bilinguals . . .

I've come across an interesting thought regarding specializations and the unfolding of modern education in certain fields. It occurs to me that there are certain areas of the ancient humanities in which given two related subfields of a discipline, one requires more language work than another.

Allow me to elaborate. Assyriology is often divided into two different areas of expertise: Sumerologists and Akkadologists (or rather, those who work more with one of these two languages than another). What occurs to me, however, is that those who focus more on Sumerian are required to be just as competent in Akkadian, but those who focus more on Akkadian need not have much competence in Sumerian. Those whose work on Akkadian texts typically need only take a year or two of Sumerian (if that) whereas those who work on Sumerian texts must have several years of Akkadian, often more than Sumerian. For example, Chris Woods, Assoc. Professor of Sumerology at Chicago talks about how until recently he was more comfortable in Akkadian than Sumerian. (In my own case, my Akkadian and Sumerian . . . and also my Hebrew . . . are equally bad).

This same process typically holds true for biblicists who specialize in Hebrew Bible (especially, but not exclusively, in the Christian tradition): typically, these scholars have just as much, if not more training in Greek than in Hebrew. Aramaicists often have more training in Hebrew than Aramaic (despite Aramaic having a much larger corpus). On a sidenote (and if you know better, please correct me if I'm wrong), this does not seem to hold true for Classical studies--a Classicist is knowledgeable of Latin or Greek regardless of her own specialization and one does not necessarily supercede the other.

Now this is not to say that Sumerologists are better or even more specialized than Akkadologists or Hebrew biblicists than New Testamentologists (I realize I'm making up terms now . . .) or Aramaicists than Hebraists. Obviously, the latters in these lists receive more extensive training in their own languages and areas. However, it is true that the formers more often comment on the latters' works than vice versa. I just find it an interesting commentary on our modern approaches to these disciplines of ancient humanities that one subfield essentially requires a more general character than its sister subfield. Obviously in each of these cases there is good reason for the multiplication of work: for Sumerologists, much of our understanding of Sumerian is due to Akkadian; for Hebrew biblicists, Greek is essential for studying the LXX; for Aramaicists, the Hebrew Bible is often the venue through which one embarks on Aramaic studies.

Once again, this is not to say that those who must learn multiple languages are better scholars or anything of that nature. This is merely an observation brought out for thought and perhaps discussion.