Wright’s been the Bishop here in Durham for about 5 years, and several of his larger writing projects have been put on hold because of his ecclesial responsibilities. He recently decided to hire an assistant to do the leg work with bibliographies, summarising, photocopying, etc. in preparation for his upcoming book on Paul in his Christian Origins series and for a couple of commentaries he’s working on: Galatians (Two Horizons) and Philippians (ICC).

He had briefly mentioned the idea of it when we had the Durham-Duke dinner there, and I don’t really remember thinking much of it. But when we got the email through the department a couple of weeks ago, I thought I should jump on it. I had the interview Thursday, which for part of it also included his wife and ecclesiastical right-hand man, and got the offer Friday morning.  That was the first time I’d really ever had a conversation with him, and I found him to be very friendly.  I’ll be doing about 10 hrs per week until my thesis is finished, Lord willing, about this time next year, and it looks as though we’ll be in Durham for a year after that (until summer 2010).

I’m really stoked about it.  And it came just at the right time.  With the UK phd only being 3 years, having a 2 year commitment was difficult for most, but since we were hoping to extend our time here by a year anyway, it was a good fit.  Plus, if he were doing any other NT subject I would definitely be out of the running.  So it’s one of those right time, right place instances.

Here’s a picture Nijay and I got with him at the Durham-Duke dinner at Auckland Castle:

NTW, Ben and Nijay