Reading Questions for 3/2 - 2 Samuel
Posted on January 15, 2006
The reading for this week is the second book of Samuel, a book that (together with 1Samuel) is arguably the most profoundly imagined, the most compelling narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Here are some questions and guidelines that should help focus your reading and the discussion this week.
(For those of you not in class this past Thursday--a lot of you!--there is a handout that you can pick up in the bin outside my office door--432 Old Mill--and e-reserve reading as well, a translation by Robert Alter of Chapter 11 of 2Samuel; ou'll find it under "David Story" on e-reserve.)
The first few chapters of 2 Samuel are rather confusing: basically David is working to consolidate the kingdom, which is divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel (ruled by Ishbaal) and the Southern Kingdom of Judah (now ruled by David). Pay close attention to what happens in chapters 1-4. Who are the key players? Pay particular attention to the role of Joab (David's right-hand man, who will be enormously important throughout the book).
Chapter 6 contains a brilliant display of the way that dialogue can work in the text--what do you make of the events leading to, and the dialogue itself between David and Michal?
Read Chapter 11--the Bathsheba chapter--in the e-reserve "David Story"--it's Robert Alter's translation of this chapter and it also contains some wonderful commentary.
Remember the way that Alter talked about David in the passages from the Art of Biblical Narrative dealing with the dual introduction of David--the public David and the private David. How do you see that borne out by the events in this book, particularly the events following the Bathsheba incident (and extending into the rest of the book). Pay particular attention to David's relationship with his son, Absalom. How would you characterize that relationship? How does Joab figure into these events, particularly the events with Absalom?
Think, too, about David's relationship with Mephibosheth (and think about how you would pronounce that name!). It is a strand that runs through most of the book--what do you make of it?
Can you discover what it is about the census at the end of 2Samuel that gets David into trouble? Why would taking a census be such a sin?
Reading Questions for 2/23 - 1 Samuel
Posted on January 16, 2006
Here are some questions and suggestions that might help focus your reading of the first book of Samuel:
Think about the family narrative at the beginning of the book—what do you make of it? In a Hebrew Bible, Samuel comes right after Judges (Ruth shows up elsewhere). Think of the narrative effect of moving from the story that ends Judges to the story that begins Samuel—how would you describe that narrative effect?
Pay really close attention to 1 Samuel 8, the people’s clamoring for a king. Think about Samuel’s response and then about the anointing of the king that follows. What do you think of Saul as a leader? How is he introduced to us?
Alter has a great section on the two different introductions we have to David: read that carefully from The Art of Biblical Narrative (the passage is noted on your syllabus) and think about those two introductions as, like Genesis 1 and 2, an significant example of composite narrative. How does it characterize David for us? What do you make of him as a character?
Pay attention once again to the women in this book—what is their role?
In class we will discuss the possibility of Saul as a tragic figure—pay attention in your reading to that possibility.
Why, finally, do you think the book is called “Samuel” (and not “Saul” or “David”)?
Reading Questions for 2/16 - Joshua and Judges
Posted on January 17, 2006
Your reading for this week is from the books of Joshua and Judges (yes, we are skipping Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy). Here are some questions that might help focus your reading for the class discussion:
What sorts of repetition do you notice in Joshua and Judges? Do you notice repeated themes or motifs from the readings we've done in Genesis and Exodus?
Both Joshua and Judges are excessively violent--what do we do with all the violence in these books?
Think of the women characters in Judges--both the named and the unnamed women. How do women function (narratively) in this book?
What happens at the end of Judges? Do the final stories have something to do with the reason these stories have been canonized in the Hebrew Bible? In other words, is there anything at all that explains what the redactors were thinking and why this book in particular is in the Bible at all? Does it have something to do with the process of nation-building that we're seeing?
Please remember that your reading for this week includes two excellent essays by Tikva Frymer-Kensky on the women in Judges--both essays should be up on e-reserve on Monday.
Reading Questions for 2/9
Posted on January 18, 2006
You Bible reading for this week is the entire book of Exodus. Here are some questions that might help focus your reading:
Again, think about the role of women in this story, particularly in the first part of the Moses story. How do they function in the story?
What do you thnk of Moses as a leader? Why does God choose him?
How do you read all those plagues in Egypt--what is the literary function of that part of the story do you think?
Exodus introduces us to a new kind of narrative in the biblical text, a narrative that merges conventional story with normative text, or the law. How would you describe that merging? What is the effect of al that law on the story? On the people? On God for that matter?
Okay, the tabernacle....think about what Alter says about repetition and try to make some sense of the function of all that repeated detail. How does it function in this story?
