tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759844.post111810094813007408..comments2024-03-21T14:59:20.729-04:00Comments on NT Blog: PhD QuestionsMark Goodacrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05115370166754797529noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5759844.post-1118307433210828962005-06-09T04:57:00.000-04:002005-06-09T04:57:00.000-04:00I wonder if you aren't missing the point a bit her...I wonder if you aren't missing the point a bit here, Mark. There are two issues. (1) In any PhD viva, anyone who has not read a piece of work in "any" foreign language is likely to be in trouble, not just German. I well remember being told by John Rogerson that the best Commentary on Deuteronomy was in Dutch! If a PhD is to be original (a big if), how can one claim this unless one has read "all" the relevant secondary literature. This leads on to (2). Just how important is German these days? Working in, say, canonical criticism as I did it is almost totally irrelevant. Any German scholar interested in this largely anglo-american project is generally put into Englsh immediately. German scholarship as a whole is not interested. But if these works are not translated, the PhD student who works on theses ideas must still find out what they say, just as they must if the work is in Spanish, Norwegian, or Polish. So, Mark, is German still a requirement for "the academic life"? Working on Chrysostom, as I am at the moment, I can tell you that Italian would be a lot more useful. The idea of the "Neutestamentler" is a powerful one, but is it really where New Testament scholarship is today?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com