I recently came across some advice/opinion from a biblical theology professor. A lot of what he said made a lot of sense. Some of it triggered positive ideas in my mind. Some of them I found hard to agree with. However, what he said and how he said it, helped me to accept the idea that I might be(come) an academic one day too!
Since it is quite late at the moment, I will reflect only on few things:
- Do not publish online. It will not help you to tenure. It can only be used against you. (he also said something about blogging. I am omitting his name here, if he would one day accidentally google his name and stumble upon my blog :))
- Do not publish your thesis until you have spent at least five years editing it to make it worth publishing.
- As a biblical scholar, wait until you are at least 50 before synthesizing.
- As a biblical scholar, if you do not have an exceptional skill in Hebrew, you need to get out of business. If you do not have an exceptional skill in Greek, you need to get out of business. If you do not have an exceptional skill in Aramaic, you need to get out of business. It does not matter whether you are a NT or OT scholar, you need to master these three languages exceptionally well (among other tools).
One other thing he spoke a lot was the idols, or examples. He mentioned two by name, and they both were exceptional in the languages - even to the point of memorizing huge chunks of the Bible in near-eastern languages. He also marveled the skill of being able to read the texts intuitively. I know what he was talking about. I have one idol like that of my own - who perhaps is not on par with the two names mentioned today, but what I have seen in him I can tell that he is definitely heading in that direction. And his example and what I heard today inspires me to pursue the same goal: to be able to read the Bible in original languages by sight.
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