"Biblioblogging" "Femiblogging" and Blogdom

For the couple of weeks, there has been a debate on certain blogs about biblical bloggers and then female biblical bloggers. Personally I find the whole debate quite ludicrous, but apparently spurred on by the SBL session and most likely addressed again tomorrow at Sheffield, I thought I might as well give my two-cents on this "highly important" matter. (rolling-eyes here)

This whole travesty started, from what I gather, about a year ago when Jim Davila questioned the term "biblioblogger" which was originally coined by Dave Meadows. From there sparked a huge debate over what name bloggers who study the Bible ought to be called. His initial rejection, which is in my opinion still valid, is that it the proper etymology would belong to bloggers who blog about bibliographies or perhaps books in general. Several responses were thrown out there, the best of which, again in my opinion, was "bibliablogger" by Ed Cook. An other valid suggestion was Joshua Tallent's at The Four Questions "antiquiblogger", which is probably more akin to what most of us do anyway. In fact, very few on my blogroll actually deal only with the Bible. For this reason alone, I wouldn't label myself a biblioblogger, even if a good portion of my posts deal with the Bible and my current fascination is with Matthew's gospel.

That should have been the end of it. Alas, it was not. A whole year later, biblioblogging returns, this time not as a question of name (biblioblogging won out, as you can tell), but of qualifying characteristics and identifications. Questions such as why female bloggers are underrepresented in biblioblogging and would blogs that are primarily personal theology in their nature be considered biblioblogs or perhaps God-blog is a better term arose informally by Mark Goodacre and was responded to by Tim Bulkeley and Phil Harland, although Phil must have deleted his posts since there's no trace of them left, but otherwise no serious discussion arose from the matter. However, at the SBL conference, for some reason I'm not exactly sure of, there was a biblioblogging session, still using the etymologically-incorrect name, they touched upon these very questions.

Since I was unfortunate to miss SBL this year (how I would have loved to go!), I can't with any certainty claim I know what happened there, but I have a very good idea. If I understand correctly, Paul Nikkel mentioned these questions and the ideas exploded. Furthered by some of Jim Davila's remarks (again, I'm getting this information second-hand, so correct me if I'm wrong) about who are bibliobloggers (professors and graduate students only?), the next thing you know people are angry over who is a biblioblogger and who isn't and why women are being excluded from this white-middle-age-male association and whathaveyou nonsense and then...Tim B. leaves.

At this point, I'm confused. What exactly was Tim leaving? What is all this nonsense of being a club/association/whatever? What some people are forgetting is that names serve as a descriptive category for things, and by no means is biblioblog that descriptive, thus it must be fairly general. But, like being a scholar or a nihilist, it's not something that you can leave. Biblioblogging isn't a choice-club - you don't choose to be in it. It's a descriptive category, one that labels certain blogs as having certain characteristics, such as discussing the Bible. The only way you can "leave" Biblioblogdom is to merely stop posting about the Bible altogether - but why would anyone want to do that for the sake of the quibbles of others? If some label my blog a biblioblog, and some have, would I stop posting about the Bible because I don't like biblioblogging demographics or because I prefer the term "antiquiblogger" because that more accurately describes my blog? Of course not! If you ignore the problem, it will go away, because this problem is wholly superficial.

However, the tone that some have taken towards this has raised even more debate. Paul Nikkel goes into more depth about this so-called "problem" of exclusivity and biblioblogging. This has even prompted Tyler Williams to parody this already with his "Seal of Approval" graphic.

Honestly, folks, I don't see all the huff about this? But anyway, here's my opinion on what ought to be done.

