If you’ve never been to a conference of the Evangelical Theological Society and you wonder what you might hear there, I thought I’d give you a list of the presentations I attended. In most cases, the presenter reads his paper. Sometimes he hands out his paper or an outline.
There were many sessions that I could not attend because of schedule conflicts (there are probably 25 sessions going on simultaneously). Sometimes I chose the subject over the presenter, and sometimes I chose to hear a presenter when another subject was of greater interest. Overall, my experience this year was very positive.
Bryant Wood, “Tracking the Israelites in the Sinai Wilderness” – if he’s right, Mount Sinai was not much more than a speedbump. (I don’t think he’s right.)
Doug Petrovich, “A Search for Historical Evidence of Joseph’s Impact on Egypt” – this could be very interesting as he continues research.
Seth Rodriquez, “Site Identification: In Search of a Methodology?” – doesn’t this sound like a great topic?
Robert Thomas, “The Hermeneutics of Integrity” – I’m not sure what kind of genitive we have here, but he made some important points.
Gary E. Yates, “Isaiah’s Promise of the Restoration of Zion and Its Canonical Development” – possibly the most interesting paper (32 pages long!), given my current obsession.
Bryan Cribb, “A Series of Unfortunate Events: How Hezekiah’s Interrupted Death Story Hails the Exile” – I’m much more into these kind of studies than I used to be.
Richard Hess, “Personal and Social Ethics among the Canaanites” – he started off the lecture with “You can’t trust what the Bible says about the Canaanites.” Yep, that’s the Hess I know and (don’t) love.
Charlie Trimm, “David, the Warrior After God’s Own Heart? The Ethics of David’s International Wars according to the Narrator of 2 Samuel” – excellent presentation; one that makes me glad I went to ETS this year.
John Oswalt, “Summary of ‘The Bible among the Myths ‘” – good insights and nice to hear the voice behind the commentary (of Isaiah)
Bruce Waltke, “Being Money-Wise according to the Book of Proverbs” – I went to this more to hear the speaker than for the topic. Yet it made me want to spend the rest of my life studying Proverbs.
I didn’t go to a single plenary session. That may have contributed to my positive experience mentioned above. The above accounts for two of my four days in New Orleans. The other two days I was at the Bible and Archaeology Fest and I plan to comment on some of those good lectures on the BiblePlaces Blog.
I ate meals with a variety of people, including three former IBEX students, one seminary classmate, one DTS professor, one TMC Bible professor I had not met, and one fellow Texan who I “met” through my (other?) blog. I also met and talked briefly with the author of another two-volume Isaiah commentary that I am really enjoying. I mentioned previously that I would be rooming with our church’s pastor and youth pastor; that went very well (except for the snoring).
As for academic conferences, Justin Taylor yesterday on his blog provided a couple of quotations on the Value of Academic Conferences that are both humorous and serious. I entirely agree.