An AI-Free Zone

 

When my students log-in to their course LMS this semester, they will encounter this warning:

This course is an AI-Free Zone: Because I am interested in what you think and in your own learning—including learning to communicate effectively in writing—the use of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, Grammarly Pro, etc., is strictly forbidden in this class.

All written assignments for this course must be your own work presented in your own words.

Students must be able to talk cogently about their written assignments and their research process. At the professor’s discretion, an oral interview may be required before a grade is assigned for any assignment. Failure to participate in the interview process will result in a 0 on the assignment.

(For good measure, the same statement appears on my syllabi.)

I am not, I think, naïve. I don’t imagine perfect compliance or that I will even be able to tell each time AI is used. I am also aware that this is not a structural change to course assessment: Rather than materially altering my assignments, I am relying on students to choose to follow my class rules instead of turning to the low-hanging fruit that is ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and other Large Language Models that masquerade as “artificial intelligence.”

But here’s the thing: AI-bots are very good at producing the kind of introductory thinking-piece essay that teachers have used for generations. The point in these kinds of assignments is not for students to make a new contribution to knowledge, but to learn as they think through classic intellectual problems on their own. These assignments have been used for so long because they work—or they did work until AI-bots came along. All of a sudden we have to look for alternatives to traditional but effective ways of helping students learn (including summarizing, analyzing, synthesizing, etc.). We may eventually come up with workarounds as good or better than our current approaches to teaching, but we aren’t there yet.

So instead of totally changing the way I teach—and in the process abandoning effective ways of helping students learn—I will try once more to persuade my students that turning to AI to complete assignments in my courses will only hurt themselves.

Here is one more reason why:

With great texts, the reading is its own reward. No potted summary of Plato’s Republic or Homer’s Odyssey will substitute for the real thing. These rich texts can’t be absorbed on a single reading; give them years of attention and they will still have more to say. As a teacher in the Humanities, a major part of my job is helping students learn to read. This includes reading and thinking about difficult texts. Again, it is the struggle that matters for learning and thinking. And so a Cole's notes version or an AI summary will not help students learn how to summarize or synthesize, and it will not get the texts inside them in a way that shapes their lives.

What is true about Plato's Republic is even more true about the Bible, a collection of texts whose meaning and implications cannot be exhausted. As a Christian educator, one of my primary aims is to help people connect with the text of Scripture. The point is not so much the right answer or correct prose, but getting the text inside you deep enough that it can do its inspired work.

Thankfully, in my confessional setting students tend to be open to this kind of argument. Some will continue to cheat themselves (and their professor). My role is not primarily to police the boundaries, but to try and create conditions that will motivate and enhance learning. Wish me luck.

Earlier posts on Education and AI:

• On Creativity, ChatGPT, and Doing Your Chores
• More on AI, Student Learning and Human Flourishing
  

Helter Skelter Take 21

Hard to believe I am at the beginning of my 21st year on faculty at Briercrest College. This semester looks to be another doozy: four different courses plus a conference paper to write on a topic unrelated to anything I will be teaching this fall. And, alas, two summers on, I have not quite finished work on my response to Jason Staples's reading of Josephus. 

On the positive side, I've taught all four classes multiple times before, I'm grateful to get paid to study the Bible and to teach it to students who care about what they are learning … and I'm looking forward to a sabbatical in the winter semester. Bring it on!

Unlike two earlier beginning-of-semester posts from fifteen and sixteen years ago, the aspirational soundtrack for the semester is not U2's cover of the Beetle's song that lends this post its name, but this rather more tame ballad by Randy Stonehill: 

Reading the Bible after the Holocaust

I consumed a steady diet of (audio)-books about the Holocaust this spring, including Doris Bergen’s War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel’s powerful memoir, Night, his two holocaust novels, Dawn and Day, and, most recently, Dara Horn’s searing People Love Dead Jews. The reading (or listening in this case) began as preparation for a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum faculty seminar on “Reading the Bible after the Holocaust” in Washington, DC.

Doris Bergen’s textbook was recommended as an introduction to the Holocaust for those who needed a refresher. Turns out I did. General awareness over a lifetime can fool you into thinking you know more than you do. For me that included reading the stage version of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl and watching Corrie Ten Boom in grade school, reading a selection of James Michener and Leon Uris novels in grades 8-10, a summer tour of Europe in high school that included a visit to the Dachau concentration camp, and a belated visit to Yad Vashem in 2009. But these vague impressions from decades ago did little to help me speak intelligently about the Holocaust and antisemitism to college students who, one suspects, may never have heard that six million Jews were murdered in Europe during World War II—much less that Christians had anything to do with it. Bergen’s Concise History was just what I needed, especially when paired with a tour of the Holocaust Museum’s permanent exhibit. My reaction: Everyone should read this book.

