In discussing the work of indexing the Harvard Theological Review, I shall begin by describing the organization and development of the project, and the various ideals and principles involved in its design. Then I shall show what some specific keyword selections will call up on searches; these selections collectively exemplify the many diverse and distinctive features of the Harvard Theological Review's collection. This article merely serves as an introduction to the Index; when I complete the project, I shall elaborate further on various matters and exemplary elements in a forthcoming expanded version of this lecture-based article.

When I was invited to consider this project, the initial idea was to employ several people, each of whom would take a portion of the articles HTR has published over the years and compile relevant keyword lists for that portion. To prepare for my own work on it, I sketched out a preliminary set of lists based on a random sampling of articles from different decades. My purpose was to get a feel for issues that might arise regarding changes in terminology, changes in content, and academic styles and interests over time, as well as how many articles might naturally bundle together under the aegis of certain general and more specific keywords. When I presented my first test case involving twenty-five articles, it became apparent that there was good reason to have one person coordinate the entire project in order to streamline the keyword format and thus produce as unified and coherent a result as possible. Such coherence is especially important given that the research mechanism of the resulting index will be two-fold. One will be able to type in keywords and gather and sift through the results. There will also, however, be an online list of all the assigned keywords, constituting a thematic index through which one can scroll. Editor François Bovon and managing editor Margaret Studier consequently encouraged me to take on the whole task. Given my eclectic academic background, I was quite happy to undertake a project that would enable me to draw upon my wide-ranging interests and many years of readings in theology, of course, but also literature, politics, philosophy, languages, archaeology—the entire spectrum of fields that relate in various ways to HTR's focus on religion. Regretfully, however, I am not a walking encyclopedia! Only such a creature could possibly achieve a perfect result with regard to giving each article full and appropriate representation. I am indeed learning much from the copious content, while categorizing each piece as well as possible.

After the initial sample of twenty-five keyword lists, I started at the beginning, a century ago, proceeding article by article, volume by volume. A brief segment in the very first volume of 1908 temporarily shook my confidence. The piece is an anonymous review of an earlier index project compiled by Ernest Richardson, for a series of articles published from 1890–1899. The commentator took a dim view of things: “Periodical articles on religion are like the plague of frogs in Egypt not only in number but in the fact that they appear in the most unlikely, not to say unsuitable, places.” Even worse for me, this writer took direct aim at efforts to index such articles: “it is perhaps not inappropriate to warn the student or the ‘general reader,’ who cannot for himself distinguish the obsolete, the void, and the fatuous from the live and significant, that such an index as this is a dangerous tool. Indeed it might be maintained without paradox that nothing contributes more to the perpetuation of antiquated error and humbug than indexes—especially to periodical literature … for they make it possible to ‘read up’ and ‘write up’ anything in heaven or earth, without the painful necessity of knowing anything about it.”

This commentator evidently suspected that someone in the future would index HTR, and thus decided to fire off the first criticism. At any rate, I recovered sufficient confidence to continue ascending the mountain of articles. The work gradually gained momentum after an early slow-down for the years 1914–1920, which was because each volume in those years contained an average of seventy-five book reviews alongside the articles. That initial abundance likely reflects the enthusiasm of a young publication, and I made keyword lists only for a selected set of those reviews. Since then, my work has gained a fair amount of systematic organization and coherence, with unavoidable adjustments along the way with regard to format and terminology.

The prevailing principle I apply in compiling the index involves a two-fold purpose. There is the standard scholarly one, in which quantity matters. A general rule is that a keyword should of course reflect an element that occupies a substantial percentage of an article—roughly two-thirds or three-fourths of the content. Anyone interested in, for example, “theodicy” would justifiably be frustrated if a keyword search led to articles in which theodicy is merely mentioned in one paragraph. However, my second purpose is to serve a wider audience for whom one cannot quantify value. I proceed with several types of hypothetical researchers in mind, who would either type in various keywords or scroll through the online index itself. My hypothetical seekers may certainly include religion-oriented academics, but I have in mind as well historians, ministers-in-the-making, curious undergraduates, graduate students casting about for potential dissertation topics, creative writers—in essence, an eclectic audience. I want to enable this diverse group of people to catch some of the relatively rare, unusual, distinctive, quirky, or striking passages, themes, comments, perspectives, or views which may constitute some sort of serendipitous discovery and inspiration. I therefore accommodate both types of approaches to HTR: strictly academic research and free-wheeling exploration. Many keyword lists attend primarily or exclusively to the former; however many others also link to articles in which there are one or more items whose value is quantitatively small, but gem-like in quality. This valuation is admittedly subjective, at least in some cases; however, I hope the number of disappointed searches will be far outweighed by many happy ones.

