Loading...It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard to get a PhD in New Testament/Early Christianity, right? It ain’t quantum physics! How hard can it be?
This is an issue I addressed in April 2018, which I present here as my Anniversary post #7.
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I often get questions from people who have been in a career for a while who want to know if it is feasible for them to go back to school and get a PhD in my field of New Testament/Early Christianity. In most cases it is not feasible at all, simply because it is way too complicated and involved — and takes way more time than one would think.
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I can’t believe this is your post today. This morning as I was journaling I thought of a question for you and was just coming to read the blog and post my question:
I look at you and see someone far more accomplished than myself or anyone I know personally. I sometimes regret some choices I made early in adulthood and feel like it’s too late to recalibrate my trajectory. So my interest in scholarship is relegated to the corners of my life after all the other demands have been met. I wish I could spend more time chasing down intellectual adventures, and sometimes I feel sad about it. I know I’m not unique. Even great scholars like you have spent their lives juggling minutiae while they’d rather be doing something else. How do you find inspiration in the mundane things? How might you have felt encouraged when torn between responsibilities and that which you longed for most?
As to your morning: Providence!
As to doing lots of other things beside our passoins (for me, the passiona are the scholarship; for the past ten days I’ve been tending toddlers instead. Long story!): there’s obviously a lot to say, but two for me are primary: (a) I try to see the joy in what I’m doing in the moment rather htan resenting having to do it. I’ve always enjoyed doing a job well, whatever it is, and finding joy in the moment is so much better than grinding your teeth the whole time; (b) when I then can get back to what I’m so eager to do, having had to take a (short or long) hiatus, it increases the pleasure and sense of well-being. But I know, it can be really hard not to regret, envy, and grind the teeth!
What would Socrates do? Living today, would he pursue a PhD? I don’t think so. But I do think he’d be happy to let others spend thousands of hours in libraries doing the hard arduous work so he would have knowledgeable experts to dialogue with.
I am always amazed by the intellectual curiosity and the dedication required of those who have earned, or are pursuing, advanced academic degrees, including yourself.
For those of us who are not professional scholars but would still like to learn Greek in order to read the New Testament in the original language, do you think it is realistically possible to achieve this through online study alone?
I have heard from some people that even with ancient Greek (Koine Greek), progress can be much faster if the language is practiced conversationally, and that intensive schooling or immersion programs may therefore be more effective than purely individual study.
From your perspective, what approach would you recommend for someone outside the academic world who hopes to reach the level of reading the New Testament comfortably?
I don’t thnk I know of anyone who has learned Koine Greek conversatoinally (though some have learned to speak it afte rthey learned it). It’s certainly possible to learn it online, but you really need someone to help/assist as well, to correct mistakes nad explain why they’re wrong. That can be dont online but you really need some kind of tutorial help as well as written texts.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond even to such a basic question.
Because I live in Japan, which is linguistically quite distant from the Western languages in which most biblical scholarship is written, much of my study of the Bible has relied on the relatively limited number of works available in Japanese. Through reading your blog and learning some of the basic issues in biblical studies, however, I have gradually come to recognize the limitations of that approach. The road ahead is long, but I hope to continue learning little by little.
Most of what I have read has been in translation, particularly the works of Étienne Trocmé and the Japanese scholar Kenzo Tagawa, who studied under him. Their work seems to reflect scholarship from perhaps twenty years ago and often focuses on questions of tradition and redaction within the Gospel texts.
I was wondering how scholars today tend to evaluate their approach. In light of more recent work on the historical Jesus and the diversity of early Christianity, are the methodological assumptions found in their work still widely used, or have they been significantly revised in contemporary scholarship?
Thank you agaain for sharing your knowledge!!
I’m afraid I don’t know. I don’t recall reading Trocmé and I’m not familiar with Tagawa.
I agree that Christianity played a major role in shaping the ethical outlook of Western society and in motivating the development of humanitarian institutions. But I sometimes wonder about a counterfactual question. If Christianity had never existed and Greco-Roman cultural and philosophical traditions had continued to develop on their own (setting aside the later rise of Islam), how might ethical ideas have evolved in the West?
I ask this partly from a comparative perspective. In Japan, where historically no form of monotheism became dominant, traditions emphasizing self-sacrifice for others and concern for the community still developed over a long period of time. Because of that, I am curious whether historians think similar ethical developments might eventually have emerged within a purely Greco-Roman intellectual and cultural framework.
In other words, to what extent do scholars think the humanitarian ideals associated with Western civilization depended specifically on Christianity, and to what extent might they have arisen through other philosophical or cultural paths?
I’d say we on’t know (obvoiusly, I guess) what WOULD have happened. But since the very assumptoins of Christian altruism differ so drastically, it’s hard to see how the West would have developed the moral sense of helping strangers in need just because they were in need. If that did happen, my sense is that it would have happened because of influience from philosophies and religions of the East.
Ask Bart …
I just heard of an ancient manuscript, known as “The Persian Codex of Eastern Testimonies”. It may or may not be authentic. I heard that most scholars think it is more literature than scripture. But, it dies like an interesting read, even if it is fiction. Have you heard of this text? Supposedly from the 1st Century CE. It tells of the Magi returning to visit Joseph & Mary a 2nd time when Jesus was 12-13; to bring Jesus back to Persia to be trained in their sacred tradition.
I would LOVE to read this codex (translated to English) but I cannot find it anywhere! Can you please advise on how to obtain an English translation of the Persian Codex of Eastern Testimonies ??
Thank you for any assistance you can offer.
I don’t think I’m familiar with it. It sounds very similar to lots of other 19th and 20th century forgeries of Gospels that claim to be ancient dealing wiht Jesus’s early life. I deal with a handful of them, if you’re interested, in my book Forged (final chapter)