A few weeks ago the Dean of ESR informed me that I was going to be permitted to take a six-month sabbatical. I began researching what I would want to do on my sabbatical.

For a few years I have thought about studying Arabic. For the past several years we have talked at ESR about the necessity for thinking about theological education and ministry within a multi-cultural context. Several people have been learning Spanish and traveling to Mexico and Central America to engage in cross-cultural ministry and theological education. It seemed to me to be a good idea to work at the same concept but in a different language, culture, and part of the world. So I began thinking about how I would go about learning Arabic and where I might want to travel to experience Arab and Islamic culture.

I didn't have to think long before I came upon the idea of traveling to Ramallah, Palestine and the Ramallah Friends School. After thinking about that for a few days and beginning to talk to the director of the school. I became aware of the local university, Birzeit University, and its Palestine and Arabic Studies Program. What became clear to me is that if I really wanted to make the most of this opportunity, I would need to spend the complete semester in Palestine.

The Dean has approved my sabbatical plans and has funding available to support me. Right now my plans are to focus on three main areas.

1. To be a Friend in Residence at Ramallah Friends School. I will want to participate in the life of the school and in the classroom. I will seek to find ways to be a part of the Friends community in Ramallah through the Friends International Center in Ramallah.
2. To take two classes at Birzeit University, hopefully one on Arabic and one Palestinian/Arabic culture. I've started to learn Arabic and look forward to the challenge of not only learning a language for reading but also for conversation.
3. I'm also hoping to teach a class at a theological school. Our work at ESR is in Christian theological education. I want to be a part of what Palestinian Christians are doing to train people for ministry. I've been in contact with Bethlehem Bible College and am awaiting an answer from them.

As the time approaches I'm sure my plans will develop and might even change. I am keeping up with the news in Palestine and sincerely hope that progress will be made for peaceful negotiations and the resolution of the conflict.

I have other plans for my sabbatical and will write about them in another blog. I am hoping to participate in an NEH summer seminar at the American Academy in Rome. I'll know about that in April. I hope to begin working on a book on Paul. It will be extremely interesting to work on a book on Paul, first in Rome and then in Palestine.

Those are my plans at the moment.

Several years ago I had the idea of learning Arabic. I talked with someone and that person discouraged me from doing that. I wish I hadn't listened to her. But now does seem like the right time for me to do this, not only because I'm preparing for a six-month sabbatical but also because I'm turning 50. Rather than a mid-life crisis (yes, I'm hoping to live to 100 like my paternal grandmother), I'm trying to create a mid-life opportunity for growth.

One of the best things that happened was coming across the book Alif Baa in the library. During a week's vacation I studied through that book and the accompanying DVD. I think it helped me to get a good start with recognizing Arabic letters, how to write them, and how to pronounce them properly. I've tried to go on to the next book in this series Al-Kitaab, but it is not working well as a text for learning on one's own.

My wife, bless her heart, let me spend the money for a subscription to Rosetta Stone online. I've been working on that about two or three hours a day in the evening. It's great for what it's intended to do. But I don't know what it would be like if I weren't also studying vocabulary and grammar with other resources.

I'm finding Amazon.com extremely helpful, as always. It's great to be able to read reviews of people who have worked with the available books and software. For the level I'm at, the Arabic Practical Dictionary is just what I need. I'm using Arabic Verbs & Essentials of Grammar by Wightwick & Gaafar. I also bought a used copy of what seems to be a concise, classic text on Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Literary Arabic by Cowan. I've also just ordered two books with audio CDs. These are intended to help me develop abilities with conversation in the dialect of Arabic spoken in Palestine: Teach Yourself Arabic Conversation (3CDs + Guide) by Wightwick & Gaafar and Instant Immersion Arabic. In a few months I will want to get The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic.

I looked for software to help me study vocabulary. I downloaded the trial versions of Verb Clinic and Vocab Clinic. Both have extensive databases of information with really good sound files. But there isn't much there for helping a person to study terms like one would with a flash cards. The program Before You Know It has a really good interface and well-designed program for studying vocabulary words. I spent the money to get the full version so I can add my own vocabulary words. My problems with BYKI for Arabic: One is the voice of the Arabic speaker in the sound files that come with the program--really difficult to listen to; the other is that when you type in new Arabic words the tops of the letters are not visible. It's still a good program. And it comes with mp3 files with the Arabic word and an English translation.

