Writing for the Guild (part 2)

 Fifteenth Monday after Pentecost

Happy Labor Day! Of our various national holidays, Labor Day is the least understood. Labor Day celebrates the labor union movement. The creator of Labor Day was P.G. McGuire, vice-president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in the late 1800's. It became a federal holiday in 1894. It commemorates all those who have been in or are in the Labor Union movement. I'm the proud father of a daughter, April, who after graduating from Yale, spent the next 14 years of her life as a labor union organizer, organizing nurses in numerous hospitals in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. So in our least unionized state in America, I hope you will take a moment to remember the true meaning of Labor Day. 

Thanks to Joe for his comment on Science and Religion today. We'll talk about it Wednesday.

The 1990's saw the peak of my scholarly career. My article, "The Problem of the Domitianic Date of Revelation" appeared in the October, 1993 issue of New Testament Studies, which most would rate as the top journal of the 60 or 70 scholarly journals in my field. Also in 1992, I had two articles, "Tithe," and "Polycarp of Smyrna," published in the massive six volume Anchor Bible Dictionary. In 1993 a revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation under the title, Toward a Reassessment of the Shepherd of Hermas: It's Date and It's Pneumatology published by Edwin Mellen Press. In 1995 my book Five Problems in the Shepherd of Hermas was published, also by Edwin Mellen. In 2000 I had six articles published in the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. During these years I had published about 30 book reviews in journals such as, The Journal of Biblical Literature, Interpretation, The Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, The Christian Century, and several others. I also wrote a number of studies for the clergy journal, Lectionary Helps. 

As I read this last paragraph, it all sounds better than it is. It's the bibliography of a fairly average scholar. There were also two substantial writings that didn't get published. In 1994, I was awarded a semester sabbatical to work on a book advocating an early date (68-69) for the Book of Revelation." I wrote over 200 pages. The book was promoted for publication by a very good German scholarly monograph series (at that time most scholarly monograph series published books in German, English, or French. Now more languages are accepted). My book was rejected by the editor of the series. I did not complete the book by the end of my sabbatical. Meanwhile, I was asked to write a commentary on 2 Peter and Jude in a new commentary series that Edwin Mellen was publishing.  I interrupted my writing on the Revelation book to write this commentary. I wrote 270 pages, but Edwin Mellen was running into financial problems. Only one volume of the series was published. The series was canceled. 

Meanwhile, New Testament studies, like every other field in academia was undergoing a epochal change. Computers! Within a half a dozen years everything in the field changed. Everything was instantly available. Complex word, phrase, and field searches that were nearly impossible to do before without months and years of research, could now be done in seconds by computer saavy grad students--and by this point all grad students were computer saavy. I was not. Don't forget that I was also teaching three or four courses a semester, serving on faculty committees, and doing student advising. Elon had lots of full time computer techs who were there to help old faculty adjust to the new realities. None of these techs, however, could work in Greek, Hebrew and the other languages I needed to work in. In the short span of just a few years I found myself completely left behind in research in my field. 

It was time to move on to something else. In 2001 I was awarded another semester sabbatical to write a general audience book. The result was Jesus and the Pleasures, a book that was a pleasure to write and which was read by many times as many people as any of the scholarly work I did. 

Faithfully,

Christian