Deuteronomy and Psalms: Evoking a Biblical Conversation‪.‬

As all who plow the fields of academic research are well aware, the vagaries and contingencies of scholarship are more extensive than appears to be the case. The seriousness of our research seems to presume careful planning in which we determine that such and such is an important area of research, a topic that has been insufficiently studied, or something in which the scholar has had a deep interest from the beginning of his or her career. All those things are often true, but it is also the case that our involvements happen for all sorts of reasons that represent much less intentionality than that. Thus, a student desperate for a dissertation subject is told by a teacher that the paper for an assigned topic in a seminar might constitute the basis for a dissertation. Years later that student is an expert on a subject that arose largely by chance. Or an invitation comes from an editor or a publisher to write an essay, a commentary, or a topical book, and the outcome sets the scholar off in a particular direction. Certainly, much of our scholarship, from the academic to the popular in form, is provoked by outside forces, by invitations and suggestions, by the lure of royalties, and by the ties of friendship. These comments, which I believe accurately describe the general picture of how much scholarship develops and how it is that people come to focus on certain areas, are autobiographical as well. So it is that some years ago when I was going on sabbatical leave and engaged in Psalms research, a smooth-tongued editor, trying to con me into agreeing to write a commentary on Deuteronomy, gave me a rather extended song and dance about how interesting and fruitful it might be to work on Deuteronomy at the same time that I was working on the Psalms, suggesting that there were all kinds of interactions hidden there, waiting to be discovered. As an editor who can do a pretty good shuffle myself when I am trying to pressure a potential author into taking on a project, I recognized what was happening. The editor was sharp and a good friend, but the stuff he was handing me was quite off the top of his head. In any event, beguiled by the snake oil, the ego enhancement, and the prospect of great wealth off vast royalties (!) I agreed. The outcome was eventually a commentary on Deuteronomy, while the hoped-for one on the Psalms never got written.