JOHN S. HOLLADAY, JR.: AN APPRECIATION
J. Gerald Janzen
Jack was one of eight of us who entered a doctoral program at Harvard in the early 1960’s, under the direction of Ernest Wright and Frank Cross. The Fall Seminar met on Thursdays from 3 to 5. In the first session, Frank gave an overview of the literary sources for our knowledge of the “Near Eastern Languages and Literatures” (the Department in those days being known as NELL), and immediately we all were intimidated. The following week Ernest gave a similar presentation, I suspect (my brain had not sufficiently recovered from the previous week for me to remember clearly), on the material grounds. The third week, a grad student who was at the dissertation stage gave a presentation on that topic—as I recall, on the Hasmonean Priesthood. He sat at one end of the long seminar table, with Cross and Wright flanking him on his left and right shoulders like two seraphim. He began to read. Shortly one of the two seraphim broke in with a question. He responded and went on. Before long the other broke in with a comment. He responded, then went on. This cycle recurred several more times, by the end of which the student would read a sentence, pause, look inquiringly left, then right, and, if there were no interposition from either side, he would go on. The following week we had the first seminar paper by one of our own number (the eight of us, Virgil Rabe, and Merton Sherman). That fall, the seminar was devoted to “The Tenth Century.” The first of our number “up” was Jack, and his topic was “The Fall Festival.”
Now, the experience of the previous week, on top of the two before that, was so unnerving that, before this next session, we put our heads together; and when the afternoon convened we petitioned Wright and Cross—would they mind if, while they took a position at one end of the long table, the presenter take a position at the other end? They readily assented, and Jack began. Now, Jack was a McCormick graduate, and, as I recall, knew Cross from those days. What astonished us, and reassured us that “there’s life after presentation,” was the way Jack was willing to argue with Cross and Wright, on the basis of the evidence—argue in a way that only Jack can argue—vigorously, yet cordially, with no personal animas but with animated love for evidence and its construal.
I think it may have been this moment that, for me, identified him as this group’s “elder brother,” forging the path for the rest of us.
My wife Eileen and I have loved him dearly. In view of his special love and vocation, may we memorialize that love in the words of Shir ha-Shirim, 8:6.
