Well, this is the 500th post in the history of the Naked Bible blog. I thought I’d take the occasion to make some announcements and give a heads-up to readers. I’ll be doing the same thing on my other blogs in the near future.

First, per the policy note on the MEMRA site, Module 2 for MEMRA has been canceled due to low enrollment **except for language courses.**  There were only five sign-ups for non-language courses, so I can’t justify the time.  All those who enrolled in non-language courses for the canceled module have already been sent a refund — and I thank those people for their interest. All those who enrolled for language courses for Module 2 will receive their beginning of term email around Sept 10, as those courses *will* run as schedule, beginning Sept 24. Registration for Module 2’s language courses ends on Sept 1.

Second, the above reality and some other circumstances I’ll touch on below have led me to decide that, come 2013, MEMRA will only be offering language courses. I will offer biblical Hebrew, biblical Greek, and Ugaritic in 2013. I will also probably add Aramaic in the summer of 2013.  If that works out, Egyptian will follow. Things are more manageable this way, and the language courses have shown more regular interest. So, the two-year MEMRA experiment has morphed again. This time it looks permanent.

Third, I am taking the MEMRA issue as providential. I have begun to take some things off my plate to give me at least a little time for writing the sequel to The Facade and, Lord willing, enter the content editing stage for The Myth That is True. Regarding The Facade, the book has now been moved to Logos Bible Software’s new fiction and trade publication label, Kirkdale Press. This means that The Facade and the sequel will be available in multiple formats (including print). It also means that the Kirkdale staff will assist in marketing both books to a new wave of readers. They have already created a new Facebook page for The Facade, as well as a new Facebook author page for me.  I have to confess that, though I have a personal Facebook page, I don’t look at it much and really don’t know how it works beyond posting things. I presume that you can go to the links above and “like” the pages, so I hope you’ll all do that.  I will be using those pages (along with Twitter @msheiser) for further announcements about The Facade and the sequel. So if you want to follow the news on those fronts, I guess you can bookmark, join, or friend the pages (anyone who uses Facebook will know what to do to get attached to the pages). At any rate, I do know how to post news there, so I’ll be doing that when I have something to report.  Look for an announcement about Kirkdale and The Facade in the near future on the Facebook pages, as well as Twitter

Fourth, there are also plans for Logos to produce my book, The Bible Code Myth, and my divine council dissertation (in Libronix format). I don’t know the precise timetable for those things, but that’s what the Facebook author page is for.