Bergen mentions Elie Wiesel, who I had, of course, heard about, but never read. So I added Night to my audio playlist. The book’s conclusion will forever be linked in my mind with a morning walk from my hotel, past the White House and the Washington Memorial, to the Holocaust Museum where the seminar was held.

The seminar had an extensive required reading list of its own on the topic of “Reading the Bible after the Holocaust.” We looked at antisemitism in biblical scholarship before the Holocaust, Jewish and Christian theological responses to the Holocaust, including sermons by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, a Warsaw Ghetto rabbi whose sermon manuscripts were discovered after the war. We also discussed post-Holocaust biblical scholarship on texts about Jews in the New Testament, and genocide in the Hebrew Bible. It was tremendously valuable to be prompted to learn about the Holocaust, and then to have the chance to reflect on it in relation to my primary fields of teaching and research (Biblical Studies, ancient Judaism) in an interdisciplinary context. The combination of well-chosen texts, skilled facilitators and a diverse group of scholars made for an exceptionally rich experience that will continue to influence my thinking and teaching in significant ways.

But I left thinking less about biblical scholarship and more about similarities between Hitler’s rise to power and the rise of authoritarian movements today, where populist leaders once again stoke fear and hatred with lies and conspiracy theories, and, sadly, gain a following among Christians more enamored by power and force than love and the way of the cross.

Strunk & White and the Via Negativa

17. Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. - William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (3rd ed. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1979).

If you take William Strunk’s injunction to “Omit needless words” and perfect it, the result is the complete silence I have been practicing on this blog over the last couple months. But the end of term is upon us. Once I am done marking up my students’ needless words, perhaps I will have room to add a few of my own.  

Good Friday Snow

Old Testament Faculty Position at Briercrest College

I am happy to report that Briercrest College is looking to fill a faculty position in Old Testament: 

Briercrest College invites applications for a full-time faculty position in the field of Biblical Studies - Old Testament commencing August 1st, 2022. 

The successful candidate will be an enthusiastic teacher and researcher. Τhey will contribute to an established Biblical Studies Department in Briercrest's engaging intellectual and spiritual environment where the liberal arts, alongside biblical studies, stand at the core of all undergraduate degree programs. Candidates should possess a Ph.D. (although exceptional ABDs may be considered) and demonstrate potential for excellence in teaching, research, and service to the church. Experience teaching Biblical Hebrew using the communicative approach will be an asset.

More details about the position are here. 

Romans Readings

I decided to switch up the reading requirements for this fall's modular course on Paul's letter to the Romans. I will still require Stephen Westerholm's Understanding Paul (Baker Academic, 2004), which remains a fine introduction to the worldview of Romans:

But instead of Leander Keck's much longer (385 pp.) commentary on Romans (Abingdon, 2005), I am assigning (1) Beverly Roberts Gaventa's short and wonderfully engaging, When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul (Baker Academic, 2016):

(2) John Barclay's hot-off-the-press, Paul and the Power of Grace (Eerdmans, 2020):

(3) A longer selection of book chapters and journal articles by other Pauline scholars.

I still regard Keck's commentary as the best short commentary on Romans available—and my seminary students will still need to read it—but it is dense, and I am not sure my undergraduate students give themselves enough time to digest it. In different ways, Westerholm, Gaventa, and especially the chapters on Romans in Barclay will have to do as a shorter and more accessible pre-class discussion of Paul's argument.

Dropping Keck lets me assign a combination of recent and seminal journal articles and essays on parts of Romans, without adding (much!) to the overall reading load:

Dunn, James D. G. “The New Perspective on Paul.” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 65, no. 2 (1983): 95–122.

Eastman, Susan. “Double Participation and the Responsible Self in Romans 5-8.” Pages 93–110 in Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5-8. Edited by Beverly Roberts Gaventa. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013.

Gorman, Michael J. “‘Justified by Faith … Crucified with Christ’: Reconciliation with God through Participation in Christ.” Pages 111-131 in Reading Paul. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008.

