Wednesday, July 27, 2005

10 ways to determine if you're a NT buff

1. Whenever you listen to a sermon on the NT you always wonder what commentaries the preacher used.
2. The back of your toilet door has Greek verb paradigms engraved on it from your seminary days.
3. Your outdated copy of BAGD is now on the coffee table for visitors to browse over.
4. Amazon.com rates you as one of their top 1000 book buyers.
5. You keep mistaking v's for n's.
6. When lay people ask you what your research interests are and you tell them, they always ask "What's the point of studying that?"
7. When your wife asks you what you want for your birthday/Christmas/Father's day - you always ask for a book.
8. When you read a passage out of Matthew you wonder if the passage derived from Mark, Q or 'M'.
9. You lay awake at night wondering how best to explain the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity.
10. The most heinous insult you have ever experienced is when someone mistook you for an Old Testament scholar.

6 comments:

Alan Bandy said...

Great list. I am wondering how you knew that I stayed awake at night pondering the parting of the ways. I've also got to the point where I dread talking about my dissertation topic because of the blank glassy eyed stare I usually get in return.

Ben Myers said...

As for number 10: I thought the most heinous insult for a NT scholar is to be mistaken for a theologian!

Scot McKnight said...

The sign is that when someone mentions the year 1919 you don't think of WW2 but the year Bultmann wrote HST.

Anonymous said...

WW2 = 1914-1918, so it's probably good you don't think of WW2 for 1919...;)

Anonymous said...

How do you know you're a NT buff? You're so busy with Bultmann and his heirs that you don't even know the dates of a world war...

WW1=1914-1918, not WW2.

Michael Turton said...

5. You keep mistaking v's for n's.

ROFL. You gotta be an NT buff just to get that joke....