I'll mention one more type of resource. These are social web sites with the focus on language learning. I haven't actually used one of them yet. I have registered in iTalki. The other is VoxSwap. I really like the premise of Myngle as a way to get language tutors and students together. For some unknown fee per session with a teacher, Myngle provides the audio/video technology for learning a language online. There are only a few who advertise teaching Arabic and only one who looks professional. Right now it's more than I want to spend for language instruction. Eventually I'll give iTalki a try and spend time teaching someone English in exchange for teaching me some Arabic. God willing إن شاء الله

Note: One of the most difficult aspects of learning Arabic is the print is always so tiny. I spend most of the time with my glasses on the end of my nose trying to read the small letters. I've even been using a magnifying glass.

One other thing. I got my laptop computer set up in Windows so I can very easily switch to typing Arabic. It's fantastic. God bless unicode. One problem. I can't seem to get the diacritical marks to appear when typing in Microsoft Word. Very strange. The irony is, after all my resistance to adopting OpenOffice, I've discovered typing Arabic in OO works very well.

No, one more thing. I've found mp3 files of the recitation of the Qur'an. There's one set in which the Arabic is given (chanted) by phrases with an English translation following. Very meditative. Beautiful.

I've found a ton of resources on the Internet. Here are my bookmarks of Arabic resources. The order is the order in which I have discovered the web sites.

How to learn Arabic

LookLex / Course / Arabic

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LangMedia: Arabic in Jordan (Palestinian Dialect)

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Arabic New Testament - Van Dyke Translation.

Arabic Bible devotions authored by various Arabic Christian writers. These articles are published in the Arabic Christian monthly magazine -the Voice of Preaching the Gospel. Arabic Bible Outreach Ministry is dedicated to further the message of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Internet among Arabic speaking people.

Arabic Conversation: Teach Yourself -- Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar

<I>Arabic Conversation</i> is a three-hour, all-audio course which you can use at any time....

FSI Arabic

Free FSI language courses on the web! Downloadable version of Arabic courses from the Foreign Service Institute.

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al-kitaab Flashcards

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Al-kitaab Homepage

| Project Root List | Quran Concordance, Grammar and Dictionary in one!

free Lane Arabic English Lexicon / Dictionary

al-Kitaab Supplement (modern standard Arabic)

LangMedia: Arabic Resources on LangMedia

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The social network for learning languages - VoxSwap

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italki - Language Exchange and Learning Community

Find everything you need to learn a foreign language including online language exchange, reviews of educational resources, and a community of students from around the world.

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Myngle

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Unicode fonts for Arabic transliteration

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Syrian Studies Association ~ Study in Syria

Syrian Studies Association webpage

عربي : دليل المصطلحات | Arabic: Vocabulary Guide

Learn Arabic Online. Internet lessons using articles taken from the Arab press.

We teach Arabic through topical news stories taken from Arab newspaper websites such as Asharq Alawsat and Al-Hayat. Our internet lessons are updated weekly encouraging you to keep studying and learning Arabic and to stay up to date with the latest events from the Middle East.

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I've applied to participate in this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar . It will run from June 23 - July 27, 2008. If I'm accepted I will be flying straight from England following the Friends Association for Higher Education conference at Woodbrooke in Birmingham.

Here's a short description of the seminar:

The NEH Summer Seminar, "Identity and Self-Representation in the Subcultures of Ancient Rome," continues a series of NEH Summer Seminars offered by the American Academy in Rome on topics related to Classical Studies, Archaeology, and the Humanities (History, Art History, Anthropology, etc.). The seminar will focus on the ever-controversial matter of personal identity by considering ways in which Roman citizens throughout the Mediterranean world used word and image to represent themselves both as individuals and as members of communities. In addition to each week's thematically organized seminar discussions, a series of Roman museum visits and field trips to sites beyond the city should expand each participant's resources for study and teaching in areas of class, gender and ethnicity. We believe that our participants may be surprised to encounter the social diversity of the subcultures encompassed within the general heading of Roman culture.

Below I will include my essay about why I want to participate in the seminar. It's probably more than you want to know.

