Category Archives: Teaching & Learning

SBL Forum: Teaching, Text Criticism, and Texts

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The latest SBL Forum is online and has a number of interesting articles. Stephen Carlson (of hypotyposeis fame) has a preview of his coming SBL presentation on “Archaic Mark” (MS 2427), while Stefan C. Reif introduces some newly discovered Genizah texts. Another announcement in this month’s forum is that the online journal TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism is now an official SBL publication.

What especially caught my eye in this month’s forum was an article by fellow Canadian and friend Tim McLay. Tim wrote a piece entitled “The Goal of Teaching Biblical and Religious Studies in the Context of an Undergraduate Education.” In this article Tim first deals with the goal of an undergraduate education, which he argues is first and foremost “to learn to think critically and to articulate one’s ideas better in oral and written form.” His second and related claim is that “the content of teaching is irrelevant.” While I have a knee-jerk reaction to Tim’s second claim, in the context of his article I can appreciate his point — especially when you think of it in light of his rhetorical question: “How often are we concerned to finish our lecture rather than entertain a question?” While I am not terribly content driven (witness the fact that I used to have a hard time getting out of the Pentateuch in my OT Literature class!), I do feel that a certain amount of content is necessary for the introductory courses. Nevertheless, Tim’s point is well taken as a reminder to be flexible in the classroom.

Perhaps my more substantial objection is to his first point. Isn’t a liberal arts education more than just critical thinking? Don’t get me wrong — the development of critical thinking skills is a crucial component of a liberal arts education — I just think that a liberal arts education should be so much more. What do you think?


The Return of the Gods to Western Culture

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passionate_intellect_sm.jpgLast week Taylor University College hosted Dr. Jens Zimmermann from Trinity Western University as our speaker for our annual Faith & Culture Conference. The theme of this year’s conference was “Incarnational Humanism and the Christian University.” Most of the lectures touched on some aspect of what it means to be a student at a Christian university — many of his thoughts on this subject may be found in his just-published book (with Norman Klassen), The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education (Baker Academic, 2006; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). I would highly recommend this book for students and professors — and not only those at Christian liberal arts universities.

The Thursday night public lecture was on the topic of religion and culture after secularism. In his lecture, entitled “Return of the gods? Faith and Intellectual Culture after Secularism,” Dr. Zimmermann tried to map out some of the concerns about culture currently shared by Christian and non-Christian thinkers and was a parade example of how Christians should think about culture.

In a nutshell, his lecture explored the demise of secularism and the resurgence of spirituality in Western culture. This resurgence is not uniform, nor is it in many cases associated with institutional religion. Rather, it is diverse and frequently appears under the label “spiritualityâ€? in a — sometimes deliberate — attempt to distinguish them from traditional, institutionalized religions. The question that Dr. Zimmerman raised is “What are we to make of this cultural development? More specifically he tackled the basic question of what the supposed exhaustion of secularism and the seemingly related return of religion into the public sphere, even into the very ivory towers of academia, actually means. In the first part of his presentation he described several causes for the demise of secularism and the resurgence of religion. He then tried to formulate a response from a religious, i.e., a broadly Christian perspective; this response is more a reflection on what is at stake in this current cultural development than it is a solution to the tensions we currently experience.

If this summary has piqued your interest, you may download and listen to the lecture for free. Just check out the Taylor Public Lecture Series on Religion & Culture web page here.


Dr. Seuss Learns Greek

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My previous post, “Abbott and Costello Learn Hebrew,” seems to have been a hit, so I thought I would post a reading that I use when I teach Koine Greek. This has its origins in my days as a student at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C. I can’t recall who originally wrote it, but I have had a copy that I have edited through the years.

Feel free to use it with attribution (“Got this from Tyler Williams who got it from someone at Regent College”!). If I find out who wrote the original I will post it. Enjoy.

Dr. Seuss Learns Greek

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Do you like to study Greek?

I do not like to study Greek
Whoever does becomes a geek.

Will you study here? or there?

I will not study here or there
I will not study anywhere.

