Blue Cord

Today was my first day of teaching at Merrimack College. I think it went well (i.e., no one got injured in the class). The classroom in which I teach was rather warm, but at least it is not receiving direct sunlight during the hours I teach in there. It should be quite nice by the end of September. It is not wired for technology, but I am told that can be brought in on an ad hoc basis. It does have a piano, however, as it is on the same floor as the fine arts department. I have always thought that Leviticus would work better as a musical, so perhaps this will be the year to try it out.

I am teaching two section of “Introduction to Religious and Theological Studies,” which all students are required to take. All of the intro classes I have taught up to this point have been either introductions to the whole Bible or introductions to the OT or NT. I have never done a general religious studies or theological class, and this intro combines both into one semester.

I am using three books for the course. For the religious studies section, I am having them read The Sacred Quest: An Introduction to the Study of Religion by Lawrence Cunningham and John Kelsay. It was recommended by some other professors in the department, and I am enjoying the reading I have done in it so far. For the theological segment of the course I am using Theological Foundations: Concepts and Methods for Understanding Christian Faith by J.J. Meuller et al. It is a team-written book that explores doing theology within a Roman Catholic framework. Each chapter has a segment on doing theological research using library resources, which will be helpful to first year college students. For the final week, the students will read Henry Chadwick’s Augustine: A Very Short Introduction. This college is run by the Augustinian order, so it is appropriate to have the students learn a bit about St. Augustine.

Because of my particular interests, the biblical studies section of my class will cover a few more class meetings than is usual, but I don’t think St. Augustine would mind. Tolle lege!

I am pleased to announce that I have been chosen not to write the volumes on Ruth and Nehemiah for a new commentary series that is not being edited by Alan Lenzi. He is looking for other people not to contribute, so if you would like to get on the ground floor of this much-needed new series, I suggest you get in contact with him now. The series is expected not to be published in 2011.

Given the work I have been doing with academic publishing over the past few months, I am seriously considering starting my own publishing company just so I can put in a bid not to publish this new series. I have always wanted not to be a small business owner, so this is just the opportunity I need!

Please note: Lenzi’s series will only fail to cover the Old Testament. Someone else will have to take up the arduous task of not writing about the New Testament.

I want to go on record to say how annoying I find bibliographic entries that use only the author’s first initial and last name. It just looks wrong. Are we really so lazy that we can’t be bothered to write out the author’s first and last name? It’s not like most publications are so hurting for space on the page that they need the few millimeters we save by using a first initial.

I vote we ban this from academic usage. Who’s with me?

This month’s Review of Biblical Literature contains a review of Maria Brutti’s The Development of the High Priesthood during the Pre-Hasmonean Period. I had not heard of this book. It is published by Brill, but since I am not independently wealthy I cannot afford books published by Brill, so I rarely go by their exhibit at SBL meetings. I was excited when I saw the title, however, because of my interest in the history of the priesthood. I am not as concerned with the period that this book covers (301–152 BCE), but knowing the state of the priesthood at the point would make it possible to work backwards into the periods that do interest me.

Unfortunately, the book review, written by Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, does not leave me hopeful about the book’s usefulness. Here is her opening paragraph, which sums up what she has to say in the rest of the review:

This erudite and meticulously researched book, the author’s revised doctoral thesis from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, leaves the reader with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the book constitutes a wealth of information about the pre-Hasmonean high priesthood. The author is very well read, confidently citing Anglo-Saxon, German, French, and Italian research, and she is fully in command of the primary Greek sources. On the other hand, the book is somewhat unsatisfactory. After reading the book, I have undoubtedly become more knowledgeable about the state of research in the field of the pre-Hasmonean high priests, but I do not know very much more about the high priests. Brutti does not pursue a specific thesis, nor does she advance a particular theory pertaining to the role of the Jerusalem high priests during the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid periods. Rather, the book is descriptive, as it outlines what we can or, more often, cannot know about the tasks and roles of the high priesthood during these time periods. Caution is a virtue, but this book is overly cautious, leaving the reader ever so slightly disappointed. [emphasis mine]

While I appreciate a good review of the literature and a survey of the data as much as the next scholar, those are only the first two steps in scholarship. Analysis is only the beginning. At some point we have to do a synthesis. It sounds like Brutti never gets around to that step. The italicized sentence in the paragraph above is particularly damning. When we read a book, we ultimately want to find out about the topic at hand, not just about the state of research on the subject.

I don’t think this book would be on my “to buy” list for the SBL this year even if I could afford it.

I just got final word today that I will be teaching two sections of “Introduction to Religious Studies” at Merrimack College this fall. Merrimack is a Roman Catholic liberal arts college in the Augustinian tradition. It is located about three miles from my apartment here in Massachusetts, which makes it much more convenient than teaching in Iowa (which I did last semester). Since I am only teaching two sections, I will be able to continue working as an editor on the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.