I will be on sabbatical in 2008 from July to December. For the past seven years I have been directing a distance education program (accredited by the Association of Theological Schools). During that time I have been teaching upper-level seminars on texts and topics related to the study of the New Testament. One of my main areas of research has been what I call Pauline psychagogy. I am beginning to write a book based on this research and also want to increase the amount of teaching and research I do in my discipline. Participation in this seminar will help me immensely.

I am excited by the prospect of intensive study in Rome. The topic of study is directly related to my research interests. This will give me the opportunity to sharpen my theoretical skills in the analysis of material culture and to gain first-hand experience with the cultural artifacts.

My primary interest in the study of early Christianity has been the way in which the interaction of cultures within the late Republic and early Roman empire contributed to the formation of Christianity in the first several centuries. Early in my studies I was interested in the ancient near eastern context and the developments within Israelite and Judean culture, including second temple forms of Judaism and the beginnings of rabbinic Judaism in the second century CE. What I discovered was the way in which the types of earliest Christianity we know about were formed in the cultural clashes and convergences brought about by the continuing Hellenistic project of Alexander and his successors and the occupation of Judea by Rome. Throughout my graduate studies I concentrated my attention on the Greco-Roman context of early Christianity. I was fortunate to be able to work with Stanley Stowers at Brown University, where we examined early Christian literature in the light of Greco-Roman rhetoric and the social location of early Christian communities in the Roman empire. What has come to be most important to me in the study of early Christianity is the comparison of the practice of the Apostle Paul to that of Greek philosophers, particularly household advisors.

My doctoral work at Brown University often drew on the Classical Studies department, either in actual course work or in the way in which we approached the literature of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. For instance, while we were engaged in a course on Fourth Maccabees, I was also taking a class on Greek rhetoric for which I wrote a paper on funeral orations. This contributed to my understanding of the language of Fourth Maccabees and its closing sections related to the commemoration of dead heroes. That way of reading early Christian texts has influenced greatly the way I teach courses on the New Testament.

A crucial part of my research on Paul and the formation of Christian communities is the practices of philosophical groups within the Roman empire, the social setting in households (patron/client, commerce, meals, religion), and the construction and maintenance of egalitarian communities (Epicureans). There is a growing body of literature among scholars of early Christianity related to the study of the Roman household (David Balch, Carolyn Osiek). Others have focused on the larger picture of the social setting of early Christianity within the Greco-Roman world (Wayne Meeks, E.A. Judge, Ronald Hock, Stanley Stowers, etc.). The group of scholars I’ve been following for a number of years are those interested in the approach informed by a study of Greco-Roman philosophy as represented in the Hellenistic Moral Philosophy unit of the Society of Biblical Literature (Stanley Stowers, Abraham Malherbe, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, John Fitzgerald, Michael White, Loveday Alexander, Clarence Glad). In addition to scholars of early Christianity writing on this topic, I’ve been greatly helped by the work of such classicists as Pierre & Ilsetraut Hadot, Anthony Long, Martha Nussbaum, David Konstan, Diskin Clay, and Dirk Obbink.

The book I am working on has the working title (Trans)Formation in Early Christian Communities: Reconnecting with Ancient Philosophical Practices. My contention is that Christianity gradually lost its connection to Greco-Roman philosophy, particularly after Constantine made it a state religion and Christianity was overlaid with the rituals and practices of Roman religion. Contemporary movements in psychology (cognitive-behavioral, rational emotive therapy, Positive Psychology), education (moral development in the theories of Piaget, & Kohlberg) philosophy (virtue ethics), and spirituality (spiritual directors, rules of life, pastoral care) are aspects of what was integral to Greco-Roman philosophy. I want to reconnect our understanding of the documents of earliest Christianity with these areas and show the benefits of interpreting these texts as advocating progress in the transformation of human persons within the formation of communities of people who help each other attain the goal of becoming the best persons possible.

My book will first argue that Jews in the Roman empire who were participating in Greco-Roman culture represent a legitimate practice of their religious and ethnic commitments. There are texts that represent a clash of cultures but there are others that epitomize a coalescence of cultures. Rather than think of Hellenistic Judaism as deviant, we should see it as an expression of the people’s genuine commitments to their country and to ancestral religion (which of course was its own synthesis of Canaanite, Egyptian, and Persian beliefs and practices). A Hellenistic Paul, therefore, is still a Jewish Paul working within his own religious commitments as Jew, though incorporating the culture he knows as a citizen (so Acts purports) of the Roman empire. Paul, then, as someone who connects himself to households and writes letters of moral exhortation functions as a philosophical advisor. What he advocates people do is similar to what the moral philosophers taught related to the therapy of the soul and the progress toward the telos of divine existence (eudaimonia or makarios) characterized by self-sufficiency and self-mastery and culminating in immortality. What Socrates and Epicurus were to the philosophical groups, what Moses was to Philo, Jesus was to Paul and his followers.