Would you study in your room?

Not in my room
Not in a tomb
Not here or there
Not anywhere
I do not want to study Greek
I do not want to be a geek.

Would you study at a table?
Would you, would you, if you’re able?

I will not study at a table,
I will not study, though I’m able
I do not like that Greek you see
At college or at seminary
I do not want to study Greek
I do not want to be a geek.

Would you study in the rain?
Would you like to use your brain?

Not in the rain
Not with my brain
Stop please stop
Don’t ask again

Would you, could you on term break?
Do it for the gospel’s sake?

I will not do it on term break
Not even for the gospel’s sake
I do not like to memorize
Those funny letters hurt my eyes
Not in the rain
Not with my brain
Not at a table
Though I’m able
Not in my room
Not in a tomb
Not here or there
Not anywhere
I do not want to study Greek
I do not want to be a geek.

You may like it, you will see
Try studying Greek in a tree.

I would not, could not in a tree
Not on term break
Quit bugging me!
What?! Use my brain?
Not at a table
Though I’m able
Not in my room
Not in a tomb
Not here or there
Not anywhere
I do not want to study Greek
I do not want to be a geek.

Take Greek this term
Without apology
Drop Systematic Theology

Perhaps for you, but not for me
Greek isn’t practical, you see
I’d rather learn to fix transmissions
I’m a candidate for missions

Would you take it in the summer?
Six weeks of verbs won’t make you dumber
You might like the paradigms
Repeating lists five thousand times

I would not, could not in the summer
For six whole weeks–what a bummer!
I will not drop another class
My GPA!! I might not pass
I will not study Greek at all
Not in summer, not in fall

You don’t like Greek
That’s what I’m hearing

You won’t get lost!
That’s what I’m fearing!

Could you not learn three small words?

Not three
Not two
Not even one
Too much pain
Not much gain
Against my grain

Do you think Greek is for the birds?

Not for birds, perhaps for nerds
I will not learn it
It ain’t fun
Not three, not two
Not even one
I will not study Greek at all
Not in summer, not in fall
I’d rather take Christology
Or Gypsy Numerology
Not in the rain
Not with my brain
I will not study in a tree
Get off my case and let me be!
Not at a table
Though I’m able
Not in my room
Not in a tomb
Not here or there, not anywhere
I do not want to study Greek
I do not want to be a geek.

You do not like it, so you say
Try it, try it, and you may
Try it and you may, I say

O.K., if you will let me be
I will try it, watch and see
Λεγω, λεγεις, λεγει, λεγομεν
I can’t do this stuff — Amen!

Say it again
Forget “amen”
You will do better
If you say each letter

Λεγετε, λεγει, λεγεις, λεγω
I think I’ve got it!
Do you think so?

Now you’ve got it!
You’re on your way
A Bible scholar
Some future day
Without a dollar
And hair all grey
If you pass Greek intro
To Greek exegesis you will go
And if you really want some fun
You can take Greek until you’re done
Then it’s Hebrew
I will teach you

Λεγετε, λεγω, λεγεις, λεγει
Those few verbs and I’m on my way
Learning Greek is so much fun
Barely started, and I’m almost done
Now I’ll learn those paradigms
Repeat vocab a million times
Cards on a ring
Will be my thing
In the summer, in the fall
I’ll do it any time at all
I’ll switch Greek for other classes
No one hits a geek with glasses
I will study in a tree
Now I know Greek is for me
I will do a PhD
I will study on term break
Greek will be a piece of cake
I will study in the rain
Let conjugations fill my brain
I will study at a table
Learn the aorist since I’m able
I will study in my room
Morning, night and afternoon
I will study here and there
I will study EVERYwhere
I do so love to study Greek
I will be a first class geek!


Beloit’s Mindset List – How About One for Canadians?

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Beloit College in the USA publishes a “Mindset List” at the begining of every academic year that claims to look “at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students.” This year’s list may be found here. Even better, take a look at Chris Heard’s commentary on the list here.

