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Wheaton Dissertation Proposal

Posted Friday, April 04, 2008 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Old Testament; Military Issues
Here in the PhD program at Wheaton we have three major oral examinations, each one before most of the PhD professors (Block, Moo, Spencer, Beale, Treier, Perrin, Schultz, Larsen, Kalantzis, Greenman, Bullock, etc.). The first is the interview, half of which is talking about who we are and why we want to go to Wheaton and half of which is defending your idea for a dissertation. The third is the dissertation defense at the very end of the process, where one defends the final result before the second reader, the external reader, and any of faculty who have read it. The second exam is the one I went through yesterday, the defense of the proposal. I wrote my proposal, went through six drafts with Dan Block, and presented a ten page summary of my idea and fifteen pages of bibliography. After a half hour of grilling and fifteen minutes of talking it over, they decided that it was acceptable. Of course, no one has yet failed this step of the process. Now that I have passed this hurdle, I can finally start writing this thing. My topic, for anyone who is interested, is the ideologies of warfare in the Torah.