Biblical Research Fails

Douglas Magnum has posted one of the best ideas I’ve heard in weeks (if not months): a Journal of Dead-Ends in Biblical Research.

Sometimes you end up with a mountain of data that only demonstrates that such and such an idea is not a profitable avenue for research. As a graduate student, almost every good idea you might have has been examined by someone else. If you think your idea is “original”, odds are that someone else has thought of it, too, done the hours of research, and abandoned it as a dead-end. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to alert others that the idea is a dead-end?

Doug proposes some sort of website dedicated to these pitfalls. Sort of a FAILBlog for biblical scholarship. I know that I have a few dead-ends I could contribute….