Excellent Teachers

J. K. Gayle is thinking about teachers. He asks for a list of 13. I am struck that in his list he includes his children. Children, to be sure, are the best of teachers. But here is a standard list of adult flesh-and-blood mentors that have mattered to me:

(1) Rachel Lewis — my Jewish first grade teacher who adopted me as a favorite student, perhaps for the pleasure of observing a very absent-minded child in action; if I remember correctly, she was non-practicing, and even sang in a church choir; but it was her gritty East Coast Jewishness that appealed to me as a Midwestern boy

(2) Michael Brockmeyer — high school teacher with an unkempt passion for the truth who introduced me to Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn

(3) Tim Ellis — director of Camp Chewonki of Wiscasset ME, where I spent a summer as a cabin counselor, got into a heap of trouble, and was disciplined the old fashioned way

(4) Larry Hurtado — a teacher with a great ability to wrestle out loud with problems of both the intellect and the heart; blessed are those who overhear the conversation

(5) John and Nancy Linton — excellent one-on-one teachers; John is a Bible college professor who delights in destroying the faith of his students – so as to build it back up again on more solid foundations

(6) Menahem Mansoor — a teacher with a tireless interest in his students, and an Old World charm straight from Cairo

(7) Keith Yandell— philosophy of religion professor at the UW-Madison who teaches the joy of clear thinking – he therefore makes mincemeat of many who write in the field of the history of religions

(8) Michael V. Fox — an excellent scholar and demanding mentor, rightfully nicknamed “Baal” by another student of his

(9) Jakob Jocz — then professor of theology at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, a Hebrew Christian who wore his faith and learning lightly, his writings are often cited by Christians who know that crude supersessionism has no basis in the New Testament (go here)

(10) H. A. Gleason, Jr. — linguist and teacher with a soft touch who explained the interface of old and new faith, as in Brahmin and Christian, through unforgettable vignettes

(11) Tullio and Valdo Vinay – Waldensian pastors, the former founded Agape in Prali and Servizio Cristiano at Riesi, saved the lives of Jews in Florence during WWII, and received a prize for it from Israel, though he was already known as an outspoken critic of Israeli policy in the occupied territories from the floor of the Italian Senate, to which he had been elected as a member of the Independent Left; the latter a professor of church history who modeled true ecumenism and became the theologian-in-residence of a vibrant Catholic movement, la comunità di sant’Egidio (go here)

(12) Giorgio Peyrot — Waldensian lawyer, a lion of a man, who largely wrote le Intese, the Waldensian agreement with the Italian state with a rather different flavor than that of the Catholic Concordat) (here is an early quote)

(13) Luis Alonso-Schökel — Jesuit professor of Old Testament at the Biblicum in Rome, for his intense love of the connectedness between the literary and the theological

Comments

[J. K. Gayle]

John,
Thanks for doing this for us, and for them. I've wondered what makes you tick, and who. Your sharing your teachers with us makes me want to learn more. La ringrazio.
Kurk

[Suzanne McCarthy]

John,

I was the one who invited Gleason to come and give that presentation on India which you remember. All those years ago. Oh, wow. And of course, I remember Jocz.

My Psalms prof. now, Gerald Hobbs, is amazing for his knowledge of the interpretation of the Psalms in the reformation (as well as Hebrew lang). We do an hour of Hebrew in a smaller group and three hours of class in English. I am using the Kohlenberger Psalter. Already Psalm 1 just stunned me - it was so different in Greek than in Hebrew, I had to look twice. What a surprise!

[Suzanne McCarthy]

PS Did you study with Gleason? I don't remember that. I kept in touch with him for years.

[JohnFH]

Hi Suzanne. I had no idea that you arranged for that presentation. Isn't that cool? It has stuck with me all these years.

After the presentation, I sat down with Gleason and we went over fine points of Hebrew grammar (he loved grammar, and he knew Hebrew grammar better than many professors of Hebrew). He gave me some advice on the field of linguistics in that context which I then followed, to my benefit.

I saw him a few times after that, but it was the presentation and conversation afterwards that marked my life for the better. It is a good example of how a great teacher needs no more than an hour or two to mentor someone for a lifetime.

[Suzanne McCarthy]

It is really neat for me to hear this because someone else was pretty lukewarm about the presentation and I didn't know it had been so appreciated. I also didn't know that Gleason knew Hebrew, but I do remember that he knew Greek very well.

He died last year.