Reading and Tweeting

Lisa Halverson (Open High School of Utah) is reading Lord of the Flies with her students, and they are Tweeting as they read using the hash tag #lotf. (Apparently another group recently began using the same tag for “Land of the Free,” but you’ll find a solid group of Lord-of-the-Flies material if you scroll down a bit.)

Many Twitter users have observed that, on balance, Twitter is shaking down to be more about information-distribution than about building communities. However, this is a continuum, not a binary: users do experience the creation and especially the maintenance of communities on Twitter. It seems to me that this might be especially true for reading groups.

A Twitter hash tag search is easily saved as an RSS feed and can be incorporated into a class’s web site and consulted whenever the reader likes. Feeling isolated in your reading? Want some inspiration from your co-readers? Check the feed. Contribute to it. Build up your reading community.

My principle shared reading project right now is reading Context of Scripture in a year, mainly with Joseph. But I am also reading The Story with members of my congregation. And of course, I am frequently reading biblical texts along with my students.

This application of Web 2.0 is almost ridiculously easy, and so is readily introduced to the non-web-savvy: sign up with Twitter, learn to use a hash tag. Have you ever Tweeted as part of a reading group? Can you imagine doing so?

[Reading and Tweeting was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/09. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Random Bullets of Research

It’s piled noticeably higher and deeper around here. Currently in the hopper are:

• Deciding on bibliography for a course on “The Old Testament in the New Testament (Allusion and Influence)”;


• Learning our institutional options and guidelines regarding creating course-packs, for above;


• Bringing my dissertation’s bibliography (late 2007) up to date, for revision;


• Inquiry into what “community” is, how we recognize it in a group of learners, and where it is found in the first sixteen years or so of internet-based online education (presentation for SBL 2010).


• Bread in the Bible and the ANE, baby.

Fortunately, I took the precaution of earning a research degree. Otherwise, I’d be worried.

[Random Bullets of Research was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/06. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

SBL 2010: "Community" in Online Learning

My presentation proposal for the 2010 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature has been accepted. The paper is, "To Those Far and Near": The Case for "Community" at a Distance. The session is about Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning, and is offered by the section, Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies.

I will share an abstract and my plans for the presentation later on. Briefly, what prompts me to choose this topic is my frustration that many educators who are unfamiliar with online learning will pronounce authoritatively that “real” or “authentic” community only happens face to face. It would be fine if this position were adopted as the conclusion of an argument befitting the holder of a research degree. However, the impossibility of “online community” is too frequently asserted as a non sequitur, without investigation into the fifteen-odd years of data at our disposal. Humanities educators may presume without inquiry that distance learning is limited to a static mode of knowledge-distribution. Among Christian theological educators, one commonly hears discussion-closing, preemptive appeals to “embodiment” and “incarnation.”

My presentation will offer a paper that takes the data—student evaluations, scores on collaborative assignments, teacher testimonials, independent surveys—into account. I may look also make note of online communities not relating to distance education. Ideally, the paper will focus on courses that traditionally depend on the creation of community toward the end of moving and changing student participants. Ideally, the paper will be offered asynchronously so that the presentation itself will involve a real-time community-building activity.

Are you skeptical of the possibility of online “community”? If so, what are the grounds of your skepticism, and what sort of evidence for online “community” might you (in principle) take seriously?

Do you already experience “community” among folks who have not met face to face? If so, where and how do you experience it?

[SBL 2010: "Community" in Online Learning was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/04/02. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Follow-up: Writing the Bible

Having my adult students add 350 words to an existing biblical narrative proved a tremendous success in terms of inspiring close readings of, and imaginative engagement with, the details of the text at hand.

In an earlier post, I speculated about a possible assignment in which students would write a sequel, or prequel, to a thorny biblical narrative. Here is the assignment as eventually described to the students (who, in this course, are lay people seeking degrees suited to varying lay pastoral ministries):

The Rape of Tamar, and “Writing the Bible”: 350 words.

Read 2 Sam 13:1–22. Read it again with care, attending to the ways in which the narrator accomplishes characterization and plot. Get an understanding of the narrative in its details.

