I’m not really sure how much I’ll be able to post about my classes as the semester goes (it’s the first week and I’m already feeling the pressure), but I’ve set aside 20 minutes tonight to mention my second class of the semester. It is a Seminar in the Torah and Former Prophets (Genesis-2 Kings, except Ruth), which is a lot of material.
The requirements for the course:
- Read the biblical text three times
- Read 750 pages from scholarly commentaries
- Read 15 recent journal articles and write summaries
- Write a research paper and present it to the class
- Prepare a response to another research paper and present it to the class
- Write the Bible argument for Genesis
Added together, there’s a lot of work here. I think it’s on the medium side of the difficulty scale in this program. I am planning to write my research paper on the reign of Jehu, with the intention of developing this into a dissertation.
Most of the class session was a lecture by the professor, but many future sessions will be seminar papers. Here are a few things he said (I’m just reporting, not necessarily agreeing):
- Genesis chapter 1 ends at 2:3 (or 2:4). This chapter division was the work of a drunk monk. (You can see that the ancient scribes agreed by the presence of a samekh in the margin).
- There are half a dozen Creation texts in the Bible. Only the emphasis by the creation research people has given Genesis 1 the seeming singularity. A biblical theology of creation that stays only in Genesis 1 is not a successful biblical theology of creation.
- When the professor was a student, The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris was a new text. Imagine a textbook in science that is 40 years old and never had a revision, you wouldn’t dare use this in a class today. But today you can buy the same book in leather binding with a gold ribbon.
- The missions department at DTS sees world missions as a reversal of the Tower of Babel, bringing people back to faith who were disseminated.
- The Bible doesn’t say that God cursed man and woman at the Fall, though all preachers say this. It says that the effects of the curse on the serpent extend to the woman, and the effects of the curse on the ground extend to the man.
- Beitzel’s view of a northern Ur is to be preferred to the traditional view of a southern Ur.
- Popular Christian mythology found in all liberal books is that Abraham was a nomad. But he was a sophisticated urbanite. It would have been a little thing for God to tell him to move if he was a nomad. Abraham was not a nomad; that guts the story. No, he became semi-nomadic because of the call of God.
- The Great Commission of the Bible is Genesis 12:3 (Matt 28:18-20 is just a recasting).
- The ability of a 89-year-old woman to conceive required a greater miracle than just “giving her an egg.” God had to completely rebuild Sarah’s anatomy.
- We make far too much of Joseph and far too little of Judah. Joseph is a flat character; Judah is the colorful one as he goes through the character change.
- You must read “How to Read the Bible as Literature,” by Leland Ryken.
- The story of Judah in Genesis 38 shows what would have happened to the sons of Jacob had they stayed in the land and not gone to Egypt. But by going to Egypt, where Semites were viewed as detestable, there was no intermarriage and thus the integrity of the nation was preserved.
- Joseph’s fleeing of immorality should take our breath away. Here is a person who from all apparent evidence is destined to an ignominious death in a foreign land, never to see his family again, never to have contact with people of faith again, and this woman is constantly enticing him.
- Focus on the number of times it says of Joseph that “Yahweh was with him.”
Ok, that’s more than I expected to write, but that’s your window into a doctoral course. Next week the class will focus on Creation issues.
How cool! Todd, I’m so grateful you’ve chosen to blog this. All of those are very thought-provoking ideas. I’m not sure about some of em…but it sounds like he got more and more accurate as the class went on, assuming your notes were listed chronologically. I especially like the last two, puts a fresh perspective on an old story.
If it all possible, I would love to hear about all the Creation issues and the discussion it creates. I’d also love to hear you respond to it.
-happy-
Todd: Was his point about “The Genesis Flood” that it’s so good that it’s still relevant 40 years later or that it’s so old that people are crazy to use it?
Gunner – the latter. His point was that some people treat it like the Bible.
“Imagine a textbook in science that is 40 years old and never had a revision, you wouldn ‘t dare use this in a class today.”
Does your professor know of any Science class that uses, or even wants to use, “The Genesis Flood” today?
If no class uses it or wants to use it, I don’t understand the purpose of the quote.
“[T]oday you can buy the same book in leather binding with a gold ribbon.”
Does your professor have any idea what a first edition of “Origin of the Species” would sell for if it were offered on the market?
George – his point was that some people treat that book as if it were science. And I’m not sure what the relevance of a 1st edition of Darwin is to a fancy modern printing of The Genesis Flood.
“[P]eople treat that book as if it were science.”
Well this particular point of his was not well thought out. There are many Science books that are useful that are not necessarily revised every year. Solid scientific theories & equations need no modification as time passes. An important criterion for a Science book revision is its popularity. Both Whitcomb & Morris published additional books over the past few decades, & if “The Genesis Flood” [TGF] had been used in every public school in America, it would certainly have undergone revisions to include new/revised info.
“I ‘m not sure what the relevance of a 1st edition of Darwin is to a fancy modern printing of The Genesis Flood.”
Your prof. was poking fun at people spending exorbitant money for TGF packaging, when they could obtain the same content in a less fancy edition. I made the same point with evolutionists willing to spend money on a collectible edition of a book important to them. On another level, your prof. was poking fun at people interested in the over-40-year old content of TGF, but there are even more people who are still interested in the over-140-year old content of Darwin’s book, even though its content has long been superceded (particularly its notions on Races; most people forget its original title emphasized the “Preservation of Favoured Races”, which was a cultural statement–not a scientific one, yet every major biology textbook still cites it as if it had some lasting scientific merit).