I have started up a new blog to explore my experience as a Bread for the World intern this Summer. It’s entitled: “Hungry for What, Now?” The question relates to my own search for meaning in vocation, particularly as it relates to poor, hungry people in the world. It also could serve as a challenge to so many people, groups, and powers. What are you hungry for?

Anyway, I will be working on outreach to congregations and getting them connected to Bread, as well as developing and partially implementing some Christian education (i.e., Bible studies) on hunger for a more “Evangelical” audience, rather than just the “mainline” stuff, which they pretty much got covered. Hunger is an equal opportunity problem, mainline or evangelical, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, whatever or whatever. So, you can expect to find my thoughts on there about hunger issue advocacy, how policy making works, creating Christian education materials on hunger, Bread events, news stories, and perhaps even a few silly things as well.

If you’re one of my readers (or even if you’re not!) and you’re interested in hunger issues and justice, I would love to have your input as I wrestle through these topics this Summer. Thanks!

[I will still be posting on here, but as I mentioned on my previous post, it is taking a little breather while I'm in my two week intensive.]

It’s official. I’ve received approval from Fuller Seminary’s Field Education Office, and have registered for, a full-time ten-week internship (FE502) with Bread for the World. This fulfills the second internship requirement for my Master of Divinity. I am finishing up the first one (a part-time, three-quarter, church-based internship at Pasadena Mennonite Church) right now. The internship will run from June 18th to August 24th.

I will unfortunately not be able to make it to their national gathering in Washington, D.C., coming up in a couple weeks (too much money!), but I will be diving in head first via Bread’s Pasadena office, run by my friends David Gist (Regional Organizer – California) and Holly Hight (Outreach Organizer – Western Region and California). I will be doing a lot of theological education regarding hunger issues (including preaching as well as developing, testing, and partially implementing hunger-related Bible studies) and outreach regarding Bread’s advocacy work. For those unfamiliar with Bread for the World, you should check them out (and you can see their blog too). They are a uniquely cool organization, which works with churches and Christian leaders around the country to lobby the United States government to concentrate their efforts on specific hunger issues domestically and globally.

But, Pat, how does this relate with your vocational goals, you ask? First of all, I want to be connected with justice issues no matter where I end up. I never want to get lost in any career, forgetting the immense responsibility that I have as a disciple of Jesus and, frankly, as a “middle class” American. “Middle class” is in quotes because there is nothing “middle” about it in global perspective–no matter how poor I feel as a grad student, I am a rich Christian in an age of hunger. Secondly, this will help me develop my skills as an educator in developing lessons based upon my target audience, communicate to them in ways with which they can connect on a particular issue (hunger issues as related to the Bible and theology). Also, I hope to one day be a professor of undergraduate students, I imagine they’d be Christians studying the Bible, and I want to mentor these students and connect them to Bread and organizations like it, helping them integrate justice issues into their academic vocations.

I am sure the ten weeks will fly by and I don’t have any grand visions of single-handedly ending global hunger in that time period, but I’m sure I will learn quite a bit. Many thanks to David and Holly for taking me on, and to Pastor Katherine at Pasadena Mennonite who will continue theologically reflecting with me as I transition from one internship to the next.

I’m reading through David Alan Black‘s New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide for my Exegetical Methods class. It’s a handy little book that just goes through the basics of the field in a quite accessible way. To my surprise, when I joked to my wife that since I was going to go do the dishes, would she read the book for me . . . she actually started reading it! I must inform you that my wife is a dietitian, far removed from heavy theological debates, and she normally steers clear of in-depth geeky Bible stuff. It did get us into an interesting conversation, though, about what all this stuff means for the average Bible reader. If scholars debate about this textual criticism stuff, how’s the non-specialist supposed to know what to do with it? How are they supposed to trust what they read in the Bible?

For my readers who don’t know, “textual criticism” is the study of (you got it) texts of the NT (or of any historical document, for that matter). It’s the search to figure out what the actual original words were for Paul’s letters or the Gospels, for example. That said, you should know that scholars are fairly certain about the wording of the vast majority of the NT. Furthermore, the vast majority of the inconsistencies in manuscripts of the NT are either easy to figure out or rather innocuous to matters of faith (like a shift in word order: Jesus Christ instead of Christ Jesus–it’s interesting, but doesn’t make to much difference for the person of faith today). I assured my wife that she doesn’t have to worry too much about not being able to read the Bible on her own. I think an average reader could get by with reading good introductions to biblical books in informed study Bibles, taking a look at a solid Bible dictionary for some lingering questions, even reading accessible commentaries if they want to go in depth (I recommend the Believers Church Bible Commentary series in that regard), and of course, learning from teachers who have done the dirty work for them. As for the text issues, I told her that a lot of the more significant textual discrepancies, the ones the nitty gritty scholars aren’t sure about, will be noted in the footnotes of the Bible or even bracketed off as a warning to readers.