Imagine that you have the opportunity to add 350 (contiguous) words to the story: either right before it, or right after it, or at a single location inside of it somewhere. Imagine what task(s) might you want to accomplish with these words. Do you want to settle down problems, or highlight them? Produce justice, or underscore injustice? Explain things that seem unclear, or confuse things that seem clear? Defend particular characters, or condemn them?

Remember that you're writing a narrative: give the characters things to say, things to do, ways to interact with one another. Don't just fill it all with the sonorous pronouncements of an all-knowing, external narrator.

You don't get to delete any part of the biblical text, only add material: up to 350 words, all written continuously, either right before, right after, or somewhere within the story.

Finally: in keeping with the tenor and devices of the surrounding narrative: you don't get to give God an active part or a speaking role. Characters may refer to God, but only human beings are explicitly active, speaking parts in the story.

In your post, use some device to show where your words fall with regard to 2 Sam 13:1–22.

One student created a childhood relationship between Amnon and Tamar to serve as background to the rape story. Another allowed Tamar to confront David for his negligence and speak an oracle against him. One of them allowed Tamar to take revenge by slipping a male beggar into a drunken Amnon’s bed. Several of them added layers of double-cross to the political machinations in the background of the story.

The students did a simply amazing job with the assignment. I was all the more surprised because we have not discussed narrative criticism, yet they worked skillfully with different ways of accomplishing characterization, with using time, and with plotting. Since I have not really been happy in the past with my ability to teach narrative criticism to introductory students, I think that from now on I will use this assignment as a “getting started” exercise in narrative criticism: by having them do this first, I can then use their own narratives as a resource for illustrating the elements of narrative.

[Follow-up: Writing the Bible was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/31. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Finally: Proof of God's Existence

A student informs me on Facebook that National Geographic Channel is offering its annual Easter season woo-fest, as indicated in this almost unendurable article in the Telegraph (“New series…new explanation…Egypt…Exodus blah blah volcanic ash yada yada algae etc”).

No, I am not saying that proof of God’s existence is found in the tendentious quote-mining of scientists by entertainers to sell a reductionist, sensationalist narrative product to gullible yokels rendered nearly helpless by years of substandard science education and the polarizing media invention of false equivalencies.

I am saying that it is found in this: when I wrote the web URL of the Telegraph article into a Facebook comment addressed to a colleague, the “captcha”^[footnote] presented to me was this:

by weasels

Top that, Anselm and Aquinas, if you can.

Notes:
BACK TO POST A “captcha” is when you have to read and copy some scribbly text in order to prove to a web site that you are not a spam robot. You sometimes have to do that when you write a comment on web sites, especially if your comment includes a web link.

[Finally: Proof of God's Existence was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/29. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Public Evidence and Sectarian Claims in SBL

What does it look like for a person of Jewish or Christian religious faith to—as a matter of method—bracket her sectarian claims about the Bible in her investigation into the content and context of biblical texts? And why is it necessary that she be willing to learn to do so?

As some of you will know, a conversation has been underway about book reviews in biblical studies that appear, as a matter of academic method, to privilege sectarian claims (sometimes along with the reviewed book itself). Alan Lenzi has raised up occasional samples, and one in particular has generated some conversation. Calvin at the Floppy Hat wrote a thoughtful post that garnered some comments.

The readers at Art Boulet’s finitum non capax infiniti, especially, have produced a comment thread especially worthy of attention. It's not a record-breaker in terms of length or number of participants, but it is clearly drawn and notably free of distracting polemics.

The basic question underlying the discussion—what does it mean for anyone, religious or not, to engage in “academic biblical studies” over against sectarian apologetics—may be of special value to students in higher education who are being asked to make this distinction, or to religious laypeople who wonder how seminary “book learning” differs from confessional “Bible study.” By all means, take a look.

[Public Evidence and Sectarian Claims in SBL was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/27. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

New Course: The OT in the NT

In Fall 2010, I will be teaching a new course: “The Old Testament in the New Testament.” Students will learn about literary allusion, and examine select examples of allusion to the Hebrew Bible in the Christian New Testament.

