This is now my 40th year of teaching at a university, 36 of the years at UNC Chapel Hill and 4 before that at Rutgers as a 28 year old. It very nearly didn’t happen at all. Life is so strange.
I was on the job market while I was writing my dissertation.. And even though there were job openings, I couldn’t get an interview to save my soul. Part of the problem was that my PhD was from a theological seminary, and a lot of the jobs were at secular institutions – state universities, private colleges, and the like. Most places simply don’t want to take a chance on someone who has been trained in a theological environment. Especially someone like me at the time. I had never set foot in a secular setting since high school! Starting when I was 17, I was at Moody Bible Institute (3 years), (Christian evangelical) Wheaton College (2 years), and then (Presbyterian ministerial training ground) Princeton Theological Seminary (7 years). Yikes!
Even theological schools and Christian colleges were not, by and large, interested in me, in no small measure because of my area of expertise. Greek manuscripts? Analyzing how fourth century church fathers quoted the Gospels in Greek in comparison with other ancient manuscripts?? Didymus the Blind??? Are you kidding? Most places wanted someone who was an expert on the letters of Paul, or the Gospel of John, or biblical hermeneutics, or – well, or anything besides what I was an expert in.
I tried my best to convince schools that I was not a typical textual critic and that I had broad range across the New Testament and related fields. I could teach Introductory courses in NT and OT, courses on Paul, on the Synoptics, on John, on … you name it. And I published articles in other areas of NT studies to prove it. But it was a tough job market, and no one saw any reason to take a chance. There were tons of other candidates who actually looked like the sort of thing they were looking for. The cards were really stacked against me.
I don’t believe in miracles, but if I did, this would be one. I was in the office of the director of graduate studies at Princeton Seminary – this was the office that served as the liaison with colleges, universities, and seminaries who were looking to hire beginning faculty members – and I was grousing about how I couldn’t get a lousy interview. It was in the middle of the Spring semester, 1984. I was in that office grousing several times a week, when I wasn’t buried in the library studying the Gospel citations of Didymus the Blind. While I’m grousing, the phone rings. The secretary picks it up. She says “Wait a minute.” And she hands me the phone.
It is the chair of the Department of Religion at Rutgers. They have an emergency situation, here in the middle of a semester. The woman who teaches New Testament has to take an emergency leave of absence. Her husband has been diagnosed with cancer. She has to withdraw from teaching immediately after she gives the mid-term exam. They need someone to finish out the semester for her. Would I be interested?
WOULD I BE INTERESTED?!? Good God was I interested.
I did it. I took over for her two classes (NT Introduction and the Writings of Paul). And that’s how I got started. She ended up retiring. They gave me the position for another year, with three classes. And the next year. And the next year. All this time I was seriously and desperately hunting for a permanent tenure-track job. And getting nothing. I was still a textual critic, after all, and no one wanted a textual critic. But things turned around in a big way in my fourth year of teaching at Rutgers, three years after I finished my dissertation. More on that in a future post.
For now, the Rutgers position. It got me started in teaching. If it hadn’t been for that job I may well have never gotten another. I certainly would never have gotten one in a secular research university with the kind of educational background I had. But my experience teaching at Rutgers set me up to get another job, the dream job I still have. And it happened by a fluke. Someone else’s horrible fortune (a dying husband) at the right time, and my happening to be in the right place just at that time, grousing about not getting a job in the director of graduate studies office. Life is a funny thing….
Congratulations on the Long run. Do not stop until you have to.
Speaking of funny things, I’m just wondering how you were able to teach at Rutgers for four years as a 28-year-old….
Ha! Time slowed down for me.
Good job Bart!!! You’ve worked extremely hard and have done well. Plus, the work you’ve done was important and still remains so. I first read your book Forged about 12 years ago, most recently I read your book Peter, Paul and Mary. I also recently purchased a Harper Collin’s study Bible. It’s very strange where life takes us. I’m a 68 year old retired letter carrier with one year of college. I didn’t wake up wanting or even thinking I would carry mail, but I have no regrets. I met thousands of people and was lucky to have a job that was physical. Thanks for all you do and for keeping my curiosity piqued.
Old saying, it’s not what you know but WHO you know.
