My Life and Career as a Biblical Scholar

Van Seters

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781498299572
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Despite growing up in a poor family during the 1930s and '40s, Van Seters eventually excelled at the University of Toronto and earned a PhD at Yale University in ancient Near Eastern and Hebrew studies. Before Van Seters became a teacher, he and his wife spent three-quarters of a year in Palestine, becoming familiar with the whole region. Later in his career Van Seters assisted in archaeological expeditions in Jordan and Egypt. Visits to the Near East across his career broadened his understanding and appreciation of the biblical texts he studied professionally. Van Seters spent most of his working life teaching in universities--first at the University of Toronto, and then for over twenty years at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This book not only chronicles what Van Seters has accomplished as a biblical scholar but also tells how he has become such a scholar. He hopes that experiences recorded here may guide young scholars to develop fruitful careers in biblical studies.

1

Youth, Family Background, and Early Education

Let me begin by making some remarks about my youth and family background. I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on May 2, 1935, as one of six children, the son of Dutch immigrants who, at the time of my birth, farmed a tract of land in Bronte, Ontario, between Hamilton and Toronto. My father was originally from a farming community in South Holland (Stellendam), while my mother was from Amsterdam. They emigrated from the Netherlands to western Canada in the 1920s, my mother with other members of her family while my father came to Canada alone. They met in Alberta and were married there. After a couple of years living in British Columbia (where the eldest two children, my sister Philippina and my oldest brother Hugo, were born), they moved to Ontario in the depression years to try to make a living at farming. My brother Arthur and I were born while the family lived on the farm. However, my parents could not make a go of the farm in the depression years of the mid-30s, and so the family moved to Toronto to try to find work there. The youngest two children, Richard and Fred, were born in Toronto. I grew up in Toronto and received all of my education there from primary and secondary schools to a university degree at the University of Toronto. I was a Toronto boy in every respect, with my grade school days spent in the heart of the city, the “Annex,” and high school and college days living in the suburb of Willowdale, in North York, just north of Toronto.

During my childhood years we lived in a number of different rentals on the west side of Toronto. While I was still in kindergarten we moved to Howland Avenue. This was in 1940, the early war years. I attended Huron Street School for the rest of my elementary education. In addition to being a farmer by upbringing my father had picked up some skills as a mechanic and had a job as a mechanic at City Dairy, later Borden’s Dairy, on Spadina Circle. (Many years later, when I was in college and looking for summer employment, I got a job in the same dairy. There were still people at the dairy who remembered my father and it may have been that fact that was part of the reason why they offered me the job.) While working at the dairy, my father went to Central Tech in the evenings to learn the skill of welding and to take up a war-time job of working as a welder on the minesweepers that were being built in the Toronto harbor during the war. As kids we sometimes went down to watch them launch one of these big ships, which for us was quite an event.

Those war years were hard times for a big family of eight, plus a grandmother who lived with us. I remember those years well. Everyone who was old enough, as young as 10 yrs old, got odd jobs or part-time work to add to the common family kitty, whether shoveling snow, cutting lawns, selling Christmas cards door to door, delivering newspapers, or working in grocery stores; you name it, we did it. Sometimes we got second hand clothes from some families in the church. Buying day-old bread was common. After the war when the shipyards closed down, it took a while before my father could find a good job. He went back to night-school and took a course in blue-print reading that allowed him to become a welding inspector on the assembly line for Massey-Harris (Ferguson), where he worked for the next twenty-five years. Even this job experienced seasonal lay-offs and strikes, during which he tried to find fill-in jobs. It is not surprising that my father was a strong supporter of socialism as reflected in the CCF (NDP).

