Alluvial deposits of the Guadalope-Matarranya system (Oligocene, Ebro basin, Spain) and the Wasatch Formation (Eocene, western Colorado), provide time-integrated records of the process of riverchannel avulsion. These sequences consist of isolated channel-belt sandstones incised into, and abruptly overlain by, flood-plain siltstones, indicating deposition by avulsive river systems. The geometry and distribution of channel incisions suggest that avulsion was not controlled by tectonics, climate, or base-level changes, but formed by autocyclic processes. Measurements from 221 channel fills in the Guadalope-Matarranya system and 38 from the Wasatch Formation allow us to statistically characterize channel geometries we infer to be associated with establishment and abandonment of individual river avulsions. Paleoflow depths in both systems average 1.4 to 1.6 m. Aggradation height (superelevation) of channel margin levees are, on average, 0.6 and 1.1 times paleoflow depth in the Guadalope-Matarran

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Abstract.Relating sedimentary records to seismic data is a major challenge. By shifting focus to a scale-invariant sharpness characterization for the reflectors, we develop an attribute that can capture and categorize the main reflector features, without being sensitive to amplitudes. Sharpness is defined by a scale exponent, which expresses singularity order and determines the reflection signature/waveform.Local scale exponent estimates are obtained with a new monoscale method. Compared to multiscale wavelet analysis, our method has the advantage of measuring transition exponents at a single fixed scale using a simple on-off criterion. The exponents contain amplitude variation information and describe lithological onsets. We create an image of the earth's local singularity structure by applying our method to seismic traces and well-log data. The singularity map facilitates interpretation, facies characterization, and integration of well and seismic data.

Within the burgeoning area of the Bible's reception history is a variant approach, termed "reception exegesis" by Paul Joyce and Diana Lipton. Investigation of an occasion of reception can generate new insights into the meaning of the biblical texts, they suggest. Introducing the results of a Leverhulme Trust Research Project on Britain’s first purpose-built deaf church to a scholarly readership interested in biblical reception, I show here how the New Testament—especially Mark 7:32–37—was used to construct the deaf people of Victorian London. Specific details of my argument will be compared with the Markan text as constructed by modern commentators in order to test Joyce and Lipton’s hypothesis. The article questions reception exegesis’s usefulness as a generator of long-term interest in biblical studies and proposes a different response to its difficulties, that biblical scholars dedicate themselves to developing a broad conception of reception history in order to generate collaborations across disciplinary boundaries while they are still in a position to do so.

The recent attempt by G. Aichele, P. Miscall and R. Walsh to generate a debate between historical criticism and postmodern interpretation using the language of comparative mythologies has so far fallen flat. Here it is suggested that a more fruitful way forward would be to re-label historical-critical methodologies with the terminology of reception history. This would build on the presence of audiences—whether real or constructed—within those methodologies while undermining the use of terms like ‘first-stage/secondstage’ to keep them at the centre of biblical interpretation and encouraging historical critics to venture into the history of interpretation. This broadening of the discipline should also help limit the impact of the current financial climate on what otherwise appears to be a very narrow and heavily over-subscribed area of the humanities.