't bother to update their feed.

The biggest reason for the change out of all the resources were for the Bookmarks in Biblical Studies. You see, I've been keeping good tabs on the internet for a few years. Not only did I do this for my own benefit, but for my students and colleagues as well. And in the back of my mind I always wanted to make my own bookmarks gateway with a bit of a different approach. The problem, basically, is that I could never find the right platform- the available software or online options never matched the ideal in my mind. At first I thought it was going to be Delicious, then I thought it would be Ma.gnolia. In fact, there was a point when I really thought Ma.gnolia would be the right option. I talked to Mark Goodacre about this even being an option for NT Gateway. But during the course of discussion, which I think was helpful for all, Ma.Gnolia's limitation became obvious for me. Mark Goodacre, with the help of Logos, eventually revamped the NTGateway. As for me, I was still sitting on a great collection of bookmarks with descriptions and tags, etc. Enter Diigo. Diigo in my opinion is the best of the best when it comes to a social bookmarking system. I finally found a home for my bookmarks. But I wanted to present my links on deinde in an attractive way, based on tags. This was the big reason I went with the Rapidweaver site- and I'm very happy with the final product. Each link is tagged with one or more tags, has a brief description, and if I actually annotate the page, those are linked as well. Three other advantages to my Diigo system: 1) My diigo bookmarklet runs right in Safari, making the addition of a bookmark to my Diigo collection a snap. 2) Because of the setup, I NEVER need to alter the gateway site- Diigo just feeds the new bookmarks to the site. 3) Diigo creates a feed whenever I add a new bookmark which I crosspost both on this blog and on a bookmarks feed here. I have, I think, a very good yet simple system for me to manage, yet delivers a lot of features and power. About the only downside is that it takes a few extra seconds for the gateway page to load. But considering the fact that this is a ONE PAGE comprehensive gateway, the wait is worth it :-)

One final "present" item, and that is a new blog I call the Journal Alerts blog. I haven't had much time to work on this yet, but if/when I get the chance to work on it more I think its usefulness will increase. Basically, I'm tying together some abilities of Google Reader and blogger to try and aggregate any and all alerts for biblical studies journals. If it all works out, this would be the one stop shop for keeping current on new journal articles.

The Future

I've got some exciting things (at least for me!) in store for 2009. In addition to keeping the Bookmarks, Web Search, and Blog search up to date, and continuing my usual penetrating analysis and commentary on the deinde blog, I will be doing a big upgrade to my Greek multimedia flashcards, as well as unveil Hebrew multimedia flashcards. These would have been out in 2008, but once again I am having to wait for software to catch up with me :-) But here it is in a nutshell- I will be using Mental Case as the new Mac software option and continue with MemoryLifter for PC. The package will come with ALL Greek words from the NT- tagged by root, frequency, and textbook chapters. The Hebrew package will be similar, but may be a bit longer in coming. I'm looking forward to these! So some time in 2009 a "Hebrew" menu item will be making an appearance on deinde.

Beyond that? Well I have another big idea brewing- actually it has been germinating for many years at deinde. I have thought about and decided that I will indeed blog about it to see if I get any positive reaction. Perhaps it is unrealistic and that will help me put it to rest. So stay tuned for my discussion on a possible future open source index for biblical studies :-)

part 3: expansion of resources

Part 1- Deinde origins. Part 2- Morphs and Expansions.

Part 3 is about the expansion of resources on deinde. For some it may well be the first introduction to some of the stuff deinde has got. I think I've got the chronological order down but its easier to talk about them based on similarity of content.

Google Books list: After an SBL forum post I talked with Bob Buller from SBL and found out he had been making a grand collection. I suggested we collaborate via Google Docs and publish the continual work in progress.

Scripture Indexing Guide: I've payed my do's to the guild as a student and created a few indexes. I came up with a method to simplify the process (as much as possible) and made it available to everyone.

SBL abbreviations: I was surprised to find that there wasn't a good spreadsheet of text file on the next for SBL abbreviations, so decided to make my collection available (Stems from indexing work too :-)

Theological German Grammar: Heading in to my PhD I began the study of Theological German- and like most of us I came to find that there are not many grammars focused on theological German. One that was passed on to me by Lee McDonald was by Walter Bense and published in house at Harvard. I received permission to reproduce it online for anyone to use.

