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Program in New Testament

Assistant Director of Graduate Studies: Dale B. Martin (Fall 2010) / Adela Collins (Spring 2011)
Teaching Group in New Testament: Harold Attridge, Adela Yarbro Collins, Jeremy Hultin, Judith Gundry, Dale B. Martin, Diana Swancutt

Introduction

The program prepares students to become scholars and teachers in the exegesis and interpretation of the New Testament. The fundamental skills required are historical and linguistic, seeking to understand the forms and functions of the earliest Christian writings in their historical contexts including both the culture of the Roman Empire and the varieties of Judaism within that culture and through them to understand the character, practices, and beliefs of the earliest Christian communities. At the same time, students explore various interpretive strategies, including theological, social-historical, literary, and rhetorical approaches.

While the focus of the program is on the New Testament, ancillary training is also provided in ancient languages and literatures, and the critical use of primary materials such as manuscripts, inscriptions, and textual transmission. Students should also consider pursuing, as time allows, courses in: ancient Greek philosophy from Aristotle to Plotinus; ancient history of the Hellenistic and Roman periods; Greek/Latin literature; literary criticism; theology. Individual students will normally have particular areas that they pursue in greater detail than others.

Within this broad and ideal framework each student develops, by the beginning of the fourth year, a special area of interest out of which a dissertation project will grow.

The teaching group in New Testament includes faculty drawn from Religious Studies and the Divinity School. But close study with faculty in other departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (such as Classics, History, History of Art, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Sociology, and Philosophy) is also normal and desirable, providing expertise in subjects, approaches, and methods not usually taught in religious studies departments; such faculty members may play an important role in a student's course of study or dissertation research. With special permission it is possible to make certain alterations in the program of study and examinations that are pursued.

Recent and current dissertation topics include:

"Watch Your Mouth: Speech Ethics and Identity in Early Christianity"

"Apocalyptic Transmissions: New Testament Interpretation and the Rhetoric of Modern Cultural Crisis"

"Written Law and Obedience in Paul's Letter to the Romans"

"Hinterland/Holy Land: Imaginative Mapping in Galilee"

"Paul Without Religion: the Creation of a Category and the Search for an Apostle Beyond the New Perspective"

"Neither Jew nor Gentile, but Both: Paul’s ‘Christians’ as ‘Gentile-Jews’"

"Gods, Lords and Kings: the Characterization of the Martyrs in the Early Christian Acta Martyrum"

"At Home or Away: Travel and Death in 2 Corinthians 1-9"

"Religious Epistemologies in the Dead Sea Scrolls: the Heritage and Transformation of the Wisdom Tradition"

"The Christian Son of God in the Roman World"

"Purity and Pneuma"

 

Preparation for Admission to the Program

Students admitted into the program are expected to have, at the time of matriculation, good working knowledge of Greek (at least two years of course work, with some classical Greek if possible), classical Hebrew (at least two years). Reading knowledge of German and French are expected and must be demonstrated by either course work or examination by the beginning of the third year in the program.

Language Requirements

A good working knowledge of Greek (Classical and Koine), classical Hebrew, German, and French is presupposed for coursework starting the first semester of the program.

(a) German and French: fluent reading ability, demonstrated before the beginning of the third year by departmental examination, by accreditation from a Yale Summer School course designed for this purpose, or by a grade of A or B in one of Yale's intermediate language courses.

(b) All students must pass Greek 790/Syntax and Stylistics (Classics Department) or some comparable course in advanced classical Greek approved by the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies (ADGS) for NT studies.

(c) Latin: if students do not have a basic reading knowledge of Latin upon matriculation, they will be expected to complete at least one year of introductory Latin during course work.

(d) Students may develop reading knowledge of Coptic, Syriac, and/or Aramaic dependent on their research interests.

Greek Examination

Normally during the third year of the program, but certainly before taking the last General Examination in New Testament Interpretation, students will be examined on a selection of nonbiblical texts in Greek. In consultation with the faculty, each student will prepare a reading list of Greek texts that should include some selections from a variety of different “kinds” of ancient Greek, including classical Greek, hellenistic Greek, and noncanonical Christian texts. The list may include selections from the Septuagint. The reading list must include no less than the equivalent of 50 pages of Greek in the normal Oxford classical Greek editions. The list will be compiled by the student and approved by the faculty. The student will sit for a written examination of translation of texts selected from the list by a faculty member.

