Last week I posted on the apparent news that the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abuna Pauolos, was going to reveal the Ark of Covenant to the world. In the comments on that post, jacob commented “Who cares about a fake ‘Ark of the Covenant.’ ” This is a good question. An even better question to my mind would be what exactly would indicate that the Ark was real or fake? read more…
Pat McCullough has posted the Apocalypse of Eve. This astounding document from the 2nd century CE appears to be uncanny prediction of the Biblical Studies Carnival 43.
While some minimalists will no doubt malign the authenticity of this document from the early church, it nonetheless provides us with an historical picture of what the author(s) thought were (to be) the highlights in biblioblogosphere during June ‘09.
Additionally, the Biblioblog Top 50 for June is also up. Congratulations to Mandy and Calvin whose blog The Floppy Hat broke the top 10, coming in at No. 5!
Update: Richard Bartholomew reports why the ark is a no-show. Bummer.
Seriously folks, you can’t make this stuff up. IsraelNN.com (among others) reports:
Holy Ark Announcement Due on Friday
An Ethiopian church leader says Friday, June 26, marks the right time to unveil the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, which he says has been hidden in his church for centuries.
Abuna Pauolos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, was in Rome this week to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. While there, he told reporters that the time had come to reveal before the world the Holy Ark. He said that the holy container has been in the custody of his church for hundreds of years. read more…
Earlier this week I was tagged by Adam on Ken Brown’s most influential book meme challenge. With all that’s been going on in my life the past few weeks (teaching, moving, writing, applying for jobs), I haven’t kept up with reading blogs. At the moment there are some 400 posts sitting in my RSS reader. As such, I just realized today that I was even tagged! read more…
Michael L. Westmoreland-White at Levelers has been running a series of posts on SciFi and Fantasy lit. He has this to say on the influence of Gilgamesh on these genres:
The Epic of Gilgamesh. An epic poem from ancient Sumeria, this is one of the earliest works of fiction. We don’t know when the first version was written in Sumerian, but the standard Akkadian version was compiled from older legends sometime around 1,300 B.C.E. It tells of the exploits of a legendary King Gilgamesh, blessed by the gods with supernatural strength but who is bored with ruling his kingdom, and his friend, Enkidu the Wild Man (who is even stronger than Gilgamesh) and their quests and battles with incredible monsters. The story influenced Homer’s The Oddysey, was outlined in brief in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode (”Darmok”), and has even influenced some role playing video games. For non-scholars only interested in reading the work for entertainment, the most accessible English translation is N. K. Sanders, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Epics, 2006) which reprints the prose edition of the Penguin Classics, 1960. The “Sword and Sorcery” subgenre of fantasy is particularly indepted to the Gilgamesh stories.
Beyond these influences, I tell my classes that popular movies such as Fight Club, Top Gun, and Stepbrothers are all modern retelling of this ancient text. However, I have been known to lie to students.
I’m a bit annoyed to discover that Scibd no longer hosts Charles Penglase’s Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. Bummer.
However, today I found Martin Mueller’s introduction to the The Iliad at the Perseus Project; so I guess it all works out. (One can, of course, buy the book
From McSweeny’s:
1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg’s
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok – ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf’s m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.
M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl.
ttyl, JHWH.
ps. wwjd?
I was just perusing the top 50 biblioblogs for May and noticed that the blog itself came in at number 13. Is it just me, or does it seem odd that the blog The Biblioblog Top 50 is calculated into the biblioblog top 50? Maybe I’m just not enough of a fan of recursive systems (I never liked WINE when I ran Linux, either).
Welcome to Biblical Studies Carnival 42, your hitchhiker’s guide to the biblioblogging universe. In many of the more relaxed corners of the blogosphere, the ‘Biblical Studies Carnival’ has already supplanted the great Wikipedia as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more populist work in two important respects. First, it has better grammar; and second, this month it has the words ‘DON’T PANIC’ inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. read more…
This month’s Biblical Studies Carnival will be hosted here at Ketuvim. Be sure to submit your choices for BS 42, which will hopefully hold the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
To submit a post either 1) use the Biblical Studies Carnival email, or 2) email me at myurl AT gmail.com, or 3) send me a tweet, or even 4) make submissions by commenting on this post.
Since my specialization is ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible, postings on the Jesus festschrift (aka the New Testament) are especially welcomed.
