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10. I haven't said much lately about the New Testament Seminar. I mentioned that we went through
Florentino Garcia Martinez edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls the second year. Those were great learning experiences. It wasn't as intense as comp exams, but it helped us cover the bases.
While I was in Germany, they went through New Testament apocrypha. I tried to keep at least an eye on them while I was away, documents like the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Protoevangelium of James.
It was always a delight when Dunn was working on a commentary. He worked on two during my time there, one on 1 Corinthians and one on Colossians. Such valuable sessions. I would go on to write a commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians for the Wesleyans, and that semester was so helpful to that end.
For Colossians, I came to see the Colossian philosophy as a form of mystical Judaism rather than syncretistic Judaism. We explored 4QMMT. So helpful. Dunn's commentary on Colossians remains the best, in my opinion.
I prize a comment Stephen Barton once made to me. He said that I usually prefaced any comment or question I was about to make with something like "I probably don't know what I'm talking about" but then I would go on to say something valuable. I felt so out of my depth in that group. Stuckenbruck, Moberly.
There were also some funny moments. One Canadian presenter paraphraseed 1 Corinthians 11:13 as Paul saying that they needed to have conflicts so they could determine who was "top dog." Dunn got a big kick out of that. I'm not sure he could make heads or tails out of the comment.
11. By far the academic highlight of my time there was the Durham-Tubingen Colloquium on Paul and the Law. You can read the papers here. It was a festival of famous names.
I met Martin Hengel. I was sitting at the end of a table during a meal when he came up passionately and interrupted whatever conversation was going on. "Luke could not have just used Matthew without a Q," he said. "It is inconceivable that he would smash the Sermon on the Mount and partition it throughout his Gospel."
Made sense to me. I think Friedrich Avemarie was at the table. A short conversation and I realized I had completely misinterpreted Otfried Hofius' approach to Hebrews in relation to Gnosticism. So much for my German.
I met Tom Wright. He had to leave a little early and I had the privilege of walking him to the train station. Richard Hays was there. Hermann Lichtenberger. Bruce Longenecker came back. I heard a rumor that the Germans only agreed to come if E. P. Sanders was not invited. He had apparently quite extensively smeered Joachim Jeremias character somewhere, questioning whether he could have accidentally gotten the rabbinic sources so wrong.
I may have misremembered that piece, so I welcome correction.
Dunn had hoped that the conference might result in some sort of consensus, but that was wishful thinking on his part. Those were the first decades of the "new perspective on Paul," and it was never likely that they would come to agreement. As I recall, Hans Hubner represented the old perspective. I think Cranfield came to one session.
All very helpful. For over a decade I would be the principal teacher of Paul's letters at IWU, and these experiences provided an incredibly strong foundation on which to build.
12. The spring and summer of 1996 were focused on finishing my dissertation. I had a stack of commentaries and monographs about a yard high by my computer. I would scour them as I made interpretive decisions.
Although I have developed firm positions on the meaning of Hebrews now, in those days I often didn't know what I thought on particular questions. I have described my process as one of deciding what I think about x. Then if I think something about x, it has implications for y. And as time went by, I weaved a tapestry that is my interpretation of Hebrews.
I had a 5 mile route mapped out that I ran to think (and also to train). I believe I would go down the Bailey across Prebends bridge and then take a left to South Rd. Then I would run up to where it met Darlington Road and out to Neville's Cross. From there it was back down to Crossgate and across Framwellgate Bridge. Mind you, it's been 30 years.
In the end, I was pretty happy with the results. I would later revise and get it published with Cambridge.
Loren Stuckenbruck was my internal examiner and Frances Young my external. After the first few minutes of my viva, I thought I was in trouble. "I'm going to have to do massive rewrites," I thought to myself.
Then Young let up. They said that they were actually very positive about the dissertation. There were also some side comments about Dunn not being particularly sophisticated at recent developments in hermeneutics. He was a classic historical-critical scholar, and my method section was dabbling in matters of poststructuralism and narrative criticism.
Well, I passed with only some minor revisions. It was still more involved to get a dissertation printed back then. But my copies were submitted at Old Elvet, and I would graduate in December.
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