As part of assessing the case for specific examples of allusion, students will develop claims about

• what the OT source text means in its literary and social/historical context, and


• how this allusion in the NT alluding text functions as a rhetorical trope in its own literary and social/historical context.

I will be allowing students to take the course either for OT credit or for NT credit, shaping their final exegesis papers accordingly.

Besides the usual run of Masters students (mostly M.Div or MTS), the course will also be open to doctoral students, who will have to meet an appropriately higher bar in the course work.

My dissertation—“Daniel Evokes Isaiah: The Rule of the Nations in Apocalyptic Allusion-Narrative”—involved allusion to Isaiah in the book of Daniel, and I have looked forward to the opportunity to teach allusion to my students in Bible.

If you have any interest in literary allusion generally, or in “the OT in the NT,” what would your wish list be for select topics? (I have a handful of my own ideas, of course.) What related issues would you want to see treated?

[New Course: The OT in the NT was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/12. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Write the Bible: Poetic Parallelism

In an earlier post, I suggested an opportunity for students to “write the Bible.” This is another one, stolen from…er, inspired by, a friend.

Teaching biblical poetry to her students, my friend (who sometimes comments here as HebProf [whups: HBprof]) came up with a cool exercise: she gave them the first of a pair of parallel lines from a biblical poetic text. The students would then write a second line such that it is parallel to the first. For example, she might give them the first part of Psa 102:6 (English verse numbering; Hebrew Psa 102:7)

I am like a barred owl of the wilderness

The students would then each write a line they propose to be parallel to that first line. After comparing suggestions, they are shown the biblical parallel line, here

I have become as a screech owl of the wastes.

My own learners will be M.Div students reading the texts in English translation, and while there are more sophisticated ways of understanding Hebrew poetic parallelism, I think that Robert Lowth’s old “synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic parallelism” is a good place to begin. Given opportunity, I would look for ways to talk further with introductory students about “seconding” and “stair-case parallelism,” and only in a seminar setting get into ideas of grammatical, morphological, and semantic parallelism.^[FOOTNOTE]

So, for example, the biblical line is clearly meant to be “synonymous” parallelism. By having students produce a range of alternatives, it can be made clear that “synonymous” embraces a wide range of possibilities to answer Psa 102:6a, such as:

I am adrift on the sea alone. Or,

I am a beat cop at midnight on a street corner.

A student trying to create an “antithetically” parallel line for Psa 102:6a might offer the following:

But you are like a new bride among the village women. Or,

But I will become like a crow among the flock.

For a “synthetically” parallel line, she might try:

with no cloud for shade. Or,

Who will tend me?. Or,

A raptor snapping at mice.

The difficulty that students would have grasping the nebulous category of “synthetic” parallelism would, I think, provide a wonderful jumping-off place into the more recent descriptions of poetic parallelism with their clearer engagement of grammar and linguistics.

What do you think of such an exercise? Do you have suggestions for improvement? Are there other exercises by which you have your students “write the Bible”?

BACK TO POST I am glancing at David L. Petersen and Kent Harold Richards, Interpreting Hebrew Poetry (Guides to Biblical Scholarship, Old Testament Series; Gene M. Tucker, ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), chapter two. I think that this resource would be a great choice for a class of mostly English-language exegetes with a handful of students who have taken Hebrew as an elective.

[Write the Bible: Poetic Parallelism was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/11. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Dressing Like A Professor

A good friend of mine tells me about a seminar in which an uncomfortable, even heated, exchange arose over “dressing like a professor.”

For my part, I used to dress informally when teaching. In short order, I realized that:

• I look younger than many of my students;


• I am younger than many of my students;


• Many of my students don’t respect the au-tho-ri-tah of some kid in jeans. Even in jeans and a sweater. Even in sunglasses.

So, pretty early on, I learned that I have to “suit up.”



Except for my tennies. And except for examination days, when according to custom so long-standing as to amount to superstition on my part, I make a point of dressing down.

Besides, in the immortal words of Joey “the lips” Fagan, “All the Motown brothers wore suits. You play better in your suit.”