Hays, Richard B. “Abraham as Father of Jews and Gentiles.” Pages 61–84 in The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005.

Käsemann, Ernst. “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul.” Pages 168–82 in New Testament Questions of Today. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969.

Linebaugh, Jonathan A. “Announcing the Human: Rethinking the Relationship between Wisdom of Solomon 13-15 and Romans 1.18-2.11.” New Testament Studies 57, no. 2 (2011): 214–37.

McCaulley, Esau. “Freedom Is No Fear: The New Testament and a Theology of Policing.” Pages 25–46 in Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Wright, Nicholas Thomas. “Christ, the Law and the People of God: The Problem of Romans 9-11.” Pages 231–57 in The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991. (too long, unfortunately)

Zoccali, Christopher. “‘And so All Israel Will Be Saved’: Competing Interpretations of Romans 11.26 in Pauline Scholarship.” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30, no. 3 (2008): 289–318.

The effect of assigning readings from a variety of perspectives will, I hope, increase student engagement as well as stimulate my own learning.

Here are the college and seminary versions of the syllabus for anyone who is interested:

• College version: BLST306 Romans
• Seminary version: BLST825 Romans  

For an assortment of other Romans-related posts, click here.

 

Ready or not, here we go

"This will be the most difficult period of our careers. But this is what it takes to live and work during a natural disaster. And we are the lucky ones." - Stan Yoshinobu, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education 

"This is definitely the most demanding and stressful period of preparation for a semester that I have ever had." - Alan Jacobs, Baylor University  

"Due to social distancing requirements & classroom sizes, my 3 courses of 25-28 students have become 6 hybrid courses of half that size. I'm essentially managing the logistics of 6 hybrid courses, & even as a very organized prof teaching courses I've done before this is an astonishing amount of work. It's what I need to do right now, and I'm thankful for a job that I love at an institution I love. But wow, we faculty need a serious break and some appreciation for all this. If you are faculty & still planning courses, do what you can to find ways to make things even a little easier on yourself this term, especially when the emotional support our students need will demand a lot from us--much more than usual, from what I'm already seeing." - Jessica Coblentz, St. Mary's College, Indiana  

"Reducing burnout in what might be an entirely new teaching environment should be on everyone’s mind." - Lance Piantaggini (MagisterP) 

As I anticipate the beginning of fall semester classes tomorrow, there is much to be grateful for: Briercrest College is located in a rural area that has not suffered a significant Covid outbreak. The college has worked hard to develop a solid plan that will follow provincial guidelines. And we have students who are eager to return to the classroom. 

From the academic side of things, the plan is to run two seven-week terms in the fall semester, with a combination of daily 45-min tutorials and asynchronous video lectures that we record in advance. To meet physical distancing requirements, large classes are divided into multiple sections. The intensive format means less time for grading and for class prep during the term itself. In my experience, the process of preparing, recording, editing, and uploading video lectures at least doubles the time I would normally spend preparing for and delivering a conventional lecture. Even with the summer to prepare, it won't be easy for faculty members to pull this off. 

My course assignment for the fall looks like (1) Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, a one-week modular class in the seminary (two weeks ago on Zoom), (2) two sections of Jewish Backgrounds in the first term (including another 18 of a projected 24 video lectures that I have yet to record), and (3) two sections of Biblical Hebrew taught as a living language in the second, fortunately with extra face-to-face class time instead of video lectures.

My semester theme is the chorus from this Bruce Cockburn song:

"Under the Mercy and I'm Okay."

Introduction to Biblical Interpretation

I'm not big on personal mission statements--unless the quote from Robert Frost in my sidebar counts: 

"My object in living is to unite / My avocation and my vocation / As my two eyes make one in sight."   

But if I were forced to articulate what makes me tick, what gets me up in the morning, it would have something to do with helping students read the Bible carefully and profitably, and helping students experience why it matters. That's why I'm committed to teaching Greek and Hebrew as effectively as I can, and that's why I'm looking forward to teaching a one-week Introduction to Biblical Interpretation modular course at Briercrest Seminary at the end of August. The full syllabus is here, if anyone is interested. 

The course will be offered over Zoom, so you can take it from the comfort of your living room. All you'd need is an internet connection. No travel required.  