In lieu of an examination, students may propose, subject to approval by the faculty, a translation "project" of some substance.

Following the submission of the written examination or project, students will be given an oral examination on the Greek of the New Testament by a designated faculty member. Admission to the last general NT examination and the dissertation prospectus colloquium will be contingent on completion of the Greek requirement.

Course Work

Normally four courses per term (or semester) are taken in the first two years. They may include some reading courses or tutorials. To fulfill the departmental course requirement, all students in religious studies must complete 12 courses at the graduate level. (With the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies, some undergraduate courses may be allowed to count toward the required 12 courses.)

Every student in the New Testament program will complete at least one course in advanced Greek exegesis of a New Testament Gospel and one in a New Testament epistle while in residence at Yale. Students may enroll in courses in any part of Yale University and students of New Testament are strongly urged to pursue course work in related disciplines, such as Classics and Ancient History, ancient Judaism, Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, Theology, History of Religions, Comparative Literature, Sociology of Religion. Auditing courses can also provide valuable exposure to unfamiliar subjects and methods. The selection of courses is made in consultation with the Assistant Director of Graduate Studies for New Testament and other faculty advisors. The Graduate School Honors requirement must be met each term (see the Graduate School bulletin and requirements).

Courses

Courses recently and currently offered at the doctoral level include:

Exegesis:

The Gospel of Matthew (A. Collins; Hultin)

The Gospel of Mark (A. Collins)

The Gospel of Luke (Hultin)

The Gospel of John (Attridge)

The Acts of the Apostles (Hultin)

The Letter to the Romans (Swancutt; Gundry)

The Corinthian Correspondence (Swancutt; Hultin; Gundry)

The Letter to the Galatians (Hultin; Gundry)

The Letter to the Philippians (Swancutt)

The Letter to the Hebrews (Attridge)

Second Peter and Jude (Hultin)

The Revelation of John (A. Collins)

Household and Family in the Pauline Corpus (Gundry)

Ancient History and Culture:

Hellenistic Philosophy and the New Testament (Attridge)

Hellenistic Jewish Literature in Greek (Attridge)

New Testament Apocrypha (Attridge)

Ancient Lives (Bioi) and Early Christian Literature (A. Collins)

Ascents to Heaven in Antiquity (A. Collins)

Martyrs and Martyrdom (A. Collins)

Ancient Apocalypticism (A. Collins)

Jesus’ Death as Saving Event (A. Collins)

Pauline Theology and Anthropology (A. Collins)

The Historical Jesus (A. Collins)

The Greco-Roman Environment of the New Testament (Martin)

Disease and Healing in the Ancient World (Martin)

Rhetoric and Early Christianity (Martin)

Philosophy at the Root of Christianity (Martin)

Sacrifice in the Ancient World (Martin)

Pauline Biography (Martin)

Gender in Early Christianity (Swancutt)

Crafting Early Christian Identities (Swancutt)

Israel's Scriptures in the Early Church (Swancutt)

New Testament Ethics (Swancutt)

History of First Century Palestine (Hultin)

Septuagint (Hultin)

Paul’s Theological Thought (Gundry)

Interpretation and Hermeneutics:

Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in Ancient Christianity (Attridge)

History and Methods of the Discipline of New Testament Studies (A. Collins)

Contemporary Social and Literary Theory (Martin)

Theory and Method in Religious Studies (Martin)

The Modern Jesus: the Quest for the Historical Jesus and Modernity (Martin and Swancutt)

Reading Scripture Differently (Swancutt)

Literary Theory and Biblical Interpretation (Hultin)

(See also courses listed under the Ancient Christianity program. Other courses in Classics, Divinity, History, Medieval Studies, and the History of Art are also relevant.)

