A fanfare for our new co-chair: Carlton Winbery

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 19 09:18:42 EDT 1999


Dear B-Greekers:

Three weeks ago, on August 22, Edward Hobbs announced his retirement as
Co-chair of B-Greek. Although Jonathan and I knew that Edward intended to
retire before the Fall term started up this year at Wellesley, we were
nevertheless caught "off-guard" by Edward's announcement that Sunday, and
although several of us were able to give some expression to our feelings of
gratitude for the leadership provided by Edward to this list even before he
was officially named as Chair by David Marotta (founder and list-owner of
B-Greek during the long years during which it was housed at the University
of Virginia from 1992 into June of 1998), Jonathan as the current
list-owner and I as the other co-chair both felt that the announcement that
Carlton Winbery has agreed to step into the slot vacated by Edward was all
too haphazard and reflected inadequately the measure of our appreciation of
Carlton both as a scholar and as an effective teacher, advisor, and
counselor who is eminently worthy to assume this new leadership role. I
have said before and can only repeat that I am deeply gratified to have a
man of Carlton's wisdom and warm humanity share this "hot seat" with me.
For these reasons I want to take this occasion to share with the list some
background and facts about Carlton that have come to me primarily through
the good graces of Bill Warren (WFWarren at aol.com), now Landrum P. Leavell,
II, Professor of New Testament and Greek and Director of the Center for New
Testament Textual Studies at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, but
more to the point for our purposes, a student under and a colleague with
Carlton for many years at that institution. To avoid the risk of distorting
anything that Bill has said, I shall take the liberty of citing him
directly (I did not seek your permission for this, Bill, but I trust you
will allow me to transmit your vision in your own words):

	"Carlton, a graduate of Louisiana College, is from central
Louisiana near Winnfield (a small town named "Olla").  He finished both his
B.D./M.Div. and Th.D. at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the
early 70's (Th.D. =
'71, if I recall correctly), studying under Jim Brooks, who currently teaches
at Bethel Seminary.  Following graduation, Carlton went to Charleston
Southern University (Baptist College of Charleston at that time) to teach in
the religion department, then moved to New Orleans Baptist Theological
Seminary in 1976, where he taught for 13 years before returning to his alma
mater in 1989 as chair of the religion department at Louisiana College, where
he has now taught for 10 years.  While at NOBTS, he co-authored his two best
known works on syntax and morphology with Jim Brooks.  Also, he spent a
sabbatical studying at Oxford as well as one (from Louisiana College) working
on the collation of Greek minuscule manuscripts for the IGNTP.  He has
authored numerous articles on a wide variety of New Testament topics,
traveled extensively in the Middle East, and has contributed to several
publications for use in local churches.  He has been active in church life,
preaching (supply and interim-pastor) and teaching on a regular basis
throughout his teaching career.  His family life includes his wife (only one
marriage), two sons by that marriage, a long-term foster daughter who was
later adopted, and an adopted Vietnamese son.

	"On a more personal note, Carlton has always been a gentleman and
person of highest integrity and morals.  I can think of few examples of a
more
Christ-like character in everyday life  (I'm prejudiced, having taken more
courses in my seminary career under Carlton than any other professor and
having had the privilege of writing my dissertation under his tutelage, but
others who studied under him have shared like esteem for him).  His first
love in academics has always been Greek.  I remember one of his favorite
stories about his first knowledge of Sakae Kubo's publication of the Reader's
Lexicon.  Carlton was in the quadrangle at NOBTS and a fellow doctoral
student called to him from across the way as to whether or not he had gotten
his Sakae Kubo or not.  Carlton had no idea of what the student meant,
thinking some bone joint or such was in mind.  He still gets a delightful
look on his face when he relates his joy at having found that a new Greek
tool had been published and he did not have a bone problem or need another
vacination from the campus clinic.

	"On another occasion, Carlton and three other faculty members were
at the local donut shop across from the seminary campus engaged in hot
competition
on the pac-man machine.  They became so absorbed in the competition that they
played through the class time of one of the faculty members.

	"For doctoral students, Carlton was both an encourager and one who
compelled us to, as he would so often express it, "give it your best shot."
He
engendered an atmosphere of excellence, yet often was our first resort for
encouragement as well.
I've never seen Carlton falter on a word or grammatical location when
translating the Greek New Testament.

	"And Carlton is quite a fisherman as well.  He still relishes an
opportunity to go fishing.  Of course, how could a true Louisianian not
like fishing?"

To what Bill Warren has shared with us let me add some bibliographical
details; many B-Greekers will have used one or the other of the two major
Biblical Greek reference works authored by Carlton along with James Brooks;
those who have not may procure them at CBD or at many seminary bookstores
or order them from Amazon Books; here are the URLs at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0819104736/qid=937740600/sr=1-3/002-1
524847-8891611  (Syntax of New Testament Greek; n.b.: be careful about the
word-wrap if you want to click on this URL to go directly through your
browser to Amazon);

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0819194913/qid=937740404/sr=1-2/002-1
524847-8891611 (A Morphology of New Testament Greek : A Review and
Reference Grammar--watch the word-wrap on the URL);

There's also a transcript of an interview with Carlton at the Amazon site:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/show-interview/w-c-inberyarltonl/002-15248
47-8891611 (Amazon.com talks to Carlton L. Winbery --watch the word-wrap on
the URL).

In conclusion, I want to reiterate something that Jonathan and I have both
mentioned before. There are two essential qualifications for the co-chair
of B-Greek, about which neither David Marotta nor Edward Hobbs nor Jonathan
nor I have ever wavered: (1) the co-chair ought to be eminently qualified
in command of Biblical Greek grammar, and (2) the co-chair must have great
reserves of patience, tact, and wisdom to confront the unpredictable
challenges arising on a discussion list whose members come from such
wide-ranging and often opposed faith-commitments and are capable, even
without intending to do so, of igniting furious flame-wars over their
opposed perceptions and perspectives on what is true and essential to human
salvation. In both these respects Carlton is by far my superior: (1) While
I think I know classical Greek pretty well, I may often enough make an
unjustified assumption that what is true of classical Greek continues to be
true in Biblical Koine--Carlton would know better, and I have, on more than
one occasion, been very politely corrected by Carlton, for which I am
grateful; and (2) My wisdom and patience are both exhaustible, which fact
has been demonstrated on more than one regrettable occasion. Let me note
that this can sometimes get difficult, and we don't expect ourselves to be
more than human in dealing with human beings; nevertheless, Carlton is
considerably more patient and wise than I and we on the B-Greek staff have
had many occasions hitherto to be grateful for his advice.

I hope this may serve as a better introduction to our new Chair, and as a
well-deserved fanfare for a TRUE "scholar and a gentleman."

P.S. My thanks again to Bill Warren for graciously sharing these deeper
insights into Carlton's personal and scholarly background.

Carl W. Conrad
Co-Chair, B-Greek List
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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