OH S01E01: A Conversation with Dr. Daniel A. Smith, Vice President, Academic; Dean, Theology; Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Science

I’m really pleased to be able to have this opportunity to serve the Huron community. People who know me know that I’m deeply committed to Huron’s mission, educating leaders with heart, and to the liberal arts as well as to theology. [Dan]

Hi I’m Madison, [Madison]

I’m Alex, [Alex]

and I’m Emily, [Emily]

and we’re your hosts of Office Hours. [All]

What’s Office Hours, Alex? [Emily]

Good question, Emily. Office Hours is a monthly podcast produced by us, your peer research coaches, and the Huron University Library, where research takes centre stage. [Alex]

Hi and welcome to the very to the very first episode of Office Hours. I am Madison, your host of today’s episode and joining me in the studio is a very special guest, Dr. Daniel Smith. [Madison]

Dr. Smith is not only the dean of theology here at Huron and the acting dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences but was also just appointed as Huron’s new vice president academic. And of course, Dr. Smith is a scholar in his own right having published three books, two edited collections, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. [Madison]

We’ll get a chance to dig into this but I’m going to start with congratulations on the appointment! This is big news, right? And, let me know if I missed anything in my introduction. [Madison]

It’s certainly big news, and not anything that I thought would ever happen when I first arrived at Huron in 2004. [Dan]

I couldn’t have imagined that I’d be appointed vice president academic, but I’m, I’m really pleased to be able to have this opportunity to serve the Huron community. People who know me know that I am deeply committed to uh Huron’s mission. Educating leaders with heart and to the liberal arts as well as to theology so I’m, I’m really excited about this new opportunity. It may have some impact on my research and my capacity to continue to study and to learn in the areas that I have been working on over the last 20, 25, 30 years. But again, I’m really happy for the opportunity and it’s great to talk to you today. [Dan]

Thank you! Now, Let’s talk about your story. can you tell us about your research journey, how you caught the research bug a few major flashpoints along the way and maybe finish off with a bit about where you are now and where you’d like to go? [Madison]

Sure, and thanks for providing the questions in advance I found it helpful to be able to do a little thinking about this. So, I guess I got the research bug, as you put it, pretty early in my time as a student. When I first began University, I thought that I wanted to be a minister in a Christian church, and so I undertook some training for that. In the end, it turns out that I wasn’t as interested in, or maybe as suited for that as I thought I might have been. But in studying Christian theology I really became interested in the ancient texts of early Judaism and early Christianity and the way they were formed and written and the form of influence that they had on peoples lives on their ideas, on the way they interacted with the world and with one another socially. And, I- I did really well in ancient Greek, and I found that that was a really useful tool to have because many of the documents and writings from early Judaism and early Christianity were composed in Greek. And so, I had that tool to get started. [Dan]

Well, I went to the University of Toronto and did a master’s degree and then started a PhD. I guess another flashpoint or significant moment in my research career was the first time I gave a paper at a conference. I had won a student essay prize and the conference, and the room was a lot bigger and fuller than I thought it was going to be. So, I was pretty nervous, but it was really quite an honour to receive that award. And the paper itself which was published almost right away in the Canadian journal Studies and Religion, Science Religieuse, was kind of a study of uh the way that people thought about and talked about losing a loved one. And so, this paper gave me an opportunity to move from some early Jewish and Christian texts into Greco-Roman sources and into what we call material evidence, so I was looking at inscriptions and gravestones. Not physically in person, in Greece or Turkey or the like but sources that had been transcribed and published and translated and it was a nice way for me to bring together the world of the bible with the historical context in which the individual writings were written. Those were I guess two, two major things that happened to me. The transition into graduate work, my first paper. I guess another, another important point in my research career was coming into contact with the work of the context group.