The "Required Seminar"

One semester each year, a faculty member in either NT studies or Ancient Christianity is assigned to teach a seminar on some topic of the ancient world of general interest. Topics in the recent past have included Philosophy and Early Christianity; Memory in the Ancient World and Early Church; Sacrifice; Josephus; Monasticism; and the Nag Hammadi library (among many others). Thus the topic and instructor of the seminar change each year, and the seminar convenes during only one semester per year.

Students in years one and two in NT studies and Ancient Christianity are required to take the seminar for course credit. All other students, no matter what year or level in the program, are required to attend the seminar if they are in residence in the area. They may take the course for “audit” credit, or they may simply sit in on the seminar, but they are required to attend. Schedules permitting, the faculty in both these fields also attend and participate in the seminar. Though the “Required Seminar” does place something of a burden on both students and faculty, it is an old tradition here at Yale with a very long history. It provides the one regular occasion when all doctoral students and faculty in the fields of Ancient Christianity and NT studies come together for scholarly work. It has proved a valuable asset to our doctoral program for both students and professors.

The Greco-Roman Lunch

Once every two weeks during term, graduate students and faculty in several programs of the university, including Ancient Christianity, Ancient Judaism, Classical Archeology, Classics, History of Art, Medieval Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and New Testament meet for lunch and conversation and hear a brief, informal presentation by one of their number on work in progress. Attendance of this colloquium, which is voluntary and informal, provides a pleasant and friendly way to keep up with students and faculty in related parts of the university.

Qualifying Examinations

For NT studies, the examinations fall into two categories and are taken in two different stages.

(1) The first four exams are connected to “proseminars” taken during the first two years (during course work). Students enroll in each designated “proseminar” and then take either an examination at the end of the semester or submit a paper, as required by the professor teaching the seminar. That examination or paper counts as fulfilling the requirement of that Qualifying Examination. Normally, the faculty make every attempt to stagger the four proseminars so that students take one per semester for the first four semesters of the program. The four proseminars and their accompanying examinations cover the following subjects:

          (a) The Greco-Roman Environment of the New Testament
          (b) The Varieties of Ancient Judaism
          (c) Christianity in the Second Century
          (d) Modern History of New Testament Criticism and Current State of the Discipline

(2) The General Examination in New Testament Interpretation

After students have completed all required course work and all language requirements, including the Greek course requirements and examinations (written and oral), they take the last Qualifying Examination, normally in the second half of the third year of the program (that is, during the sixth semester of the student’s program). The General Examination must be completed before the dissertation prospectus may be submitted and the student admitted to candidacy.

The examination is in two parts: a written examination followed soon thereafter by an oral examination by the faculty in NT studies. The written examination consists of three questions, the general topics of which will be set by the faculty in discussions with the student. First, the student, in consultation with the faculty, submits a bibliography of works for which the student will be responsible in the examination.

For the written exam, the student is allowed six hours, generally being expected to spend about two hours on each of the three questions. The student is allowed to use a Greek NT and a Bible, but no other resources.

The questions are on the following topics:

          (a) a general question of NT interpretation: This may be exegetically oriented or a question on a more general topic of interpretation of the NT. In any case, the question is intended to examine the student’s ability to comment on general issues in NT interpretation along the lines of some particular interest of the student.
           (b) a “dissertation” question: Some question that allows the student to explore issues related to his or her expected dissertation topic.
          (c) a question on theological hermeneutics or theory: Some question that examines the student’s expertise either in theological interpretation of the Bible or some aspect of literary, social, or interpretation theory that is expected to be relevant to the student’s future work. The student selects whether to receive a theologically or a theoretically focused question.

Generally one or two weeks after completing the written General Examination, the student defends that exam in an oral examination with the faculty.

In preparation for the general examination, the student should aim for an up-to-date survey knowledge and an orientation to (but not expertise in) the problems that have concerned scholarship. The examination is not meant to test the student's ability as a research scholar, for this is done in research papers and the dissertation. Rather, its purpose is to certify preparedness to begin special research and to construct one's own courses as a teacher.

