Blue Cord

In the wake of the news out of Seabury-Western on Thursday, I thought I would point people to two short articles in this week’s The Christian Century (Feb. 26, 2008 issue).

Nick Carter, the dean of Andover Newton Theological Seminary gives an interview in which he discusses the “Constraints & Opportunities” facing seminaries. Although it takes up only a page and a half, he gives a good overview of some of the problems that have led to the current crisis in some seminaries. He gives some statistics that I didn’t know:

• Half of all M.Div. students attend twelve seminaries. Unfortunately, he doesn’t list those twelve. Out of those twelve, only three are traditional mainline seminaries.
• 53% of seminaries have fewer than 150 full-time students.
• Experts (who?) say that as many as twenty seminaries could go out of business in the next five to seven years.

He raises the question of whether we have too many seminaries, although he doesn’t attempt an answer.

The second article is a report on Harvard’s revamped M.Div. program. Harvard Divinity School retooled its M.Div. three years ago, and the first batch of graduates under the new program graduate this semester. One interesting fact is the HDS now requires all M.Div. students to have three semesters in one of the biblical languages. That is not three semesters spread between Hebrew and Greek but three in Hebrew or three in Greek (I am sure this will make John Hobbins quite happy!). I have suggested before that one year of a biblical language is not enough to make one competent in a biblical language, but three semesters is certainly getting closer (see my post on “Seminary Training in Biblical Studies”). Their M.Div. now features a focus on “ministry studies,” although the article does not define what that includes. One thing I didn’t know was that M.T.S. students make up two-thirds of the student body at HDS while M.Div. students only account for one-third.

John Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry has an excellent post on the state of biblical interpretation training in seminary. His post has elicited several responses and posts on other blogs. Links to these can be found at the bottom of his original post.

John laments the fact that most seminary graduates have such a poor grounding in the Bible. In a phrase that cuts to the heart of the problem, John states:

Overwhelmed by many other claims on time and mind, students end up with a merely cursory and superficial preparation in the literature that is supposed to be compass, mirror, and anchor of the ministry they will carry out.

I wanted to make two points about biblical studies in seminaries.

The first flows out of John’s statement about the other claims on the time and minds of seminarians. Part of the blame for this comes from the fact that mainline churches — including my own — do not place as much stress on the Bible as they once did. Many other things clamor to be the central mission of the church, including social justice and pastoral counseling. And many parish search committees look more for someone who can be an administrator than someone who can interpret a biblical text. Is it any wonder, then, that the people who go to seminary look to focus more on things other than the Bible?

This is not to say that social justice and pastoral counseling are unimportant. They are, but they are not the reason that the church exists. They flow out of our commitment to the gospel of Christ Jesus, a gospel that is best understood through the Scriptures of the church.

I would be surprised if there were any medical schools out there in which students studied administration more than they studied the human body. Or a law school in which actually reading the law was required in only a quarter of the classes. But that is exactly what we are doing in a number of seminaries.

Sad to say, I knew more than one person in my seminary who could quote from memory more lines of T.S. Elliot’s poems than verses of Scripture.¹

My second point is that I am not sure requiring Hebrew and Greek of seminarians would improve this situation, especially if we mandated just the one year that some denominations require. If we are trying to create students who can responsibly use Hebrew and Greek, then no less than three years should be mandatory in each.

Obviously, few seminarians are going to go for this, and I am not convinced we should make them. Not all seminarians are cut out to be linguists (as my friend the Peripatetic Polar Bear can attest) nor should they be. But one year of language study creates a dangerous situation. We have all heard sermons where the preacher made basic mistakes in handling the original languages, and it often comes from thinking that they know enough of the language. Giving students one year of language equips them to make mistakes but does not really give them enough to understand the text better. I think Alexander Pope’s caveat needs to be recalled here:

A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.

Are we really convinced that Hebrew and Greek are such simple languages that two semesters of each gives the would–be pastor the tools to delve deeper into the text? I think the student’s time would be much better spent taking additional classes on interpreting the text in English.

1. Granted, T.S. Elliot is de rigueur for us Episcopalians, but the Bible should be too. [back]

Shortly after posting the note asking for prayers for Brevard Childs, I got word that he had passed away around 2:00 pm this afternoon. He died peacefully, surrounded by his family, just a few minutes after they removed life support.

Childs will be remembered as a giant in the field of Old Testament studies. He is best known for his canonical approach to the Scriptures, an approach that fundamentally changed the way some scholars approach the field. His critique of biblical theology in the 1970s led to a revitalization of that area of study, while his An Introduction to the Old Testament as Christian Scripture was a remarkable exercise in what he thought an introduction should be.

All of this and more will be said of Childs in the coming weeks as the field eulogizes him. But I wanted to take a moment to share some memories of him from when I was a student. I had the honor of taking two courses from him: Hebrew Reading of Psalms and Isaiah as Christian Scripture. The first I took as a first year seminary student. I remember sitting in the class hunched over my BHS and BDB, scared to death that Childs would call on me.

