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Conference Recap #SBLAAR24

Conference Recap #SBLAAR24

Last updated on: November 29, 2024 at 4:44 pm by James F. McGrath

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Conference Recap #SBLAAR24 2024-11-29T16:44:26-05:00 James F. McGrath

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The combined annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego ( #sblaar24 ) was amazing. Upon arrival I had a chance to reconnect with old friends who were only there that first day before, and to record a short video (because I was running late) with Jacob Berman for his History Valley YouTube channel.

The first full day of the conference began with a book review panel about John of History, Baptist of Faith. The room was packed, literally standing room only and there were several people standing. The discussion was lively. Even though harshly critical of some details, Joel Marcus said, ‘Jim has produced the most stimulating work of historical reconstruction I have read in a long time. The book fairly bursts with ideas, not only related to the JB and Jesus movements, but also to the history of Israelite religion, Second Temple Judaism, early Jewish apocalypticism, early Jewish revolutionary movements, early Jewish mysticism, Gnosticism, Mandaeanism, and even the origin of an obscure ritual associated with Rosh Hashanah! I would venture to prophesy that scholars will be mining the book for decades, panning through its countless suggestions. Indeed, Jim frequently says things like, “I don’t have the space to go into this in more detail; it deserves a full-length monograph.” And it often does.’

I loved the way the different panelists found different parts of my book compelling or not, based on their own work on John the Baptist, Q, the historical Jesus, and/or the Mandaeans. The responses have persuaded me that I accomplished the main thing I set out to, which was to offer an engaging and innovative reconstruction of the life of John (in Christmaker) and plausible new answers to questions that either have been frustratingly difficult to answer or have rarely been asked.

One example of that was the focus of the only paper I read at the conference, on editorial fatigue and the Baptist source behind the Protevangelium of James. If that doesn’t sound fascinating, let me say a bit more. There is an infancy Gospel from the second century, whose title is sometimes rendered the Infancy Gospel of James. It starts with a story about the parents of Mary, who are elderly and childless, like Zechariah and Elizabeth (and so many others). They are miraculously granted a child, whom they dedicate to the Lord. I won’t go into all the details, but suddenly at the end it shifts to focusing on John the Baptist, not mentioned up until that point. What I suggest is that, instead of the ending being chopped off of a Baptist source and appended to a Christian work, the Christian author had been reworking a Baptist source throughout. Thus the reason Mary’s parents (called Joachim and Anna) resemble Zechariah and Elizabeth is that in the source being reworked they were Zechariah and Elizabeth.

I explore the reconstruction of that source more fully in John of History, Baptist of Faith. My conference paper focused more than the book chapter does on the methodological point. Editorial fatigue is when an author is using a source and transforming it, yet at some point includes a detail from the source without transforming it, one that does not gel with the new version the author was creating and the alterations they introduced. We see that in the way Matthew uses the Gospel of Mark in the story of John the Baptist, and I suggest also in the Protevangelium of James. I think we can look for these features in texts and posit underlying sources on that basis even when they are no longer extant.

The term “editorial fatigue” was popularized by Mark Goodacre, and I was thrilled that he was in the session where I read my paper and had a very positive reaction to it. I am hopeful that, even as the enthusiasm and interest (and sales of my book) expressed at the conference indicate a lot of enthusiasm about my book, the review panel and paper will in turn have generated still more.

I was also interviewed by a team of Jehovah’s Witnesses because of my earlier scholarship on Christology and monotheism, in particular my book The Only True God. I am not strongly anti-trinitarian in the way they are, and indeed I have a certain appreciation for the symbolism. Nonetheless, my arguments that the earliest Christians were monotheists in exactly the same sense as their Jewish contemporaries, and that the Trinity is a later development and not a teaching or assumption of the New Testament texts, have made my writings popular among unitarians of various sorts.

There were excellent papers by Robyn Faith Walsh (who mentioned her article “The Mouse of the Mysteries” which you should definitely take a look at), Mark Goodacre, Robert MacEwan, Hugo Lundhaug, Stephen Carlson, Joshua King, Emily Fero-Kovassy, Amber Dillon, Jeffrey Garcia, and Jeffrey Gibson, among those I got to hear because I was in the sessions in question. There was also a wonderful pedagogy swap session in the Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity AAR program unit, featuring David Maldonado Rivera, Jeremy Steinberg, Laura Locke Estes, and Jeannie Sellick. I was sorry to not make it to other TELA sessions due to overlaps with SBL sessions I was involved in.

I was also delighted to have the opportunity to reconnect with so many fellow academics and have interesting conversations with them, outside of sessions. Also worth mentioning is that the weather in San Diego is consistently wonderful this time of year, as it is all year round. Indianapolis on the other hand was cold when I left, indeed it had snowed just the day before. Such a contrast!

Other attendees have also shared posts about the conference, including Nijay Gupta, Yung Suk Kim, and Christian Brady.

I will be presenting at Starbase Indy this weekend. Check out the program and come along to enjoy this wonderful event if you are in the area!

Want to know more? Just ask, and I’ll share more about this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature!

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