THIS SUMMER IS FULL OF CONFERENCES, not least, and most recently, the International Society of Biblical Literature meeting here in St. Andrews, which finished up as I was composing this post. As I just mentioned, it was highly successful: with 850 delegates it was large for an ISBL meeting and it was also, as far as I can ascertain, the largest conference ever held in St. Andrews. Congratulations to Professor Kristin De Troyer, who organized everything flawlessly, to Dr Beth Tracy, who with Kristin omnipresently oversaw everything, and to the many postgraduate assistants and other University staff who helped make it happen. The ISBL this year was one of the events tied to the celebrations of the six-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the University of St. Andrews. The upcoming British New Testament Conference is as well.
I haven't yet encountered any blog reports on the ISBL, but I'm sure they will be coming. Meanwhile, here are some reports on other recent conferences.
Egil Asprem has some posts on the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden: Getting ready for ESSWE4: interdisciplinary panels, international networking, magickal musick – and the transhuman apocalypse, The biggest esotericism conference yet – ESSWE4 and the schizophrenic life of academics, and ESSWE4 round-up – reviews and impressions from across the esosphere. The last post links to other blog reactions to the conference.
Larry Hurtado on the Peter Conference: Edinburgh 2013.
James McGrath on the The ARAM conference on the Mandaeans in Oxford: Conference Papers (ARAM Conference on the Mandaeans, Morning Session, 8 July 2013); A New Dictionary of Mandaic; Proceedings from Previous ARAM Conferences on the Mandaeans; Mandaean Banquet; Female Figures in Mandaean Religious Art; Comparison and Collation of Mandaean Texts; Pihta and Polemic in the Mandaean Canonical Prayerbook; and The End of the 2013 ARAM Conference on the Mandaeans.
If you have published a blog report on a conference relevant to PaleoJudaica and you would like me to consider linking to it, do drop me a note.