The Complete List of Biblioblogs (RSS)

[July 1, 2011 Update: Though I originally planned to update this OPML file with some regularity, Steve Caruso has obviated those plans with his Biblioblog Reference Library. To follow all biblioblogs from this point forward, I’d recommend utilizing his tools.]

I recently thought how nice it would be to subscribe to all the biblioblogs listed at The Biblioblog Top 50. However, it seemed like an awfully tedious task to go through each of the blogs one-by-one and subscribe to their RSS feeds.

Well, it was an awfully tedious task, but it’s now been done for you. What follows are a number of OPML files that you can import into any feed reader to subscribe en masse to the biblioblogs of The Biblioblog Top 50 canonical listing.

If you simply want to get to the files, scroll down or click here. Otherwise, a few preliminaries:

What’s RSS?

RSS stands for “really simple syndication,” and it’s a way sites can publish their updates. An RSS feed is a series of those updates, which can be viewed using a feed reader like, for example, Google Reader. There are many feed readers that are not web-based, if you’d prefer a native application for your computer, and many of those offer syncing with services like Google Reader.

Why would I use RSS or a feed reader?

If you just like to check one or two of your favorite sites each day, then RSS is not for you. But, let’s say there are 10–20 sites that you read daily. In that case, RSS allows you to have all of those updates show up in one location, rather than having to go to each site individually. What’s more, with RSS, you’re in no danger of missing any updates or articles, as they will automatically pop up in your feed reader each day. Think of it like an email account in which the only messages that are ever sent to you are updates you’ve asked for.

OK, but what’s an OPML file?

Many feed readers (including the aforementioned Google Reader) support feed importing. An OPML file is simply a list of different RSS feeds. You import the OPML file into your feed reader, and it will automatically begin tracking any of the feeds listed in the OPML file.

So, what do I need to do to take advantage of The Complete List of Biblioblogs (RSS)?

Things that you will need to make use of the following files:

• The ability to download a file
• The ability to import OPML files into your RSS reader of choice
• That’s it!

The following files are divided by the categories used at The Biblioblog Top 50. Simply right-click and download the files you want¹:

1. General Biblical Studies
2. Theory and Reception
3. Biblical and Religious Studies
4. Hebrew Bible / Early Judaism
5. Early Judaism and ANE
6. Early Judaism and Judaism
7. New Testament / Early Christianity
8. Early Christianity and Greco-Roman Culture
9. Textual Criticism, Translation, and Linguistics
10. Technical and Software

If you’re interested in having all of these at once, use either of the following two options (warning, almost 300 blogs!):

• The Complete List of Biblioblogs
• The Complete List of Bilbioblogs (with folders/tags)

If you’re interested in only the Biblioblog Top 50, here is an OPML file of all the blogs listed in the February 2011 Top 50.

Though I may at some point in the future put together a file for the almost 300 “related blogs,” I haven’t yet. You’ll have to subscribe to those on your own.

Notes

• The list of blogs was taken from the Biblioblog Top 50 Complete List of Biblioblogs, accessed from March 26–28. It also includes a short update from March 29.
• Jesus the Bum was marked private, and thus could not be viewed.
• As far as I can tell Michael Heiser’s site isn’t a blog, and does not have an RSS feed.
• http://www.toshunka.blogspot.com/ doesn’t exist anymore.
• http://biblicalpaths.wordpress.com/ moved to http://frstephensmuts.wordpress.com/.
• Tony Chartrand-Burke seems to have lost his original domain to a spam page. He now blogs at http://www.tonyburke.ca/apocryphicity/.
• Dan Wallace’s blog couldn’t be separated out from the main Parchment and Pen feed (at least not in any immediately obvious way).
• http://www.deinde.org/blog is actually (or at least is now) at http://www.deinde.org/blog.php, and the blog is actually a tumblog at http://nt-studies.tumblr.com/.
• I could not get http://www.sakeoftruth.com/ to load.
• http://www.qaya.org moved to http://www.gentlewisdom.org.uk/
• Jesus Dynasty was marked private, and thus could not be viewed.
• The blog at http://community.livejournal.com/robhu_bible/ has been deleted.
• Mark Stevens of http://revdmarkstevens.wordpress.com/ now blogs at Near Emmaus.
• http://www.biblicalexegesis.org doesn’t appear to exist any more.
• The eTeacher Biblical blog doesn’t appear to have a public RSS feed.
• For the Biblioblog Top 50, David Black’s blog has no RSS feed.

Final Disclaimer

I have nothing to do with the list of blogs contained in the OPML files above. I’ve simply gone to the sites listed in The Complete List of Biblioblogs at The Biblioblog Top 50. If you’d like your site to be included, if you think you’ve been over-looked, if you think you’ve been miscategorized, or if you have any other complaints or comments, you may direct those here (in the email window that pops up, be sure to replace the ‘[at]’ with the actual ‘@’ symbol).

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1. A note about downloading these files: I used Safari to test out the downloading. When I right-clicked and selected “Download Linked File” or “Save Linked File to ‘Downloads’” the downloaded file had an XML extension appended to it. This did not affect my ability to import the OPML file into Google Reader. If you have any trouble, I’d recommend simply renaming the downloaded files WITHOUT the XML file extension. So, for example, you would rename filename.opml.xml to filename.opml. If you still have trouble, feel free to contact me. ↩