Reading Questions for 2/2
Posted on January 18, 2006
Sorry these are a little late; hopefully they are not too late to be helpful. These questions should help you focus a bit on the reading from the second half of Genesis:
How would you characterize Jacob and Esau? If you had to cast them for a movie, who would you cast? Why?
What do you think happens at the Jabbok? Who is the man Jacob wrestles with? What are some of the ways you might interpret this story?
Chapter 34 is another one of those “interpolated” narratives (like Sodom and Gomorrah). How do you make sense of it in the narrative sweep of this half of Genesis? (Those of you who have read The Red Tent will be very familiar with one particular interpretation of this story.)
The note at the bottom of page 55 explains that the saga of Joseph and his brothers enacts “a drama of divine providence that ties together all the themes and concerns of Genesis.” How would you define those themes and concerns?
As should by now be clear to you, one of the things that Robert Alter is most interested in is characterization: how do the narrative strategies of the Hebrew Bible work to further our sense of the characters in the stories, he asks. He, of course, is most interested in the text’s “major” characters, and most of those characters are (arguably) male. But there are a lot of female characters in Genesis as well. Keeping in mind the reading strategies Alter is introducing us to, think about the female characters from the second half of Genesis and consider some of the ways in which they are characterized in the text.
Reading Questions for 1/26
Posted on January 19, 2006
This week you're reading the first half of Genesis and three chapters from the Art of Biblical Narrative. Here are some questions that might help focus your biblical reading and to which you're welcome to respond both in class and in the comment section at the end of this post.
Genesis begins with two different creation stories. How would you characterize each one? Why do you think there are two? How do they work in "conversation" with each other?
The story of Noah and his ark should be pretty familiar to everyone. But when you really stop to think about it, what kind of story is this? "Righteousness" is a word that gets used a lot in the story, but what's the status of that concept by the end of the story?
With the story of Abram and Sarai we are introduced to the idea of the covenant, the "contract" that is the foundation of Hebrew monotheism. Think about the terms of that contract and the toll it takes on Abram's family, and Isaac's family thereafter. How can we characterize the relationship between God and Abram's family? How might we characterize the relationships between just the human beings in this story?
Think about the "sign" of the covenant, the bodily sign. What do you make of it? Why that? What's its significance?
In chapter 18, God promises Abraham and Sarah a son, but an awful lot happens before that son is born in chapter 21. Think about the significance of the stories that come between the promise and the delivery--how are they in a kind of conversation with the text that frames them?
Registering with Type Key
Posted on January 20, 2006
The very first time you attempt to sign in, the blog-site will not recognize you; so you need to register through a program called “type key” (which will enable you to post to thousands of blog-sites in cyberspace, though it’s unlikely you would want to). Type key is menu driven, but I will explain the steps here.
Once you get to Type key (which you will get to by clicking on "comment" where you want to comment), you will see entry areas on the left and the right. Ignore the left side for now (you will use it later); go to the right side and click “create free account.” You are then taken to the “Sign Up” page. Enter the following:
Member Name (usually students use the uvm log-in name: first initial and last name / for me that’s “lschnell”)
Display name (your full name, at least your first name--please no nicknames unless we all know it)
Password (best if you just use the same one as you use with your regular email)
Then you go to Personal Information: First Name / Last Name / Email address
Then: a “Confirmation code” will appear; type code on the line available
Then: you need to “agree to terms of service” and tell computer you are over 13 years old (menu driven)
Then: click to sign up
Then: you will see “Enter Activation Code; as soon as you sign up, you will be sent an “activation code” to your email address (whatever you entered) that you use to validate your email address / password. It’s easiest if you just keep type key open and go to your email, retrieve the activation code and either type it or cut and paste it into the entry line on type key. But the email message will give you instructions about other ways to do this. Once you give type key that activation code, you click “continue” and the computer should tell you what a fantastic person you are (or something like that); when you click out of type key, you should return to the blog site. You may see a note that you are not properly signed in; so just click Sign In again, and enter your member name (like “lschnell”) and your password, and then you should be able to post a comment. If this is a problem, just exit the blog site and re-enter it; go to comments again, go to sign in, and this time you can put your member name and password on the left side of the sign-in page, and this will enable you to post. You will see a big box for “Comments,” and then you can click post. Don’t worry about space for “URL.” After you post, sometimes you need to click the reload button on the computer to see it … but we should all be able to get that post.
Reading for 3/16 (Ruth, Ezra, Job)
Posted on March 10, 2006
Lisa was providing something like a study guide for previous weeks; I will continue the practice.
