(note: this post was originally written on my old blog. Go there for comments made on the original)

Last week I realized something. At the beginning of September, in roughly 6 weeks, I will begin my second year of study as a graduate student. More over, I intend to earn a PhD in Hebrew Bible or a related field. As I was thinking of this I experienced an epiphany. In one year I will be taking the GRE and within the next 15 months I will be applying to PhD programs for admission in the Fall of 2010 (assuming that all goes according to plan).

Some of you have watched me walk this path (outlined here, here and here, among other places). After this epiphany, Mandy and I began talking about which PhD programs we liked the best. Throughout this process it became apparent that I need to do some thinking about specifically what I’m looking for in a PhD (Mandy has the jump on me here, which you can read about beginning here). This post is my attempt to do that. I realize that to some extent my research interests may end up being fluid. But I need to pin down my broad interest areas. You’ll find this post to be filled with my ramblings, perhaps it may benefit some of you; or at least induce a laugh or two. Feel free to comment on my ramblings with thoughts or suggestions.

I have two areas in which I’m sure I’d enjoy doing doctoral work, and another in which I think I’d enjoy doctoral work. Before I get into those areas though, I want to think out loud about the more general focus or type of program that I want. For instance, do I want a religious studies program at a university? A Biblical Studies program at a divinity school? A NELC program at a university (and if so, what do I want such a program to focus on)? It might be easier to start by talking about what I don’t want.

What I do not want in a PhD program:
1. Theology. I’ll come up with my own, thanks.
2. An unapproachable faculty.
3. Anything vaguely resembling conservative scholarship.

These things are countered by what I do want…

What I do want in a PhD program:
1. Lots of focus on languages (specifically Northwest Semitic languages).
2. Obviously, an approachable and helpful faculty.
3. Lots of work in the Hebrew text of Scripture.
4. A focus on the culture and history of Israel and her neighbors.
5. Did I mention text and languages?

That gives a fairly broad idea of what I’m looking for in schools, departments, and programs. Obviously some of that is quite subjective. I think its safe to say that my desire to avoid theology basically removes most (though probably not all) divinity schools from consideration. At least the ones I’ve looked at (Yale, Harvard) seem to take a more theological track in the divinity schools. I think this is perfectly acceptable, but it is not what I’m looking for. Religion departments probably aren’t completely ruled out, but I find that they tend to focus on comparative religions or similar things. Again, this is fine, even good, but not what I’m looking for, well at least not modern comparative religions. Nevertheless, there could be some programs out there in religious studies that would suite me. So it stays on the list, for now. I think where I probably need to focus the majority of my attention is on NELC/NES programs. My only worry is that such programs may tend more towards archeology and comparative semitics (the latter of which is very cool, the former..eh..in the words of one person, “If what you dug up doesn’t have writing on it, I’m not interested”) than towards Northwest semitics and the Bible specifically.

As for those two or three areas of particular interest that I mentioned earlier. The first is the Wisdom Literature of Ancient Israel. I find Hebrew Wisdom to be absolutely fascinating. There are various facets of this corpus that interest me, but perhaps the most interesting is the poetry and language of Job and Egyptian parallels to the Hebrew Wisdom corpus. The second is the early and pre-monarchic periods of Israelite history. I should quickly note here that I am more interested in the literature that views this area as a kind of “heroic age” than I am with the actual material culture of the Late Bronze and Iron I ages. I’d love to do some work with Hebrew discourse analysis in Judges-1 Samuel (possibly including Joshua). This is one of the areas where I’m not sure a NELC program is the best fit…but that could be my ignorance of such programs speaking. Literary criticism can be somewhat interesting as well, but much of what I’ve read on that has tended to deal with English translation, rather than the Hebrew itself. I’ve yet to see an analytical comparison of Hebrew narrative with narratives of neighboring cultures. Of course, this might be because we have a comparative lack of prose in those other cultures (no pun intended). The third area, and one in which I’m not 100% sure I’d like to do doctoral work yet, is text criticism. The problem is this is a pretty broad area, and I don’t have enough knowledge of the breadth of it at present to really pinpoint if I want to go in this direction.

So, that’s my thinking out loud for this evening. I’m sure I’ll revisit these thoughts at least once in the not-so-distant future. I have quite a bit of pondering to do over the next 15-18 months.

-Calvin