The only other family that we had living close by were two of my mother’s brothers and their wives: Uncle Ren (Hubert) and Aunt Hattie, and Uncle Bill (Hubert) and Aunt Margaret. They never had any children while I was young, although Uncle Bill and Aunt Margaret finally had two daughters when I was a teenager. So the two uncles and aunts were at our place for every major occasion such as Christmas and Easter and for many other times as well, and they were very good to us kids as much as those hard times would allow. During the war, Uncle Ren and Aunt Hattie both worked at a war munitions factory building aircraft. My Uncle Bill joined the air-force and finally got his wings, as bombardier, but never actually made it overseas before the end of the war. In addition, there were lots of Dutch friends that visited us so that there was a lot of Dutch spoken and we learned to speak and understand it, even though English was the language commonly spoken at home. During the war years of 1940–45 there was a lot of activity at both the public school and the boy-scouts movement to do projects for the war effort. When Victory Europe Day came, ending the war in Europe, there was a massive celebration for that great event. We also began to receive news from relatives in the Netherlands for the first time since the war’s beginning and sent parcels of food and used clothes to them, because things were pretty desperate for them by the end of the war.

Early Education

I had a good primary education at Huron Street School, in spite of the fact that the main building was already very old when I was there and has long since been removed and replace. The school also had a newer annex which I believe still stands. But the school’s outdoor play area had no playing fields, only a large area covered with concrete, so there was little development of any sports program. There was no gym or other facilities indoors for sports. Among all the teachers that I had at that school one stands out as one of the finest that I have ever encountered: Mr. Gilbert. He was my teacher in grade 6 and again in grade 8. He came to the school after the end of the war where he had been an officer in the army. I first remember him as visiting the school with a bandage rapped around his head from a wartime injury. His first year back in teaching in September of 1945 was the year that I was in his sixth-grade class. He was not a rigid disciplinarian as one might have expected, although outside the classroom he always had the appearance of a gentleman with a cane or umbrella as he walked. He did not speak often of the war experience, but I remember that first remembrance-day service after the war ended. It took place in the school kindergarten room, the largest room in the school and it was standing room only. Afterwards Mr. Gilbert told a deeply moving story of how he was assigned as a major in the army to lead a special mission and had to ask for volunteers. So many stepped forward that he had to choose which would go and which stay behind. Then he told us that less than half returned from that mission. His own voice trembled as he recalled the episode, but it had a great impact on me, and I am sure many others in the class. Even though he was naturally reserved, he gave us a glimpse into his own soul and into the meaning of the day for him that I have never forgotten.

Mr. Gilbert was “old school” and did not entirely approve of the new textbooks and approaches to the various parts of the curriculum, so he made use of some older textbooks. Where he got them, I do not know and how he got by with using his approach puzzles me, but he did. He had a way of approaching every subject, whether math or English grammar or art or literature that made it so interesting that you wanted to get your mind involved. For the first time I flourished in school. I can still remember some of those lessons to this day. He did not just have us memorizing poetry. We had to compete with each other in reciting the poems from memory with feeling and interpretation. In art the rage at that time was self-expression, plaster anything you like on a piece of paper. But Mr. Gilbert was an artist, especially with his landscapes in watercolors, and he taught us how to make a simple picture that we could enjoy. He had a whole set of basic examples and I still remember them. He taught us perspective in art, how to do a multi-colored wash, especially for sunsets. I had him as teacher again in grade 8 and he prepared me for high school so that in some subjects I was already ahead of the level in my first year. No teacher in my early years instilled in me the love of learning more than he did and I am sure that I was not alone.

One other thing must be said about Huron Street School. It was a school with a very diverse student body, even back then when Toronto as a whole was still very British. There was a large Jewish community in that part of Toronto and a significant number attended Huron Street School so that on Jewish holy days their absence from school was quite noticeable. We had Jewish neighbors, the Fishbanes, and Jerry Fishbane was a classmate of mine, so we often walked to school together and our families got along very well. Jerry even taught me the odd word in Yiddish. There were also some Chinese in the school, and one in my class, children of the Chinese grocers on Bloor Street. Also in that part of Toronto was an old Black community that dated back to the days of the underground railway, and some of these were students at our school. (This was before the influx of Caribbean immigrants.) And there were offspring of immigrants like us to counterbalance the predominantly British population. This diversity was a great asset because it was not at all common in many other parts of the city, and not at all the case where I went to High School in North York.