We will spend the first half of class for 3/16 on the Book of Ruth (material from Ezra--a priest who essentially ruled Judah as a sort client state of the Persian Empire ... you met him in the video last night--is mainly in support of our understanding of Ruth); the second half of class on Job (but, as the syllabus notes, you don't have to read all of Job). For Ezra, take special note on the new policy on foreign wives--mentioned in the video from last night.
Alter understands Ruth as an extended type-scene. You only have to read the short section of his ch. 3 on type-scenes that is on Ruth, but if you don't remember what a type-scene is, you should re-read the full chapter; I will certainly ask you to be able to explain both the general idea and its specific application to Ruth. Type-scenes are excellent examples of what Alter means by the revisionary process (in reading the Bible, he argues, we discover how "meaning, perhaps for the first time in narrative literature, was conceived as a process requiring continual revision" [p. 12]). More than that, we have the fascinating situation of the relocating of the Book of Ruth from its location in the Hebrew Bible (included in the "Writings") to a new location in the Greek translation, the Septuagint, the basis on modern "Christian Bibles" (so that, in the bible we're using, Ruth comes between Judges and 1 Samuel). That move is itself part of a revisionary process (part of the way the bible came to have meaning, even different meanings, over time). You can at least ask yourself what difference would it have made to have had a sequence that ran: Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, and then to have had Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel. What does the change do? (You may have lots of ideas, but I will call your attention to the Deuteronomistic History, and how the Bible is often at odds with its own dominant ideas ... the re-placement of Ruth is a great example of this).
... As is Job (which, as the video you saw notes, explicitly challenges the core premise of the Deuteronomistic History. I will also try to suggest that Job challenges the very foundation of Judaism (the relationship with God). These ideas will lead us again to the notion of "revision" (literally, to see again, but really, to see what we thought we knew in a new context, and so remind us that meaning isn't always stable). Chapters 38-41 in Job (the voice in the whirlwind) seems intent on revising some notions from Genesis 1, the first creation story. But Job also revises itself, or at least earlier versions of itself. So notice the relationship between chapters 1-2, 42 (on the one hand) and the intervening chapters (though you don't have to read all of that) on the other. Stylistically, they are very different, no doubt, intentionally. This is an example of "frame narrative" and is often used to force the reader into a sense of contrast or conflict between between the what frames the main narrative and the main narrative itself. At a minimum, the frame offers a kind of oblique commentary on the main narrative; or perhaps it is the other way around. In any event, pay attention to the difference in style between the two parts.
Finally, you may have some questions about "the Satan" who makes his first fully developed debut in Job. He may not be what you expect. And just a note, this figure (though having a long and complex history) also comes from "Persia" (just like "hell" and "resurrection" ... all part of Zoroastrianism).
Happy reading.
for March 30th
Posted on March 21, 2006
We will be beginning our work with the Christian Greek Scriptures or "New Testament." As I have noted, this is all (or almost all) still "Jewish" writing: Luke's Gospel and the Acts of the Apostle are the only major texts in the Bible written by a non-Jew (actually Luke-Acts is really a single text, though they are separated by John's Gospel in the canonical Bible).
Although, chronologically speaking, Mark is the first Gospel (at least, of those "in" the Bible)--composed around 70 CE--we will start with Luke and Matthew because Mark doesn't have a nativity story ((he begins with the baptism of Jesus); John doesn't have a nativity story either. You will note, though, that, while Luke and Matthew have certain details in common, their nativity stories are quite different in many key details (and I will ask you about those on the quiz). As you read through Crossan's "A Tale of Two Gods," you will also learn why the details are so different (or at least what the implications are). If you find this curious, please go back to what you learned in Alter's chapter, "Composite Artistry."
In the second half of class we will consider Crossan's "A Kingdom of Nuisances and Nobodies," which will introduce us to many of the central themes of Crossan's work (his particular reading of Jesus of Nazareth: be prepared for a "revolutionary" portrait, in all senses of that). We will use this account as a jumping off point into some of Jesus' parables (stories told "by" Jesus rather than "about" him ... so, we'll get a look at Jesus as a story-teller). We will then take a look at one or two of the important parables (certainly the parable of the Good Samaritan will be among these).
We may or may not get a chance to discuss the parable of the Prodigal Son, but this is a good chance to tell you that the details of your second essay are now available. Look under "assignments" on the blog-site ... scroll all the way down. I've given you a bunch of topics to choose from (I'm sure there will be something there to interest you). That essay is due on Friday, April 10th.
Hope you come back from Spring Break ready to go. We'll have just 5 weeks left.
April 6th
Posted on April 4, 2006
We are covering the Gospel of Mark--without question, the most important single piece of writing from the early Christian era--this week. For Christians, this Sunday is Palm Sunday, an event recounted in chapter 11 of Mark (and that account is probably based on Zechariah 9: 9).