I can present only a few examples of the many riches contained in one hundred years of the Harvard Theological Review. I want especially to describe some items in several older articles that should lead one further on to the dust-gathering tomes in Andover-Harvard Library or the Depository—books that a dissertation writer or historian or novelist or academic would do well to clean off and read with the fresh and questioning eyes of the postmodern era. For example, in the realm of religion and literature, index entries “children” and “Peabody, Josephine Preston,” will call up a 1914 article which explores how children were depicted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction, with particular reference to Josephine Peabody's writing. The same article also surveys that era's poetry. It is intriguing to think about the issue of children with regard to religion-oriented fiction, and religion in general. Josephine Peabody may be an author worth bringing to the attention of contemporary scholars and novelists. The same may be the case for Mark Rutherford and William Hale White, whose novels receive fairly extensive description and analysis in another 1914 article by Willard Sperry.

In 1915 one can find an article about the Russian Orthodox Church that includes references to Quakerism in Russia, to an ardently idealistic reformer named Peter Verighin, and to various protest and reform movements that accompanied the rise of socialism in that country. This article is a historical treasure, composed as it was at the very brink of the 1917 Russian revolution. HTR was indeed a still very young publication when World War I shook faith in God, religion, humanity, and any hope at all that progress is more than a deceptive and ultimately futile concept. Among the myriad book reviews in the issues of 1921, the keywords “World War One” call up a review of six books of sermons that were inspired by that conflict. Those sermon collections have tantalizing or poignant titles like “Citizens of Two Worlds …,” “Addresses and Sermons to Students,” “The Breath in the Winds …,” and “What the War has Taught Us.”

In the 1930s, Harry Wolfson wrote some articles that masterfully synthesize many elements in the field of comparative religion and philosophy—articles which anyone can fish out with several keyword bait terms, including epistemology, philosophy, and psychology, further specified as Aristotelian, Christian, Islamic, or Jewish. Wolfson's work raises the issue of how, on what terms, and to what extent scholarship can achieve timeless value. This should be a periodic meditation in any “present” age, when there is ever the tendency to subject past work to searing critiques, and when what has been done can so easily be dismissed as outmoded. Like people in other fields of endeavor, scholars forget that if so much scholarship thinking itself cutting edge “back then” can be summarily dismissed, then so will this era's seemingly inarguable views be scorned in a future we cannot now imagine. It is healthy for academics to make a pilgrimage to our predecessors' literary remains, in order to remind ourselves of the inherent mortality of our own work—but also, perhaps, to seek out the still glowing embers of research, analyses, and the resultant writings that contain still relevant insights. Browsing through and delving into HTR's early decades therefore inspires further reflection about the scholarly enterprise and its ability to transcend time and change.

On the matter of pilgrimage, from a different angle and with regard to another historical treasure in HTR, I found a 1940 article by Francis Magoun which summarizes and amply quotes from two travel journals based on early medieval visits to Rome. The pilgrims were Sigeric, who served as the archbishop of Canterbury from 990–994, and Nikolas, the abbott of a Benedictine monastery in Iceland from 1155–1159. These two men's travel diaries offer a wealth of information about the conditions, rituals, relics, and architectural details of Rome's many holy sites in their respective eras.

My final example of the immense range of material in HTR is a 1944 article entitled “Probationers for Eternity: Notes on Religion in the United States in the Year 1800.” The author, Peter Oliver, studied contemporary newspapers, journals, and sermons, which he carefully footnoted for further pursuit. This type of article naturally bundles in with many others under keyword phrases like “church history, Protestant.” However, it is notable for me as the first article that justified a new keyword, namely “humor”—yet another topic rarely considered as worthy of what would be a paradoxically serious study, an investigation of the theme of humor with regard to religion. At any rate, Oliver mentions a tendency in 1800 to make light of the church, which the Puritan divines of the previous century would have quickly suppressed. Although this topic does not occupy two-thirds of his article, that he brings it up at all is worth knowing. It also seems worth discovering, especially within religion's intensely serious domain, that in 1800 there was some comic relief. A favorite joke appearing that year in many books and gazettes (Oliver cites several) was about a farmer who, when asked about his religious opinion, declared that he had no preference with regard to Arminianism, Socianism, or deism, but that he definitely opposed rheumatism. Oliver additionally refers to parodies of the catechism of the Presbyterians—such as changing “what is the chief end of man?” to “what is the chief end of rum?”; as well as a poem with lines like: “from a war with the French Republic, Good Lord deliver us; from all old tories, from aristocrats, from the illuminati of New England and from the deceits of the devil, Good Lord deliver us.” Such are the multi-faceted treasures ready to emerge when keywords summon them.

As I mentioned at the outset, in the near future I shall compose a more comprehensive description of the HTR index and various relevant matters. For now, the groundwork is firm, the progress is steady. The journal we are celebrating today is clearly a remarkable treasure and resource, and I hope the index will serve not only those who know what they want, but also those who are poised for discovery and inspiration.