Rebecca Alpert Jim Biechler Marcus Braybrooke Ellen T. Charry Leobard D'Souza David Efroymson Gabriele Feyler Stefan Feyler Eugene Fisher Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer Krystina Gorniak-Kocikowska Yitz Greenberg Wan-Li Ho Sanaullah Kirmani Reinhard Kirste Hans Küng Lihua Liu Jack Malinowski Patricia Martinez Sergio Mazza Alan Mittleman Ronald Modras Paul Mojzes Malcolm Nazareth Angelika Quade Ida Raming Virginia Kaib Ratigan John Sahadat Simone Schaupp Ingrid Shafer Shu-hsien Liu Thomas Thompson Catherine Berry Stidsen

Thomas L. Thompson To Leonard Swidler, Teacher and Friend Three years ago, I had the opportunity of giving a lecture at the University of Aleppo--a secular university, whose administration has close ties to the ruling Baath party of Syria. I had been invited by members of the faculty in connection with the publication of a book of mine to address what was a delicate intellectual issue: critical research on the Bible in recent European scholarship. With a large audience of faculty and students-with a simultaneous translation into Arabic of my pre-submitted paper-I analysed the implicit pacifist implications of early Judaism's self-critique embodied in the story of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem in the Book of Ezra. While the university administration maintained a discipline, which politely and firmly prevented most political issues from surfacing in the lively two-hour discussion following my paper, once the formal part of the session had closed, they were helpless in preventing a large group of students from surrounding me and pressing administrators, faculty and translators to the periphery. They had one question-and only one question-to ask. How does one address critical questions to Islam and the Quran, while supporting the historical values of the text and tradition? Declarations of faith and doubts were voiced, but the question remained the same. When this discussion with the students inevitably spilled over into the faculty's dinner party that followed, I listened to one scholar after the other-all serious and articulate artists and thinkers active in Syria's current intellectual awakening-express a similar need to open Islam to a secular theology and a critical rethinking of Islam's foundations. Ever since, I have found myself comparing my experience of these intense discussions to the same question I had addressed to Leonard about Catholicism, more than forty years before at Duquesne University. His arguments for theological renewal-not least his reformer's slogan of "back to the foundations"-I realize now had raised in me an excitement, which now engaged the students in Aleppo a generation later. Seduced by his passion and commitment, and infected by his desire for critical thought and a theology free of clerical control, I found myself in 1962 on a boat bound for Europe, eventually finding my way to Leonard's Tuebingen. Aleppo has recalled to me the debt I owe Leonard in my own "origin story"-and to the journey on which he sent me. With yet another memory, Leonard as my teacher continues to influence me. A decade after I had left Duquesne, my graduate studies in Tuebingen ended. Although my dissertation on biblical historicity had found success and waited at the press for publication, my concluding rigorosum--especially the examination in dogma with Josef Ratzinger and in canon law with Johannes Neumann--had much less success. In the face of this student's disaster, I was too shamed to allow myself to stand for re-examination the following year. Instead, I decided to leave the theological faculty without a degree, as I continued on in Tuebingen on a research fellowship in historical geography. When Leonard learned of my decision, he did not try to dissuade me. Nor did he try to shift the responsibility of my difficulties to the examiners. Instead, he joined with his colleague in Hebrew Bible, Robert Wright, to invite me to submit my (now published and notorious) dissertation for a degree at Temple University. His pragmatic solution-respecting both my and the faculty in Tuebingen's integrity--while remaining apart from the conflict itself, was a model in conflict resolution. It also provided me in the years that followed with an insight into humility, which--fragile and precious as it is--has proved to be my greatest lesson from my teacher and friend. Thomas L. Thompson Professor of Old Testament, University of Copenhagen

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