So, the context group, is a group of scholars of early Judaism and Christianity who use social scientific methodologies to understand the contexts of these ancient writings. And so, it gave me an opportunity to learn how to do more than just literary or historical analysis, but to use models from cultural anthropology, from sociology and to try to use those methodologies to understand the social processes that are reflected in these ancient texts. [Dan]

That’s actually, there’s a quote by you on your Huron bio that as a history major really resonates with me. You mention the importance of understanding the historical, social, cultural, and religious contexts of texts like the New Testament and other early Christian writings. Would you say that your approach to theological research is more interdisciplinary than how other academic theologians approach it? [Madison]

Well, I can’t speak for other academic theologians, but I would say yes, my approach is quite interdisciplinary. So, students who come to the master’s programs in theology here at Huron, when they take a course in reading the bible they are really most interested in what the bible means for them, for their faith, for their religious journey, or their religious communities in the here and now. But what I try to bring into my teaching is not only, I mean I do want to answer those kinds of questions but I’m really interested in bringing the historical side into my teaching as well to that students understand not only what these texts mean for people today but also where they came from and what they meant to people in the ancient world who first wrote, and read, and used these. I guess you would say that there is a kind of set of philological methods that are used by scholars like me to understand ancient texts. So, philological approaches look at the language, the grammar of ancient texts. They look at the history of composition. They look at the history of early reception, but I also try to bring in other methodologies. Not only theological approaches, like post-colonial theology or feminist theology or the like, but also social scientific methods. So, I’ve done a little work in applying critical spatial theory which comes out of human geography to ancient texts to try to understand how they construct and imagine space. Not just like real space or built space, or wilderness space but also religious space or mythic space, like the heavens or the underworld or the like. And in some of my most recent work, I’ve used deviants’ theory from sociology to understand how and why ancient Christian and Jewish documents handled their opponents and uh the way they would use rhetorical techniques but also uh uhm approaches to building boundaries around behaviour and ideas that determine whether a group is ‘Other’ or ‘Like us’. So ‘Other’ would be “we wanna stay away from those guys, they are bad” and so uh I found that I found over the years that a lot of the texts that I study are interested in drawing lines around identity and behaviour and belief and I found that deviant theory from sociology really helps me understand how enemies and opponents are depicted. So, my most recent book is not a book only by me but its an edited collection. It just came out in the late fall of 2024; it’s called From Difference to Deviants: Rivalry and Enmity in Earliest Christianity and its a collection of essays that come from a conference that I organized with a colleague of mine at the Catholic university of Luvin in Belgium. So, the conference took place in 2022, and uh there were lots of chapters on the way that enemies and other figures and groups are depicted in the New Testament, so in the Christian scriptures but also in other ancient writings. And I’m just really pleased with how this book came together. So, there’s already a copy in the library you can drop by and have a look at it. But I have an essay in there in the way that the opponents in two early Christian letters, one attributed to Jude and one attributed to Peter, the way that they depict their opponents, and they use different rhetorical techniques to depict the deponents, these opponents, as deviant, deviants. [Dan]

That’s very interesting [Madison]

Yeah [Dan]

That’s definitely, the study of the ‘Other’ historically too is also a lot of historians look into. [Madison]

Yeah, and there’s a there’s a scholar uhm called Johnathan Z. Smith, very famous scholar of religion, no relation, and his idea is its the proximate ‘Other’ that always receives the most vigorous critique and polemics. So, they’re, they’re like us, but not like us enough that we would accept them and so they’re sometimes the enemies that receive the strongest critique. [Dan]

Very interesting actually. Now, how do you manage your time and navigate between research demands, teaching responsibilities, and, in your case, being the dean of two faculties and VP academic, your administrative responsibilities? And by teaching I’m thinking really broadly to include both your classroom teaching and the more informal teaching and mentorship of students here at Huron. [Madison]

Well, yeah, you raise an important point. Which is that with two or maybe three jobs depending on how you parse out my titles, it is difficult to find time to do research and to do some writing. So, I have one set of short-term projects that I’m almost finished with but I’m late with the third of three pieces. So, I’ll have to figure out how to get that last essay done. And I also have a long-term commitment to write a commentary on Jude and, second, Peter which I’ll need to be in touch with the publisher, yet again, and extend my deadline, yet again. As a faculty member you’re able to have a summer. Basically, from May till late August free from teaching and meetings. Which means that you can spend your summer researching, writing, developing new courses, developing curriculum for your program here at Huron. And as well, you have sabbatical time that you can work up towards over a certain number of years. Three years will get you six months of sabbatical, and six years will get you a full year sabbatical where you’re completely free from meetings and teaching and you can really devote yourself to research. So, because of my administrative duties, I’ve had to forgo a research leave, but happy to do it for Huron. But it does mean that I do need to do some longer-range planning in order to be able to come back to my research. You asked about teaching, too? What was the– [Dan]