I received my secondary education at Earl Haig Collegiate in the five-year college prep program (1949–54). This was the only secondary school in North York at the time I entered secondary school, but during my third year another one was built, and others added quickly in the years that followed. The region on the northern boundary of what was then the City of Toronto was experiencing very rapid growth and we had been part of that growth, moving into a new home, the first that we actually owned. My youngest two brothers went to a brand new elementary school just across the street from where we lived, which even had a large playing field. We were also very close to Hog’s Hollow, the large ravine of the upper Don River, a great place for kids to explore. Earl Haig was a good school that produced lots of good students for university, particularly the University of Toronto, although some brave souls went further afield, to Western or Queens. My brother Art and I were there together in high-school and shared many of the same classes. My oldest brother and my sister were no longer in school. Art and I were active in a number of groups and in sports, particularly basketball because we were tall, but Art was a much better player than I was. We sang in the school’s Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and in the Glee club, and we were also involved in a religious student group, the Inter-School Christian Fellowship.

In secondary school education one had to begin making elective choices at least by the second year based upon certain perceived interests which could change in a subsequent year. Art was convinced by his second year that he was going into the ministry and picked Latin as an option. I had other ideas, so I picked art, probably because of what I had learned from Mr. Gilbert. But I soon tired of it and by third year I too wanted to take Latin, but that would mean I was a year behind. I talked to the Latin teacher Ms. Verra Vanderlip, and she said that if I was willing to work hard, I could make it up on my own. She would tutor me on the side until I caught up with the rest. This was completely voluntary on her part. She also taught my brother Greek as an extra. There is a sequel to this story. When I was in graduate school at Yale I again ran into Verra Vanderlip. She had decided to go into graduate studies and get her doctorate in order to teach at the college level and she was enrolled at Yale in the classics department. We ended up graduating in the same year, and since our names were so close in the alphabet we marched together in the graduation procession. Verra and others like her reflected the quality of education that I received at Earl Haig.

Religious Background

Before going on to discuss my college education and graduate studies, I want to reflect on my religious life and indoctrination during my childhood and youth. I was brought up in a conservative Calvinist Christian home and environment. While I happily identified myself as evangelical and was strongly in favor of those who were not Christians being persuaded to become believers, I was not so comfortable with the label of “fundamentalist” because it reflected so often a more non-reflective brand of Christianity in which theological discussion was minimal, apart from a few dogmas—the fundamentals—which were merely accepted without question. Although my father was brought up in what in North America is called the Christian Reformed Church, he made a decision early on to change to that other Calvinist church in Canada, the Presbyterian Church, and we were brought up within this Scottish tradition. For the whole time that we lived in the Annex we attended Knox Presbyterian Church on Spadina Ave., and were very active in church life. By father was an elder in the church (probably the only blue collar worker to attain that position, since the congregation members were otherwise well to do). We were active in many phases of church life and trained to know the Bible; I memorized large portions of it, always in the King James Version, along with the Westminster catechism. Every Sunday after church at dinner time my father regularly analyzed the sermon, usually for its orthodoxy, its exegesis and its evangelical appeal. We were also trained at home in the Heidelberg catechism, which my father preferred. We read a lot of Christian literature; one of my father’s favorites was Gresham Machen of Westminster Theological Seminary (of whom we had a photo portrait on the wall in our house); another was Abraham Kuyper, a noted Dutch theologian and politician. My grandfather, a mayor of a small town in Holland, had been a member of Kuyper’s party. Above all, we were imbued with Calvin, his Institutes and his commentaries. The various ministers of the churches where my father served as elder soon became aware of his expertise in Calvinism and the Institutes. It is fair to say that I was thoroughly indoctrinated at an early age and a very large part of my youth was taken up with church life and religious activity beyond the confines of the church. I attended meetings of evangelical churches other than my own, including that of Charles Templeton, and revival crusades of Billy Graham and others. I even worked a couple of summers at Canadian Keswick, a resort in Muskoka, Ontario, for mostly well-heeled Christians who wanted to spend their evenings listening to “leading” Christian speakers, e.g. faculty members from Wheaton College and Moody Bible Institute, or major preachers. I sat in on many of these and honed my skills at critical evaluation of their talks. I loved to engage in “Bible study,” as it was called, and in theological debate. Of the six children in our family, those who were most inclined in this direction were my sister Phil, my brother Art and myself. This was the situation throughout my youth before Art and I went on to college. Whether at church and through its broader activities or at school or within the family circle, most of our friends were Christians.

