Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) International Meeting 2022 Salzburg
The acronym SBL IM 2022 Salzburg stands for a major event that will take place in 2022, the year in which the 400th birthday of the University of Salzburg is celebrated: the international meeting (IM) of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). From the 17th of July till the 21st of July 2022 ca. 1200 to 1500 academics in the field of biblical studies and the like will descend on Salzburg!
The SBL is a scholarly organization which was established in 1880 in the USA. Its members are scholars who teach and research the variety of fields that make up biblical studies. It is the oldest and largest society devoted to the critical investigation of the Bible from a variety of academic disciplines. It is an interdisciplinary, humanistic, academic society that includes scholars of history, literature, archaeology, anthropology, theology and more. It is also one of the eldest members of the American Council of Learned Societies (since 1929). It produces its own 3 journals, 20 series, and a plethora of diverse electronic resources and educational tools (such as for instance, the Bible Odyssey on bibleodyssey.org). It works in cooperation with a variety of other learned societies and sister organizations. Each year it holds smaller regional meetings, one large national meeting and an international meeting. The SBL promotes cooperation across global boundaries by holding yearly meetings outside the borders of North America.
The SBL has about 8324 members, the majority of which are persons teaching undergraduates, masters and doctoral students in a variety of departments (from the traditional biblical, divinity or theological departments through linguistics, Near Eastern and Greek, till the archaeology, history, African, Asian, Women’s studies departments, etc.), and doing research in an academic setting. They come from ca. 134 countries world-wide and represent a variety of racial, ethnic and religious traditions.
For the yearly national meeting, the SBL works together with i.a. the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The latter has about 8000 members worldwide. The SBL and AAR have held joint meetings for a long time, which means that these two groups hold concurrent annual meetings in the same city at the same time. These annual meetings are attended by some 8500 to 9000 participants. The program of the SBL national meeting is created by the chairs of the 169 ongoing SBL program units and the 21 sister organizations and the chairs of the more than 150 AAR program units. Even in the corona year of 2020, the joint meeting of the SBL and AAR took place, with 903 virtual sessions, spread out over 11 days, and attended by ca. 7000 participants. Besides the academic program the SBL and AAR also invite more than 150 publishers to attend their exhibit hall, and offer, in the Employment Centre, plenty of convenient and private settings for universities to interview candidates for jobs. Given the amount of participants attending, the joint meetings of SBL and AAR can only take place in cities with major congress infrastructure (Chicago, Atlanta, San Diego, Boston, etc.).
The international meeting takes place on a smaller scale. Since 1983, the SBL IM have taken place in major academic cities such as Salamanca, Strasbourg, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Vienna, Rome, Melbourne, Louvain, Cambridge, Cape Town, Helsinki, Singapore, London, Buenos Aires, Seoul, Berlin, etc. In 2022, the meeting will happen for the first time in Salzburg.
The Salzburg program is organized by the International Meeting 48 program units and their international chairs and by the local committee in collaboration with the Council of the Society. The ca. 60 program units will each run about 2 sessions with each offering about 5 to 6 papers.
Section
Sections offer the broadest access to the meeting program. Volunteer paper proposals are welcome.
- Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
- African Biblical Hermeneutics
- African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
- Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
- Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
- Aramaic Studies
- Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
- Art and Religions of Antiquity
- Assyriology and the Bible
- Bible and Emotion
- Bible and Film
- Bible and Popular Culture
- Bible and Practical Theology
- Bible and Visual Art
- Bible in America
- Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
- Biblical Ethics
- Biblical Exegesis from Eastern Orthodox Perspectives
- Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
- Biblical Hebrew Poetry
- Biblical Law
- Biblical Lexicography
- Biblical Literature and the Hermeneutics of Trauma
- Book History and Biblical Literatures
- Book of Acts
- Book of Daniel
- Book of Deuteronomy
- Book of Psalms
- Book of Samuel: Narrative, Theology, and Interpretation
- Book of the Twelve Prophets
- Children in the Biblical World
- Christian Apocrypha
- Christian Theology and the Bible
- Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
- Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
- Contextual Biblical Interpretation
- Contextualizing North African Christianity
- Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
- Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
- Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature
- Deuteronomistic History
- Development of Early Christian Theology
- Digital Humanities in Biblical, Early Jewish, and Christian Studies
- Disputed Paulines
- Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
- Early Jewish Christian Relations
- Ecological Hermeneutics
- Economics in the Biblical World
- Egyptology and Ancient Israel
- Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
- Ethiopic Bible and Literature
- Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
- Formation of Isaiah
- Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
- Genesis
- Gospel of Luke
- Gospel of Mark
- Greco-Roman Religions
- Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
- Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
- Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
- Hebrews
- Hellenistic Judaism
- Historical Jesus
- Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
- History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
- History of Interpretation
- Homiletics and Biblical Studies
- Ideological Criticism
- Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible
- Intertextuality in the New Testament
- Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
- Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures
- Israelite Prophetic Literature
- Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
- Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
- Johannine Literature
- John’s Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
- Joshua-Judges
- Latino/a and Latin American Biblical Interpretation
- Latter-day Saints and the Bible
- Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
- LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
- Literature and History of the Persian Period
- Lived Religiousness in Antiquity
- Masoretic Studies
- Matthew
- Meals in the HB/OT and Its World
- Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
- Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
- Midrash
- Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation
- Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
- Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
- New Testament Textual Criticism
- Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
- Paul within Judaism
- Pauline Epistles
- Pauline Theology
- Pentateuch
- Performance Criticism of Biblical and Other Ancient Texts
- Philology in Hebrew Studies
- Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
- Poverty in the Biblical World
- Prayer in Antiquity
- Pseudepigrapha
- Q
- Qumran
- Qur’an and Biblical Literature
- Racism, Pedagogy, and Biblical Studies
- Reading, Theory, and the Bible
- Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
- Religions of Israel and Judah in Their West Asian Environment
- Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
- Religious Experience in Antiquity
- Religious World of Late Antiquity
- Rhetoric and the New Testament
- Ritual in the Biblical World
- SBL International Meeting Presentations
- Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
- Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom
- Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
- Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
- Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
- Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
- Synoptic Gospels
- Syriac Studies
- Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
- Textual Criticism of Samuel – Kings
- Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
- The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
- The Historical Paul
- Theological Perspectives on the Book of Ezekiel
- Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
- Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
- Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
- Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
- Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
- Wisdom and Apocalypticism
- Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
- Womanist Interpretation
- Women in the Biblical World
- Writing/Reading Jeremiah
- zTest Program Unit
Seminar
Seminars are established around well-defined research topics or projects with specific publication plans. Seminars have limited membership but permit auditors. Papers are discussed, not read.
- Apocalypse Now: Apocalyptic Reception and Impact Throughout History
- Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
- Early Exegesis of Genesis 1–3
- Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
- Josephus
- Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
- Mark Passion Narrative
- Meals in the Greco-Roman World
- Mind, Society, and Religion: Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World
- Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
- Paul and Politics
- Philo of Alexandria
- Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
- Psychology and Biblical Studies
- Redescribing Christian Origins
- Religion and Philosophy in Late Antiquity
- Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
- Scripture and Paul
- Theological Interpretation of Scripture
- Writing Social-Scientific Commentaries of the New Testament
Consultation
Consultations are exploratory program units focused on new areas of interest. Volunteer proposals are occasionally welcome.
- Archaeology of Roman Palestine
- Comparative Method in Biblical Studies
- Documentary Texts and Literary Interpretation
- Historical Geography of the Biblical World
- Interrelations of the Gospels
- Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman Travel in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Byzantine Periods (300 BCE–600 CE)
- Nature Imagery and Conceptions of Nature in the Bible
- Numismatic Evidence and Biblical Interpretation
- Utopian Studies