Childs was a very soft spoken man. Listening to him lecture always sounded to me like hearing Winnie the Pooh wax poetic on the wonders of the pi’el imperfect. He was an amazingly kind and gentle man, although he never could remember my name. After I took the Psalms class, the registrar sent him a note asking for my grade. Childs replied with a hand written note, stating that he couldn’t remember if I had dropped the class or not, but he suggested that perhaps I had taken the class under a different name.

In Isaiah as Christian Scripture, I got to interact most directly with his canonical approach to Scripture. Although I loved the new questions he was asking of the text, I never quite accepted completely the answers he gave. This, of course, is not the time to be debating such matters. But whether your agreed with him or not, Childs broad knowledge was unmistakable. He could quote at will from Luther and Calvin, and for a biblical scholar he knew entirely too much Barth for my taste. Of course, Childs knew Barth, and it was rumored at school that Childs had met his future wife in Barth’s living room. ¹

Childs’s impact on the field was truly monumental, and I know many voices in the coming weeks will say so. I merely wanted to add my own personal note at his passing to offer my gratitude for the profound impact he had on my own understanding of the Old Testament as Christian Scriptures.

1. I never knew whether this rumor was correct or not. [back]

Chris Heard at Higgaion asked what teaching grammars people prefer for Hebrew. I just finished a year long Hebrew course, I thought I would give my thoughts on Mark Futato’s Beginning Biblical Hebrew. I have only taught Hebrew once, so this will not be a comparative review. Instead I will list what I found to be the pluses and minuses of this particular grammar.

On the plus side:

• Futato explains concepts well. He gives enough information to explain what is going on, but does not bog students down with a detailed description of every exception. It gives students enough to learn without overwhelming them.
• The exercises have a grading key in the back, even in the student version. If you have honest students who will use it well, this is helpful.
• The exercises move into complex sentences quickly, which helps the students develop proficiency.
• The exercises always have two or three sets aimed at the new material, three or four review material from previous chapters, one integrating the two, and a final exercise giving actual passages from the Bible for them to translate.
• Futato does a good job of focusing on what students will need to know most. He covers the qal, pi’el, hiph’il, and niph’al in depth, first giving the strong verbs and then the weak verbs.
• Futato is available in electronic format for those who use the Libronix system (the text program that powers Logos).

The minuses:

• There is no full chart giving the strong verb in all stems. Since this is one thing I require my students to memorize, it would be helpful.
• The treatment of the pu’al, hithpa’el, and hoph’al seems rather tacked on.
• Many of the exercises are not ones that you can have students turn in for grades. For the translation exercises, he gives the text in the left column and the translation in the right column. The right column is shifted down so that students can cover the answers with a sheet of paper for practice. But this makes it harder to have the students turn in the answers, which makes it more difficult to track their progress, particularly in a large class.

The book has 40 chapters, and we got through those with two weeks to spare in the second semester. Granted, the class my second semester was down to three students, all of whom were excellent and had experience learning languages. After all, I was teaching it at LCC where most students are trilingual, so we moved pretty quickly. On the other hand, we did a three week review of the first part of the book at the beginning of the second semester, due to the fact that I taught the first semester in the spring. But when we finished the book, my students had little problem reading the first two chapters of Ruth.

As I mentioned before, this is the first time I have taught Hebrew and this is the only grammar I have used, so I cannot say how it stacks up against others. But I hope the information given here will be helpful in making a decision. I liked Futato, but I would also want to look at a few other grammars when it is time for me to teach Hebrew again.

Charles Halton over at Awilum has a post on an article in Hebrew Studies that discusses linguistic data for distinguishing between Standard and Late Biblical Hebrew. The problem is one that is on-going in the field, with some scholars doubting whether linguistic evidence can be used for dating texts.

I posted a response to his entry, which I reproduce here:

I think the exile is the earliest point at which the change would be made, but it didn’t necessarily happen at that point. It certainly happened by 400, but it didn’t necessarily happen that late. That leaves us almost two centuries during which the change could happen. Not only is 200 years a long time, but these happen to be a rather important 200 years.

Many of the texts that we have trouble dating fall within that time period. This is especially important for me, since I am working on the last layers of the Pentateuch. If we could determine the time of the change from SBH to LBH, that might help me date H and the H redactor.

To tip my hand somewhat, I am currently leaning towards a pre-exilic date for the Priestly source (P), perhaps in the 8th century BCE, and an exilic dating for the Holiness layer (H). The H redactor is post-exilic, as it clearly shows signs of Aramaic influence. The problem is that if P and H are pre-exilic and exilic, then both of them should be written in SBH, since the date for the switch to LBH is probably later than the exile. That means linguistic data cannot help me distinguish P and H, but might help me distinguish H from the H redactor.