July 2008

The discovery

I’m going to give this newsletter a title and call it “The discovery.” It is about an encounter I had with someone over 20 years ago when I was a new missionary in São Paulo, Brazil. I was the new Greek professor, and another Greek professor came to see me.

Why was I a Greek professor? I was (and am) under the supervision of my Brazilian church. That is part of the way in which “partnership” is now understood. All I knew when I agreed to go was that they had asked for a Bible professor with a doctorate. When I got here, the first thing they asked me to do was to teach Greek to beginning students at the seminary. Later, after they had had more time to look me over, they asked me to do other things. I don’t think they expected that I would really like teaching Greek quite as much as I did, but, anyway, I did enjoy it and gave myself to it during the first few years, before I was transferred to other duties. As it happens, there are many theological seminaries in this city, most of them small, and most of them have somebody teaching Greek so that the students can study the New Testament in the original language. Some of them knew a lot of Greek and some didn’t.

Classes were (and are) at night, but I had reasons for arriving most days in the afternoon. The seminary at that time was in the nine-storey building next to First Church; it has since moved. I would arrive at the building, take a small elevator to the fifth floor, and sit to study either at the table in the professors’ room or somewhere in the library. As I walked into the library one afternoon I was introduced by the librarian to a smallish, slightly sad-looking man, who had come to meet the new Greek professor. He was the Greek professor at another seminary, where he had been for many years. I do not remember his name or that of his seminary. I am quite sure he was a Brazilian. I do remember that we shared stories a bit, about our training and such. There was one thing, however, that he really wanted to tell me.

Some years back, he had made a discovery. In studying a certain text in the Greek New Testament, he had noticed that a certain interpretation was possible that was different from the usual one. The Bible translations had all taken a different interpretation from his. So had the commentaries. But the interpretation he had found seemed right. He was sure it was. Who would he tell? He probably told his students. I do that with my discoveries. He could tell the Greek professors at other seminaries, not all of whom really knew very much Greek. He could go to the classics department at the University of São Paulo, where they really know Greek, but conversation is often not easy between New Testament scholars and classics professors. I would still like to meet a classics professor in the United States or Brazil who believes that we New Testament people really know Greek. His discovery, made some years earlier, was a precious personal possession. He had lived with it for years. He has been alone with it. Now he wanted to know if I agreed that his interpretation was the right one.

He wanted affirmation. I know what that is. I want it too.

I cannot remember what I said to him as we stood there, face to face in the back of the library, but I certainly remember what it felt like. I knew the passage he was referring to. The interpretation he had found was, in fact, something I had thought of, too. It was possible, it might be the right one, but I could not go so far as to say it was certainly the right interpretation. I don’t think I handled the situation well. Whatever it was that I said to his face, inside I was weeping. He had been alone with his discovery for so long. Isolation had not been good for him.

There were other Greek professors. If you go to the university and take all the classics courses that they offer, what do you do afterwards with that background you have acquired? One thing you can do is tell your students how many Greek courses you had when you were young, and there was one professor who did that for years. It did not win him friends.

Things are different now. You can go to a graduate school. The professors and students together are a community of learners, making discoveries, testing them, and living with constructive criticism. Also, connected with the graduate schools, there are congresses where scholars read papers to each other and test their ideas. If you were good at something in college, there is a way to go on with it (rather than talking about it). However, most of what we do in graduate school and at those congresses wouldn’t make good newsletter material, and I generally haven’t tried to write about it.

Still, there are good reasons for having a graduate school, and for me one of the reasons is a pastoral one. Nobody should have to be alone with his or her discovery.

In Mission,

Arch Woodruff

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 276