PhD Advice: A test case in finding a dissertation topic – Part 3

Introduction                                                                                   photo credit: Horia Varlan

In my last two posts, I shared on how I was able to narrow down my dissertation topic field:  The first post talked about a desire to study leadership in general while the second post whittled my preferences down to something in the New Testament, preferably non-Pauline literature.

It is now time to continue this trek down the narrowing road of how I chose my dissertation topic.

Limiting the text

After having decided that something in the Book of Acts or in the gospels sounded very exciting, I next had to decide which text I wanted to study.  I wanted these verses to tackle leadership in a very direct way and not just in an exemplary fashion.  In other words, leadership terms, content and contexts had to be very much in play.

In one sense, this made my task much easier since this very criteria limited the number of verses from which I could choose. As I scanned the gospels and Acts and did some preliminary reading on leadership in the New Testament,  two texts kept popping up on my radar:  Luke 22 and Jesus’ leadership exchange with his disciples at the Last Supper (including parallels in the Synoptics) and Acts 20, Paul’s Miletus Speech to the Ephesian elders.  (Curiously, both texts had been written by Luke, a fact I never pursued in my search for a topic.)

Honing in on the topic

It was also at this time that I began to study the books of those New Testament professors with whom I was likely going to work at the London School of Theology (where I am completing my research).  This is a good practice for any discipline if you are thinking of heading into a PhD.  I read each of their bios noting their research interests, publications, etc.  One immediately caught my attention, he was an Acts scholar.

I picked up a copy of Dr. Steve Walton’s dissertation, Leadership and Lifestyle: The Portrait of Paul in the Miletus Speech and 1 Thessalonians, and began reading it carefully.

He was essentially arguing that the Paul of Acts was the same as the Paul of the epistles (a consistent debate in Lukan studies) based on the similarity between the Miletus Speech and 1 Thessalonians. What he also found was that the Miletus Speech and 1 Thessalonians shared much in the way of leadership material, hence the title.

At the very end of the book, in section 7.4,  “Future work suggested by this study” he stated that it would be valuable to compare the Miletus Speech with other leadership texts in the New Testament to see if there was commonality there as well.  If there were, then these common elements could be suggestive for the development of the early church’s leadership traditions and structures.  He was essentially talking about a literary and linguistic comparison based on two distinct texts.

It was at that moment that my dissertation topic began to really crystallize.  (I should also note that these “Further Study” sections make great research areas for your dissertation topics)

Conclusion

Well, that’s about all for now.  Come back for my next post where I reveal how I finally settled on my dissertation topic.

As always, your comments are greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, happy researching and don’t give up on your academic dreams.