Iain Provan on Serious Christian Education

“[T]hose who care greatly about the Bible's authority must necessarily care greatly about the Bible's proper meaning, and the elucidation of that meaning requires literary competence at various levels of Bible reading …. It is not by accident that the churches arising out of the Reformation, with their emphasis on sola scriptura, have historically been primary advocates and organizers of education for everyone. The Reformers understood that reading the Bible well required education—not least because the ability to read itself was the necessary prerequisite of Bible reading. We now live in a world, on the other hand, in which many factors currently conspire against literacy in general, even where people are technically capable of reading words on pages. Literary competence certainly cannot be taken for granted, even in general terms; and if people cannot read well in general, it stands to reason that they will not be able to read the Bible well in particular. In such a situation there is a need for the revival of serious Christian education—education that will not so much tell people what to think about the Bible, but will rather enable them to reengage with the Bible …. If, for example, Old Testament narrative is exhausting but also engaging, it is surely no part of the minister's task to try to intervene between the Bible and the congregation in order to make it less so. The task is surely to facilitate the exhaustion and the engagement, so that God may speak to people through the Scriptures as they experience both realities. The task is to teach literary competence with respect to the Bible as much as it is to preach the Bible's message, so that the sheep in our various flocks are not only hearing the word but also themselves reading it with understanding.” - Iain W. Provan,  “Literary Competence and Biblical Authority.” Word & World 26.4 (2006): 375–82, here 382.

Modular Course: Jewish Backgrounds to Early Christianity

I will be back in Saskatchewan in October to teach "Jewish Backgrounds to Early Christianity" as a week-long modular course at Briercrest. The class can be taken in the college as a 300-level undergraduate History or Biblical Studies elective, in the seminary (with a little more work) as a Masters-level Biblical Studies elective, or as an audit.

This is how I describe the course in the syllabus:

Contemporary scholars of Christian origins are committed to studying early Christianity carefully in its early Jewish context; they also agree that Judaism should be studied fairly on its own terms and not simply as the background to Early Christianity.

This course will adopt the same approach. We will examine pivotal “intertestamental” period events, such as the Maccabean revolt, and consider the impact of centuries of Persian, Greek and Roman rule on the beliefs, practices, and dreams of first-century Jews. We will learn about the distinctives of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, as well as what was common to the majority of ordinary Jews who did not belong to any group. We will also gain a first-hand acquaintance with early Jewish literature by reading selections from the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. By the end of this course, you will recognize more fully the richness and complexity of the Jewish milieu out of which Christianity developed. You will also be familiar with major trends in scholarship on early Judaism, and be better able to identify the nature and limits of the historical evidence, as well as to distinguish between speculative and solidly-grounded historical reconstructions.

And yet at every turn we will be concerned with the implications of what we are learning for our understanding of early Christianity. Our study of Jewish eschatological beliefs will shed light on the early Christian affirmation that Jesus is the Messiah. Our analysis of early Jewish interpretation of Scripture will help us pay attention to the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament; it will also provide an opportunity to explore the development of the Old Testament canon. Finally, what we learn about the role of the law in early Jewish life will provide a framework within which Paul’s statements about the law can be evaluated. Fresh ways of looking at familiar texts will raise new questions as well as answer old ones. This is good—not least because it can direct us back to the Bible, prepared to listen to Scripture more carefully and to hear its challenge with new force.

It's a course I've taught a bunch of times now--see here and here for past iterations--but never as a "mod." This time around I switched up some of the assignments to suit the intensive format, and, hopefully, my students. I also changed one of the key textbooks--assigning short essays from The Jewish Annotated New Testament instead of readings from George Nickelsburg's Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah. Here is the full list of assigned texts, in case anyone is interested:

Secondary Sources

Cohen, Shaye J. D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. 3rd ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2014.

Levine, Amy-Jill, and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Annotated NewTestament. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Reserve Reading 

Kugel, James L. “Early Jewish Biblical Interpretation.” Pages 151–78 in Early Judaism: A Comprehensive Overview. Edited by John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.

Sandmel, Samuel. “Parallelomania.” JBL 81 (1962): 1-13.

Primary Sources

Apocrypha: Coogan, Michael D., ed. The New OxfordAnnotated Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Dead Sea Scrolls: Vermes, Geza. Penguin Classics Complete Dead SeaScrolls in English. 7^th ed. New York: Penguin, 2012.

Pseudepigrapha (Note: You are not expected to purchase a copy, but you are required to bring a copy of the assigned readings from the Pseudepigrapha with you when they are discussed in class):

Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985. Repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010.

