Loading...I have been posting some reminiscences of my relationship with my mentor, Bruce Metzger, one of the great New Testament textual scholars of the twentieth century. Here I talk about one of my direct involvements with him as his student.
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.
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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.
Heh, I had two months to prepare for my comprehensive exams, and though I created bibliographies for each, I wasn’t asked nor did I share those with my committee members, who came up with questions based on their own idiosyncracies.
The prior summer, I was a RA for one of my committee members. I was trying to get a handle on what sort of question to expect, so I asked her: “would the following be the sort of question that might appear on the exam: blah blah blah”. She said ‘yes’. I was glad for the confirmation, but assumed as a matter of course that my sample question would definitely not appear on the exam, so I spent zero time preparing for it.
Guess what! Yep, that was one of the questions. She probably thought she was doing me a favor. Whereas I was completely unprepared for it. She was probably nonplussed when I didn’t choose to answer that question.
Oh, and my exams were taken in a room with continuous jackhammering right outside the window.
In your interview with Rev. Brunelle of St. Luke’s Episcopalian Church, discussing the Jewish view of the apocalypse, you referred to the resurrection of the dead, saying in passing that they were thought to be resurrected in glorified or spiritually altered bodies. Is it possible that, when Jesus’s band of followers reported having experienced Jesus resurrected from the dead, they did not mean the recently crucified physical body, but a different kind of body capable of being lifted into heaven? This interpretation may have been understood by the Jewish audience (Doubting Thomas excepted), but most of those being reached by the message were not Jewish, and interpreted the claim literally? In other words, many modern Christians claiming that the Jesus’s resurrection validates the idea of universal eternal life with recognizable bodies and hearing and taste, tech.are basing their claim on an incorrect reading.
I”d say the stories of Jesus’ resurrection do presuppose a different kind of body; it was still the same body (it could be touched and recognized; it could eat) but it could walk through doors and float up to heaven, etc. So it’s not just a near death experience on the one hand or only a “spiritual” resurrection on the other.
So, at the outset, Jesus’s resurrection was thought to be a “special case,” based on Jesus’s unique connection to God. Have you traced the path through Christian history as widespread belief went from “special case” to the idea that faith conquers death, guaranteeing eternal life to every believer immediately upon (and beyond) physical death?
Yes, I”ve talked about that on the blog before. As to it coming immediately after death, that starts to show up only in the latest letters of Paul.
Hi Dr Ehrman!
What does Jesus mean in Matt 11:14?
Who is Elijah?
Thank you!!
THe prophet in the OT who was taken up to God without dying in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2)
Very interesting Bart. You are very honest regarding your insecurities as a grad student.
I saw this piece in the BBC news today:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57992957. Have you been to the Hobby Lobby Museum of the Bible. If so, could you give us your impressions? Do they have any accurate artifacts that shed light on the Old or New Testament scholarship? Of course, you can be brief.
Thanks, Ray
Yes, I have. Most of the museum (first three floors) is really more a defense of teh accuracy and importance of the Bible for a Bible-believing audience than a less biased presentation of historical fact; the fourth floor is where they present ancient artefacts, and that’s very impressive indeed. Unfortunately, there werew a lot of shenanigans involved with the acquisition of a good bit of that material, and some of the items once displayed (Dead Sea Scrolls) were forged.
Just learned of an example of a virgin birth in Roman mythology. There’s an alternative version of the birth of Romulus and Remus.
The king of Alba Longa had a phantom phallus appear in his hearth and learns from an oracle that a virgin must have intercourse with this object. He orders one of his daughters to do so, she substitutes a handmaiden. The king considers executing the handmaiden, but Vesta appears in a dream and forbids it. The handmaiden gives birth to twins, the king orders them exposed, the servant leaves them near a river where a wolf finds them. This story is told by Plutarch in his “Life of Romulus”, but he doesn’t consider it credible (I agree!).
So would you classify this as a virgin birth? I believe you’ve said the virgin birth is unique to Christianity.
It’s not a virgin birth if there’s a divinely sent phallus that penetrates the woman, no. (I”m not sure what the word “phantom” that you use here means? But the point is that it required some kind of phallus that penetrates the woman)
I haven’t seen the original text; this is from Wikipedia. I can’t read Latin.
Dr. Ehrman,
Encyclopedia Britannica states in its article about Serapis:
The destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria by Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, and his followers in 391 ce—together with the obliteration of other pagan temples (all with the encouragement of Emperor Theodosius I)—signaled the final triumph of Christianity not only in Egypt but throughout the Roman Empire.
