the hypomnemata rankings

By reading the title of this blog I thought it was going to be all about resources for the New Testament. The first story though is about Facebook and divorce. How interesting is a blog about the New Testament going to be apparently. It seems you got to spice it up with contemporary cultural references to stay in the Top Fifty. It is also clear from the title this is an 'update' which means he does regular features on this stuff. Here is a sample of the writing:

I experimented (very briefly) with Facebook a year or so ago and decided that I couldn’t afford the time to do much with it. Since then I’ve been concerned about the privacy issues etc. that plague the service. I’m not sure why I should take time to post material, etc. that is only accessible to “insiders” when my blog is available to all. This latest twist reinforces my conclusion that *I* am better off without it. That’s obviously a minority opinion, but I shall maintain my resolute resistance to get on the band wagon and follow the Piper.

Well you got to give him credit - he's not using Facebook and Twitter to drive his numbers so he seems to be a principled individual at least. He'd probably be Top 25 if he used those services.

The next story has a photo of the line up for the new Ipad in the author's hometown. Not much of a story.

The next post is a quiz where he asks his audience to determine a quote from a recent theologian. Not interesting for us. A story about how to get a PhD follows. This doesn't seem to be about early Christianity let alone new ideas.

This blog seems to be more serious than the last one.  It is called Evangelion and there are two bloggers who contibute here a certain Joel Willits (no information) and a Michael Bird who describes himself as follows:

I am a red head Australian and I teach Theology at the Bible College of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Although I am culturally "Australian", I was born in Germany (but despite that I really, really, really do believe in the resurrection).

He seems very qualified and the first post I see is an article on Martin Hengel which shows some serious blogging is going on.  It is however mostly of interest to those who care about the application of Christianity in the modern world (ministry etc.).  This is not for us.  Well written and intelligent but not about new ideas in early Christianity.

I am quickly going through the Bibliosocial blog Top Fifty to see the relative intellectual value of each site listed.  If there is something intellectually stimulating I would like to add the blog to our new resource for interesting and provocative bloggers who encourage new ideas.  I will start from the bottom of the list where we find Targuman this month.  The author is obviously intelligent, which is a good start.  Here is his personal information:

I am Christian Brady, associate professor of ancient Hebrew and Jewish literature and dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State

Well, with a name like that he's not Jewish (lol).  But he's qualified and his knowledge of Hebrew is undoubtedly superior to my own.  But does he have enough time left in his busy schedule to find something interesting to say in his blog?  Well, let's find out.

The most recent article is yesterday and it seems to have a review of a book that the blogger admits he hasn't read:

I have not read Bell’s book (although I have downloaded the sample on iBooks so I will be sure to leap to conclusions based upon that free snippet)

Hmmm. We're off to a bad start already.  Seems to be writing a post for the sake of writing a post.  Indeed he seems to admit as much in his opening line:

Was I trolling for hits with that title? Perhaps. Since I have not had time to read (let alone post) any comics you can imagine that I have not really been able to keep up with all the news regarding Rob Bell’s new book and the hoopla regarding universalism.

Again sounds like he's part of this 'theological culture' that exists out there which takes C S Lewis seriously and various modern theologians.  As I am not a Christian this site is not really of interest to me and it seems as if the blogger cares more about attracting enough readers to avoid the being the 51st Bibliosocial blogger (and thus 'miss the cut' at Jeremy's site). 

It looks like I will have to look at past articles to make sure that there something original, interesting and 'untimely' here.  As I noted he's obviously smart and learned.  The problem is that his busy job doesn't allow him to formulate substantial posts it would seem. 

The next post is even worse. A picture of a sign in New Orleans and some talk about a recent trip. God. Don't people have any friends? And then he has this line about I have a million pictures from my trip and you have to ask for permission to use them. Who the hell wants pictures from someone else's trip? Photos from other people's vacations are the thing we try and avoid looking at not steal from them. I don't know about this guy. His making it into the Top Fifty is probably the biggest thing to happen to him since losing his baby teeth.

Probably a nice guy by the look of it. I mean I don't think he's a bad human being. Oh my God look at the next post - a video my four year old would watch from Youtube. This is a serious blog?

The next post comes from March 15th and there is no reviews of books he hasn't read, no baby pictures and no cartoon videos. It's a paragraph introducing a book he likes by Dorothy Sayers:

I have been doing a lot of traveling in the last few weeks, so my blogging on Targuman.org has mostly been confined to redirects of blog posts for my class. As you might imagine, with an administrative job I find myself reading all sorts of material, just not a lot for pleasure. I decided to change that recently and re-read a great Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, Cloud of Witnesses. As I read it I came across some great gems that made me laugh, go hmmm, and otherwise remind me why she is one of my all-time favorite writers. Here are a few (quotes):

Okay this is a step in the right direction but so what? You like Dorothy Sayers. I think I proved my point about this being a Bibliosocial network. But it's only the first review.

He's smart and a nice guy. I don't want to belittle his site. I am sure he is a great guy to engage in serious conversation.  The problem as I noted is that he doesn't have enough to time left over to write anything worth keeping at his blog.  On to the next.