Biblioblog Top 50 – February 2009
Posted by The Biblioblog Top 50 on February 28, 2009
It’s the Biblioblog Top 50 - for the month of February 2009 - the first to be hosted by this blogsite, after being transferred from NT Wrong!
The Biblioblog Top 50 ranks each biblical studies blog, or ‘biblioblog’, by the total number of unique visitors it receives each month.
The Number One Biblioblogger this month is, yet again… Ben Witherington.
Among the big shakers and movers for the month of February 2009 are:
- Rachel Barenblat (The Velveteen Rabbi), up 41 places to no. 7
- Daniel and Tonya (Hebrew and Greek Reader), up 24 places to no. 12
- Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis), up 39 places to no. 19
- April DeConick (Forbidden Gospels Blog ), up 76 places to no. 20
- Better Bibles Blog, up 46 places to no. 21
- Mandy and Calvin Park (The Floppy Hat), up 63 places to no. 22
- Rick Brannan (Ricoblog), up 47 places to no. 23
- Torrey Seland (Philonica et Neotestamentica), up 54 places to no. 25
- Darrell Pursiful (Dr. Platypus), up 76 places to no. 29
- DLC (Balashon), up 112 places to no. 31
- Gavin Rumney (Otagosh), who is also a great source for Worldwide Church of God information: up 117 places to no. 45
There are also a number of additions and changes to the biblioblog list over the last month or so. Michael Carden began blogging on Jottings, employing a fabulously camp mix of mauve and pink. On Greek Books, Pail Randle talks, unsurprisingly, about Greek books. And P.W. Dunn has begun a blog on the second-century C.E. Acts of Paul, Acta Pauli, and participates on another African blog with Elisée Ouoba: Palabre. Mark Stevens began Scripture, Ministry, and the People of God, and Richard discovers source criticism on Tetrateuch. Patrick Woods began blogging on the so-called Epistle of Straw (James) in So Much For Straw. In addition, we’ve added Metalepsis (run by an anonymous Sheffieldian), as the blog appears to have sparked into action after a long absence. And then we found Swedish biblioblogger Benjamin on TorahBlogga, as well as notable Russian expert on Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, Enoch, and Metatron, Andrei Orlov (Андрей Орлов’s Journal). Also added is Craig Blomberg’s biblioblog, New Testament Musings, which is hosted on the Denver Seminary site (which means we can’t get any stats for the blog itself), and Raija Sollamo and the University of Helsinki’s Qumran and Identity (with similar obstacles for obtaining stats). We also found Lisa and White Bear Girl (aka Sophie Clucker)’s Bible Study Connection, which takes a special interest in biblical women, Deirdre Good’s On Not Being a Sausage, which takes a special interest in things that are not sausages, Matthew Burgess’s Confessions of a Bible Junkie, Michael J. Gorman’s Cross Talk, James Gregory’s Blog (which will be hosting an upcoming Biblical Studies Carnival), Karl Möller’s Biblical Studies Notebook (BSN), Tim Ricchuiti’s If I Were a Bell I’d Ring, and Greg Carey’s NTGeeks. In addition, Doug Chaplin switched blogs from Metacatholic to Blogito Ergo Sim, not to be confused with blogito ergo sum. And Mark Goodacre separated out his personal biblioblogging from the flash new NT Gateway site, to Mark Goodacre’s NT Blog (and so the stats no longer aggregate NT Gateway and Mark’s blog, as we have had to do in the past, which means the blog will appear lower in the rankings, ceteris paribus). As their biblical studies posts are fairly sparse, we included Peter Kirk’s Gentle Wisdom and David Ker’s Lingamish in the ‘Related Blogs’ section (just because we suspect they were feeling left out, and we’re such nice people).
