Another boring conference . . .

Drove down to Minnesota last week for a regional SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) conference. I know what a complete and utter shock this will be to many of you, but I find those conferences so . . . deadly . . . boring. Somehow us post-Enlightenment North American professional, "objective," "academic" folks have actually managed to make the Bible boring. You'd think that would be impossible: how could take something like that Bible and make it boring? It would take no small amount of skill to make Handel's Messiah boring; but we've done it to something even greater. I don't quite know how, except that secondary literature--theories and interpretations and reconstructions about the biblical text--have somehow become the primary literature of many biblical scholars, and the primary text--the Bible--has become secondary, merely a launching point for modern obsessions with the pre-history of the text or whatever.

I mean, I sympathize. As a scholar, I've got to publish and find ways to interact meaningfully with the text. But I frequently find scholars to pursue this (laudable) goal by making modern biblical scholarship the focus, so that interacting with other scholars and books is the main goal of scholarship; and you get involved articles which quote the Bible a handful of times, incidentally. I'm interested in something else: an attentive, delighted fascination with the text itself, with books about the text staying secondary, off to one side, important but not all-consuming. There are treasure there in Deuteronomy and Job 9-10 and Isaiah 15-16 and the last chapter of Amos that are just waiting to be found--and that's my method. Learn and drink deeply from the text, and write about that limitless depth; and subdue unruly human verbiage so that it stays secondary, ancilliary to the real thing. I'm not there yet, of course, but I hope (by God's grace) I'm on my way.

Part of the reason for going was to see my Grandparents Giles, who have not met their great-grandchildren, and to see my aunt and uncle, who pastor in the BGC in Alexandria. So it was wonderful to see them, and my mother flew up as well. Unfortunately, though, it took us three days to get through N. Dakota because of snow; and we went into a ditch on the first day, had to spend the night in Minot, and get towed out of the ditch. All things considered, we were really lucky - we hit some ice, spun around, and landed (back-first) in a big snow drift in the median. It was the safest way to lose control of the car, in other words; and as soon as we went into the ditch, a Minot resident stopped, let us use his cell phone, and drove us to a hotel. Say what you like about small towns, people really do help each other out. So I'm very thankful for God for his protection . . . and determined not to be a normal scholar.