What topics would you suggest for a PhD thesis in biblical research?
This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1991.
You ask advice on possible topics for you to tackle for a PhD thesis in biblical research.
I ought to warn you that I am not a theologian by training, but a classicist. My own research, as far as it concerned the Old Testament, was in the realm of the Septuagint and its relevance for the establishment of the original text of the Old Testament. I have in that connection also given attention to the literary criticism of some Old Testament books, particularly where literary criticism can contribute to the solving of textual problems.
Examples of that are the contributions I made to 'The Story of David and Goliath: Textual and Literary Criticism', Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 73, Éditions Universitaires Fribourg, Suisse, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1986; my article on 'The Literary Structure of the Book of Daniel And Its Implications' in the Tyndale Old Testament Lecture, 1980; and my article on 'The Composition of the Book of Judges' in Eretz-Israel, Jerusalem, 1982, volume 16, pages 70–79.
There are, of course, areas in the Septuagint that still need to be worked on from a point of view of determining the history of the text; but I don't know whether such severe studies would appeal to you. Such studies would demand an advanced knowledge of Classical as well as Hellenistic Greek, since they involve assessment of the quality of the Greek that is used in various recensions of the Septuagint.
It seems to me also that we as evangelicals still need to do research on law in the Old Testament; not from the point of view of attempts to apply it straightforwardly to our modern situation, but for the purposes of trying to understand the principles and motivations that lie behind the laws as given, for instance, in Exodus 21–24, and in particular trying to understand the rationale that lies behind the selection of these particular laws in this section of Exodus.
Yours sincerely in Christ,
