Harvard, what’s it like?

I began a Master’s degree at Harvard about a month ago now, and things are well underway. I’m in the Master of Theological Studies program, with a concentration in Jewish Studies. Watch our convocation here. My impressions of everything so far…

Student Body

The Divinity School at Harvard is certainly a one of a kind place. While there certainly are a lot of very smart people, there’s something characteristically “misfit” about the div school. Harvard, in its attempt to pull people in from the fringes to bring new voices to the foreground , and certainly to be seen as a place of diversity, has crafted what I would see as a Kingdom community. These are the sort of people that are at once interesting and peculiar, people I imagine Jesus hanging around with. They are of course all brilliant in their own right, and I am not without my own quirks. I seldom encounter a person who has not been on a journey as peculiar as my own. On the other hand, however, I do think the div school has overreached in certain areas without reaching far enough into others. The sheer number of people that identify themselves as non-heterosexual was not something I expected, and I’m still growing accustomed to it, especially having just arrived from my work in the Middle East where this issue simply has not been on my radar. Queer Theology and Women’s Studies in Religion is the focus of a very large percentage of the student body. The issues presented by these disciplines are inevitably something I will confront and dialogue with during my time here. The other issue which I had hoped would be more focal has been the interfaith integration and diversity of religious backgrounds. There certainly are students doing Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies (like myself), and so forth, though they are dwarfed by the Christian and Unitarian communities, and they also seem to largely hail from America, rather than the Middle East. I still feel as though I am not fulfilling certain opportunities to truly connect with these students on a personal level, though perhaps this will change in time as I discover more opportunities. My work study job as a circulation librarian has made me something of a div school bartender—as I check peoples’ books in and out I get to hear everyone’s passions and (more often) woes, and meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise. I hope, in due time, this will be a means of making some of the connections I have been seeking. 

One other unforeseen consequence of having this diverse student body has been that the level of academic familiarity with the more esoteric Biblical Studies disciplines is not as high as it would have been if I went to a different school. For example, a class on Jesus and the Gospels at the Vanderbilt Divinity School would certainly have consisted of students with a background in Biblical Studies, probably familiar with ideas of text criticism, and a number would have had some Greek. Here at Harvard however, because of the diversity of religious backgrounds, my class on Jesus and the Gospels has a number of students that are reading the New Testament for the first time in this class. This has its pluses and minuses of course, because it allows me, with my background, to stand head and shoulders above much of the class, but it also means that the level of depth in our conversations about the topics at hand is stunted in many ways. This is compensated for in many classes with pre-requisites of certain languages and so forth, though this is often not the case.

Regardless of the goals, orientations, and background of the students, they are nearly all very friendly and strike me as nothing less than genuinely good folks. The few students that fit the Harvard snob stereotype are truly the exception that proves the contrary.  

Grounds

The Harvard campus itself is famous, and deservedly so with a history reaching further back than this country by more than a century. It’s nearly a daily happening that walking to class I have to avoid getting in the frame of someone’s photo of the buildings. The first div school building itself goes back to the early 1800’s.

The most recent addition to the div school is the Center for the Study of World Religions, not all that impressive architecturally, but books and covers and so forth.

Andover Hall is an immense building housing classrooms, the adjoining Andover-Harvard Theology Library, chapels, and various other fancy Harvard type things. It turned 100 this year.

The original div school building, the eponymous Divinity Hall is the first building Harvard constructed outside the Yard, and the oldest div school building, going back to 1826. It has an incredible history of its own, including a chapel that has been host to the theological giants of the last few hundred years, and more than its share of controversy from the pulpit.

The Semitic Museum houses div school courses and exhibits along with stuff for the related Arts and Sciences department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. It’s pretty cool to say that I have a class in an actual museum.

Memorial Church and Memorial Hall are over in the Yard, but too immense and beautiful to not include. Each is a memorial to the concurrent war, WWI and the Civil War respectively.

Finally, the Widener Library, which depending on how you count, houses somewhere between the 5^th and 10^th largest collection of books on the planet. Not bad right?

Teachers and Courses

The teachers…they are simply prolific scholars, but this goes without saying. Before arriving I was very anxious about how they would be in person, but so far they are all incredibly gracious, friendly and approachable.  The fact that my advisor is Diana Eck and that I sit in a classroom with Jon Levenson, Michael Coogan, and Helmut Koester on a daily basis really blows my mind, especially when I have had the opportunity to speak with them one on one. It really is surreal. I think so far, this is my favorite thing about the div school.

My courses this term are:

Intermediate Classical Hebrew

So far his second year of Hebrew has been a little disconcerting, students have been dropping the class like flies because it has been very demanding.

Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament with Michael Coogan

As you probably know, I have been acquainted with this material—however, it is being taught by Michael Coogan, a prolific Bible scholar and senior editor of the New Oxford Annotated Bible. I’m taking the class as an audit, just so I can sit in the room and osmote from him.

Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospels with Helmut Koester

Helmut Koester has been a professor at Harvard Divinity School since about 1955…if that doesn’t tell you something I don’t know what will. He was one of Rudolph Bultmann’s protégés, who himself published research quite literally a century ago. As far as I am aware there is no other figure of New Testament scholarship still living that can claim his sheer scope of experience in this field. He reads his lectures from the lectern which aren’t enthralling, but speaking to him person to person in our section, the profound insights he has shared have me leaving every Thursday in awe of his experience and knowledge.

Judaism: The Liturgical Year with Jon Levenson

This course serves as something of an introduction to Judaism by studying Jewish holidays, their origins, how they inform the Jewish faith in history, and how they are practiced today. Jon Levenson is another prolific writer in the field of Biblical and Jewish Studies. His particular niche of using historical critical Biblical research for interreligious dialogue is something I would love to piggy back onto. Recently, for example, his research into ideas about resurrection in Judaism have brought to the attention of modern Jews how significant resurrection was for them in their history, and that it is a part of their tradition they have unfortunately allowed to fade, undoubtedly in the shadow of Christianity. He argues that this is a common theme that both Jews and Christians ought to cherish and in so doing grants us a new avenue of interreligious dialogue.  

Ancient Near Eastern History

Taught through the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department, this class will give me the context of what was going on in the rest of the Ancient Near East from pre-history through the time of the Old Testament.

Seminar for Advanced New Testament Studies: The Q Riddle

I needed something to distinguish myself from everyone beginning this Master’s program without substantial background in Biblical Studies. This year-long course, designed for advanced Master’s and PhD students, lets me flex some of my academic background, while hopefully being impressive on my transcript. If you don’t have a clue what the “Q Riddle” is, that ought to give you an idea of how advanced the course is.

Living Situation

Last but not least, my place. I’m renting a basement from a retired minister and his wife out in Arlington. It’s quite a long trek, a 30-40 minute bus ride each way to Harvard, but it’s cheap and I’ve made it my own. I have room for my clothes, my books (for now), and my mementos, which is plenty of room for me. I have my own half bath, and I even have a desk with a window!