This class already coming in handy

I am only one chapter into one of the books for my next grad. class (the book is “The Continuing Conversion of the Church” by Darrell Guder) and am already benefiting from the discussions of this class.  For example, if I had read “The Bible itself became a battleground as scholars refined and expanded the newly developed tools [...]

Thought on Enns

I have really enjoyed reading this book so far. It was been very insightful and thought provoking. I loved the section where he dealt with incarnation stories of the bible.  Christ is the most important incarnation story of the bible! Enns hit a home run for me when he talked about the magnitude of Christ [...]

On Lesson 4

While reading the historical introduction to Gilgamesh, I was interested to learn that writing was ultimately created due to the need for canals. We are taught in school that writing (sometimes we hear cuneiform) was first used in certain ancient cities, but I’m not sure I ever understood why a written language was needed, or [...]

Week 5

Before reading the text concerning Jewish Women’s Scholarly Writing on the Bible, I thought it was going to be a lot like reading a Christian woman’s interpretation of the Bible, or a man’s interpretation of a woman’s interpretation and so on…Unfortunately, many of the authors of those articles tend to have an opinion, and then [...]

On Inspiration and Incarnation

I’m going to go ahead and comment on Enns’ book, even though I’ll probably end up using some of what I put here in my review. I enjoyed reading it, but like some of you, it took me longer to get through the book than I anticipated, and I’m sure I will reread many of [...]

Solve This Riddle

We saw this statue on the Charles Bridge in Prague. This is not meant to be frivolous, but there are some important lessons from history you can learn. We will do this as a class project next week, but your assignment is to translate the Hebrew and explain the significance of this piece [...]

Pay Attention

The home page may look the same when you come back, but I have been updating some of the other pages. I just added a sub-page under lesson 4 on “The Nature of Biblical Scholarship.” I plan to add one more, an introduction to Wellhausen, this week. You should try to read [...]

Reflection on Lesson 4

The section in Lesson 4 titled “Authorship Issues” really has me thinking.  In Mark 7:10, Jesus says, “For Moses said,…’”  He was referencing to scriptures in the OT, and those scriptures are Exodus 20:12, Deut. 5:16, Exodus 21:17, and Lev. 20:9.  When I first read the three questions I was a little puzzled.  After all, [...]

Enns’ Book

I have really enjoyed Enns’ book.  There are certainly some areas that I don’t agree. I felt like he spent way too much time on listing the similarities between the babylonian flood myths and the genesis flood account and not enough effort listing the contrasts.  However I believe his understanding of the wisdom literature is on [...]

Tips on Assignments

Here is a tip I gave to Niki, when she asked about the review of Inspiration and Incarnation.

The “Critical/Appreciative Review” doesn’t need to be long, a couple of pages is fine. It should include a description and summary of the book. Describe the writing style, purpose, intended audience, etc. Summarize the [...]