Blogspot is one of those great websites that offer you free webspace. One of the benefits of free blogs is that you can have more than one, like Jim did with both PaleoJudaica and Qumranica. My suggestion would be that if a substantial part of your blog revolves around something other than your "theme", or if it could easily be broken up into two blogs or more, then by all means let's separate. It's more than perfectly acceptable to post every so-often about your children, or politics, or, heaven forbid sports, but if you have a blog devoted to Israel excavations and Taiwanese politics, perhaps we can do a little splitting there? I've been thinking about starting a blog revolving around my own politico-religious philosophy, but I would never incorporate those into my academic blog, which I try to keep mainly on one page, even if divergent every once-in-a-while. I know I twice now posted on evolution and once on the creation of Palestine, yet that's merely three times in nine months (oh, and that little post about a blogger's worth, so make that four) which I don't think is so bad. Actually, I'd even give others more freedom than I'd give myself.

But you must remember, this is coming from my personal opinion. I personally don't wish to see a blog with little substance and all filler. My blogroll has been paired down a couple of times because certain blogs became uninteresting to me because of constant posts about daily life, church, politics, sports, etc... Heck, no offense to the big man, but I skipped over all of Mark Goodacre's posts about his move to America. (Ok, I skimmed to see if anything was relevant.) If those kind of posts became all that Mark posted about, not only would he lose certain respect, but I certainly wouldn't want to read him no matter how interesting his life may seem. I echo Joe Weaks' concern:

The two main concerns have centered around the amount of personal, non-field related material and the clublike nature of "the group" that excludes others such as women. The first concern does come out of a misguided need to define a group, but it also includes a plea, really. There are some blogs I'd like to read, but it's just too muddled with other topics for me to invest the time to include it on my feed. For instance, I took AKMA off my feed list earlier this year. His children sound really great, but I have two of my own kids and it's hard enough for me to keep up with them.

The other main concern is that white males are dominating the biblioblogdom. I'm appalled actually that we have not yet become so blind to sex and skin color. When I read a scholarly opinion, I think about one thing: does the conclusions fit the evidence. If I may not be so knowledgable in a certain subject, I may also check credentials, but often I find that credentials rarely matter anymore, though this may be a personal bias.

Why are there not more female bibliobloggers? Does it really matter? Are we really going to quibble over whether results come from a male or female? In biblical and general antiquity studies, males dominate the field. Since blogging is merely an extension of a field, perhaps the problem lies deeper. Or perhaps there is no problem at all. If women are drawn towards it, they will come. I don't think they need males hypothesizing about why they aren't coming and preparing differents methods to have them come. Are we fishing for women? Sounds a bit sexist to my ears.

I did notice three women "bibliobloggers" commenting on this (and I put up the irony quotes for irony, thank you very much): locustyears, Yasmin Finch, and Lese Bellevie. The former would be a good read, but I couldn't seem to find very much of anything relating to Biblical studies, so I probably wouldn't read it, and Yasmin's seemed to have much more Biblically related materials, but it's so polluted with personal notes or topics not of my interest. Perhaps someone else who is into that sort of thing will keep up with it and mention any serious Biblical topics she might bring up. It's nothing against them personally that I wouldn't want to read it, but there's so much that disinterests me that I there's no point, really. Sorry if I'm offending, I don't mean to be, and it has absolutely nothing to do with sex. In fact, I can think of several other biblioblogs by males that exhibit the same problem and thus I wouldn't keep up with. On a promising note, locustyears (Pilgrim at First and Lake?) said she will be posting more in line with scholarly topics in the near future as her interests become more narrowed. I will keep my eyes open.

Perhaps one reason it's not so much of a problem with me is because of Lese Bellevie's Magdalene Review blog (link above) and classicist Glaukopides blog which I read with the same regularity as the rest on my blog roll. They're living proof that blogs can be kept consistently academic-related and by females at once.

To finish this (rant?), I quote Dr. Goodacre's finishing touch on his assessment of these problems:

As my closing thought, I would say: Write your blog on what you are interested in, and if people want to read it, they will read it, no matter what categories and sub-categories it may be thought to fall under. Blog on what you want to blog on, read blogs on what you want to read, and let the blogosphere continue to evolve and develop in its own unpredictable and unique way.