Or Charles, R. H., ed. Pseudepigrapha. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1913. (Online at www.ccel.org/ccel/charles/otpseudepig/ or http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/noncanon/pseudepigrapha.htm)

And here are the syllabi:
BLST 371 College Biblical Studies Syllabus
HIS 371 College History Syllabus
BLST 801 Seminary Biblical Studies Syllabus

On Teaching Romans

I flew back to Canada in October to teach an intensive one-week course on the book of Romans, a class I have taught every second year since the winter semester of 2007. In some respects not much has changed: This year I returned to the same major textbooks I assigned when I first taught the course, and my notes are still deeply indebted to that first wild, desperate ride through the letter.

With experience comes a certain measure of confidence. I am now much more comfortable with the material, I have a good sense for what tends to work in class, and I have learned much from my students' observations and penetrating questions. In each new rendition of the course I am able to work in fresh material as well as to flag specific areas that need more attention or rethinking the next time through.

Still, Romans remains a challenge. As I began preparing for class this fall, I was met by the equivalent of an unpointed Hebrew text. I needed my notes to be the Masoretic vowel points, indicating how it should be read, reminding me how I construed this or that exegetical issue. To extend the metaphor, how you point the text--the exegetical decisions you make--in a few key passages forecloses other options and determines your reading of the whole letter. (The danger is that one's own laziness, refusing to wrestle honestly with alternatives, will reinforce how one has always read the text.)

Romans is also tremendously challenging in other respects. One takeaway for me this time through is a surprising convergence between the 19th-century English preacher, Charles Spurgeon, and the 20th-century German scholar, Ernst Käsemann, both of whom remind us that Romans is not about some theological abstraction, but about encounter with and dependence on the living God:

“[T]he gift which is being bestowed here is never at any time separable from its Giver. It partakes of the character of power, in so far as God himself enters the arena and remains in the arena with it. Thus personal address, obligation and service are indissolubly bound up with the gift. ... [E]very gift of God which has ceased to be seen as the presence of the Giver and has therefore lost its character as personal address, is grace misused and working to our destruction.” - Ernst Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 174-5.

Spurgeon, as one would expect, puts it more colourfully:

“Depend upon it, my dear Brothers and Sisters, if ever our sins are to die, it must be with Christ. You will find you cannot kill the smallest viper in the nest of your heart if you get away from the Cross. There is no death for sin except in the death of Christ.” - Charles Spurgeon, “The Old Man Crucified” (sermon #882).

I began teaching Romans around the time I started blogging. For an assortment of other Romans-related posts, click here. 

On Killing Trees

While I admire those who can deliver brilliant lectures or lead class discussion without any written aids, I don't aspire to their example. The presence or absence of notes is, in my view, no sure sign of teaching effectiveness. Notes are not an instructor's training wheels to be abandoned when a teacher can ride without them. Nor need they be a constraint.
Depending on how many times I have taught the course, the notes become more of a prop than a constant reference, a security blanket, if you will, that gives me freedom to innovate and be present in class, focused on reaching and engaging my students without being distracted by the fear of losing my place or missing something crucial.

My usual practice has been to print off a new set of notes before each class, and to mark them up lightly as part of my final class prep. If I have taught the course before, I glance at my marginal annotations from the previous iteration before finalizing the latest version.

Inevitably, end-of-term haste means that the new binder of notes gets added to the old. Over time the paper adds up. As I cleaned my office this summer, the detritus of more than a decade's worth of teaching filled a recycle bin and led to a glut of empty binders.



The experience was motivation enough to look around for alternatives. If I had $700 USD to spare, I would be inclined to abandon paper altogether and switch over to Sony's newest Digital Paper solution, where "writing and drawing feel as natural as on real paper":

The only downside to the Sony DPT-RP1 is the price tag. Since money does not grow on trees, I expect to stick with real paper for the time being.

Why study 1 Corinthians

As I mentioned back in October, I will be teaching a 300-level course on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians this semester. In the syllabus, I make a case for studying the letter this way:

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is a valuable resource for readers who wish to recover evidence for day-to-day church life in the mid-first-century CE, but the relative abundance of historical data in 1 Corinthians also poses a challenge. Of all Paul’s letters, 1 Corinthians may strike modern readers as the most firmly embedded in an alien historical setting. Reading 1 Corinthians well as a historical document demands more than tracing Paul’s argument; readers must also learn about the archaeology of ancient Corinth, the social and religious beliefs and practices of first-century Jews, Greeks and Romans, and the conventions of ancient rhetoric.

