Presidential Address

I first met Vincent Wimbush long ago and far away, when we were both graduate students at Harvard University in the late 1970s. Even then it was evident that he was someone who would make his mark in the discipline of biblical studies, but I don't think anyone could have anticipated the profoundly transformative impact that his career has had and continues to have in our field.

Some of you will know him as a scholar of asceticism in Greco-Roman and early Christian cultures, for he is the author or editor of some six important books on that topic. Although asceticism continues to be an active part of his research agenda, Vincent's intense focus on asceticism took place in the 1980s and 1990s, as part of a fundamental and transformative reevaluation of that phenomenon. But even as he was making a distinguished reputation for himself in what many might consider a rather traditional field, Vincent was simultaneously developing a critique of the assumptions of the dominant models for doing biblical studies as a narrowly historical-critical enterprise. The insight that has guided his thinking throughout his career was already expressed in an early essay in 1989. He was describing what had drawn him to biblical studies: "It was neither antiquarian interests nor theological sensibilities, but first the recognition of the function of the Bible among African Americans in every aspect of their existence, in every period of their history, which attracted me to biblical studies."*

The word function is emphasized in the text. But Vincent's observation was not just autobiographical. From his situatedness as an African American who had become a biblical scholar, he saw more broadly the need for a profound transformation of the field of biblical studies itself. He continued: "Failure to address the matter of the historical and contemporary cultural functions of the bible is to fail not only to provide for the culture of intelligent lay persons a reason to engage and be influenced by biblical scholarship, it is also to fail to provide for the guild of biblical scholars any clear and compelling reason for its being" (p. 32).

That was perhaps a more startling claim in 1989 than it is today, though even those who are inclined to agree with it often see the accomplishment of such a goal as far beyond their capacities as biblical scholars. Not Vincent. He embarked upon an extraordinary series of collaborative research projects, first at Union Theological Seminary and later at Claremont Graduate School, designed to bring such a vision of what it means to study Scripture into being. And Vincent did not think small. From 1996 to the present he has received grants from the Lilly Endowment, the Henry W. Luce Foundation, and the Ford Foundation totaling by my count $2,123,000 (not counting the small change). This vision is currently embodied in institutional form in the Institute for Signifying Scriptures at Claremont Graduate University. Vincent likes to refer not so much to the phenomenon of "Scriptures" as the object of study but to "scripturalizing," that is, to the social scripting, psycho-social formation, and power dynamics of which Scriptures are always and everywhere a part. The conferences, book series, documentary films, and visiting scholar program sponsored by the Institute are bringing into being striking new ways of conceptualizing our field.

If Vincent has been integral to the transformation of the study of asceticism and to the conceptualization of scriptural and biblical studies, he has been no less instrumental in the transformation of the Society of Biblical Literature itself. Although he has served in many, many capacities—on the council, as president of a region, as the SBL delegate to the ACLS—he has remarked that he is proudest of having been the first chair of the Committeee on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession (1991-95). The SBL is a very different institution than it was when Vincent and I first came to its meetings. It is dramatically more diverse, not only in its ethnic, gender, and national composition but also in its thinking, and he has had a significant role in...