Yeah, and what about teaching? I mean, what’s that process like? How do you decide what classes to teach or the best way to teach different material? Do you like teaching or is it something you have more so tolerate in order to do research? [Madison]

No, I love teaching, and I miss it. So, I’m not doing too much of it this year. I am facilitating, i guess, a capstone course for master’s students in theology and that’s underway right now. But it’s more helping students work their way through individual research projects. So, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the students in this class, I’ve known them all the way along through their career in the faculty of theology and now as they come to the end of their degrees, they are all working on research projects that are on topics that really have grabbed them and have really stimulated them. So, to be able to hear what they are interested in, to be able to help to guide them in the research and planning and the execution of these projects is really rewarding. And, but when I was a full-time faculty member, I really liked developing a new course. I’d get an idea, and I would try to test it out, sketch it out. And then the first time running it I was always a bit nervous whether the students would appreciate it or not, whether it would get the enrollment that the dean would want to see. But I really enjoyed hearing from students in the classroom. What their interested in, what their questions are, what their struggling with. Because, teaching religion can be very interesting and fascinating lots of different threads you can pull in in terms of methodology and sources and so forth. But it can also be really challenging for students to uh to grapple with issues that relate very personal to them. In their world view in their faith, in the way they understand the world and others. So, I’ve always enjoyed that, and I wish I could go back to that, but I won’t me going back to that at least for the foreseeable future. [Dan]

Yeah, I mean three roles is uh its quite big. So, vice president academic, I don’t think that many students are very aware of the responsibilities of many of these administrative roles. Can you perhaps explain what the VP academic is and maybe how it relates to your other academic positions? [Madison]

Yeah, so I’m trying to figure that out, actually. As Dean of theology I knew that my purview were the courses and curriculum of the faculty of theology. So, I worked closely with faculty members to develop new courses, to fine tune the curriculum, and there’s a lot of like administrative work that really would be like the Chair of the history department, for example, you said you were a student in the department of history, [yeah] that Dr. Peace would do. You know, planning courses and recruiting faculty to teach individual courses and so on. But when I took on the role of acting dean of arts and social science and vice president academic. The dean of arts and social science does things that the dean of theology doesn’t do, and doesn’t do that the dean of theology does, if that makes sense. [yeah] So, in that role I’m not so hands on with courses and curriculum but it’s more like long-term strategic thinking, deeply involved in the budgeting process, I work closely with colleagues in arts and social science when issues come up. I just had a meeting with representatives from the faculty association, also Dr. Peace, and so it’s just uhm, it’s just quite an incredible variety of things that come across my desk in any given day. I have to say that even though it’s demanding and challenging, I’m getting to know my faculty colleagues in FAS, and the staff members, dedicated staff members who support the work of the faculty of arts and social science. I’m getting to know them much better than I ever did and it’s just a pleasure to work with them, it’s been really great so far. My calendar is nuts, [sure, it’s what I was gonna–] So, I’m glad we had, we found the time to talk today. [Dan]

So, the idea for this podcast initially grew out of a conversation at the Center for Undergraduate Research Learning Spring 2023 conference. We were talking about the difficulty that students face when learning, or when trying to learn and understand the research and interest of faculty members and the various potential relationships between faculty research and independent undergraduate research and learning. Can you talk broadly, perhaps, about your thoughts on the value and place of undergraduate research in the contemporary university and or specifically here at Huron? [Madison]

Sure, yeah. I, one of the things I’m proudest about at Huron is the Center for Undergraduate Research Learning. The idea that we have this center, that’s led by dedicated faculty members, that inspires and provides a forum for students to work on projects that are of great interest to them, to take the methodologies and the approaches that they’ve learned in their courses from their professors and apply them to something that is of great interest to them. It’s really exciting and something I believe should be part of every liberal arts university focused on student research learning. Whenever there’s a CURL event, I like to go and I like to hear what students are working on, I an always just amazed at the variety of topics that are addressed. But also, the passion that students bring to their work, and also amazing is when I see a faculty member collaborating with a student on a publication so to see a student bring their own research skills and to collaborate with faculty members. This is, this is just amazing. [Dan]

