A Teacher Like Elijah - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > Bible Review > February 1998

A Teacher Like Elijah

A rare teacher, James Muilenburg was able to hold together the historical meaning, the literary form and the theological significance of biblical texts.

By Bernhard W. Anderson

In my first teaching position, at Colgate University, I arranged for my own teacher, Dr. James Muilenburg, then at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, to give a lecture at Colgate.a At the family dinner table before his visit, my youngest daughter asked, “Who is Dr. Muilenburg?” “Oh you know, Joan,” answered my oldest daughter, Carol. “He’s Daddy’s God!” Dr. Muilenburg is held in comparable high esteem by his distinguished students from Union Theological Seminary, including Walter Harrelson, Phyllis Trible, Norman Gottwald and Walter Brueggemann. It was at Union that Dr. Muilenburg’s career reached its climax. There was, […]

You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Footnotes

1.

The following essay represents the substance of my remarks at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, in New Orleans, November 1996, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Muilenburg.

2.

See Jeffrey R. Zorn, “Backward Glance: A Legacy of Publication,” BAR 23:04.

Endnotes

1.

S.R. Driver, Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (New York: Scribner’s, 1913; Meridian rev. ed., 1956).

2.

See my essay, “The New Frontier of Rhetorical Criticism,” in Rhetorical Criticism: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg, ed. Jared Jackson and Martin Kessler (Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Press, 1974), pp. 1–18.

3.

James Muilenburg, “Introduction to and Exegesis of Isaiah 40–66, ” Interpreter’s Bible, ed. G.A. Buttrick, 12 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1952–1957), vol. 5.

4.

Muilenburg, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” Journal of Biblical Literature 88 (1969), pp. 1–18.