The challenge of reconstructing the letter’s context is matched by the demands of its contents. Paul’s instructions are sometimes challenging because they seem obviously and uncomfortably relevant. They address issues—like church unity, sexual morality and the practice of spiritual gifts—with which the twenty-first-century church continues to struggle. Sometimes they are challenging because the topics, such as head coverings and food sacrificed to idols, seem foreign to contemporary concerns and cultural norms; sometimes they seem equally familiar and foreign at the same time.

Readers who seek to read 1 Corinthians faithfully as Christian Scripture must be alert to the ways in which their own horizons of experience and their own preferences shape and constrain their interpretations. They must also face the hermeneutical challenge of applying what Paul says to their own twenty-first-century contexts. These challenges make 1 Corinthians a fascinating and rewarding subject of study.

In this class we will draw on all the interpretive resources at our disposal to read 1 Corinthians carefully in its historical context, and to consider its implications for contemporary readers.

By the end of this course, students will be able to articulate an understanding of the letter’s purpose, summarize its content, trace its flow of thought, and explain how Paul responds theologically to practical questions. They will be familiar with a range of options in the interpretation of key texts and be able to illustrate how knowledge of the socio-historical context of the letter affects its interpretation. They will also be able to describe hermeneutical challenges posed by the text, and be better prepared to engage it seriously as Christian Scripture.

A copy of the full syllabus is available online here.

Requesting a 1 Corinthians Reading List

Erastus Inscription, Corinth

The lot fell to me to design a new upper level biblical studies elective this year, and I (probably foolishly) decided on Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth. I reasoned that the letter would be closer to my current teaching and research interests than the book of Revelation (my other main option). 1 Corinthians also follows the Gospels, Acts, and Romans--all courses that have formed part of my regular teaching assignment. Why not work sequentially through the New Testament?

I taught 1 Corinthians once before, twenty years ago at a Bible school in Kenya, fresh out of college, with the first edition of Gordon Fee's NICNT commentary as a lifeline. In seminary I took a course on the Corinthian Correspondence from Murray J. Harris, who assigned C.K. Barrett's BNTC commentaries as textbooks. That is, more or less, my last serious academic engagement with the book.

Needless to say, I have some catching up to do. One of the reasons for the blog silence this semester is that I have been trying to read ahead for next semester. I am not as far along as I'd like, however, and a textbook deadline looms. I could use some help:


Primary Textbook: For courses like this, I typically look for an excellent, relatively short, and readable commentary, as a primary textbook. For 1 Corinthians, I haven't found anything better than Richard Hays's 1999 contribution to the Interpretation series.

Secondary Textbook/Articles: To fill in the secondary readings, I'm casting about for one or more of the following:

• A shorter, accessible book that introduces the text from a more practical or theological level (though Hays does both exceptionally well), or an introduction to the historical context.
• *A set of paired articles introducing diverse perspectives on major issues in 1 Corinthians.

Any reading recommendations, particularly of seminal essays on 1 Corinthians, will be appreciated!

Waiting for the Summer

Winter semester classes ended last Tuesday. "Summer," for the purposes of this post, begins in another couple weeks--after I have made my way through a small mountain of marking, and submit final grades.

Then I transition from marking essays to writing them: I am happy to report that both my SBL proposals were accepted this year, which means that I will be presenting two papers in San Antonio in November, one in the Book of Acts section, the other in the Hebrew Bible and Political Theory section. It also means that I have two papers to write during the summer. Fortunately for me, neither is brand new:

• "Maccabean Characterization and Reverse Polemic in Acts" will be a major revision of a paper I gave at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies annual meeting last spring in Ottawa. More details about the CSBS version are here.
•  "The 'Prophet like Moses' and Josephus's Aristocratic Ideal" will be a revision--minor, I hope--of a paper I am scheduled to give at this year's CSBS at the end of May in Calgary. Provided that the pieces of my argument come together in time, I hope to show that, at least in the Antiquities, Deuteronomy 18 informs Josephus's political philosophy. 

Summer also means preparing for next year's classes, including two brand new courses (a first year "Introduction to the New Testament" and a 300-level elective on 1 Corinthians), second-year Hebrew, and an upper level elective on the book of Acts. S'all good, but full.

Somewhere in there will be vacation too.