Basically, I tried to convince her that you don’t have to be a scholar to understand the Bible (that would be a very cruel theological joke). She asked the obvious question: So, then, why are you doing this? Meaning: why am I interested in pursuing scholarship, if I’m standing there downplaying the importance to scholarly debates. It’s a fundamental vocational question, and a good one. My answer, I think, is that the scholarly debates are not irrelevant, they just need to be distilled to reach the non-Bible-geeks like my wife. I want to be one of those people who wrestles with the hard stuff, because I have an acquired palate and passion for it, and then makes the nitty gritty more accessible for those who aren’t interested in spending their lives buried in books and libraries and heady classroom discussions (not to mention the reading of biblioblogs!). In my career, while I would like to do some scholarly pushing and pulling in more technical debates, I think my primary goal is to be an educator and communicator. I’m reminded of the need for that by all the people closest to me who ask me these very good questions.

Since the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is coming up later this month, and it’s my first run-in with the bigwig conference, it may be a good time for me to think about what I am interested in pursuing as a potential scholar. What captures my attention, passions, and interests in the field of biblical studies? I’m still trying to figure this out myself, so I’m just going to do a list format here. And maybe I should start with what I don’t want to do, since that’s easier to know.

Things that make me go “ugh…”:

• Highly speculative historical reconstruction of events: What is the dating for Paul’s various letters to the Corinthian churches? Did the exodus really happen and, if so, when? What were the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls community and who was the “Wicked Priest”? It’s not that I don’t appreciate the work that others do in trying to figure these things out, but it’s just not my bag, baby. These actually are pretty tame as far as speculation goes. Generally, the more speculative it is, the more abhorrent I find it.
• Source and redaction criticism: Did one definitive “Q” source exist (that is, a source used by both Matthew and Luke) and of what did it consist? What parts of the Pentateuch were written by the J, E, D, and P sources? Again, not bad work, but not for me.
• Highly philosophical interpretive methods: Highfalutin language and incomprensible systems and grids is a major turn off. I do like a bit of poststructuralism in moderation, but for me, it can sometimes skate the edge of boredom.
• Historically disconnected and overly postmodern “reader-response” criticism: Boy if that doesn’t show my bias, eh? I don’t like history to reign supreme in hermeneutics, but I also don’t think that each individual reader is the be all and end all of the interpretative endeavor.
• Solely ideological criticism: I am a feminist and at times I like to dance with… (no, not with the devil in the pale moonlight)… liberation theology. I think that it goes over-the-top, however, when it is an undergirding hermeneutical method. I appreciate the work that some feminists and liberationists are doing to ask the difficult questions, but I worry about losing historical perspective . . . similar to my concerns about reader-response criticism.

Things that make me go “mmm…”:

• Jesus: This is a little complicated. I’m not into a ton of speculation about the “historical Jesus,” but I don’t mind it as much as other speculative issues. I’m more intrigued by how Jesus is remembered by the New Testament documents and what that means for the history of the church and for Jesus followers today. But I do enjoy thinking about Jesus’ historical and cultural context. This is the purpose for historical research for me: not figuring out exactly how things happened, but pondering the significance of the surrounding culture (especially early Jewish culture).
• Anabaptist hermeneutics: What does critical New Testament scholarship mean when interpreted through the lens of a radical lived-out faith community? For example, what do we do with the early chapters of Acts and the Sermon on the Mount?
• Intertexuality: What is the relationship between various texts? As far as specific textual relationships go, having taken VanderKam’s course on early Judaism, I’m particularly interested in Second Temple Judaism. I’m also interested in texts that have no direct link (that we know of) and yet still share similar language and themes.
• Narrative or literary criticism: I like looking at the final form of the text in Scripture and wondering what it means, rather than contemplating what its source was and how it came to be… blah, blah, blah.
• Canonical criticism: What is the relationship of this text within the larger canon and what might it have meant to the community which pulled it together? I like the emphasis on community here. Inspired community formed the canon and hopefully an inspired community interprets it. My former pastor and newly inaugurated Goshen College president, Jim Brenneman (who studied with James Sanders) has dragged me a little closer to canonical issues.
• Apocalyptic literature: The last year or so of seminary life has really hit home the idea that apocalyptic literature was not an escape from present requirements but a motivation to “stay the course,” as it were. I’ve fallen in love with Matthew 25 and I think I could do a dissertation just on that text!
• Second Temple Jewish literature: I mentioned this above, but I think it deserves its own bullet point. I really enjoy reading about Jewish ideas around the time of Jesus and the early church. I can see myself getting into rabbinic literature at some point, but I’m not there yet.
• Some text criticism: Though you might think it too laborious for one such as myself, I nevertheless do enjoy doing some nitty gritty textual research. I really like some of the things I’ve read from Bart Ehrman (even though we don’t hang our hat on the same theological presuppositions).