In your book, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, how do you characterize the destruction of the Serapeum? First, do you discuss that destruction by Theophilus in your book? (I could not tell by looking at the chapters of your book on your amazon product page for your book.)
Yes, I have a full discussion of it. ANd no, it’s nowhere nearly correct to say that this is the final triumph of Xty in the EMpire. Even after it happened over half the empire was still pagan.
I do admire your stamina, Dr Ehrman. The longest exam I’ve had to sit is 3 hours, and my arm felt like it was fit to fall off after writing for that long. Six hours sounds horrendous and I can’t believe such ordeals haven’t been outlawed by the Geneva Convention 🙂
Did I miss your Gold Q & A audio for July? Don’t see it here.
Yikes. THanks for pointing that out. I recorded it and I thought we posted it — but apparently not. I’ll get it loaded up ASAP.
I have to say, Bart, I’m sorry for you. I know you have enjoyed tremendous success as author and professor, but to put so much effort into something and still to miss the essence, bottom-line and whole story about the thing is tragic. If you had even studied just a little mysticism you might recognize that the New Testament must be read critically, between-the-lines, or rather, between the lies: red-letter truth, black-letter obfuscatory church propaganda. The New Testament corpus is messing with you. Be more skeptical.
There was a real Master at work in the Gospels, probably James. His words are twisted and misinterpreted at nearly every passage. I wrote two books on it. You wrote a book of your own on it, about *later* corruptions! Dr. Robert Eisenman wrote three masterpieces on it, nearly 3,000 pages worth. It isn’t as if this is news.
Like I’ve tried to tell Eisenman, Marvin Meyer, Elaine Pagels. April DeConick, you — the bottom line is that early Pauline church leaders tried starting a false new religion. Nowhere will you find outside support for a martyred myth of a man saving the world from his grave! The New Testament is horse-***.
Unrelated, but how hard was it to learn Koine Greek? How did they teach you?
Ancient Greek is very difficult to learn — you really need an instructor. I learned Attic Greek to start with, and did it like you’d learn any other language: I took college courses on it to get the basics and then read and read and read it in various graduate courses. THe courses always involve a textbook and an instructor. THere may be was to do it on the INternet these days, but you really need an expert to correct your mistakes.
Do you have any tips on how to write an essay on a question that you weren’t expecting?
Swallow hard, concentrate, and wrack your brain to come up with a clear and compelling answer. (!)
I really appreciate the grind you and your fellow students were exposed to and had the determination to get thru. My two brothers have PhDs and don’t talk about it.
Thanks for this article detailing your experiences.
Tom
Wow, did that ever bring it all back. I was so terrified before my qualifying exam at Cornell (physical chemistry, 1967) that I forgot how to tie my tie, which I had learned to do as a Boy Scout. I think I invented a new knot. Three faculty grilled us orally, while we stood at a chalk board; anything about chemistry was fair game. No suggested bibliography. Our only edge was that one committee member (Roald Hoffman) was known to ask for the ground state hydrogen wave function. It turned out he only cared about the exponential asymptotic dependence of all of the orbitals.
Wow.
I think I need a nap.
I almost completed my PhD (in a different field). Preliminary exams are indeed extremely stressful. But having to take those with a wife and two kids, while being pastor…is nuts. You should write a book explaining your techniques to manage your time hahah.
When I was writing my dissertation many years ago, I had a question on the texts on the actual mss used for the KJV and TR, and I couldn’t find a satisfactory answer in any book or article. So, fresh-faced graduate student that I was, I wrote Dr. Metzger a letter and asked him (these were pre-Internet and email days). A few weeks later, I received a typed letter back, under his signature, that gave me the information I needed along with some congratulations on being this far along. To this day, I wonder who I thought I was to be writing a letter to Bruce Metzger to ask a question, and now I am even more amazed to think that he wrote back this wonderful, informative, and kind reply. You were fortunate to have studied with him.
Wow. He was remarkably generous with his time, and incredibly efficient to be able to pull it off!
Herr Prof. Ehrman,
Da Sie sie Deutsch gelernt habe damit Sie die deutschsprachlichen, neutestamentlichen Klassiker lesen können, würden Sie auch deutsche Kommentare bzw. Fragen beantworten? Wenn ja, schreiben Sie dann auf Deutsch oder Englisch?
I”d be happy to (in English!) but unfortunately that would mean other readers of the blog would not benefit from your comment/question or understand my response. Would it be possible for you simply to add a Google Translated version along with the German (or instead of)? my goal in these back and forths is not to make them a one-one-one but a one-for-all, if you see what I mean.