Off to SBL in Atlanta, plus review of Schäfer, Origins

I'M OFF TO ATLANTA for the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, which runs from Saturday to Tuesday. I'm presenting two papers there. The first is on Saturday morning:

Review of Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism
(Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2009)

SBL S20-114 Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism Section

Click on the link to download the paper as a pdf file.

The book under review is partially available at Google Books (here). Ordering information can be found there as well. It's expensive for individuals, but if your local research library doesn't have it yet, make them buy it.

You can find an early summary of what eventually became my book Descenders to the Chariot (mentioned in the review) here:

The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism

Early drafts of two of my articles mentioned in the review can be found by following the links:

Ritual in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha

The Hekhalot Literature and the Ancient Jewish Apocalypses (pdf file)

In the review I also refer to the work of Professor Maxine Grossman. The text of an online lecture she gave to my Dead Sea Scrolls class is available here and it treats some of the relevant issues. Do read her book, though.

I have received the sad news that, due to unavoidable circumstances, Professor Schäfer will be unable to attend the session.

I'm giving the second paper, "What Just Happened: The rise of 'biblioblogging' in the first decade of the twenty-first century," on Monday. The next post, which I have preposted for publication in 15 minutes, will have the full text of that paper, with links.

Have a good week. I shall be very busy, but I hope to be able to continue some blogging during the conference.