In sum, I am not enthused by a lot of historical speculation, but don’t like total historical apathy. In that way, I would hope for some balance between the extremes. Most of my “mmm” category entails thinking about interpretation. Historical context is good only in service to our reading of the biblical text, not the other way around. At least that’s my way of looking at it. At the end of the day, the most important question to me is: what do we do with the words and narratives of Scripture?

To be perfectly honest, though, what really excites me is working through issues with other people. My eyes are more towards teaching, communicating, and discussing difficult things about biblical interpretation than it is making a name for myself on the details of lonely scholarly work. But you have to go through the latter to get to the goal of the former. And it’s not that I’m terribly adverse to
the academic minutia, that just isn’t my focus. Some of it is more interesting than other parts, but I don’t want to get lost in the abyss of research while forgetting the joy of the community.

[By the way, the pictured teacher is Brian Smith at Messiah College (my esteemed alma mater). Brian is hands-down and without-a-doubt the most significant inspiration that I have in becoming a teacher of biblical studies. He's an OT guy, but that's okay. Some of us need to take a look at the introduction to the New Testament KIDDING! Anyway, he's the best teacher I've ever had and I want to be like him.]

On his blog, my friend talked about what superpower he would pick of he had a choice for one. He went through the various arguments for and against the different possibilities (like how flying would be cool, but he might get sucked in by the intake valve of a low flying jet-liner). He decided on teleportation because of its ease of connecting with faraway friends. Then he offered the challenge to his readers: “What would you pick? Telepathy? Telekinesis? Tele-evangelism (please, no)?” While I was tempted by that last one (I hear the money’s pretty good), I surprised myself with a new idea: Super Scholar. This was my thought:

As long as I had the option of turning it on and off, I think I would want to just know what is in a book and really understand its contents by laying my hand on it. I wouldn’t want to take away the pleasure of reading novels or magazines, but as a graduate student, it would be awesome to not have to read all the required books. Think of it: on top of all the necessary nonfiction works of my field (including commentaries), I could use it with dictionaries and encyclopedias, lexicons, language textbooks (!), sacred works from all the known religions. I wonder if it could expand to nontraditional book formats, like ancient papyri or clay tablets discovered in archeological digs or cavewall writings. Taken to the next level, maybe it could even handle electronic resources somehow, like whole websites, blogs, ebooks, etc. Dude, I could be, like, super scholar.

Maybe it could even go the other way too…. It’d be great if I could have thoughts just appear in writing on my word processor program. All that time I spend trying to think of how to word thoughts… BAM, it’d be gone. Just transferred right there on the screen.Write a publishable article? Easy. Dissertation? No problem. Monumental scholarly book? Piece of cake. I tell you what, man, the more I think of the possibilities for Super Scholar, the more I can’t imagine wanting to trade it for any other power. Although, the whole teleportation thing would be right up there on the list.

What strikes me about this thought, after contemplating it, is just how self-serving it is. Where is my attention to Spiderman’s mantra that “with great power comes great responsibility”? No, this would just make my life easier. And maybe make me famous for my super scholarship. How could I serve the greater good of humankind with this vast knowledge and writing abilities? Well, there is the indirect benefit of income from book sales and speaking engagements. I could be like Rick Warren and do a “reverse tithe,” living on 10% of my income and giving away the rest. I figure if I could write enough books (a couple thousand, for instance), even if they weren’t bestsellers, I could bring in that kind of money.

Beyond that, I suppose I could try to use my intellect to try to foward the cause of Jesus discipleship with great new ways to conceptualize it. Maybe I could gain such a reputation for my scholarship that I could rub elbows with world leaders and show them where they are right and wrong. But these things are getting into apologetics and ethics. Remaining in biblical studies, maybe I would be able to figure out new ways of exposing how the Bible is misused by both conservatives and liberals alike. I would be able to do this in the classroom, in churches, public lectures, articles in popular media, appearing on talk shows, etc. I would have to work hard not to just use it for myself. With great power comes great responsibility. Maybe I should pray for this new superpower.