Loading...I CONTINUE MY RECOLLECTIONS OF MY EXPERIENCES WITH MY MENTOR, BRUCE METZGER:
Metzger directed my PhD exams, and was responsible for writing the questions for one of them. To explain that situation requires a good bit of background.
In a typical PhD program, at the end of two years of taking seminars (usually three a semester, for four semesters), a student takes the PhD exams. These go by different names: “Comprehensive exams” (that’s what we called them at Princeton Seminary); “Preliminary Exams” (i.e. preliminary to writing a dissertation); “Qualifying exams” (i.e. that qualify you to move on to the dissertation stage) – all of these refer to the same battery of exams. In most respects the way it was set up at Princeton was fairly typical – it is the way we also have it set up in the PhD program that I teach in at UNC. Here at UNC, students take five examinations, each of them four hours in length, followed by a two-hour oral examination before the examining committee. At Princeton we took four exams, but they were six hours in length, followed by an oral exam in front of the entire biblical studies faculty.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t belong — now’s YOUR CHANCE!!
Bruce Metzger is the author of several books including The Early Versions of the New Testament and The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, And Restoration.
I think I just lost a year off my life just reading this. I would have had a heart attack. That seems like a crazy amount of pressure. Have you ever “not noticed” an innocent mistake on one of your student’s Comp Exams? As if you would ever say on this public blog posting. 🙂
Yes, sometimes we can be a forgiving tribe, professors. (Well, sometimes not….)
So you don’t immediately flunk a student who mistakes book 10 of Pliny for letter 10?
Very funny! I’d at least tell him to check for stupid mistakes more carefully!
Didn’t notice…or let it pass?
As one whose spouse did this at Union, this process is abusive…yet it continues.
I don’t think it’s abusive. It’s simply really really hard! (at the time I thought Metzger just let it pass; now I wonder if he caught it!)
And hard for the spouse too. When Karen finished the dissertation, wrapped it, and addressed it, she had to go out of town, and asked me to mail it to UTS. So thought I, Lake Michigan or the post office. I chose wisely.
Wow..you worked on a phd while raising kids, pastoring a church, and were still able to do the comprehensives ealier while taking seminars?! That’s crazy!!
I am aware at the top theological schools in the English-speaking world, students on certain modules are sometimes required to read seminal works written in non-English languages. Given the dominance of the English language, do you think one can be a leading theology or biblical scholar without ever reading any non-English works that have no English translation?
You have mentioned a number of times in your blog and on your trade books about being a pastor. Perhaps an article on your experience as a pastor and how you viewed the experience now, would be informative.
No, one cannot be a top scholar in any of these (or related fields) without being able to master the scholarship produced in other major languages. Just the way it is! On being a pastor: good idea. I’ll think about it.
How are most English-speaking scholars able to find the time to become proficient in academic-style French and German? Surely if books in non-English languages are seminal in the field of scholarship, they need to be translated to be accessible to the international community?
I imagine most top biblical scholars have the talent to learn new languages given their proficiency in multiple ancient languages. But I don’t expect theologians to have the same linguistic talent.
Are your doctoral students routinely taught French and German?
Yes, it’s part of going to graduate school. In almost all programs in Religious Studies, one has to learn French and German (reading knowledge, not conversational) and pass exams in the languages — usually before taking the prelim exams. It’s simply because most books and articles are not translated.
Being unmarried at the time, I took the easier route by doing my studies in Europe, living in France and Germany and Belgium. I can’t imagine learning foreign languages while still living in the States, sounds very difficult and tedious.
By the way, I enjoy your blog very much.