University Readers
Over the years SBL has received many requests from its members for course packs that combine materials from SBL’s extensive list of publications. Today we are happy to announce that we are now able to offer such course packs to our members and other leaders in higher education through our partners University Readers. To view SBL’s current offerings on University Readers, click here . Let us know what you think!

Bible Odyssey
We have launched a beta version of our new website, Bible Odyssey, to all SBL members.
We welcome your feedback. Please respond via our short 10-question survey. If you have any questions, email bibleodyssey@sbl-site.org

New Books from SBL
Reading 1–2 Peter and Jude
Eric F. Mason (Editor), Troy W. Martin (Editor)

Scholars engage the best contemporary work on 1–2 Peter and Jude in this student-oriented book. The first four chapters in this collection—on authorship and pseudonymity, literary relationships among the three books, epistolary rhetoric, and apocalyptic elements—consider important, foundational issues related to all three epistles. These essays lay the groundwork for more focused chapters that examine theology and theory in 1 Peter as well a stylistic, theological, and thematic overlap in Jude and 2 Peter.

Paper $35.95, ISBN 9781589837379
Hardcover $50.95, ISBN 9781589839403
E-book (pdf) $35.95, ISBN 9781589837386
294 pages • Resources for Biblical Study 77

Aristaenetus, Erotic Letters
Peter Bing and Regine Höschele

Full of erotic spice and charm, this late-antique collection of fictitious letters was the work of a gifted litterateur of circa 500 C.E. who drew on a wealth of classical and postclassical models. Long known only to specialists of ancient literature, Aristaenetus’s beguiling epistles are now available to a broader readership in the first complete English translation in nearly three centuries. The Greek text appears on facing pages.

Paper $24.95, ISBN 9781589837416
Hardcover $39.95, ISBN 9781589838826
E-book (pdf) $24.95, ISBN 9781589837423
184 pages • Writings from the Greco-Roman World 32

The Bible and Posthumanism
Jennifer L. Koosed, editor

What does it mean to be human? We are poised somewhere in between animality and divinity, aided, enhanced, and altered by technology, changing and changed by our environment. The Bible begins with men and women created in the image of the divine and given dominion over the rest of creation. However, the Bible also contains multiple moments of disruption, boundary crossing, and category confusion: animals speak, God becomes man, and spirits haunt the living. At the end, monsters confound. Pointing beyond human-centric ideologies, the essays in this collection explore biblical texts from Genesis to Revelation in conversation with the critical theories of posthumanism.

Paper $43.95, ISBN 9781589837515
Hardcover $58.95, ISBN 9781589839397
E-book (pdf) $43.95, ISBN 9781589837522
356 pages • Semeia Studies 74

Passings
Ellen B. Aitken
Robert M. Grant (1917-2014)

SBL Subscriptions
Is it time to renew your subscription to the Journal of Biblical Literature or the Review of Biblical Literature? You can check by logging in to the website with your member number, !*SBLID*!, then click on “Renew Now” at the top of the page you can see your subscription information. If you wish to receive the next print issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature you need to renew by August 15, 2014. If you wish to subscribe to the Review of Biblical Literature (print) for 2014 you need to subscribe by November 1, 2014. As a member of SBL you have access to both RBL and JBL at all times, online via our website.

SBL Calendar
Events for Biblical and Religious Studies

Incorporation of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA)
In 2012, The Society of Biblical Literature announced that it had received a $140,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support a three-year consultation to explore the formation of an independent learned society for scholars of the Qur’an. It is with great excitement that we report that the Board of Directors of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) met on 29 May 2014 in Atlanta to approve the formation of the independent organization by ratifying its articles of incorporation and bylaws. These articles will be filed in the District of Columbia, as will its application for non-profit status. An announcement of this development is on the IQSA website (www.iqsaweb.org). Please take the opportunity to support and encourage the work of your peers in Qur’anic studies. As an affiliate of SBL, IQSA will hold meetings at the Annual Meeting, and we are confident that you will find its program to be filled with engaging and path-breaking scholarship.

Congratulations to the 2014 Award Recipients
The 2014 David Noel Freedman Award for Excellence and Creativity in Hebrew Bible Scholarship has been awarded to Guy Darshan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) for his paper entitled, “The Origins of the Foundation Stories Genre in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Eastern Mediterranean.”
More information >>

The 2014 Paul J. Achtemeier Award for New Testament Scholarship has been awarded to James W. Barker (Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion, Luther College) for his paper entitled, “Ancient Compositional Practices and the Gospels: A Reassessment.”
More information >>

It is with great pleasure that SBL offers these awards – a singular honor from colleagues and peers! We would also like to thank our members whose contributions make these awards possible. If you would like to know more about the Achtemeier and Freedman awards read more here.

International Meeting pre-registration will end at midnight on Friday, June 20.
An ICI Forum will be held in Vienna at the SBL International Meeting on 7/07/2014, 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM, in HS 45 - Hauptgebäude. Interested members, regardless of country of residence, are invited to participate in the discussion. More International Meeting information >>

Annual Meeting Registration Deadline
The last chance for Early Bird registration for the SBL Annual Meeting is Thursday, June 19! Early Bird registration rates are in effect through the end of the day (11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time). After this day they will increase an additional $50 so please make sure to Register Now. You may also make a hotel reservation at one of our available conference hotels when you register
More Annual Meeting information >>

Humanities Indicators
Please mark your calendar for June 19th, when the American Academy of Arts & Sciences will roll-out the first major revision to the structure and design of the Humanities Indicators (http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/) since the site was first published in 2009.

Changes will include:

• a fresh and streamlined design to help you find and identify information;
• fully revised text that highlights key findings on each topic;
• full search capability across the entire site and in each subject area;
• PowerPoint slides and PDFs that can be easily incorporated into a presentation or article;
• a new report on the state of humanities funding (showing how the humanities compare to other fields and trends through the recession); and
• an online forum that will host scholarly and public discussions about the data.

SBL Membership Profile
The Society of Biblical Literature has developed a Membership Profile to allow us to better understand and serve our members and analyze trends and changes within the field. So far, only 3,439 members have completed their profile. We urge all of our members to fill it out as soon as possible and to update it each year when you renew your membership. Please sign into the website with your member number !*SBLID*! and then click on “Member Profile” and answer the questions. It will only take a few minutes of your time and will help us in so many ways. Every member who fully completes the questions by December 31, 2014 will be entered into a drawing to win one of two iPads.
More member information

ICI Books
The following books were added to the Online Book depository in June:

Allen, Pauline. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Philippians: Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Pauline Allen. Writings from the Greco-Roman World 36. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013.

Boer, Roland, ed. Postcolonialism and the Hebrew Bible: The Next Step. Semeia Studies 70. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013.

Heacock, Anthony. Jonathan Loved David: Manly Love in the Bible and the Hermeneutics of Sex. Bible in the Modern World 22. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011.

Landy, Francis. Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs, Second Edition. Classic Reprints. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011.

Robertson, Warren C. Drought, Famine, Plague and Pestilence. Gorgias Biblical Studies 9. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010.

Schoors, Antoon. The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.E. Translated by Michael Lesley. Biblical Encyclopedia 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013.
More info on the ICI Programs