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door-weathered

Edwin M. Yamauchi, Emeritus
Ancient History, Miami University (Ohio)

I graduated in 1960 with a degree in Hebrew and Hellenistics from Shelton College, a very small Christian school in northern New Jersey.

How small was it?  A split in the Bible Presbyterian denomination the year before I transferred to Shelton had reduced its student body to about 125 students.

God shut one door when professors I had wanted to study under had gone to Covenant College in Saint Louis. But I did get the opportunity to study Hebrew and Greek on a former millionaire’s estate with seven lakes in Ringwood, New Jersey.

Most providentially through Melvin Dahl, my instructor in Hebrew  (who had studied under the eminent Jewish Old Testament scholar Cyrus H. Gordon), the Lord opened the door for me to pursue doctoral studies at Brandeis University.

When I Did Not Receive Tenure

When I completed my Ph.D. in Mediterranean Studies in 1964, the Lord opened several doors of employment for me, including a position in the History Department at Rutgers-the State University of New Jersey.  When I did not receive tenure at Rutgers, the Lord opened the door for me to move to Miami University as an associate professor.  Within four years I had become a full professor.

Over the past 40 years I have had the privilege of teaching many graduate students and directing the dissertations of 16 doctoral students, all but two of whom were evangelicals.  I have also had students of students come to study with me.

My demands for these students were much higher than for students in other fields.  Those in European history had to have two languages, those in Ancient History had to have four languages — two modern and two ancient.  As a result, my students were those who were both older and more highly motivated.  They were well regarded by the department, and a few of them won teaching awards from the College of Arts and Sciences.

It became rather conspicuous that I was attracting more graduate students than other colleagues in the department, particularly those teaching in non-U.S. history fields.  And that became somewhat of a problem.

I served on the Graduate Studies Committee with about six other colleagues, reviewing applicants for admission.  One year Scott Carroll, one of my students teaching at Gordon College, encouraged one of his bright students, Jennifer Hevelone, to apply.  She had outstanding grades, superlative GRE scores, and enthusiastic letters of recommendation.

Opening Better Doors

But then in the voting of our committee a distinguished U.S. historian gave her a zero rating out of 10, which absolutely doomed her admission.  Dumbstruck, I asked, “Jack, why are you doing this?”  He calmly replied that we were getting too many candidates in Ancient History, when we needed to balance the fields.  There was some justification for his reasoning, which did, however, strike the committee as rather drastic.  I did not take this decision personally, and Jack and I have remained friends.

It turns out that the Lord in His providence shut the door to Jennifer, only to open better doors for her to enter.  After receiving the M.A. from the University of Chicago, Jennifer got to write her Ph.D. under Peter Brown at Princeton, the foremost authority on church history in Late Antiquity.  She is now the chair of the history department at her alma mater, Gordon College.

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© 2008  Edwin M. Yamauchi    Used by permission of Faculty Commons