Month: June 2007

What do I want in a course that introduces the New Testament?

I’ve been thinking about it as I look back on the year’s teaching, and after reading the article in Inside Higher Education about Robert Frank’s economics curriculum. Part of the problem involves the interplay of cognition and judgment. Entering students in Bible generally need to learn more about the Bible itself, and about the terms and frames in which biblical scholars write, but they also need to learn to think like biblical scholars — at least insofar as that enables the students to make useful sense of the vast quantities of scholarly writings.

The Franks article helpfully makes several points I want to bear in mind as I think about NT introduction. First: “The idea of taking a few core things, working on them until you get them, and then moving on and adding complexity only when the root stuff is firmly embedded, that just seemed like such an eye-opener to me.” There’s so much that NT scholarship has done, has gradually taken for granted as a minimal base for knowledge and reflection, that it’s hard for a teacher to see how vast a load of stuff we’re dumping on people.

Second, Frank’s project helps students develop a narrative intelligibility for the matters we study — rather like Stephen Neill’s book, revised by Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1986. I’m beginning to think that the best way to introduce students to the New Testament would involve helping them understand how we got to where we are, on several limited areas. A student who has come to understand the history of analyses of the Synoptic Problem will be better prepared to think about pseudonymity in the catholic epistles, even if we don’t spend a lot of time on II Peter.

You may remember that at last year’s choir banquet, Pippa walked away with two of the major awards (attendance and the Rector’s Award for exemplary ministry); I figured that she probably wouldn’t get any repeat awards, so she might manage without any this year.

Tonight was the choir banquet, preceded by the final choral Evensong of the year. During Evensong, Pippa sang an extraordinary improvised solo during the psalm; Margaret and I were very nervous going in, but Pippa rocked; everyone lauded her. Then at the awards banquet, she received not only the joke award for an “Exchange Student” (presaging her coming year in Princeton), but also the attendance award (again) and the Most Improved girl’s chorister. Then Jonathan gave her a special good-bye present from the choir, too.

She was characteristically reserved about all this — Jonathan remarked on it, joking that he knew she just loved the attention — but we were beaming with pride. She’s a treat, and it’s intensely encouraging when other people notice her.

The prospect of sabbatical leave provokes more lines of thinking and anticipating than I could realize in three or four years of time off teaching, but among the things I hope to do relatively soon is redesign this page.

Today was Commencement Day at Seabury; a flock of bloggers got their degrees. Heidi, the Archer, Raisin, Beth, and Laurel all became alumnae (except the Archer, an alumnus).

While I’m at it, Court was ragging me last night for not going to his site or linking to him, so now I’ll make that link — and I’ll throw in a link to Donna while I’m at it. Blogging makes a great medium for helping distant friends keep up with you; I’m glad to see so many of my students taking it up, and I’ll be watching them from afar next year.

The Presiding Bishop’s sermon was OK by me. She invoked “the lure of God” a little too often (twice) without distancing herself from process theology — something that makes me edgy when a scientist is speaking — and teh sermon was not as distinctly biblical as I prefer, but really most of the preaching went smoothly. Kristin met my eyes when Bishop Jefferts Schori said, “Today we celebrate the feast of Justin Martyr. . . ,” a phrase that [I argue] gives a congregation permission to stop paying attention; but she didn’t lead with that phrase, and most listeners were probably on board by the point at which Bp. Jefferts Schori dropped that in. I still wouldn’t say that, though.