You Might Be Becoming a Biblical Scholar If. . . (In honor of the newly inaugurated “Society for the Advancement of Biblical Scholarship” fellowship on the Hill)

14 Sep 2010 2 Comments

by Marvin Lance Wiser in Biblical Studies, Hebrew Bible, New Testament Tags:

[If any of  10 or more of these statements apply to you, then this fellowship could be for you.]
  1. You consider persons such as Hermann Gunkel or Albert Schweitzer to be more important than Michael Jordan or Steve Jobs.
  2. Your Amazon list consists of titles such as The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts, or The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.
  3. You have ever held a copy of Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel.
  4. You know what the Graf-Wellhausen Hypothesis is.
  5. You have ever asked for the Anchor Bible Dictionary for Christmas.
  6. You have ever received a lexicon for your birthday.
  7. You have ever cited one of these Normans: Norman C. Habel, Norman K. Gottwald, or Norman Golb.
  8. You have ever parsed a verb of a dead language at 2:00am.
  9. You have ever lied awake at night pondering the origins of Christianity.
  10. You have ever given pets names like Enkidu, Qumran, or Nag Hammadi.
  11. You think the Iron Age is better than the Digital Age.
  12. You can explain biblical parallelism.
  13. You have read Semantics of Biblical Language.
  14. You hear the phrase “hill country” and you don’t automatically think of rural Appalachia, but rather of Judea.
  15. Ugaritic Narrative Poetry actually sounds appealing.
  16. The “Jesus Seminar” you refer to doesn’t involve a band and strobe lights.
  17. You know how to spell “pseudepigrapha.”
  18. You are familiar with the “New Perspective” on Paul.
  19. At some point in your life, Indiana Jones was/is a role model.
  20. The word “Kitchen” is synonymous with “Egypt.”
  21. You make vehement distinctions between the Hebrews, Israelites, Judahites, and Jews.
  22. You know of an ancient gospel where a character is a talking cross.
  23. You are not referring to your TV signal when you speak of “reception history.”
  24. “Second Temple” doesn’t refer to the local church or synagogue.
  25. You know the Chicago Manual of Style has nothing to do with fashion.
  26. “Heilsgeschichte” is a colloquialism for you.
  27. You refer to voluminous lexicons with a tender last name, e.g., “Kittle.”
  28. You can identify any of these acronyms correctly: ANE, APOT, BDAG, BCE, BHS, DTR, JBL, JEDP, NMS, Q, SBL.
  29. You are now considering Akkadian or Coptic as course electives.
  30. “Canon within a Canon” is not a board game.
  31. You can name more than five types of biblical “criticisms.”
  32. Israel or Turkey make the list of possible future vacation spots.
  33. You ever played “deciphering the ostracon” as a child.

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