Today I had my first PhD class. It’s a 3-hour seminar on the Gospels and Acts, and meets once a week. On Fridays, I have a 3-hour seminar on the Torah and Former Prophets (Genesis-2 Kings). I’m considering blogging about them this semester. There are some reasons why this might not happen: 1) If I don’t like the class or am struggling with some issues that I don’t want to put in a public place where potentially anyone could see it, I may skip it altogether; 2) If I simply cannot give the short time I would plan to give it; 3) If I can’t think of anything that I think would be interesting.
Today was an introductory class and it was mostly a lecture by the professor to the nine students in the class. Nine is a large number to have in this kind of class. I know two of the students – one was at IBEX and the other came for a DTS 3-week trip. Of the others, three or four have Chinese heritage and one is from Africa. Of the others, none strike me as young or good-looking as myself. :-) More seriously, it’s really hard to determine ages of people at this stage in life, and I know that one is younger than me (the former IBEXer), but I just can’t tell on the others. I think it’s safe to say that I’m in the younger half.
Some of you might be interested in the course requirements (what is a PhD course like, anyway?), so here goes.
Read four books. Two of these have at least 500 pages and lots of fine print. Read a couple of dozen articles from the IVP Dictionaries of the NT. Read Matt-Acts twice. Do a research paper, at least 20 pages in length.
The crux of the course, however, are the discussion of questions each week. This counts for 50% of the grade (and all that reading is a mere 10%). The way this works is that each week you have a list of questions about the portion of Scripture for that week. You prepare answers to all of the questions before class and then in class you go around the prof asks different people to answer different ones. So you may have to answer only a few, but you have no idea which ones. For Matthew, there are 25-45 questions each week. Next week we’ll be covering Matthew 1-4 and we have 25 questions. Here are a few that I’ll be working on:
- Summarize the argument of the book.
- Evaluate various commentaries on Matthew. (I got this one nailed because I spent a lot of time researching in Matthew last semester.)
- Explain the custom of divorce in 1:19.
- Discuss the relationship of Isaiah 7:14 to Ahaz and to Matthew 1:22-23.
- Explain “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2).
- What is the meaning of “fire” in Matthew 3:11?
- Was the Lord’s call of the disciples in Matthew 4:18-22 His first contact with them? Discuss.
- And one more, I can’t believe this is one of them: What village was Christ’s base of operations for His ministry?
So, I already know the answer to #23. More work ahead…
Who is the instructor?
todd…been reading for a while, haven’t commented though. thanks for the run down on what PhD courses are like…matt will start somewhere in the fall. waiting to see where. nice to know what we’re in for. :)
I don’t know if I’m ready to concede that you’re better looking than me.
Eric – we’ll let the audience decide. Eric is on the left.
Dr. Combs – I’ll respond to you directly.
Natalie – good to hear from you. Rough road ahead. And many PhD programs are not like this, I think.
Sounds good. It could be worse. You could always come to Princeton where they hand you Karl Barth in German on the first day (a non-translated text) and simply say to you “know it in 3 weeks”. =) At least you get to study the gospels and Acts….
Chris – I would not argue with you! I chose this program specifically because of what I would be studying, and the way in which I would be studying it. One thing that I find interesting is that so many Bible/theology-related programs study everything but the Bible. It seems to me like one needs a good foundation in Bible before going on. The advantage goes to the teachers, who have students less able to disagree. I’m not relating this to your situation (which I do not know), but am speaking generally. One could of course argue how good of a knowledge of the Bible is necessary before doing the other things, and that’s a good question. My guess is that, for me, it’ll take these four years to get that foundation.
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