One Year Anniversary!

The most popular blog entry of the first year was about
Rembrandt and his The Rich Fool

The first post on this blog (December 9, 2013) started with these words:

I just signed a contract (November 2013) with Baker Academic (Baker Publishing Group) to write a textbook on the reception history of the parables. I have been working with James Ernest of Baker, and the topic is an exciting but daunting one: examining how the parables in the NT Gospels have been interpreted over the centuries.

This blog will document the process of writing that book, and it will include works that I find and insights I have gained through my research for the book.

It's one year (and 126 posts) later. Not sure whether I should say happy anniversary or happy birthday!

I want to thank those people who have become readers of this blog. The blog obviously--for several reasons, including the small "niche" that it occupies even within the small niche of biblical studies called reception history--was never meant to be a blog that had a wide readership, but I hope it has been helpful if not sometimes enlightening for those who have stumbled upon it. I had never read biblioblogs before, so I really didn't know what I was doing at first--and maybe still don't--so I am grateful to people like James McGrath who would drop hints from time to time about what I needed to do to make the blog better and more readable.

I also want to thank three people (in the book, I will thank a number of other people), who have helped me on this reception history journey. First, Chris Rowland, now freshly retired from the University of Oxford, who first extended the invitation for me to write a reception history commentary for the Blackwell series (I should add Judith Kovacs to this thanks as well). Second, Christine Joynes, also of the University of Oxford, has become a much-valued colleague in reception history. She is doing fantastic work in her own research and at the Centre for Reception History at the University of Oxford. I can't wait to see her reception history commentary on Mark. Third, I want to thank James Ernest, my editor at Baker Academic. He was the one who made me realize that this book needed to be written before the one I had originally intended to write, and he has been a delight with whom to work.

As I have mentioned several times over the past year, the blog has been helpful to me. Even though it has added to my workload and used up a fair amount of time, the blog has helped me stay focused on the audience for whom I am writing the book. I have and will continue to revise sections of the book based on what I have done on the blog to make the topics more clear, readable, understandable, and interesting.

The due date for the manuscript to Baker Academic is a year from now, and I have the first draft about 3/5 completed. I want to complete the manuscript in time so that I have plenty of opportunity to revise the manuscript many times. 

I still have three "openings" for the 1500-1700 era, but the most of the work on the book remains for the final two chapters (~1700-1900; 1900-the present). 

I also hope that my honors seminar next semester (on the Reception History of the Parables) will give me an opportunity to make the book an even better one for students. I have some great students enrolled in that class, and I am really looking forward to our explorations and dialogues.

I also have started thinking about how to continue/develop/change this blog after the book comes out, but more on that later. 

Thanks again for reading.