[Update (6/7/07): My apologies for using the term "women bibliobloggers": explanation here]

The Biblical Studies Carnival 18 is up as of last night over at Deinde, written by Danny Zacharias. The “carnival” is an attempt to gather together all and highlight the best blogging posts and conversations regarding biblical studies. You can read an explanation with instructions by Tyler Williams, the coordinator of the carnival, and even see an article written by him about it in the Society of Biblical Literature Forum. Danny has done a wonderful job (although, there appear to be some strange line break formatting going on in part of the post). I told him in an email that I do not envy that job! I especially appreciated his coverage of the “One Act Play” on “Who Not to Cite,” a kerfuffle started by Jim West (responding to Mike Bird) who lambasted anything written by InterVarsity Press.

The first of the month also brings forth the Featured Blogger of the Month at biblioblogs.com. For June, that blogger is Rick Brannan, a Logos Bible Software employee and three way blogger of Ricoblog and PastoralEpistles.com, while also contributing to Logos Bible Software blog. Like Mark Goodacre, I was particularly interested in Rick’s thoughts on the “current state of blogging” (related to biblical studies, in particular). And I was also quite impressed to see that he has built his own kayak!

Taking a look at the featured bibliobloggers of blogging past, I was struck by the fact that there is only one woman (correct me if I’m missing any): Lesa Bellevie, whose blog (The Magdalene Review) is now apparently defunct. This does reflect the reality that the overwhelming majority of bibliobloggers are men (even greater than the percentage of scholars in biblical studies). Nevertheless, I have noticed that there are some great bloggers in our midst, who happen to be women and who deserve featured mention. April DeConick’s blog is particularly strong. In fact, looking at my “trends” on Google Reader, I have shared more of her posts in the past 30 days than any other blogger. Closely related to April’s work is Judy Redman’s blog. And another fairly recent addition is Angela Roskop Erisman. These last two are less frequent bloggers than April, but strong nonetheless. I see also that April links to Betty Adam’s blog, with which I am not familiar (but I’m now going to subscribe). Am I missing any women bibliobloggers? I’m probably going to kick myself for not mentioning somebody.

Also, I am worried that as a white male (even if I am lower on the academic totem pole than all the women I’ve mentioned), this might sound paternalistic. That’s perhaps the most sensitive issue with being a male feminist. I just think that we are still a long way off from being liberated from stereotypes and assumptions regarding gender roles, even in academia, and the topic should be discussed from time to time.

Update (Same Day): Jim West has just informed me that the dearth of female bibliobloggers has been discussed in the past. So I have taken a look to see. In the lead up to the Philly SBL conference (Nov 2005), Ed Cook raised the question about what should be discussed among bibliobloggers and this was one of the topics mentioned. Jim West [broken link] and Joe Cathey [broken link] responded. Mark Goodacre mentions two now defunct female bibliobloggers [Helenann Hartley and Jenee Woodard] and, while hoping not to fall into “gender-stereotyping,” asks “Is there something about the combination between the male-dominated academy and the nerdy, geeky male electronic world, that makes the computer academy particularly prone to this?”

Loren Rosen suggests, “Blogs feed our male egos like no other internet forum, and there’s certainly no point pretending (lying) otherwise, even if we also have positive motives for being involved in this network of shared learning.” Further, he says:

I’m suggesting that women share their interests with others in less self-aggrandizing ways. The “anonymous female” who responded to Mark Goodacre confirms this, when she says: “I think the main reason [I don’t blog] is that I am just not comfortable with the idea of telling random strangers what I think about things.” We men, by contrast, are very comfortable doing this.

Lest he be misrepresented, it is clear that Loren wants to highlight both “sharing” and “aggrandizing” motives for males who blog, but that it is just difficult to admit the latter. Finally, here Jim Davila rounds up the various blogging about the biblioblog meeting in Philly, much of which includes thoughts about the dearth of female biblioblogging. I don’t have time to read through all of it right now, but I did notice that Mark Goodacre thinks that we should at least draw attention to it. The last talk that I see (correct me if I’m wrong) was about a year and a half ago. I don’t think it’s wrong to raise the question within such a space of time, particularly in the fast-paced blogging world (of which I wasn’t even a part in 2005).

One thing that I notice is that I see plenty of women bloggers out there (take the contributors to Emerging Women, for instance, or many of those to the Beatitudes Society blog), just not so much in biblical studies. So, is it a lack of interest amidst female biblical studies scholars/informed-laypersons? Or a lack of welcome amidst those already in the biblioblogging world? Or something else? Or all of the above?

Also, as I type this, April comments of Rebecca Lesses’ blog–another that I’ll be adding to my subscriptions.

Update (6/3/07): See Judy Redman’s thoughtful response on her blog. Jim West also mentions the issue on his blog. Michael Westmoreland-White piggybacks on this issue a
nd reflects on women theology bloggers, which seems to be in better shape (numbers wise) than women bibliobloggers. Michael also encourages his readers, if they be female bibliobloggers or know of some, to “tell either Pat or Jim (the latter can get you more traffic)”. Hmmm…. well, I guess it’s true, Jim being the hub of biblioblogdom that he is! But, as the old Jesus saying goes, the higher trafficked blogs shall be last and the lesser frequented blogs shall be first, right?