Doug, author of the most recent carnival, asks the question about whether we might consider a different approach to carnivals. Good question. On the one hand, the approach we have is so established that it may be difficult to get another one off the ground. On the other hand, there may be other approaches that would be more sustainable as our “community” of bloggers of academic biblical studies grows.

I have recently given this some thought, actually, as my wife has begun blogging in the past couple months. She is now part of the breastfeeding blogging community. When I was “coaching” her on how to establish her blog, I suggested she find out if they had a carnival like the biblical studies carnival.

Turns out, they have a monthly carnival, but it is run much differently. A small team of the most experienced breastfeeding bloggers determine a question/topic for breastfeeding bloggers to address. Breastfeeding bloggers produce one post dedicated to the topic of the carnival and submit it by email to one of this team of three or so who run the carnival by a particular date. If their post is accepted as a part of the carnival, they will told to publish the post on the predetermined day of the carnival. Everybody in the carnival posts their carnival post on the communal topic on the same day. They then all send their links to each other by email and post a list of links to the other carnival posts. So, every carnival blogger has a list of the links to all the other carnival bloggers.

What I like about this is that it lends itself more to discussion with other bloggers. Such has been my wife’s experience (see her own carnival posts). If we all have a common theme or question (one that can span the wide array of biblical studies specialties), then we are probably going to be interested in what others have said about that same theme. Not every blogger will be interested in the chosen theme of every month. That’s okay. It just allows for a slimmer list. Themes could include a wide range of topics and/or approaches:

• What is the meaning of “biblical history”?
• The desert in biblical and related literature. Discuss.
• What is the most neglected passage in biblical and related literature?
• What is the most misinterpreted passage in biblical and related literature?
• Discuss the importance of material evidence for work in biblical studies.
• What are the implications of so-called “ideological criticisms” in the field?
• What has been the role of non-canonical literature in your own work?
• What did you wish you had known before you started your academic career?
• Name one pedagogical approach that you have found helpful in the classroom.

What I don’t like about the approach is the process of the linking business. I think what ends up being easiest is for someone to go ahead and copy the list that someone else went through the effort to create for all of these blogs. Perhaps if we did a carnival like this, we could add an additional role for the person(s) in charge of organizing the carnival topic for that month. They would create the list of links and everyone in the carnival would copy the “canonical” list. But these are just the little details.

We could still keep the process of rotating the carnival author, but that person (or persons) would then become more of a gatekeeper than an author of the carnival.

Also, I’m not sure how useful our current carnivals really are. When I had much less traffic than I do now, I was desperate to get onto the carnival to get more traffic. I don’t know what your experience is with carnival links, but they have rarely given me more than a few extra hits. The good thing about our approach is that we have this catalog of biblioblogging for each month. And it’s archived! It’s very academic, in a way. And it falls on th carnival author to write this research project. But it is worth rethinking. Thanks, Doug.