I’m sure glad this happened! It might have been divine intervention… but I still lean towards a happy coincidence. Just the other day, I got stuck listening to a relative’s lengthy tale about how he once lost the key to his bicycle lock while playing frisbee on a large grassy field, and then he prayed to God to help him find the key, and then he actually found this tiny key on this vast field, and that convinced him of the existence of God. He was quite earnestly convinced that this was a moving and persuasive tale. I guess he experienced it that way. I think he was slightly dismayed that I did not find it persuasive at all.
Right — I bet he was dismayed! Every time someone describes a personal miracle to me I get the same reaction from them…. But we all have amazing stories, and for some folk, that’s enough!
A question for Bart. I know this is off-subject on this post. But I’m listening to the latest Misquoting Jesus episode. The subject of Mythicist came up. My question. I assume there are Mythicist who believe ‘what they preach”, so to speak. Do you know Mythicist who really don’t buy in to what into Mysticism, but “feed red meat” to their audience.? I guess in other words, how common are frauds in the Mysticism movement?
I don’t know, but my sense of all the ones I’ve met is that they really mean it, or have at least convinced themselves of it….
I’ve been called a mythicist and I reject the moniker, for three reasons. First, bec. ‘Myth’ is often used as short-hand for “made-up” story, a seriously outdated understanding. Secondly, bec. it implies that “those people” were stupid or naive or mendacious. But worst of all, bec. it leads exegetes down rabbit-holes in trying to explain miracle stories as magic, naive science, etc. Or to Rationalism: e.g. Jesus’ “walking” across the Sea of Galilee by floating on a floe of ice! (I kid you not.) IMO, myths are meant to be *true* (but not literally), and to convey true insights into a lived world. And, in accord w. Levi-Strauss, I suggest we can’t begin to unravel their semantics w/o placing a myth into a whole symbolic vocabulary that provides historical/cultural context. Thus, I’d suggest that the context of Jesus’ stroll/storm-control is inter alia a long series of stories about the chaos-waters and their control, beginning with Gen. 1 and marching through the Flood, parting of the Red Sea, psalms regarding the Tehom, etc. I’ve no view on Jesus’ historicity. Largely beside the point.
I’d say his historicity is beside the point if our interests are on the “meaning” of the texts. But if we’re also interested in history (completely different sets of concerns, interests, methods, etc.) then I’d say it does. Have you read Strauss’s Life of Jesus? Brilliant — wiht a perspective on the walking on water close to yours. (you probably know it. And probably know that it was translated into English — well most of it — by George Eliot!)
Wow! I am so glad that happened because, to put it mildly, your work changed my life. No kidding!
Thanks Ron!
Thank you for sharing, I’m glad you found a path to get your career started, in New Jersey too!
Look forward to hearing the rest of the story!
Something like you describe happened to me — three times.
When I was in my senior year of high school, one of the faculty advisors called me into his office. He told me about scholarship opportunities and gave me the address of an office downtown where I would be interviewed. I went. The interview was 30 minutes long and I thought I did well enough. A few weeks later I received a letter saying I had received a four-year college scholarship.
In my fourth undergraduate year, my faculty advisor told me that I would receive a letter from a graduate school offering me full tuition for work on a Masters degree. No interview. Evidently, my undergrad grades were good enough.
As I was finishing two years of grad school and defending my research work in my orals, I received a call from a local aerospace corporation offering me a job in the general engineering labs. I accepted. This was 1965 and the starting salary in today’s money was $89K. This was the middle of the Apollo Program and aerospace companies were frantically looking for anyone with laboratory experience. I spent the next 32 years there.
Whoa.
Man’s fate is either accidental or inevitable.
Before 2002, I never thought I would be the prophesied Messiah.
Bit late to the party on this but contingency drives careers and your story is not unusual. Being in the right place at the right time, working for the right boss, having the right circumstances arise at a job that gets you noticed and on and on it goes. Absent these events or circumstances, lots of very talented people simply don’t get their opportunity. Few do ‘badly’ but many never reach their potential due to factors outside their control. These latter cases are legion and I suspect we all know of a few.
Glad things broke your way. We’re all the richer for it.