Theological German glossary: Yet another item that I originally made for myself in the study of Theological German. This glossary contains items more specific to Theological German, as well as the essential German words that need to be learned.

Multimedia Greek Flashcards: The following Greek resources have really stemmed from my teaching of NT Greek for the past 3 years. One of my projects was to create multimedia flashcard sets using existing vocabulary software for both Mac and PC. I sell these for a small price and they have been pretty well received (I'll talk about updates to these in the next post)

Flashcard Roundup: In an effort to help students and profs find vocabulary cards for computer, I created this roundup so you know where to find what you want.

Greek Animations: I can take zero credit for these. They were created by Glenn Wooden for use with Mounce's grammar, but can be used no matter what intro textbook you use. These small video files animate the Greek grammar for the students.

Greek Principal Parts: Many of these came to me via Craig Evans and I've added some since then. I plan to expand this dataset even more in the future. I think this is already the largest collection of Greek principal parts on the net, but I may be wrong :-)

Greek Songs: Some of my most popular posts ever were when I unveiled some of my Greek Songs (which I'm working on publishing). This page is the permanent home for them now.

In my last post (should be tomorrow) in this series on the history of Deinde, I want to talk about Bookmarks in Biblical Studies, as well as a few new feeds and some future projects coming down the pipeline.

Get the Code!

For those who may be interested in having a deinde search box on your site, I have placed the code on deinde to easily copy and paste to your site. I especially encourage anyone hosting biblical studies related sites to pop in a Deinde Web Search box on to your page- help your visitors/users/students search for and find quality resources on the internet without having to wade through the smut that regular googling gives you.

Grab the codes here.

A bloated SBL?

April DeConick has just made an interesting post which I agree with very much— that there are too many sessions at the SBL annual meeting and needs to be reorganized.

This makes me think of Mark Goodacre's "tips for surviving SBL". One part has always bothered me a little bit- his suggestion that it is okay to be a flake and walk in and out of sessions. While on one level I agree with him- go see the papers you want to see!- it has gotten to be a crazy stampede after every paper. I've seen presenters leave their own session once they were done too. I think fewer sessions, or fewer meetings of sessions, and perhaps different planning, would reduce traffic a little.

Anyway, go and read DeConick's post, it's a good one.

Look what you started SBL! The Bible Software blogger-cooler

Well, we got some great discussion going on revolving around Bible Software. It began at SBL with a Bible Software shootout. I heard about this from Rick Mansfield, who reported favorably on the whole thing, though in favor of Accordance.

However, the firestorm definitely ensued with Michael Heiser's blog post on how the status quo in bible software has changed. With all due respect to Michael, even though he tried to be friendly, he basically stuck out his tongue on behalf of Logos and chanted over and over "we're the best and your the worst" (I joke of course). Heiser is also speaking from his own point of view as well— it was not an official Logos communication I don't think. Michael makes some good points as well as some points I don't totally agree with. One issue that I think definitely does put Logos a cut above, in my opinion, is the ability to sync to an iPhone, and eventually to sync a Mac, PC, and iPhone. This is and will continue to be a great thing- though having a internet connection is a drag.

His post has solicited some reactions, but it seems that the commenting feature on his blog doesn't seem to be working- thus the reason for this blogger cooler.

- A very good and detailed discussion revolving around the syntax issue has taken place on the Accordance forum by a poster named Marco.

- Another very good post with which I agree very much with comes from Ruben at Bible Software Review.

- Rick Mansfield has also posted some initial reflections on Michael's post, with more forthcoming I'm sure. He also asks some questions of Heiser, which I hope to see response to on Michael's blog. He also adds a good dose of realism to Heiser's claims. THIS BLOG POST HAS BEEN DELETED BY THE AUTHOR (if I had a photographic memory, I'd rewrite and sign my name to it, it was a fair assessment) **BUT here is a cached version from a commentor.

- The Accordance blog has summarized the shootout, but decided for this post not to answer Heiser's critiques.

- Another summary of the shootout by Tony W. Cartledge

- A critical view of the shootout and comparative reviews in general (I totally disagree fyi)

- Some thoughts by Pat McCullough. He certainly doesn't buy into the extremeness of Heiser's statements. Do take note of Chris Heard's comments on the post as well, which succinctly states why Logos will not make much of a dent on the Mac platform.