I will show in class a couple of sections from Episode 3 of the documentary, From Jesus to Christ: the First Christians; I'll show the sections on the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and, time permitting, John (we'll come back to Luke when we do the Acts of the Apostles). We'll also be discussing Crossan's chapter, "In the beginning is the body." I think this is the most important chapter in Crossan's book in terms of getting his reader to understand that we must learn how to read the gospels--they should not be taken as historical or biographical accounts (they are, just as they say, "good news"). So as you are reading that chapter, think both about the specifics of the stories as Crossan analyzes them AND about what you are learning more generally concerning what it requires to understand the gospels in terms of historical context. We'll move fairly quickly, but I think we will cover at least the following: Mark 5, Mark 6: 6-13, and John 11 (because Crossan spends some time on this story). As always, you will have the opportunity (especially at the beginning of class) to make whatever comments or ask whatever questions
you want.
Also, please remember that the topics for the second essay are listed under "assignments" (scroll down to the PDF file).
April 13th
Posted on April 11, 2006
Although I often teach this course in the Spring term, it only occasionally happens that we get to the "Passion" and "Resurrection" narratives the same week as Easter (and this year Passover falls in the same week; this Thursday is Holy Thursday for Christians, the celebration of the Last Supper, which, in the Synoptic Gospels, was a Passover meal).
Thursday's class will fall into two parts. In the first half we will deal with the narratives in all four of the Gospels treating the movement from the Last Supper to Jesus' arrest to his torture, trial, carrying of the cross, death, and burial. Crossan discusses quite a lot of this in his chapter 6: "The Dogs Beneath the Cross." What I want you to focus on are 1) the core sequence that the Gospels have in common (note that John's is different in some obvious ways; and 2) the differences in the accounts (there are both obvious major differences and some very subtle ones). Crossan doesn't focus exclusively on these differences, but he does give some important examples (e.g. how the burial accounts differ). Crossan is also trying to get us to reflect on why Jesus was actually crucified: what did the historical Jesus do to get killed (and is that how the Gospel writers "redact" the story)?
In the second half of class we will consider the Resurrection and post-Resurrection narratives. While all the writers have a scene at the tomb ("Easter"), they have very different accounts about what happens subsequently (and even the "tomb-scenes" have slightly different compositions of characters). Please note that Mark's gospel originally ended at 16:8 (and you should stop there so that you get a feel for how the other writers change his story). One of Crossan's key points in chapter 7 ("How many years was Easter Sunday?") is that, whatever the early Christians actually believed about the resurrection as an "historical event"--and the reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Corinthians will tell you something about this-- the resurrection stories do not aim to reconstruct the resurrection in terms of "what really happened"). So please give that special consideration. We will look at some of the specific arguments Crossan makes about these stories, but we will try to go beyond his account as well. We will certainly give some special attention to Luke's account (his "Road to Emmaus" story is a great one, and I read this a bit differently from Crossan), and if we have any time left we will give some attention to the first 8 verses of Mark 16 (it's quite amazing how much is packed into that small space).
A reminder that you have an essay due on Friday.
April 20th
Posted on April 17, 2006
We'll be reading accounts by St. Paul (his letter to the Galatians) and accounts where Paul is the main character (in Acts of the Apostles). In read his writing, we'll will continue to consider early Christian notions of resurrection (and Paul's way is but one particular way of translating the notion of the "living Jesus" or the post-Easter Jesus as a dynamic presence into a specific concept). Although Paul was Jewish (a Pharisee), he became the great missionary to the gentiles, and this is the central focus of Luke's account in Acts.
So the first half of class will be on Paul's ideas (mainly)--we'll look at some texts that are not assigned reading, like Philippians chapter 2--to get a sense of the range of Paul's thought. (Paul was, among other things, the first theologian of Christianity.)
In the second half of class, we'll talk about the spread of the ideas and beliefs of the Jesus or kingdom movement, first to Jewish communities and then to Greco-Roman gentile communities. We'll consider some of the major topics addressed by Luke in Acts, but we'll also contrast Crossan's views to those of Paula Fredriksen (we'll be reading a piece--on electronic reserve--from her Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews).
One thing to pay special attention to. Luke addresses Paul's moment of conversion (his famous vision on the Road to Damascus) on three different occasions in Acts (chapters 9, 22, 26). Think about these in relation to Paul's own accounts (in Galatians 1 and 1 Corinthians 15). What sort of accounts are we getting here? What is literal and what is symbolic?
For a great image, see Caravaggio's famous painting:
