Because of my location in Israel, I am not able to attend the annual ETS meetings. I have had the opportunity twice – 2001 because of disaster I was in California and able to fly to Colorado Springs, and last year when I was able to combine a visit to Dallas Theological Seminary with the meeting in San Antonio. But I’m a member and I also look at the program with interest at what I’m missing. I realize that some of the topics are more interesting than the papers or presentations themselves. Nonetheless, I miss this opportunity to hear from others.
A friend recently sent me a link to request papers from the conference that were submitted to Zondervan. Unfortunately only about three of the dozen of interest to me have papers available. If anyone knows another source for these papers, let me know. Otherwise, you can see what I would like to hear more about.
Terry Hofecker, Grace Theological Seminary. Iron Age Gezer: A Synthetic View from Scripture, Extra-biblical Texts and Stratigraphy.
John A. Beck, Bible World Seminars. David and Goliath, a Story of Place: The Narrative-Geographical Shaping of 1 Samuel 17.
Marshall Wall, Northwestern College. Rescued by the Hand of God: Archaeological and Historical Evidence for the Biblical Account of Sennacherib, Hezekiah, and the Army of 185,000.
Mark Strauss, Bethel Seminary San Diego. Do Literal Bible Versions Really Show Greater Respect for Verbal, Plenary Inspiration? (A response to Wayne Grudem).
Mark Dubis, Union University. The Land in Biblical Perspective I
Walter C. Kaiser, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The Land in Biblical Perspective II
Brian Toews, Philadelphia Biblical University. The Land in Biblical Perspective III.
Halvor Ronning, Home for Bible Translators and Scholars (Jerusalem). The Church is Israel: From Barnabas to Augustine.
Robert L. Thomas, The Master’s Seminary. The State of Evangelism: Fact of Fiction, Orthodoxy or Heresy?
The only one of those 12 I went to was the one on David and Goliath. I thought it was all right, but not great. He mostly just talked about the geographical markers in the story and where they were. He could have used some of your aerial pictures of the Elah Valley. He was trying to show how geography shapes a story. For example, he was talking about how the Philistines are not supposed to be in the Elah Valley, and at the end of the story, they have fled from there. He handed out a one page outline, and I can email that to you if want it. It has his email address, so you could then email him for the full paper if you wanted. One recommendation: The paper by Chisholm on Judges as an apology for YHWH against the Canaanites gods was excellent, and I think it is available from the Zondervan site.
Charlie
The only one I went to was Kaiser’s. There wasn’t a handout for that one–it was a panel discussion on some book by some other guy.
The paper on Gezer was cancelled. I tried to go to it.
A.D.
Charlie – thanks for the comments. I didn’t necessarily expect it to be so good (given the guy’s title and the different standards of what is good in the US regarding Bible geography). But I’m proud of you for standing up and telling him that before the Pictorial Library came out he had an excuse for not using awesome aerial visuals, but not anymore! :-) I had grabbed the one by Chisholm already and will now put it first on the reading list. Thanks!