Summer Meeting 2018


St John’s College, Durham

confidential material (minutes of the previous business meeting as well as proposals for membership) will be posted here (log-in required) once they are ready.
St John’s College, 3 South Bailey, Durham, DH1 3RJ, and the contact telephone number is (+44) 01913-343500 (see here for a pdf with travel information).
16–19 July 2018
Under the presidency of Prof. Walter Moberly
Printable version of the Programme.
Booking form (pdf/docx)
Publishers are invited to display books for sale during the Meeting.
Members who have had books published recently are also invited to display copies.

MONDAY 16 July

  • 2.00 pm Committee Meeting
  • 4.30 pm Registration
  • 6.00 pm Reception (sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University)
  • 6.30 pm Dinner
  • 8.15 pm Professor Brent Strawn (Atlanta), “What is Missing from Ancient Israelite Religion?”

TUESDAY 17 July

  • 8.00 am Breakfast
  • 9.15 am Carly Crouch (Nottingham), “Duelling Dynasties: Ezekiel’s Sign-Act of the Two Sticks”
  • 10.00 am Simon Stocks (West Malling), “Lament and the Construction of Identity in the Psalms”
  • 10.45 am Tea and Coffee
  • 11.15 am Kai-Wen Karen Yuan (Taipei), “The Drama of the Pursuit of Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9”
  • 12.00 noon Leigh Trevaskis (Brisbane), “Did Ehud change his mind? The significance of idols in Judges 3:12-30”
  • 1.00 pm Lunch
  • 2.15 pm Free time for optional activities
  • 4.00 pm Tea and Coffee
  • 4.30 pm Hywel Clifford (Oxford), “yhwh ’ḥd: Divine ‘oneness’ in the Shema in its ancient Near Eastern setting”
  • 6.30 pm Dinner
  • 8.15 pm Richard Briggs, Deborah Rooke, Walter Houston and Brent Strawn
    Discussion of Richard Briggs’ Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture (South Bend: Notre Dame University Press, 2018)

WEDNESDAY 18 July

  • 8.00 am Breakfast
  • 9.15 am Marian Kelsey, “The Relenting of God in the Book of Jonah”
  • 9.45 am Stephen Campbell, “Life Worth Living: A Case for Rhetorical Coherence in Deut 4:1-8”
  • 10.15 Suzanna Millar (Cambridge), “Dining on Destruction: The Pedagogical Power of a Metaphorical World in Proverbs”
  • 10.45 am Tea and Coffee
  • 11.15 am Prof Cheryl Exum (Sheffield), “Adventures and Misadventures in Song of Songs Interpretation”
  • 12.00 noon Business Meeting (SOTS Members only)
  • 1.00 pm Lunch
  • 1.45 pm Outing to Vindolanda at Hadrian’s Wall
  • 4.00 pm President’s tea
  • 6.45 pm Dinner
  • 8.15 pm Robert Hayward (Durham), “Psalm 30 and the Offering of First-fruits”

THURSDAY 19 July

  • 8.00 am Breakfast and depart

Domestic Arrangements
The venue for the Meeting is St John’s College, 3 South Bailey, Durham, DH1 3RJ, and the contact telephone number is (+44) 01913-343500. Please refer to the enclosed maps for information on how to get to St John’s College. There is very limited and expensive car parking, so please use public transport if at all possible. En-suite accommodation is limited, so a waiting list will be drawn up if demand exceeds supply. Charges for hospitality are shown on the enclosed Booking Form. Members are requested to pay their accounts in full when returning the form but, if necessary, a non-returnable booking fee of £30 will be accepted and the balance will be payable on arrival at the Meeting.
There is a subsidised price for those on low incomes or from economically disadvantaged countries. Applications for a further conference grant to assist in meeting the costs of attending the Meeting must reach the Secretary, Dr David Shepherd (shepherd@tcd.ie) by 9th May. Application forms for grants are available on the SOTS website.
All bookings must be received by Wednesday 13th June 2018; no bookings can be accepted after that date. Bookings can be made by email to sotshospitality@gmail.com with payment made via purchase on the SOTS website shop, by electronic bank transfer, or by a posted cheque (see Booking Form). Card payment is no longer possible. Please note that in making a booking, members render themselves liable for payment of the full cost of that booking, a liability that will be waived only in the light of extenuating circumstances and only when the final conference accounts permit a refund. You may wish to consider taking out insurance on your booking (or check that your annual travel insurance is applicable) to cover the possibility of you having to cancel your booking. You are advised to make a copy of your completed Booking Form for your own records.
General correspondence concerning the affairs of the Society should be sent to the Secretary, Dr David Shepherd, School of Religions, Peace Studies and Theology, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (shepherd@tcd.ie). Proposals for new members must reach him by 9th May 2018. Changes of address notification should be sent to the Membership Secretary, Dr Janet Tollington, 118 Balland Fields, Willingham, Cambridge CB24 5JU (jet40@cam.ac.uk).