Biblical Studies MTh, MSc postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Last month a returned copy of a local history book reached my desk at the branch library where I work with three different readers' pencil notes in its margins. One had corrected a date, another had crossed out that correction, and a third had written "source?" beside both. Before rubbing them out, as our policy requires, I spent longer than I should have working out which hand came first. I recognised the problem from my undergraduate dissertation, and it is the kind of question I would like to pursue at postgraduate level.

I graduated last summer with a 2:1 in Theology and Religious Studies. My dissertation examined a sample of corrections to the Gospel of Mark in Codex Sinaiticus, using the digitised images and transcription on the Codex Sinaiticus Project website. I began with the best-known case: "Son of God" in Mark 1:1 is absent from the first hand and was supplied later. I then looked at a run of smaller alterations in the early chapters, including spelling changes, added words and deletions. I wanted to know whether the corrections looked like deliberate theological intervention or mostly routine tidying. I found far more of the latter. By the end of the project I was much more cautious about claims that rest on a single variant.

The project was limited by my Greek. I studied Koine Greek for two years and can work through Mark with a lexicon and grammar, but I was slower than I wanted to be. I found the scribal abbreviations difficult until I had practised with them for several weeks. Since graduating I have kept reading a short passage most evenings and have moved on to parts of Luke. I have also started teaching myself the Hebrew alphabet and basic noun patterns. I know I will need structured teaching in Hebrew rather than relying on self-study. Postgraduate study would give me the chance to strengthen both languages properly. It would also let me see how textual questions connect with wider historical and literary approaches to the Bible.

My reading has followed the same direction. Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus first made textual criticism seem like a live subject to me. David Parker's An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and their Texts then showed me how much more there is to the subject: how manuscripts are described, dated and grouped, and why a manuscript is more than a container for variants. I would like to develop that wider view, including the Old Testament and the Septuagint, which I know only in outline.

Work has shaped how I study. At the library I process reservations and interlibrary loans, and I run a fortnightly session helping older borrowers use the online catalogue. The job rewards accuracy, and a single wrong digit can send a book to the wrong county. It has also taught me to explain search tools patiently to people who find them frustrating. Separately, I spend an hour each week reading post and forms aloud to a neighbour whose sight has deteriorated. Doing this has made me more attentive to how wording lands with a listener, and to the difference between what a letter says and what its writer probably meant.

Away from desks, I walk in the fells most weekends I can. I plan routes on paper maps, which my friends find old-fashioned. I like being responsible for the navigation, and I have become good at noticing when the ground does not match what I expected.

I am applying for postgraduate study because I want to move from careful amateur reading of manuscripts and texts to work that is properly grounded in languages and method. I bring steady habits, a dissertation that taught me to test my assumptions, and experience of explaining complicated material clearly. I would like to build on these with the training needed to ask better questions of the biblical texts and the people who copied and corrected them.