The list is (naturally) very American.  It would be interesting to compose a list that would fit the Canadian context, eh?  Any takers? Suggestions?


Teaching Classical Hebrew

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I will be teaching Introduction to Classical Hebrew again this year. I have almost ten years experience teaching Hebrew and I can say that I still love teaching it! For my introductory course am going to use Kittel’s text, which is now in its second edition:

Biblical Hebrew: Text and Workbook, Second Edition.
Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Vicki Hoffer, Rebecca Wright
New Haven: Yale, 2005. Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com

While I have a number of issues with this text, including the fact that the second edition is only a negligible improvement over the first (if even that), I still find it the best for introducing undergrads to the language of the Hebrew Bible. I like its inductive approach, though I do augment it with a series of more deductive handouts to give students the “big picture” before the text actually provides it. I have developed a number of resources for teaching introductory Hebrew with Kittel and most of them are available on my “Resources for Kittel” page. I also have a discussion of introductory Hebrew grammars available here.

In regards to Classical Hebrew grammars, Joe Cathay has a good blog post where he surveys some Hebrew grammars. I pretty much agree with Joe, though I have never found LaSor that helpful. I’m also not sure that when it comes to grammars there are only “basic” and “advanced.” While there is some truth to the notion that learning Hebrew is an “either/or” proposition, I see an important role for intermediate grammars.

Intermediate grammars are helpful for students to make the jump from the basic understanding of the language gained in a one-year introductory course to being able to understand the discussions in GKC, Joüon and Muraoka, or Waltke & O’Connor. There are two different types of intermediate grammars: those that focus on developing reading ability with some attention to matters of morphology and syntax (I would put Ben Zvi’s grammar in this category); and those that provide a summary discussion of the advanced grammars (I would put Arnold and Choi, Williams, and van der Merwe in this category). While the taxonomy of “introductory – intermediate – advanced” may not be ideal, I still prefer it to Joe’s (too) two broad categories of “basic – advanced.”

You can see my discussion of intermediate and advanced Hebrew grammars on my “Annotated Bibliography for Mastering Biblical Hebrew” page.

Finally, Michael Bird over at Euangelion posted on teaching resources. In regards to Hebrew one article (among many) that I found quite helpful in my thinking about how to teach Classical Hebrew is an article by David W. Baker called “Studying the Original Texts: Effective Learning and Teaching of Biblical Hebrew” in Make the Old Testament Live: From Curriculum to Classroom, edited by Richard S. Hess and Gordon J. Wenham (Eerdmans, 1998; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com).

All my online Biblical Hebrew resources may be found here.


Email and the Student-Teacher Relationship

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The New York Times published an interesting article the other day by Jonathan D. Glater entitled, “To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me” (To read the full article you will have to sign-up for a free account). The article explores the implications of technology such as email on the student-professor relationship. Here are some relevent excerpts:

At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance.These days, they say, students seem to view them as available around the clock, sending a steady stream of e-mail messages — from 10 a week to 10 after every class — that are too informal or downright inappropriate.
….
While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor’s time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.
….
But such e-mail messages can have consequences, she added. “Students don’t understand that what they say in e-mail can make them seem very unprofessional, and could result in a bad recommendation.”

Still, every professor interviewed emphasized that instant feedback could be invaluable. A question about a lecture or discussion “is for me an indication of a blind spot, that the student didn’t get it,” said Austin D. Sarat, a professor of political science at Amherst College.
….
A few professors said they had rules for e-mail and told their students how quickly they would respond, how messages should be drafted and what types of messages they would answer.

Meg Worley, an assistant professor of English at Pomona College in California, said she told students that they must say thank you after receiving a professor’s response to an e-mail message.

“One of the rules that I teach my students is, the less powerful person always has to write back,” Professor Worley said.

This raises a bunch of interesting questions for instructors. As a professor who encourages students to email me and one who is pretty informal, I don’t see it as a huge issue. I find email a great way to communicate with my students. I try to respond to most emails in a timely manner and I don’t necessarily reply to every email, especially if they are not directly tied to the course (as a rule I do not like email responses that require too involved a response; I will typically ask the student to catch me after the next class if possible).

