When I began my theological education at Dallas Theological Seminary, I was planning to specialize in New Testament studies. The Th.M. curriculum requires four years of study, one longer than the typical seminary M.Div program, and was designed to allow for greater depth in a particular field of interest. But when taking an Old Testament Introduction class with Professor Bruce K. Waltke, I fell in love with Old Testament studies and never looked back. Dallas had a strong Old Testament faculty that included, in addition to Dr. Waltke, Eugene Merrill, Walter Bodine, Kenneth Barker, Donald Glenn, and Allen Ross. These men taught me Hebrew, the art of biblical exegesis, and introduced me to the discipline of Old Testament theology. In addition to a lot of Hebrew, I also had the opportunity to learn Biblical Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Akkadian, along with ancient near eastern history and religion. My Masters project was an instructional handbook of Biblical Aramaic. Of course, one must learn more than just Old Testament to earn a theology degree, and I completed three years of courses in New Testament Greek and exegesis, as well as many other courses in theology, church history, homiletics and pastoral studies, Christian education, and so on.
After completing seminary studies, I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Northwest Semitic Philology at the University of Chicago, taking courses in both the University's Oriental Institute/Near Eastern department and the Divinity School. With Professor Dennis Pardee I studied Ugaritic, Hebrew grammar, and texts in all the northwest Semitic languages (Hebrew, Phoenician and Punic, Ammonite and Moabite, and Old and Imperial Aramaic). I studied Akkadian historical texts with Robert Biggs and Amarna Letters with Simo Parpola. Lawrence Stager taught me Syro-Palestinian archeology. Norman Golb introduced me to post-biblical Hebrew, and I read Tannaitic Hebrew (Mishnah and Tosephta) and Qumran Hebrew with him. I was also privileged to take a year of Syriac from Arthur Vööbus, an elderly and colorful Estonian refugee and New Testament scholar. At the Divinity School I studied Old Testament with Gösta Ahlstrom and James Barr.