For my part I don't disagree with Heiser that Logos has the most impressive library for books, I'm very impressed with the syncing abilities of Logos, and I do think that syntactical databases are an important thing and Logos currently owns the yard. Important to note, however, is that Accordance is currently preparing a syntactical database, so it is not like Logos is holding the light and everyone else is fumbling around in the darkness- Accordance is well aware of the importance of this and it is in the works.

One thing struck me as odd, this quote: "And the means of searching these titles is superior as well due to under-the-hood issues." The "titles" refer to books, commentaries, etc. I don't have Logos 4 so I will have to see this- otherwise I'll have to state that this is just plain wrong. The usability of Accordance book modules from my experience is unmatched and much faster. So for my part, I do hope to see another post by Heiser to explain this comment some more. I am, after all, open to being corrected.

I'll try and keep this post updated as more discussion follows.

Latest Deinde bookmark 11/24/2009

• 4 Enoch: The Online Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism

  An academic project of the Enoch Seminar, directed by Gabriele Boccaccini (University of Michigan, USA) with Hanan Eshel (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Princeton Theological Seminary, USA).
  The Encyclopedia aims to offer a comprehensive introduction to scholarly research in Second Temple Judaism (or from the Babylonian Exile to the Bar-Kokhba Revolt). It includes biographies of Scholars and Authors as well as abstracts of scholarly and fictional Works on the period, from the 16th century to the present.
  The project is supported by the Department of Near Eastern Studies and the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies of the University of Michigan and by the Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies.

  tags: Reference_work, Judaism, Judaica

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Accordance news

Usually the most exciting thing during SBL time is not the papers or even the books, but the excitement of hearing about the latest additions to Accordance. The Accordance blog just made note of the new stuff now available- and I'm drooling. Time to start saving my pennies once again....

The only thing I'm slightly annoyed about is that I literally JUST BOUGHT the CNTTS release 5- and now the final release 6 is out! (if anyone at Accordance feels pity, I'd be happy to receive release 6 in the mail :-)

Apparatus of the Septuagint

Gottingen Septuagint: The major critical edition of the LXX published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, available soon for preorder, ready early 2010:

Genesis-$100, Leviticus-$80, Ruth-$50,

Pentateuch-$480 sale-$400

Swete Septuagint: Swete's edition of the LXX tagged text and textual apparatus now includes vols I and II through Tobit-$110

Cambridge LXX Apparatus: Includes the full Cambridge LXX textual apparatus through Ruth-$60

LXX Apparatus add-on (Swete+Cambridge)-$170 reg-$130

Dead Sea Scrolls Studies

Dead Sea Scrolls Images- New high resolution scans of early photos by John C. Trever, digitally enhanced by James E. Trever. This is the first publication of this collection in full width with scales-$129

Judean Desert Corpus: Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts from the Judean Desert, non-Biblical MSS not included in QUMRAN-$50

DSS Greek Bible: entire Greek corpus of biblical scrolls from the Judean Desert-$50

Rabbinics Series

Untagged and aligned with primary text, two new texts available for download

Tosefta-$80, Mekhilta-$40, Sifra-$60, Sifre BeMidbar-$40, Sifre Debarim-$40

Tannaitic add-on: Tosefta, Mekhilta, and Sifra-$180 sale-$150

Primary 8.4 DVD

Offers these new modules in addition to the above:

Apostolic Fathers (Holmes) 3rd Edition Updated Greek tagged text with revised critical apparatus, introduction, notes, and fresh English translation.-$100, upgrade from AF-$30

Bullinger Figures of Speech-$40

NKJV with Strong's Numbers (NKJVS)-$49, upgrade from NKJV-$20

Svenska Folkbibeln-$40

CNTTS Apparatus

Very detailed and now complete apparatus of the Greek sources of the New Testament-$100 includes NT Apparatus CD-ROM release 6, upgrade-$10

part 2: Deinde's morphs and expansions

In part one I talked about the origins of good old deinde, in this brief section I want to talk about some of the expansions and morphing that took place in the past few years.