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tOW2TWmtY"] (update: now blocked by user)

Of course—the devil is always in the details—there are still the finer points, especially for women (after all, why should this be an area where professional women don’t live in a perpetual double-bind)? Must a prof be dowdy? Is it possible to be too hip? Or even too (gasp) “feminine” (that is, shaped vaguely like a human female)?

So, for your part: what does it mean for you to “dress like a professor”? To what extent may a professor “embrace her/his inner fashionista (or fashionisto)”?

[Dressing Like A Professor was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/03/03. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Delta A Team Rocket Hebrew SEALS Force 5 in Black, P.I.

Biblical Hebrew is an elective for my students, and of those who take it at all, most work it into their last year of study. In recent years, though, I have had an unusually high percentage of second-year students, and even first-year folk, learning Hebrew.

This means that they can bring their mad skillz into the advanced-level Bible courses they take later in their course of study. These are English-language courses—that is, there is not a Hebrew prereq—but the professors can be really good about finding ways for these few Hebrew-reading students to stretch their fledgling wings.

This term, my former and current Hebrew students have infiltrated courses in Jonah/Ruth, in Job, and in Judges. Like sleeper agents, they move among their classmates unseen. Like yeast, they quietly transform the unleavened dough of the English-language exegesis course. They are behind the system; beyond it: the Black Ops of biblical interpretation. They are everywhere and nowhere, ubiquitous and invisible, getting into place and preparing to blow your mind.

It's kind of cool, is my point. Anybody else teaching biblical languages as an elective? Do your students normally get the opportunity to use it while still in their degree program?

[Delta A Team Rocket Hebrew SEALS Force 5 in Black, P.I. was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/02/09. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

Creating a Biblical Persona

[Reminder: nominate posts to me for the upcoming Biblical Studies Carnival.]

In my online course, “Literature of Ancient Israel,” I have a discussion forum reserved for student questions addressed to one “Hananiah Ben-Ishbaal,” a 1000 year old Israelite whose life spans the history of the people Israel. Students may ask Ben-Ishbaal about his daily life, his memories of the history of his people, and about his responses to particular biblical texts.

As I recall, credit Credit for the idea goes to Daniel Ulrich at Bethany Theological Seminary. Since Professor Ulrich teaches New Testament, the persona of his creation is of course a man of normal life span, living in the First Century C.E. Professor Ulrich discussed his practice while presenting to the section, “Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies” at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. For my purposes, if a single “persona” is to span our Hebrew Bible curriculum, then I need to take some poetic license and allow “Ben-Ishbaal” the not-uncommon narrative fiction of unnaturally long life.

I have only begun answering student questions, but the decision-making process is already intriguing. For example:

• Is Ben-Ishbaal’s family priestly or lay?


• In what periods is his life agricultural, or urbanized?


• Is he literate (in literary sense) or no? To what degree is he exposed to biblical texts and traditions, and by what means?


• Is he close to power, or far from it?


• How “orthodox” is Ben-Ishbaal, from the perspective of the final form of the Hebrew Bible? For example, how late into Israel’s history does he assume the existence of gods other than Yahweh? How does he view divine activity in history (e.g., the fall of Jerusalem) and in his own life (e.g., in personal tragedy or blessings)?


• By what epithets does he call the god of Israel, and at what periods in history?


• What is his family life: when was he married, and to how many women (concurrently or serially), and what has become of his descendents?


• Other questions?

What other questions would you add to this list, in sketching out a character like “Hananiah Ben-Ishbaal”? How would you, personally and as an instructor, choose to answer some of these questions in your creation of this character? Why?

[Creating a Biblical Persona was written by G. Brooke Lester for Anumma.com and was originally posted on 2010/02/05. Except as noted, it is © 2010 G. Brooke Lester and licensed for re-use only under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.]

"The Story" (Zondervan): Reading the Bible?

As a kind of resolution for 2010, our rector has decided that we’ll be reading the Bible this year (I pause here for jokes about the Episcopal Church and knowing nods; better now? okay). The initial vehicle will be a ten-week reading group, working through The Story: Read the Bible as One Seamless Story from Beginning to End (revised edition; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008). Amazon/Publisher

I should say right away that, on balance, I am excited that we’re pushing Bible and finding ways to encourage familiarity with it. This church happens to have racked up some pretty staggering accomplishments in outreach, in community service, in local and international charity, and (less quantitatively but not less noticeably) in growing a community marked by a joyous mutual love. A more solid biblical foundation can only strengthen the kind of theological thinking that already drives the congregation.

