What's going on this Fall

It's pretty incredible to think that I'm beyond the half way point of my master's already. My schedule will be quite a bit different this year, though, unfortunately, probably no less challenging. I'll be taking two languages, German and Syriac. Each of these classes is a year long. I've never attempted two languages at once before, so I'm pretty nervous about it. I've never considered myself to be a person that's good at languages, but I realized recently that I've learned a few languages since I've been saying this. German and Syriac couldn't be further apart either, so hopefully that will make it easier to do both at once.

You may be asking, "why take German, and what the heck is Syriac?" German is one of the three standard languages of scholarship, alongside English and French. In order to be competitive for PhD programs I will need to have two done by matriculation (normally in addition to most or all of the required ancient languages). I'm still trying to decide between "German for reading in religious studies," which should be easier, and a regular German class which will actually be useful for studying in German (one option I'm considering).

Syriac is a Semitic language of the Christian East until Arabic became the [i]lingua franca[/i], though it is still in use today by several Christian communities. It's related most closely to Aramaic thought it has some similarity to Hebrew and the script is reminiscent of Arabic in its cursive style.

The Lord's Prayer in Syriac
Syriac is important because most studies on early Christianity in general, and Jewish-Christian interaction in particular, focus on the Christian West, written in Latin and Greek. There has been a push in recent scholarship to recover these voices from the East. Learning Syriac is ideal for my goal of studying material that is useful for contemporary Christian-Jewish-Muslim dialogue. As it turns out, the people behind this Syriac literature often maintained a much greater affinity with what we call Judaism today. The affinity was so great in fact that discerning a distinction between Judaism and Christianity is often difficult and in many ways artificial. The writing of groups deemed heretics by the Church for being "Judaizers" (that is, too "Jewish") is also largely preserved in Syriac (and a couple even more obscure languages). That's the Jewish-Christian part, so how does it pertain to Christian-Muslim interaction? As I said, Syriac was widespread in the East until Arabic gradually, but not entirely, took over because of the Muslim conquest in the 600's or so. Syriac preserves the very earliest literary encounters between Christians and Muslim, especially what they argued about and how they argued. Cool right?!

Apart from the two languages I'll be taking two regular classes each semester. The one I'm looking forward to most is History of Ancient Christianity with the indefatigable juggernaut of a scholar, Helmut Koester. The other Fall course I'm not 100% sold on yet, since the course offerings in the Jewish studies concentration are somewhat sparse this Fall. In all likelihood it will be "Rewriting Scripture in Jewish Antiquity" which will examine how Second Temple communities, and I presume communities shortly afterward, used and interpreted the Bible in various ways. It could be a valuable course for me because, obviously, the religions of Christianity and Judaism emerged from this process.

Finally, in addition to my normal work at the library, I've landed a research assistant position. I'll be sorting through scores of Greek papyri in the bellows of Widener library to help Dr. Giovanni Bazzana prepare a commentary on the New Testament and a monograph on Q.