England - Second Year 9

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71. I went home for a brief visit in late summer. Then I was back for Michaelmas in October. Second time teaching Greek. Another year as residential tutor. More acting and singing.

Christoph Lorentz was back to Tübingen. Helen Fox was off to continue her life. There was no more rowing team.

I did run my first marathon the next summer in Leeds. I did my training, but about mile 18 I hit the well-known wall. I came up over a hill to see another gully and another hill. I thought to myself, "I'll just walk up this next hill then start running again."

But I was unable to start up again. I little bit of Orangina at a hydration station might get me going for a few feet, but I mostly walked the last eight miles. It was very annoying, because the last few miles were well downhill, but I just couldn't get going.

I tried to jog the last few hundred meters. A 70 year old man pulled up beside me. He had run a marathon the previous Saturday in Belgium. Very humbling... especially when I suddenly developed a cramp in my leg and had to limp across the finish line. "Don't stop now!" The very few people left yelled from the sidelines.

I had fish and chips in a nearby chippy afterwards. Very greasy. One of the best meals I had for my whole time in Britain. :-) [1]

I couldn't let that be my last marathon so my final year I ran in the London marathon. I was determined never to stop. Even if I slowed down to a pace that could hardly even be called a run, I must not stop. And I didn't. I believe it was 4 hours and 20 minutes.

72. Christoph left and Alex Jensen came. Alex was not a stereotypical German. He was from Hamburg in the north and also a Tübingen student.

Alex's very first degree was a PhD. It takes seven years to get your first undergraduate degree in Germany. I've also mentioned already that you have to do the equivalent of two doctorate degrees to get a teaching post in Germany.

So Alex did a year abroad in Durham in something like his sixth German year. Then he switched to Durham as a master's student. Then after satisfactory process, I think with Stephen Barton, he became a PhD student. He did his work on theological hermeneutics and the Gospel of John.

Alex was a hoot. In his early days you could tell when he didn't understand what you had said because he would go "uh huh." Of course my German was much, much, much worse than his English.

I believe it was in my third year that George van Kooten wandered through Durham from the Netherlands. He has gone on to become quite a significant scholar at Cambridge. I saw him this fall at SBL.

73. With the departure of Sandy Wedderburn, Loren Stuckenbruck came to the university my second year. Postgraduates had participated in the sample lectures at the end of the previous year. Another well-known scholar also presented. I enjoyed that presentation as well. He suggested that the Jews would have likely understood the star over Bethlehem to be some sort of heavenly being.

But Stuckenbruck's presentation was clearly the best. He fielded the questions well and did a great job teaching. Over the years, I have found him to be one of the most personable brilliant people I know. He's clearly a genius, so it is always a little surprising to find him also to be one of the most helpful of people. It always seemed like he bent over backward to help students on their path, even well beyond graduation. It didn't matter whether a person was his student or not.

His work on Angel Veneration and Christology was helpful to my work on Hebrews, since he deals with Hebrews 1 in his book. He studied with James Charlesworth at Princeton and so was particulary good when it came to the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Jewish literature. In recent years he has been heavily involved with the Enochic literature.

I was also sad to see Bruce Longenecker leave Cranmer at the end of my first year. Bruce is the son of well-known evangelical scholar Richard Longenecker. He is currently thriving at Baylor and has a great book on Pompeii coming out next month.

So in my second year we also interviewed for Bruce's replacement, who would eventually be Mark Bonnington. I don't remember the name of another person who interviewed but he didn't choose a good topic for the setting. I felt sorry for him but it was pretty amusing.

His paper was on the seven last words of Jesus. [2] He basically did a historical Jesus study on the words, asking which words it was likely that Jesus actually said. Principal David Day wasn't impressed. He made some snarky comment like, "So you're saying that Haydn got it all wrong? Good luck with that."

74. I believe Dunn was working on a small commentary on 1 Corinthians in my second year. So the graduate seminar worked through 1 Corinthians. It was incredibly helpful and enjoyable. It was because of that semester that I would jump at the chance to write a commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians for the Wesleyan Commentary series.

Scholars would occasionally come through. Paul Trebilco wandered through Durham one semester. Carl Holladay appeared. I seem to remember a brief exchange with him about coming from a fundamentalist background. I got the impression that a lot of prominent mainstream New Testament scholars had come from more sectarian backgrounds.

Ralph Martin gave a presentation once. I remember being struck with how "in progress" his work was. It gave me hope. I felt pretty inferior in those sessions. I felt like if I would say anything, I would inevitably look stupid. There would be some obvious work that I should know about but didn't.

Stephen Barton encouraged me once on this score. He said I always prefaced my comments with something like, "this probably is overlooking something but ..." Yet he said my questions and comments were always helpful or insightful. That was encouraging.

75. I believe it was at the 1995 British New Testament Conference that I presented a paper. My paper was "Did Hebrews Know Wisdom?" In it, I argued that the book of Hebrews demonstrates an awareness of the book of Wisdom.

[1] I had some family friends do a bus trip around England, and they stopped down at the Durham City Centre. They had seen enough castles and cathedrals so weren't interested in seeing another one. But they were up for some fish and fries. The most memorable moment was when he complained something like, "What do I have to do to get some ketchup for these fries?"

[2] There's a famous piece by Haydn called The Seven Last Words of Christ. We may have even performed it that year. I can't remember.