BibleTech08 was two days chock-full-o' Bible-geeky goodness.

The highlight for me was time spent between sessions and at meals talking with folks. Prime among those was time spent with James Tauber. I've emailed with James back and forth for at least five years now; it was great to spend time with him in person, reflecting on sessions, talking about the doctroal work he's doing, and all sorts of other stuff. Here's the not-so-great picture I took with my cell phone to prove it:

Others have summarized sessions (Check the tag bibletech08 on Technorati for a listing) so I won't do that here. I will say that some of the stuff James Tauber talked about work with Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen at MorphGNT.org regarding lemma alignments was thought-provoking; Andi Wu's presentation on treebanks caused me to covet my neighbor's syntax data; Sean Boisen's Zoomable Bible presentation made me think about interface in ways I hadn't before; Kurt Fuqua's stuff made my head hurt (though not necessarily in a bad way), Zack Hubert's zhubert.com retrospective was awesome; and Bob MacDonald's talk on structures in Psalms was much appreciated both for the visualizations and also for the esteem in which he presented it -- unlike so many presentations at places like SBL, you could tell that for Bob, this was not simply an academic exercise, the text has profoundly influenced him.

My profuse thanks to everyone who came to Seattle for two days of Bible-geeky goodness. Hopefully we'll do it again next year!

I had an insanely great time at BibleTech:2008 and will blog about that in a bit; though I wanted to get links up to my paper.My paper on cross-references went well, I thought, though my presentation itself was somewhat scattered. Here are the goods:

• BibleTech2008Paper.pdf (531.26 KB)
• BibleTech2008Handout.pdf (64.45 KB)
• Rick Brannan BibleTech2008.ppt (1.54 MB)

I'll be posting these on my personal web site on Monday; I also believe the BibleTech website will hold copies of the paper, handout and powerpoint. And maybe even audio!

Note that my colleague Sean Boisen (who blogs at Blogos) has blogged on a number of the papers presented. Here's his primary post; hopefully he'll add some tags to link them together over the next few days.

My colleague Sean Boisen reminds us all that BibleTech:2008 is coming.

I have one talk/paper at the conference, the overly-generically-named Locating New Testament Cross-References: Some Strategies. My abstract isn't much help either:

This talk examines the feasibility of locating related passages in the New Testament using various measures. The focus will be on strategy and results, not on the nitty-gritty details of the code.

Well, I've actually written the paper now so I have a better idea of what I'm going to say. I still need to make the powerpoint slides and such. But here's the introduction to give you a better flavor of what's what:

Marginal cross-references have long been a feature of several Bibles in print. Each of the myriad versions has some edition with “marginal cross-references” or “center-column cross-references”. Yet electronic editions, apart from those reproducing data available in printed editions, have not done a good job of complementing the text with relevant cross-references. Most electronic editions of Bibles are centered on the words of the text and not its presentation or on supplying ancillary data to help in the study of the text.

This paper largely restricts itself to discussing New Testament cross-references to the New Testament. Different approaches, from “no-tech” to “low-tech” to (keeping the rhythm) “mo’-tech”, will be examined (each in differing degrees). Discussion of necessary data and even ideas about sources are provided at relevant points.

But first, it is necessary to note that there are several different types of cross-references, and perhaps even several different “levels” of cross-referencing. Cross-referencing can be between key words in a text (perhaps even down to key words in a book/author); it can be between similar phrases; it can be topically oriented. But even tables of Gospel parallels are cross-references of a sort.

This paper takes a sort of “shotgun” approach, mentioning several ideas on different styles or sources of cross-references and even providing worked examples of many. But we will move quickly from idea to idea. In other words, the presentation will be wide, not deep.

Since Chris Brady (Targuman) proposed the idea of International Biblical Studies Writing Month (IBSWM), all the cool kids have been posting their projects.

I have at least one that qualifies. My paper for BibleTech:2008 is on locating cross-references in the New Testament; that is my IBSWM project. It is now mostly done (but mostly written in January!). I'll be sure to post a copy after BibleTech:2008 (so, after Jan 26)

I have another writing (blogging) project bubbling in my head, but hesitate to mention it here for fear that I might not get started on it during IBSWM (if ever).

This morning the Logos Bible Software blog announced the BibleTech 2008 conference. It'll take place January 25-26 in Seattle, WA.

While Logos is the primary conference sponsor (disclaimer: I work for Logos), the conference is not about Logos Bible Software. It is designed for those who are interested in the intersection of the Bible and technology. So this could be professionals, hobbyists, publishers, bloggers, webmasters, educators or just about anyone else. If you're interested in the Bible and technology, no matter where you are, what you do, or who you work for, we'd love to see you in Seattle.

Several folks have already agreed to present. I'm most interested to hear from James Tauber (general XML/Python stud and co-creator of MorphGNT.org) and Zack Hubert (creator of zhubert.com).

The call for participation is open. Have an itch you'd like to scratch, or a cool side project you'd like to present? Then submit your ideas. I know I've got a few different ideas a-brewin'.