Now for the gripes.

The Story starts with the TNIV as a base text. Put positively: at least it’s not a paraphrastic, expansionistic re-telling of the biblical text tending toward commentary (like at least one prominent translation I could name). Put negatively: I didn’t have any use for the NIV, and the TNIV doesn’t do anything to change that assessment. I believe strongly in the educational value of underscoring, rather than denying, tensions among the biblical texts. Harmonizing translations interfere with that project of teaching and learning, so I normally avoid them except for illustrations of the problems I associate with the harmonizing project. Overall, then: could be worse.

In terms of “Seamless Story from Beginning to End”: obviously the editors have had to decide on a timeline. Decisions made here are predictable: early patriarchs and exodus; Isa 40–66 as predictive prophecy; Solomon as pious but ultimately satyric author of Proverbs (but not, apparently, Ecclesiastes. Hey, where the heck is Ecclesiastes? Holy mo…where’s Job!? I guess there’s no room for the “dissenting wisdom” in The Story). And so on.

Where The Story skips or summarizes parts of the Bible, their stated plan is to put such summaries in italics, so that this editorial material can be distinguished from the biblical text itself. A couple of observations:

• That transitional material can run to heavy-handedness (for Noah’s generation, life had become “one big party”? How do you get that from the biblical text’s description of “wickedness” and an inclination toward “evil”?).

• The book inserts plenty of non-biblical commentary that is not set into italics. For example, this piece, that follows Gen 15:16 (“it was credited to him as righteousness”):

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

Similarly, after Gen 22:

Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a matter of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

The perspicacious reader will observe that Paul of Tarsus has been set amok here, and that a brand of Pauline hermeneutic is shamelessly passing itself off as Hebrew Bible.

All this said: our rector is fully aware of the strengths and shortcomings of any attempt to abridge and narrativize the Bible, and she has invited the congregation up front to argue, wrestle, denounce, and question (which I’ve no doubt they will do). So, on balance, again, it’s a project that I can totally get behind and get excited about.

Anybody out there already have experience with The Story? Any stories about The Story?

Science Denial (NPR Science Friday)

I mentioned yesterday the denial of history, specifically Holocaust-denial. While I wrote that post, I happened also to be listening to a podcast about another form of public misinformation: science denial.

On NPR’s Science Friday, Ira Flatow interviews Michael Specter, who is the author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives (Amazon link).

The interview itself is not at all a typical “science v. religion” piece, and while I judge that if anything Specter soft-peddles the role of religionists in science denial, he successfully puts religion-based science denial into the larger context of our national pandemic (my words, not his) of irrational thinking, and of the calculated encouragement of irrational thinking by groups that benefit from the denial of science.

Unfortunately, Specter initially seemed to encourage a “blame the scientists” approach. He was simply (and rightly) trying to say that scientific progress itself moves too slowly for the public to become acutely aware of its astonishing but tortoise-paced successes. However, I think much of the fault there lies with the unrealistic promises of school officials writing press releases and the willful scientific ignorance of media editors, and not with the scientists themselves.

You need not be especially vested in the “science v. religion” public discourse to enjoy the interview. But, anyone in religious studies or religious education might be particularly interested in how Specter places religiously motivated denial of science into a larger cultural context of unreason.

Google Wave in Education? Talk to Me

I have finally gotten a Google Wave invite, and have started mucking around. Is anybody out there using Google Wave for collaborative projects in education? If you are, please tell me about it in the Comments. Or, point me to any examples or resources that you know about.

Thanks!

A General-Public Biblical Studies Site?

Why yes, and they would like to know what you, the public, would like from such a site.

This is from the Society of Biblical Literature, our big ol’ professional conference. The site will be called, “The World of the Bible: Exploring people, places, and passages.”