Teaching Fellowships

All doctoral students in religious studies are required to serve as teaching fellows during years three and four in exchange for their stipends. Students are not allowed to serve as teaching fellows during years one and two. Normally, students will receive a dissertation fellowship during the fifth year and not therefore serve as teaching fellows during that year. The dissertation fellowship, however, may be taken later than the fifth year, in which case students may apply to serve as teaching fellows even after the fourth year.

Most teaching fellowships require the fellow to attend lectures by the instructing professor and lead one or two discussion sections per week. Some fellowships require less teaching and sometimes only assistance in grading. Teaching fellowships offer an opportunity to gain fluency with the subject matter of the program and to develop pedagogical and lecturing skills under the supervision of an experienced teacher, in addition to providing financial resources. Especially relevant, academically, are fellowships in the introductory courses in New Testament history and literature and the history of ancient Christianity given in Yale College, and on New Testament, early church history, and patristics at the Divinity School. Ideally, students in NT studies will serve as teaching fellows both in Yale College and in the Divinity School, supplying experience for the different pedagogical situations. Teaching opportunities in other subjects may also arise.

Dissertation Prospectus

The dissertation proposal ("prospectus"), worked out in consultation with the faculty and normally about ten pages in length, is submitted normally in the seventh term of study to the teaching group in New Testament, who, together with other appropriate faculty, meet with the student for a two-hour colloquium to assess the scope, significance, and feasibility of the topic and the student's preparedness to accomplish it in a reasonable time. The colloquium is a cooperative, collegial enterprise whose goal is the success of the dissertation project. The prospectus itself ordinarily should include a statement of the precise nature of the topic, its significance, its relationship to previous work, and the method and sources to be employed. It should also include an outline of chapters to be included. After approval by the teaching group, a two-page summary of the proposal is submitted to the entire graduate faculty in Religious Studies and thence, if none object, to the Dean of the Graduate School; the student is then admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. Once accepted, this prospectus becomes the basis for the eventual assessment of the completed dissertation. It should be noted that the faculty members who gather for the colloquium do so in order to advise the student on the dissertation prospectus only. Dissertation research is conducted under the direction of a single faculty advisor, and the completed dissertation is judged by a panel of readers selected at the time of completion.

Progress to the Degree

The Ph.D. in NT studies may be completed in five years, though many students take six years to complete it. If a student matriculates into the program with sufficient background in the required languages and with some knowledge of critical study of the Bible already, the program can certainly be completed in five years (ten semesters or terms).

A typical course toward the degree is as follows:

Year 1: Four courses each semester (three may be allowed with the approval of the ADGS); the annual “Required Seminar”; two of the “proseminars,” if possible one per semester, along with their accompanying qualifying examination or paper.

Year 2: Four courses each semester as in Year 1; the annual “Required Seminar”; the remaining two “proseminars.”

It should be remembered that all language requirements not already met (except the Greek Examination) must be completed during the first two years of course work but no later than the beginning of the third year of the program. If remedial language study is needed, students may have to spend part of the third year still taking courses or language exams, which does delay progress toward the degree substantially. Thus, by the beginning of the third year, students should have demonstrated, either by course work or examination, adequate reading knowledge of Hebrew and Latin. By rule of the Graduate School, students must be certified in German and French before being allowed to register for the fall semester of the third year (i.e., term 5).

Year 3: Completion of the Greek Examination (preferably during the fifth semester, or fall of the third year); preparation of the General Examination (to be completed preferably during the sixth semester, or spring of the third year); attendance at the “Required Seminar” as auditor.

Year 4: First semester: Preparation for the dissertation prospectus; (completion of the General Examination if not already taken); dissertation colloquium and approval of dissertation topic. Note: by rule of the Graduate School, the dissertation prospectus must be approved by the department before registering for term 8 (i.e., before the beginning of the spring semester of the fourth year). Thus the dissertation colloquium and approval of the dissertation prospectus is to be done no later than the fall semester of the fourth year (term 7).

Years 4.5-5 (i.e., terms 8-10): Research and writing of the dissertation; attendance, as auditor, of the “Required Seminar.”

Contact Information

The Department of Religious Studies
P.O. Box 208287
451 College Street
New Haven, CT 06520-8287
Phone: (203) 432-0828
dale.martin@yale.edu

 
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