So, looping back to your personal research, I was looking at your, into your publications and your journal articles, and I read something about your work on document Q. Could you explain what that is? [Madison]

Yeah, Q is, well, how would I explain this? It was the focus of my dissertation research and then my first book, and Q also features prominently in my second book Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter. So, what was Q? Well, don’t think of Q-anon, and don’t think of Q from the Bond movies, or any other Q that you’ve thought of but Q is the name that scholars of the gospels give to a hypothetical source that contains sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. So, I need to explain that, too. So, starting at the very beginning. The New Testament, the Christian New Testament contains four biographies of Jesus, and they are each attributed to a figure from earliest Christianity. Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. So, these four, these four gospels or biographies of Jesus begin, some begin with his infancy, some begin with the beginning of his teaching and healing career, but they all end with his death and resurrection. So, uh, the first three gospels, Mathew, Mark, and Luke are often called the synoptic gospels they tend to look at things in the same way and, in fact, when you look at Mathew, Mark, and Luke, and when you look at them closely, scholars notice two things really beginning, well, going back all the way to the late fourth century with Augustin of Hippo who was an early Christian theologian. But more recently in the 17th, 18th century, scholars noticed two things about these synoptic gospels, Mathew, Mark, and Luke. The first thing they noticed is that they’re all written in Greek, but they often tell the same stories or give the same sayings of Jesus in exactly the same wording in Greek. Like, verbatim agreement in Greek. So, if you think about Jesus as a historical figure, teaching in Galilee, he would’ve taught not in Greek, but in Aramaic, which is like a cousin language of Hebrew. So, the fact that Mathew, Mark, and Luke report the same stories of Jesus, the same sayings of Jesus in very similar, sometimes identical language. It made scholars think, what professors think when they receive two or three papers from students that are exactly the same. [that would be quite the coincidence] Quite the coincidence, yes. Rather than plagiarism, we talk about source utilization. So, the first thing they noticed was same stories, same sayings often in very similar or identical language. The second thing they noticed is that in Mathew, Mark, and Luke, often the same stories are told in the same order or similar order. So, it’s these agreements in wording, and the agreements in order that made scholars think, and also the fact that these are agreements in Greek and not in Aramaic. These texts were not composed in Aramaic and then translated into Greek; they show no signs of whatsoever of translation Greek. So, we trust the literary critics who know this better than I do. But, uh, scholars began to think, not that the three gospels reported accurately everything the same but that they were related to one another in the same way that a professor would say that the papers were related to one another. In terms of literary dependency or source utilization. The majority theory of how the first three gospels were composed holds that Mark was written first, and that Mathew and Luke used Mark as the source for their stories about Jesus. But the issue here is that Mathew and Luke contain material, it’s mostly sayings, that are found in Mathew and Luke but not in Mark. So, if Mathew and Luke didn’t get this stuff from Mark, then what’s the alternative? Alternative one, which some scholars found not very convincing or likely, but option number one is that Luke used Mathew or Mathew used Luke. But another theory, which is the theory that is at the heart of the two-document hypothesis, is that Mathew and Luke used Mark for their narratives, but they also had access to a collection of Jesus’ sayings called Q. Which accounts for the material that they have in common. So, when Jesus teaches and says “not only love your neighbor, but love your enemies” that’s found in Mathew, and it’s found in Luke, but it’s not found in Mark. So, on this theory that I will do, that saying comes not from Mark, not from Mathew copying Luke or vice versa, but from this document Q. So, it’s hypothetical, we build it up hypothetically from the similarities that are found between Mathew and Luke. No copy of it exists, except the copy that’s been published by scholars who study Q and have reconstructed it’s wording and its order. But it’s not only a solution to a problem, but the problem is called the synoptic problem, the problem of why the synoptic gospels are the way they are and how they came to be written. But it’s also an interesting location for thinking about the social development of the Jesus movement and that’s been my interest in Q. The way that the people, whoever they were, that compiled this document Q, who they were, where they lived, what they thought, what they thought about Jesus, what they thought about God, what they thought about the destiny of the world. All of these are things that we can study when we study Q. But I, but I left out the most important thing which is why do we call it Q? So, Q is the initial that we use for short form for the German word for source, uh, which is Quelle. So, because this theory, the two-document hypothesis originated in German scholarship in the middle of the nineteenth century, scholars who started to theorize about this hypothetical source of Jesus sayings, they called it the ‘logianquelle’ which means the saying source or the ‘gretaquelle’ the speech source or the like. So, Q is short for quelle, and it’s the hypothetical source of sayings of Jesus that we do have in Mathew and Luke, but which we don’t have combined together in a literary form in any ancient document except in the imagination of scholars who hypothesize this source. Does that make sense? [Dan]