As they put it:

This website will provide information about the Bible from academic perspectives, and will not reflect any one religious viewpoint.

Fill out their survey, won’t you? Let’s raise the signal-to-noise ratio in our public discourse about the Bible.

Hat tip to Akma.

Literature of Ancient Israel: New Section Begins

Got a new class starting this morning, “Literature of Ancient Israel.” What would you like to say to anyone beginning their study of the Hebrew Bible?

These folks aren’t M.Divs or undergraduates, but rather masters students in varying degree programs more or less comprising “lay pastoral studies”: pastoral counseling, pastoral studies, religious ed, social justice, spiritual direction.

If there is one “big idea” animating the syllabus (besides the standard thing of distinguishing evidence-based inquiry from devotional or apologetic reading), it is the several theological tensions and disputes preserved in our canon. Only in its genuine, disconcerting diversity can the Bible be big enough to address the multidimensional array of pathetic (or delightful, for that matter) circumstances we creatures continue to find ourselves inhabiting.

The course is fully online, and even our weekly plenary sessions don’t begin right away, so no suit-and-tie get-up for me today. (Of course I suit up to teach. Why, what do you do?) I will have the pleasure of offering them a weekly asynchronous “televised address,” as well as a weekly synchronous hour, so there will still be the occasional need to become presentable.

Unlike some online conversations my students have had before, these folks are holding their discourse behind closed doors. Wish ’em luck. Anything you think they should have on their minds as they dig into the literature of Ancient Israel?

The Beatles: Solomon, Aaron, Pul, and Daniel

I'm sure our own reconstructions are more accurate than this. After all, we have, um…and then…dang.

Hat tip to the Little Professor.

Letters Home (Discussion Assignment)

As you have seen, I am noodling ideas for weekly discussion-board assignments in my upcoming online course, “Literature of Ancient Israel” (an introductory course in Hebrew Bible and biblical studies for students planning careers as lay pastors).

One week, I may ask them to compose a short letter to someone “back home” (figuratively speaking: these are mostly commuter students who live locally). This could be a family member, or a friend outside of the school, or someone at their home church. In the letter, they would write about something they've recently learned in the course, trying to communicate what excites them about it, and what preliminary, provisional ideas they are developing about why this thing matters.

The letter would have to show engagement with the materials of the course: readings, lectures, other discussions. They would also need to respond to (not “answer”) some of the other students’ letters.

This “Letters Home” assignment would also serve as practice for the final paper they need to write for the course: “How has the study of the Hebrew Bible shaped my Christian imagination and goals for Christian ministry?” (I hasten to note that the setting is a professional program in pastoral studies; these are not undergraduates with a wide variety of vocational plans.)

What do you think of a “Letters Home” discussion-board assignment? Are there ways in which you would tweak it, or any red flags to be looked out for?

Write the Bible

Or supplement it, anyway.

In my niece’s middle-school, the kids first read some book or series of their choice; then, they get to write an extra chapter, either within a book, or between two books of a series, or as a prequel or sequel to a book.

I am thinking of adapting this to a discussion-board assignment. I would give them a notably thorny or confusing biblical text, and the students would get to write some additional material (just several lines of dialogue, exposition, whatever). They would then also be asked to explain what “goods” are offered by their own additions, and to comment on one another’s work: Does it alleviate some moral problem in the text?  Does it help explain some character’s behavior (including God’s) that is otherwise hard to understand in the text at hand? Does it cause two adjacent narrative elements to better cohere together, and if so, how?

In choosing a text, I would like it to be 1) narrative, and 2) somewhat off the beaten track while not so obscure as to feel irrelevant (not, say, Gen 3, yet not unexplained corpse of Deut 21 either). Aaron and the golden calf is a possibility; or the dismembered concubine; or David and Bathsheba; or an epilogue to Jonah; or Job 1–2.

What text would you consider for such an assignment, and why? What do you think of the possibilities for such an assignment?

December's Unwelcome Cousin

Pay now or pay later.
Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
Give someone enough rope and they will hang themselves.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
Rome was not built in a day.
If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing well.
Silence gives consent.
Man does not live by bread alone.

(Allow me to cite my sources.)