Get a Free Book!

It seems like all the cool people are moving to Wordpress. I have decided that I can't be cool unless I switch too. So I am planning to make the move at the beginning of January. But I need your help. "Sandwiches There" is frankly a stupid blog name. Before that, I was "The Hungry Scholar," but that made sense when I was only interacting with non-scholars. So what should my blog be named once I move? If you suggest the winning name, I will send you a FREE BOOK! Yes, you read correctly. I will send you a book from my very own book collection. And if it's a really really great name, maybe it will be a useful book too! Wow, the excitement is making me all giddy. If you offer me a blow-it-out-of-the-water name, I will even consider buying you something from your Amazon wish list.

(It will really have to be just amazing since I'm pretty much broke and need to feed my five small children. But we can sacrifice food for a few days. It's really no big deal.)

But in addition to the prize, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped make a real difference in the world. Good luck!

Some Thoughts About Blogging

I am still trying to sort out my identity in the blogosphere, who I am and what I am all about. Last week I was telling everyone I knew about blogging and about some of the issues I have been dealing with, like inclusivism and inerrancy. And as soon as I've gotten you all to start reading my blog, I stop posting. Sorry about that. Now lest you write this off as just another apology-for-not-blogging post (which I hate almost as much as "Under construction" web pages), I promise I have a greater purpose here.



Mostly I've been spending my blogging time trying to catch up on reading other people's blogs and submitting (what I hope to be) thoughtful reflection. Here's some of what I've been interested in:

1. Brian LePort has been looking at interpretive issues related to the Old Testament poetry books. His analysis seems quite close to Vanhoozer's proposal that the primary purpose of scripture is not to convey propositional truths, but rather to provide everything we need to live out the Christian life.
2. Speaking of which, Ben Myers featured a guest post by Byron Smith reviewing Vanhoozer's, The Drama of Doctrine. Dr. Vanhoozer was my theology professor last fall and is quickly becoming one of my biggest theological influences.
3. My friend Jake has a great meditation on Psalm 50 and offering sacrifices to God.
4. Brandon Wason has been conducting an informal poll regarding the so-called synoptic problem. I weighed in with my two-cents, which in turn got quoted on Mark Goodacre's blog, that blog that is currently ranked as the #1 Biblical Studies blog by Amazon's UnSpun. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have made it into a "real" blog!
5. Scot McKnight offered a great list on what it takes to be a successful blogger. It got me asking why I am blogging in the first place. Really I'm blogging for me, to try to work out my own thoughts on different theological issues I'm dealing with. But if I'm going to have a "good" blog, I have to do some blogging that is purely for you, the reader.

This leads me to my two questions. First, now that at least a few people are reading my blog, my blog title feels all the more pretentious. "Real" scholars don't need to call attention to the fact that they are scholars; their work speaks for itself. Only a scholar-wannabe would use the word "scholar" in his own blog title. My defense? Okay, I admit it. I'm a scholar-wannabe. I am just that much more aware of it now. Should I change the title?

Which leads me to the second question. I ask myself what I'm good at, and I arrived at this conclusion: I'm good at asking questions. Is there a market for a blog that majors in asking questions? All I know is that I have all sorts of questions that I'm trying to sort through. That's why I'm hungry... hungry for answers, for truth.

So how much of blogging should be for the blogger, and how much for others? What do you all think?

Hunger and Scholarship

I started this blog yesterday with an explanation of the title. I spend way too much time wording it just right and it was very un-blog-like of me. Here's a go at it today.

Hungry is because I am intellectually and spiritually hungry. It specifies the basic attitude I hope to take towards my work - hungry for answers. I certainly don't feel I have all the answers, and I am usually turned off by those who think they do. Not to say that I have no answers, but I am especially cognizent of what I lack.

Scholarship is because that is what resonates with me right now. I began my Christian walk with an emphasis on the experiential over the intellectual. In the past few years my focus has shifted so that I am much more interested in the intellectual. My reading material of choice is 700-page books with lots of footnotes.

I am starting this post in an effort to get my writing out to a larger audience. Unlike my undergraduate years, I actually have something to say now. I would like to share them with more people than my proof-reader (my wife) and my professor. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. I hope to submit some of these to journals for publication, though they will need a lot more work than I have given them so far.

I am not sure how to handle footnotes on a blog. Can I cut and paste from a document with footnotes into a blog post? Maybe I should attach them as Adobe Acrobat files? I'm not quite sure the best way to handle it. Can anyone offer advice?