“The SBL Handbook of Style is precisely what is needed for the next generation or two or three of scholars in our field and for everybody in the chain from author to editor to printer, including all the half steps in between. I hope that The Handbook will draw together everybody who publishes in this field to agree to adopt it as the bible for publishing scholarly works in our discipline. having a uniform standard, and a detailed exposition of the rules and the whys and the wherefores of this intricate business, will go a long way toward clarifying and simplifying the work of both writer and reader of these erudite products. I could not be more enthusiastic about a volume that I can recommend to one and all, and to which I can send innocent, ignorant, and recalcitrant authors and editors, and all the rest.” ? David Noel Freedman, Professor of History, and Chair in Hebrew Biblical Studies, University of California, San Diego

“The SBL Handbook of Style is an astonishing book, a true ?one-stop? reference for authors preparing manuscripts in biblical studies and related fields. It covers an amazing range of topics, from what every literate scholar should know (but may not) to what only the most erudite expert in an obscure subfield of the discipline would be likely to know. Do you need to know how to cite an Internet publication? Whose job it is to prepare the index and secure permissions? How to alphabetize Abraham ibn Ezra (and why)? What the abbreviation of AAeg stands for? It’s all here. This volume should substantially reduce the incidence of tears and tantrums that so often beset the process of manuscript preparation. Before long biblical scholars will wonder how we ever got along without this indispensable reference work. Every graduate program should make The SBL Handbook of Style a required text.” ? Carol A. Newsom, Professor of Old Testament, Emory University

SBL Handbook of Style
Patrick H. Alexander, Kutsko, Ernest, Decker-Lucke
ISBN156563487X
Price: $24.95

Publication Date: April, 2003

Available at the SBL Website.

In my search for Good-Looks, the handsome playboy who was treated so harshly by Ereshkigal, I stumbled upon Desire, discord and Death. Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Myth., by Neal Walls.
His approach to the ancient Near East myths is pleasantly refreshing, and I was excited to learn about the new approaches in Ancient Near East studies, and hopefully likewise in Biblical studies. The old approach was as dry as sand, most of the time, not to mention (religiously) biased and sometimes hideously racistic.

I quote from the foreword:

“For most of the twentieth century, the traditional curriculum of Near Eastern studies emphasized the technical methods of archaeology, history, and philology but neglected the fields of anthropology, comparative religion, and literary theory. As a result, Near Eastern scholars were often unfamiliar with current methods in the academic studies of myth. Many scholars adopted out-of-date interpretative approaches, such as euhemerism, nature-myth, or myth-ritual approaches; others adopted overly romantic perspectives toward the ancient world and attributed a prelogical, mythopoetic mentality to practitioners of “ancient “fertitlity religions”. (…) While earlier generations of Near Eastern scholars did brilliant work in philology, history, and the production of critical editions, they did not always have the same high standards or appropriate methods for sensitive interpretations of mythological literature. Recently, however, scholars have begun to cross disciplinary lines in order to apply contemporary forms of literary and symbolic criticism to the world’s oldest mythology. Indeed, the need for scholars of ancient Near Eastern literatures to break out of their self-imposed isolation and engage critical literary theory is now openly acknowledged within the guild.”

“… the complexity of mythological literature compels me to employ a complex set of methods in order to expoit more fully the surplus of meanings produced by ancient Near Eastern mythological narratives. I apply a variety of methods in order to explore the texts as examples of sophisticated literature and symbolic discourse, to unpack their poetics, and to emphasize literary features not adequately appreciated by previous interpreters. I borrow this idea from literary criticism, that perspective from psychoanalysis, and the other notion from ideological criticism in order to offer new readings of very ancient myths. These contemporary reading strategies ask new questions of both the reader and the text and so open up new vistas of meaning; they cast a new light on the ancient texts and illumine neglected facets of their discourse.”

The result of these methods are four highly interesting, refreshing, thought-provoking essays.

Neal Walls. Desire, Discord and Death: Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Myth (ASOR Books). The book can be downloaded (as pdf) here, and can be ordered here.