What I need to be able to do is show that not only can the literary texts best be understood in this way but also we can best understand Paul functioning in this way in the social location of the household and cultural context of philosophical advisors (such as Philodemus). This summer seminar in Rome will give me first-hand experience studying the material culture of Rome and the theoretical methods necessary for interpreting it.

Let me just add what I’m planning for the second part of my sabbatical. I will be living in Ramallah, Palestine from Sept. through December. There I will be taking classes at Birzeit University in Arabic & Palestinian Studies. Here again I will be studying and experiencing the culture – both the clashes and the convergences – related to the world of Paul. These two trips will be extremely valuable book-ends to my research and writing about the first-century world of Paul and to the formation of early Christianity. I hope my work will help the world to refocus the interpretation of religious texts away from sectarian and cultural schisms to the spiritual practices that form and enhance the common life of the people around the world.

[This is a message I gave at my church, Salem Friends Meeting]

A few years ago, my wife, Suann, and I became homeowners. I’ve not been convinced that it was a wise decision for us. Sure, the house has served us well. It has kept us warm – at least warmer than the out-of-doors. It has kept us dry – except for the leak in the roof and the puddles in the basement. There is the security we have – the security of knowing no sensible thief would try to rob a house like ours. We primarily bought the house because of its location. It is located on the southwest side of the city where the high school is and it’s across the street from where I work at Earlham School of Religion. We thought the advantage of its location outweighed any of the other problems the house might have. However, the children hardly ever walk to school and I’m still always at least ten minutes late for work.

Along with the house comes a nice piece of property. It’s my property. I own it. I’ve looked online and have seen the official boundary of my property. When we first moved in there was a playground set in the back yard. I drove into the driveway one day and saw a little boy in my backyard. I went down there and told him he couldn’t be on my property. I defended my land and prevented an incursion from occurring on my land.

My land has given me many fruitful harvests for which I continually curse mother nature. If only there would be less rain and less sun, perhaps the grass would not grow so quickly and the weeds wouldn’t force themselves through every nook and cranny of my property. Besides the occasional patch of mushrooms that appear in my front yard and some kind of wild strawberry that showed up where it didn’t belong, there hasn’t been much produce from the dirt that hides below the surface of my ill-manicured lawn.

There are other families for whom land has greater significance. My parents have a plot of land they bought as a retirement home. My father has put a great deal of sweat and probably some blood – I know it’s taken a fair amount of money – into his handful of acres. But he’s only lived there for maybe a dozen years or so. He’s tended a large garden most years and that’s helped them with the cost of food. But it’s not been his livelihood.

I can imagine that farm families have a greater attachment to their land. For some farm families their land has been in the family for generations. Until recent years farm families could expect the land to provide a livelihood for a next generation of their family. They could tell you about what the land has meant to them over the years. Not only have the farmers had an intimate connection with the land by their blood, sweat, and tears, there may well be ancestors buried in the dirt on their land.

Nowadays it seems farmers are a different breed. In order to do well on a farm, they need to have a knowledge of business management and understand the market. They are biologists and soil scientists. I suspect the modern day farmers see their land more as their field of business than the dirt which gave birth to their families and which holds their ancestors in trust until resurrection day.

In the olden days, as in antiquity, people had a greater spiritual connection to their land. The stories of how their tribes of people came to settle the land are passed down through generations. For them, it was God or the gods who gave them their land and provided life to them through it. God blessed their land with the heat and life-giving force of the sun. God showered them and sent streams of water to quench the thirst of their land. The cycles of life were the seasons of planting and harvest; God gave life from the ground and to the ground people returned. To you and your people the land was a God-given trust; not just property to own or an asset of your business but a part of the earth God gave to you and your people.

I can explain what that means to some people, but I obviously can’t really understand it. I think there are many people like me who don’t have a real connection to the ground they live upon. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but that’s the reality we live with.

