Antiquity and Christianity

Abstract

Let me begin, if I may, with some personal remarks. The fact that I have been honored to be president of the Society of Biblical Literature is far from self-explanatory. When I came to this country in 1963, I was an unknown young immigrant from a country that not even twenty years earlier had been at war with the United States. In that same year, when James Robinson introduced me to the Society, I was welcomed as if this was the place where I belonged. I still see before me the faces of Henry Cadbury, Paul Schubert, Amos Wilder, John Knox (the president of that year), and Kendrick Grobel (the secretary), as they sat in the audience to listen to my first public lecture in English. Nobody at that time told me, to be sure, that some day I would be president of this Society, although that possibility was certainly implied in being received as a member. Yet I may be forgiven, perhaps, if there are moments when I wonder whether all this is a dream or reality. There can be no doubt, however, about my deep gratitude for this great honor bestowed on me. Dream or reality? This is also a question the Society might ask itself. When I joined the Society of Biblical Literature, its membership included a few hundred people. The annual meetings took place at Union Theological Seminary in New York, in whose dormitory rooms we all stayed and in whose refectory we all ate our meals. All those who attended listened to all the papers, the list of which was mimeographed on a few sheets of paper. Hardly anybody beyond the premises of Union Theological Seminary took notice of the meetings or the subject matters with which they dealt. In 1997 membership stands at more than seven thousand who paid their annual dues. The programs for the annual meetings with hundreds of lectures and discussions have the size of a book, and there is only a limited number of