We are near the end of the year. What better time for a final exam?
In my classes I normally give essay exams — they are by far the best way to find out how much a student actually knows (as opposed to testing them for what they don’t know) and how well s/he can express thoughts in writing and develop an argument.
I’ve pulled out an exam that I once gave to my students in a class called Jesus in Scholarship ...
Continue Reading →I decided to look back to what I wrote on this day five years ago, and I started to laugh — it’s *exactly* the same think I was thinking just yesterday, about all the trillions of books that get written about the Bible and the scholars who write them. I’ve decided to re-post it, and simply update it to this very moment.
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I’ve had a terrific and interesting first few days at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting ...
Continue Reading →Since my conference in Chicago last weekend I’ve been thinking a lot about the theologically conservative folk who really believe there can be no mistakes in the Bible. And just now browsing through some posts five years ago, I see someone raised a very interesting question about it, in relationship to my teaching at UNC. Here’s the question and my response. I would still answer the same way today!
QUESTION:
Do you ever get a student in your class who doggedly insists ...
Continue Reading →This will be a very personal post, about being an enemy of the Christian faith.
I’ve long been amazed, surprised, and perplexed about how, when it comes to religion, comments made in one context are completely non-problematic but when the (exact) same comments are made in another context, they are heinous and threatening. Some of it almost certainly has to do with tone and general attitude. But I wonder if it isn’t actually much broader than that.
One of the ways I’ve ...
Continue Reading →As I mentioned in my previous post, I have finished editing my textbook on the New Testament for its seventh edition (title still: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings). The book was first published in 1997 and has always been designed for college/university students taking a one-semester course on the New Testament. In it I do not presuppose any knowledge of the topic, but begin at ground zero.
When I started doing research on the first ...
Continue Reading →I just finished the seventh edition of my textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. I started working on it, for the first edition, in 1993 – so I’ve been at it for 25 years. Ouch. For this new revision, among other things, I’ve added an Excursus of particular relevance, on the “Digital Bible,” written, luckily for all involved, not by me, but by my scholar-friend Jeff Siker, who has published, just this past year, ...
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Here is an old question that I received that continues to be pressing — something I think and talk about all the time!
QUESTION:
Would you please explain more on the differences between Biblical history and theology? Is it difficult as an historian to keep these separate in your personal beliefs?
RESPONSE:
I deal with this question in each of my three textbooks for undergraduates, since, for them, it is a confusing issue. How can you study the Bible as a historian without ...
Continue Reading →I often get questions from people who have been in a career for a while who want to know if it is feasible for them to go back to school and get a PhD in my field of New Testament/Early Christianity. In most cases it is not feasible at all, simply because it is way too complicated and involved — and takes way more time than one would think. Here is what I said about what being a graduate student ...
Continue Reading →Classes started last week, and for the first time in roughly forever I’m teaching a new course. I posted the syllabus for my course on the Greek New Testament last week. Here are the instructions I give the students for writing their weekly position papers.
These are exercises you too might be interested in – they are easily done, but highly illuminating. Or at least they are meant to be. Some of them (such as the first) make best sense in ...
Continue Reading →For the first time in forever I am teaching a new course — one I’ve never taught before — at UNC, a class for classics students (and others who already know Greek) on the Greek New Testament. It is obviously a very small class (6 or 7 students); to be in it students have to have already had at least a couple of years of Greek. So the class is not teaching the rudiments of Greek grammar, but it assuming ...
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