I do like the idea of setting up some guidelines for emails at the onset, as I have received some emails that were too informal and bordering on inappropriate. I am not sure I would expect students to send a thank you reply. I do have “netiquette” rules that I use for class discussion lists and boards that I could adapt.

What do you — whether instructor or student — think? The comment board is open.


Faith-Based Wissenschaft: An Oxymoron?

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Michael V. Fox has a thought provoking essay at the most recent SBL Forum entitled, “Bible Scholarship and Faith-Based Study: My View.” While I have the utmost respect for Fox as a scholar (his various works on the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible are absolutely second to none), I am not sure I agree with his bold statement “faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship” (see Danny Zacharias’s reflections at Deinde, as well as James Crossley’s posts here and here).

On the one hand, I’m not sure I like the implication that “faith-based scholarship” (or Wissenschaft) is an oxymoron. While I would agree that any scholarship that presumes its conclusions is methodologically problematic (and borders on disingenuous), faith-based scholarship does not necessarily have to fall in this category (though some certainly does). Furthermore, I would think that secular Wissenschaft could learn a lot from a lot of faith-based scholarship as well as other ideological approaches. As Peter Donovan has recently noted, “the scientific study of religion can ill afford to insulate itself from the thinking of others interested in the same subject-matter, merely because they may hold very different views about theory and method” (“Neutrality in Religious Studies,” in The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader [ed. Russell T. McCutcheon; New York: Cassell, 1999], 245). What is perhaps most important for any approach to biblical studies is that the approach is academically sound, methodologically rigorous, and up front about any and all presuppositions.

On the other hand, Fox’s point has some validity in that he is not dismissing the “scholarship of persons who hold a personal faith.” In fact, he notes that “there are many religious individuals whose scholarship is secular and who introduce their faith only in distinctly religious forums.” Basically what I understand Fox as saying is that “Wissenschaft” employs a “secular, academic, religiously-neutral hermeneutic” and any scholars who want to engage in biblical Wissenschaft needs to play by the agreed upon rules. Thus, Wissenschaft becomes a “middle discourse” by which people of different faiths and/or no faith can engage in scholarly discourse.

This debate within biblical studies is paralleled by a larger debate within the discipline of religious studies. Since the end of the nineteenth century, the discipline of religious studies has typically been understood to be the “value-neutral” and “objective” study of religions, while theology is the confessional or particularistic study of one religion (see, for example, Donald Wiebe, “The Politics of Religious Studies,” CSSR Bulletin 27/4 [November 1998] 95-98). This distinction played an important part in the establishment of religious studies departments in a number of universities in Europe and North America — and especially Canadian public universities (interestingly, not all educational institutions thought that the distinction was necessary). This traditional demarcation has been challenged on some fronts in light of the postmodern recognition that there is no real objective, value-neutral study of religion (or any other subject for that matter), and thus the only differences between the disciplines are the rules agreed upon by those working within them — the rules of the game, so to speak.

(For an interesting discussion of postmodern theories of religious studies, see the interaction between Garrett Green, “Challenging the Religious Studies Canon: Karl Barth’s Theory of Religion,” Journal of Religion 75 [1995] 473-86; Russell T. McCutcheon, “My Theory of the Brontosaurus: Postmodernism and ‘Theory’ of Religion,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 26/1 [1997] 3-23, and William E. Arnal, “What if I Don’t Want to Play Tennis?: A Rejoinder to Russell McCutcheon on Postmodernism and Theory of Religion,” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 27/1 [1998] 61-68; see also McCutcheon’s response, “Returning the Volley to William E. Arnal” on pp. 67-68 of the same issue).

