After 20 years of research, revision and persistence, Matthew Umbarger, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, has published his first book, “A Table in the Presence of My Enemies: Banqueting and Battling in Ancient Israel.”
The book is available for purchase through major booksellers, including Amazon, eBay Books and Sandman Book Co. It takes a cultural look at the concept of banquets within battles, which Umbarger had noticed as a pattern in scripture and in ancient Near Eastern mythology.
“I noticed there are all these stories where, before the main battle narrative in the story, they would have a banquet,” he said. “It’s in the Babylonian creation myth. It’s in a lot of the Baal Epic from Ugarit. I went back and started to find similar things in the Old Testament as well.”
While the book began as no more than a thought during his senior year of college, it followed him through his graduate studies.
“My senior year, it was a germ of an idea,” Umbarger said. “Then I ran with that for my master’s thesis, and that became a chapter in my book, which is essentially my dissertation.”
Umbarger finished his dissertation in 2010 and earned his doctorate in 2011 from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He originally intended to publish it as a monograph, which is a detailed written study in a specialized subject.
The challenges of publishing
It wasn’t until he started distributing his work to publishers that the real revisions of the book began.
“That Old Testament academic world is kind of cutthroat,” he said with a laugh. “I sent it off to about six different publishing houses and five of those were extremely critical. They’d have three or four reviewers, but there would always be one who would vote, ‘We cannot publish this.’”
Umbarger said the critiques would vary from him spending too much time on one “obscure” thing to the whole book not being focused enough on the church fathers.
“I was ready to give up on it. I just thought, ‘This is it.’ It was demoralizing. I didn’t think it was worth it, maybe,” he said.
Finally published
Months between waiting for feedback from publishers turned into years before Umbarger’s friend, Matthew Levering, put him in touch with the publishers at Cascade Books.
“He gave me a lot of encouragement and helped me see that this was something that I had not been dismissed from, that God was actually calling me to do this, and to give it one more go,” he said.
Another friend of Umbarger’s, Amy Baxt, helped him in the final stages of revision before publishing. He wanted the book to not just make sense to religious scholars, but also to lay people within the Church.
“I was absolutely thinking of her in the final revision,” he said. “I gave her the first introduction in the first chapter or two, and I just asked her, ‘Does this make sense?’”
Baxt, who’s active in church teaching, told Umbarger she was struck by the book’s mix of scholarship and spirituality.
“With a second read of the first 27 pages that cover explanations of covenantal properties, my appreciation is growing,” Baxt wrote to Umbarger during her time reading. “I see an extraordinary intelligibility and depth of expression throughout what I have read, especially in how these table rituals of meals are painstakingly described and posited in chapter one. BRAVO to your fine book!”
Umbarger mentioned Baxt in the acknowledgements page in the book’s final publishing.
Faith and timing
Looking back, Umbarger said he can see now the purpose of the delays in his book.
“The book is much, much better than it would’ve been if it had gotten published 20 years ago, or 15 years ago when I had first tried to get it published,” he said.
Umbarger said he’s already working on a follow-up project with a more personal tone — this time, dedicated to his mom.
“I want to come back and maybe do a second version that’s less academic,” he said. “I want to publish that one for my mom next.”
In addition to teaching, Umbarger is also leading a five-part series on how the Bible was put together at Wichita’s Spiritual Life Center. Sessions are scheduled on Thursdays — Oct. 16, Oct. 23, Oct. 30, Nov. 6 and Nov. 13 — from 7 to 8:30 p.m.
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