Bastard Stew and Things of the Like

Dear friends,

First, a collection of interesting tidbits and short narratives:

I recently googled Albus Andrew. (I'm apologize that all of my posts are about Albus Andrew, but he provides for such fantastic blogging opportunities.) Anyway, googling your tutor is a terrible idea. Besides seeing all the great scholarship that he has done thus far, I found this report: "[Albus] Andrew is a skinheaded nutcase who needs to be locked up." "Gee," I thought, "I sure hope that's not my Albus Andrew." After that, I thought it best to close the web browser.

I'm assuming that Albus Jonathan feels quite left out seeing as how Albus Andrew gets all the attention. No worries, for Albus Jonathan provided for his own moment of glory during our first meeting. As we were discussing my translation of Xenophon and his Persian Expedition (biblical Greek, I long for you...), we got to a point where dear Xenophon, (or was it Kyros?) anyway, one of them was hunting game. Peculiar game he seemed to be hunting--ostriches, wild asses, things of the like. This being the case, when I asked my tutor what a certain Greek word meant and he replied that it was a bastard, you can only imagine why I would take it as natural that Xenophon was hunting wild asses and bastards. Perhaps a peculiar sport to the modern mind, but who doesn't like to enjoy a hot bastard stew?

It was only later when I had gone back to my translation on my own and come across the bastards in another section that I realized that, in fact, Albus Jonathan had replied that the word in question was "bustard" -- apparently a large, ground-running bird. Goodness me! Those English accents are tricky to say the least.

And again back to Albus Andrew: during the small talk portion that typically concludes our tutorial, Albus Andrew calmly asked me in his pleasant Irish lilt:
"Have you begun working on your dissertation yet?"
"Crap Albus Andrew! Making it through one of your tutorials is enough of a tenuous affair, don't you think we should deal with improving my competency therein before discussing my dissertation? Who ARE you?"
Nonetheless, I found out fairly quickly that he was referring to the long essay that I will write as a culmination of my time here.
"Of right," I said, "my twelve page dissertation." "No, I have not particularly begun my work on that."

I then rather cautiously asked him if it was typical to refer to such projects as dissertations. He looked as though he thought I was trying to trick him and answered cautiously himself: "I guess I'd use it to refer to any longer piece of writing."

"Dear Northwestern College,
I went to Oxford to write a dissertation. Now do you think you could give me those freaking honors cords?
Just checking in,
Sara"

In other news that is perhaps the coolest news you've ever heard, I found out that N. T. Wright did his preparation for the Anglican ministry at Wycliffe Hall, which is the hall I'm associated with here. In case you don't know, N. T. Wright is a BAMF. I hope someday I can be a BAMF just like him. I probably sit in his favorite spot in the library, where he planned to write a million great books. You don't get that everyday at Ramaker eh?

In terms of one bit that is more anecdotal: a friend of mine here described the British as those "walking along looking sad in their peacoats." Sometimes when I'm out in public, I'll catch myself smiling for some reason or another, and I have to immediately put a stop to that. The same friend described the Brits' reaction to having a stranger smile at them: (tear eyes away viciously) "OMG, I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST SAW THAT." However, I have befriended in the slightest sense an adorable, older librarian in the theology faculty library. Today he commented on how I seemed to be clutching my red, frayed New Oxford Annotated Bible like it was such a precious thing. Once I told him about how when I hold it noticeably in public, God takes note of my righteousness, then he understood. He wanted one too, I could tell.

You might be interested to know that I have been considerably less angsty this whole past week. I feel as though I'm adjusting more and more, and my roommates and I have been interacting more so as besties lately. To illustrate the comfort level I have gained with them, I felt okay asking them the other night whether or not Philadelphia was a state. In retrospect, I really shouldn't ask questions like that outside of my head, but I had already shut down my computer and thus had no access to wikipedia. Geography really is my most terrible subject. It took me years to remember that London went with England and Paris went with France.

I think part of the change in my perspective is that I have realized that I will never "succeed" here in any sense of the word. As long as I am here, I am utterly, irreversibly dumb. Instead of being angsty about this, I have decided to enjoy it. I have decided to enjoy having no idea whether or not Albus Andrew thinks I'm a daft fool. In fact, it's really quite nice to not get grades on my essays. I will still get a final grade, but I will have absolutely no idea what that might be until I see it on my transcript. How about that for a angsty, obsessive, perfectionist eh?

I still wonder countless times each day whether or not I would find joy in a future in academia. I doubt my abilities so very, very much. The Oxford programme of study has a way of exposing all of my weaknesses, all the time. For this, I am both perpetually angsty and eternally grateful. Sometimes, I have this great fear that I might accidentally end up as a pastor. I don't know how one goes about becoming a pastor by "accident," but sometimes I worry that it will happen to me. I think that might be the worst thing I could foresee in the history of ever. I really have no idea what I'm going to do with my future.

So back to my dissertation, and here I readily welcome your advice because I have to make a big decision. I need to pick a topic within a week, and I have two topics that I really quite want to pursue.

a.) How important are non-canonical gospels as sources for the historical Jesus?
Thus, in terms of what we might be able to conclude regarding a historical account of the person of Jesus, might what we find, for instance, in the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter be of any help?
Truly, this could be a really good time.

b.) My other option is to do something with textual criticism, which is what I was supposed to do my honors research on at NW before that fell through.
For those who might not be familiar with textual criticism, it refers to the process of trying to restore the original words of the New Testament manuscripts. The field of textual criticism exists because the original manuscripts of the New Testament do not.
Thus, I would pick an interesting variant that runs contrary to what is printed in most Bibles today, and I would explore perhaps why that variant was either introduced into the text or eliminated from the text.

For example, at the end of Luke's account of Jesus' baptism, the text reads: "And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (3:22 NRSV). However, some of the manuscripts read something more akin to "You are my son, today I have begotten you." Now if you want to go all Bart Ehrman-esque, you might say that here we have an instance of orthodox corruption of the text--scribes smoothing out portions that might be preyed upon by various heresies. In particular, a heresy of the day that might be quite fond of the "today I have begotten you" reading would be that of the adoptionists--those who believed that Jesus was not divine at all, and had been more or less adopted at his baptism to be God's son. Thus, if Luke's original text read "today I have begotten you," then perhaps good-intentioned scribes smoothed over this a little, resulting in a reading that did not lend itself so easily to an adoptionist interpretation.

Wow, I did not plan to write so much. It's boring, yes I know. But I find it FASCINATING.
So, you get to help me, which sounds more interesting to you?

Okay now on to something more interesting: the other night I had what I'd like to refer to as "the best idea in the history of ever." While browsing flight prices on Ryanair.com, my roommate mentioned that she didn't even know what country most of the listed flights went to. After nodding my affirmation of this, I wondered aloud, "wouldn't it be fun to just book a flight to a city with a cool name and then just find out what country you were in when you got there?"

As one might imagine, this quickly became a "that's the coolest idea ever, and let's go and do it and remember it forever!" sort of thing. Thus, my roommates and I plan to book a 5 pound flight to a city with a cool sounding name and then figure out what to do once we get in that country. Is that perhaps not the most brilliant idea you've ever heard? It's going to be fantastic. I hope we don't die.

Well, seeing as how I have again written a ridiculously long post, I must now go prepare myself for Greek tutorial #2 with Albus Jonathan tomorrow. I do wonder what Xenophon might be hunting this week. Hopefully, another [insert expletive of choice] stew will be in order.

Best,
Sara