God works in mysterious ways (who knew?) I had an invitation to interview w. Rutgers Philosophy in ’74. The chair had to rescind: objections from a senior dept. member in phil. religion. I later engaged that professor in extended debate over mysticism; and when he retired, he invited me to apply for his position… But for me, as a young philosopher of science, religion hadn’t been on the table at all. Pure chance: an Ethics seminar led to my taking a couple of Anthro. courses, against dept. chair’s advice. That led to lifetime fascination with religion and myth analysis. Meantime, my best college friend had wound up at Chicago studying the Gospel of Matthew (had been a biology major) with J. Z. Smith et. al. When he told me he was working on Matthew, under Smith’s influence, light bulbs went on for me. I was hooked. More than happy I ignored my grad school dept. chair’s advice.
Whoa.
Man, the tenacity you have is a proxy for your passion on the subject! I hope someday you get your expert paws on some Greek Druze manuscripts, Dr. Ehrman.
I’m trying to move my way into the job market myself. Not great so far! Computer science is a nasty field, though.
Yup. Incredible competition.
Ahh, I remember that young professor at Rutgers! All these years later and I still remember how important context is, do NOT call it Revelations, and just because someone’s name is on it doesn’t mean they wrote it. It’s also fun to finally see your religious background because, at the time, you refused to tell us. I just signed up to this site and wanted a Bible refresher after President Carter’s passing. I was fortunate enough to go to to his Sunday school class and events at the Carter Center. And while my own religious ideas are at best what you might call confused, watching him talk about issues (Biblical and otherwise) were incredible, inspirational experiences. At any rate, since it’s been on my mind, I wanted to refresh myself on context. Then I remembered and came here to this site. After all, who would be better for context?
Whoa!! Really? Which class did you have with me, and what year?
I won’t say I’m getting old, but my granddaughter just got into Rutgers!!
It was the New Testament class, and I don’t recall the year exactly, but I’m thinking around 1988? Funny, I do remember the textbook by Spivey and Smith. Congratulations to your granddaughter!
Whoa. Would’ve been Spring 1988 — my last semester there!
I would call this destiny.
I had an experience similar to yours, but with the opposite outcome. I received my Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1981. At that time the job market for historians in general, and especially in my specialty, Russian history, was dismal. I ended up finding a job first as a technical writer in the data processing center of a real estate limited partnership business, then went on to become a computer programmer and wound up as a software engineer working on justice computer systems for Los Angeles County. However, I have never lost my interest in history, and I have found your work to be extremely intriguing, illuminating and inspiring.
Yeah, those were tough times. Remarkably, they’ve gotten tougher. It’s an ethical dilemma accepting PhD students in the humanities these days….
One door shuts and another door opens 😊
Well, Bart, you have one of these stories similar to all of us who are a right of passage it seems whatever that entails, but I’m not sure either that finally got there. Not handed down the grousing about got me chuckling. Having to visualize you grumbling over your lot. Life is indeed funny!
Once upon a time, as a junior, I walked into Hamilton to decide if I wanted to take your course to fulfill one of a couple of my dangling general elective courses. I think there must have been 300+ kids in there, and I had bad flashbacks of Venable chem and decided nope
Dumb
Finding you 25 years later has been incredibly illuminating. Glad it worked out this way
Ha! Yup, that’s a big room. But NT ain’t like Chem 101!
The funny part – after listening to your course on audible – is that you would have owed me that Mexican dinner; I don’t know all eleven questions but the ones you mention are ones I learned when my dad was a Sunday school teacher. Cosmic please (not even sure it’s still there Franklin changes so much)
Armadillo Grill is still there! But I never go. Students stopped coming to my informal office hours after a number of years. Who wants to hang out with an old geezer???
I took an introductory seminar from an older professor on International relations.
Even though the seminar lacked a foundation, that professor was a base of knowledge.
When I was living in Shanghai 1997-2020, my friend said another guy went to Princeton Theological Seminary-instant reputation!
Thank you!
Hmm!
Brings back memories of being new and miserable in one section of my career path. I’d been ignoring an internal ad for a position exactly suited for me, and one day it finally dawned on me to apply! Barely 24 hours after I did so I was called for an interview. Interview day came and everything went great. About an hour after I returned to my desk, the phone rang and I got the job. Been in this career now over 35 years.
Nice!