Rather than doing a chronological account, I'll attack it on two fronts. The first is platforms and people. As I mentioned, it started with Paul Nikkel on the blog, and I slowly started chiming in more and more. As we continued on with the original system it slowly became clear that the discussion boards weren't really taking off. At the same time, the web search for biblical studies was pretty popular. Paul and I decided to change to a different platform to allow for more contributors to the deinde blog. While we were on the new platform we had Mark Cheeseman throw in a few posts, as well as JB Hood (who I hope will come on board again some time!)— but by this time I had become the main blogger. The platform we chose, which encouraged community editing and posting, wasn't the greatest for hosting other resources, and so we changed platforms again to Wordpress. It was while we were on Wordpress that I started adding more and more additional resources. During the Wordpress time, do to the ebb and flow of life, Paul had less and less time to contribute and deinde essentially became a one man show— kind of like a pool shark that needs a backer (me being the pool shark and Paul being the backer :-)

Next, early resources. The first real resource we had was a search specifically for biblical studies. The next expansion came with the biblical studies glossary, which we created very early on. This 'quick and dirty' glossary continues to be our most visited page on deinde, and one that I continue to expand even today.

After our move to the second platform and the introduction of Google's custom search engines, I took over the Biblical studies search. This was a natural thing for me to do, as I had really started to keep good track on resources on the internet (more on this later). This led me to expand and create two more searches, the journals search and the biblioblogs search. I continue to be very proud of the Deinde Web Search, and it is used pretty frequently. (One of the first things I do for my students is introduce them to the Deinde web search). The biblioblogs search also continues to be popular as well.

The next resource page, my unicode for Mac tutorial, is another page that is visited frequently. This tutorial grew out of a series of posts I wrote on unicode implementation and reflects my well-known emphasis on technology in biblical studies.

That's long enough for now. I'll do two more posts after this: (3) expansion of resources, and (4) current status and future prospects.

Latest Deinde bookmark 11/21/2009

• Encyclopedia Judaica online

  Encyclopedia Judaica is perhaps the finest reference work on Judaism. It is now freely available online thanks to the Jewish Community Association of Austin.

  tags: Judaica, Reference_work

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Markan copycat- Me! Deinde's relaunch and revitalization

Mark Goodacre has been a doing a great blog series on NTGateway's past, present, and future. The posts coincide with a presentation he is giving (or has already given) at SBL. I thought to myself, why not be a copycat? So this is first in a series of posts on Deinde. This first post is on ....

ROOTS
Although I'm traditionally known as the deinde guy now, those who have always followed us know that it was in fact Paul Nikkel who started the deinde website (go ahead and look back at the early days on archive.org's wayback machine). Deinde's lifeblood continues to rely on Paul Nikkel as he hosts deinde on his server. Deinde began as a site based primarily on php forums- Paul early on recognized the increasing value of community sites AND blogging. The original deinde also had its own web search (based on php digg) - the prototype of deinde's current web search.

When deinde began, it was Paul who did the majority of the blogging. I remember when Paul first asked me to consider helping out with deinde I almost said no- what a mistake that would have been! You see, although deinde is not the most prolific and frequently updated blogs, we are in fact one of the oldest- we're talking only a handful of biblical studies blogs when we first came on the scene. What I initially thought may be a detraction to my studies quickly gave me an outlet for research and discussion online and actually boosted my profile quite a bit- which was pretty cool! My first time going to SBL as a nervous student, people were recognizing my name and saying they read and enjoyed deinde! It felt great to be just a lowly student and actually feel like I was contributing to the guild. Publishers started occasionally sending me books, another indication that deinde was being read rather widely.

The next post will be on morphs and expansions, stay tuned!

Deinde Bookmarks- follow along!

I have created yet another blog feed for those who are interested in new bookmarks that I stumble across and add to the Bookmarks in Biblical Studies. When the bookmarks are noted in the feed, they are instantly added to the bookmarks gateway.

For those who follow the deinde blog already, new links found will be cross-posted, so you probably don't need to follow both. If you are interested in following along with these new findings, subscribe to this feed.

My hobbyhorse: electronic editions of lexicons, commentaries, etc.

Recently Rick Mansfield compared Accordance's new bibliographic citation feature with Logos's citation feature. While neither do it flawlessly, Accordance comes off better I think (of course I am triply biased, I'm a Mac user, Accordance user, and assisted with this new feature).

During the course of the video comparison, Rick mentions the fact that both programs include the program information (Accordance or Logos) in the citation. He mentions that students may have to remove the mention of Logos or Accordance for old-school teachers who prefer the citation to be of the "actual book" (I'm paraphrasing here, watch the video for his exact words).

Now, this is undoubtedly true as it has happened to me but I decided a few years ago that I will simply refuse to "quote the real thing" as if electronic editions are second class citizens. 2 things really bother me about this perspective, and teachers out there would do well to listen up.