In practice, religious studies (and biblical studies) in the Canadian public university context tends to be the scientific study of religion which does not privilege one religious discourse above another. Theology, on the other hand, is typically defined as the study of one religion from a confessional standpoint. So in this sense, I agree with Fox that there is a valid difference between faith-based scholarship and secular scholarship. But the question remains “what rules are we going to play by?” While I appreciate Fox’s point, I am skeptical about whether there is any scholarship that is truly “objective” and “value-neutral.” And any scholar who suggests that their work is “objective” and “value-neutral” would perhaps be more at home in the 19th century! I for one live in both worlds and produce scholarship for a variety of contexts. Some of my research is for the broader academy and employs methods appropriate for such work, while some of my study is for the community of faith to which I belong and employs a slightly different approach. I hope, however, that all of my research may stand up under the scrutiny of scholars who take different approaches and have different presuppositions than I.

Let me end with the final exchange between David and his Rebbe from Chaim Potok’s masterful book In the Beginning (Ballantine, 1997; Buy from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com).

  • Rebbe: “… Are you telling me you will not be an observer of the commandments?”
  • David: “I am not telling the Rebbe that.”
  • Rebbe: “What are you telling me?”
  • David: “I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”
  • Rebbe: “Lurie, if the Torah cannont go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.”

Athens Revisted…

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In regards to the previous post “Between Athens and Jerusalem: Thoughts on Critical Commitment” I made reference to the idea of “critical commitment.” As a faculty we read V. James Mannoia’s book Christian Liberal Arts: An Education that Goes Beyond. One of the main arguments Mannoia makes is that you want to engender critical commitment in your students, not dogmatism nor cynicism. In order to produce this critical commitment you need to introduce just enough dissonance (not too much or they will retreat). This is the toughest part: introducing just the right amount of dissonance so that they will grow and not wither. Mannoia’s work also takes into consideration the different stages students will be at and how you need to treat them diferently. The bibliographic data for this work is:

Mannoia, V. James. Christian Liberal Arts: An Education That Goes Beyond. Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.
Buy from Amazon.ca – Buy from Amazon.com

I would highly recommend for any educator in faith-based schools.

Between Athens and Jerusalem: Thoughts on Critical Commitment

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Thanks to the heads up on Michael Pahl’s blog, I took a look at the latest SBL Forum and read C. Drew Smith’s post, "’Between Athens and Jerusalem’: Reading Liberal Books at Church-Based Universities." As a professor at a faith-based university, I can sympathize with Smith’s experiences. I too believe that in a liberal arts education students should read and engage a broad spectrum of scholarship — both "liberal" and evangelical (As an aside, I really do not like expressing this in the form of a dichotomy, as it is not in reality two distinct sides. Every author writes from her or his own ideological perspective and we are want to discern that when we engage them in our studies or in our classrooms). What our goal is critical commitment, not indoctrination. As Smith notes:

Would we not, as Christian liberal arts institutions, want to rise above the increasingly entrenched dichotomy between conservative and liberal, offering opportunities to hear various voices speak? And in doing so, should we not be humble enough to admit that there are positive contributions made by those who think differently from us, even when such difference is vast? And if we can come to this point, have we not reached the true goal of education, which is to consider all the evidence and to draw thoughtful and critical conclusions from that evidence? This to me is the essence of learning in a liberal arts tradition.

While I haven’t had much protest from students in regards to textbooks, I have had to talk to local pastors who have had concerns. This has prompted me to put disclaimers in my syllabi indicating that these books are to be read critically, etc. (I’ve been wondering whether or not I should put such a disclaimer on my Old Testament Commentary Survey so that well-intentioned readers don’t think that when I say so-and-so’s commentary is the best of the bunch, I endorse it’s theological or ideological perspective as well — which I may or may not). I don’t really like having to put the disclaimers in (as I feel they are just stating the obvious), but if it helps first year students, parents, and local pastors understand a bit about what goes on in the classroom, then so be it.

On the flipside, I feel that the education students receive at a faith-based university may actually be more of a true liberal arts education than a non-faith based university. At a faith-based university we look at all perspectives — including faith-based scholarship, which I imagine is often neglected at "secular" institutions (again the dichotomy!). At any rate, I encourage you to take a look at the SBL Forum, and Smith’s post in particular.