ETS

The blogging has been slow, and unlike those who found time to blog, whilst still at ETS/SBL, I couldn't bare looking at a computer screen for long periods of time. Sleeping only three to five hours a night is not something I am particularly good at, add to the mix the fact that I gave a paper and had interviews, the stress levels were in a constant state of flux. So now that I have had time to reflect upon my experience here goes. I will start with ETS:

ETS

The Evangelical Theological Society is a crazy conglomerate of people who in some way profess to be evangelical. Evangelical as a term, is a great example of a word that shows the problems of signification, since it signifies very different things to very different communities. This is reflected by the wide spectrums of papers given, and also the comments to those papers. That being said I only went to four papers, in which only one was completely egregious and the reader deserved to be shot on the spot for making so many category mistakes (yes we postmoderns do care about the internal logic of a paper).

The highlight was obviously hanging out with friends, laughing, and just being all around misfits. I also got to meet Richard Hays, and chat with him a little, so that was cool. I met one of Richard's students, who had a really brilliant idea, setting up a young scholars study group at ETS, but alas, somebody would have to organize all that, but at least you could solicit papers instead of having them grouped in some incoherent conglomerate.

The ETS site was appalling, the building seemed to be at its heyday in the late 80's, which is beginning to get old, there were no restaurants close by, and unless one had transportation, you had to wait for shuttles to get back and forth from your hotel. Many of the rooms had no podiums, and there was an oppressive spirit that hovered over a place called the 'Scanticon'.

My paper seemed to go well enough, though there were very few comments, which was disappointing since that is why you give papers. But it was all good, and ETS is simply a great way to meet up with old friends, and meet new ones.

And I bought no books there, can you belive it!