First, if a student is using an electronic edition of a text in Accordance or Logos or whatever, they should tell you that- it should be treated as an edition of the book. If you ask them to cite the "real thing" they won't. That is to say, if they are using an electronic edition, they will not simultaneously use the hardcopy edition as well. That is doubling the amount of work and unduly punishing them for making a better choice! (more below) So, if you ask a student who cited a Logos or Accordance version of a text to "cite the real thing", all that student will do is take the words "Logos" or "Accordance" out of the citation. They will not go and look at the hard copy. Rather, your odd legalism for citation has caused them to improperly cite the source (giving credit where credit is due) AND you have asked the student to dupe you!

Second, whether you like it or not, electronic copies of texts are here to stay and will only grow with time. Bible software is an integral part of most scholars lives now. Why treat it so poorly? In my opinion, an electronic edition is often the better choice. I am able to do full text searches of electronic copies, read them side by side with other texts, etc. There is no end to their usefulness. I recommend to all of my students that they not only invest in Bible software, but to NOT EVEN bother with hard copies of lexicons, dictionaries, grammars, and commentaries. If they are available as a bible software module, they will be more useful in the long term for them if it resides on their Accordance shelf rather than their bookshelf.

Finally, even if you do not like that they are using an electronic edition, it is safer for your students (and for scholars) to make note of the electronic version in their citation. Why? Two reasons. First, no Bible software program is perfect- sometimes mistakes, human or computer, creep in. If something happens to be incorrect in the electronic version and this is cited in a paper, blame for misrepresentation cannot fall on the person who made the citation- the problem is with the edition not with the person. Second, there are times when the hardcopy original has mistakes (gasp!) and Bible software publishers choose (wisely) to fix those mistakes in the electronic edition. So sometimes the electronic copy is in fact better!

Thus ends my tirade. I will continue to bang this drum from time to time until every single person agrees with me.

—

Dr. JB Hood

Slightly belated, but I wanted to publicly offer my congratulations to my friend and fellow student at HTC Jason Hood for passing his viva. Jason once upon a time blogged for deinde on occasion (and still can, wink wink) and I enjoy hanging out at SBL (sadly not this year though).

I hope to see Jason's dissertation published in the future as it is a fine piece of work from academia's newest Matthean scholar and will be welcomed in the field.

Congrats Dr. Hood!

Booya! Accordance 8.4 offers citation feature

**update** the scripting superman Joe Weaks has just posted a great little script to solve the problem of Pages not supporting the "create footnote" feature of Accordance. Thanks Joe!

Fresh off the line today (Nov.10) is Accordance 8.4— a free upgrade for Accordance 8 users. While I always psyched to see a new Accordance release, I'm doubly excited to see this one because I had the privilege of helping out with this release and its main new feature.

8.4 now gives users the ability to copy citations along with accompanying bibliographic information. The bibliographic information is thorough and up to date, and is formatted in either Turabian or SBL style. Supercool also is its ability in both MS Word and Mellel to actually create the footnote for you.

As usual, this feature is dead simple to use. Just highlight the text that you are quoting and hit the "copy as citation" shortcut key (or use the Edit menu), then switch over to your word processor and hit "paste". The quoted text will be pasted in along with the bibliographic citation INCLUDING the page which the quote is taken from.

This new feature gives you customization features as well. Besides choosing Turabian or SBL, you can choose whether or not it automatically creates the footnote, you can encase the quote in characters (like quotation marks), and encase the bibliographic citation in characters as well. The time this will save me (and you) and convenience this brings for quoting text from my Accordance library makes this a most welcome addition.

Accordance 8 users out there- upgrade and enjoy!

A new blog (of sorts): Fresh Off the Press

I've begun a new page here on deinde which I hope others will find useful. It is in its preliminary stage, but at this point is usable and useful.

Basically, I've aggregated feeds and email alerts onto one page, which I call Fresh of the Press (this is the feed).

Currently, this feed will alert you to new issues of:

Aramaic Studies
Biblical Interpretation
Biblical Theology Bulletin
Criswell Theological Review
Currents in Biblical Research
Dead Sea Discoveries
Expository Times
Harvard Theological Review
Horizons in Biblical Theology
Journal for the Study of Judaism
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 Semitic Studies
Journal of Theological Studies
New Testament Studies
Novum Testamentum
Scottish Journal of Theology

The amount of information that comes through is largely dependent on the publisher— so don't blame me (see my previous post for my rant and suggestions on this matter).

