Dr. Jim gets ready for Atlanta!

Yeah, I’m going.

I’m doing a paper in the Ideological Criticism section on Saturday Nov. 20 (session S20-319). The theme is “Secular Biblical criticism and Introductions to the Bible”. Johanna Stiebert (Leeds), presiding.

4:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Room: Fairlie – Hyatt Regency

My paper is called “Why is this mythology different from all other mythologies?” I have a really crappy and no longer entirely applicable abstract in the program book, but here is a better foreshadowing of what my paper is all about.

“Myth” is a notoriously difficult to define, but its application to any of the materials in the Old Testament is complicated by modern theological conceptions of the uniqueness of the Israelite world-view.  Fortunately, this state of affairs has been changing in key areas but it has yet to fully impact the way the Hebrew Bible is presented in textbooks intended (at least in part) for the secular classroom. despite there being a number of other wise excellent texts, few are really strongly based on the conceptions and methods taught in secular Religious Studies, and none I have seen really addressed the thorny problem of “myth” in anything approaching a comprehensive fashion. Some books, while claiming a secular religious studies approach, actually undermine it.
The blurred dividing line between secular biblical research and confessional biblical interpretation is maintained in these books, the publishing industry, and in most academic societies devoted to biblical studies, such as the Society of Biblical Literature. This, in turn, helps preserve a barrier between secular biblical criticism and the wider field of Religious Studies. A fully secular critical introduction that is designed as a component in a comprehensive study of world and/or ancient religions remains lacking.