The fact is, here in the United States of America, we live on land that only a few hundred years ago belonged to another group of people. We think of our ancestors as people who fled religious persecution and were led to this new world as a promised land flowing with milk and honey. It was okay for us to displace the people living here. After all, they hadn’t made anything of the land. The natives lived like animals. They had no technology, no industry, no literature, no philosophy, and no God – or at least not ours. We have now successfully removed the aboriginal people and confined them to small reservations where they can leave in freedom. We’re sorry about that, but it’s okay because we were following God’s leading, fleeing religious persecution, and we were establishing a great country founded on religious principles.

I’ve been thinking about this because of my plans to live in Palestine for a few months. That has caused me to begin thinking more about the Middle East crisis. How does one look at this conflict fairly? What is our perspective as US citizens? What is our perspective as Christians? How is that different for us as Quakers?

We cherish Holy Scripture and consider ourselves as part of the religious and spiritual heirs of its stories and teachings. The Jewish people are our religious and spiritual ancestors. Their God is our God; their Bible is our Bible. We read their Scripture in which God tells them God will give them a land and God will bless them there. God makes a covenant with Israel to be their God. That same Bible prophecies of a future blessing of God when Israel is returned to their land and when everything God gave them in the past is restored. The more literal of our brothers and sisters in the faith take that to mean the future of God’s work in the world is directly connected to the future of the modern state of Israel.

The recent history of our world saw a terrible event happen to those whose Bible we share. European Jews were persecuted: tormented, tortured, and executed by the train-loads. We ignored their plight in the beginning and refused them protection in the end. Through a series of politically and economically motivated decisions, a place was secured for them to go. There was a problem however. Author Ghada Karmi titles her book on the dilemma of modern Israel with an allusion to a famous message. When rabbis visited the land of Palestine in the 19th century looking to return to their former homeland, they sent back word: "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." There’s no other way to see it than that we have been complicit in the taking of that bride from her husband and giving her to another. But what can we do? Say that a religious people has no right to claim land from an indigenous people, virtually wipe them out as savages, and then declare themselves God’s people and their country as blessed of God?

Jimmy Carter, in his recent book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, describes making this connection in 1973, when he visited the Holy Land ahead of his plan to run for the presidency. Carter understood this comparison having been a farmer himself.

I have to admit that, at the time, I equated the ejection of Palestinians from their previous homes within the State of Israel to the forcing of Lower Creek Indians from the Georgia land where our family farm was now located; they had been moved west to Oklahoma on the “Trail of Tears” to make room for our white ancestors. In this most recent case, although equally harsh, the taking of land had been ordained by the international community through an official decision of the United Nations. The Palestinians had to comply and, after all, they could return or be compensated in the future, and they were guaranteed undisputed ownership of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

I’m trying to understand what it means for Palestinians to have their land taken from them. What it means to be removed from their homes and forced to live in refugee camps. What it means to have their homes and their orchards taken over by others or simply to have them bulldozed. What does it mean to soak the dirt with their tears and their blood, the dirt that contains the life of their people from thousands of years. How do I really understand what that means and what do I do about it?

My Christian theology has little room for the value of dirt. For us, heaven is our home and in this world we are only resident aliens. Our life is in the spirit, not in flesh, bone, and dirt. We save the soul, not the body and the land on which it resides. Our heritage comes from the merging of middle eastern culture and the western culture of Greece and Rome. Our values are not in the maintenance of property and wealth. Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafini, in his novella Men in the Sun, has Abul Khaizuran tell Marwan, “The first thing you will learn is: money comes first, and then morals.” Our ethical system says the opposite. But then we judge that from a place of privilege. Easy for us to say. “Why are you fighting over worldly goods: land, wealth, oil? Be like us and live in the spirit – now that we have our land of prosperity and security.”

Our Christian theology may not have much to say about valuing land and dirt, but it does have a great deal to say about justice, fairness, and peace. It is our responsibility to think about what this means. Just because we made a mistake in the past and have learned to live it, doesn’t mean we should be willing to be partners in doing it again to another group of people.

As I prepare myself to live in Palestine in the fall, I have a satellite image on my computer screen that shows me the city of Ramallah. It will be home from Sept. through December. It’s not much to look at, really. There is little vegetation to be seen, mostly sandy and rocky soil. But it’s their dirt and it’s their home, at least for a little while longer.