Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

Well, if you look at the date of my last post, I’ve taken about an 11 month blogging hiatus. But, so as not to offend Jim, I’m not going to make this one of those “sorry, I haven’t blogged in a while posts.” This is more of a here’s what I’ve been up to, I hope to get back to blogging more this year post.

While I was gone to South Africa to participate in my graduation ceremony last December, I was offered a contract to work for Logos Bible Software on the Bible Sense Lexicon (when we started it was Bible WordNet). When I got back home I resigned my position in the church parish where I was doing adult education. Two weeks later I was on my way to Bellingham to get oriented for the project.

Working on the BSL has been an incredible experience. I’ve been able to work alongside a great team of people and made a number of friends up in Bellingham along the way. I don’t think that even Joel can deny that working on Hebrew 8 hours a day is a pretty cool job to have.

I hope to have the time to write a bit more about the BSL over the coming weeks.  At the very least, I’ll post more about it by March because I will be giving a presentation on the Bible Sense Lexicon at BibleTech 2013.

In other news, I’ve also published a couple of things over the past year. Academically, I had an article published in Hebrew Higher Education and a short teaching tactic in Teaching Theology and Religion. I also wrote a popular level article for The Bible Today. The vocabulary work I did for my dissertation continues to be used at the University of Stellenbosch and to train Bible translators in Africa.

All in all, 2012 was a great year. I have missed participating in the online blogging community sometimes, though I’ve kept in touch with bloggers through social media. But, this year I hope to get back to participating once again, even with Joel.

Thanks to Ben Byerly for his post and links on more reasons not to do a PhD.  Of course I’m trying to be a little bit funny, but more often than not some of us academics only laugh to keep from crying.  I will be feeling and have felt this pinch already.  My wife and I are both from the South.  And, here in the South we don’t generally like to move away from our families.  As an anecdote, my dad said that when he was in college not many people even came to South Louisiana to recruit because people here generally stayed home.

At any rate, the harsh reality is that there isn’t a big demand for Hebrew scholars here in South Louisiana.  So, the options may be 1) try to find a job in my area of specialization elsewhere, 2) try to find a job that is related here at home (related to Biblical Hebrew?), 3) none of the above (whatever that means or looks like).  Fortunately, I have a job now where I work with young people and my employer gives me time to pursue my other interests.  For instance, I do a good bit of scripture study stuff in my parish (and of course I blog and run my website).  So, I guess that currently classifies under #2. And, right now I’m happy with that.  With that said, I guess I’ll go ahead and finish my doctoral degree anyway.

Of course, if all of you clicked on my Amazon links and constantly bought tons of expensive stuff, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.  But, …