| Rank | Prev. | + / - | Blogger | Blog Name |
| 1 | 9 | 8 | Ben Witherington | Ben Witherington |
| 2 | 1 | -1 | James McGrath | Exploring Our Matrix |
| 3 | 2 | -1 | Mark Goodacre | NT Gateway Weblog |
| 4 | 6 | 2 | Michael S. Heiser | The Naked Bible, PaleoBabble, UFO Religions, Scribal Practices, Two Powers in Heaven |
| 5 | 11 | 6 | Joel L. Watts | The Church of Jesus Christ |
| 6 | 3 | -3 | Airton José da Silva | Observatório Bíblico |
| 7 | 48 | 41 | Rachel Barenblat | Velveteen Rabbi |
| 8 | 5 | -3 | Jim West | Jim West |
| 9 | 17 | 8 | JV, Mike Holmes, Simon Gathercole, Christian Askeland, Martin Heide, j.-l. simonet, Peter R. Rodgers, Peter M. Head, Bill Warren, Dirk Jongkind, Gie Vleugels, Amy Anderson, P.J. Williams, maurice a robinson, Michael F. Bird, Randall Buth, Tommy Wasserman | Evangelical Textual Criticism |
| 10 | 8 | -2 | Thomas Verenna | The Musings of Thomas Verenna |
| 11 | 18 | 7 | Nick Norelli | Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth |
| 12 | 36 | 24 | Daniel and Tonya | Hebrew and Greek Reader |
| 13 | 30 | 17 | John Hobbins | Ancient Hebrew Poetry |
| 14 | 15 | 1 | Steve Runge | NT Discourse |
| 15 | 21 | 6 | Chris Brady | Targuman |
| 16 | 4 | -12 | Dave Black | Dave Black Online |
| 17 | 16 | -1 | Chris Tilling | Chrisendom |
| 18 | 28 | 10 | Michael F. Bird, Joel Willitts | ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ / Evangelion |
| 19 | 58 | 39 | Stephen C. Carlson | Hypotyposeis |
| 20 | 96 | 76 | April DeConick | Forbidden Gospels Blog |
| 21 | 67 | 46 | David Ker, David Lang, Wayne Leman, Suzanne McCarthy, Mike Sangrey, Richard A. Rhodes, Peter Kirk, Dan Sindlinger | Better Bibles Blog |
| 22 | 85 | 63 | Mandy and Calvin Park | The Floppy Hat |
| 23 | 70 | 47 | Rick Brannan | Ricoblog |
| 24 | 40 | 16 | Loren Rosson | The Busybody |
| 25 | 79 | 54 | Torrey Seland | Philonica et Neotestamentica |
| 26 | 51 | 25 | Phil Harland | Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean |
| 27 | 7 | -20 | Claude Mariottini | Claude Mariottini |
| 28 | 34 | 6 | Tim Bulkeley | Sansblogue |
| 29 | 76 | 47 | Darrell Pursiful | Dr. Platypus |
| 30 | 46 | 16 | Chris Heard | Higgaion |
| 31 | 112 | 81 | DLC | Balashon |
| 32 | 14 | -18 | Kevin P. Edgecomb | Biblicalia |
| 33 | 31 | -2 | Rod Decker | NT Resources Blog |
| 34 | 45 | 11 | Doug Chaplin | Metacatholic |
| 35 | 68 | 33 | Tony Siew | Revelation is Real |
| 36 | 80 | 44 | Bibbiablog guys | Bibbiablog |
| 37 | 66 | 29 | Esteban Vázquez | Voice of Stefan |
| 38 | 56 | 18 | Jeff Oien | Scripture Zealot |
| 39 | 32 | -7 | Neil Godfrey | Vridar |
| 40 | 71 | 31 | Charles Halton | Awilum |
| 41 | 47 | 6 | Duane Smith | Abnormal Interests |
| 42 | 63 | 21 | Scott Bailey | Scotteriology |
| 43 | 54 | 11 | Adam Couturier | Thoughts from a Young, Slightly Cantankerous, Aspiring Theologian |
| 44 | 82 | 38 | Michael Pitkowsky | Menachem Mendel |
| 45 | 117 | 72 | Gavin Rumney | Otagosh |
| 46 | 41 | -5 | Douglas Mangum | Biblia Hebraica |
| 47 | 64 | 17 | Peter M. Lopez | Beauty of the Bible |
| 48 | 73 | 25 | Charles Savelle Garland | Bible X |
| 49 | 89 | 40 | Ben Byerly | Ben Byerly |
| 50 | 93 | 43 | Brandon Wason, Jim West, John Hobbins | Biblioblogs |
Congratulations!
To revel in the glory of your achievement, please feel free to display our prestigious and newly revised icon on your biblioblog, in either gold-on-white or gold-on-black:
Some technical info on how the stats are calculated is included here.
MattPage said
Where’d I go? I dropped 27+ places in a month? And I thought my visits were up. Bummer. Now I’m going to have to take the banner down – which is a lot less exciting than putting it up was.
Oh well I suppose it was a below average posting month.
:(
Matt
biblioblogtop50 said
Matt,
I’m sure you’ll be back. Your total users were down rather than your hits (traffic), probably as a result of having less posts.
MattPage said
Thanks – hopefully you’ll be proved right!
Matt
Jim Davila said
Does your reckoning system really show PaleoJudaica dropping more than 35 places and staying there for two months in a row? There has been no notable change in my (daily and usually multiple) posting pattern or my stats during that period. My Technorati stats have also improved and then stayed pretty steady in the last few months. I have to say I’m baffled.
biblioblogtop50 said
Yes it really does show this. We admit that it is contrary to our expectations, but the statistics are all taken from Alexa. As Technorati and Alexa each do not use total data, but samples, it is possible they will produce different results.
For December 2008, your weekly percentage of internet users were 0.000100, 0.000100, 0.000050, 0.000070 and your traffic ranks across all internet sites were 975,000, 1,120,000, 1,664,000, 1,312,000.
For February 2009, your weekly percentage of internet users were 0.000006, 0.000050, 0.000005, 0.000020 and your traffic ranks across all internet sites were 6,784,000, 2,103,000, 6,860,000, 4,304,000. Due to our heightened awareness of the unexplained drop in January, we took special care to double check results.
The first week of March is 0.000020 and 4,327,000 respectively – outside the top 50.
Alexa is widely used for measuring blog use, and it has regularly and correctly picked up movements on other biblioblogs from month to month. It appears to be generally quite good overall. But we will look into this some more, as we are concerned to obtain accurate statistics. We are planning to run a comparison between various stat-providers, including the blog-stats, to test the various sources.