Visiting Ben Franklin's Non-Existent Home

This week was the Society Biblical Literature's annual conference Nov. 18-22. This year SBL was held in Philadelphia. Last year it was in San Antonio and next year it will be in Washington D.C. For a list of future SBL meeting places: http://www.sbl-site.org/Congresses/Congresses_AnnualMeeting.aspx

I like to describe SBL as the Super Bowl or Final Four for Bible scholars. It's the largest gathering of biblical scholars in the world (over 8,000) cram into a city every weekend before Thanksgiving and hash and spew out new, sometimes incredible and sometimes preposterous , but often times tedious theories on how we can better understand the Bible. There are hundreds of lectures given in a plethora of hotel and convention rooms on such diverse subjects as (these lectures were given in Philadelphia this year):

"The Johannine Ego Eimi sayings in Cognitive-Critical Perspective"

or how about...

"From 'Guerrilla Exegesis' to Open with Caution and Beyond: US Black Biblical Ideological Criticism"

this one would have been fun...

"The Edomites are Coming"

or especially...

"A Hard Headed Woman? Eve in the Hebrew Bible and Later Jewish Interpretations "


Anyway, it's a great time to reconnect with friends from all over the world. We stayed at the Penn's View Hotel off of the Delaware River http://www.pennsviewhotel.com/ A nice little intimate place to take in the Liberty Bell City. One night we ate at the City Tavern http://www.citytavern.com/ originally built in 1772. All the American revolutionary heros ate here at some point in the midst of their scheming.

We also visited Ben Franklin's house (though it doesn't exist anymore). Instead they have put up these gigantic metal bars in the shape of where the house use to stand. Also visited the Post Office that Ben use to work at (apparently the first Post Office of the United States). Even ate a philly cheese steak on the side of the road. No, we didn't see the Liberty Bell and similar fare because of lack of time with too many security checkpoints to go through.

The whole reason we were in Philly was for this "Super Bowl bible" conference. Sharon presented a paper on why biblical Hebrew teachers should teach Hebrew as a spoken, living language. We had a standing room audience. Quite fun to see all the curious looks in the crowd. I did a paper on the Sower parable of Jesus. See the blog entitled:"A Synoptic Parable ". We had a big reception for the Jerusalem School (of which we are associate members) on the last day thrown by Brian Becker. See www.js.org for more details about the Jerusalem School. So it was a great time for one and all.

As we returned from Philadelphia to New York by bus we brought along Sharon's parents and Brian Schultz. Brian was flying out for Israel that night and the Buths were joining us for Thanksgiving. My mom, Judy, and brother, Jonathan, flew up from Florida for Thanksgiving. And the next blog is about doing our first Turkey day in New York City.