Sometimes it seems like so many new discoveries are being made, that it’s hard to keep up with all the new knowledge coming at us each day. Well, you have researchers to thank for that. People, who get curious about something, then make a plan to find out more.
Nancy Mason is a senior at Virginia Tech. In a religion and culture class, she came across something that didn’t make sense. It had to do with an ancient town that once existed near the Sea of Galilee in Israel, called “Bethsaida.” It’s the place where Gospel writers say the “feeding of the five thousand” took place when Jesus fed the multitudes on a few loaves and fishes.
"I realized that Bethsaida, and the usage of this town in the Gospel was different from Gospel to Gospel. So in the Gospel Mark, Bethsaida represents the Gentile population and in the other 3 Gospels, Mathew, Luke and John, Bethsaida is representative of the Jews."
Mason thought hey, Gospel writers identify this place very differently. Why that discrepancy? She he went to her advisor with the question.
"So then we started looking into it – well what was the population of this town, who actually lived there. And we couldn’t find anything."
Aha! A new question about a very old town, important to Biblical scholars. Mason’s professor suggested a research project and she dug in. She pored over the work of historians and geographers of the day to get a different perspective. What she found was that because the population of Bethsaida had changed over time, during that transition, its religious make-up was sort of, in the eye of the beholder.
"So I’m providing the context for, not just what the town was, but what the town was to people; so what people saw the town as being."
A migration of Jews into the town slowly changed it from Gentile to Jewish, but it took a while for the perception of the town to change in people’s minds. A subtle point, nearly obscured in the mists of time, but one Mason says you can see at work even today.
"You can see these kinds of things in negative sociologies like racism and sexism, how it just takes a while for people’s minds to shift t gears even when the reality shifts gear."
A new, if tiny addition to the literature, which could have implications for other scholars studying the history of the Gospels. Those scholars thought Mason’s research paper was significant enough, to invite her to present it at the annual meeting of the Mediterranean Studies Association in Athens, Greece.
"It was exciting. This was my first piece of research. So I never had this idea or this concept of ‘Oh, there’s something I could do.’ There’s something that I, as an undergraduate could contribute to this body of knowledge that predominantly professors are putting together."
"They come up with an idea, they’re curious about something; they’re interested in finding something else out about something. Being able to contribute to the life of a discipline, being able to offer something to an academic field, like philosophy or history can be extremely rewarding and I think our students who engage in research find that that can be one of the most educationally, professionally rewarding experiences of their lives," says Mark Lucht, Director of the Undergraduate Research Institute at Virginia Tech.
Lucht says undergraduates doing research is emphasized at Virginia Tech. And that it not prepares them for graduate school or to work in a field, but also helps them stand out among their peers. Nancy Mason was named the outstanding senior for the 2015. She will travel to Greece later this month to present her paper.
In our next segment, we’ll hear from another undergrad researcher at Virginia Tech. She researched the way an African country makes one room in the house a whole lot greener.
