Spiritual Grandfather

I have learned that while I was away on vacation, Brevard Childs (1923-2007) passed away. Childs was a professor at Yale Divinity School for 41 years. I never studied with him personally. I studied with professors who studied with Childs. So he is something like my grandfather in biblical studies. His influence on four of my professors (both in Old Testament and New Testament) was profound as was their influence on how I read scripture.

Following his death, a professor of mine in Hebrew and Old Testament, Dr. Ellen Davis wrote,

His scholarship was very fully integrated into his character, it would be very difficult to separate those two. He was a Christian. His work was a form of discipleship.

I think that integrated feeling between what he studied and how he lived says much about the approach to scripture he taught them and they tried to pass on to me.

Childs is known in biblical scholarship for his respect for the final canonical form of scripture (the Bible as we have it in the form one can buy translation in stores) as important for all biblical work. It is called the Canonical Method and is exemplified, to cite one example, in Child's own excellent commentary on Exodus.

To try to simplify the great scholar's work...one can break down the scripture for study, but an important step is putting it back together and seeing how the text in its final form speaks even with what the detailed scholarship teaches us. This is not a pre-critical reading the Bible without a deeper understanding of the language, archeology, historical contexts and what else scholarship teaches, as if Saint Paul wrote the King James Bible. Nor is it a merely critical reading that tears the Bible apart and leaves it in discrete units or peeled apart like an onion looking for central core and finding only layers. I was taught a post-critical approach that fully takes into account scholarship and uses it in service of the Church and a given congregation. This involves a close reading of the biblical text with a reverence for it that isn't afraid to break it open and learn nor afraid to let it break me open so that I can better see.

While I don't always live up to the level at which I was trained, the work of my professors Stephen Cook, Ellen Davis, A.K. Grieb and John Yieh was not for nought. And so I remember today the man who made such an impression on them that I am thankful for the life and work of Brevard Childs though we never met (except through his writings and students).

There is a tribute at the Society for Biblical Literature: Brevard S. Childs (1923-2007) and another at Dr. Stephen Cook's blog More Details on Childs's Passing.

And as part of a passing of a generation of scholar's Dr. Jim Ross (1927-2007) also died while I was away. Dr. Ross had taught at Virginia Seminary prior to my coming there. He and I both worked on creating web resources on biblical studies in the late 1990s and I appreciated his pointing me to some very useful sites. While he was not personally influential for me or my teachers, he was a great professor who taught a generation of priests in our church and I am thankful for his ministry as well. More on Dr. Ross is found here at SBL's page: James F. Ross.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor