Fourteenth Monday after Pentecost
Monday is Faith Journey Day on the blog. In 1987 I made a career move that was not a job change. I had been at Elon for a year, gotten my feet wet with a new school and a new department. It was clear at this point that I was no longer going to get writing contracts from the UM Publishing House. My sense was that I was ready to move on, even that God was calling me to move on, to New Testament Scholarship, what I trained for all those years in Grad School.
New Testament scholars refer to themselves as the Guild. It's an unofficial designation. There are probably around 12,000 NT scholars world wide, mostly in North America and Europe. The largest organization is the Society of Biblical Literature. SBL is North American but all the top-flight European scholars are also members. There are other smaller societies, such as the Catholic Biblical Association (you don't have to be Catholic). The smaller, international, prestigious society is the Societas Novi Testamenti Studiorum. It has about 300 members and strict requirements for membership: at least one scholarly book in New Testament studies and two articles in refereed journal. You have to be nominated by a member sponsor, approved by the membership committee, and voted on by the entire membership at at the annual meeting. Although I had an article published in the SNTS journal, New Testament Studies, I never quite met the other requiremernts and never became a member.
These scholarly societies are composed almost entirely of college and university professors. When I first joined SBL way back in 1971 the membership was almost entirely male and white. Now the membership is close to being representative of the population.
SBL has a big annual meeting every and smaller annual regional meetings. I had been a society member and been going to the annual meetings since the early 80's. Every year was a different city, all over America and occasionally in Canada. The meetings are in big convention hotels. SBL meets congruently in these hotels with the American Academy of Religion, which is all those professors who are in other areas of Religious Studies than Biblical. The meetings consist of all sorts of small groups with paper presentations and discussions and large plenary sessions at night with the great scholars. Another highlight of the big annual meeting is the displays. Every publisher in the business has displays of most or all of their books in a vast exhibit hall. Most have big discounts. On the last day the discounts get even bigger. I bought most of my books there.
In 1988 I presented my first paper at a regional meeting. It was entitled "One Scholar's Hypothesis Leads to the Next Generation's Fact: J.B. Lightfoot and the Dating of Revelation." A revision of this paper eventually became my article, "Some Problems in the Domitianic Date of Revelation" in NTS. There were about 35 scholars at my paper reading. One advantage that I immediately discovered was that I was a good speaker. Most scholars aren't. My thesis, that Revelation should be dated in 68 or 69 rather than the customary 95-96 was radical at that time. I read the paper with fervor and conviction (Many years of preaching every Sunday had prepped me well). A number of scholars wanted to talk to me about it afterward. My first effort had been an enormous success. Over the next fifteen years I would present a paper almost every year, except for the two years when I chaired the SBL's "Reading the Apocalypse Seminars," two meetings. My speaking ability is doubtless what got me that job.
I had no illusions of becoming a great scholar. I have too many detriments. I'm not a fast reader. I'm not a fast writer. My German is lousy, and a huge amount of the literature in this field is in German. And when you come right down to it, I'm just not that smart. For good or ill, a lot of people thought I was that smart. My public speaking skills and my ability to remember vast numbers of names and dates led some folks to that conclusion. For a time they almost led me to that conclusion. Over the next years I would have plenty of successes but enough failures to give me a good, honest understanding of what I could do and what I couldn't.
Although I have the feeling that many of you may find this the least interesting part of my faith journey, I will do one more blog on it next Monday. NT scholarship seems to be fascinating for NT scholars, but not so much for anyone else. Back to Acts tomorrow. Hallelujah!
Faithfully,
Christian
2 comments:
I beg your pardon. I am flattered, entertained and inspired by your willingness to describe your faith journey and professional career. My regret is that I cannot or do not hear more. By that, I mean all those interesting experiences in the multiple roles you have played, and of course continue to play in your life, are interesting, more than interesting.
Some of your blog readers, including me, know little about the time and effort that has gone into research focused on the NT and how the community of scholars attempts to reach peer agreements based on that research. There over three million chemists in the US, many more worldwide, but only 12,000 NT scholars? I think that we are extremely lucky to have one in our midst, especially one who writes concisely and speaks so well. Please don’t cut short the descriptions of this part of your faith journey; the perspectives that we continue to gain are important (and fascinating).
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