Also, if you are a publisher or the editor of a journal that currently has no alerting mechanism but for whatever reason don't feel like doing a blog feed or email alerts, you can use Fresh of the Press to alert the world with one easy email. Whenever a new issue comes out, you could simply send an email with the TOC of your journal and any relevent links. The email will convert to a post in the feed. There are A LOT of biblical studies journals out there that have no alerting mechanism— hopefully this new feed and these 2 posts will encourage you to begin doing so.

If you are interested in posting your TOC's on this feed, please email me (danzac---at---gmail . com) for further instructions.

To all biblical studies journal publishers....

This is an open letter to all publishers of biblical studies journals,

Please update the way that you alert people of new issues. Some of you are doing a decent job, and some of you are not doing it all. For example,

1) Some are offering a regular text email, sometimes formatted with RIS to import directly to a bibliographic manager. That's pretty good too. But why email?
3) Those of you who have started to use RSS- good for you! The problem is that NONE of you are doing it right. Usually your RSS feed is a simple note of a new issue with no information. The other way is a post for every article- that is OVERKILL.

The current best publisher for alerting, IMO, is Cambridge. The email alert includes the entire issue and includes the abstract. But I ask again, why email? Why not an RSS feed with that info? And for the MAJORITY of publishers— let's get on the bandwagon. It costs you a few minutes per issue to cut and paste info into a blog to alert readers of new articles.

So here is my suggestion to you- If you have RSS abilities already, then make them better. ONE SINGLE rss entry whenever a new issue comes out. Include the abstract if available. The icing on the cake would be putting it in RIS format which can be imported right into bibliography managers for us computer geeks that use them.

Second, if you currently use email for alerts only — start offering the exact content of the email in a blog post. Pretty simple.

Third, if you don't alert the world at all via email or RSS feed, for goodness sake start doing it.

Fourth, if you haven't, read the blog post right after this one for an alternative way you can alert the world to your new issue.......

**EDIT**
For any publishers who may actually be listening, here is how you would format your RSS feed (or email to Fresh of the Press)
________________________________________
TY - JOUR
JA - Expository Times
VL - 120
IS - 12
PY - 2009
AU - DeLashmutt, Michael W.
T1 - Delusions and Dark Materials: New Atheism as Naïve Atheism and its Challenge to Theological Education
SP - 586-593
AB - This paper engages with New Atheism as reflected in the recent popular academic work of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens and the adolescent fiction of Philip Pullman. It asserts that New Atheism represents a challenge to theology not because of its philosophical critique or rigorous argumentation, but because it contributes to a popular cultural disposition which is uncritically anti-religious. Atheism itself is certainly not new, but the means by which the position of these New Atheists is articulated (ranging from popular books and films to bus advertisements) problematizes the task of theological education in a liberal Western society, such as that of modern Britain, by engendering a culture of naïve secularism. It is at this interface of popular culture and theological education that this evaluation of New Atheism hopes to offer its own critique of the critics.
ER -

TY - JOUR
JA - Journal for the Study of the New Testament
VL - 31
IS - 4
PY - 2009
AU - Sim, David C.
T1 - Matthew and the Pauline Corpus: A Preliminary Intertextual Study
SP - 401-422
AB - This study investigates the possibility that the author of Matthew's Gospel had access to the letters of Paul. Using the methods of intertextuality, it establishes criteria for determining whether this was indeed the case and concludes that it is more probable than not that the evangelist did know the Pauline epistles. An intertextual relationship between the Gospel and the Pauline corpus becomes clear once we understand that Matthew, as a Law-observant Christian Jew, was opposed to the more liberal theology of Paul. A single test case reveals that the evangelist was reacting to certain claims of the apostle expressed in his letters, and raises the prospect of further intertextual connections between these early Christian documents.
UR - http://jnt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/4/401
ER -

Biblical Studies on iTunes (and other stuff)

My thanks to Mark Goodacre, who tipped me off to a new blog to follow called "Text, Community, Mission". Besides adding that to my blogroll and to Deinde's biblioblog search, the author Daniel has done an incredible service to the www by compiling two great lists: One is a list of theological lectures on the internet (including ADC's Hayward lectures) and the other is a list of Biblical studies on iTunes U. Thanks very much Daniel!