Yeah, that’s quite the hypothesis. That’s, that seems like a very big theory of interest for a lot of people. So, I have some general interest rapid-fire questions for you. [okay] What’s your favourite animal? [Madison]

Charlie, my dog, he’s a springer spaniel, he’s very cuddly, yeah. [Dan]

What would you say your go to comfort food is? [Madison]

Do you know buttermilk [yeah] Buttermilk Chicken, you know the fried [yes, it’s really good] chicken Buttermilk. They just opened a store at West 5, and they’ve got one down here at the bottom of Western Road. Yeah [yeah] [Dan]

Parking lot is always full. [Madison]

Yeah, amazing. [Dan]

Their poutine is like I think the best I’ve ever had. [Madison]

Do you consider yourself an early bird or more so of a night owl? [Madison]

Uh, well, unfortunately both. So, I’m often up late and then I have trouble sleeping through to the alarm. So– [Dan]

I can relate to that as a student. [heheh] Usually out of the door by 8 AM. What’s your favourite board game? [Madison]

Cribbage. So, cribbage has a board, you know its a card game [yeah I like that game] but it does involve a board, but you’re thinking of Settlers or Monopoly or something like that, where you– [Dan]

Cribbage is the one where it’s kind of like, it looks like a racetrack almost, right? [Madison]

Yeah, that’s right and you play the cards back and forth with your opponent, you peg your points, and you go all the way around. [Dan]

I think I played that as a kid a few times, [yeah], I never really understood it. What’s your ideal vacation or way to spend time away from academia? [Madison]

Well, I like to travel to Europe and my wife Tricia and I, she works at Western, we have friends that we like to travel with so the last three summers we’ve gone to Italy. And I like to sightsee and see all the monumental architecture and all these beautiful places and spaces. But I also like to just like settle in in a nice little town by the sea and just kind of chill, and find the best places to eat, and eat and drink. Yeah. [Dan]

I think if I went to Europe, I wouldn’t be able to focus on food I would just think of history considering how much there is. [Madison]

So much history. Yeah. [Dan]

Yeah. Finally, any words of wisdom or advice to undergraduate students? [Madison]

Well since we’re talking about research, uhm, I would say follow your passion, follow your nose. If you’re curious about something, if you’re excited or interested, excited about or interested in something, uhm, pursue that. Get to know your professors, you can do that here at Huron, you can’t do that at every university, but you can do that here and you can get their advice, you can learn from them in the courses, of course, but you can also get their advice about sources, methodologies, approaches, and follow your interests, follow your passion. [Dan]

That’s very good advice. As somebody who didn’t start as a history major, who thought they were going to go into art. It took me a while to understand, but once I knew that I was in history it just felt like so much better than any of the other disciplines. So, I think that’s very good advice. Thank you, Dr. Smith, this has been a great conversation. And I hope people feel more knowledgeable about theologies, academics, and you. [Madison]

Thanks, Madison. It was great to meet with you and talk with you today and I was really glad for the opportunity to be the very first guest on the brand-new Office Hours podcast. And just a word to the students who are listening, if you are still listening at this point, if you see me in the hall, don’t be afraid to say hello and let me know about who you are. I’d love to hear about your academic journey and what you’re up to here at Huron. [Dan]

Great. And thank you listeners for listening to our first episode of Office Hours. [Madison]