It is not surprising, therefore, that both Art and I aspired to religious careers and felt “called” to the Christian ministry. We often served as leaders of youth groups and were frequently called upon to speak at Christian gatherings or in church on “Youth Sunday” and had a fairly broad recognition within such circles for leadership. Our parents, of course, strongly supported such aspirations, and while they could not do much in the way of financial assistance, they were most willing to help in any way they could. When it came to deciding just what course of study to follow within the wide range of possibilities which the University of Toronto offered, Art and I went to visit Dr. Stanley Glen, the Principle of Knox College, the Presbyterian Seminary in Toronto. (Art would himself become the principle of Knox College in later years.) Dr. Glen, himself a New Testament scholar, would advise up to go to University College and take an honors program of study in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literature (Near Eastern Studies) as it was then called, with a special concentration in Hebrew and Greek. And that is what we did. There never seemed to be the slightest doubt that this was the wisest and best choice.

My brother Art and I entered University College in the fall of 1954. I had a small scholarship that went towards fees for the first year. Most of my expenses were covered by a combination of money saved from my previous earnings, especially summer jobs, supplemented by a Government of Ontario bursary, based on a means test. This allowed me to concentrate all of my time during the school year on my studies, without my family having to put out any money for fees, which they could not afford to do. Only in the summer did I work to earn money for the coming school year. The first two years I commuted from home to the university but in the last two years of college I lived in residence, and by the time I graduated I was completely debt free. It was a wonderful college experience and I thrived on it. I had seven different professors of Hebrew language over a four-year period, covering grammar and syntax and readings in Pentateuch and historical books, prophets, Psalms, Qoheleth and even the Mishna. I had four years of Near Eastern history from ancient Sumer to the present, including of course ancient Israel and early Christianity and the history of Islam, as well as the modern Near East. In classics I had four years of Greek, three years of Classical history of Greece and Rome, Greek philosophy, and Greek art and archaeology. In addition to my required courses I had a few other courses outside my honors concentration. I also did a senior thesis paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many would regard my education as very narrow because it did not include mathematics, physical and life sciences, or social sciences, but the concentrated focus was wonderful and all of it was related to my goals and interests.

During the time that I was in university, I continued to be very active in evangelical Christian groups, along with my brother Art, especially in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, organizing meetings, attending conferences, and morning prayer-meetings. We even served on the executive committee that organized an evangelizing mission with John Stott, a British clergyman, conducted throughout the university. While living on campus, I was also active again in Knox Presbyterian Church on Spadina Ave. By this time I was beginning to confront, through my studies and the university environment, a more critical approach to understanding the Bible and read a lot of theologically conservative literature that attempted to address these issues. The whole process left me uneasy, with many questions. Yet, I was so embedded within a very supportive religious and family community of belief and world-view that I was reluctant to venture too far from those ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Youth, Family Background, and Early Education
• Chapter 2: Toronto Years, 1970–1977
• Chapter 3: The Move to UNC Chapel Hill
• Chapter 4: Second Trip to Egypt and Visit with H. H. Schmid in Switzerland
• Chapter 5: End of First Term as Chair and Sabbatical at Oxford
• Chapter 6: Second Term as Department Chair and the Interim Years, 1986–1992
• Chapter 7: Cambridge Sabbatical
• Chapter 8: Third Term as Department Chair, 1993–1995
• Chapter 9: The Last Five Years in Chapel Hill, 1995–2000
• Chapter 10: The Move Back to Canada and Life in Retirement
• Epilogue
• Major Publications