Technology in the Classroom
My wife brought home the latest issue of Educause Review from her office today. There is an interesting article by Patricia McGee and Veronica Diaz entitled “Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member Supposed to Do?“. Since most of the readers of this blog are more technologically savvy than myself, it might not provide any new information. However, I was by references to technological support in the article, especially in light of my continuing travails this semester.
Jazz Chords in Genesis
It’s always difficult leading folks through the inherent clashes of concepts, ideas and chronologies that make up Gen 1-2. In some ways these two stories provide a great place to star by laying all the issues of biblical texts out on the table. At the same time, the conflicts within the text and in relationship to the larger biblical corpus can be disconcerting — especially for Christians. While I have previously referred to such conflicts as the two creation stories, two calls of Moses, and the like as ‘stereophonic’ in nature, I’m now starting to wonder if a better analogy would be jazz chords. Perhaps it is the dissidence itself that makes the text interesting. Read more…
Office Hours
of·fice hours [aw-fis ou-erz] -noun
- University required time for adjuncts to sit alone in the coffee shop: No one ever visits me during office hours!
- An opportunity for adjunct professors to consume more caffeine than the Surgeon General recommends: My hands are always slightly jittery after office hours.
- An excuse to blog: I wrote this post during office hours.
- (rarely used) An occasion for face-time with students in a more private and less threating environment, so that they may share their questions, misgivings, and misunderstandings more openly than in class: Please see me during office hours if you have any further questions, misgivings or misunderstandings that you do not feel comfortable addressing in class.
SBL’s ’07 Guide to the Galaxy
As both Nijay Gupta and Brandon Wason have noted, the SBL ’07 National program guide is up. Yours truly is presenting in S18-86 Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy with a paper entitled “Hurrying the Analogy: The Analogical Function of Hurrians and Beds in CAT 1.132.” My paper is the last in nine papers in the session(!). Is it just me, or do four hour session seem a bit much?
Hospitality in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Yesterday I reread the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter” for a class I’m teaching this fall. I read this text many years ago, but I obviously hadn’t been so engaged with the ancient Near East at the time. The hymn recounts Persephone’s abduction by Hades; and while one would expect to pick up echoes of the Mesopotamian myths of the “Nergal and Ereshkigal” and the “Descent of Inana/Ishtar” what resonated most with me were the strong similarities with “Adapa and the South Wind.” The hymn’s major focus, I would argue is on hospitality.
Horsing around with Ugaritic
For those not keeping up with Duane Smith’s excellent series on the Ugaritic hippiatric texts, he’s just posted a nice summary. Duane has really put in a yeoman’s effort on some very difficult and annoying texts that nonetheless seem to have piqued his “abnormal interests.” Give them a look!
Chaos, Uncertainty and Teaching
Over this past weekend I packed all of my family’s worldly possessions into a rental truck, drove close to four hundred miles and unpacked the truck in the space of two days. Since then I have battled with DSL support, argued with charge-happy rental representatives, and interviewed for an adjunct position. I got the job.
Now, surrounded by boxes and unsure where my copy of the CAD is, I find myself in crunch time to finalize syllabi for two classes I’ve never taught, at two universities that I’ve never taught at before. This is the first time I’ve taught at a university that I wasn’t currently or recently attending. The dynamic is different. I know little of the culture of one of the universities and the other I haven’t been associated with for over ten years. While conversations with other professors can help to get a feel for the place, there is nothing that can compare with actually getting one’s hands’ dirty in the process of teaching.
Which brings me back again to the boxes that surround me. I need to be ready to go, with syllabi completed and readings finalized in less than three weeks (ideally by the end of next week), and yet I don’t even know where my office space will be in our new place. I can’t control the uncertainties inherent in teaching at a new school, but I can control my half of the teaching equation by knowing the material cold and having detailed lessons plan that will keep the classes involved and interest while communicating the need materials and methods. However, it is hard to do this when you are still sleeping on an air mattress in your living room surrounded by boxes.
While the ancients often represented chaos with water imagery, a better image for our contemporary world would be cardboard moving boxes.
Kensington Fire
About a week and a half back there was a seven alarm fire in the Kensington section of Philly that took out almost a whole block. Several old friends from college run an intentional community on that block called The Simple Way.
Fourfold or Sevenfold in 2 Sam 12:6?
Preparing for a move down the East coast, I was only to happy to see my copy of JBL 126 no.2 (Summer 2007) finally arrive this past week (since I need to pack finish packing my journals). I finished reading the volume last night and was intrigued by some comments made by Jeremy Schipper in his overall excellent Critical Note “Did David Overinterpret Nathan’s Parable in 2 Samuel 12:1-6” (JBL 126[2007], 383-391). Schipper’s overall premise that David overinterprets Nathan’s parable and sees it as a condemnation not of himself but of Joab—an intriguing idea that I think works well with the text.
What bothered me was a relatively minor textcritical comment preferring the “sevenfold” of LXX (minus the Luccian recension) over the “fourfold” of the MT. In truth, this position is not new; S. R. Driver, P. K. McCarter and others have taken this position before. However, I still think it is wrong.
Learning Languages in Seminary
I’ve been watching the wonderful series of posts by John Hobbins on the plight of North American seminary education, especially in relation to language an solid biblical knowledge. For some reason, it was reading Christopher Heard’s post on the subject that I though that I should add my own ruminations to the mix.
I spent one miserable year at Westminster Theological seminary and four years at Fuller seminary earing two degrees. At Fuller I TA’ed everything from languages to Medieval and Reformation Church History, as well as taught two rotations of the standard intro to Hebrew. From all this it seem to me that the big problems with learning languages in seminary are 1) it is really too late to learn the language completely, and 2) most folks don’t really want to learn anything for learnings sake.
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 